2009 wrap up and plans for 2010

I haven’t posted since back when NaNoWriMo finished, I know. I’ve been occupied with the silly season, sewing, and starting to play Magic: The Gathering.

I had quite a productive year in 2009 – much more productive than I was expecting. My goal was 250k for the year, and I thought that’d be a struggle. As the year finished, I ran some quick statistics from my word count diary (I write down my daily word count, monthly total, and yearly running total).

584,844 words total (330,033 of those during November, mind you). 48,737 words a month (year long NaNo nearly!), 11,247 words a week, 1,602 words a day.

I was ecstatic when I figured out I was only 65 words a day off having a 12 month long NaNo-esque streak. From memory, April was my second most productive month with roughly 80k being written during Script Frenzy.

Now, onwards to the next 12 months! I still haven’t figured out what I’m aiming for this year. I’m going to be focusing more on re-writing and editing, opposed to first drafts like what I was mainly working on during 2009. Firstly, I need to get a new diary. I’ve scouted calender shops since November, but still haven’t found anything that’s just perfect for me. I found a few quirky ‘procrastinators’ diaries, but nothing I really loved. After some Googling around today, I decided which one to buy.

A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010

I saw this and fell in love immediately. It seems so perfect! And only $9.95! Woo hoo! Sadly, that also means $12 for international shipping, then the exchange rate from USD to AUD. So I’m going to have to wait until next pay to get it, meaning that I’ll be nearly a whole month without a diary (possibly longer depending on how long it takes to get here)! In the meantime, though, I’m going to jot my word counts down on a sheet of paper, keep it in my old diary, and copy it in once I buy a new one.

But, for now, I’ve found my first goal.


Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Award

I remember hearing about it last year, but I didn’t really have anything that I wanted to enter. I haven’t made any submissions anywhere for close to a year now, so it’s about time I got back on the horse. I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks editing and polishing Revenge and seeing how that goes. I don’t really expect to win, but I do lack to rack up the rejection slips (I must take photos of my office wall one day…). I need to get some new deadlines going, and this is the only one so far until Script Frenzy comes up in April. If anyone has any ideas of competitions or challenges that are coming up this year (smaller ones that aren’t listed on the NaNo site), please, let me know!

For now, I’m off to procrastinate the night away between the NaNo forums and World of Warcraft

xxBella

NaNoWriMo 2009 is OVER!

Well, folks, NaNo is over. For Australians, it finished just under 9 hours ago. Wow! I stayed up to see everyone cross the line (I’ve because a little early bird), which was great. My brother, Enigmatarius, crossed the line with 50,001 words! In his first year! Woo hoo!

I ended up with 330,033, which I’m pretty happy with. But now, I have a headache and aching hands. So I’ll post a proper update once my mind’s working properly again.

Woo hoo!

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 27

First of all, I didn’t die after my NaNoWriDay on Saturday. I’ve just been AFK most of the week, writing on my laptop and updating my wordcount on my phone (which is why I’ve written little) while being a social butterfly. I’ve still been making progress, just not as much as I would’ve liked.

Well, where has the month gone?! It’s already the end of the 27th, and time has just flown by. I just reached 300k a few hours ago (my goal for the month), and am now at 303k. I only got to verify my wordcount today (due to the AFK-ness this week). What can I say. I’m extremely tired. I’ve been up since 4AM or so, and it’s just a few minutes short of midnight. I’m really only posting to let everyone know I haven’t completely crashed since Saturday

I’m going to head to bed, and see how many words I can churn out tomorrow!

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 21 – NaNoWriDay

Today, I wrote more than I ever have in one day before. I can get 15k days fairly easily, made a 20k day on the 15th, but today, I wrote 50k in 24 hours.

Instead of posting an actual bloggy thing about it, I’m just gonna update you all on my (mostly) hourly progress.

• 1AM: 3,155 words down. 46,845 to go.
• 2AM: 3,083 new words. 6,238 total. 43,762 to go. Notes: Hand are starting to ache. Taking a quick smoke break before next hour starts.
• 3AM: 2,777 new words. 9,015 total. 40,985 to go. Notes: A little lower this hour, but got distracted. Had my first No Doz for the day.
• 3AM: 2,217 new words. 11,232 total. 38,768 to go. Notes: A lot down this hour. Only got 30 minutes of it to write. Gonna make a coffee.
• 5AM: 3,020 new words. 14,252 total. 35,748 to go. Notes: Holy shit. I might actually pull this off.
• 6AM: 3,802 new words. 18,054 total. 31,946 to go. Notes: Getting a little grumpy and restless.
• 7AM: 3,685 new words. 21,739 total. 28,261 to go. Notes: Holy shit. I’m nearly half way there already!
• 8AM: Went to sleep after an hour of not writing – compeltely exhausted.
• 10AM: Woke up to my mother making cheesymite rolls for the write-in.
• 11AM: 3,267 new words. 25,006 total. 24,994 to go. Notes: Woo! Half way! Will write until 12, and then get ready for the write-in.
• Midday: 3,245 new words. 28,251 total. 21,749 to go. Notes: Getting ready for write-in, yay!
• 1PM: 2,002 new words. 30,253 total. 19,747 to go. Notes: People are here!
• 2PM: 2,322 new words. 32,575 total. 17,425 to go. Notes: Falling behind a little bit per hour, but am still ahead in total.
• 3PM: 3,179 new words. 35,654 total. 14,246 to go. Notes: My brain is dead.
• 4PM: 1,960 new wrods. 37,714 total. 12,286 to go. Notes: Where has the time gone/will it ever end?!
• 6PM: took a 2 hour break due to horrible leg pain and then finishing up the write-in. Will be back and writing in a couple of minutes.
• 7PM: 3,204 new words. 40,918 total. 9,082 to go. Notes: Holy shit, let’s do this thing!
• 8PM: 2,550 new words. 43,468 total. 6,532 to go. Notes: Exhausted. I want a bubble bath and sleep.
• 9PM: 3,054 new words. 46,522 total. 3,478 to go. Notes: Gonna have a smoke and then come back to finish (will be done at 10ish).
• 10PM: Made it to 50,210! Will update blog later.

So I made to to 50k shortly before 10PM, which I’m so happy about. I couldn’t have done it without the other Melbourne NaNoers cheering me on.

Long story short: It’s 1AM Sunday morning. On Friday night, I got about 4-5 hours sleep. I got two hours sleep 8-10AM Saturday morning. I’m completely buggered. I should be up in 9 hours and getting ready to go to Scarlett Archer’s write-in, but I dunno when/if I’ll get there. My leg has been playing up a bit, and I’m tired. Once I crash, I think I’ll sleep until sometime in the afternoon.

xxBella

NaNoWriDay – First Seven Hours

I’ve found myself with a few minutes to spare. I was planning on sleeping from 6AM-10AM, but that’s not gonna happen. I’ve now been up for 21 hours or so on one coffee and one No Doz. How are things going? Bloody. Brilliant.

• Hour 1: 3,155 words down. 46,845 to go.
• Hour 2: 3,083 new words. 6,238 total. 43,762 to go. Notes: Hand are starting to ache. Taking a quick smoke break before next hour starts.
• Hour 3: 2,777 new words. 9,015 total. 40,985 to go. Notes: A little lower this hour, but got distracted. Had my first No Doz for the day.
• Hour 4: 2,217 new words. 11,232 total. 38,768 to go. Notes: A lot down this hour. Only got 30 minutes of it to write. Gonna make a coffee.
• Hour 5: 3,020 new words. 14,252 total. 35,748 to go. Notes: Holy shit. I might actually pull this off.
• Hour 6: 3,802 new words. 18,054 total. 31,946 to go. Notes: Getting a little grumpy and restless.
• Hour 7: 3,685 new words. 21,739 total. 28,261 to go. Notes: Holy shit. I’m nearly half way there already!

My originally plan was to nap before midnight, that didn’t happen. Then to write 2,500 an hour all day, except for four hours sleep (6AM-10AM). It’s now 7AM, and I’m not tired. If I don’t get to sleep in the next hour (doubt it), I’ll be up until at least 6 or 7PM, when the write-in finishes. I was only thinking I’d get 15k before bed, but I’m nearly at 25! I’ve been average 3k an hour for the past 7 hours, and if I keep it up, I’ll be finished around 5PM – whoo! But I think I will have to take a nap before the write-in starts, or at least have an hour or two to lie down.

What else to say… I’m well ahead of where I thought I’d be, and it looks like I’m actually going to make it! I’m not tired, and my typing/spellings skills are mostly intact. Sometimes my hands freeze up and kinda go “Wtf am I supposed to do?”, but they go back to typing a few seconds later. I’m not having too much pain in my hands (the first three hours was painful though), and my goal is in reach.

I’ll update again once I reach the 50k mark, or whenever I get bored.

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 20

Well, tonight, I’ll be kicking off in my adventure to write 50,000 words in 24 hours. I’ve decided to start on a completely new project, treating it like a mini NaNoWriMo (but still having my WIPs to turn to incase of block). I’ve got a rough plan, with the first few chapters outlined just to get my started.

I’m hoping to get today’s word count achieved before midday (probably only a few k today to get me to the 200k mark), because then I need to head in to town and do some crap (my piercings have been the biggest time-killer the past week or so), so that’ll knock a few hours off my day. I’m hoping to re-arrange the furniture in the lounge room once I get back (to make it more open for the write-in, and to drag the kitchen table in since that got used heaps last time), so I’m not in a mad flurry in the morning. I also want to get all the food for the write-in all in one place (just so I know where it is).

