NaNoWriMo: Thanksgiving Gift of 50,204 Words

Total Word Count on Day 28:  50,204 verified! 

As you can see, I have completed my goal of writing over 50,000 words in a novel in the month of November. True, I didn't write every single day or I would have finished this goal a few days ago, but I still feel like I accomplished something.

Is the novel finished? No. I still have a few things to do to complete the story. I have a lot of loose ends to tie up and a lot of chronological plot points to fix, not to mention, I lost complete track of what chapter I was on and just wrote "Chapter Something Something" to start off and end a section. The lesson in doing this is not to have something written that is "perfect," in the words of Fred Gleeck, "Done is better than perfect." I totally agree. I had to keep writing and keep going and just let the words flow out. To stop and edit, well, that would defeat the purpose and slow me down. Editing is for later. Get the story written down. Whatever you don't like about it, you can cut out and rewrite, or you can change it or if you love it and can't make it fit, then you can keep it, and find a way around it. There is more than one way to write a novel.

Congratulations to everyone this year who met and exceeded their goals, whether you participated in National Novel Writing Month or not. If you even wrote an article, a journal entry, a paragraph, or just a note to your spouse expressing how much you love them and you received a positive response, then you deserve congratulations. Writing is a very solitary and underappreciated undertaking. Most people who are not writers wish they could be, and most of the people who are writers know they can't be anything else.

Thanks to all my family and friends, writers and non-writers who cheered me on and told me to keep going. I appreciate all of your love and support and encouragement. Without that, this would never have happened. I truly appreciate all you have done for me, not just this month but every month this year. 

I hope all of you had a fabulous Thanksgiving holiday and I will be posting soon about the novel and what I plan to do with it, so stay tuned. It's not completely over just yet! :)

NaNoWriMo: Skipping to Day 23

NaNoWriMo word count as of Day 23:   45,065


Ok, I know, my updates haven't been as frequent or as timely. My apologies to all of you. I've been a bit busy.

I promise to let you all in on the details later, but for now, rest well in the knowledge I have not given up and I am still writing. :)

Have a great day! And stay warm. :) 

NaNoWriMo: Day 5 Back In The Saddle Again

Total word count as of the end of Day 5: 10,149

I guess that two day break did me a lot of good. Today was my errands day and I spent it also seeing my nephew, Cannon, who is four years old. He is in preschool this year, and he was telling me all about school, and Star Wars, and his new video game and trick-or-treating and all other sorts of stories. I love being around him and I miss him so much. I used to babysit him from the time he was 6 weeks old until this spring, and he brings so much joy and laughter. You miss that sometimes in your day-to-day when you don't have small children around. (I am not going to be birthing any babies. I enjoy other babies so I can spoil them and send them home to their parents! Sorry, Mom.)

I also stopped a my parents house to see my Mom and Dad, but Dad was at the doctor's office. Mom was glad to see me, and we had a nice visit. I'm going back to their house tomorrow so I can see Dad and pick up my jars so I can make jelly.

The funny thing is, I have been just so busy today and I was really tired, but then I said, I have to write my 2,000 words, at least, and then once I got started and got the music cranking in my headphones, I just flew through the words. Amazing. I guess it's like exercise, that you may not feel like doing it, and you whine about it and then once you start doing it, you feel like a million bucks because you didn't wuss out and fall asleep in front of the television, AGAIN, drooling on yourself watching something like "The Men Who Stare At Goats."

I feel much better now, and I'm really tired. More tomorrow. :)

NaNoWriMo: Day 3 & 4

Total word count for the past 2 days: 0 (zero)

Now, let's talk about this. I know I promised I was going to write 2,000 words a day or more. So far, I have met or exceeded that goal. Now I have two days with no words written on my novel. I'm ok with that.

Part of being in this writing challenge is to know when you need a break, not a long one, but a short one. I have a job, a family, a house to clean, laundry to do, and a voice in my head that begins to wear on my nerves when I am not taking care of these things. The voice turns louder and becomes many voices and nags at me until I DO SOMETHING about the situation or the laundry or makes dinner, or in my case, makes cookies. I also had to give myself time to work things out in my plot.

I know, it sounds like I'm copping out or making excuses for procrastinating, but the truth of it is, I usually get a little worn around the edges when I start out with such a lofty goal and hit it really hard right out of the gate. I did need a break. I was pooped. And since I am working a full time job while I'm doing this, I have to make sure nothing is slipping in my performance at work. 

If you are concerned for my mental well being, I appreciate and acknowledge your concern. Thank you. But I am on medication and I'm fine, voices and all. I also have had a long "conversation" with my characters in my novel and they are promising to make things interesting for this novel challenge. This one might be published. Who knows? You never know until you write it. And that's a more important lesson for any writer out there. If you don't write it out, you won't know if it works or not. Even if it doesn't work, you didn't lose anything at all because you learn so much from going through the process of writing.

