NaNoWriMo: Week 4 Update
Hey guys! This month I’m going to be doing some general updates on my NaNoWriMo progress. You’ll see how I’m progressing, get some insider looks at what I’ve written each week, and see some of the stuff that goes into creating a book!
NaNoWriMo: Week 3
Projects: Star Supernova (Blue Star Series, Star Trilogy #2), Prequel to The Curse of Broken Shadows
Word Count: 50,006 / 50,000 (updated count on the NaNo website)
Details: WOOHOO! I have won NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row (and the fourth year I’ve participated). This one posed a challenge that was significantly different than some of my other times participating (hello, pregnancy). NaNo is always meant to be fun, and an encouragement to get your book started, but with this one I went the rebel route. That is, instead of starting on a brand new project, I focused on getting 50K words toward two of the projects I’ve desperately been working on in the last month or so. While I didn’t finish those completely, I made really good strides to get those works toward the finish line. I predict that Star Supernova will get finished early next year while the prequel will likely wrap up shortly before the end of the year. I imagine that one will take a few months before it starts to circulate outside my Patreon (that is, on Amazon, but you can read unedited chapters over on my Patreon as I finish them).
Music: New Music Friday's have been rather disappointing lately, but I’m not discouraged. As some of you know (if you follow my Blue Star series), I don’t listen to the same bands/groups/singers that are more well known in the world. But I love my music with a passion and I will fight to the death for some of these bands’s music. A few you might not know that are regular staples in my writing playlist: Mating Ritual, Andrew Belle, Smallpools, Noah Kahan, TWIN XL, and The Man Who.
When I’m not writing: OMG guys, after winning NaNo, I immediately rewarded myself with a book that’s been on my TBR and IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. You can find my full, 5-star review for Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson on Goodreads, but let me tease you with this: tall heroine, witty sorcerer, peculiar and sassy demons, and grimoires with their own personalities.
Distractions: Not gonna lie, fatigue has been a huge factor impacting my writing speed/ability. Now, I am not one for writing sprints (timed sessions of writing where you try to get as many words as you can). I really struggle with ‘writing quickly’ - writing at a slower pace is totally my style - but I’ve been joining a few writing sprints with friends and it has really kept my morale up. Campfire runs a few of these, and if you recall, I’ve been a guest on their YouTube show before! You can find those videos here and here.
Excerpt (from prequel):
Brela was a flurry of punches, stabs, and kicks. She stole and broke weapons, used the sprites’s attacks against them, and left a trail of crystal bodies moaning or unconscious in her wake. She had no idea why the hells she was fighting, what the whole purpose of their insanity was inside this pit, but this had always been her element.
Chaos and violence. Not just her training under Dernian’s watchful eye, but her training as a child of Valisea who possessed a cursed magic. As a daughter who had been given a dagger at five years old. As a little girl who had been trained in combat before she could even spell half of the words she had been learning of the shadow language.
As the heir to the Veil Scholar who had been born with a paintbrush in one hand and a weapon in the other.
Always on the run. Always hiding who she was. Always the hunted.
Not in Rooke. Not here.
She was the young woman who gave nightmares to the entire earth kingdom because of what she was capable of. She made grown men tremble and soil themselves before death. She was the Night Terror assassin, and they would know her name in the desert.
Excerpt (from Star Supernova, Declan’s POV):
“So what did you do? Knowing you, I assume there was shouting involved,” I pressed.
Kiya clenched her jaw. “I set myself on fire.”
“You threatened him with your power?”
“Not me,” she whispered. Silence fell as she stared at the blankets around her legs… the legs that weren’t moving. She opened her mouth, shut it, and then finally spoke. “I threatened him with words, yes. But the fire? Declan, that wasn’t me.”
I shook my head. “Kiya…”
“I lost control of something, but it wasn’t my powers,” she replied. “I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it. I promise that there’s an energy inside me that I am in complete control over, but there’s also something that isn’t right.”
Meme of the week:
