Young Writers Society

This year for NaNo, I'm doing something I've never done! I want to try and edit all of When I Was Anna (recently posted on YWS and finished last month) for NaNo. What this will mean in some cases is writing new scenes entirely, and in other cases tweaking and improving the scenes I have.

This is a 58k word novel, and I'm hoping it'll end up somewhere between 60-65k, so it's a little ambitious to say I'll finish BUT I AT LEAST WANT TO BE CLOSE TO DONE IF NOT DONE.

Instead of writing 1667 words per day, I'm going to EDIT 1667 words per day (or write that many if it's a new scene).

I would love to query this novel early next year!

Three words to describe this book: catfishing, marching band, romance

This sounds like a super interesting idea, Carlito! The chapters I've seen of When I Was Anna all looked pretty great, so good luck with NaNo and querying when you get there!

Oh, how exciting!! That's a great action plan to getting a huge head start on editing. Best of luck!!

Good luck with editing and eventually querying!! This sounds like a really fun project

Day One:
I knew today would be a tough start. Worked and when I got home had to finish tidying up the house. (Oh and it's figure skating time and I had to get caught up on a competition that started while I was working). Boy and I had dinner with one of his co-workers and then had them over. So I sat down to write at like 11:45pm

BUT. I have a clean house. So tomorrow I can just watch skating and write!

Words today: 11
Total words: 11

Day Two:

I fully intend to catch-up today and have the NaNo crawl to help me! Goal for today is 3323 words to be caught up
Each part is another challenge in the crawl.

Part one - settling in at 11am. Watched the men skate this morning and I have three hours until the ladies skate, and I WILL NOT PLAY SIMS 4. It's very daunting to look at a fresh word document, knowing I have to write words :p
I'm off to a slow start because I'm changing up the beginning of my first chapter and I changed my mind about how I want to change it last night at 11:45pm.
Took some time to figure out what I need to focus on and accomplish in ch. 1. I feel better now. But I still just need to start and go with something. Beginnings are hard.
59/3323

Part two - now it's a little after 12pm. After much procrastinating and floundering, I'm just going to do it. Writing new words for 20 minutes even if it's bad. Ready set go!
I'm still struggle busing (I hate everything I've written today), and I'm going to try to write in 1st person, past tense and see if that helps. I usually default to present tense but I think this story might work better in past.
120/3323

Part three - now it's just after 4pm. Figure skating is over for another weekend! (fabulous result this weekend by the way!) Now I need to get some momentum going. 500 word sprint.
I skipped a little part and then hit a little grove. Now I need to connect the first part I wrote with the last part I wrote and then the rest of the chapter should come much easier because I'll be able to work from what I had in ch. 1 of draft 2.
629/3323

Part four - now it's about 5:30pm. I'm feeling much better about this draft now! I'm still connecting the first and second sections I wrote today and once I'm through with that it should go faster for a little while. 675 words now to write!
I finally feel like I'm hitting a groove! Just had to dust some cobwebs off.
First person past tense is going well!!
Surpassed the first 1000 words
1311/3323

Part five - it's now 6:30pm and I have a warm blanket from the dryer and just ate a cookie. I had a late lunch today so I'm not sure what I'm going to do for dinner. Next up is doing a 3 digit challenge, so 322 words.
1649/3323 (basically at the day 1 target now!)

Part six - moving right along, it's almost 7pm. It's getting much easier now because I'm essentially just re-writing my old ch. 1 now and making it past tense rather than present, adding some description, and streamlining a little
Next up in the crawl I need to write 1200 words. There's a chance I'll end up having to cut this in in two because boy and I will probably go to dinner soonish?
Dinner time! Got about 400 words in and I'll do the remaining 800 when I get back Then I'll actually be super close to the 3323 mark!!
I did return after dinner and am still moving right along!
2974/3323

Part seven - It's 10:30pm and I'm about to be done with this chapter and I'm about to hit the goal. Two for the price of one! I need to do 1% of my daily ridiculous goal which is 33 words.
3026/3323

Part eight - It's still 10:30ish and I'm still about to be done, so let's do one more challenge! Write 10 words for each writing buddy on my list (I'm going to use the number of people I follow on YWS). I follow 299 people which is 2990 words
Well I certainly don't need that many tonight. I'm going to finish this chapter and then right the rest of those words tomorrow!
3360/3323

BOOYAH ALL CAUGHT UP.


Words today:3360
Total Nano words: 3371

Day Three:
I know this isn't the point of NaNo, but I don't care :p
I went through Chapter One with a fine-tooth comb and checked to make sure I accomplished what I wanted to and cut out useless words so my word count went down to 3243.
This is going to happen every time I finish a new chapter because this is draft three and if I don't do it immediately I won't be motivated to go back and do it!