Now, I'm going to take a shower, relax and go to bed. And then I'm going to wake up to another beautiful day tomorrow (I hope), and will write my butt off.

Stay tuned...

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 2

I'm now at 6,747 words total.

I'm flying through this novel. I feel like a runner in a marathon, and the high they talk about as they reach a mile marker and know they are well on their way to the next marker.

I never run. Most of you who know me personally, know that even though I should, I never run. Exercise is the "E" word to me, but I can walk. I love to walk. And now that things are starting to settle in my life and in my writing, I feel the urge to walk. Especially this week.

Last week the weather was like walking out in a hurricane. The cold and the wind and the rain and the dark clouds made you just want to climb back into bed and sleep. This week, the sun is shining and the temperatures are cooler, but the sky is that bright brilliant blue that it only gets in the fall, and with the white puffy clouds, it feels like a perfect day. The leaves make noise underneath your feet, and the trees have bared their hands to heaven. Smells like wood burning and a pumpkin pie baking or some banana bread warm and out of the oven, just make you want to bottle days like this and save them.

Writing is my way of recording what I observe, make sense of what I see, taste, smell, hear, and most importantly, feel. I have always been an observer. I've been content to over hear conversations, to look and watch to see what happens. I was blessed to find a partner in life who enjoys "people watching" like I do and we love when we can just sit back and see how people interact in large crowds, in public, with their families, and their kids.

We also like reading the T-shirts.

One of the most important lessons I take from doing an exercise like NaNoWriMo is the fact I can write whatever I want and it can be the worst crap in America.

And that's ok.

For many years, I thought to be a good writer, you had to struggle and you had to perfect every word, every sentence, every paragraph. You don't have to be that rigid. You can just write. Write your ass off. Write because you feel like it. Write because you are happy, sad, confused, hurt, or bored.

One of the best lessons from Mrs. Fliginger was to just write something, anything, until you write something else. If we couldn't think of something to write, then she would say, "Then write 'I don't know what to write' until you think of something better to write."

I have had to do that to get through my articles, to finish my NaNoWriMo novels in the past when I have let the perfection run me right into a writer's block. It's a trick that works so well. It's so simple and so easy. You almost think it has to be more complicated than that to work. Stop complicating it.

Just write. Be happy, and just write.

NaNoWriMo 2010

I was debating this year if I would participate in National Novel Writing Month and after some thought, I decided I would. I was more anxious to get started this year than in other years, maybe because I've had the plot of the horror/thriller novel I've started writing in my brain for a few months. Just like in past years, I didn't have the whole plot, but just a rough of what I wanted to write and I would just write it, editing later or letting it sit in limbo in my harddrive. But this year, it's been clear to me more than ever before that the reason I was so anxious to begin is because I've been repressing my writing tendencies for the last few months. I've let life get in the way of my writing.

First it was my new job, which has helped me organize my thoughts and the rest of my life and I've been busy there helping them get things together for events that have come up. I'm looking forward to being hired on full-time, but having a process, a discipline if you will, has helped my writing, when I've taken the time to do it, immensely. I've been able to clarify my thoughts, organize my thoughts and to manage my time much more efficiently. I've been able to write in my journal, sporadically, but I have to write at least a few times a week or I get really crabby.

My English teacher, Mrs. Fliginger, always told us that to be a better communicator you must write at least 2 pages per day, that's 2 notebook pages, front and back, wide ruled. I sometimes write more, sometimes I write less, but I shoot for at least 2 pages in my journal, and it's wide ruled. Thanks to her, I can't write in a college ruled notebook. It just seems wrong.

But the one thing this NaNoWriMo does for me, is the equivalent of running a marathon. You push yourself to see how far you can go. You set goals for yourself and with each word you write you come closer to the finish line. It make take me all month to write this novel, it may not. But thank goodness I have the opportunity to see what I can do. I feel so wonderful after I've "won" a NaNoWriMo and last year, I bragged and told everyone I was going to win it in the first week. Instead, I failed miserably, fell flat on my face. I was so embarrassed by my ego and my lack of organization I didn't even finish my novel nor did I post how many words I wrote. Not this year.

This year, I will post my daily word count on my blog here and on the NaNoWriMo website. If you want to check up on me there, go to www.nanowrimo.org and look for Laura Crawford.

To my fellow writers and NaNo participants, Good luck and Happy Writing!

Thanksgiving, Movies, and Family

I was so excited my son would be spending Thanksgiving with us. Then, the phone call.

