Is NaNoWriMo's Countdown Tone Deaf?

A week or so ago, many of us (now former) Municipal Liaisons noticed that NaNoWriMo had a countdown to November up on their website.  I screencapped this a couple of days ago, so the countdown is not up to date for today.

Is it just me, or is this completely tone deaf?  There has been a massive outcry in the community against NaNoWriMo's AI statements, and many of us have been exploring alternatives to NaNoWriMo in the weeks since.  And yet, with no mention of any of that, they throw a countdown up on the website.

Today, finally, NaNo HQ addressed the issue with an email blast to the entire community.  It was, as all the statements posted online have been, a bunch of pandering and gaslighting.

This ignores completely that the major difference between this statement and last year's statement is that last year's statement on AI clearly (and accurately) points out that using generative AI to write your entire novel "would defeat the purpose of the challenge."

Then there was the claim that they've overhauled the volunteer system to bring it into compliance:

I guess technically cutting loose your ~800 volunteers does bring the program into compliance, because now there are no volunteers to comply with any legal restrictions.  But at that point you don't actually have ~800 volunteers anymore.

As far as I know, not a single ML has actually been restored as of yet, and it's unlikely to happen in the next month.  There's significant speculation within the community that NaNoWriMo is trying things out without the MLs this year to see if they can make it work without the local community representatives and the expense we represent (mainly in the form of free stickers for our region's participants, and ML goodies such as annual pins recognizing our contributions).

The staffing changes claim is a hoot, because the impression I got was that the staff actually unanimously quit, rather than being let go for their involvement.  If that's not the case, there was significant gaslighting coming from the Interim Executive Director at the time of the "staffing changes," who told the MLs that our usual point of contact was "on leave," and only informed us that she had quit after she was supposed to have returned from leave.

Also, "staffing changes" is misleading because it implies that staff has been replaced.  As far as I know, HQ consists right now of the Interim Executive Director and maybe a programmer or two.  And the staff page is also down, which certainly implies that they don't want us to know this.

The email ends with a bunch more gaslighting and a call for donations.

The numbers read like resume bullet points or executive summaries, and are clearly designed to make it sound like NaNoWriMo has been communicating better than they have been.  Unfortunately, just because an email has been sent out doesn't mean it has communicated anything it should have.  Additionally, the part about it being possible to participate "if" your region doesn't have an ML is noteworthy for a couple of reasons: One, as I said above, I don't believe any region has had an ML reinstated, and two, it seems to support the theory that HQ is seeing if perhaps the community organizers aren't needed after all.

Finally, the call for donations in the signature is, just like the countdown on the website appearing before any communications went out to the community, tone deaf.  What exactly are we donating for?  I've seen posts indicating that educators may not even have access to the resources of the Young Writers Program anymore, and that program was always a significant part of what we were funding when we donated.  With that and the community outreach program in limbo, what exactly is left to support?  Right now NaNoWriMo is little more than a word count tracking website run by a backyard nonprofit with a skeleton crew, and as I mentioned in my post regarding NaNoWriMo alternatives, there are other ways to track word count in November.

I will be writing a novel this November as always, but this year my volunteer efforts will be better spent picking up the shattered pieces of our community that HQ left us with when they dismantled the ML program.

Time Management and the Importance of Down Time

I mentioned in my weekly goals post that last week was a really busy, rough week, and that at the end of it I canceled my plans for Sunday so I could just stay home and write.

I'm not always good at balancing that need, but I try.  In this case, I had a super busy, in-my-face Friday and Saturday, and desperately needed that break on Sunday.  It took me a couple of hours to realize Sunday, basically until I realized I was going to procrastinate getting going until it was too late and then feel bad about it.  Instead, I recognized what was happening, canceled my plans so that I would feel less bad about it, 

And yes, sitting on the couch writing for four hours is a break.  A lovely one, in fact!  I made tremendous progress on my novel, catching up from a decided slump.  And I ended the day feeling much less stressed and overwhelmed, despite the general busyness of the week.

It's so difficult to recognize when we need to slow down and give ourselves a break, yet it's so important to make sure we're doing this when it's needed.  everyone needs a break periodically!

When I'm not writing for a break, reading is another big contender.  We also like to go to movies occasionally, since we have A-List subscriptions with AMC.

What about you?  Are you able to recognize when you need a break, and how do you handle it when you realize?

Weekly Goals, Week 40: A Small Reprieve

Last week was another rough week, but this week should be better.

Sound familiar?

I think it's true this time though.  I do have a few things scheduled this week, but it's considerably less demanding-looking on my calendar than last week was.

Remember how in last week's goals post I mentioned I usually only track 25-35 hours throughout the week, and the previous week I'd tracked 45?  Well, last week I tracked 38, which is a little less but still more than my usual.  No wonder it felt so busy!  Saturday was especially busy, straight from one thing to another all day long, so on Sunday I ended up canceling everything and staying home to WRITE.

This week should be better, though.  No, truly!  I have much less scheduled.

My goals for the week are:

1. Write every day
2. Work on dolls
3. Take doll photos & post content
4. Work on organization

These are the same goals I had last week.  I managed to write nearly every day, worked a little on dolls, took doll photos, and posted content.  I did not get around to organization (I had some shelves to put up and didn't), and I did not do as much of the second and third items as I had intended.  The collab I filmed on Friday and the Q&A for NaNoWriMo my region held on Saturday took up much more of my time during the week than I had anticipated.

This week's goals are more or less the same.  Writing every day will probably always be a goal, and the rest of these goals will probably be pretty static as well, for the near future anyway.

As much as I would love to hope that my weeks will keep getting easier, the truth is that they are about to ramp up in a major way.  NaNoWriMo starts November 1st, and although my co-organizers and I are planning on distancing ourselves from HQ starting this year, we're still doing the challenge and all of the same events we always do.  So my life is about to get quite a bit more chaotic!

Let Freedom Read Day

Do you want to do more about book banning than celebrate Banned Books Week?  While exercising your right to read challenged books is important, today is about doing something about book banning.  Today is Let Freedom Read Day!

Let Freedom Read Day is all about taking an action - any action - that will help to fight the fight against book banning.

Ready to join the fray?  Here are my favorite suggestions from the Banned Books Week website on how you can help.

• Register to vote.  Voting is important in any election, but especially in this election.  The availability of books in the education system is only one of the many things at stake this November.
• Pledge to support the freedom to read when you vote.  Make a commitment to fight back against book banning at the ballot box!
• Quiz your candidates.  Do you know where your local candidates stand on book banning?  If not, you should!  Research their positions, write to the campaign, or attend a town hall or campaign event to ask your questions.  This goes for elected officials, too: Just because they've been elected doesn't mean they can ignore the people's concerns, so make yours heard!
• Talk openly about the dangers of book banning.  A lot of people don't understand the ramifications of censorship.  If you know someone like that in your life, this is your chance to educate them!  
• Write a letter to the editor.  Getting a letter to the editor published in your local paper or community website can be a great tool for raising awareness and educating others on the impact of book banning.
• Donate banned books to libraries, schools, and Little Free Libraries.  Give the gift of knowledge by donating banned books to places where they'll be read, spread, and enjoyed.

If these things feel like too much, rest assured, there are still ways you can help.

How Does Reading Banned Books Help?