Day Four:
Starting at a little after 9:30pm. Back on the Nano crawl and am continuing the challenge from day 2 when I needed to write 2900 words. And you know what, that's a lot so I'm going to change it and say 1 word for everyone I follow (on YWS) making it 299 words which I did last time, so on to the next!
Next I need to write 300 words. Starting chapter 2! I'm only going to work until 10 tonight and try to start earlier tomorrow.

Now I need to write 600 words because I'm writing YA (which might be all for tonight, we'll see...)

Made it! It's after 10 and I'm tired so I'm going to call it and start earlier tomorrow.


Words today: 954
Total NaNo words: 4314

Total manuscript words: 4197 (to account for the fine-tooth comb)

Day Six:
I didn't write yesterday but I did research some agents because that's a productive use of time right now

I truly just want to play Sims and register for wedding gifts right now but I'M GOING TO PERSEVERE.

I will do one challenge (still in the nano crawl) then I can work on my registry for 15 minutes.

I left off with....
I need to do a 20 minute sprint. It's almost 8pm. Hey, I'm starting earlier!
And go!
713 words.
Registry time! (I looked at stuff for more than 15 minutes :p)

Now I need to do a 15 minute sprint. It's a little after 8:30pm.
319 words down.
MORE KITCHEN THINGS <3

Could have written more but I hit a wall and boy distracted me so I'll stop there. I intended to write much faster than this but oh well. Writing during the week is hard and STILL BETTER THAN 0!


Words today: 1032
Total Nano words: 5346

Day Seven:
Didn't write. No real excuse other than lack of motivation.

Day Eight:
Settling in to write late again today. I knew today would be tough because I worked all day, and after work left immediately for a fancy party with boy. Settling in to write at 11:40pm (And I'm catching up on watching figure skating).

Where I left off in the nano crawl, I need to write to my next 1000 word milestone (which is about 650 words).

Managed 54 words

Day Nine:
Saturday!! I have high hopes for writing today as well.
Starting off with some ice skating and finishing the challenge from yesterday by writing 600 more words.
Also starting a new chapter!

Quick break to clean something (don't have the luxury of already having a clean house going into this writing day :p)

Now onto writing 1000 words in 1 hour! It's 10:56am. I'm starting with 6032. (And I'm still watching ice skating).
I'm at 7050 and it's 11:46am!

Quick break to clean something again!

It's 12:30, I'm still watching figure skating (pausing that when it's time to take a cleaning break). 10 minute sprint time! Which will work perfectly because I'm starting the ladies free skate and they have to do introductions and the warm-up.
391 words and there is 1 minute left in the warm-up. Perfect timing

I'm not going to take a break because I just sat down! On to the next challenge which is writing as many words as I have posts. This is supposed to be the NaNo site, but I'm going to peak at my YWS posts.... 1902.
I guess I'll write 1902 words. I'm about to start a scene that's going to need more of an overhaul too.

I made it to 7882 total before I lost momentum

Day 16:
Am I even Nanoing at this point? I'm just going to try and see how I can go this month because I'm obviously so far off track and that's fine.

I think I've been procrastinating because I'm changing the end of this chapter and I'm not quite sure how I want to do that. But I'm just going to suck it up and write something.

It's 8:30pm ish and I'm also keeping track of some figure skating going on right now because people are trying to qualify for Nationals and two of my favorites are trying to make their comebacks.

I don't remember where I left off in writing that 1900 words in the Nano crawl so I'm going to skip to the next part and write until I hit a milestone which is 10k! Here we go!
(I'm not allowed to refresh the figure skating updates until I get to the end of a page).

hahaha it was a good thought. I've been watching skating nonstop now for like an hour :p BUT ONE OF MY GIRLS IS GOING TO NATIONALS AND MY OTHER GIRL IS ABOUT TO SKATE AND THEN MAYBE I CAN WRITE.
I don't think my other girl is going to qualify So I here I go again trying to write something!

(it didn't happen. I got distracted researching because I want to start taking figure skating classes again :p)

Day 17:
It's a little after noon, I'm watching the end of a different figure skating competition that one of my favs is competing in (and it should be an easy win for her!). Still working on getting to 10k. I need to get over that hump.
Quick! While they're warming up! Write!

Okay I have written stuff! BUT MY GIRL MADE SOME BIG UNCHARACTERISTIC MISTAKES AND NOW I #AMNERVOUS. And it's her lowest score of the season :'( She'll still medal, but won't win. Ugh. She ended with 2nd. Not ideal, but that's okay. The girl that won was skating in her home country and was SO excited when she saw her score

I. FINISHED. A CHAPTER. (i'm a little over 8500 words)

Time for the grocery store!

Okay it's 3:45 and I have some other cleaning/organizing things I want to accomplish today as well but I'm going to keep on writing! I was really productive yesterday with non-writing things

Actually, I'm going to do some fine-tuning before I start the next chapter.