I'm NaNoing this year too

I just wanted to quickly update to say that I am indeed participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

The new site has taken a lot of getting used to, and I know that many users are grappling with the extreme bugginess of the site. Clearly it wasn't quite ready to go at launch time on November 1st, but sometimes you get lucky and find workarounds that work for you.

One of the biggest problems people are facing is the inability to use the default type of word count updating method - the "total words" option. For me, adding words written during each session is working, but it doesn't work for everyone. And for me, adding my overall word count total does NOT work. It looks like it's updated, but when you refresh and go back to it, the word count has reverted to the old count.

I count myself lucky to only have that problem, where other people are having what sounds like an infuriating issue with their projects being deleted / disappearing over and over again. They've had to add it back repeatedly, and some seem just about ready to give up.

I'm hoping that many of these teething issues will be resolved soon, but it seems like the NaNo team is very short-staffed, and they're dealing with what looks like thousands of complaints. So it can't be a fun time for them right now!

As for my actual writing? I am working on adding words to pre-existing projects. The main project is one that I had to do some corrections for before November 1st, because I had previously stalled at a certain point of the book. I had to revise my plan for how the story was going, as it just didn't seem to be working. So that was done before November began, and while it was a little slow getting back into the story, I feel like it's flowing nicely now. These are my first projects where I'm writing to a beat sheet, and I'm hoping that when I get to the revision stage, I'll find myself with far less of a mess than I have in the past (in my pantsing days). Time will tell!

I went to a kick-off party which was a lot of fun, and I'll go to the November 30th Write Night for my region too. All in all, I just love NaNo and always get sucked into doing it, even in those years when I'm not sure I should.

Is anyone else doing NaNo too?

Point Book re-reads - 2019

This year I am continuing with my goal of re-reading titles in my vast collection of pre-teen Point books that were super popular when I was in primary school. The purpose of re-reading these books is:

1. To love how extremely late-80s/early-90s the books are now, in hindsight
2. To laugh at the ridiculousness at some of the plots/descriptions/etc
3. To bask in nostalgia
4. To remember what the heck those books were actually about.

So far this year, I've re-read these two:

My Secret Admirer (Carol Ellis)

General thoughts:
I actually didn't remember much about this one, except I had a vague recollection of the cliff area (the Rimrocks). This book wasn't too bad, but wasn't one of my favourites either.

Jenny had a case of insta-love with David, but then he didn't really show up much in the whole story. Still, I was oddly convinced by their love. Ha.

I liked that every guy Jenny knew was a suspect - it wasn't one of those lame stories where the stupid heroine suspects everybody except the one that she should suspect. That said, Jenny was pretty stupid, for a number of reasons which I listed in my GoodReads review.

The 'Aww' factor:

Things that made me go 'aww' tended to be things that related to the sheer 80s/90s-ness of the story.

Dean and his "computer print-out", the telephone booth being a lifeline, everyone calling around on their house phones (no mobiles, no social media), Jenny's fashion wins (white shorts and a rainbow-striped shirt; later there's a washed out denim jacket).

Oh, and the VCR!! "Let's watch a tape." The mere fact that the telephone with its "built-in answering machine" was something fancy at the time.

I am still alive in 2019!

Sharing some of my art, because I feel like some graphics
are needed.

Well, hello there!

Ummm, so yeah. It's been ages since I last posted! I'm probably going to be saying that for every future blog post I do, until I someday get back into the swing of posting regularly. I'm not sure when/if that will happen, but I still have a big soft spot for this blogging community so I hope it does.

I think one thing that's affected my blogging here is that I'm in touch with a lot of bloggers I met here via other means - on Facebook or Instagram namely. I'm also not really writing or editing at the moment. Things are very busy (again) with the cat rescue, and it's that time of year again when we have to prepare our financial documents for the annual audit. So that's taking a lot of focus.

I have many story ideas churning away in the back of my head, but really do want to concentrate on editing what I already have. The same old problem that I'm always tackling!

On the music front, my bandmate is already working on new songs for the next Woody's A Girl album, and he has asked me to send through songs that I'd like us to work on as well. I'm still working on narrowing down the list, but one problem I've run into is that some songs are missing tabs - I never recorded the tabs at the time I originally wrote/recorded the demo versions of the songs. So that's a slight spanner in the works. Still, I have enough of a list to send through to him as it is.

Elsewhere, I'm still a part of the little critique group, and comment on other members' shared excerpts when they're posted, etc. But I haven't posted anything new myself in quite some time.

Another thing that I'm getting off to a slow start with this year is my GoodReads Reading Challenge. I'm something like 7 books behind schedule, partly because I read some really tedious books that took ages to get through. I'm hoping to get some good reading time in to catch up. And speaking of reading, I'm part of a workplace book club that meets every 6 weeks or so (I think). We've already read one book, and we're currently reading the second. So I'll be checking out books I probably wouldn't usually as a result of that.

Anyway, I'm hoping that once the cat rescue stuff calms down again, I'll have more time for my creative pursuits. I do miss it when I'm not able to really get stuck in, so it's not like I'm not motivated.

I hope you are all doing well out there. Let me know what you've been up to!

NaNoWriMo 2018 plans (and plotting)

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote here! I thought I should check in because NaNoWriMo 2018 is coming up, and I do have a plan for what I'll be writing.

I have a new adult romance mostly planned out (temp title = FOLLOW), with a little way to go. I'm quite enjoying this whole planning thing, which I never thought I would back in the old days.

I've also been writing another novel (CLAUDIA AND DL) after planning the story out down to great detail, putting said plan into a custom beat sheet that combines a lot of different 'beat theories', and then starting to write. The writing has been flowing nicely for the most part, though I've had a few moments where I've stopped and given myself a little break, e.g. during chapters that didn't seem to flow quite as easily.

As usual I'm writing more words than expected/planned, but my bloated chapters will be honed later, during edits.

All of the above is helped by the great (albeit small) critique group I'm a part of. I think we have really helped each other in the last year or so. It's nice to be enjoying a moment of strong creativity, which is also partly inspired by my critique partners' own sense of inspiration too.

Are you planning on writing something for NaNoWriMo this year?