No, it’s not that time of the year again – NaNoWriMo is still a couple of months away. You have not lost time, don’t worry.
But nevertheless, as countless generations before us have already realized: practice makes perfect. And that goes for writing as well. In addition I have multiple story ideas running wild in my head and I need to get them straightened out.
Right now, I am experimenting with some rather unusual (for me) writing techniques. One of the stories that wants to be brought to (virtual) paper is somewhat …

One month of absolute craziness is over and as you can see by the definitve drop in my posting frequency, I really needed a writing break. After all, I wrote more than 102K of words, thereby completing my first ever NaNoWriMo (actually completing it twice, since the goal were 50K). You can read all about this on my blog in the category NaNoWriMo, but there are some things I would like to reflect upon.
*** Just an additional word on the picture, because I forgot to mention it when first posting: …

I made it! As of tonight, 12:15am, my very first novel is complete. I will call myself a writer from now on :D

Writing today and last night has been quite difficult. I knew what needed to happen and how, but yesterday I was incredibly tired and today my neck decided to remind me every single second that is is very dissatisfied with the choice of desk and chair I am using. Very uncooperative, really. So I had to retire to my bean bag and write from there, which slowed me …

While yesterday was a flying day, today writing progressed at a walking pace. I didn’t have the story in my head as well; I knew roughly were I needed my characters to go, but I was not clear on how to get them there. So I kept fighting for words with long break in between and eventually managed a little over 4K (at least that’s the generous NaNo count, Scrivener has me at a little less that 4K).
What surprised me was how cruel one of the new characters turned out …

Today I uploaded my novel (as far as I got, at least, it’s not done yet) and the mighty NaNoWriMo machine declared me one of this year’s official winners! Guys, this feels absolutely awesome! 
I reached my overall goal (successfully compete in the NaNo), my word goal for today (top the 90K) and the goal of writing more words than Jarsto. 
Which makes me feel so good that I made a little donation to the NaNoWriMo program because I want it to continue next year. Writing is so much fun, but it needs some driving force …

No blogging and no writing for a weekend, but I really couldn’t get my mind focused. I was approaching the end of the story too fast – it was downright boring. Just dialogue, no action. Everything I had been writing so far had been leading up this point and now things just didn’t add up. So I spent Saturday trying to set up a photoblog (on which I succeeded today, at least the framework is up and running) and Sunday was a clean-the-apartment-really-really-thoroughly day. Translating to six hours of cleaning, …

Getting back on track with the writing has been surprisingly challenging after the week started out so well. Or better – because of it. Jarsto nicely compared the Muse to a muscle – you have to exercise it regularly so you can use it more often and more intensely. To stay with this metaphor, I think I strained that muscle when I churned out almost 30,000 words in three days.
Apart from that another description comes to mind, but this time one of my persona: Batch called me the “Final-Episode-Avoider“. I …

Weird title of this entry, that’s what you think, right? Well, as I am procrastinating right now because my story isn’t really moving forward I reflected a little on why I am writing and on pieces I had done years and years ago.
I always liked stories, I learned to read quite early because I just couldn’t stand it when my parents put the book away at night from which they had been reading to me. I wanted to read myself. The stories were a wonderful way to dive into a …