Updates for NaNoWriMo

To reflect that I'm getting back to work on Ruby Ransome for NaNoWriMo 2022, I've made a few updates to my blog template.  You'll see I removed all the icons from past NaNoWriMo years.  I'm cleaning up the clutter and starting fresh with just this year's icon.  I also took down the old progress bars and replaced them with a new one, which I'll try to keep updated (although I have to do it manually, as NaNoWriMo apparently no longer has an API for word count widgets).

I also plan on blogging regularly about my month of getting back together with Ruby, so stay tuned for future updates!

Last-Minute NaNoWriMo Prep

I can't believe our region's kickoff party - and the start of NaNoWriMo 2022 - is tomorrow night!  I am SO NOT READY.  I have not even started reading my novel yet, so I guess that's probably going to be my job for tomorrow.  Doing it all at once will mean better continuity, and it'll all be fresh in my mind, right?

I always feel like I have too much to do, but right now the feeling is rather intensified.  I have to get ready for the kickoff party tomorrow night, which means printing bingo cards, finding my stash of NaNoWriMo stickers and favors, and making sure I have everything all together.  We also probably should grab something at Costco for the potluck tomorrow evening.

In addition to prepping for the kickoff party, I also have a variety of other things to do: website maintenance, photo shoots, and other business-type things.  I still have a cleaning and organization project I've been working on, and need to make some progress on.  And of course, I need to take care of my horse and do barn chores before the kickoff.

So much to do, so little time.

Wish me luck getting it all done in the next 22 hours!

Now Can We Panic???

I came to the realization today that we're only five days out from NaNoWriMo.  Five days, people!  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

I've been less productive than I would have liked the last few days, so I'm sorry to say that I'm not ready at all.  I should have started reading through my novel a couple days ago, but instead I'm rereading a nonfiction book about the 20s called Flapper.  (I'll post about it later.)  It's a good way to get me into the mood to write about the 1920s, but it also means I have only five days left to get ready to start rewriting my first Ruby novel.

I also have a full library cart of books about the 20s - some fiction, some nonfiction - that I wanted to get to as well.  I really don't know what I was thinking.  Forget "bit off more than I could chew" - "checked out more than I could read" should be a saying, although in this case it's literal.

I know I'm not the only one who isn't ready for NaNoWriMo.  My husband only has an idea for what to write about - no story or characters - and one of my co-MLs said in our chat tonight that she doesn't know what she's going to write about at all!

The closer we get to NaNo, the more tempting it is to say never mind, I'll just work on my blogs, or a project that I'm more ready for... but I'm going to try to stick to the original plan, and work on Ruby!

Exciting New Come Write In Partner!

I'm super excited that Barnes & Noble is partnering with NaNoWriMo this year.  I've been writing in Barnes & Noble cafes for years.  Starting in about 2005, when I was both a full-time technical writer and a freelance writer, I used to go to my local B&N to get some work done when I was tired of working at home.

I love writing in cafes, and a cafe in a bookstore seems like the absolute perfect place to write.  We've held NaNoWriMo write-ins at Starbucks as well as Tattered Cover, a small local chain of bookstores, but an early attempt to hold one at Barnes & Noble didn't go so well (although to be fair I don't know the full situation or whether that write-in had been approved by B&N).

This year it should go much better, since we'll be there as part of a collaboration between NaNoWriMo and Barnes & Noble.  When a business or organization signs up as a Come Write In partner, the region's municipal liaisons coordinate with them to get their events scheduled and on the local calendar.  So Barnes & Noble should be well aware of how write-ins work this time around, since they're dealing with the organizers directly.

I have two Barnes & Noble stores near me, one to the north and one to the south, so I've taken on coordinating directly with both of them to set up write-ins.  One has already gotten back to me and it's looking like we'll be having write-ins there Wednesday evenings in November.  Hopefully the other Barnes & Noble will pick a day other than Wednesday because I'd like to attend both of those write-ins, since I'm coordinating with both stores.

I'm also planning write-ins at a local board game cafe that is incredibly supportive of NaNoWriMo, as they have been hosting these write-ins as well as our kickoff party for years.  Those write-ins will be on Sundays throughout November.  So as you can imagine, between the two B&N write-ins and the board game cafe one every week, my social calendar in November is already pretty full.

Hard to believe November is only two weeks away now!

To Read or Not to Read

With only two and a half weeks until NaNoWriMo is upon us (!!!), I'm starting to think about my reading materials in the next few weeks and during November.  My plan was to reread some of my 1920s research materials leading up to NaNo - in addition to reading my own novel, of course.  But now I'm a little afraid I won't have enough time before November to read everything I wanted to.

