This past weekend I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic for a time when I used to write a lot more stories. Each year for the past few years I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month, but haven’t completed it for a few years. The participating is what I enjoy about NaNo. I enjoy writing with a group of people who when I need a plot twist or a prompt I can simply ask the person next to me and they are more than willing to help. And most importantly I enjoy building a story from the ground up and seeing where the characters lead me (even if they refuse to listen to me sometimes).
I’ve been getting the story bug again (hopefully this means I’ll be participating in Flash Fic Wednesday again). I’ve set a goal to write a small 200-600 word short story twice a month, and I’ve even bought a book called “Complete The Story“.
This is a short story that I wrote about 4 years ago and posted on one of my very old blogs.I realized I never cross posted it here and felt like sharing it again out of pure nostalgia. It’s actually one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.
Almost a year ago I posted a review about Morgan Matson’s book Since You’ve Been Gone. After reading it I bought another one of her books called Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour, which sat in my library for months and months until recently, when I decided to sit down and read it.
Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour
Author: Morgan Matson
Amy Curry is not looking forward to her summer. Her mother decided to move across the country and now it’s Amy’s responsibility to get their car from California to Connecticut. The only problem is, since her father died in a car accident, she isn’t ready to get behind the wheel. Enter Roger. An old family friend, he also has to make the cross-country trip – and has plenty of baggage of his own. The road home may be unfamiliar – especially with their friendship venturing into uncharted territory – but together, Amy and Roger will figure out how to map their way.
Whenever I’m away for a bit of time I always feel the need to apologize for not posting. But here’s the thing, life happens and sometimes I can’t fit blogging into that life (despite my efforts). The past few weeks has been busy with The Husband’s birthday and the beginning of my holiday gift shopping. I’ve had little time to actually sit down and just write.
NANOWRIMO
This problem does not bode well for the upcoming month… National Novel Writing Month. For the past few years I’ve participated in this in an effort to force myself to write and do it for me. The first two years I finished writing the 50,000 word cap within the 30 days. The years after, I was not as focused and thus did not finish.
Despite not finishing the past few years I’m going to continue to try. I have a vague idea of what I want to write, but I’m not sure where to start (isn’t that always the case?). So instead, I’ve spent the past few days drafting some character sheets and making a novel “vision board” on Pinterest to hopefully keep me inspired during those days of limited inspiration.
Aside from a vision board (I know it sounds cheesy, but it totally works sometimes), I have a few staples in my how to survive NaNoWriMo aresenal.
Go to Local Write Ins (when able)
I find the best place for me to write is at the local write ins with my fellow NaNoers. I’ll credit my success from the first few years to that. By going to write ins all the time i realized how nice it was to be surrounded by others who were on the same crazy ride I was.
If no write ins are in your area, start your own! Pick a coffee shop, advertise it on the message boards and enjoy.
Find a playlist
I’m personally a fan of movie/television/video game scores. I’m particularly attached to the scores from The Holiday by Hans Zimmer, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Theif by Christophe Beck, and P.S. I Love You by John Powell
Drink a lot of water (caffeine helps too, but mostly water)
I’ve been slowly trying to train myself to drink more water and find that I write a bit better when I have less caffeine and more hydration running through my body.
Don’t beat yourself up
NaNo is both a marathon and a sprint. But don’t beat yourself up if you don’t work up to for 1,667 words per day. There are days that you have 500 words and days where you write 4,000. Eventually it evens out a bit.
The past few years I’ve also designed a few calendars to track you progress, despite not having one for this year, the dates and word count are still correct, even if where that date falls in the week is not.
If you’re participating in NaNo this year, feel free to add me as a writing buddy!
My Funko collection is growing. Basically anytime any of my favorite stores have sales, I end up buying a good handful (probably more than I should) of new Pops to add.
