Day 9 NaNoWriMo – Marathon – 3 hours to go!

3 hours left and I have finally made it home from the pub… I am watching the livestream from earlier and am put to shame by Jules and Simone who plan to write 7000 today. Made only slightly better by the fact that the presenter Grant Faulkner has only made 12000 – and here I am on 16000+

see what I’m seeing;

NaNoWriMo Writing Marathon Livestream at Noon with Grant Faulkner and Kiddos!      

NaNoWriMo Writing Marathon Livestream at Noon with Grant Faulkner and Kiddos!

They talk about rewards and punishment – so every 1000 words I will treat myself to treat myself to 2 pieces of candy and a 10 minute break – I only have 3 hours to go – but may take my marathon over midnight.

I will update later

UPDATE

Well that was fun! Yes you heard me, FUN! I did however fall asleep on the laptop again!

When I found out today was the NaNo Marathon I got excited and planned to write throughout the day, then we made plans to see our friends in the pub and I thought I would still have time to write when I got home, thinking it would be tea-time. We got back just after 8pm (about 3 hours later than I had envisaged) and as you have already read, I only had 3 hours of this epic event day left to write.

I should have started straight away but I spent the first hour catching up on my PAD poems writing about Cat Ornaments and Lovers (not in the same poem!)

I spent about an hour and a half writing (deducting time for dosing at the keys!)

Here’s how my mini marathon panned out.

 700 exactly

Total Words Written  17,073

Words Remaining  32,927

 300  I made my reward – which I didn’t have – hence falling asleep from the lack of sugar at this point!

Words Written Today

1,628 (all this work and I haven’t yet even reached the average day count of 1667 and some of those words were written last night!)

Total Words Written 17,373

 330

Words Written Today 1,958

Total Words Written 17,703

Words Remaining 32,297

So at this point I have made my word count for the day – and fallen asleep at the laptop twice.

I decide my nano marathon challenge is to make it over 18000 before midnight and to do my best to produce 3000 over the course of Sunday – that way this weekend will have seen about 5000 words.

I play more live stream nano marathon videos.

NaNo Analogy

A good analogy watch it!

You are going to make it through NaNo.

I hit a wall tonight – not with the writing but with the fact that I had spent the afternoon shopping and then in a bar with friends drinking until 8pm and I dosed off and woke up feeling a little worse for wear, in the back of my mind I am thinking I need to write more material for tomorrow’s poets for peace event. I wrote my PAD poetry before I started my Nano write tonight and have just 30 minutes at this point before midnight to write.

 Another 288

Words Written Today 2,246

Total Words Written

17,991 My inner cheerleader gets involved …. 9 more words come on!

　

 22 words

Words Written Today 2,268

Total Words Written 18,013

So I haven’t exactly achieved a MARATHON amount of words (I will choose to have my own personal marathon in bite size chunks when I have a free day… ) but I set the achievable goal of 18000 and managed that, so I can go to bed proud of myself for meeting my objective even if it was only a 2268 word write. I still need 601 words to make it to 2268 today as some of these were written after yesterday’s count.

I had a lovely day with friends AND got to write another chapter of my story.

The good news is I have a second wind and am going to write a bit more before bed. Of course it is now Sunday and so the words will be counted on the Day 10 post, but as I am out reading poetry again tomorrow over writing now will be a bonus.

I have also picked up some great tips from listening to the live streams. I will add those in another post before bed.

Day 9 – Nanowrimo – Writing Marathon… On Your Marks, Get Set, GO!

The Marathon is TODAY!

Every year during the month of NaNoWriMo the good people of the Office of Letters and Light (Nano headquarters) organise a marathon! They are great fun to take part in and are also a good fundraiser for the site itself as people donate or pledge money on this day in relation to how much they manage to write.

I don’t know of any hard core wrimos who sit through the whole 8 hours (and I have been asleep for most of them!) I am sure if I surfed the net I would find some of the 200,000 + participants preparing for a whole day at the typeface. Just an hour or two is acceptable though!

It is also a great day to hook up with your regional group and write through the marathon itself together as a collective of wrimos. I am a bit gutted because in a city not too far from here my regional group are doing just that today. I am unable to go as I have so much to do and the 2 hour travel is time I need to spend on doing things today.

I do hope to meet up at the regional headquarters and write with the others before the end of Nano – but next weekend I am in Oxford and the weekend after that is my Gran’s very special and BIG 90th Party celebrations. So I am not sure I will make it to the Coffee Lounge this year. However, I plan on Nano being part of my annual writing plan so maybe next year I can make the meets and some of their warm up pre-Nano meets too.

Here’s some information from the email NaNo sent to all WriMos about this year’s marathon;

No time for reading… Must write!

The short version: Join us on Saturday, November 9 for day-long noveling madness in person and online, and donate to help us reach our $50K goal. Keep NaNoWriMo running the course for years to come!

All the glory of a traditional marathon, none of that pesky training. Just you, your novel, and a deep and abiding love of helping others discover the joy of writing.

