Tuesday, December 01, 2009

BOOK IN A MONTH - Final

I decided to try to do the book in a month for November only I crafted it for me instead of following the rules.

I only wrote during the week and left the weekends off for the family, which cut down on my thirty days. I didn’t beat myself up if I didn’t feel like writing. I decided to just write and let the muse flow.

I set a goal of writing seven pages of day. I had 15 days to work, because I knew nothing was going to get done the week of Thanksgiving. Some days were a breeze, some days I didn’t want to write at all. I think I had a whole week I didn’t do anything. However I didn’t stress about it. I was writing again and that was most important.

I didn’t reach my goal of 105 pages. I ended up writing 60 pages – 10, 704 words.

Which means to me I’m about two months away from finishing this book. WOO HOO!

I learned a lot with this experience. I can reach my daily writing goals when I have to.
I wanted to know how long it would take me to write a book and this page goal helped me to see how to break the book down into a monthly figure. So I could write a book in about 8 mths if I worked hard at it. That’s not too bad. One book a year. My ultimate goal is to write two books a year. I think that’s possible if I wrote two genres, which I’ve been doing for years. (I’m working on a middle grade book too. I’ll tell you about that one later.)

I learned more about my characters and what their motivations are.

The most important lesson, that it’s best to write and edit later. In my writing stage, I just let the words flow, I didn’t try to figure out what I did or why. When I’m in editing mode sometimes I lose my muse because I’m trying to figure things out. You can’t worry about figuring things out when you’re in the writing mode.

Now I’m in editing stage and I’m hoping to take those 60 pages and change them into 120 pages.

How did you do with your book?

2 comments:

del said...

I couldn't do NaNo this year because I was too busy with non-fiction work, but congrats on how far you went! I last did NaNo a few years ago and 2010 will be the year I focus on fiction and getting my novel published. I'm also a married mom of 3 and they don't always make it easy! Best of luck :-)

LaShaunda said...

Del,

Thanks so much for stopping by. What is your non fiction book about?

Writing with kids is tough, but we have to make it work or we'd be crazy. LOL