Friday, December 10, 2021

Finished with NaNoWriMo21.

To my dearest friends and followers,
click to enlarge
and to my fellow creatives,

What a crazy time it's been!!
During the month of November, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It was my every intention to write a blog and keep you all up to date on how my progress was going. Unfortunately that didn't happen, as all of my writing energy went towards working on my project.

Basically, the NaNo goal was to write a novel (a minimum of 50k words) in 30 days during the month of November. I finished the month with a total word count of 50,234!!
The project I worked on this year, The Death of Jack (Tales from Beyond the Veil) book 2 was a continuation of the project I started last year, so the current total word count is 101,910. I'm guessing I've got about 40k-ish more words to go before the novel is finished. 

Every day of November, I had to write a minimum of 1,667 words per day to stay on track. Some days I wrote 3k words and some days I wrote 400 words - in the end, they balanced each other out and I managed to hit my goal of 50k. XD

I love NaNoWriMo so much and the challenge and community it provides. If it weren't for NaNo, I know it would have taken a lot longer to get to where I am now with my current WIP and with Hollyhocks (which I wrote a large portion of during NaNo 2016).

However, that being said, NaNoWriMo is extremely hectic and exhausting. Once November was over, I just wanted to sleep and do nothing. I've been doing some meditation and burning some sage to cleanse the energy from my space to move on from the chaotic energy that is NaNoWriMo.

I had planned to read a bit in between writing during November, but that didn't work out. My brain just felt like mush and I just wanted to rest in my downtime. I then decided I would just wait to read once NaNo was over. That hasn't really happened either though, as I feel like I'm still in recovery mode. 
The current plan is to take most of December off, with reading just a little bit and writing when I feel up to it, but not pressuring myself. Then, I'll start writing again in January and plan to finish the novel then or in February. I'll take off the spring and summer, and begin the revising and editing phase in the fall and hopefully be ready to publish early in 2023. 

It feels great to be over halfway there with this book!! I'm excited for my writing journey ahead and can't wait to share Jack's story with the world!!
Speaking of Jack, I turned a sketch I made of him into some vinyl stickers which you can check out by clicking here. Also, I have a handmade journal / notebook with Jack on the cover, click here to check it out!!
One last thing...if you haven't read my first book, may I suggest you check it out?? As I talk about Jack's story more in the future, you'll definitely want to have read book 1.
Thank you so much for reading!!

Yours truly,
Me

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