This post is about things you can do to fight back against censorship, but in truth, reading is something you can do.  When you read banned books, you:

• Support the author, publisher, and countless other people.  Buying books is obviously money in both the publisher's and the author's pockets, but reading from the library also helps to support them.  Libraries pay good money for books and demand will keep them buying!  Plus if you're reading a book, you're likely talking or posting about it, and word of mouth helps support authors and publishers too.
• Maintain demand.  As noted above, libraries have to make decisions about what books to buy.  When a book is challenged, they may also need to fight the challenge with data on the book's demand.  It's easier to fight back against a challenge on a popular book in the library's collection.
• Add to the discourse.  Assuming you talk or post about what you read, or even simply update your Goodreads account, you're adding to the overall conversation about the book.  Word of mouth helps generate support by getting other people interested in books and selling more copies, to both individuals and libraries.

Ultimately, the best way to combat book banning is to ensure that it never goes unacknowledged.  The best way to fight back against a ban on information is, after all, with more information.

I've signed the pledge, put several challenged books on my TBR list this week, and I will, as always, vote liberally this November.  What about you?  What actions are you taking for Let Freedom Read Day?

Happy Banned Books Week!

Every year I try to celebrate Banned Books Week with a blog post and by adding a banned or challenged book to my TBR list.  Often I find out it's Banned Books Week toward the end of the week, but this week I actually saw a post about it on Sunday!  Banned Books Week is this week, September 22-28.

The list of top challenged books of 2023 has a lot of repeats on it from last year's list:

1. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
2. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
3. This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
5. Flamer by Mike Curato
6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
7. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins (tied)
8. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (tied)
9. Let’s Talk About It by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
10. Sold by Patricia McCormick

If you compare this to the list published during Banned Books Week in 2023, you'll see a lot of repeats.  In fact, the only books on this list that weren't on last year's list are Tricks (by the same author as Crank, which was on last year's list); Let's Talk About It, which is just basically sex ed in graphic novel format; and Sold, which has been on top-10 lists of challenged books in the past.

Every year, I try to read at least one banned book, preferably one from the list.  From last year's list, I had already read quite a few of the books, so I chose to read and review Me and Early and the Dying Girl and Lawn Boy.  I also read Crank, Flamer, and Out of Darkness, and This Book Is Gay, and I've had Gender Queer, The Bluest Eye, and A Court of Mist and Fury on my list ever since.

This year I'm going to bump up Gender Queer and The Bluest Eye on my TBR list, and add Tricks.

How do you celebrate Banned Books Week?  I think the right to read and explore our world, and for our children to do so too, is one of the most important rights to exercise.  My first response any time I see a book being talked about or challenged is to want to know why.

As Stephen King has said, "When books are banned from school libraries, run to your public library, or the nearest bookstore, and read what it is your elders don't want you to know."

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Weekly Goals, Week 39: EXHAUSTED

Last week was an exhausting week.  I knew it was going to be a busy one, but underestimated exactly how busy.  As it turned out, I had to pick and choose what got done and what was deferred.

The biggest win for last week was working on my novel nearly every day.  (I did miss Friday.)  I worked on dolls a little, but didn't accomplish as much as I had in mind when I set the goal.  Same for doll photos and content.  And for my organization goal, I had planned to put up shelves, but we were so busy I didn't get around to that.

That being said, I did get a lot done last week, and I both babysat and puppy-sat, so there was a reason it was so busy.  All in all, I clocked 45 hours of tracked time, whereas normally I only track 25-35 hours.

This week won't be quite as busy, but it'll still be fairly busy.  I have basically the same goals for the week this week as I did last week:

1. Write every day
2. Work on dolls
3. Take doll photos & post content
4. Work on organization

I did update one of those goals to posting content as well as taking the photos.  Sometimes getting the content posted is something I struggle with.  It's so weird, because it's easy to post content, right?  But sometimes I just don't want to do it.

Hopefully I don't struggle with productivity this week after how busy last week was.  That is a thing that happens to me sometimes.  Wish me luck!

Read an eBook Day!

Today is Read an eBook Day!  Well, technically for me, every day is Read an eBook Day, but today it's actually a national celebration.

I started reading ebooks close to 20 years ago at this point.  I started out reading them on my iPhone and eventually bought a Nook.  After several Nooks, I finally got a Kindle about 5 years ago, and I've been part of the Kindle family ever since.  I have a smaller, older Kindle that is always in my purse, but my favorite is the Kindle Scribe.

So I love that ebooks are celebrated with their very own holiday!  I still love physical books, and I even collect beautiful antique and vintage books, but ebooks have so many benefits that really speak to me as a reader.

• Easy to hold.  A Kindle is much lighter weight than a hardback, and it's easier to hold one-handed and turn the pages, which all makes it easy to read in bed.  I've read before bed nearly my entire life, and it's so much a part of my bedtime schedule that I find I go to sleep faster and easier when I read first.
• My entire library on one device.  Carrying my Kindle with me means that I have any book I want to read with me at all times.  I was that child who would bring two books to school when I knew I would finish one soon.  With a Kindle I don't have to worry about that anymore, as the next book is always there.
• Traveling!  I used to have to plan my suitcase around several books.  Now I just always have my Kindle in my purse, so it's a non-issue.
• Syncing between devices.  Sometimes I don't have my Kindle on me, just my phone.  No big deal because I have all my books on the Kindle app, too!
• Easy library loans.  Honestly, I don't buy all that many ebooks.  Most of what I read is checked out from the library.  Kindle makes it super easy to download library books onto your device, and when the loan is up, they just go away.  No commute back and forth to the library required!
• Easy on the eyes.  I prefer the black and white, "paperwhite" style devices because they simulate a page the best, and I love the fact that these devices are lit now so that you can read in low or no lighting environments.  I also really like being able to change the font and text size, margins, and other aspects of the text that customize the reading experience.  I'm getting older so this is becoming more important to me with time.
• Automatic Goodreads updating.  This is a Kindle feature, but I love that it updates Goodreads automatically for me.  I'm an avid reader and I'd never be able to track what I've read and haven't read without Goodreads.

So yeah, no matter how much I love the beauty and the tactile experience of holding a physical book, for everyday reading I much prefer ebooks!

What are you reading today to celebrate Read an eBook Day?  I'm working my way through Eyes of the Void, the sequel to a book my sci-fi/fantasy book club read a couple months ago.

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Weekly Goals, Week 38: A Solid Start

After the insanity and stress of the last two weeks, this week feels tame in comparison... even though I'm actually quite busy this week.

Last week started out rough, but it ended on a good note.  I wrote content, wrote copy for the museum, sent emails in my quest to have a local alternative to NaNoWriMo in place this November, and I managed to get some work done on my novel every day except yesterday.  I also worked on a client's doll and mounted a couple shelves for dolls last night, which means I worked at least a little on every goal I had for the rest of the week.

This week will be, as I mentioned, more intense.  I have more responsibilities away from home, so there are a bunch of things that will have to wait until I have more time, probably on the weekend.  I'm babysitting all evening tonight, so I had to make some hard choices about what I was going to get done today (spoiler alert: not much).  I'm even writing this post from baseball practice!  And between riding, puppy sitting, a write-in, and book club, the rest of the week will be involve a lot of similar decisions about what I can actually accomplish.

This weekend will hopefully provide a chance to catch up on what wasn't doable during the week.

With those challenges in mind, here are my goals for the week:

1. Write every day
2. Work on dolls
3. Take doll photos
4. Work on organization

Even though I've worked on my novel every day except yesterday, I haven't been my desired word count, so I'm falling behind.  I had set an unnecessarily aggressive end date, though, so I might extend that to give myself more time.  Either way I want to keep working on it every day to maintain the daily habit.

I also have a client doll to finish working on, plus I want to get to work on a few of my own.  It's time!  I have too many project dolls piled up.

The doll photos include some that I've been putting off, and I really want to make time for this week.  My Instagram account needs the love.

