Author Ryan Schneider's Blog

DAY 6 Today was a good day. I reached 12,536 words before finally shifting gears to my other WIP. I found myself outlining the scene again, the same as I did yesterday. It’s not exactly a scene so much as a period of time in the story. In this case, it’s the day after yesterday. It began in the morning with the characters eating breakfast and went through the late evening. I got to dinner when I stopped. Also, I know exactly what the first word will be when I begin writing tomorrow because I've already outlined the scene(s). I think  it was Hemingway who said to stop writing for the day when you know EXACTLY what the next word is going to be; this will make it easier to resume writing tomorrow. The most important part is that I’m enjoying myself. It took longer than I expected, same as it did yesterday, because I take brief breaks to go to Chrome and do a bit of research. These breaks are anywhere from one minute to about five minutes, depending on ho...

DAY 5 - Thursday, November 5, 2105 [NOTE: If you're confused because we went from the previous post (Day 2) to today (Day 5), don't be; I started NaNoWriMo2015 three days late; I decided to actually go for it and signed up on November 3rd. So my  Day 1 was actually Day 3. Get it? But we're caught up now and subsequent posts will match the correct corresponding day of the competition. Thank you. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.] Wound up going long yesterday and surpassed the required 6667 word count. I reached 7597 words. There’s definitely pressure to get this book written, achieve my word count each day, and get back to my other WIP, which is a trilogy (and probably/hopefully a series). All 4 books MUST be done and out by Christmas in time for all the new e-readers and smart phones on which people will be excited to read new novels. Also, for those interested in the craft side of things, I found myself outlining yesterday’s Na...

DAY 2 (Day 4) November 4, 2015 Got about 4000 words last night. Updated the word count. It said I would be done on December something, which is not November, so I upped it to 5050 words in order to see the completion date November 30. So today is day 4, which means I need to get to 6667. It’s currently 11:07 a.m. Wednesday. Time to begin.

DAY 1 – Tuesday 11/3 [Note: Today is indeed November 5, not November 3 as stated above. This journal is going up a few days late because I just decided it would be a fun experiment to document my first NaNoWriMo experience. Subsequent entries will coincide with the actual day. Thank you. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.] After agonizing (well, okay, more like thinking about) whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year, given that I’ve never done it despite having wondered about it every year at this time for the past four or five years, I decided to go for it. I figured that I’m going to be writing my tail off anyway to get at least three new books to market by Christmas, so why not sign up for NaNoWriMo? At this moment, I’m in the process of signing up, reading the Terms&Conditions, the FAQ, etc. Mostly, I’m trying to decide if I should use NaNoWriMo to continue with my three-book series I’ve been working on the past seven months, or d...