Adara VS September 2022
In today’s video I look back over my Summer Plotting challenge, including my homemade guide, in the run-up to NaNoWriMo!
Visual Description:
Opening scene is Adara sat holding her novel guidebook. It moves onto Adara writing on the sofa and in front of a window and back again. A green notebook is opened with the times she worked and gold stars next to them for September. It also shows her birthday presents, including the playful jellyfish mood lamp before going back to footage of her typing up her notes.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Canopy! In today's video: Adara vs September and this is going to be a quick one.
My month was interrupted a lot by various medical issues, for both me and various family members. I spent the majority of it trying to transfer my written plot for novel two onto a spreadsheet. So I took the Save the Cat beats which I had been working on, and I am transferring them - I'm almost finished now - into a spreadsheet, and I'm going through allocating them chapter by chapter. And I'm now trying to fill in what each of those chapters are going to look like.
It's now #Preptober: the month before NaNoWriMo. I've never done NaNoWriMo before. I've only ever stuck with Camp NaNoWriMo and that's because of my ill health. Normally I would limit what I can do to say my word limit or the amount that I was going to work, but I've decided not to do that for this month. I'm gonna give it a go this month, Preptober. I'm gonna see if I can get an outline for this sequel to get me back in the writing groove. It's been a long time. Three years I spent on novel one. It's about time for something new, and I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying the prep and I think I'm gonna have something good for NaNoWriMo.
So as you can see, although I have set myself the goal once again, it's more of a rewards tariff really... if I work for 20 minutes in one day then I get one gold star. And all of those gold stars I add up together at the end, and for every 10 gold stars I earn the right to trade it in to buy myself a book as a reward. That normally works quite well.
As you can see, I ended up having to do this in drips and drabs - my working this month - but it all added up, and then it finally exploded in the last few days of the month. I was commissioned for a spoken word piece which was nice. I don't only write novels, I also dabble and spoken word. That's where I originally came from as a writer, kind of my background. I didn't actually believe I could write something as long as a novel. They are very different art forms. Sometimes they overlap. I think spoken word activates a different area of your brain to the novel, but it was a nice detour. I spent a lot of time on it. A lot of time very quickly. But that was nice. But back to the novel writing!
In the end I earned the right to buy myself three new books this month. Adding that to the six I'm already owed myself from last month, that's a handy collection of nine. I haven't cashed those in yet. I'm not in a position to. I'm gonna wait, maybe hopefully by Christmas. If not, I'm gonna have to find a new reward system. Somehow. We'll see how that goes.
And also towards the end of the month, when things got quite hectic, was WOWCON. I've spoken about WOWCON in the past. It's an online virtual writers conference, and it's very very accessible. All the videos, the Zooms, everything, panels... is all done online, and everything is available for up to a month afterwards. I still need to catch up with a lot of those. While WOWCON was happening I was there for the opening launch on the Friday, but for the Saturday and the Sunday I spent that time sitting in A and E, which is the Accident and Emergency Ward at a hospital. Thankfully not my problems - a family members problems. They are recovered, or they're getting there at least. So that was a time! I still need to catch up with those, but I'm getting there, and from the keynote speeches that I saw it was really really inspiring. This year's message and theme was all about elevation, so how to elevate your writing, and particularly how to elevate beyond boundaries. My work, I pride myself on straddling many different genres and not to be afraid to do that.
The month was also interrupted by my 31st birthday. You can see the video of my Roundup of my writing career until the age of 30 up in this video open the cards, and link down in the description. This birthday was exceptionally cozy. I got some collections of Grimm's fairy tales, a CD of Owl City, some chocolates and a gorgeous autumn and fox themed mug, and then I got the most chill out present of all time, which is this gorgeous jellyfish mood lamp. I highly recommend it to anyone. I was going to make a video of just this mood lamp with a timer on it, but I'm not entirely too sure how to set it up properly, so you're just going to have to enjoy this little snippet for now. And it was also someone else's birthday in the house as well, so even more of trying to distract me from writing this month!
Looking ahead it is Preptober. I am now jumping straight back into novel two and I think it's going to be good. I think writing it is going to be a lot of fun. Maybe a lot of pressure. I've never attempted the full 1677 words a day, but I'm gonna try it. I'll give it my best shot. My novel is going to be 80 000, so even if I do complete NaNoWriMo I won't have a finished product. Maybe some of the chapters won't be as long as I think, and I have to fill stuff out. I don't know. Last time I was pretty on the mark, but then ended up chopping some stuff out at the beginning. I think I started novel one in the wrong place, but then I went back and revised it. But it's looking exciting.
I need to find out more about my second point of view character. I've never flipped between point of views before. That's going to be very interesting. I don't know how that's going to fall in terms of the 1677 words. They don't exactly line up that nicely with the chapters that I have planned. So I may end up thinking: 'oh well, I've finished this chapter. Well it's one person's POV. Am I gonna have to now jump to continue to get the word count with someone else's POV in a brand new chapter?' Is it going to force me to do that, or am I gonna just for once write out of order? I don't know. I'm gonna figure it out as I go along. If I don't exactly get it right that's no big of a deal. We are creatives. That is fine. But we'll see how it goes, and I'll give it my best shot.
So I think that's it for my September. Short and sweet. Still in planning mode. Took a bit of a detour to write some spoken word pieces. One in particular for a friend who was left in arts organization just briefly to go and do their own stuff. I hope they flourish. And on to Preptober proper! I am setting my goal for next month once - again more of a rewards tariff I would say - at 20 minutes per one gold star, but I look forward to changing that in November to per word count. That's going to be very very good to get back to that. It's originally where I started out, and if I look back through this notebook, through to the notebook that I had previously before this, you can see where I first started out at 400/500 words a day on draft one of novel one, and it's been fun to see the progress and the different stages of what I'm working on.
Have you achieved anything that you're proud of particularly in September, and do you have anything hanging over you into October like I do? I have the WOWCON to catch up with. That's it. I have to go now I have a video to edit, being this one, but more importantly I have to work on my novel and plan the chapter breakdowns, as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence Music
credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKAMusic
Credit 3: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA
3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
