WRITING JOURNAL NOVEMBER 2017

WEEK TWO

NOV 6-12

Patreon backers get to read posts first and their generosity makes it possible for me to almost afford NJ car insurance! There’s an index of all NaNoWriMo2017 posts accumulated.

November 6 Monday:

I had one of the easiest writing sessions of my life. I spent two hours at the desk and churned out a difficult chapter — when a victim is under attack. From 10:20-12:15, I managed just under 2,000 words. I was pleased with myself.

November 7 Tuesday:

The exact opposite of yesterday! I felt like I slept okay enough. I did get up at 1AM to see that Gus brought me some yarn and he cried quietly (for him). I got out of bed at 6:30AM and took him for his walk for an hour. I checked social media and got to writing by 9:00. Words were not working!

I have no idea what could be stumping me at this point since I formulated a short scene of back story and then an action chapter. It should be easy for me to write these two things. Instead, my eyes were heavy. I kept sipping my coffee. My fingers weren’t moving much. I did a couple minutes of research, but didn’t find exactly what I was looking for anyway.

At 10:28, I realized my head was propped against my hand and my eyes closed. I called it “pause” not “quits” and crawled back to bed. I put on a Yoga Nidra meditation which one is supposed to stay awake enough for to listen. I thought I could do that: listen without sleeping. I caught myself sleeping several times. After an hour though, I popped out of bed and tried again.

Damn, this day is ridiculous. I challenged myself to get to 1,000 words then I could go vote and come back to finish. I kept adding my new totals into the word tracker and still had not hit 1,000. I watched the ticker. 300 words. 100 words. 50 words. I needed a good kick in the ass. I closed the graph and came within 100 words of goal. Toggled back to Scrivener and plowed through it. Ugh!

November 8 Wednesday:

I was in the first high action chapter of the story. I thought I’d breeze through, but alas, I had to pause today. I was as fatigued as seems to be the pattern, but I stopped after one hour because I had a rare opportunity of the house to myself. I recorded the voiceover for the second Yoga for Writers video and finished producing it. I took the shower I so desperately needed and ate lunch. I finally got back to writing and it was relatively easy going. I had a few moments where I felt like I’d rather be in the rabbit hole of politics on Twitter (omg 280 characters *she typed with oozing sarcasm*).

Gus had a short walk today and surprised me when he wanted to come inside early. It was kind of bitter out there. We did small adventuring – breaking through sticker bushes again and walking along an unstable rock wall. The reason this was funny is because my two leading female characters were in a similar situation in this chapter. The protagonist, Ursula, realized she was not the leader for once and that she had to put her trust in someone else as they went through adventuring physical challenges.

I still feel like I need a nap. I feel guilty for being so behind on my reading. I honestly should have been done with this Susan Wittig Albert a week ago. I did get some comics read this week (as always get Bitch Planet: Triple Feature and Clue), but there are always so many that it piles up, digitally nowadays.

November 9 Thursday:

Gus and I did some mildly challenging adventuring today. We were outside at 7AM and were out there for an hour and a half. I made extra coffee when I came inside. My feet were so cold, but the rest of me was fine in layers. It took a while for him to settle into a nap (not until after 10AM). There’ll be some future Adventures with Gus photos from that because I did get lots of good ones.

He had some kind of issue during the night. I’m guessing it was the male stray who comes around spraying. He drives Gus and Ollie into Hulk rages. Luckily it wasn’t nearly as bad as last time and I got Gus quieted down after a few minutes. But then I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I was a little late at writing this morning, but I managed to hit my word goal by 12:20. It’s great to see my progress bar in the orange now.

November 10 Friday:

Woke up from a terrible panic attack during the night. It felt like it wouldn’t end. I listened to whale sounds and dozed in and out. When I did get up at 6:30, it was so windy, I decided not to take Gus out for his morning walk. He was disappointed. We played with some toys instead.

I had to write a review for a new mystery novel since NetGalley kindly offered me a copy. It’s for book seven in Susan Wittig Albert’s Darling Dahlias series. After 800 words there I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to work on on NaNoWriMo words at all. I slowly got a few hundred out and thought of giving up and lying down. I pushed and pushed through.

Once I realized where this scene was going, my fingers flew across the keyboard. That was the problem: there was too much jump from the previous scene to the one I had planned so I needed to wedge something with lots of action in there.

November 11 Saturday:

Had a harder time getting the words out today. Had to share the computer and Gus spent a while crying and whining for attention. Did two writing sessions and broke 20k words.

Highly recommend kitty therapy: while running errands, we stopped to get Gus food at PetValu and they work with PAL animal rescue. I posted pictures to Instagram of the kittens up for adoption. The news was also so depressing (as usual) with all of the sexual assault stories coming out. I try to balance seeing terrible things with better posts so I share Petfinder links on Twitter.

November 12 Sunday:

Had to break up writing into two sessions again which was a good thing; I was waiting to eat until I reached my word goal, but instead I had a forced lunch break and it felt good.

Still on a story segment with a lot of action. Had to balance when characters split up and were in different places. I think I handled it okay. Broke 22k words.

MISC:

I also received an email from Amazon inviting me to become an “influencer” which is a step up from affiliate. The main thing is that I’ll have a url for people to see a list of things I recommend: books, yoga, cat stuff, etc. They probably hand this title out like candy, but it’s one more thing to add to my resume.

LINKS:

• Don’t forget to check out the Yoga for Writers series of posts and videos.
• Please support me at Patreon.com/amberunmasked.
• Amazon Author Page

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.