So, I’m currently sitting in my room with a stuffy nose, sore throat, numerous aches & pains, and numb taste-buds which means 2 things: 1) I can’t taste anything = the worst form of suffering because I love food and 2) I’m sick the day of Halloween. Grrrrreat. I also have school tomorrow. Super Grrrrreat. Anyways, before I go and down some more Alka-Seltzer (ew), I thought I’d update you all on what I’ve been up to for the last month or so.

1. Began an excerpt for my Fantasy Fiction (FF) series, for the first book. #yasssss
2. Was inspired by a new book I got from B&N as well as an impromptu trip to Longwood Gardens (that place is magical) and wrote an excerpt for an entirely new story idea; worked on developing the plot-line and characters. #wheredidthatevencomefrom
3. Did some random arting/concept art for my FF series.
4. Wrote a little more dialogue in my math notebook. It’s starting to spill into my homework…oh boy. 😛
5. Had a writing/brainstorming session with KD17 in which I started a FF scene, this time for the second book. #productive
6. Wrote for my main CCR story…I’m still stuck on this one scene I haven’t finished and it’s 9 pages long and I just can’t. Ughhhhhh.
7. Kept working on that same scene for the CCR story.
8. And kept working.
9. Did I mention that scene yet?
10. Wrote more “math-notebook” dialogue and a tiny bit of a scene for my FF series.
11. Began going through story files. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
12. Reconstructed a storyboard for my CCR story. (If you don’t know what a storyboard is, you’ll find out on here eventually. 😛 )
13. Worked on files…A LOT.
14. Finished a journal. If you know me, you know this is a big deal. I still can’t believe it. *dies*
15. Started going through said journal. #helpme
16. Got a new journal!!!
17. Worked on developing some background stuff for my FF series. I’m trying to develop each of the different cultures of the kingdoms within my story; there are 11 of them…
18. Began another excerpt inspired by a trip to the doctor’s office. #painisgoodforinspiration
19. Oh! And for school, I’ve been reviewing stories/essays/articles and having to write “reviews” on them = my life. I’ve also written a memoir, summary, and definition essay. Not the most exciting stuff, but I’m learning a bunch.

Yea, so that was my month. Now you might be wondering (or not; whateves) what I’ll be doing this month. Well, let me tell you. This November, some of my writing friends and I will be participating in NaNoWriMo! *cue trumpet sound* National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a month-long challenge for young writers and writers in general. The challenge is to write 50,000 words (or less, depending on if you do the young writer’s program) by the end of the month; that divides out to about 1,667 words per day. I know it sounds crazy, and it definitely wasn’t easy last year when I did it, but I went from having 12,000 words for my CCR story to having around 53,000. And if you did that math, yes, I did type up some material I already had and counted it for NaNoWriMo. It was my first time!

All in all, it was hard work, but I was able to flesh out the plot for that story and now I’m going to use this year to work on developing/expanding some of those scenes that I wrote way back in 2015; you should join me! You don’t have to have a story already, you can come up with a whole new one or work on many different stories at once, as long as you end up with 50,00 words total. Sign up today on their website—it’s free! Click here to go to the NaNoWriMo website where you can track your progress and connect with writing buddies who can support you as you try to get through the next 30 days. You might even find KD17 and myself on there. 😉 Just one piece of advice: DON’T TYPE INTO THE TEXT BOXES ON THE WEBSITE!!! This is for a brief synopsis and/or excerpt of your story, not for the whole thing. To avoid losing all your work, type your story into a Word document or Google Drive and save often, like, every five minutes often. I’m serious.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll be updating my own word count progress throughout Novemember through one of our 3 media channels (either on here, FB, or Insta) and I’d love to hear about your writing progress whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not. As always, keep on writing, friends.

Love,

YW