As for organization, we have a quilt hanger and a couple more shelves arriving this week so we can finish the area we were working on yesterday, and then I have some other shelves I want to put up soon.  The more shelves I get up, the more dolls I get off the floor and out of bins, so I have some incentive to keep making progress on that.

We'll see how the week progresses, but so far it's much better than last week, so I am optimistic!

NaNoWriMo Alternatives

I wrote recently about the outcry against NaNoWriMo's endorsement of AI and fallout within the community.  I'm honestly not sure NaNoWriMo will come back from this.  After the crisis last year, it seems like the staff has dwindled to potentially just one person, the Interim Executive Director.  That could have been survivable with time and a dedicated new staff, but the organization has felt badly mishandled this year, culminating in the endorsement of AI.

So if you are feeling like you can't in good conscience participate in NaNoWriMo again, and are mourning the loss of that experience and community, you are not alone.  Thankfully we, the community, can refuse to let NaNoWriMo take us down with it.  Here are a few resources you can use to replace what NaNoWriMo offered.

The Local NaNoWriMo Community

NaNoWriMo has been through some major changes right now.  MLs (Municipal Liaisons, the ones responsible for actually running each region) have been disbanded and are awaiting reinstatement as HQ (somday?) implements a more structured volunteer system, complete with background checks and ID verification.  While that was supposed to be implemented this year, there doesn't seem to be any movement on that front.

As a result, many MLs were faced with determining how best to contact their region and keep it together even before the AI endorsement got everyone all riled up.  We no longer have the ability to email our regions, so we're having to depend on our unofficial channels for reaching participants.  If you know your region has a Facebook page or group, a Discord server, or if they tend to use the region page's chat box (which is still active) on the NaNoWriMo website, check in!  If you had contact information for other wrimos, reach out!  Share information and get in touch with your MLs in any way possible.  Chances are your MLs are stressing about how to contact everyone, and one more person making contact would help to ease their worries.

It's important to remember that the community is still there, and there's no reason we have to give it up.  For now my region has opted to continue doing the noveling challenge in November, so that we can hold events for wrimos who are still participating in the official event, as well as rebels who are moving away from the organization.  For us, the important thing is to keep the community together, as we've always had a very active community in our region.

Online Word Count Trackers

I have not deleted my account on NaNoWriMo's website for several reasons, but I haven't used their word count tracker since news of the AI announcement broke.  I love having a word count tracker to show me my progress, so this was one of the first things I wanted to replace after making a plan for our community.

I've done a variety of other things in the past, back in the days when the NaNoWriMo word count trackers weren't available year round, such as reporting word count in blog posts and using this simple word count meter to give a visual display.  However I desperately wanted something better, something I didn't have to generate the code for and insert manually every time.

This time I found WriteTrack, an impressive system that enables you to create multiple projects, have friends on the site, and a variety of other NaNoWriMo-esque features.  I especially love the fact that it displays everything in a calendar, with updated word count goals for every day based on the words written so far.  In fact, it exports to a Google Calendar, which you can add to your account so that your word count goal shows at the top of every day's events.  And they update, too!

There's also a link to a progress bar that you can share with people.  I've been trying to get the embedding feature to work, but without much luck yet.  Click here to see my progress bar for Amnesia and the sequel (all rolled into one word count for now).

WriteTrack is free, but there's a donation button.  If I keep using it, I'll donate what I would have given to NaNoWriMo, as a thank-you for being there for us when NaNoWriMo failed us so spectacularly.  So far it's looking like I will be using it, as I really like the features.

Write-Ins

You know, there's nothing that says NaNoWriMo owns the concept of write-ins.  If you find, like I do, that regular write-ins help you to keep you motivated and productive, set some up of your own!  Even if it's just you and one other local writing friend, pick a time and place and start meeting regularly to get some words in.  If you do it in a place where other writers frequent, or if you put the word out among writing friends and the local NaNoWriMo community that you have a year-round write-in, most likely you'll get new people joining.  We've had some people only come once and decide it's not for them, but we've also gained others who come every time.

Online Community

If in-person write-ins aren't your thing, there are still plenty of ways to get words written with other writers.  Our region of NaNoWriMo has an established Discord server that sees activity year-round, and we've even added a bot to the server for running virtual writing sprints.  Other platforms can also be useful for supporting virtual writing communities in lieu of NaNoWriMo.  For instance, you could create a Facebook group and use group chats or video events to run virtual write-ins or writing sprints.

If nothing else, NaNoWriMo has shown us that writing does not have to be a solitary thing, and that relying on a social writing community can actually be beneficial.  But that doesn't mean the community has to be NaNoWriMo's.  Even if you're uneasy about participating in NaNoWriMo after the AI endorsement or the other scandals, don't give up on writing or the community!  Find or build your own community.

I'll post with more alternative resources if I find anything else worthwhile.  In the meantime, feel free to friend me on WriteTrack!  I'm KatharineSwan, no spaces.

Weekly Goals, Week 37: Recovery and Recovery and Recovery

This week has been difficult so far, which is why I'm writing down my goals for the week on a Wednesday instead of a Monday.

Last week was all about gearing up for the museum's Fall Show, which was over the weekend.  I had a lot to do to get ready for that, and it was complicated by the drama surrounding the other nonprofit I volunteer with, NaNoWriMo.  As I wrote about in my post last week, NaNoWriMo endorsed AI in a rather wishy-washy statement, infuriated creatives all over the world, and sent participants and regions into a tailspin.  As one of my region's leaders, there were things I had to do to address it, plus I was rather obsessed with checking for more news for a couple of days.

After a couple of days of that, I kicked myself back into gear, but I'd already lost a lot of time and it was difficult to recover from.  So it felt like much of my preparation for the Fall Show was done by the seat of my pants.

On paper, I achieved all the goals I planned for the week, except for writing every day.  (I didn't write Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, my big Fall Show days, as I was either busy or exhausted for most of that time.)  I worked on dolls (though didn't get one done that I'd planned to), I prepped my exhibits and got them set up (late), and I prepped for my workshop on Sunday (at the least minute, and we had a snafu during the workshop that could have been prevented if I'd prepared better).

Everything went well, but some things felt a little too rushed and last-minute that didn't have to be.  You can read my post on my doll blog about my American Girl doll restringing workshop here.

This week started out with a recovery day.  I was expecting not to want to do much on Monday, and I was right.  Then, on Tuesday, we ended up spending 2.5 hours at the vet with our younger cat, and I had a hard time focusing for the rest of the day.

Which brings us to today.  After the last 8 or 9 days, it's probably no surprise that I'm still having a hard time focusing, but it's getting better.  In the hopes of the rest of the week being more normal, I'll make some goals:

1. Write every day
2. Work on dolls
3. Work on organization

After the scramble to gather dolls for my exhibit, and especially after the restringing workshop on Sunday, I came home from the show feeling energized.  I wanted to keep working on dolls, and focus on getting my doll room in order so I can enjoy that space a little better.  The workshop reminded me that I love doll stuff and want to make more time for it.

I also have a fairly free weekend ahead of me, which I'm hoping to use to work on organization and time-consuming tasks like mounting some new shelves.  Getting the shelves up will help me get more things organized and put away.

As for writing, I had to take three days off over the weekend, but this week I've managed to write every day.  I need a couple of really big word count days in order to really make up lost ground, but for now, I'm happy to be writing every day again.  I want to make sure I keep it up.

We'll see how the rest of this week plays out, but I am hoping to get back on track.

NaNoWriMo's AI-Fueled Downfall

It's been a rough few days in NaNo-land.

