Ganymeder

After her long sleep, the patron of Gomorrah was ready to wake.

*image courtesy of Roget Geraedts via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

In honor of Nanowrimo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month, my writing prompts are dares.

Write a literal take on a pun.

Your character discovers they have inherited an island.

A mistake in a clothing shop leads to hidden treasure.

Have fun!

In honor of Nanowrimo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month, my writing prompts are dares. Have fun!

Have a character speak only in iambic pentameter.

Include a kangaroo with hiccups in your story.

Someone in your story wins the lottery, but it’s NOT a good thing.

As far as my personal progress goes, after my early morning writing sprint, my word count total is 48, 261. For the past couple days, I’ve actually gotten a little bit ahead, which is a relief because I was slightly behind all the previous week. I was beginning to worry about finishing in time! If you are participating and behind, there’s no need to panic though. Plenty of people write high word counts the last week of the challenge! In fact, my plan was to write in fifteen minute sprints throughout the day to hit my daily goals. I think most people can probably spare fifteen minutes here and there.

Anyway, I need to apologize for my lapse in blog posts. I wanted to keep posting writing prompts on a weekly basis, but I was behind on my word count last week. And since during November, I made my daily goals my writing priority, everything else came after – including blogging. My final installment of my Cloud 9 series posted, because I had scheduled the post before Nanowrimo began, as did my Nanowrimo themed post, That Nagging Little Voice, for the FridayFlash.org site. I did tweet slightly, but mostly just to update my word count online to keep myself accountable.

After I reach my 50,000 words goal AND reach the end of my story, I will write more about what I learned this year from the experience. For now, I need to get back to work, and I wish all my fellow writers the very best of luck!

In honor of Nanowrimo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month, my writing prompts will be dares. Have fun!

Write a character that is upset that they’ve never been to karaoke.

Create another that is obsessed with squirrels.

Include a scene where a children’s birthday party goes horribly wrong.

What’s happening in my own progress? On Saturday, my husband and son went with me to a local cafe so we could all work on our laptaps and maybe some other local ‘wrimos’ might stop by for an impromptu writing session. Alas, this did not happen, though I did succeed in making my word goal as well as drinking enough tea to float away on.

When we got home later that evening, my husband kindly installed a beta version of Scrivener for Linux on my laptop. So I’m really excited to use it, but I’m learning slowly because I don’t want to be distracted too much from my Nano-novel. I’m at 17,286 words (as of Sunday night- when I wrote and scheduled this post). I realize this is slightly behind for the monthly goal, but 17,000 was my Sunday night goal; so I’m happy.

I’m also taking a slightly different approach to writing this novel. I know the whole editor thing is supposed to be locked away, but I’m outlining as I go – both in a separate document and in the story draft itself. I color code the phrases that describe each section and put it before that section, like a chapter title. I’m hoping that by doing this I’ll make things easier to edit after November. This slows things down slightly, but since the outline is actually part of the document (sort of), I figure the words still count.

It’s all a first draft anyway thought; right? Wish me luck! And good luck with your own writing!

In honor of Nanowrimo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month, my writing prompts will be dares. Have fun!

Include a monkey on a cupcake in your story.
Write a character that only speaks when spoken to.
Create a superhero whose power is the ability to knit quickly.

And a far as my personal accountability goes, I hit 15,172 words. My goal is 17,000 words written for my Nano-novel by Sunday night. My story doesn’t seem too bad so far! I’m practicing using more words instead of less (like in my flash), which is always an interesting experience, and the structure of my story hasn’t gotten too convoluted.

Yet.

In fact, the plot is just beginning to thicken, and I can tell that it’s going to be very messy and interesting in the near future.

But it’s a first draft; right? Wish me luck! And good luck with your own writing!

The tree sprites remained trapped in their wooden tombs.

*image courtesy of Museum of Photographic Arts via Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.

Some people saw the world through rose-colored glasses.

*image courtesy of i am the fish that drowns in your chest via Flickr. Some copyright restrictions.

The colossus strode between worlds.

*image courtesy of Dirk Dallas via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The experiment – no matter how much they tried – just would not die.

*inspired by one of my son’s science experiments for homeschool.

Pygmalion thought he’d had it bad, but at least he hadn’t been forced to wear paisley.

*image courtesy of Thomas Hawk via Flickr. Some rights reserved.