NaNoWriMo 2014 - Winner!!

Yes writers everywhere, I have done it again! This blog wasn't around during my first three years of NaNoWriMo, but this year it is, which means I have somewhere to brag wholeheartedly.

I WON I WON I WON WON WON!!!

Okay, now it's your turn. If you have been doing NaNoWriMo this November, you should be around the 43-45K mark by today. And I'll give you a hint - it is possible to write the entirety of your novel in one day. It may be the worst novel to ever be novel-ed, but it'll be on paper. I wrote about 10K on the first day and about 7K on the day I won (November 24th, this year). I've written 30K in one day before during Camp NaNoWriMo, which, let me tell you, sucked very much, but it was done. So I refuse to let anyone tell me that this is impossible.

No matter where you are at today, you can make it to the end. Whether you've only written 500 words or 5,000 words or 15,000. You have four and a half days left (well, maybe more or less, depending on where you live) to hit that beautiful 50K. Believe me, it's worth it.

And I'll tell you now that you should be careful celebrating. As soon as I hit 50K, I turned on "Shut Up and Dance" by Walk the Moon and started screaming the lyrics, dancing around my room. I jumped on my bed (which was somewhat impossible, since my bed is a pull-out couch) and ended up falling over and bruising my hip somewhat badly, which ruined the excitement. So, if you're a klutz like me, I'll recommend doing something less dangerous than jumping on a non-jumpable bed, like drink hot chocolate until you pass out from writerly exhaustion or watch Criminal Minds all night. Something where you don't risk an injury.

But no matter how close or how far you are, believe me when I say that the exhaustion you put yourself through in the next few days to finish will be worth it to see the bar on NaNoWriMo turn purple and watch the little video on the winning page.

If you've already won, congratulations! Print out your certificate with pride and post your winning banners everywhere you can. You deserve it.

NaNoWriMo - Day One

Oh look at this pretty!! My Inkpop friend Anah Spiersmade this for me for my NaNo novel this year. Thank you Anah! (You should totally click on her name and go check out her blog. Do it. I'll wait.)

In other news, it is day one of NaNoWriMo, which means writing as much as humanly possible in one day. And since it's a weekend, this means I have time to do this and have a Harry Potter marathon too! Working my way from the beginning... 

I started writing before I put the movie on, but less than halfway through Sorcerer's Stone, I'm already at 5K! Sadly, so many other people are doing just as well at writing and updating, because every time I try to update my word count, the website kicks me off. 

Here's the link so y'all can stay up to date on my word count. I'll be saying it here too, though. But there, you'll also be able to check out more about the novel itself. 

If you're doing NaNoWriMo with me, congrats on making it to, and hopefully through, day one. Keep going! I promise, the end is not nearly as far away as it seems on the first day. 50K will be on like white on rice on a paper airplane in a snowstorm. 

Until then. 

Current Word Count: 5308

NaNoWriMo Updates

No cover just yet - I have a friend whose making me one, and, with her permission, I'll post it on here when it's finished.

Even without a cover, I'm here to say this: I won't be doing an every day update of NaNoWriMo (with the homework I've just been assigned, there's no way I can get it all done) but I'll try to update every other day. At the very least, it'll be a weekly update, so you can see how far I get into The Price of a Gift. I might even post excerpts from the latest writings...

Short post, but either way -

Until then.

My NaNoWriMo Novel is....

THE BIG REVEAL! Mwahahaha! I have no official cover for this novel yet, nor do I have even an okay pitch for it. But I promised that it would be revealed and, with less than two weeks to go before the big 11/1, I figured that it was about time. Rest assured, this novel will have a cover and a pitch at some point (but I cannot promise that it will be before November).

The title of my novel is...

