Workout Wednesday – Sad news

Taking a short break from NaNo (by which, I mean that I haven’t written anything today yet O_O) to do a Workout Wednesday.  It is Wednesday, right?  My sense of time is wacky this week for some reason.

Anyway, if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that I was working hard to do the Disney Princess Half-Marathon next February.  Due to financial reasons, I will not be able to do that.  I might do some other local race next year and maybe I’ll be able to do a Disney half-marathon in 2014, but I just can’t justify the trip right now.  It pretty much broke my heart, but I have to do the responsible thing right now.

I’m still running, although I’m not working hard on improving my speed at the moment. A lot of my running was spurred on by imagining the trip, so to avoid relapsing into thoughts of it while running, I’ve started listening to shows I have on my iPod, which means I can’t keep track of my laps at the same time.  So if I’m at the gym, I just run for half an hour and don’t count the laps, which means I can’t keep track of my speed.  But when I ran outdoors the other day, RunKeeper told me that my speed isn’t suffering for this.

I’m still doing my PT routines and other workouts as I can fit them in (on top of losing the half-marathon, my work schedule changed so that I can’t do my midday classes), and I haven’t really let up on how many workouts a week I do.

Still, it was very disappointing to lose the Disney trip.

I hope you are doing well with all your exercising endeavors and that if you’re participating in NaNo, you haven’t gone completely sedentary, as sometimes happens to obsessed writers.

Lots of love,
Sage

Contest Announcement: 50 Signed YA books

Fifty books!  Fifty!
You probably didn’t expect to see me post about 50 anything here unless it was 50-thousand words, but here I am to share Beth Revis’s amazing contest.  She has collected signed YA books from all sorts of events, and now she’s giving them away.  Here’s the picture/link for it.  Hopefully it works:

This means that I’ll be writing another blog post soon about why I love YA.  It’s a tough question to answer beyond, “I just do,” and my brain is set on a paranormal bromance right now, so I’ll have to do it another day in November.

NaNo word count is currently 34,153.

Lots of love,
Sage

The Write Way (#NaNoTip)

For the past few weeks, people have been giving out advice right and left about how to succeed at at NaNoWriMo.  For the new NaNoers or those that have never won, I’m sure that this advice is helpful.  Then there are people who beg you to tell them every detail of how you get through NaNo so that they can emulate you.  It’s really flattering.

But here’s the deal, folks.

There is no right way to write.

There is no right way to win NaNoWriMo.

Every writer is different.  Two writers might find that a technique works for both of them, but that doesn’t mean that every piece of advice will work for every writer.

I see this:

• Listen to music with headphones
• It has to be quiet
• Tweet your wordcount to keep you motivated
• Do not open the internet under any circumstance
• Start with a character and have them dictate your plot
• Start at the end and plot backwards
• Plot everything before you start
• You have to outline to keep yourself on track
• Don’t outline or you’ll get bored
• If you don’t click with your character from line one, pick a different character
• Change plot halfway if it feels too hard
• Do not change anything, just keep going because you can fix it in edits
• Don’t fix typos
• Fix typos but don’t fix whole lines
• Fix whole lines, but do it by crossing out the old one so you can keep the words
• It’s only a NaNo project, so what you write doesn’t matter
• Think about each line, because it matters
• Use Write or Die
• Write or Die will make your novel suck
• Write by hand so you can avoid distractions
• Write on your computer so you don’t have to type it up later for verification
• Write huge amounts on the weekend so you can relax on weekdays
• Write 1667 consistently every day
• Don’t take any breaks
• Take breaks
• Even if you have five minutes somewhere, write a line or two then
• You need to have big chunks of time to really get into the zone
• Have a ritual
• Don’t have a ritual or you won’t be able to write unless you’re in that situation

I gave some advice for the #NaNoPrep blog posts, but I tried to make it general and to keep in mind that what works for some, doesn’t work for all.  But I see so many people preaching their methods like gospel.

Here’s what matters during NaNoWriMo:

• You get to 50K before Dec. 1
• You have fun doing it

If you find that a certain writer’s past experiences help you get through your novel in November, that’s awesome!  But what works for someone else may not work for you.  So don’t stress that someone’s told you that you need to write during your five-minute break at work and you know that that’s not enough time to get into the story enough to write even a sentence.

There is only one right way to write: The way that works for you.

Have fun!

Lots of love,
Sage