For those who haven't seen the news yet, NaNoWriMo shot themselves in the foot a few days ago by endorsing (or at least refusing to condemn) using AI tools to write your NaNoWriMo novel (original statement).  A lot of us feel like this defeats the purpose of the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month, because if you can just have AI do it, what's the point of challenging yourself?

I think the key words here are challenging yourself.

NaNoWriMo's official statement is vague, and you might note that it doesn't say generative AI.  In fact, it doesn't really specify any type of AI tool, of which there are many valid ones, such as grammar checkers, speech-to-text, editing software, and name generators.  But I think it's important to note what the statement does not say: It never says you can't use generative AI, and since NaNoWriMo's entire challenge is to write your novel, I think that's important.

It's also noteworthy that while HQ has revised the statement once already, they have not revised it to specify the types of AI they mean, even though they pointed out in an email to author Cass Morris that they didn't say generative AI.  Interesting that while they told her that in an email, they didn't bother revising the original statement accordingly, isn't it?

The answer may be found in their sponsorship.  As many other sources have already noted, NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, an AI-based service for writers.  I think it's clear HQ didn't want to offend their sponsor with their answer.  Unfortunately, they've lost other sponsors since making their statement.  Ellipsus stepped down as a NaNoWriMo sponsor, and while Freewrite hasn't made a similar announcement, The Mary Sue noted that Freewrite was no longer a NaNoWriMo sponsor either.  And I noticed today that Ninja Writers has dropped off the list of NaNoWriMo's sponsors since last night, too.  (For reference, this was the list of sponsors just before the story broke.)

Incidentally, the statement from ProWritingAid in this article makes it sound like they're not too pleased with NaNoWriMo's stance on AI.

As you can imagine from a community of creatives, people are infuriated with NaNoWriMo's stance.  As the Literary Hub rightly noted, NaNoWriMo pissed off the whole internet.  Several authors have stepped down from NaNoWriMo's writers board in fury.  The disability community is furious at the implications that they couldn't write a novel without help.  And rumors, possibly driven by a comment from Maureen Johnson, are circulating that NaNoWriMo novels could be stolen for AI training.

To make things worse, this is all following a particularly rough couple of years for NaNoWriMo.  A couple of years ago, users realized that one of their sponsors was a predatory self-publishing service.  And last year, HQ came under fire for not handling well (or at all) accusations of predatory behavior towards underaged writers on the forums.  The latter scandal resulted in the board getting involved.

Whew, I thought.  At least that will be handled.

Unfortunately, "handling" it ended up with nearly the entire staff leaving or being let go (no idea which), the former board president stepping down to fill the position of Interim Executive Director, and a complete restructure of the volunteer system that puts 900 local volunteers in charge of their local regions.  I understand the need for better checks and balances in the volunteer system, but that felt mishandled too, to the point that we've all been cut loose and are still waiting to be reinstated, less than two months before the start of NaNoWriMo.

In other words, it's pretty safe to say that NaNoWriMo will be run without the help of their Municipal Liaisons this year.  And as far as I can tell, HQ is currently a one-woman show, or at least nearly so.  The staff page from the website is gone, and to my knowledge we have yet to see any evidence that anyone other than their Interim Executive Director is answering communications.

I've tried to remain optimistic throughout all of this, standing up for HQ even when most other MLs were raging against them.  But this last thing, endorsing AI to write your novel, is too much for me.  My heart is broken.  I've put 9 years of volunteer work and 18 years of writing into NaNoWriMo, and I've always believed in their goals of promoting literacy and encouraging amateur writers.  Endorsing AI feels like they've betrayed their non-profit's mission statement and the goals behind their 25-year history.

Their Young Writers Program mission statement reads (emphasis added):

National Novel Writing Month believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.

That stings, don't it? 

It's not true that our NaNo novels will be used to train AI (NaNoWriMo hasn't required a word count validation in years, and even when they did, it was easy to use a lorem ipsum generator to upload instead).  Even ProWritingAid states that their users' work is safe:

For grammar checking, once checking has been completed, all submitted texts and their improvements will be deleted. When using ProWritingAid, your texts will not be used to improve the quality of our services.

Even so, many wrimos (as we tend to call ourselves) no longer feel comfortable aligning ourselves with NaNoWriMo.   A lot of participants have already publicly stated that they've deleted their NaNoWriMo accounts.  And while I'm hoping the Interim Executive Director will recognize that she's destroyed the organization's credibility and step down as Interim Director before she does any more damage, my fear is that she will instead dig in and try to maintain her untenable position.  If she does so, I have no doubt that NaNoWriMo will go down with her.

While NaNoWriMo's future hangs in the balance, many of us are looking for alternatives.  I don't want to give up the writing community or the challenge, so I will be looking for ways to continue in an unofficial capacity.  More information on that to come!

Update 9/6/2024:

Today NaNoWriMo issued a letter to the community, and revised their statement on AI.

It doesn't change that this was handled badly and that I've lost faith in the organization.  The statement actually feels a little condescending, like it's saying, "We didn't know we had to tell you the full story behind our decision."  And ultimately, it is not a strong enough retraction to heal the harm done to our community.  I think it would have needed to take a position such as "using AI to generate your novel would not be in keeping with the original challenge," even if it only relegated generative AI users to "rebels" instead of followers of the traditional challenge.

Overall, this response from NaNoWriMo feels like too little, too late, and with lots of condescension thrown in.

Weekly Goals, Week 36: Deadlines and Crises

This post was supposed to go up Tuesday (since Monday was a holiday), but Tuesday had a hole blown right through it when NaNoWriMo pissed off the entire internet by endorsing the use of AI in their writing challenge.  I didn't get anything done yesterday, and today I only got anything done because I worked on my novel and got set up with a new word count tracking site I found.

Throughout everything, I've managed to maintain a daily writing habit.  I succeeded in writing every day last week, which was my number one goal.  I also kept up with posting on social media about the show for the first few days, but then fell behind.  I didn't get any work done on dolls or on prepping for the show, beyond the many emails and messages I've sent and the logistics I've figured out.

With so much to do still, I really need to buckle down tomorrow, since there are only a couple days left before the show.  It feels a bit silly to write about my goals so late in the week, but I'm hoping writing this post will help me focus on my priorities.

1. Keep writing every day
2. Work on dolls
3. Get together my exhibits for the show
4. Prep for my workshop on Sunday

It's a lot still to do and it'll be a struggle to get it all done, but I have no choice.  I lost a lot of time yesterday and today to fretting about the current NaNoWriMo controversy.

Once I get through this and have time to sit down and write a blog post about it, I have many thoughts to share about what's going on with NaNoWriMo and their statement on AI right now.

Weekly Goals, Week 35: Two Weeks Until the Fall Show

Last week was a crazy week.  We were house sitting for my husband's parents, which meant a lot of back and forth to take care of our cats every day.  Thankfully the diabetic cat went into remission just before we started house sitting, so this time we didn't have to time our visits to give her insulin injections.

In addition to the house sitting, I had a pretty productive week.  I had some big writing days, got a bunch done to prep for and promote the museum's Fall Show, and kept up on social media.

I also had an idea for a new, fun YA novel.  I didn't want to lose the idea, so I started working on it right away.  I wrote nearly 8,000 words for it on Thursday!  Right now I'm trying to maintain both the new novel and the sequel to Amnesia at the same time, which is tough as they are very different novels.  Some days I've only worked on one or the other, and other days I've managed to do a little on each.  I figure what matters most is writing every day, regardless of which one.

All in all, I feel pretty good about last week.  I had three goals, and I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do.  I got an effective system set up for Todoist and Google Calendar, I wrote every day except for Monday, and I got a bunch of stuff done for the Fall Show.