The Price of a Gift

Kind of anticlimactic, I bet, but I love it. I've had this novel idea and this title in my head for almost a year now and I'm finally getting around to forming it into an actual idea. It's gone from a little sliver to a fully fledged, planned out, plotted out novel. I have my outline prepared on Scrivener and I'm slowly putting in different information about characters and settings. As I don't have a pitch, here's the basic plot of this novel:

Ariadne Slater (that's the main character) has worked two jobs for a while. At first, while simultaneously running her sick father's blacksmith shop, she was a call girl for the men wealthy enough to afford her. But after she got married, she went from sleeping with the cheating men to killing them for their wives. Her husband dies, though, and her father gets sicker. And then, Ariadne gets sicker. Blinding headaches and the only things that have helped were her husband, now dead and rotting, and the adrenaline rushes she got from first sleeping with men, and then killing them. With her headaches becoming worse, Ariadne must continue killing, One day, though, Ariadne is approached by three of the most powerful witches in the world who offer her a deal: her father's, brother's, and husband's souls along with a permanent cure for the headaches, in exchange for one more murder of their choice. And Ariadne finds out too late who she has to kill.

By the way, I suck at writing pitches. Either way, this is what my novel is about. I can't wait to really start writing it, and I especially can't wait to finish it. I think I'm really onto something with this novel...

Until then.

Novel Playlist!

Look at me being quick on the update! Here's the playlist I've created for the novel I'll be writing next month during NaNoWriMo. I wonder if anyone who may be reading this can guess what my novel is going to be about...

Kill of the Night - Gin Wingmore
My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark - Fall Out Boy
Centuries - Fall Out Boy
Fighter - Christina Aguilera
Human - Christina Perri
Monster - Imagine Dragons
Titanium - David Guetta
Unbreakable - Fireflight
Back in Black - AC/DC
Act the Part - Cherri Bomb
Beating Heart - Ellie Goulding
Moon Trance - Lindsey Stirling
Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking - SMASH Cast
Heart Attack - Demi Lovato
Jar of Hearts - Christina Perri
Mythology - VersaEmerge
Royals - Lorde
Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs - Fall Out Boy
Underdog - Imagine Dragons

For hints on what this novel is going to be about, pay close attention to some of the lyrics in Royals, Sympathy for the Devil, and Jar of Hearts... In the next post, I think I'll share the title of my novel, along with maybe a little tidbit of a synopsis.

Also, if you are reading this, leave a comment! I'd love to know that I'm not the only person that reads my blog!

Until then.

NaNoWriMo - Part 2

Here we are again - back to the topic of NaNoWriMo! Yes, back to it. I'll be posting pretty much nothing but NaNoWriMo until December 1st (this is assuming I'll be posting anything next month). In this post, I'll be talking about actually preparing for NaNoWriMo, my survival kit, and how I'm planning on winning despite being weighed down by upcoming exams and competitions.

First off: my survival kit.

This is my fourth year doing NaNo, which means I'm kind of a veteran about it. I'm nowhere near Chris Baty levels of veteranism, but I'd like to think I know what I'm talking about. This will hopefully also be the fourth year of winning. To do that, I keep a little kit ready that I call my NaNoWriMo Survival Kit. It includes the following:

-My plot outline for CENSORED.
-A very unhealthy supply of Red Bull, to either drink straight or use as a substitute for water in the coffee machine.
-Timer for word wars with friends
-My laptop (complete with Scrivener)
-My main man (aka my journal)
-A billion and one pens, pencils, and highlighters
-No Plot? No Problem! Book and mini-noveling kit.
-Novel timeline
-My Muse (aka my squishy Adipose stress thing)
-Rough pitch (because I suck at writing pitches and save them until I actually get something written)
-Novel playlist (this novel playlist will be posted hopefully by the end of the week)
-Lip balm (Eos is my favorite - I have three of them!)
-Favorite sweater
-Past NaNoWriMo victory T-shirts and sweatpants
-Gigantic bag of M&M's
-Character sketches
-And, of course, my cat

Now, some of you might think this is unnecessary for writing. I, however, will tell you that you never know what you're going to need on November 16th when you've hit the midway point and want to stop. You might actually need more M&M's than that gigantic bag can provide! This means, oh no, venturing out of your house and risking distractions. Stay as distraction free as you can while at home - that pile of dishes in the sink? Ignore them! If you can't ignore them all month, as many people can't, ignore them until you're at least a thousand words ahead of where you need to be.

That's another thing - the worst thing you can do during NaNoWriMo is to fall behind. I'm not saying this in reference to the fact that you only have a month to write so many words. I'm saying this because if you fall behind, you're going to say, "I can just catch up tomorrow." Some people can actually do this, but if you're busy and you're a procrastinator, NEVER DO THIS. Because you will keep saying that you can do it tomorrow, which will end up being December 1st and you won't have that novel you've been bragging to your friends you're writing.

