Tag: NaNoWriMo

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NaNoWriMo Day 20: When Business Trumps Art

November 20, 2011 jcladyluv

As a person who not only writes fiction for a living but who also edits fiction as well I find it sometimes hard to separate myself from the work that I am editing. This is most evident on the days that I am unable to write on my own novel. I am at the tail end of editing project on another work of fiction by one of my more steady clients and it is one of those stories that just captivates you and pulls you into wanting to learn more and more about its characters. I wish I could tell you more details about what is so amazing about this story but its confidential. I am still trying to get my word count done for today but I am just so moved by the work that I’m editing and after all business is still business and I must make money. Hopefully I will have more to tell you about what’s going on in my own novel tomorrow. Until next time…Do you think your novel will pull your editor in?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 19: Silenced

November 19, 2011 jcladyluv

Today was not a good day for writing. I tried to get my thoughts together but nothing was really coming out, at least not right anyway. I’ve been thinking about other things pertaining to my writing, such as what happens after November is over and my novel is done. I’m not necessarily talking about my future projects, I’m thinking more so of the freelance aspect of my writing career. Today the stresses of life have been bogging me down so much that the words would not come together but I am going to make sure to double up on my writing tomorrow to make up for what I missed today. Hopefully in tomorrow’s post I will feel more accomplished in my word count for the day. Until tomorrow…Missing one day won’t hurt, I hope.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 18: Every Character Deserves to Have Their Own Voice

November 18, 2011 jcladyluv

Okay so Mackenzie’s best friend, Leah, is beginning to tell me more of her story and she is deciding that she would like to have more of a voice here. So that leaves me to wonder whether I should give her a voice now or if I should make the second book that will be in this new series more focused on her and the story she is dying to tell. I think I might have actually figured out how to bring her more to the forefront in the second book but the question is, should I give my readers a glimpse of her now. I mean it’s not like I can just silence her in my head. She has gotten tired of sharing the attention with Mackenzie and of all of Mackenzie’s issues taking over and she wants to be heard. I guess if I promise her more of a feature in the next book she might be a little quieter until then, or at least wait until I finish this book and can capture her story with a little more detail. Don’t you just hate when the character you least expected to speak up decides they want to distract you from the original plan you started out with. Okay well if I’m being honest, I was actually waiting for someone else to decide they wanted to tell their story so I can’t really complain. I guess I have a lot of work ahead of me once I finish this novel because the next one won’t be far behind. Until next time…Go ahead, let your background characters have their moment too!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 17: Having a Backwards Kind of Day

November 17, 2011 jcladyluv

Okay today has been one lacking in productivity. I was supposed to write this morning but the bed wouldn’t let me go. So I resolved to write later in the morning but alas nothing was moving me to write. Now I make a promise to myself that by the end of the day I will have my minimum words written for the day but right now things feel a little backwards. I would normally have my words done for the day by the time I got around to writing up my blog post but today will just have to be different. I have actually, in lieu of writing, started thinking about the second book in the series that this book is going to be the beginning of. I was thinking about the kind of case Mackenzie will be encountering in the next book and what else Mackenzie is going to reveal about herself in that one because something tells me that this book will not spill all of the secrets in her life. I was also thinking about what I might want the cover to look like and what the book trailer might consists of. I think I might have to go ahead and put together a marketing plan for this book before all of the ideas leave my mind and before it is too late to start thinking about this aspect of the novel. I have big things planned for this book, at least in my mind anyway. Well I guess I’m going to go actually do my word count for the day. Until next time…What would your book trailer look like?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 16: Just Trying to Keep Up

November 16, 2011 jcladyluv

Okay I have not been doing so well with the early morning sessions for the last three days. I’ve managed to get my words completed but it has been a struggle to get them out. There are added distractions once it reaches past a certain point in the morning. This is probably why it works better for me to write at5 inthe morning. I can’t understand how it was so easy for me to get up early in the beginning of National Novel Writing Month but now that it’s halfway through to the end it’s becoming more and more of a struggle. I suppose maybe it was the excitement of the new project. It is comforting to know that my struggle is not making it any harder for Mackenzie to communicate to me. She seems to always be ready to tell me something new. In fact she keeps trying to get me to get back with the program so that she doesn’t have to wait so long to tell me what’s going to happen with her next. I suppose I should try my best to keep up with my character rather then making her wait because you know how that goes. You make the characters wait and you might end up missing out on what they were trying to tell you. Until next time…have you been keeping up with all of your characters?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 15: I’m Halfway There!

