- but you are dropping your current projects to work on other projects, at least you are getting something done! I'm getting nothing done :P

But if I keep dropping projects in the middle I will never finish anything and that's even worse! D:

This weekend is my girlfriend's birthday, plus I live in Seattle so, you know, that big sportsball festival is a big deal on Sunday... but maybe one of these upcoming weekends we can play word wars?

- some weekend.... the weekend after that a have a CE seminar for work. Maybe some weeknight would work better? Also, uh, Go Seahawks? I don't really follow football. :P

The only thing I care about with sportsball this time around is that Chris Evans has a bet going with Chris Pratt: if the Seahawks win, Chris Evans will come to Seattle Children's Hospital in full Captain America gear and a 12th man flag (if the Patriots win, Chris Pratt will go to Christopher's Haven as Starlord in a Brady jersey). I just want Cap in Seattle :)

Maybe during the week?? During the week is rough on me though 'cause work is pretty well set on killing me right now (it's the super busy season for my office - you'd think I was an accountant or something!) But it's worth considering on sometime for sure!

- lol, yeah I had heard about that, that would be pretty rad.

Week nights only work better for me if it's not thursday or friday :P

lol yay for opposite schedules! I'm sure we'll come up with something....

Thanks!

If you guess wanna read it...

And feedback is always appreciated! :D

Sooo, a friend of mine published her poetry collection today, if anyone's interested in taking a look at that. http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00T4Y6HS2

I've finally started sitting down and re-writing the first book in my series. The rough draft has only been sitting there waiting for me for a year and a half (oh, is that all?)

Unfortunately it's been really tough, slow going. I decided to completely change the opening scene, so it feels like I'm writing an entirely new story - and while I know I'm going to be re-writing scenes I've already written as well, I have a hard time not falling into this bizarre feeling like I'm going to be writing a whole new thing all over again.

This novel was my NaNo 2013 project - the one where I jumped into NaNo on 11/13 and wrote my 50k in 17 arduous and pain-filled days. So this story is VERY hard for me to return to; it still holds a lot of memories of agony and the strong desire to just give up.

I've got a little over 800 words on my new opening scene. On the greatly positive side, I really like it so far and it's been actually pretty fun to write (I love my characters so, so much) and I don't mind re-reading it (my usual bane). I just have to try focusing on the good things coming out of this and try to move past how much suffering was involved in the initial first draft.

You know I'm feeling really proud of myself... sure it's slow going but I'm actually getting some writing done. I asked 2 very good friends of mine to toss me some ideas they'd like me to write about, so I have a nice list to work off of. I'm giving myself 8 days to get as much written as I possibly can during my time offline.

I love writing my rough drafts by hand, it's become a personal habit of mine, don't do it /all/ the time but I do enjoy the old fashioned way. Anyway I've got a story started, I'm about 8 pages in so far and still got much more to work with. I'm very excited!

Writing by hand is my favorite way to start out as well :) I don't do it for the whole draft, but I definitely do it as part of my outlining/plot development process. Forming letters by hand, for me, forces me to slow down and think about what I'm putting on the paper. Unlike typing, where a thought comes into my head and just as quickly it's on the screen. That can be GREAT for becoming a word conduit and writing EVERYTHING without thinking about it too hard and second-guessing(like I sometimes have to do for NaNo), but there are times when you just want to take the time to think things through.

That's so rad that you're already 8 pages into your story! Is this the first day/what's your timeline? :)

Oh yes same here. I write to get my ideas down and then when I go to type it up I have full reign over adding more detail, more info, fixing clunky wording and all that. If I chose to write by hand no matter how far I get into my works I could fill tons of notebooks with my stuff. Ha-ha which to me is awesome because I do enjoy looking back over old works to see if I forgot some things.

Well day 2 actually, I had to take a break the night before because of a headache but I still felt accomplished. I just love being able to write again and actually get further along in my works. Even though these are short stories I'm just so grateful to have something done. It feels like forever since I've written anything half decent.

Getting stuff done!! That's the best thing :) Huge congrats to you on that. And I think it's cool that you got some ideas from other sources to run with - so in a way, you have someone to hold you accountable. At least someone to say "hey, how's xxxxx thing going?"

(I was making progress in my stuff... and then I got re-dragged into a past fandom and suddenly it's all I can think about facepalm)

Are you planning to get some ideas together for Camp NaNo this spring?

Yes that's so true. I do love including my friends in my little planning sessions, I find it helps me pull things together and gives me some neat concepts to work with. Plus giving myself an 8 day deadline has put a nice bit of pressure on me I so sorely needed.

Good luck with your works, I no longer work with fandoms sadly but I do appreciate them because if it were not for fandoms I'd never have bothered with writing any more. I'd have given it up ages ago.

I'd like to but I'm not sure right now. It does sound quite interesting though.

It's amazing how much having an actual deadline can help with sticking to goals. You can say "I want to write a novel this year", but the likelihood of doing so is so much lower than if you change it to "I'm going to write at least 250 words every day for a week" - or something like that. That's why NaNo works for me, personally: It sets that definite goal and breaks it down into something that looks significantly more manageable.

The Camps are really fun. If I remember correctly, the first one is in April and the second is in July. I could definitely be wrong, though. But I'm pretty sure I'm right?

I've never taken part in one... ^^; sadly.

- I prefer to do my rough draft on the computer, and then edit by hand... but with a 50k word novel, that's a lot of paper and ink :( GL with your story! Hope you keep up with it. Maybe I can get some writing of some sort done tomorrow.

Ha-ha thank you. Sometimes I tend to write up things on the computer then go over it like a dozen times, always tweaking. But I do like sitting on my bed and writing things out, it's become like my comfort zone. If I liked laptops then maybe I'd be more inclined to type things up there but ha-ha nope. Good luck I hope you get some writing done!

Every year I hear so many people stressing about NaNoWriMo. There's so much excitement I think about jumping on the bandwagon, but my muse and I have a contract that does not allow overtime. ^_^ How long a novel can you write in just 30 days?

You'd be surprised how much you can get done if you really set out to do it. 50k in 30 days is completely plausible.

Whenever I do a Camp NaNo session, I usually choose a shorter goal - 15k or 20k. This is because unlike November, where I can become a shut-in (aside from going to work) and people understand now that it's my "weird writer month" and leave me alone, I'm actually ridiculously busy in the spring and summer.

So tl;dr but it's absolutely plausible to be able to get a rough first draft, or at least the majority of one, done in 30 days. It really depends on how you, personally, work in regards to deadlines and stress :)