IWSG Day & Once You Do NaNoWriMo

Happy IWSG Day! Can you believe there’s only two months left in 2022? And here we are together again. Every first Wednesday of the month, sharing our writerly weal and woe. Thanks for creating this writing community goes to ninja extraordinaire Alex Cavanaugh.

The co-hosts for the November 2nd posting of the IWSG are: Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

Interested in joining us? Click on the badge above. Our Twitter hashtag and handle are #IWSG and @TheIWSG.

So, what’s going on with me this month?

The same thing going on with me every November. Participating in NaNoWriMo!

Which also coincides with this month’s IWSG bloghop question.

November 2 question – November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

This will be my 10th year participating in NaNoWriMo. Had always heard about the challenge but didn’t dare to take part until 2013. Have only missed one year in 2014. Have yet to win NaNoWriMo, which used to get me down. 

But I’ve changed my mindset. The fact that the stories running around my head finally makes it onto the page. Keystroke by keystroke. Or pen and paper. That’s what makes me a winner. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, I’m at my most productive. That’s a lot for a turtle writer like me. 

As mentioned in a previous post I was unsure of what my NaNoWriMo novel should be. Then I had the thought of instead of choosing one, why not choose 2-4. And dedicate one or two weeks to each in November. 

Well, as November 1st drew closer and closer, another idea popped in my head. Which then led me to chuck that idea because why not choose them all. So for NaNoWriMo 2022 I’d decided to work on 12 drafted WIPs. And to choose which WIP I’d work on I created a story roulette wheel using the random wheel template on Wordwall.net.

Work in Progress Roulette

As you can see below, the 12 WIPs consist of 3 novels, 5 novellas and 4 short stories. The number of days have been broken down to 3 days for each novel. Then 2-2.5 days for each novella and short story. Whenever I spin the wheel, I’ll remove the chosen WIP from the wheel, until no WIP will be left behind.

And the first story chosen was…

A young adult romance short story. I first drafted this short in 2018 and all it needs is some editing and rewriting polish. And since it’s a short story, I have half a day left to work on it. So far, on day one of NaNoWriMo, I’ve rewritten and edited a lot of sentences. Cut out a lot of unnecessary paragraphs and wrote 760 new words.

For most of the WIPs, I already have a specific scene I want to work on. For example, I plan to tackle the battle scene towards the end of WIP fantasy “The Otherside of Paradise.”

Here’s the playlist I created for “If Only for One Night.” Enjoy!

What’s going on with you this month? Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? If not, why not? If you are, let’s be buddies! 😀

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