I also have to decide what to read during the writing process.  I remember reading some author's thoughts on the matter once, saying that they read voraciously while they were planning the novel - research materials, other similar books, etc. - right up until they started writing it.  And then, at that point, they read only other stuff, books that wouldn't be similar enough to what they were writing that it would unintentionally influence them.

I wish I could remember who that was.

Anyway, I know a lot of people don't read at all during NaNo.  They think they can't or shouldn't spare the time away from their novel.  But I'm a voracious reader - I'm always reading something, no matter how busy I get.  Even if it's only for five or ten minutes, I have to read at least a little bit every night.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've gone straight to bed without reading, and they've always been because of something extremely out of the ordinary, such as when my horse almost died in the spring.

So my plan is to read a bunch of 20s stuff - both research and fiction, probably - to get me in the mood before November, and then during November I'll try to stick to completely unrelated fiction.

What about you?  Do you read while you're writing a novel, and do you have any rules for yourself about what you read?

Where Do You Write?

I've been trying to tidy up my house lately, and it occurred to me that if I were to actually clean my desk (ahem), I could try writing there.

It's been so long since I've written at my desk, though.  I used to write primarily at my desk, although sometimes I would work on the couch in the living room.  Since I moved into my condo in 2016, though, I've primarily worked in the kitchen, instead of my office in the second bedroom upstairs.

It's not that I dislike my office.  It's often a mess, although that will hopefully be fixed soon.  But I don't care as much for working upstairs.  I like being in my sunny kitchen, where I can get a drink or a snack at any time.

In my kitchen, I used to sit at the table to work, but for the past few years I've preferred to sit at the counter.  My kitchen has a galley kitchen with a counter that sticks out beyond the cabinets, dividing the kitchen from the eating area like a peninsula and creating a little bar.  My husband and I sit on either side of that counter to eat and work, for the most part.

I would love to get the office and doll room (a shared room) organized again so that we can both use our desks upstairs, but I don't know how much I'll actually work up there.  Thankfully, one of my favorite things about my laptop is that I can work wherever I please, even when this changes from time to time.  Sometimes I write from bed before going to sleep, sometimes I write on the couch, and often I write on the go, schlepping my laptop with me places and writing wherever I happen to be at the time.  Sometimes I even write while my electric car charges at a public charger.

I think being flexible about where you write is a good skill, but also, there are studies that show that the ambient noise of a coffee shop can actually help you focus, oddly enough.  Maybe that's why write-ins are so popular during NaNoWriMo.

What about you?  Where do you prefer to do your writing?

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

I've decided I need to start my read-through of Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box soon.  As I mentioned quite a few blog posts back, I realized I had some substantial flaws with character motivation and the plot, so I'm having to rewrite much of it.  Many of the main scenes will stay, as they do make sense with the new plot and motivation (more sense, in fact - I was trying to force something that wasn't working).  But much of the small stuff needs to go, so rather than going in and tweaking every single scene and deciding what would stay and what would go, I am going to rewrite instead.

But first, I need to get my head back into Ruby's world of the vampire-ridden 1920s.  I have been out of it for a long time.  I have some reference books about the 1920s that I might reread in preparation for writing during NaNoWriMo, but more importantly, I need to go through the novel itself and mark what's staying and what needs to change.

You may remember me debating how I was going to revise.  Of course, this isn't a standard revision, since it'll be primarily rewriting - I'm just trying to refresh my memory and get back into the atmosphere of the novel.  But it's been the same debate for me anyway.  Do I find my marked-up manuscript and read through it and all the handwritten revisions?  Or do I read through the novel on a screen?

Ultimately, I decided that the best way for me to get it done was by reading on a very specific screen: my Kindle screen.  After all, I want to read through it fairly quickly, hopefully in just a couple of days, and having it on my Kindle is probably the best way to make that happen.  So I used Scrivener to compile it into an ebook, and emailed it to my Kindle.  Now I'll be able to read through it there, and I can actually highlight and take notes about anything I want to remember when I'm rewriting.

Another option is of course to keep a note pad with me and use that to take notes.  It might be a little faster when I want to make note of something, but of course it'll mean I'll have to find that part in the novel later, and then there's the matter of whether I have my notepad with me when I need it...  So I think, even with the fact that typing notes on the e-reader will be slightly cumbersome, I will plan on using the highlight and note-taking features on Kindle.

Now the only question is when I'm going to do this.  I have the ebook loaded on my Kindle now, but I've been working on some other things at the moment, more pressing things from my to-do list.  I do think it'll make the most sense for me to read the novel in the last week or so before NaNoWriMo, so I'm in the mood and ready to write on November 1st.  I also want to skim through some of my old research books that I have about the 1920s, books I pulled a lot of information out of for Ruby's story.

How about you?  How is your NaNoWriMo prep going?  Will you be ready to write in only three weeks?