 

NaNoWriMo’s 2013 Writing Marathon + Donation Day

On Saturday, November 9, 2013, Wrimos around the world will gather virtually and in-person for an all-day NaNoWriMo Writing Marathon.

No word count will be left behind.

Join us!

Spend a day marathon noveling (Marathoveling? Novelthoning?) at in-person events hosted in your local region, and virtually on Twitter and YouTube.

(Check your regional forum to see if your Municipal Liaison already has something planned, and let us know if it’s not already on our local events page!)

Can’t make it out to an in-person event? We’ll be livestreaming from NaNo HQ throughout the day, and you can also join in virtually in the official Marathon forum and join the #NaNoThon on Twitter for updates, challenges, and giveaways.

Wherever you choose to write, your commitment will be the same: to spend as much of the day noveling as physically possible.

I’m on the starters block…. are you?

 

2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 9

2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 9

Nine days may not seem like much, but hey, we’re now 30% of the way through November, and that’s a lot of percents, right? We’re making real progress, and I hope making some real poems.

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The Other (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Some possible titles may include: “The Other Side of the Story,” “The Other Brother,” “The Other Hand,” or whatever else you concoct. And remember: I really don’t care if you bend or break the prompt in your favor. My prompts are just a starting place.

Robert Lee Brewer

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community

 

Possibly the best poem I have written yet on this challenge, yes I know I have already made this claim, about the one before the one that you are now – something we can all relate to – the ex. I called it ‘The Other Lover’.

We All Need a Reboot from Time to Time

 Last night, about 12 hours ago – the computer lost connectivity. Mr G was already asleep and I was attempting to make the daily word count on my Nano write (managed 1703). I was gutted that I had lost ability to post as there were other things I had planned to blog about. On the other hand it was past 1 a.m and I was tired from the working week. I imagined that this was the universe’s way to get me to bed, so I gave up trying to reconnect and slept.

This morning Mr G rebooted the laptop and woke me after a blissful 11 hour slumber!  I have had a lazy entry into the day, reading a few chapters from my current novel. I would recommend all wrimos keep reading if they can, as it helps you consider the structure and content of your own work. I am pleased to say I think mine meets up to a bestselling author! Of course I learnt early on not to compare myself to that competition as a novice writer – what right do I have? – I look in the mirror and compare myself to that competitor instead and I have say she has already developed strength and knowledge and writes better than she did 11 months ago.

I have plans for today that include a lot of writing (among other things);

 Poetry

I want to catch up on the PAD poetry challenge – already a day behind again.

I need to get my set ready for tomorrow. I am performing at the ORT café again in a Remembrance Sunday event called Poet’s for Peace. I have written a few new poems (from the PAD challenge) but there are also some websites I want to visit and read and then write some more poetry specifically for my set. I will need to spend some time later reading over these poems, preparing and rehearsing.

I also need to get my poetry ready for my set on Thursday night – which was booked back in October and now is going to be my 7th appearance (not my 2nd as I first thought it would be.)

 Admin

I need to email Emma my poem for next weekend’s workshop in Oxford. (I missed last night’s deadline due to the connectivity issue!)

I need to check my emails as I haven’t all week! (Work)

 Blogging

I need to catch up in Blogland.

 Writing

I want to get ahead on Wrimo writing to compensate for next week – next week I am working 3 days, I have 2 performance events, a stanza meeting and a workshop and performance in Oxford. I know there will be little time to reach 1667 targets and I will be happy to produce 800-1000 a day. Which means today and tomorrow I really need to overwrite. by the end of next week I expect to be on target for the 30th November and not beyond (as I have been since the start of the challenge!)

I have also just discovered it is the Marathon Writing Day for Nanowrimo today!

I also managed to sign up for the Picture book challenge –  PiBoldMo last week, the site gave me error messages but I received an email offering registration (which closed on the 7th November) so I have to catch up with what is going on in this challenge – basically a month thinking up 30 different picture book ideas. I found out about it when I did my Children’s Picture Book Writing Course back in May.

 

 Reading

I also need to spend some time reading my way through a poetry magazine which I borrowed from stanza two meetings ago and was meant to give back last month and forgot.

I also (finally) subscribed to my writing magazine, I have been buying it all year, but since moving house there are no stockists over here. It also saves me money. £15.00 a year, that’s a poetry book, performance or a bit of petrol money for events in 2014 already banked…. which is great because I totally over spent this year’s budget by twice as much again! Of course I hope to win it all back in some poetry prize in 2014. My new magazine arrived in the post a few days ago and is still in it’s sealed packet!

I also need to start reading Hooked – the writing book James leant me at the 42 Event last month!

 Life

It is also a friend’s birthday this weekend so I am out tomorrow and need to go gift shopping today, and there are other friends I am meeting up with today in between running errands in town, sorting out household monies and doing a bit of cleaning up at home.

So a busy weekend – looks like I needed that mammoth sleep!