Because his ship would be out to sea in a week, he wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving after all. Sad as I was, I realized that this is what it's like to be a Navy Mom. I was fortunate my son is still state side, and he would be coming home after Christmas for a nice visit.

Some of those who served our country and their families are grieving the loss of their loved ones who have given the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. My prayers and condolences and my heartfelt thanks go out for those who served so bravely and their families. And this includes those who were gunned down in Ft. Hood. Thank you, is not enough words, but it's the best I can give you all.

I was sad he wasn't home. It didn't feel the same without him, but we did have a visitor stay with us, Andy, QH's son, stayed with us, and it was nice to have one "kid" home for the holidays.

I decided to splurge, so I rented some movies. "Star Trek", which was awesome; "G.I.Joe" was pretty good; "Year One", with Jack Black and Michael Cera was hysterical; "Angels & Demons" which was good as movie, but it wasn't as good as the book; and finally, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" was really cute.

On Sunday, I took the movies back and decided I wanted to rent some more. I rented two: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" which got to be a bit much with the graphics, and a bit long in the movie pace as well; and "Up" a Pixar movie about an old man who floats away with his house using helium balloons.

"Up," if you haven't seen it yet, is sad to start, in fact, have the tissues close-by, because your going to cry. It's a lesson in how you live your life, and what you get out of it in this crazy journey. It relays the message the dreams you have when you are younger don't necessarily die as you get older, but they might change a bit into something you least expected. And love never dies. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but I think it's a great movie to see, especially these days when we all think that we are beyond the age of having any kind of adventures, and our definition of "family" may not include those who are born into it.

I read something interesting today about age and whether you're too old to start over in your life, in your career, or in your business. In an e-book written by Bob Bly, the copywriting genius, he tells the story about the actor, Abe Vigoda.

Abe Vigoda, before he was a regular on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" was in a television show called "Barney Miller" and played a cop named Fish. But his career began in the movie, "The Godfather". Guess how old he was when he played in the "The Godfather"? He was 50 years old when he was in that movie, the movie that launched his acting career!

It's never too late. It's never too late to start over. It's never too late to tell someone you love them. It's never too late to be the success you were born to be. It's never too late to enjoy the moment you are in right now. It's never too late to be thankful for everything you have and everything you are receiving.

In counting my blessings this year, I am thankful for the lessons I've learned, especially the most painful ones. I appreciate them because I consider them growing pains. I've grown from last year (and not just horizontally). I'm not the person I was last year, and I'm glad about that.

I'm thankful for the family I have and the love and support they've given me this year. Especially, QH, who has taken on the role of breadwinner in this family since I lost my job in June. He's had a rough year this year, and I'm thankful he's been so patient and understanding with me, even when I wasn't patient or understanding with myself. I pray this next year brings his dreams and wishes and prayers to fruition. That would make me very happy, to see him get back all the good he's given, not just to me, but to everyone around him, and reap the rewards of being the wonderful man that he is. He deserves that and so much more. If they gave out medals for being him, he would get a whole box full of them. But a Harley will have to do. Or a 1969 Chevelle SS.

Thanks to all of you who read this little blog of mine. You are the reason I keep writing. I almost gave it up altogether, (AGAIN) and while I had such great ambition to win NaNoWriMo this year, life interrupted my intentions. Oh, well. I'm still writing, that's the main thing. And there is always something that brings me back to it. I get a call or an email or something from a reader who says they laughed when they read something I wrote, or it made them think differently, or it made them cry, or just that they felt SOMETHING from my writing. It's worth a million bucks to me and more.

So, thank you all for your prayers, your comments, your wishes and your opinions. I pray the next year brings you many blessings and adventures.

I have much more to do before this year closes, but one message I want to give is this:

Never give up. Never. Just keep going and listen to your gut, it will lead you to your dreams, even if it's not exactly the same dream you started with. The journey is worth it in the end, because once you end it, you can begin another adventure. And bring someone you love along for the ride. ;)

Announcing NaNoWriMo 2008 Winner Laura M. Crawford

I did it!!

My official word count is (drum roll, please):

50,664

I received my certificate, which I promptly filled out and saved and printed. I worked my tail off to get this finished. I am truly proud of myself, and will continue with this novel, edit it, and hopefully find a publisher for it. If no one wants to publish it then I will turn it into a book, and an ebook, and sell or give it away.

The thing about doing something this challenging is that it really shows you what you are capable of. I did screw off a bit, and I did not write every single day, and initially I did not reach my goal of finishing by November 14th, but I knew I did not want to let another year pass by without finishing in the winner's circle.

Now I'm off to finish another of my goals. Yes, it's writing related. I want to establish my web sites, get my multiple streams of income going, and be able to reach that place of financial freedom, where I can do what I want, work as a writer, and be able to work at home. It's more than just making money, it's making a life. And since life is so short, and death is so long, I want to make the most of my life and enjoy as much of it as I can.