November 15, 2011 jcladyluv

I was supposed to have some kind of reward or treat planned for this moment. The moment when I have made it past 25,000 words of my novel and am halfway to the finish line of NaNoWriMo. Sadly, I did not get my chocolate reward that I had originally planned on (but I’ll get it tomorrow) but I suppose the reward in itself is actually hitting the word count button and seeing that number go over 25,000. What’s funny is that I don’t feel like I’m halfway there, I feel like I still have a long ways to go. I feel like there is still so much more of the story to tell before I make it to the end. Truthfully I probably won’t be finished with the novel even when NaNoWriMo is over. I think that Mackenzie is only just beginning in this novel and that there might in fact be a series in store for her. I’m having so much fun telling her story and she is opening up a lot. She is going to have a lot of things to deal with and it is going to be way too much for just one book. I hope that all of you are at the halfway point too, or at least almost there. I gotta go find me some chocolate now! Until tomorrow…How do you plan on rewarding your halfway mark?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 14: Detour Averted

November 14, 2011 jcladyluv

Okay so I stayed up later then expected last night watching the fourth installment of Harry Potter on my DVR, and although I managed to actually get up at 5 this morning, I typed a measly paragraph and made a much needed decision to get back in the bed and go back to sleep for that hour and a half before I had to get my daughter off to school. Don’t worry I still made my word count for the day. I was still able to have Mackenzie brought in under suspicion of murder while turning her personal life upside down at the same time. But I think that I will definitely make sure that I get my full night’s rest from here until the end of November if I want to stick to the routine that I have set and the routine that seems to be working beautifully. It’s really hard to stay on track all of the time but I suppose that as long as you are able to get yourself back to the point where you are supposed to be then a little detour every once in a while doesn’t hurt. Tonight I will make sure to be in bed on time. Until next time…What detours have you been experiencing along your NaNoWriMo journey this year?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 13: The Harry Potter Distraction

November 13, 2011 jcladyluv

Today was another struggle to write but it wasn’t because Mackenzie wasn’t talking to me or having some kind of dramatic meltdown, but rather it was due to the distractions that life holds, especially on the weekend. My daughter was quite upset that I couldn’t play with her for the majority of the day because I was writing but what was really distracting me was this movie on T.V. Actually it was not just one movie, but rather a particular series of movies. I hope no one laughs when I say this but I was caught up in the Harry Potter movies. I had tried to read the book several times but I could never really get into them and every time the movie would come on before I had always caught it in the middle and I just couldn’t catch on. I can usually get hooked to a movie even coming in the middle but for some reason not Harry Potter.

So I had just dismissed it as maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea and that even though I am a huge fan of J.K. Rowling and her story, maybe I just could not catch on to it. But just as I was wrong with dismissing Twilight (which I came to love a lot later on), I was also wrong with dismissing Harry Potter. There has been a Harry Potter marathon on the ABC Family network all weekend and as soon as I started watching the first one from the absolute beginning I was hooked. However, it is literally one of those movies where if you miss even one scene you miss a lot and luckily for me I have the feature on my T.V. where I can rewind if I come back from a commercial too late because otherwise I would’ve gotten lost even after finding a love for it. I started with the first one and am up to the fourth one (although I’m using the DVR for 4 and 5 to watch later). Needless to say, I’m hooked. It’s a shame too because now after the last one, there will be no more. So Harry Potter was my distraction today, but a good one.

Movies that draw me in like that and keep me on the edge of my seat make me think a lot about my writing and my stories. Now I’m no science fiction writer (not saying I would ever dismiss the possibility) and I don’t generally watch movies about vampires and werewolves or witches and wizards but what captivated me about Twilight and Harry Potter is the back story, that mixed in with the intrigue of being able to have the ability to come up with a completely different world apart from the real one that already exist. I watch these movies and think about how I want to (and hope that I do) make stories that draw people in like that and have them sitting on the edge of their seats (or bed in my case) wondering what’s going to happen next and leaving them wanting more of that story. You empathize with them, and you are scared right along with them. You want to help them and you want them to be okay (or in the cases of the villains you want them to get what’s coming to them). I may have been a bit distracted by Harry Potter this weekend but I was also incredibly inspired. I hope to draw my readers in like that and I’m going to work really hard to do that. Until next time…What stories or movies inspire you to be a better writer?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

NaNoWriMo Day 12: Proving something to myself

November 12, 2011 jcladyluv

NaNoWriMo is teaching me a lot about myself and my writing this year. For one, this novel is showing me that I should not be afraid to branch out into different genres or styles of writing just because it’s something I’ve never done. I wouldn’t have known that I could be good at writing a mystery if I had never made the attempt. The second thing it has taught me is that I, the person who is not a morning person at all, writes better in the morning. Not only that but that I can actually, despite the longing to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock, have the willpower and enough passion for my writing that it makes me drag myself out of the bed anyway at five in the morning. The third thing that NaNoWriMo has helped me prove to myself is that I can actually blog everyday. The closest I had gotten to doing it before was three days a week. That was all I strived for because I had convinced myself that that was as close to daily blogging that I was ever going to get. I never even tried it before until doing this for NaNoWriMo and I am discovering that I should’ve been doing this a long time ago. Today was a tough day for writing. I had some things happen that were just emotionally draining. I didn’t feel like writing when I got home and my daughter was ready for Game/Pizza night. However, this novel is important to me and being able to say I finished what I started and set out to do is extremely important to me so I told my daughter to give me an hour to write and that we would start after. I sat down and, though the words were not coming easy, I finished my minimum word count for the day and I felt good that I pushed myself to just sit down and write. Mackenzie had some things that she wanted to get off her chest anyway and she didn’t feel that it could wait. Well I think I’m gonna call it a night and pray for tomorrow to be better. Until tomorrow…What has this year’s NaNoWriMo inspired you to prove to yourself?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”