This week will be more of the same, except that the Fall Show is coming up quickly, so I'll be focusing heavily on getting ready for it.

1. Keep writing every day
2. Stay on top of social media and communications for the Fall Show in 2 weeks
3. Work on dolls and restringing kits for my workshop at the show

I will need to maintain a decent level of productivity this week.  The Fall Show is just under two weeks away, and I need to keep promoting it on social media, keep in touch with others who are working on it, and get everything ready for my workshop.  There are other things I'd like to start working on soon, but I'll put them off until after the show, to ensure I get the most time sensitive things done.

Weekly Goals, Week 34: Trying a New System

Last week wasn't as productive as I had hoped, but I'm hoping the next week will be better.  I have a new tool and a plan!

A month and a half ago, I read a book that had a significant impact on how I view time management.  Four Thousand Weeks is all about how our time is limited, and the time management tends to make us feel like we can do it all if we just organize our time well enough, rather than encouraging us to focus on doing the important stuff and not feeling bad if we don't get the other things done.

For a little while after reading that book, I struggled in the face of trying to restructure my priorities.

Now I think I may be figuring out something that might work better for me.

You may remember that I schedule my tasks in Google Calendar.  It works fairly well for me, as I have to think about how long tasks will take and block out the time for them.  It helps to keep me from overscheduling myself, although I still do, of course.

Unfortunately, when I don't get to tasks, that means rolling over the calendar events to the next day and, eventually, the next week.  Since I still tend to overschedule myself and procrastinate, I have amassed a number of events that get rolled over week after week.

Four Thousand Weeks addressed this, in a way.  That book talks about having a master list of to-do items, with the understanding that you'll never be able to get to all of them, and a short list of active to-do items that is no more than 10 items long.  Then, as you finish one item, you can put another on the list.  The result is a rotating list that isn't dependent on day and allows you to keep a master list of items that you can choose between when selecting your priorities for the day.

Google Calendar doesn't allow an efficient way to do this, since moving all my undone tasks to the next day or week is quite inefficient (not to mention demoralizing).  So I revived my old Todoist account, which allows me to keep a "master" list and easily move things to my active list by having different ranks of priority.  The projects and tags also offer myriad ways to organize and view my tasks, which I also like.  It'll give me a way to do things like note down photography or content ideas, for example, that I'm not going to get to any time soon but don't want to forget to do eventually.

So this week, my goals are as follows:

1. Get a good system going in Todoist
2. Get back to writing every day
3. Prep for the Fall Show in just under 3 weeks

As I get going in Todoist, one of the things I need to decide is whether to spring for their paid subscription, which might allow me to manage both my to-do list and my task scheduling in Google Calendar without having to duplicate work.

I do want to get back to writing every day, as well.  I've done better in the past week, as I worked on my novel about every other day, so I'm making progress there at least.

And the Fall Show for the museum is coming up quickly!  I have a workshop at the show, two speakers that I've organized, and a variety of things I still need to recruit doll people for (exhibits, volunteering, etc.), so I have a bunch to do in regards to that.

Lots to do!  It'll be a busy week for sure!

Weekly Goals, Week 33: Catching Up

The theme of this week will be catching up from being sick.  The very end of last week didn't really offer enough time to do all the catchup I needed to do.

It'll also be a chance to get back into a routine after several weeks of disruption.

I've let myself fall out of my daily writing habit, which is one of the first and most important routines I need to reinstate.  The pressure to get back to organizing has been building again, so I also want to get to work on that.

I also have a doll restringing workshop coming up at the museum's Fall Show in less than four weeks, so I need to finish getting everything together for that.

My goals for the week may be overly ambitious, but I have a lot I want to get done.  We'll see how I do:

1. Get back into a routine of writing every day
2. Work on dolls and doll stuff
3. Work on organizing and cleaning

It looks like a simple list, but actually there's quite a lot I need to do.  It'll be a full week.

Weekly Goals, Week 32: Recovery Time

Well, last week didn't go as planned.  It started out fine, and then took a dive as first my husband, and then I came down with covid.

I was hoping to recover faster, but I was on the couch full-time through Tuesday.  I got a lot of reading done, which was at least enjoyable and a benefit to being sick.  I'd hoped to get a little writing done too but I had too much of a brain fog for that.

Yesterday was my first day without cold medicine and I was feeling a lot better, but I also wasn't fully back to 100 percent yet, as I found when I crashed in the evening.  Today I have a more normal day planned, most catching up on some tidying and organization that didn't get done while I was sick.  Tomorrow will be my big cleaning day, as I want to do laundry and clean the house properly to get rid of all traces of being sick.

I'm not going to make much of my goals this week, since the week is almost over and I fully expect cleanup and recovery from being sick to take up the rest of it.  I do have one goal, though:

1. Get back to work on my novel

I didn't work on it when I was sick, but I do want to get back into the habit of writing daily again, as that has fell by the wayside lately, between getting sick and other various reasons.

I also have some projects I want to accomplish this weekend around the house, but those are more flexible, as I don't know yet how I'll be feeling physically.

Hopefully everything will be back to normal next week!

Weekly Goals, Week 31: Energized

Last week I made a post with my major long-term goals, and also my goals for week.  I don't know how well I did with the goal of minimizing distractions, but I am trying (when I remember).  The problem is that sometimes I can chase social media for a little while before I remember.

Regardless of how I did at minimizing distractions, I did stellar at one of my long-term goals, the goal to make progress with my writing and my goal of getting published.  I finished my novel Wednesday evening during a tremendous 8,000-word writing day, and then jumped straight into writing the sequel.  I wrote 4,000 words the following day.

Unfortunately, as busy as I was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I haven't written anything since, but I'm hoping to regain that energy and momentum this week.

I'm going to keep my minimizing distractions goal on the list for now, just to serve as a reminder to myself as I start out each week.

1. Work on minimizing distractions
2. Keep working on my novels
3. Get back to work on doll and organization stuff

I feel like all doll stuff and organizational plans have fallen by the wayside lately.  Especially organization!  I haven't worked on my doll room since before we house sat.  So that needs to go back on the list this week.

I love Mondays, for the simple fact that the whole week is stretched out ahead of me, full of promise.  It may not always go the way I intend, but I always love this moment of imagining what it could be!

Camp NaNoWriMo Goal Achieved!

It's been far too long since I provided a Camp NaNoWriMo update.  The last time I posted, I was still coming to terms with the fact that I was going to be extending this novel into July.

Tonight I finished my novel, Amnesia, at long last.  I've thought I was "close to finishing" for about a month and a half at this point.  I just kept realizing I needed more and more to finish it off properly.

But tonight I finally wrote all the way to the end!

I finished the novel just under my word count goal for July, which was 135,000 words.  After several rounds of lengthening my word count goal, it seems I was finally spot on with what I needed to finish the story.  (To be fair, some of the lengthening was because I knew I was cutting out a substantial chunk of backstory that I was rewriting or ditching.)

I'd already started working a little bit on the sequel, so I just moved directly into working on that, and therefore met my word count goal of 135,000 words the same night as I finished the novel!

At some point, I need to separate these two novels into their own files and figure out word counts for each.  I think the first novel, Amnesia, is around 107,000 words, give or take once I finish cutting some and adding some.  We'll see how long it is after revision.  The second novel I haven't give a title yet, and I have no idea yet how long it's going to be, although I'll aim for them to be about the same.

My plan at this point is to write the sequel now, then revise both novels together.  I want to be able to do a staggered release, with the first novel to be followed by the second a few months later.  When I release the second, I'll likely do a promo on the first one to help sell the second.  While I'm gearing up to publish Amnesia and sequel, I'll get back to work on Ruby Ransome.  (Although now I'm also thinking about reviving a book I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2013, a genderbent retelling of Phantom of the Opera.)