After that, dinner and sleep. I want to get in at least a few hours of sleep before I start tonight, because I’m planning to stay up until 6AM writing, sleep for four hours, then write for the rest of the day. It’s gonna be a mad dash in the morning until the write-in starts to make up for time I won’t be able to write (answering the door, greeting people, being social, etc.). All in all, I’m hoping to be at the 25k mark before the write-in starts (1PM).

Chances are I won’t get much chance to post tomorrow, but feel free to check out my Twitter or Facebook (both are linked at the right hand side) and follow my updates there throughout the day. I’ll try to do a proper post after midnight/when I reach 50k/give up (whichever comes first), but that’ll depend on how exhausted I am.

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 19

So, little progress has been made today. I managed about 12k, written very slowly, drudging through it.

I didn’t spend much time writing today, about two hours in the morning and a couple of hours this evening. I was pretty lazy today, mostly caused by stress about Centrelink and their ’system errors’. My eyebrow piercing has also puffed up and turned sore and red today (for the second time in a month), so no doubt next week will involve doctor’s visits and seeing my piercer and antibiotics and such.

I’m gonna aim for a little over 200k tomorrow (I’m now at 197k), spend a few hours plotting, and get some sleep before the midnight start. I’m out for a few hours in the afternoon, and want to get an early start on re-arranging couches and stuff for a more write-in friendly layout, so that in the morning I can relax and write until people turn up. I’m not too fussed if I don’t make 10k tomorrow, because I should make up for it on Saturday, and it would be better to spend more time plotting so I’m prepared, rather than running myself dry.

That’s about all for today.

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 18

So, today I managed 12k, bringing me up to the 185k mark in total. It was a slow process, as I wasn’t very inspired today for this story. A lot of it was spent planning my project for my NaNoWriDay. Today was pretty uneventful, except for the plotting.

I’ve decided that I’ll attempt my 50k day on Saturday (21st November). It was either Saturday or Thursday, and I figured that Saturday would be better because I’m hosting a write-in, so I’ll be in the zone. The plan is to start at midnight, and hopefully knock out 10k before I go to bed, possibly more depending on when I get tired. Then, hopefully stay up until 6AM, wake up around 10, do a couple of more thousand words, then get ready for the write-in (moving furniture, putting food out, etc).

I plan to break the 25k mark around lunchtime, 40k by the end of the write-in (around 6ish), do a quick cleanup, then pull in to 50k just before midnight.

I’ll be posting on my Twitter (which feeds to Facebook & there’s a feed on the side of my blog) from my desktop widget, to keep everyone up to date on my progress, as I won’t on IRC, MSN or Facebook throughout the day to prevent distractions.

There’s a couple of blogs that have given me some motivation for a 50k. Two of them are Kateness’ post from the first day of NaNo, and the other is someone’s hourly posts for their WriDay. So, yeah, check them out!

xxBella

NaNoWriMo Day 17

So, today I was aiming for 10k (my daily goal), and I just pushed in at 13k for the day. There were a lot of distractions today, sadly. I wrote about 1.5k at 2AM, having not been able to get to sleep, which always gets me more motivated to write once I wake up.

I didn’t get to sleep until sometime after 4, and woke up around 9:30. Normally, I like to get anywhere between 8-12 hours sleep to be completely rested. I ended up getting to 5k just before 3PM, then taking a break for a while before endeavouring on the next 5k.

I was planning on taking it slowly today, but when I found out it was a double episode of Ladette to Lady tonight (9:30-11:30PM), I knew I had to push myself a bit. I didn’t start on the second 5k until just after 6PM, which definetly made it a bit of a push. But I just broke the 13k mark now (around 9:15PM).

I’m very satisfied with how much I wrote today. I was aiming to get a nap and then start on a 50k in 24 Hours endeavour at midnight, but when I realised Ladette to Lady was on, that made it kinda impossible after so little sleep. So now I’m thinking that maybe Thursday will be my day. If not, Saturday will be good, because I’m hosting a local write-in that day. Apart from that, I probably won’t get a chance to write for 24 hours until the last weekend of November.

 

Might puddle along during Ladette to Lady and see if I can break 175k before midnight. Aiming to break 200k on Thursday!

 

xxBella

Why I’m here

Well, I was planning on starting a new blog for 2009 NaNoWriMo, but I ended up getting distracted. So, half way through the month, here I am!

I’ve been averaging 10,000 words a day so far, and I need to keep up that pace to bring me to a total of 300,000 words. At some point this week, I’m hoping to make a 50,000 words in 24 hours sprint. So, if I do that, be prepared for hourly updates

I think that’s all for now…

xxBella