Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
I am turning my sights to NaNoWriMo; it is fast approaching. It’s been sometime since I managed to participate in a monthly challenge. It feels both like I am out of practice and like going home. What will I write? Should I cheat and use the challenge to finish a story that is half done? Should I write a compilation of short stories?
More importantly, what will you write? Find me on NaNoWriMo.org and be my writing buddy!
“November 1-30. The world needs your novel.” — National Novel Writing Month
If you know me, you know I am a big sucker for NaNoWriMo. And that I often don’t finish and have taken myself out of the running for a little while in order to work on started but not finished novels. This doesn’t mean that NaNoWriMo is no longer a big part of my November thinking. To the contrary. Though I won’t be urging you to join me on the NaNoWriMo, I am urging you to find the novel deep within that you never really believed you could write. Find it, and believe me, You Can Write It! Whether you sign up for NaNoWriMo or not, write with me this fall. I want to read your story.
I am not doing my best at writing today, so I made a cover for my Nanowrimo novel instead. I present: The Devil of Westhope-Fairview.
Westhope and Fairview were each very small towns in the same valley in Wyoming, recently relocated so that the valley could serve as a water reservoir. To save money and labor the two towns were combined into one not far from the shores of the reservoir. All of the townsfolk are settling into their new, factory shiny, homes, and the local government is gearing up for an election season to trim the duplication of town officials.
Charley Albright, formerly of Fairview, thinks one of the mayoral candidates, the Westhope attorney Hilary Beedle, is the antichrist. Charley has made it his mission to stop Beedle at all costs, to save the town and all the world.
Are you ready? Have you deciding on what you will write yet? Have you made me a buddy?
And I am all set for it. I’m ready and waiting. I know what I’m going to write: a novel idea I had brewing but didn’t allow myself to do much more than jot down ideas ’cause I had too many other stories to finish. It is The Devil of Westhope-Fairview, and it’s going to be awesome! Come write with me in November.
New story/book covers have been added for “Peachtree” and Intervening Variable. I’m working on Intervening Variable now in the hopes of finishing it once and for all. Next on the list was my sci-fi 800 Square Miles. Is it bad that I have already begun brainstorming for two new novels besides?
Now that moving is done, perhaps I can knock out some old writing in order to pull out something new for November NaNoWriMo. How have I been doing at camp, you ask? Horrible, so far. I guess it was really too soon to jump into a month long creative commitment when I still had boxes and clean-out projects to tackle.
How could I miss this? No, scratch that, I have been too checked out to make a decent attempt at November’s NaNoWriMo to have paid attention to another opportunity to write together/separately with a host of like-minded story tellers, even if I do love it. For two years now, I have missed this and I will miss it no more!
I will go to Camp NaNoWriMo and I will write in July. And it is not daunting, you lot, ’cause each writer gets to choose her own word limit, and you can work on a preexisting project if you want.
And you can commiserate with me at my profile: http://www.campnanowrimo.org/campers/leems. Only I don’t know if I’m going to try something new or finish something old. I should probably finish something old, but which one: Intervening Variable or 800 Square Miles? And how many words should I shoot for? 800 Square Miles could probably use another 50,000 since the first 50,000 left the action smack in the middle of my idea.
And give! Camp NaNoWriMo is another opportunity to support the good work of the Office of Letters and Light, encouraging creativity in young and old.
I’ve trumpeted National Novel Writing Month a ton on this here blog. I have enjoyed every year I have participated. Not only have they created an environment of encouragement and commiseration for people who may have never ventured into writing otherwise (my Mother), but they do great things to encourage youth to write as well! We all have stories and NaNoWriMo helps us tell them.
Ok, that was way thoughtful and somber – point is Yay! I don’t have to wait for November to embrace that feeling again. For the first time ever there will be a National Novel Writing Month Spring Writing Marathon on April 13th. Your marathon can be editing, writing fresh, continuing a story, anything. Just pledge what you can, ’cause you want to support the awesome stuff NaNoWriMo does, and then hunker down on the 13th and write write write! I did and will.
I love National Novel Writing Month, so much so that I have signed up for the challenge when I knew there would be no time, like that one year when we moved apartments in November. I wrote 23 thousand words that year before the file got corrupted.