By the way, because I hadn't done an update in so long, I also hadn't posted about hitting my word count goal at the end of June.  It took a whopping day of writing the last day of June, but I did it!

Weekly Goals, Week 30: Getting Back on Track

My one goal last week was to work on minimizing distractions.  Honestly, I don't know how I did at that.  I feel like by the end of the week, I had completely forgotten about that goal.

One thing I tried to focus on last week though was the importance of things that inherently aren't productive.  My mom visited on Tuesday, and we went to lunch and spent the afternoon together.  On Wednesday I rode and then we went to a concert with Zac's mom and sister.  So both days were highly unproductive, but spending time with family is valuable in other ways.

Thursday I got a lot of writing done on my novel, making up for multiple days of not writing, but then the weekend was so busy I never got anything more done on it.  On Friday I volunteered at the museum, and on both Saturday and Sunday I had friends bring their kids to ride my horses.  It was an exhausting weekend, but rescheduling wasn't an option in either case, so I sucked it up and did it.

This week I want to remind myself of my major long term goals:

1. To keep working on my novels, publish, and develop my career as an author
2. To clean up my house and make the doll spaces more usable
3. To get back to working on dolls, both my own and my clients'

I have gotten off track from these long term goals quite a bit, so my goals for the week are pretty simple:

1. Work on minimizing distractions
2. Get back on track with my long term goals

Getting distracted is a pretty major problem for me and I'd like to find a way to combat it, whether it's by learning the will power to ignore things like Facebook, or by finding some tools to help me.  And I feel like I need to start working on getting back on track just in general.  I did make some headway last week with a few little tasks like responding to emails I'd been putting off for some time, but this week I need to get back to writing regularly and also start working on doll stuff again.

It should be a less hectic week, though, so hopefully things will settle down enough that I can get a handle on my goals again.

Amazon Prime Day Deals for Readers

It's Prime Day!  It's funny how Prime Day has become almost a holiday of sorts.  Other retailers are starting to have sales on Prime Day, too, I guess cashing in on the people waiting to spend money as soon as everything goes on sale.  I was checking Prime Day deals late last night, and have seen many already go back to regular price.

Please note that I do get a small commission for any purchases made via my links!

I was hoping for more writing tools to be on sale for Prime Day, but at the very least I'm happy to see the Kindles on sale.  The Kindle Scribe, which I have and love, is $259.99, 30% off.  Note that that's the version with the smallest amount of storage and the premium pen; the ones with upgraded storage are either not on sale, or already went back to normal price.  There is one 64GB Scribe bundle still on sale for Prime Day, though; the price of $324 is 38% off and includes the premium pen and a cover.  That's the Scribe I have and I highly recommend it!

There are also two smaller Kindles on sale:

• 2022 Kindle $84.99 (15% off)
• Kindle Paperwhite $134.99 (10% off)

There's also a Fire tablet on sale for $74.99, 46% off, but for me that's too much distraction when I want to read.

I was really glad to see the Kindles on sale.  My husband decided to upgrade his very old refurbished Kindle.  We both have the same kind, that we got during a sale a few years ago.  They've done us well, but compared to my Scribe they're slow and the screen lighting isn't as crisp.

I'll keep looking and see if I see any deals writers would benefit from, but so far the Kindle deals are the best deals I've seen for literary-minded folks.

Editing to add:  I found a TON of Prime Deals on Kindle, plus you get triple points today and tomorrow for all Kindle book purchases!  Click here for easy access to Prime Day Kindle book deals.

Weekly Goals, Weekly 29: Changes Are Hard

Last week was something of a mixed bag.  I had a super productive day on Monday, possibly because I was feeling energized by the book I was reading.  I got several small tasks done, some of which had been on my to-do list for quite some time, as well as some larger tasks.

Tuesday and Wednesday continued fairly productively.  I worked on stuff that mattered to me.  I got lots of writing done and kept up on some things that needed doing.

Thursday is where everything started to fall apart.  I picked up the dog we were dog sitting for the weekend, wrote a blog post, got a little writing done.

By Friday, I was fully in a slump.  I didn't get much of anything done.  Saturday we ran some errands and yesterday we visited a vintage store run by a doll friend on the way to help my mom with some things, so neither day was truly unproductive, but I haven't worked on writing since Thursday so I feel like it was unproductive.

On Friday, I was chalking it up somewhat to the difficulty of reframing my priorities.  In some ways, allowing myself to do what matters most to me allowed me to do nothing for a little bit.  You could probably argue that after house sitting and running the table at Fan Expo, my body was telling me that I needed to rest, and resting for the sake of resting is definitely something the author of Four Thousand Weeks talks about.

But I'm hoping to get back on track this week.

I've been thinking about my long term goals, and how my weekly goals don't necessarily always match up.  Part of that has been how busy we got, of course.  But part of it was also that I'd gotten out of the habit of working on certain projects.

I have three major, long term goals:

1. To keep working on my novels, publish, and develop my career as an author
2. To clean up my house and make the doll spaces more usable
3. To get back to working on dolls, both my own and my clients'

Truthfully, three major goals are a lot to juggle.  I need to be aware of the juggling that having multiple major goals will entail.

One thing I need to think about is an idea that Four Thousand Weeks proposes: that when you're working toward a major goal, it may be helpful to temporarily shelve everything else and focus just on that task or project.  I think I may need to do that with cleaning up the house and working on the doll room, but the question is, how much to shelve?  I don't necessarily want to put off writing every day, and of course there are a lot of necessary tasks that I can't put off.

What it comes down to is that I need to eliminate distractions such as social media, which tend to suck me in and keep me scrolling, wasting time that I could otherwise be using on either writing or working on the doll room.

So this week's goal is actually going to be something entirely different:

1. Work on minimizing distractions

Of course, I have secondary goals, things I want to work on in that time I'm taking back from my distractions: in this case, writing and working on the doll room.  But I want to keep minimizing distractions as my main goal, because I don't want to lose sight of that as I go throughout my week.

Four Thousand Weeks: A Review and a Reset

In my post about my goals for this week, I blogged about a book I was reading at the time, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

Well, I finally finished the book, and I have lots of thoughts.

The book has had an immediate impact on how I view my time and my to-do list.  On Monday when I planned out my week, I took a bunch of unimportant tasks off my calendar, where they'd been languishing for weeks and sometimes months, rolled over from week to week as they remained unfinished.  It felt good to recognize that I probably would never get to them, and that that was okay, because they weren't all that important to do.

Perversely, I got a ton done on Monday, probably at least partly because I was feeling energized by this new way of looking at things.  There were also a lot of things I had to get done, after 10 days of house sitting and 4 days of Fan Expo.  Basically, I'd had two weeks' worth of stuff to put away and two weeks' worth of basic tasks to catch up on.

Today, I'm finding that my desire for productivity is shot, perhaps because Four Thousand Weeks has given me permission to focus on what matters to me.  Turns out that eliminates quite a few things from my task list, and all I want to do now is read, write, and do doll stuff.

I suppose the fact that writing makes the short list should tell me something, though.

As I mentioned in Monday's post, the message of Four Thousand Weeks is that we have a limited amount of time, and there is no possible way we can ever hope to accomplish everything.  Rather than how the productivity self-help industry has focused on finding ways for us to get progressively more and more done, Four Thousand Weeks coaches you to forget about trying to do everything, and instead focus on doing what matters most to us.

In other words, quit trying to fit it all in and feeling guilty when we can't.  Instead, give ourselves permission to not accomplish everything.

