NaNoWriMo 2012: a month in review

Words written on my novel: 81,685

Words written on other things: 19,508

Okay, that's the boring numbery part. Now I'll go on to the actual reviewing of the month.

July: a month in review

This month I've been beaten up by goats, eaten brownies and tried to figure out what I'm going to do in the way of a 'serious' project that I can prepare for publication. I've also spent a fair bit of the month dealing with pain and dreaming about various pieces of dairy equipment. Yes, I mean that literally. It's called a 'quarter milker' if you feel like searching the internet to see the kinds of things that occupy my sleeping hours.

Siana Blackwood's insane plan

A random picture of Gypsy the kitten.

I'm trying to get my writing life in some kind of order, so I spent part of yesterday typing random stuff until I started to draw conclusions about myself. It works surprisingly well - everyone should try it once in a while. I call it 'wandering down the psycho path' after a joke I heard once:

Q: How do crazy people get from place to place?

First blog post of 2012!!!

Blogging is apparently not something that comes easily to me. All through last year I used the excuse that I was writing a million words for WriYe and blog posts didn't count, so I'd do one after I'd met my word count goal.

Yeah, that went well.

This year, I told myself, is going to be different. Two posts a week every month. So how did it get to the ninth without a single post?

Therefore, hello and welcome to the first post of 2012. No, make that the first of many posts of 2012.

Things I'm going to blog about in 2012:

• 2011. Last year I wrote 12 first drafts and a million words and told nobody about it. That achievement deserves at least a couple of blog entries
• My 2012 projects. This year I'm aiming for the only thing that could possibly be more awesome than a million words. What's that, you ask? Publication.
• Writing software. I've recently started trialling Liquid Story Binder, the first piece of writing software I've actually met that I didn't hate on sight. Whether this continues or not is still open to debate. I also like full screen text editors and I'm looking for an operating system that lets me have light text on a dark background system-wide. I'll give Windows 7 a chance, but I know Linux can do what I want, so we'll see...
• Writing. It wouldn't be much of a writing blog if I didn't talk about writing, would it? One of the big things here will be my 'seat of the pants' attitude and how it fares as I move into rewriting and editing. I've got some first drafts to do this year as well, though, so maybe we'll see the development of a detailed creative paradigm here.
• Books. Reviews, electronic v. paper, book-binding projects, book repair... I really don't know what, but I love books in all their forms and I really think everyone else should share my passion.
• Other stuff. Music, writing groups, writing months, random things about writing, cute pictures of my cats and goats (who are of course the most awesome cats and goats in the universe), and I guess the occasional link to something I think is awesome and needs to be shared.

So anyway, look! First blog post of 2012!

Random Blather

Okay, so I should update my blog more often. I should make that new theme I've been thinking about making. I should do a whole bunch of different things. However, I have done a whole bunch of stuff this year. so I think I should be excused. Still, I will try to mend my ways.

So far this year:

JanNoWriMo: No Light in the Dark (95k)

FebNoWriMo/MarNoWriMo: Dispersion (122k)

April Fools/MayNoWriMo: Night Without Stars (76k)

April Fools/MayNoWriMo: Hope (86k)

WriDaNoJu: Dark Star (100k)

JulNoWriMo: Broken Mirror (41k and counting...)

FebNoWriMo was a loss by 2k and MayNoWriMo was only barely a win, but other than that the year has been going pretty well and I've written 664k of my planned 1 million words. I feel good about that.

Anyway, blog updates will soon be forthcoming, more writing will be done and... and there probably isn't really an 'and'. Oh, Leroy said he's going to start posting as well. I'll let him introduce himself, though...

Siana sucks at posting...

I officially promise that I'm going to do better...

Over the next few weeks (possibly a month or so) I'm going to completely redesign this blog and actually start using it. New topics that you can expect to read about include:

• My works in progress


• My current activities. Mostly, this means comments on whatever WriMo I'm participating in at the time.


• Writing techniques. This is YeoWDam't and if I can't learn a lot about writing throughout the year there really isn't a lot of point doing it.


• Writing resources. This includes lists of websites that give better advice than me, software reviews and all stuff like that.


• Humour. Being me, this is going to involve stuff like interviews with characters, joke writing advice and possibly the odd non-serious short story...

Watch this space for more information about the redesign and new content.

NaNoFiMo day 30: completed!

Well, yesterday I completed my NaNoFiMo novel, which was the still unnamed vampire story. It came in at just over 31ooo for the month, making the overall story just a tiny bit longer than The Frozen Tear.

Here are the actual figures:

Started with: 43905

Added: 31653

Final total:  75558

Now on to the next challenge! You can read all about it in my next post.

NaNoFiMo day 6: progress report

Writing: the unnamed vampire story I was working on before NaNoWriMo and The Frozen Tear

Words (Written Today): 2133

Words (Total as of Today): 2759

First Sentence (Written Today):  "Hey Jaden, I was wondering about something," Liselle said.