Wednesday 30 October 2013

2013 My First NaNoWriMo: Plunging into Chaos

November is coming. That soul-crushing writing challenge, NaNoWriMo, is upon us. But before that...

Let's start this post with a confession: I totally butchered my 100 day challenge. I didn't make it beyond day 25. Obviously, I entered it half-heartedly. It gets a small mention at the end of the post, and seems quite impulsive in hindsight.
So what happened exactly? The challenge was: “Paint a portrait every day for 100 days”.
It didn't take long before I started to postpone the portrait to right before bed when I'd go “Oooh, still have to do that.” and rush it. Then one day – day 26 – it was one o'clock and I said to myself:
“Well, I can just paint two tomorrow.”
And then I just never did. That was the end of my 100 day challenge.


In positive news, check out the difference between day one and my personal favourites, day 20-21-22!

Day 1


Day 20-21-22

But anyhow, the 100 days are over. Up next: NaNoWriMo. "National Novel Writing Month" is held in November each year, and the challenge is to find a 50,000 word novel by the last day of November.

Okay. Is NaNoWriMo going to be different? I hope so.
To begin with, my alarm is set at 4:50 now.


Yup, 4:50 every morning. The plan: get up, eat a little, write 1667 words and then start my day. Tomorrow is an extra day for practice. :P
In other words, avoid NaNoWriMo interfering with daily life, which could provide excuses to give up!


To keep myself accountable, I also decided to post my daily writings. I had no idea how the NaNoWriMo posting system works, so got looking for a different site to post my updates.
I had two requirements: 1. Free to use 2. Non-users can read & comment.
Note: I made a subdomain, but deleted it after NaNoWriMo was over. Many thanks to you who read my daily writing updates!

Whew.


Now, if you look at the title, you see I don't expect things to go smoothly. I already encountered one difficulty: since I have no plan whatsoever, it was quite difficult to come up with a title... I went for “Golden Fields, Black Snow” because it doesn't mean anything.


By the way, you can sponsor me on NaNoWriMo. If you do, my avatar will get a shiny halo.

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