Friday, October 29, 2010

The New Widgets are Here!



Okay, so I'm a geek. And maybe a dork. A geedork? Anyway, it's just not NaNo until I can slap a word count widget onto the top of this page. There it is on the right in all of its minimalist glory. During the month of November I will update it daily through my NaNo homepage. As you can see, it keeps track of the cumulative word count, percentage toward completion, and the number of days left in the challenge. Feel free to stop by and mock me if I start to slack off.

Boy oh boy! Things are going to start happening to me now!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Moving Along Nicely...

...on the road to 2010 NaNo-dom. Just finished a rough outline for my next effort in the "month of writing dangerously." This year's novel is a sequel to my 2007 NaNo, Leonard the Great: Dragon Friend (still in editing hell). The working title is Leonard the Great: Boulderhead.

The outline itself is five full pages, divided into nineteen chapters. Most of the descriptions are two or three paragraphs long (per chapter). A few are five paragraphs long, others are only a sentence in length. The idea for this first draft is to get the very vaguest idea of what's going to happen in my manuscript. I have succeeded on that count and am pleased with the overall direction of the story.

I'll spend the rest of October going through this version, revising and expanding the notes I've made. Right now, the story mostly makes sense. Hopefully, it will completely make sense by the end of the month. No guarantees!

I'm not a rigid slave to my outlines, delighting in discovering plot and character elements along the way that I had no idea were coming, but a decent one really helps to get the ball rolling. Although some writers claim they can start writing without an outline, I can't imagine starting something as large and complex as a novel without having a pretty good idea of where I'm headed. Yay, outlining!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Tick Tock

In less than a month, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins. If you've ever fantasized about writing a novel, now's the time to get your rear in gear and finally do it. I started my outline today and hope to have something coherent enough by the end of October to propel me through the month of November.

The goal is to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. My daily goal is 2k a day which gives me a little pad in case I have to miss a day or two during the challenge.

This is my fourth year of doing NaNo and I've had a blast doing it each time. It's harder than it sounds and easier than it sounds at the same time -- and very satisfying once you reach Nov. 30th.

Come on, you know you want to do it.

Here's the link to my personal page.

Roger Eschbacher's NaNoWriMo Page

Stop by and say hi after you sign up.

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