Reaching A Goal Is Rewarding! Camp NaNoWriMo April 2013 is coming to a close and I want to celebrate achieving my goal.…

No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

My…

Last weekend, I had the good fortune to do something I haven’t done since I was a teen — attend a writing retreat.

The retreat to mark my long absence from writers retreats, workshops, and conferences was Writing Our Way Toward Wholeness, an exploration of writing as a spiritual practice. It was incredibly nourishing, and just what I needed after the frenzy of…

Congratulations to all who participated in year 2012 NaNoWriMo.

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Announcing my win to the Internet! Now I’m going to go announce it to my husband. And then I’m going to bed.

The novel is “complete” at 50,712 words, but far from finished. I can’t wait to take this one on for a few more rounds. This is only the beginning.…

This is it! The final week has arrived, and by Friday, I'll hopefully have another novel first draft under my belt (my eighth!). I'm close to the end of the story now -- the prince has been found out, Rapunzel's hair is cut, and the witch's backstory has been revealed. All that's left is some wandering in the wilderness, some babies, and a reunion. I hope that I'll actually be able to type "the end" and not just hit 50,000 words, because I agree with Chris Baty that there's something magic…

So, supposedly Week Three is where things are supposed to start coming together. This is where the NaNo journey gets better. Although I’m not quite seeing it yet … I’m still struggling through mid-novel insecurity, and the negligence of many other areas of my life for the sake of this novel is beginning to have an effect. My dear husband finally cleaned the bathroom tonight. I finally walked my dog and got new tires. The dishes remain undone, and this blog post is being written at the last…

I'm finally crawling out from beneath a pile of laundry and trying not to be too dismayed by the fact that only half my to-do list is accomplished and that I haven't earned a single penny today (except for some residual income from Demand Studios -- thanks, Demand!). I'm trying to go easy on myself and remember that it's always like this when I take a trip and am out of contact with my "real life" for a few days. The good news is, airplanes are a…

In the past week, I’ve received a couple pieces of good news on my writing projects. My middle grade/young adult novel, Ever This Day, is currently under consideration with a new press. And the Conscious Monologues, a play including a piece I wrote about Women’s Ordination, has it’s debut performance next month. I would love to go to the opening, but I think my travels to Illinois last month for my…

I Jumped! Into Writing...

http://elisabethzguta.blogspot.com/2012/11/national-novel-writing-month-year-2012.html…

By this time next week, I should have written at least 8,000 words on this year's NaNoWriMo novel. Like every year that I've decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month, I find myself savoring these last few days of freedom from word-count tyranny even as I feel delightful anticipation in getting started.

This is not going to be easy. I work every weekend in November and will be at the…

A miscelleny of blog posts and advice on preparing for NaNoWriMo

Throughout October a common theme runs through many of my favourite blogs – preparing for NaNoWriMo. I thought it might be a good idea to gather some of my favourite posts from the past few weeks into one easy-to-find resource. But these posts are not just pertinent for those planning to participate in…

*Note: This is a mirror blog to my blog at http://llword.wordpress.com. Most of the "history" referred to in this post is over there, since I only started copying my posts here when I joined the SheWrites community.

In the September issue of Writer’s Digest, there’s an article by Nina Amir encouraging writers to “blog their book” — to post a…

I've been gone from SW for entirely too long, but it's okay; I don't think I…

Finish-lines, dead-lines, due-dates, the red ribbon we cross through, there on the horizon. Our dream. Staring us in the face. What do we do with that image? How do we proceed? Do we rush toward it, ignoring all the distractions? Do we start strong and finish strong? Do we need or use or look for support along the way?

I recently tested my own ability to cross the finish-line myself by writing 50,000 words in one month. A novel from start to finish. No notes, no outline, no…

It's hard for me to believe that it's been less than a week since NaNoWriMo ended. Although time always seems to speed by quickly, the days of having how I'd get my wordcount in on my mind every day feel far away now that that mentality is behind me. And although that might not sound pleasant, that is exactly what made me realize how much I love NaNoWriMo.

I was so resistant to participating this year, and for good reasons; and yes, some of my…

Well, I did it. I finished my NaNoWriMo novel on November 28--50,049 words that add up to a very rough draft of my YA novel, Seed Bombs. It was such a relief to reach the finish line--it reminded me that I am indeed a writer (something that should have been a given in my mind, but after writing so little the last couple of years, part of me couldn’t help but worry that those days were over.) It was also a relief to finish a couple of days early, because the 2nd anniversary of my mom’s death…

Well, in a few days, it will all be over. I’m down to having to write 1500 words a day to finish on time. I haven’t written my 1500 words for today, but I will.

What I won’t do is finish this novel; I think I’ve probably about hit the halfway point this month.

Since this is a “rewrite from scratch” of a previous novel, the main purpose of NaNo this year wasn’t to create something new, but to see whether it was worth returning to something old — something very, very old. The…