Trust me - I almost didn't finish my second year of NaNoWriMo because I fell behind on the last week. I ended up writing over 10K in one day to catch up and that was the longest writing day I've ever had. You do not want to try to write 10K in one day at the end of November. If you're in school, if you have a job, if you have Thanksgiving leftovers (which is unavoidable), you will not have the time for this without shoving something to the side.

So after possibly scaring everyone reading this (maybe all three of you), have I scared you off? If not, holy crap, you're brave and I can't wait to see if y'all finish NaNoWriMo with me. If it's your first year, trust me - it'll be worth it.

Until then.

We Need to Talk...

...about a little thing coming up called NaNoWriMo. I know, I know, you fellow writers out there might be thinking, "NaNoWriMo? But that's over a month away!" Or, you might be thinking, "Finally! It's only a little over a month away!" Or if you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, you'll be thinking, "What the heck does NaNoWriMo mean?"

NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month, created by Chris Baty back in 1999 for writers to attempt the supposedly impossible - write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days (the official, formal number for this is #A30/31/50K). I say supposedly impossible because I've done it three times now and this November, I'll be attempting my fourth win. The first year, it was so incredibly hard, but I managed to write The Worst Novel Ever (then Dark Beauty) in the span on 30 days. It ended up being a little over 80,000 words and I was so proud of myself! In fact, I'm still pretty proud of the fact that at the age of fourteen, I managed to write an entire novel in one month. The book sucked, it was the worst thing I've ever written (and I've written a lot of really bad stuff) and I refuse to let anyone read it. But it was my first complete novel, so I kept the bound copy I got for finishing NaNoWriMo and it's hidden away in my closet under a stack of clothes so I never have to look at it again.

Thirty-three days from now, NaNoWriMo will being and I'll be attempting this and I encourage everyone to join me on this perilous quest. I promise that it's either going to be either the worst writing experience of your entire life or the best. Once I get up my contact information in that little tab up above, feel free to contact me about that (I love gaining writing buddies! But I am anti-creep. Stay away creepers).

I won't post about NaNoWriMo again until a little further into October, but that's when I'll start posting my intentions for NaNo... Intentions including what novel I'll be working on! I promise that I'll include a cover and a summary, along with how far I plan on working it through. As of now, though, I'd like to completely finish the first draft for NaNo.

Until then.

Hello, hello!

For those of you new here (which is everyone), welcome to my blog. I've tried keeping a blog in the past, but it has never worked out. But this time, unlike every other time, I'm determined. So here is my blog: Confessions of a Novelist. Yes, I am a writer. I'm not published, but that's because I just love taking my dear, sweet time writing novels.

My current work is Revolutionary. If I tell you the plot, you have to promise not to jump down my throat. "Jessie, that is so cliche!" "Jessie, that's so overdone!" "Why don't you go get an original idea!" I know people think that. Just listen: dystopian novel, set in the New American Colonies, because the world has gone to crap, Europe as a whole disintigrated, and America and Russia moved in before anyone else could, splitting the continent in half. Unfortunately for this society, after less than one hundred years, their world gets just as screwed up as it had been before. Now, women have been turned almost into actual objects. No speaking in public, cover your hair and face at all times, don't cut your hair, etc. etc. The daughter of a duke is set to marry the prince of the NAC, Jefferson Jefferson III, in fact, she's walking down the aisle on her wedding day when the book starts! But then, the group of rebels who had been almost nonexistent since the death of Victoria Schmidt's mother kidnap Victoria and hold her for ransom. If the king doesn't change the laws that are oppressing women, they will slaughter Victoria and make the entire country watch - and then they'll come after the king. Can't tell you much of what happens after that, but let me tell you - it involves threats of disembowelment, making out in a broom closet, a secret marriage, betrayal, revenge, and a dreaded love triangle that I swore I would write out but love too much to do so.

I don't have anything else to say. Check back for more posts or for the pages to be updated. You know you want to find out what happens to Victoria. Does she help the rebel women or turn them in? What about her little sister who's left to fend for herself at the palace? Who will she marry? What will happen to the queen? The king? The country itself? I promise that you might find out soon enough...

Until then.