Heather Foeh

YES!!! I did it! I am a NaNoWriMo winner. 50,129 words in 29 days. Man is that a wonderful feeling.

No, my manuscript isn’t complete, but it’s darn close. Probably another 7000 words to go. Then revisions, revisions, revisions.

It’s been quite an adventure, full of twists and turns. Some interesting plot changes along the way that I hadn’t foreseen, but I like them. Two secondary characters popped up and I really love them both — Peter and Martha. They’re a great foil for my hero and heroine, Jack and Laurel. The bad guy turned out much creepier than I had envisioned - he kind of scares me actually.

I think I’m going to go drink a glass of wine and celebrate! Many thanks to all of you who cheered me on along the way.

The current magic number is 42,815. That’s my word count for NaNo! I’m closing in on 50,000 and man will I be thrilled when I cross that finish line.  I’m at the stage of writing where the ideas are flowing fast and furious twenty-four hours a day. My friend Kate Williams described it as “a hamster on crack running around in my head.” Well said. That’s exactly the way I feel…a bit manic, a bit crazed.

Our NaNo Pep Talk a few days ago was from Deanna Raybourn and I really liked this passage:

“When you write every day, you are always in the story. There is never a period of reconnecting with your characters, of trying to remember what mood you were attempting to create the last time you worked. And by working every day, you engage your subconscious in a way that simply isn’t possible when you keep a more whimsical schedule. There is no need to summon the muse because there is no time for the fickle little strumpet to go anywhere. I become so immersed in my story that I seldom write more than an hour a day, but I am typing the entire time, with no breaks to think or to wonder where the story is headed. I write flat out because the other 23 hours I have been thinking about the book while going about the rest of my life. (That includes the time I’m asleep. I seldom wake up without thinking of the scene I’m preparing to write. When I sit down to work, I’m essentially taking dictation from myself.)”

“Taking dictation from myself.” I love that. That perfectly describes my writing experiences of the last week or so.

Home stretch here I come!

Well, my goal was to be at 30,000 words at this point, but I didn’t quite make it. I’m at 25,152 - which means that I wrote 10,156 words today. That’s 47 manuscript pages, in case you’re wondering. My brain has turned to mush, my fingers are going numb and my rear is very tired of this chair. Whew!

One good tidbit, I now have a title! My new manuscript is called “A Woman in Red.” I’ll have to post about it one of these days and explain the meaning, but I’m too tired to do it justice right now.

I would like to mention my fantastic new writing pants. Some people have riding pants, right? Well, I have writing pants. And they rock. I bought them yesterday at Target in the men’s department. They’re made out of sweatsuit material, have a drawstring waist and the legs are wide and don’t taper down to elastic at the ankles. Super comfy and wonderful! They made it through over 10,000 words on their opening day. A very respectable start to their writing career.

For all three of my regular readers, you’ll notice that I haven’t been posting very often lately. That’s because I’m in the throes of NaNoWriMo. I could also phrase that as “throws”…as in “throw myself off a balcony.” Eeek, I’m behind. Yesterday was the halfway point, which means that I should theoretically be at 25,000 words. Um, yeah. Okay. Not quite there.

However, by Sunday night I will be at 30,000 words. I may not sleep, but heck, sleep can be over-rated, right? (Sadly, I don’t really believe that. I LOVE sleep.) I’ll post again on Sunday night and let you know my status - and my level of sleep deprivation.

All of the email pep talks that we receive from the NaNo fearless leaders keep reiterating, “Editing is for December.” I have to keep reminding myself of that. Boy, it’s hard to turn off that inner voice!

Okay, back to the story, which by the way is currently called “Laurel’s Story.” Compelling, isn’t it?

It’s here! The clock is ticking…I have the next 30 days to write 50,000 words.

One of the joys of NaNoWriMo is that the good folks there do a wonderful job of encouraging you along the way. And not with vapid little comments like, “You can do it.” Nope, they really know the insanity and so their pep talks truly do pep you up. For the kick-off today we received a pep talk email from Tom Robbins. I won’t quote the entire thing here (that might be against the rules?) but I will repeat of few of the things that really stood out to me:

You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what’s going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.

