First rambling after NaNo

After 30 days of joy and pain, I finished with 50,550 words.  I feel good but spent.  But I must at least have some fun.  This quote by H.G. Wells was the first thing that popped up and I thought it was cool.

“ There comes a moment in the day when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored; that's the time for sex. ”

Sounds good in theory but since I'm a single man and vast majority of the women I know are already spoken for, I don't think the last part will work out anytime soon. 

Oh well.

NaNoWriMo - Day 2

Day 1 of NaNoWriMo is over with.  I got close to 1,600 words typed and a good start into my story.  I feel good that I was able to sit down and do that much.  But I still need to work on not letting life get in the way at times.  It ranged from the trivial (texts from a friend), to personal interests (my Virginia Tech Hokies losing again last night), and professional items (layoffs and restructuring at my job, not affected but feel bad for those who were).  So I finally got time to do what I needed to do.

But I’ve got 29 more days to go.  And I’m pretty sure more distractions are coming (I already know I’ll need to say no to a few things this weekend).  But I will keep pressing because I told myself I wanted to do this and I feel good about the story that I want to tell.  So we shall press on.

Hopefully you guys won’t run into too many distractions and can put them aside when you need to.

 

NaNoWriMo - Day 1

Day One of NaNoWriMo has arrived and I’m finally excited.  I can actually start writing.  I’ve done some planning and worked on the main characters.  But the best part of the eve of this was putting together a “soundtrack” to the story.  I used to scoff at the idea, especially a few years ago when I saw an artist boldly state that his latest album was a “soundtrack” to his autobiography that had just come out.  Now I look at that idea a little differently now.  I know this is not the time to think book or album sales, but I’m finding music to your story is important.

I tend to listen to the same types of music that my characters are listening to.  It helps me get into what they are thinking and feeling as they go along in the story.  So I’ve been digging back into my cassette tapes (yeah, still got ‘em even though I can’t play ‘em) and looking back at the music I listened to in high school and college to help me along. 

What do you guys do to get yourself ready to write?  What is your “soundtrack”?  Suggestions and ideas are welcome.