I hate to say it, but I won’t be signing up this year. I will be devoting November to writing, mostly finishing in progress stories and editing first drafts, but I will not be crafting a new novel from scratch starting tomorrow. I already miss the instant camaraderie of disembodied writers in motion. So, I’m going to have to live through you this year. Sign up to write a novel, send me the link to your NaNoWriMo profile and give me weekly updates. I need this from you. I need you.
Dunno if you’ve noticed, but I like to commit to crazy creative challenges. I keep finding out about ones that have just passed without my knowlege (like hourly comics day). So in an attempt to miss as few as possible, I’m planning.
Inktober – an ink drawing a day throughout October: no pencils, no erasers.
24 hour comics day – registration open in June. This was a crazy day to get through the first time I did it, but I ended up drawing a story I probably would never have come up with otherwise.
NaNoWriMo – November writing challenge. I’ve signed up every year since I first heard about it in 2008. I have only won twice. There is something magical about having a quest, a goal, a crusade to throw yourself into the moment you get home from work.
Jason Turner Project or Page 100 – where you make a comic of the 100th page of a favorite book. I was so excited about this I rushed to my book room to grab one of my childhood favorites and realized that I’ll probably have to re-read the thing in order to get it right.
Allison Lehman’s 30 Day drawing challenge – I was looking around for more challenges and I found this. I like the list and the idea of compiling a challenge of one’s own. So the months outside of October and November are prime for this.
I did it, after two years of enough obstacles and sabotage to ruin my chances of winning–I have triumphed ONCE AGAIN! That is, finally again after the first time in 2008. I have completed a brand new novel of over 50,000 words in the month of November. And what’s better–it’s not even another un-finished project. It’s over, it’s done! So, it’s really like a novella, but that’s ok because those cheesy 80s teen romances didn’t pack in a lot of verbiage anyway, and that’s what I was writing for.
It needs editing, granted, but man, I am so relieved that I could actually get to the end of something I put my nose to just for me. I will rest well. I will feel better and I will go on a date tomorrow. And it’s good that this here particular challenge is done because I’m running out of the pages I drew up in my comics to stock this month. Time to get back to the old stories.
From before: Nanowrimo update
Very apropos comic for this month. I have a poltergeist–what’s keeping you from writing? Drawn!, by the by, is a fantastic blog. And Tom Gauld is awesome. I have to talk about the blogs I like on my blog now that Google reader doesn’t offer a shared posts thingy anymore. Oh, Google plus will replace it or something but I’m not ready to go that social yet.
You know, it’s not too late to sign up and start your novel this month. I mean, don’t let it get you down that 5 days have already passed. I’ve only written a measly amount on just one of those five days, so you could totally start now.
I really hate to say this, but I am a little disappointed in NaNoWriMo’s new site if only because it no longer has a place to put a book cover. I’ve never been successful in thinking up or creating a book cover within the same month I am desperately trying to write a book, so I have never been able to take advantage. This year was going to be different, and maybe the reason why I’ve only written a paltry amount so far, but I had a book cover in mind–and here it is. I’ll show it to you instead of the NaNoWriMo site. You will be the select few who will ever know about my great cover idea. Take that NaNoWriMo! I love you!
So, in the spirit of National Novel Writing Month, I have made mock-up covers to replace two of the ‘image coming soon’ notices on my stories page. They just happen to be for the stories that have a finished draft–that was totally accidental. I still have no idea what I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month, and I am still trying to finish another in progress before November 1st rolls around. It’d be nice if this year were the first I could come up with a cover idea for November’s novel before November is over. I’ll keep dreaming.
All right kittens. The new NaNoWriMo site is finally up! Is it sad that I was waiting for this? I mean, it’s still mid October and I have a couple of stories that I really really really want to finish up before starting something shiny and new on November first, but I’m really excited about National Novel Writing Month this year. The past two years I’ve tried, but because of moving and unforeseen circumstances I was not able to make much of a go of it or a show of it. And then there was the 23,000 word thumbdrive corruption…..
Why is my lease set in November?
Anyway! In an effort to distract myself from writing, I will still be drawing and trying to figure out how to integrate a web-comic posting function into this here blog, or website.
Once the buddy function is up and running make me a friend and we’ll write together come November.