After being able to accomplish this feat of writing 50,664 words in less than 30 days, there is no limit to what I can do.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had Thanksgiving dinner last weekend with my son, Alex, in Illinois. We are still eating the leftovers.

We went to my parents house this morning for traditional turkey dinner, then went to QH's parents. I didn't have the space to eat again. I'm still full and it's almost 11pm!! But that's fine, I won't have to cook all week! :)

The best part was spending the time with my family and getting caught up on what everyone has been up to. We also have a houseguest, QH's son, is staying with us this weekend.

I am still doing the NaNoWriMo novel, and hope to be at the finish line before Sunday night. I will keep you posted. My current word count stands at:

23,426 words

I will count my blessings, and I hope you all do the same and have a great day!

We're leaving tomorrow...

For Illinois. I am still cooking, mainly because I was lazy and slept last night. I ran around town today getting the last minute stuff, and also reprioritizing (whew that's a big word!), some of my lists. I decided there were things I was not going to get done, some things that could wait, and a few that just were not that important to begin with. I never used to do that. I would just run my butt off trying to do all of it, and failing miserably. Now, I find that my time is much more precious, and I'm not getting a medal if I accomplish all of that anyway.

Enlightenment is wonderful, isn't it?

I am still doing the NaNoWriMo novel, and I have not had time to write anything except grocery and to do lists for the last few days, but I will finish, before the deadline. I know I was trying to have everything said and done by November 14, but I had to reprioritize my life a bit (love that word!).

I am very excited to be seeing Alex again. I am wondering how much he has changed in the last couple of months. I know this won't be such a long stretch in seeing him, since he will be home around December 19, 2008. We don't know for how long, yet, but I have learned to go with the flow. I can't drive myself nuts over things I have no control over. It's a huge waste of time and energy, and I am way too tired right now to do that!

I will log back in on Monday, and I hope you all have a great weekend. And please say a few prayers the weather is going to be nice for our trip. Thanks a lot!

And for those who are still doing NaNo, keep on writing!!!

NaNoWriMo Update--November 10, 2008

Hello, Everyone!

In my last update I wrote 8,305 words. I wrote later that night and added 2,320 more words. On November 6, 2008, I wrote a measly 670 words which brought my grand total to 11,295. Not a bad start.

On Saturday, November 8, 2008, I beat my previous personal best. I wrote 8,832 words, in one day!!! That brings my grand total up to 20,127 words. I am more than halfway there.

I decided to go to bed early last night. I was pretty tired. I made banana bread all day, and cooked dinner. It was cold and windy and we had some snow flurries, so it was the perfect day to stay inside and warm up the oven and cook. We spent Saturday, during the day, taking down my gazebo for the winter, putting the cushions for the patio chairs in the storeroom, and we put plastic on the windows inside the house to keep the cold drafts from coming in. We do this every year and it helps a lot with conserving heat. We do have one window above the sink we don't put plastic on, so if we need to get some fresh air into the house, we have that and the door.

I am getting excited to finish NaNoWriMo, but I am more excited to be going to Illinois on November 21, 2008 to see my son. We will be taking Thanksgiving to him this year, since he won't be able to make it home. I have a smoked turkey on order, and will make cheesy potatoes, blueberry cheesecake bars, and bring bread and butter along with a few other goodies from me and Grandma. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, can you?

I will keep you all posted with any news, but in the meantime, stay warm and keep on writing!

NaNo Update--November 3, 2008

I hope you are all enjoying this wonderful weather. It's supposed to hit over 70 degrees this afternoon. I want to play hookey from work, but I won't.

This was a great weekend. We went to a Halloween party at our friends' house and it was fun. We were home by the witching hour, and we spent all of yesterday outside doing cleaning and yard work. I didn't start my NaNoWriMo novel until last night and I reached my personal best for daily word count. Drum roll please...

8,305 words!!

I can hear QH now. He will be saying I should have at least 2 novels a month written at that pace! Don't be surprised to find me chained to my computer, ha, ha, ha!

The story came out of nowhere and it was more interesting than the one I outlined. I thought I should go with it. I call it "Red's Revenge" and it is a spin on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. I have an excerpt posted on my author site on the NaNoWriMo page. Just look up Laura Crawford.

I just updated my Novel Info, so check it out and let me know what you think. I put it in the Horror & Thriller category, because I think that was a better fit than Mystery & Suspense. I could be wrong.

I have to get things done around here, and head off to work I will update my word count tomorrow.

In the meantime, go out and vote tomorrow, and I hope you are all well rested from gaining your hour of sleep from the time change this weekend.

And enjoy the weather!!