NaNoWriMo

9 entries. 3,404 words.

October, 2013

• Story Locked In for NaNoWriMo 2013. 2013-10-18 12:26 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have my story idea for NaNoWriMo this year. I’m kind of excited about it. At least I was when I thought of it. It’s a bit of a meta-story, a pure fantasy that could not in any way happen in real life, or even alternate world life, and I would be lying if I said it did not in some way resemble John Scalzi’s inexplicably-Hugo-award-winning Redshirts­. I would say it has some elements of Redshirts and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One mixed up together. Possibly with a dash of Disney’s Tron. 178 words.

August, 2014

• July Camp NaNo Results. 2014-08-13 1:36 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I suppose I should finally reveal the results of my July Camp NaNoWriMo experiment: Total failure. I was doing all right until things at work took a turn for the stressful, and then it became impossible to write in the evenings. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s hard to be creative when you’re totally drained. I tried to set myself up for success anyway, by changing my target word count from 50,000 to 15,000. (You can do that in the summer NaNoWriMos.) That goal was well within reach until things at work took a turn for the even-more-stressful and exhausting on top of it. So I wimped out and gave up. I ended up completing a little over 10,000 words. 234 words.

December, 2017

• NaNoWriMo 2017 Post-Mortem. 2017-12-01 3:48 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • News
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Hi! I’m finally back with another writing update. I completed NaNoWriMo again this year, and here’s my assessment of my performance. Summary This year’s novel is code-named “Survey.” It’s a science fiction/fantasy set many thousands of years in the future, in a time after a long war between humans and aliens has finally resulted in a treaty. A human captain leads a ship on a mission to survey a planet, where a lost colony had once been established thousands of years before. They find a struggling pre-Industrial human society, and alien ships in orbit. 1,111 words.
• The Editing Process. 2017-12-15 3:30 PM.
  • Editing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment: I’m going to try not to completely abandon the novel I wrote in November. This experiment has failed every year since 2010. NaNoWriMo drafts from 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 languish more-or-less in exactly the same state they were in on December 1st. Drafts from 2010 and 2011 have been edited a lot, but remain woefully unsuitable for submission. But this time I have a plan. Well, a first step in a plan, at least, which is better than I’ve ever done before. 679 words.

October, 2018

• Winter Arrived Today. 2018-10-22 1:51 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I woke this morning to an almost literally freezing cold house, which means that we can no longer pretend that the cold months of the year won’t happen. By “we” I mean “me,” because there are some people who actually like the transition from summer to fall. I personally spend most days between November and March in three or four layers of clothes, moving slowly, barely staving off uncontrollable shivering fits, unable to concentrate, hiding in the darkness that consumes most of each day. 582 words.

November, 2018

• NaNoWriMo 2018 Vlog Experiment. 2018-11-03 12:37 AM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment this year for NaNoWriMo. Instead of writing blog posts about my progress, I’m recording “vlogs” about it. I created a YouTube channel where you can watch me ramble about my NaNoWriMo journey this year. My goal is to record a short video every day talking about my progress, the challenges I run into, how I deal with them, etc. Things that I think might be educational or inspiring or helpful or just funny to other writers. A lot about “the writing process” and how I’m feeling about the project as I go along. Thrills, chills, spills. Stuff that I would normally write about, but I’m just going to talk about them instead. I would rather reserve my writing energy for the NaNoWriMo draft as much as possible. 302 words.
• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 3 Vlog. 2018-11-04 12:36 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Vlog
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Kind of a long one. A better day. Hilarious text-to-speech on the iPad, switching scenes, what I like about my writing so far, blanks between writing sessions, thinking about getting Scrivener for iOS, starting fresh every day, finally getting into the world of the story, bringing complex modern sociopolitical themes into the backdrop of the sword-and-sorcery city setting. 58 words.
• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 7 Vlog. 2018-11-08 3:06 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It’s interesting to watch view statistics when you upload a series of videos to YouTube. You might think, as I do, that if you say, “I’m going to upload a series of videos to YouTube, one every day, and here’s the first one,” that people would know and understand how to find and watch the complete series if they’re interested, and you’ll get similar view statistics on each video. But you’d be wrong. The first video will get some views, if you have any followers at all, and then the remainder of the videos will get zero views because everyone will wander away and forget about you amid the rest of their busy daily lives. So from time to time you have to keep reminding people, on social media, or in blog posts like this one. :) 194 words.

December, 2018

• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 30 Vlog. 2018-12-01 2:37 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Last vlog for NaNoWriMo 2018, unless I record one more epilogue a bit later to show how I reorganized my Scrivener project. Validating 50,247 words. Lack of editing. Thoughts on what to do next. Reflecting on the month. There are in fact 31 vlog videos, which you can find in this NaNoWriMo 2018 Playlist on YouTube. All the ups and downs of writing for 30 days. 66 words.