Category: Novel

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Day Twenty-Five

So, I did it. Five days early and I pushed past the 50,000 word mark on my novel. 50,000 words in 25 days, which gives me a win for NaNoWriMo, but more importantly it gives me the satisfaction of doing what I set out to do. Of course it’s about writing a complete novel as … Continue reading Day Twenty-Five

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Day Twenty-One

the-number-21-profile21 is blackjack. 21 is the legal age to drink, and to gamble. 21 is the name of a best-selling Adele record. It is an extra chromosome in those with Down syndrome. That’s what I think when I consider 21. Oh, and it’s also the title of a cool movie about gambling, but its importance to me right now is that today is the 21st day of NaNoWriMo, the novel writing month when writers everywhere try and blaze through 50,000 words in 30 days. Here are my stats through 2:46 on the 21st day of NaNo…

Words written today: 1,044
Average words per day: 2,037
Target words per day: 2,000
Total overall words: 42,787

My story has evolved in several sections since I last blogged about it on day 15, and my two protagonists are several steps closer to meeting. There have been two major reveals since last we spoke as well, one of which is the turning point of the story. Now the characters are hurtling on a collision course of consequences for actions that took place long before the novel began. Here is an excerpt:

“The cloisters were long hallways that branched off into open spaces that looked to be door openings but that had no doors hanging within them to separate them from the hallway itself. The entire place was as drafty as a castle, which is what it most closely resembled in looks and in atmosphere. Continue reading “Day Twenty-One”

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Day Fifteen

I honestly can’t believe this month is already halfway over, and that my novel is closing quickly in on the 30,000 word mark. The last few days seem like a haze, honestly, and as I read over what I had written since the start of this week it was almost like reading something from someone … Continue reading Day Fifteen

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Day Nine

varianceWords written today: 2,334
My average per day: 2,226
Words so far this month: 20,035

As you know, I’m working on my NaNoWriMo novel this month, which means my goal is 50,000 words to be written in the span of 30 days. This is day nine and my objective is to write 2,000 words each day. As you can see by my statistics so far, I’ve accomplished that to this point, nine days in. However, since I completed NaNo last year I do recall that at about the 30,000 mark it got hard to keep hitting my marks every day, especially since my marks are above where I need to be to get to 50,000 in the 30 day limit. In order to get to 50,000 exactly by the end of the month I only need 1,667 words a day. But you know me, I like to put more pressure on myself. Continue reading “Day Nine”

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Lights! Camera! Autographs!

I remember the first time I beheld a signed copy of a popular novel. It was one of those Lawrence Block tomes about a seedy character named Matthew Scudder, books that I used to eat up like Frosted Flakes. They were vapid, but somehow kept my interest the way few books did in the early ’90s. Then, I saw a book in a bookstore (I don’t even remember what book it was, but it was in Borders) that had a sticker on its cover that proudly read “Autographed Copy.” I wondered at how a book could blatantly lie like that, but then when I opened the cover, there it was, just as advertised, the author’s signature. I thought, “It’s got to suck to be famous because everyone wants a piece of you,” and then I realized that particular author wasn’t famous. Oops.

Then I became an English teacher and headed off to the mecca of all English teacher hangouts, the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) national conference, held in Pittsburgh one year. At the conference, to my great surprise, were all kinds of authors who sat at booths at prescribed times, and, you’ll never believe this, SIGNED BOOKS FOR TEACHERS. I know. I’m still trying to catch my breath over that one, and this was a number of years ago when I was at the Pittsburgh conference. I was like a kid in a candy store. I met Nicholas Sparks, Lois Lowry, Laurie Halse Anderson, that guy who wrote the Uglies series, and many more. I was hooked. Continue reading “Lights! Camera! Autographs!”