One of the things the book talks about is the idea of limiting yourself to only three to-do items at a time.  I've always thought that was ridiculous because who has only three items on their list?!  Of course, as someone who is self-employed, I have work items on my list, whereas someone with a traditional job probably wouldn't.  But still!

The way the book discusses it, though, I started thinking: how about only having three active projects on my list at a time?  I've definitely noticed that I do better if I keep my weekly goals to just three, when I write that post every week.  So maybe limiting my big projects to three would be helpful.

But then in the appendix, the author suggests keeping two to-do lists: one with active items that you limit to only ten, and another with all the things you hope to do, with the understanding that you will not get through all of those.  And every time you accomplish one of the ten things, you can cross that off and move something else over.

He also suggested keeping a third list, a "Done" list, which I like for the purpose of reminding myself that I have been doing things.  Too often I look at the things I didn't accomplish and feel like a failure, no matter how much I actually did accomplish.

A final note: One of the things the book addresses quite a bit is distractions that keep us from doing things we need to do, or rather, that enable us to procrastinate on things we should be doing.  Social media is, of course, at the top of that list.  While there's no way I can eliminate social media from my life entirely, as it does serve some very real purposes for me, I definitely should look at how to limit its ability to distract me when I'm doing something important.

After pondering Four Thousand Weeks and the meaning of life all week, I feel like I'm even more lost as ever, although maybe that's just my new hierarchy of priorities taking shape.  Or, perhaps, it's me trying to figure out what I actually need to do (clearing the clutter in the kitchen, for instance), and how to balance those with the things that matter to me (just reading, writing, and dolls, really).

In any case, I'll accept my current feeling of aimlessness as growing pangs and part of the process of resetting my priorities, if it will eventually lead to more satisfaction with what I do and less guilt over what I don't.

Weekly Goals, Week 28: Changing My Outlook

I'm currently reading a book called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.  As the subtitle suggests, the book is about how limited our time is, and is a counter to the obsession with productivity.  It's making me rethink how I'm planning my goals every week.

I'll write a full review when I'm finished reading, but for now, suffice it to say that I'm reassessing how I manage my time.

Last week, of course, was absurdly busy, partly due to house sitting and partly because of Fan Expo Denver..  I posted my goals post for the week late, and also posted about our table for the Denver region of NaNoWriMo at Fan Expo.

While the con was busy, it was also a lot of fun.  We had two panels where we talked about NaNoWriMo and writing novels, and the rest of the time my husband and I traded off working the table with one of our other local organizers.  I'm super jazzed about working on my novel after all that, and looking forward to the weekly year-round write-in tomorrow, since we had a few people at the con who expressed interest in coming.

This week will be my first "regular" week in about three weeks, and maybe my first week without as many distractions in a long time: My husband started his new job today, and will be in the office four days a week for the first couple weeks (three days a week after that).  It'll be an adjustment and I do miss him being home, but I think I may find that not having him here will enable me to get more done.

I'm trying not to focus too much on rigid productivity, though, and instead consider the value of the things I'm trying to make time for.  One of the most important points of this book is that no matter how productive we are, we'll never have time for everything, so it's important to choose instead what we value most and make sure we do those things.

With that in mind, and noting that I'm not done with the book yet and haven't decide for sure how it will apply to my daily outlook, my goals for the week are as follows:

1. Work on my novel every day
2. Finish unpacking and cleaning up from the last two weeks
3. Reassess what's most important to me and rethink my goals

This morning, I went through a bunch of my tasks that I've been rolling over each week for weeks, sometimes for months.  The number of tasks was getting out of hand!  I deleted anything that wasn't super important to me or that had been there for far too long.  The important things that were left, I tried to make some time for, in both this week's schedule and next week's.  There are some tasks that I deleted that will probably get recreated at some point, but ideally when I have more time to do them, as they aren't things I'm likely to forget about.  Having so much tasks to roll over each week was stressing me out, as it made me focus on all the things I couldn't accomplish.

I'm trying to remember, as I go into this week, that my time is finite, and there's only so much I can do with it.  Nothing is served by me feeling guilty for not having accomplished things I think I should have; most of the time, I legitimately didn't have time for it, and I know that.  Things like deleting less important tasks and rolling over less every week will help me not feel so guilty about things beyond my control.

Celebrating NaNoWriMo at Fan Expo Denver

Hello from Fan Expo Denver!

As we do most years, the Denver region of NaNoWriMo has a community table at the expo, plus two panels about NaNoWriMo: one tomorrow about the Young Writers program, and an intro to NaNoWriMo on Sunday.

It's a great time to reach out to the community.  We get a lot of people walking by who are interested in writing or who have kids who are interested in writing, but have no idea what NaNoWriMo is.  We do also get people coming by who recognize the name or who have participated in NaNoWriMo before.  Occasionally we even see familiar faces, participants we know from our local events.

The table is a lot of sitting around though, because most people trolling the vendor hall are looking for things to buy.  Possibly my favorite (even though it's a little anxiety-inducing) is the panels, because we get to talk about our experiences doing NaNoWriMo.  We usually do a short intro and then just take questions from the audience.  It's fun and we joke around a lot, in between the more serious answers.

I hope if you're in Denver, you'll stop by our community table to say hi or come join us for our panels!

Weekly Goals, Week 27: Crazy Week #2

I said last week was going to be crazy, and I wasn't wrong.

As expected, we spent most of our time driving back and forth between the two houses and spending a few hours one place, and a few hours at the other.  I got largely nothing productive done at all, other than working on my novel.

I did make my word count goal for Camp Sandwich, which I'll write about more in a future post.

This week started out the same way, of course, which is the biggest reason why I'm finally writing this post on Thursday.  My husband's parents got home yesterday, so we spent last night in our own house, no more driving back and forth... just in time for Fan Expo to start today.

Fan Expo is the next four days, today through Sunday, and we're here until evening every day, so I don't expect much productivity this week either.  Hopefully I'll get some writing done at Fan Expo (where I'm blogging from now).

So my goal list for the remainder of this week is just:

1. Work on my novel every day.

Literally, that's the best I think I can manage to do right now.  But next week will be better!

Camp Sandwich Update and July Camp NaNoWriMo Plans

I posted yesterday about how my writing goal is going really well.  As of yesterday's screenshots, this is where I was at:

My daily word count is starting to look a little like a heartbeat.  I have good days and days where I don't write as much.  I'm happy with this as it's all steady progress, and the bigger word count days help to give me a little boost periodically.

The story is in a good place.  I know I'll be discarding about 30,000 words of what I've written; some of it I'm rewriting to better fit the direction the story has gone in, and some of it I'm just getting rid of.  If you read my post about catching up after a couple missed days of writing two weeks ago, you may notice I increased my official goal to 120,000 last week to reflect the new direction.  If I check the word count of just the sections I know I'll be keeping, it's more like 78,000, which feels like a good point for where I'm at in the events of the story.  I'm still aiming for a 90,000-word novel, all said and done.

But I don't think I'm going to be done in the next week, which is an issue, because it's going to ruin my plans to go back to work on Ruby in July.  And there's another reason why that may not happen: I've been thinking of writing a sequel to Amnesia, since I'm planning on ending the novel in a fairly... open-ended way.  It will be a sadistically perfect ending for the first novel, but at the same time, it will desperately need a sequel if there's going to be any closure!

I've decided I want to start working on the sequel right away, before revising the first novel.  Even if it means I end up rewriting and revising more later, I feel like right now, I'm motivated and invested in the characters, and since I want the story to roll right into the sequel, it will be a good idea to start writing it as soon as I'm done with the first book.

