Tag: national novel writing month

Posted in NaNoWriMo, updates, Writing

A Good Feeling

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

It’s the seventh day of Nation Novel Writing Month and I have to say that, so far, I’m on schedule. There have been a few days where I wait until the last minute to type, underestimating how many hours is going to take me to get 1,667 words that day. 1.6k words doesn’t seem like a lot words but, trust me, when you’re sitting at your computer or sometimes on your phone, it is a lot. You type up three paragraphs and whole page even and then you check the word count. Not even close.

I’ve found that music tends to help me sometimes but that’s not always the case. There are times when I can’t have music on because I’m at work or it’s just not possible. Personally, I like to think of what I’m going to write during the day before I actually sit down and write. It’s more like day dreaming than anything.

With this method, I sort of play through the scenes of my head so I can have an idea of what’s going to happen in the story. There are times when I just sit down, read what I wrote before, and write because I need to finish the scene or I automatically know what’s going to happen next.

Thanks to this, I have finally finished the original story. Now, I can focus on the rewrite. Maybe I mentioned it before, but in case that I haven’t, I’ll say that I know where I want to go with the story. I know what needs to be changed in the rewrite. While I will use almost the same scenes and characters, I will be changing things up a bit. I have a good feeling about this month.

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing

Final Preparations

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

There’s only a week left before the start of NaNoWriMo but I’m not freaking out. Not yet at least. For the next few days, I’ll be outlining and making notes on important scenes that need to happen in the story. The only issue that I see coming up is the fact that the current story is about 74 chapters long but those chapters aren’t that long. They’re about 1k -1.2k words in length. Not much to work with.

With this story (TVPGTHS), I need to have almost everything planned out. There’s not going to be much room for flexibility. It’s troubling because normally, I do leave room for the story to change but this time, I can’t. This mainly has to do with the fact that I am rewriting this story. I guess that means that I’m not exactly ‘participating’ in NaNoWriMo, I just happen to have the same deadline. However, personally, I still think it can work. I’m starting the story from scratch. I’m not using any of what I have already written. I’ll be rewriting every single word.

As of right now, I’m not sure if I’ll be using any writing software. Google Docs has been really good to me so far and I can take it anywhere. I think I’ll stick with that for now until a better option comes along.

I haven’t decided how many posts I’ll be able to publish during November. If anything, they won’t be very long but I’ll keep everyone updated on progress.

Posted in Resources, Writing

Sweek and Contests

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

As November draws closer, I’ve been busy and productive lately. Not only have I started rewriting a certain story from wattpad that I don’t like, I’ve also entered a screenplay contest on Sweek. I’ve only recently discovered the website and I have yet to draw any conclusions from it. I also haven’t invested a lot of time on there but that might change.

For this screenplay contest, you can follow the link here, I decided to write up one of my little writing exercises I’ve posted on here. Can you guess which one it is? Not to leave anyone in suspense and because it is October, I decided to write ‘Summons‘ as a screenplay. I extended the ending and I changed a few things up. You can find my entry here.

I’ve also decided to enter in a few more contests as well. Thanks to Freelance Writing, I was able to find most of these contests. Some of those include #MicroBlue, ServiceScape Short Story Award 2018, and Beartooth Anthony’s Halloween Campfire Story Contest. I’ll probably not enter in all of them but, for the most part, I’ll enter in a few.

My focus is still preparing for NaNoWriMo. The next step is to write an outline of the story I’ll be working on. I’ve decided that I’m not going to use any of the original work if I can help it. It’s going to be a brand new story with the same characters and story but just told differently. It does help that I have certain scenes and events planned out already so outlining isn’t going to be too bad.

Honestly, I think my outline is more of a synopsis without calling it a synopsis. Outline is more loosely based on what’s going to happen. A synopsis details what does happen. I’ll be writing a mixture of the two so I can stay focused. I’m not really trying to experiment on the story or characters this time around. Everything is set in stone. The story just has to be rewritten.

 

 

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing, Writing Prompts

Writing Prompt – Alien Magic

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Camp NaNoWriMo has come to an end. By some miracle, I was able to complete my monthly goal of 30k words. Due to school and work, 30k words were all I could manage this month and even that proved a bit tricky. Starting in November for NaNoWriMo, I will actually try to write 50k words. There’s a lot of preparations to do for then.

For today, though I usually share some of my writing, I will only post writing prompts that I like. I’m going to take a small break from writing and recuperate.

alien magic

 

Posted in Methods, NaNoWriMo, Resources, updates, Writing

Scrapping for Ideas

Posted on by Kassandra Carrillo

Over the weekend, I decided that I will be participating n July’s Camp NaNoWriMo. My reason for this is due to the fact that I haven’t been writing as much as I should. Using July’s Camp NaNoWriMo, I want to trick myself into writing more that I have been. This month, however, I won’t be aiming towards 50k words. Instead, I’ll be aiming towards 30k words this month. If, for whatever reason, I write more than 30k words than my goal was successful. With everything that is going on right now. I don’t have that much free time.

Saying this, I don’t really have anything planned for this month. I do have a few story ideas floating around and prepared but I’m not sure if those are novel ready. So, this poses the question: how am I going to reach 30k words or more without having a lot prepared.

First off, I’m going to wing it. I don’t normally do this because I typically have a sense of where the story is going to go. For this story in general, I have the basic idea for it but I don’t know where to go from the beginning. There’s a vague idea floating in my head but nothing is concrete.

Secondly, I’m going to write random scenes. I’m going to have my characters is conversations with others that could pertain to the plot. Maybe as I write these conversations, inspiration will strike and Camp NaNoWriMo will go smoothly. Fingers crossed. And, I never know. Inspiration might strike at random.

Next, I might actually do some plotting when I have the time. This won’t be too elaborate or too in depth but it might help. I don’t want to get stressed over writing 30k this month. So, while I will put effort into completing my goal, I don’t want to force myself to do it. When it’s forced, it’s not fun anymore and I always try to have fun when I write. I want to enjoy it.

Lastly, I might even go back to the original draft and steal ideas from that. The story I’m writing for this Camp NaNoWriMo, I worked on it a few years back. It never went anywhere because I didn’t like the direction it was going so, I basically stopped writing. This time around, I’m trying to revamp the story. I really liked the characters and the magic system I created for this world so I want to keep using. If worst come to worst, I might even think about combining ideas together. I’ve done that before and it has worked. It might work this time too.

Now, while I usually post world-building posts on Mondays, for this month, it might change or it might not. Depends on the day and what I have to do. I’ll try sticking to the schedule I set up because I think it was working really well with a few exceptions. If anything changes, I’ll announce it.

Thanks for reading and, for those participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, good luck. Don’t forget to share some tips. I’m going to need all the help I can get.