NaNoWriMo 2011 is now officially over, and somehow I officially won! Not sure how that happened, but I’ve got my writing groove on and I’m ready to get right back to the diary challenge and make a really good go at it before the year ends. I’m further behind than I’d care to work out, so let’s not worry about that for now and just keep going forward :).

It won’t have escaped your notice that there’s some kind of celebration coming up. Can’t think what that’s all about, but apparently it’s kind of a big deal. So, the challenge for this month (or at least the first 24 days of it) is to create a Christmas/holiday story advent calendar. We want a very short story (or script, or advert, or poem, or song, or blog post, or anything at all you can think of) for each day of advent. Any format, any genre, any characters you like. I hope this is going to be fun and I don’t end up running out of ideas after the first couple of days!

Optional prompts for this week are:

Thursday 1st December – use the title ‘First Christmas*’ for a piece in any format

Friday 2nd December – write something inspired by your favourite Christmas carol

Saturday 3rd December – I’ve always wondered about the people who write the poems in Christmas cards. Write a story about one of them.

Sunday 4th December – script an advert for a Christmas product or service

*note – you may want to write about a different religious celebration, a different time in history, or a different world where they don’t have Christmas, so whenever I say ‘Christmas’ feel free to substitute with holiday name of choice :).

That’s all for now! Be back next week for more prompts and some musings about what next year will have in store…

It’s late on Monday before I’m posting again, but at least it’s the right Monday instead of the following Monday so we’ll call that a win and celebrate the small victories ;).

It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day! Which means there’s really only one theme we can have this week. Yup…Fairies! No, ok, it’s pirates really. Or pirate fairies if you like. Actually there’s a pirate elf on Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom, but that’s neither here nor there.

Ahem, anyhoo, on with the challenges….

Monday 19th September – Description challenge

Describe a pirate character of your choice. They could be a nice pirate (Westley!), a ruthless pirate, a lovable rogue, any kind of pirate you like.

Tuesday 20th September – Dialogue challenge

Write a conversation between your pirate and someone official who takes issue with their pirating ways.

Wednesday 21st September – Scene Challenge

Write a scene involves your pirate doing something traditionally piratey, like attacking a ship or hunting treasure or pillaging a harbour.

Thursday 22nd September – Dream Challenge

Use a dream as inspiration for a piece of writing. Bonus points if it’s about pirates.

Friday 23rd September – Stream of Consciousness

Do some free writing around the theme ‘the sea’.

Saturday 13th August – Flash Fiction

Write a short story entitled ‘Hostage’. It can be about anything.

Sunday 14th August – Pot Luck: Genre bender

Create a pirate in a different genre to the character you’ve been working with this week and write a little something that shows them off. So, if you’ve been writing about a classical pirate you might try a space pirate. Or if you’ve been doing a fairy pirate maybe try your hand at a grizzly ghost pirate. Whatever you like.

I think that will do. Revision time!

Nope, the title is not a mistake, my dates for the challenge this week span 2 weeks. This week and last week, in fact. I did have a challenge in mind for last week, but due to being in Skye and having no internet connection I wasn’t able to do a blog post. My first thought was to just go with it retrospectively, but that just didn’t seem right. So what’s a girl with a year long writing challenge to do? I can’t go back in time and present last week’s challenges on time! Or can I…

OK, I really can’t, but this week our characters will have that chance! It’s a double challenge to fill in the pages for this week and the pages that got missed last week. Go back to Monday 22nd August. Write a scene which starts with a character making a choice, or having something happen to them and show how it plays out. Then they’re going to get to go back and do things differently, so flip forward to Monday 29th August (today!) and let them make a different choice, or avoid the event, and show how things turn out this time. Repeat for the remaining 6 days.

For those all important bonus points:

In at least 1 scene the character must be aware of the ‘do over’. It’s up to you if you want them all to be conscious of the process or not.

In at least 1 scene making a change must make things worse.

1 scene must feature a non-human character getting the ‘do over’.

In 1 scene the fate of the whole world hangs on the outcome, so no pressure there :).

That’s all I can think of for now. Have fun! TTFN.

Once again I find myself home alone as hubby has jetted off to Riga for YAPC::EU. Last time he was away I went for rather melancholic challenges. This time they will not be intrinsically sad. Firstly, I would hate to be repetitive, and secondly, he’s only at a conference and compared to what some other people I know are going through it’s really no big deal. Sorry sweetie, but you know I still miss you, right? 😛

Anyway, this week we’ll be writing 7 scenes, or 7 flash fic pieces again. Each of them must feature a character who is alone for whatever reason. It can be any 7 people and any reasons at all. It could be a teen home alone, a mother indulging in a rare night away from the kids, the sole survivor of an apocalypse, you know, normal stuff like that. If you need a bit more inspiration than that you can try making them all different ages and see what emerges. I like to imagine that when I’m 80 I’ll still be playing Guitar Hero when no one is looking :).

And that’s it. It’s a short post but the week will be the same length it always is ;). TTFN!

