NaNoWriMo Days 7 & 8 (& yet another excerpt!)

Sometimes I wonder if I should really be writing such vastly different "novels". I have a sci-fi/teen romance fiction novel, a serious Christian-themed novel, a spy/teen romance novel, and now a non-fiction (duh) auto-bio. But then I saw this on Pinterest last night and it made me feel better -->

Okay, I'm not posting stats for yesterday or today because... I don't have any, lol. Well, I'm currently at 13,074 words and I need to be at 13,333 so I'm super close to my goal today. But, I'm at such a nice stopping point. I just finished 1998. So, here is an excerpt from the end of that chapter. Enjoy :) and remember that this is the first draft! It is not perfect in any way. But it's just a taste of what I'm writing :) 

Papa Don came down to Lake Jackson on Christmas day of ’98. We had just spent a few days in East Texas and the fun continued with Papa Don in town. We opened gifts and went driving around . We tried to fish but didn’t have much luck at our location.

            Now, Papa Don smoked. He’d been doing so since about the age of 14. He was, at this time, in his 60’s. Today, he’s in his 70’s. He still smokes. Sometimes he smokes less, but he has to have that nicotine kick every day.

            Well, his trip was no exception. He would sit out on the front porch and smoke his cigarette.

            I was extremely intrigued by this process. I had never seen someone smoke before. Or if I had, I didn’t even know what they were doing. But I now had an opportunity to watch my grandfather smoke up close and personal. I could sit next to him, stand in front of him, watch from the window. Wherever!

            Papa Don was only in town for a few days. When he left, so did the cigarettes.

            But that didn’t stop my interest.

            As Kelsey and I were coloring one morning soon after, I realized that the white crayons kind of looked like something I had seen before.

            Yes, a cigarette!

            I started to peel the paper off the crayon (which took several minutes) and proceeded to stick it in my mouth.

            That’s what the white crayon is for, I probably thought. I mean, no one actually drew anything with the white crayon. It was supposed to be my own personal cigarette – duh.

            So, I started “smoking”.

            “That’s gross!” Kelsey said.

            I didn’t care.

            My habit went off and on. Mom and Dad didn’t know about it, though, for quite some time.

            Finally, I got out a new white crayon on day. As I began to peel the paper off Mom could hear Kelsey say, “You’re not gonna smoke that, are you?” in a totally grossed-out tone.

            But, of course, I smoked away. And I don’t think Mom or Dad even tried to stop me.

            Instead of going into the New Year with a goal to quit smoking, I decided to take it up. 

            Don't worry. That habit didn't last long. 

NaNoWriMo Day 7

Day 7 is finally over! It was pretty tough getting myself to write today. At one point I actually forced myself to write 200 more words before taking a bathroom break. Yeah, it was that bad. But I finally caught up on my word count by passing the much-loved 10,000 word mark. Yay! Now I just have to do that 4 more times and I'll be good, right? If I write 1,667 words a day from tomorrow on I'll finish on time. But, I'd still like to be one day ahead in word count. I've never done NaNoWriMo in a 31 day period (rather than 30). I must say, I love having that extra day as a cushion. But, I hate to use that cushion at the beginning of the month. Hopefully I'll get that cushion back in the next few days. Does this make any sense? Sorry if it doesn't; it's a bit late and I'm rather tired...

Now if you'll excuse me, my fingers are about to fall off, so... catch ya on the flip side.

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...