NoNaNo this year

I didn't complete NaNoWriMo again this year. Honestly, I'm okay with it. It motivated me to get writing again, which I'd been putting off. So I'm at 37,588 on this novel which was way further than I was anyway. Life is just busy right now. I've been out of town twice, it's the holiday season, and other life things are happening.

Another thing. I have SUCH a hard time writing without researching. I'm not sure I can do it. People have told me the tricks, leave a marker to search for later or make a note and such, but it just seems like more work later. But really, if I'd done it, I may have been able to finish NaNoWriMo. Maybe.

Of course when you're researching along the way there are all the shiny distraction on the internet like Twitter and Facebook and memes and funny cat videos...

I WILL finish this book though. It's taken a long time. I actually tried writing it during NaNo last year, but realized it was too hard to write in one piece. I had to write it in two separate sections from the two differing points of view, one at a time because they were from two different time periods and those time periods were different lengths. One stretches through an entire school year, one just a few weeks. I'm having a much easier time now.

I'll probably keep trying at NaNoWriMo. I'm a two time winner, and one of those books went on to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Never Eighteen). Even if I don't win, I usually am able to get out a few thousand words (or tens of thousands).