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).

Monkey Madness Monday: NaNo Quiet

Yes, I took last week off from blogging. I hadn't really intended to, but with NaNo and, well, life, I really had no choice.

Here's the deal: I don't think I'm going to complete NaNo this year. I'm about 7k words behind and really don't think I can catch up. But ya know, I don't feel too bad about it. Why you ask? Because I truly believe I'm writing a quality story.

The main reason I'm behind is that I'm doing too much research, and that's my bad for choosing a story set partially set in Medieval Germany. And yeah, I could have glossed over that stuff and gone back and put it in later, but I didn't want to. I wanted to know what kind of foliage grew in the Black Forest, and what exactly is and Imp? What did women wear under their dresses in 1250 and how arranged marriages worked. So, my bad.

I am very excited about this story and this series (this is the first of hopefully a three or four book series).  And a stray from the contemporary realism I've been writing for the last four years.

Here's an excerpt of the story for your reading pleasure (or displeasure if that's the case).

Happy reading, happy writing, happy Monday.