And I love this bit about the rapids:

…you simply pack your imagination, your sense of humor, a character or two, and your personal world view into a little canoe, push it out onto the vast dark river, and see where the currents take you. And should you ever think you hear the sound of dangerous rapids around the next bend, hey, hang on, tighten your focus, and keep paddling—because now you’re really writing, baby! This is the best part.

So, here we go. I’m packing my canoe today and getting started.

November is almost here and you know what that means… Oh, you don’t? Well, let me fill you in — it’s time for National Novel Writing Month (affectionately known as NaNoWriMo). It’s the one month of insanity in the year when fools try to write 50,000 words between November 1-30. And yes, this year I’m going to be one of those fools. I’m going to get down the entire first draft of my manuscript by December 1st, so I figured I would go ahead and join the NaNo fray and get their humorous and encouraging weekly emails while I’m at it. Any other fools out there? Come on in — the water’s fine.

As I wrote that headline (”Writing a Synopsis”) I thought of several modifiers that could go in front of “Synopsis”… painful, evil, Satanic…. you get the idea. How on earth are you supposed to intelligently convey a 267 page manuscript in 5-10 pages?! And not only that, but it needs to be in the tone and style of your voice and be compelling and interesting, not just a listing of facts. Sheesh - no pressure.

I am entering my manuscript in the RWA’s national Golden Heart contest for un-published manuscripts and my submission is due by December 5th. The submission packet has to include a synopsis of not more than 15 pages. The total entry cannot be more than 55 pages — so the longer my synopsis turns out to be, the less actual manuscript pages I can submit. My goal is a 7 page synopsis, but so far I’m at 9.5.

I have a great critique group that I’m part of and they very kindly critiqued my first attempt at the synopsis and it was EXTREMELY helpful. Two of the people have already read my manuscript, so they gave me a different slant on what I’m including and leaving out in the synopsis. Others who haven’t read the manuscript asked good questions about important plot points that I clearly need to include in the synopsis. So now I’m ready to pick up the fantastic comments I received and go for round 2 on that evil, dastardly synopsis. Fingers crossed… 7 pages!

Our Austin Romance Writers of America chapter is having a “301″ challenge — write 301 words a day for 31 days (October 1-31) and I’m participating. Unfortunately for the last few days I’ve been a slacker…basically just trying to get my minimum number of words in. Pathetic. I admit that it will probably be the same tonight because I’ve been struggling with a migraine today and my brain is absolute mush. However, this weekend, I’m turning over a new leaf…BIG WORD COUNTS are on the horizon. First and foremost is my synopsis that needs to accompany my Golden Heart entry. And man am I dreading that. I don’t think I have the Synopsis MoJo — eek!

Interesting… Harlequin has announced that ALL of their new titles (120 per month) will be available in eBook format. They even have a new eBook Boutique. I wonder what kind of response they’ll see? I consider myself a geek, but I’ve yet to read an eBook…maybe I should give it a try?

I spent the weekend at a writer’s retreat with my Austin RWA chapter. We went to McKinney Roughs for two days and it was wonderful. The weather was lovely (although I’ll admit I was hoping for cooler temperatures), and the scenery is just perfect there. Native plants, hummingbirds, a huge great room in a soothing green color. I worked on plotting my new story – actually, I worked more on getting to know the hero and heroine. What type of people are they? How do they talk? What do they wear? When I got stuck with that, I wrote a random scene and let the two of them speak to each other. What a wonderful way to learn about them! Jack is a little more predatory than I had envisioned, but I like it. Laurel is confident and clever, but I already knew that about her from her appearance in my first manuscript. It’s so exciting to start on a new project!

Before, during and after dinner Saturday night we had wine, then we moved on to Lemon Drops – oh my. I haven’t laughed that long and hard in quite a while. We have some darn funny ladies in our group! What a treat to get to know them more. We have such a good, supportive, smart group of women. I’m proud to be a part of them.

Before we launched into the Lemon Drops, I had a Tarot reading that altered my world view. No, not my world view. My view of myself and my future. It helped me put into words things that I hadn’t been able to express before. It helped me understand that my path is knowable. It was intensely personal and I’m so very glad that I had it done. I’m sounding metaphysical and woo-woo here, but I think it’s because I can’t convey how truly amazing the experience was for me.