‘Where have you been?’ I hear you cry. Well, I’ve been busy.  I’d love to say I was busy writing my Camp NaNoWriMo novel, but mostly I’ve been busy doing college work and the novel challenge attempt was a bust. Yes, I know I have another month, but I now have a lot of empty diary pages to fill  and dwindling motivation, so if we’re going to make it through the year while managing to keep on top of college work I have to accept that it’s not going to happen and go back to 1 page-a-day challenges. Last week I tried some random free writing and conversations just to get the ball rolling again, and this week I’ll go back to proper challenges. Will work out how to back fill July at some point (suggestions are welcome!).

As writing has been overshadowed by University for the last month lets make University the focus and get something back from it.

Monday 8th August – Description challenge

Set the scene by describing a University setting. This may be a conventional University, or it can be something completely different like a magical university, or a alien university, or whatever you like.

Tuesday 9th August – Dialogue challenge

Write a conversation between two or more students at this University.

Wednesday 10th August – Scene Challenge

Write a scene that takes place in a lecture/class where the tutor has a challenging student to contend with.

Thursday 11th August – Dream Challenge

Write something based on a dream you’ve had recently.

Friday 12th August – Stream of Consciousness

Do some free writing around the theme ‘knowledge’.

Saturday 13th August – Flash Fiction

Write a short story entitled ‘Graduation’. It can be about anything.

Sunday 14th August – Pot Luck: Script

Let’s have another script. As a university administrator myself I know the plight of the ‘backstage’ staff is often overlooked, so we shall write a short script starring the support staff of your University. Bonus points if they save the world, because adminions rock :).

That’s all for now! Hoping to get back to normal over the next few months. My exam is in October after which I can start my planning for NaNoWriMo and we should be all set for a more successful novel attempt in November. I already have an idea in mind inspired by the fountains in Rome, and three characters to take part in it. What’s it about? Fountains of course. No, seriously, it’s going to be cool. Trust me.

TTFN!

Eeek! It’s Tuesday! Why didn’t anyone tell me? Shame on you all. In case you haven’t guessed, we’re busy writing novels this week. All month in fact, but that’s no excuse not to do a blog post.

Camp NaNoWriMo is in major Beta this month, but it’s there and you can update your word count. There’s a place to chat to other campers on the NaNo Prime forums until the site is properly launched next month.

This month I was going to write the sequel to one of my previous NaNo novels, just because I’ve already got the whole thing planned, but it got to Friday morning and I started writing my witch story instead. I blame Terry Pratchett. Damn you Tiffany Aching and your impossibly high standard of witchy goodness that I can never hope to attain. My teenage witch sucks in comparison to you! But still I have to write it, because let’s face it, if I only write stuff that’s as good as Terry Pratchett I’d never write anything. But anyway, I have a crappy novel to write and I’m writing it, ok?

Also, I’m planning on cheating at camp, or being a camp rebel if you will. I have a baby, I have a college course, and I have a full time job. I can’t write a 50,000 word novel in a month as well. But I might be able to write 25k, and maybe another 25k next month, so I’m going to consider myself a winner if I manage a 50,000 word novel my the end of the second camp at the end of August, even if I can’t claim any shiny winner goodies.

That’s all for now, folks. See you next week!

Yikes, it’s Sunday again already! How the heck did that happen?
It’s a busy time for me, but right now I think all times are busy :). I’ve got a report due in on Tuesday that I need to finish tonight because I’ve got no other time to work on it, I’m a few days behind on last week’s challenge, I had a wedding to attend yesterday and we had guests staying for the weekend, I’ve started typing up the genre challenge to post it but it’s going slowly, I’ve got a very important meeting at work next week that involves a lot of prep, and I’m typing this on my iPad at my son’s crib side while he refuses to go to sleep because he knows I’ve still got to tidy up all that mess he made today when I finally get to go back downstairs before I can start of my course work. Poor hubby isn’t faring much better as he’s working through his first father’s day. I think we’ll have to give him a do over when things are a bit less mad.

But despite all that I’m sure I can still come up with a challenge for this week. Still no new news on Camp NaNoWriMo, though it is supposed to be staring next month, but I think it’s safe to say something will be happening so let’s think about what we might like to write.

This week the challenge is to go back through the diary and pick one of these rough novel outlines I’ve been making you do throughout the year. You should have at least a couple. We’ll take one of them and spend the week really fleshing it out into something that’s ready to write.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday
People like to do planning in different was so I’m not going to set the order here, but you’ll probably want to spend at least two days on characters, a day describing the major conflict/bad guys, and depending on genre a day on your setting. This should give you plenty to be getting on with up to the last three days.
Friday, Saturday & Sunday
Personally, I like to go with the old Three Act format of plot outlining. Act I sets things up and ends with a major event or turning point that drives the rest of the story. Act II is basicially everyone trying to deal with what happened at the end of Act I, and just when you think things are finally going to work out another big event launches you into Act III. Act III deals with the fallout from the latest disaster and eventually everything is sorted out and the main character has grown or changed somehow from his experiences. The end. Or they all die, it depends how you like your stories. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying ‘three days, three acts, you do the maths’ :).

And now the baby is asleep. Yay! On with other work now. Until next time!