A few weeks ago, I swung by FYE and picked up a Dancing Groot Pop [Affiliate Link] and a Crowley Pop[Affiliate Link]. I was excited to finally start expanding my Supernatural collection. I got home and set the figures down only to get distracted for a couple days before I could pull them out. After tossing the bag and setting the boxes on my desk I went about my day organizing my shelves to make room for the newest additions. I was admiring the box and laughed when I noticed that in the picture, Crowley is holding a glass of something, but I couldn’t remember seeing that on the figure itself. After a moment I realized the reason that I didn’t notice it at first was because the figure I picked up, DIDN’T HAVE A HAND! Having already thrown away the receipt I didn’t know what to do. While I’m sure that some stores will exchange it, I wasn’t sure if with it being broken that I could return it. So instead, I decided to use this mishap to make something silly.
A short (and probably poorly thought out) story about how Crowley could have lost his hand.
Flash Fiction Wednesday or FlashFicWed. I was a little overexcited about this last week and posted a story A WEEK early, so I decided to write and post a new one today.
found on tumblr… somewhere
Flash Fiction Wednesday was started by the awesome loudlysilent and is a MONTHLY (not weekly like SOME people *cough*me*cough* thought until the adorable Christa Mae at ObsessiveGirlFan corrected her) challenge to write a short story, 600 words max. A challenge that I’m going to try and participate in more often.
It’s a little late, but I really wanted to do this today. As I sat down to participate in #FlashFicWed this week I realized how incredibly rusty I am at writing. Despite that feeling, I wrote anyway (trust me, this is a big accomplishment). I decided I was going to write read over it only twice (to check for misspellings and weird sentences) but I wasn’t allowed to delete anything. So this is what came out. I’m a little rusty, so any constructive criticism is welcome, but please be kind. 🙂
I’ve been in a writing rut. I keep trying to pull myself out of it by doing tags (book and TV tags) or participating in weekly community features like 5 Fandom Fridays, but something is not clicking. I feel like this happens a lot when I start blogging. I’ll do really well for a while, then slowly I just stop. This repeated problem is really annoying me.
The worst part is pulling myself out of this rut. I want to write more, I have about a dozen half written posts on my drive but I just can’t bring myself to finish them. Part of me thinks they’re not ready to be forever on the internets, another part of me just wants them to be done so they can stop clogging up my drive.
So I’m asking advice from those that will give it…
What keeps you writing? What is your best way to keep motivated and timely? I’ll take any advice you can give me.
In an effort to keep my writing skills up to par and to keep up on blogging, my friend Nicki and I have decided to do a prompt fueled Wednesday every couple of weeks that we’re calling “Writing Wednesdays” (yay alliteration!!)
Here is how it works: This will be a semi-monthly feature here and at Nicki’s Blog. On the first and third Wednesday of every month we’ll post a prompt that we’ve either found or thought up ourselves along with our drabble for said prompt. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join in, all we ask is that you link back to one of us on your own Writing Wednesday posts.
Also, be sure that you comment on this post with a link to your own post so that everyone can check out the other blogger’s stories.
In an effort to keep my writing skills up to par and to keep up on blogging, my friend Nicki and I have decided to do a prompt fueled Wednesday every couple of weeks that we’re calling “Writing Wednesdays” (yay alliteration!!)
Here is how it works: This will be a semi-monthly feature here and at Nicki’s Blog. On the first and third Wednesday of every month we’ll post a prompt that we’ve either found or thought up ourselves along with our drabble for said prompt. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join in, all we ask is that you link back to one of us on your own Writing Wednesday posts.
Also, be sure that you comment on this post with a link to your own post so that everyone can check out the other blogger’s stories.
In an effort to keep my writing skills up to par and to keep up on blogging, my friend Nicki and I have decided to do a prompt fueled Wednesday every couple of weeks that we’re calling “Writing Wednesdays” (yay alliteration!!)
Here is how it works: This will be a semi-monthly feature here and at Nicki’s Blog. On the first and third Wednesday of every month we’ll post a prompt that we’ve either found or thought up ourselves along with our drabble for said prompt. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join in, all we ask is that you link back to one of us on your own Writing Wednesday posts.
Also, be sure that you comment on this post with a link to your own post so that everyone can check out the other blogger’s stories.
![[Books] Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour | Morgan Matson](https://nerdyalerty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ared.png)
