Nanowrimo and Much Much More!

Wow, this years Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up this November. For those of you who don't know what that is, its a solid thirty days, that's right three-zero, that you have to start and finish a book that is at least 50 THOUSAND words long.

You cannot start the writing of this novel until November 1st and the last day you have to finish this challenge is November 30th.

I've attempted this challenge several times, we won't go into how many, and only succeeded once. I've come close, within a few thousand words a couple times as well. I felt wonderful when I crossed that 50K word count mark. Like I've finally accomplished a major goal in my life. I'm going to attempt it again this year and still haven't quiet decided what I'm going to write about. This 50K mark can be hard to meet with Thanksgiving and other family obligations floating around this month (at least for those who are in US). It's easy to fall be hind and somewhat daunting to try and catch up.

Plotting:
I don't do so well pantsing a story line this long that has to be written in such a short length of time. Pantsing for those of you who don't know, is where you attempt to write a story where you have no idea where you are going, what is going to happen or even how it might end. It can be a fun to write a free flowing story where you discover new things about yourself and your characters or it can be a story from hell where you end up burning your computer and smashing your USB into pieces as you just can't take the constant road blocks and unhelpful characters anymore.

Personally I prefer plotting to pantsing in this short length of time. I have this desire to know exactly where my story is going. Some might say this stems from my at times over controlling nature, but I don't believe them. I plot mainly so I don't end up pulling all the hair out of my head while I try to figure out just what the hell is happening in my story and to my characters. The problem I have with plotting is that I tend to plot out the chapters and by the time I've finished writing the plot points I end up with only half a length of story. This is when I tend to pants it and end up not reaching the 50K mark.

This might be because I don't add enough details into my plot points so I just kind of skip along from one action to another without adding enough random events to fill in the spaces. I'll have to try harder to plan those smaller plot movers/markers this year. And people say I don't let me characters have enough free space.

This year I'll also be attending my first writer's conference and I can't be more excited! I'll be sitting in on several conferences for tips on writing police/investigation novels with believable characters and plot lines (I have several stories already started that I want to be more realistic with). I'll get tips on publishing and just a generally bumping elbows with those other writers in my community. I cannot wait!

I'm hoping that I'll also be able to met my first submission goal this year (this has been one of my new years goals for the last two years) and actual submit a novel to publishing houses to see what comes back. I can't wait! Even if they're rejection letters, I'm still supper physicked that I even got this far :)

I'll be posting book reviews soon. So many to catch up :)

Also, if there are any you'd like me to review, leave a comment and I'll get on it!