The other reason I want to start writing the sequel right away is because I do plan to publish these books, and I want to be able to release the sequel a few months after the first novel, and run a promo for the first novel in order to help sell the second.  There's a concept in indie author marketing that the best thing to sell your books is to keep writing more books, because that way when you capture a new reader, you're not just selling one book, you're potentially selling several or all of your books.

The trick will be getting back to work on Ruby right away once I'm done with these, so that I can get a bunch of those books written and start publishing that in quick succession soon, too.

So my July camp goal will officially be finishing Amnesia and starting on the sequel (title yet to be determined).  We'll see where I get by the end of the month, and if I decide to roll the word count goal for both novels into one.  If I'm still working on Amnesia, it might make sense to keep it all under the same project in the NaNoWriMo project and goal tracker, at least until the end of Camp.  Once Camp is over, I can create a new project and a new goal for the sequel, and split the Scrivener project into two at that time.

Weekly Goals, Week 26: Crazy Week #1

This week is going to be a cluster.  But before I get into that, I want to look at last week.

With the exception of Wednesday, I spent a fair bit of time writing last week.  The novel is coming along nicely, but it continues to surprise me, as new ideas keep coming.  This makes writing longer, but arguably makes the novel better.  I'm overall very pleased!

I also spent a fair bit of time over the weekend taking doll photos.  Taking Pride photos had been on my to-do list since the beginning of June, and ended up being a couple of massive photo shoots as our ideas for the photos kept growing.  The photos turned out great and I'm very pleased!

I didn't work on organizing in the doll room, though.  Just the photos.

I also got a major reprieve on my timeline for doing a sale.  My husband's unemployment finally came through (after he called and they discovered an issue that wasn't obvious in his online account).  And on Friday, he received a job offer, for a job that would start in two weeks.  It would be hybrid instead of fully remote, which we're less excited about.  He's been fully remote for over four years, and it'll be a tough transition to return to driving in to an office a few days a week.  Commuting is going to claim about two hours out of every day, I think, as the office is across town and he'll be fighting rush hour.  Maybe there will be a way he can stagger his drive so that the traffic isn't as bad.

That should mean that his next two weeks are free for whatever he wants to do, since he won't have to put so much energy into job searching anymore, but unfortunately it's not going to work out that way.  We're spending the next 10 days house sitting for his parents, and then we'll be spending the four days after that running a community table for NaNoWriMo at Fan Expo (formerly Denver Pop Culture Con, formerly Denver Comic Con).  House sitting is going to be especially busy and stressful because we'll have to drive back and forth between the two houses to take care of the cats, an especially demanding job now that one of them needs regular blood sugar tests and insulin shots.  But at the same time, we can't leave the dogs alone at his parents' house for too long, because there dog gets separation anxiety.

So it's going to be a busy, stressful week, and I don't expect to get much done.  I'm setting expectations low as a result.  I can write every day, no matter where I am, and I'm going to try to find time to work on the Ginger doll inventory when we're here, but with low expectations.

As it stands, these are my only goals:

1. Work on my novel every day until finished
2. Work on organizing the doll room

Hopefully we can figure out a routine and the week will go easier than I'm anticipating, but I'm mentally prepared for a rough week just in case.

Weekly Goals, Week 25: Setbacks and Recoveries

Last week was a week of wild swings.  On Tuesday my horse, Panama, didn't drink all day.  We discovered him dehydrated and uncomfortable at 10pm, and spent the next five hours coaxing mashes into him. I'm pretty sure that we narrowly avoided a recurrence of his near-death experience two years ago, but thankfully we did avoid it, even if it cost us an evening's plans and a good night's sleep.

Since I've been mostly working on my novel late in the day, I didn't work on my novel at all that night, breaking my daily writing streak.  And since the next day was mostly spent at a pair of morning doctor's appointments, mashing Panama again, napping to recover from the lack of sleep, visiting with Zac's family that was in town for the week, and mashing Panama again, I didn't end up working on my novel on Wednesday either.

Fortunately I got caught up on my Camp NaNo novel in a big way on Thursday, and have maintained the daily habit ever since.  But that was pretty much all I got done last week.  I never was able to make time to work on the doll room, let alone organize a sale.

It was a wild week, though, and pretty busy between our concerns about Panama's health and several days' worth of plans with Zac's extended family while they were in town.  All in all, I'm glad last week is over, even though this week likely isn't going to be much better.  Less family, but lots of catchup.

1. Work on my novel every day until finished
2. Work on organizing the doll room
3. Get organized and sell

You'll see that my goals are essentially the same as last week's and the week's before that, except for the wording of the sales goal.  I decided that putting all the pressure on a single sale may have been making me feel like it had to be this big, perfectly organized event.  Instead, I'm going to try to do some smaller listings throughout the week, and if I can get organized in time, a big sale on the weekend.  But at least if I can get some smaller listings up, I can start chipping away at the stuff I need to sell.

As for my novel, I made some decisions regarding the plot that mean I'm not as close to being done as I thought.  I will be rewriting much of the flashback material that I already wrote so that it fits into the story a little better, and adding a little to the story to flesh out the climax and ending.  I have a bad habit of taking shortcuts to the end, and I want this novel to be satisfying rather than just finished.  Hopefully I'll still finish by the end of June, though, so that I can get back to work on Ruby Ransome in July's Camp NaNoWriMo.

Hopefully this week is productive and goes well, as next week we'll be house sitting for Zac's parents and everything will be thrown for a loop yet again.

Camp Sandwich Catchup

I'm pleased to say that after my long post yesterday regarding my broken daily writing streak, I ended up getting a lot done on my novel.  I picked up where I'd left off, made significant headway, and stopped writing with a good sense of where I'll be going from here.

I think it made a big difference that I started writing earlier in the day.  I usually end of up waiting too long and then trying to squeeze a little writing time in at the very end of the day.  I used to choose this as my writing time as I would feel most energized at night, but lately I just want to read and wind down for the night.  So I need to start working on it earlier.  Even around or a little after dinner time would be fine.  I just am not doing much daily writing when I wait until I only have 20 or 30 minutes to write before I get ready for bed.

I also realized in all my writing yesterday that much of my earlier backstory, which I'd intended to use as flashback material, will need to be rewritten or thrown out.  That means I actually have a significant amount of writing still left to do, and I will not be done as early as I thought.  While I'd hoped to get back to work on Ruby Ransome during July Camp, I'm actually okay with continuing to work on Amnesia if I'm not done with it yet by then.  I want to get the first draft as right as possible, so I'm not having to fix a lot of holes with the second draft.

Currently I'm at 89,317 words, and my daily word count needed to reach my goal of 90,000 by the end of the month (the end of my goal) is an amusing 40 words.  I'll be writing more than that per day, obviously.  But I figure I'm actually at about 62,000 words if you don't count the backstory stuff I wrote earlier on.  That means I'm about two-thirds through the novel, which seems about right for where I'm at in the story.  (Maybe a little less than two-thirds, if it ends up longer than 90,000 words once finished, or if I tighten earlier in the story, where I feel like some of the stuff drags on a bit.)

I'm debating on whether to correct the inaccurate (if I discard a bunch) word count between my Camp Sandwich and July Camp projects, but then again, maybe that will make it more difficult to see my progress across multiple projects.  So maybe I'll just increase my goal in July to account for the 27,000 ish words I plan to discard or rewrite.

I guess that's all assuming I don't finish the novel in June, as I may very well still do.  If I think I'm going to finish in June, I could also increase the current goal to reflect that change.  If I increase it to 120,000, that makes my new daily goal 1,800 words, which is a lot to write every day... so yeah, the finishing of this novel may spill over into the July Camp.

Unless I keep having days like yesterday!