NaNoWriMo Day 6 (& another excerpt!)

I can't believe I've managed to blog every day of NaNo up to this point... I wonder how long that will last, haha!

Anyways... today's stats:

Word goal for today: 10,000 words
Total words written: 10,883
Words ahead: 883
10,000th word: Africa (talking about my Dad's mission trip!)

I got through to April 1998 today. Tomorrow, Colleen is going to be born and Dad is going to get Malaria ;)

And, I talked a girl I know into trying NaNoWriMo. I told her it wasn't too late to join in this year (lol!) but she's going to opt to try it sometime next year if she goes for it. I told her maybe she and I could try a different month than November and do it earlier in the year together. We'll see...

Another excerpt was requested so here is a short one from Chapter 5: 1998 --

Mom records January 6, 1998 as a day where Kelsey and I played “Mary and Joseph” all morning. She said the piano bench was our donkey. I guess the Christmas story was still fresh in our minds and we didn’t want the festivities to stop.

            Apparently we had just purchased two fish the day before. When Kelsey and I finally took a break from playing to go into our room and check on our new pets, they were both dead.

            One of them was floating on top, upside down. The other one had sunk to the bottom.

            Kelsey exclaimed, “We better call the pound, quick!”

            Mom tried to explain that they could probably handle this type of thing without the pound getting involved.

            Kelsey said, “Well, Jessica just flushes them down the toilet when her fish die.”

            Mom didn’t think this was such a bad idea.

            I remember Dad later that day taking the fish bowl into the bathroom and flushing our two little goldfish down the toilet. It was rather dramatic to see the little gold things swirling around the toilet and then watching them disappear. But to be honest, I thought they were going off to a better place. I thought they were heading to a pond somewhere and would be revived and alive as soon as they got there.

            I guess I didn’t realize they were dead. 

NaNoWriMo Days 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6

My family and I went out of town for the weekend which has caused me to get a little behind in NaNoWriMo. If I don't get to writing I'll be 2,500 words behind tomorrow (not including my daily 1,667 words...). And it's almost 10 PM so I don't see how I can make much progress before I go to bed. Oh dear. But I guess this wouldn't be exciting if I didn't get a little behind... right?

I started reading a book a few days ago called "How Not to Write a Novel" which consist of about 200 mistakes that new (and even published) authors tend to make. The first chapter of this book pointed out a huge mistake I made in Shiloh's Children. "And what was that mistake?" you ask... I'll tell you! Introducing the main character, introducing his/her family members, showing how they interact together, etc. with no actual story line in sight for 50, 100, or even 200 pages. I kinda, sorta did that in Shiloh's Children. But guess what? I know better now! I know now that I need to start with a little more action and leave off all the history and background. I can still use all that history for my personal use but I don't need to put my reader through all that yapping about Shiloh's childhood. I'll have lots of editing to do come August.

NaNoWriMo Days 4, 5, 6, & 7

   

Over the past four days I have managed to just barely get my daily word count in but I have managed to do it. For example, I am only 90 words above my daily quota today -- but I am not behind :) I also passed the 10,000 word mark yesterday which. is. AWESOME! I love the 10k word mark. It feels so good to have written that much in just 6 days. Plus, that means I only have to do that four more times to win, lol.

The saddest part of these past few days has been that I have had to let four, wait, make that five people die. One of them was just two years old. So very sad. I have, thank God, never had someone super, super close to me die (grandparent, parent, sibling, etc.). My great-grandma died and that was very sad at the time but I was only in, like, the third grade so it has been a few years since that experience. So I am worried that my writing about these deaths may not make a big impact on the reader. A good editor could help me with that though (and I would rather have to edit it a million times than my parents die in a car accident, if you know what I mean...).

I still have a lot of month left, and a lot of novel. I am having a bit of the IGAD (I've Got All Day) syndrome and it is taking me a couple of hours what should take me about 50-60 minutes. But the plot is picking up.This is going to get better... I think... right?!?

NaNoWriMo Days 5, 6, & 7

Well, on Day 5 I woke up early like I normally do and only wrote about 300 words in 45 minutes - not good! So I used Write or Die to catch up. On Day 6 (yesterday) I passed the 10k mark and my mermaid, Nerin, met the human, Richard. Finally!! So far, that was worth getting up early to write. Today, I am just a few hundred words from my goal and I passed the 11k mark. I am hoping to get ahead tonight and tomorrow. :D Just 39,000 words to go...