Thank you! And what I learned...Nanowrimo

I wanted to share a few things on Nanowrimo.  Yeah, I know you all are probably tired of hearing about it.  So, I will try to not mention it again after this.  Okay?  (note I said "try") :)


So, where do I begin?


First and Foremost, I have to THANK a few very special people who helped me during Nanowrimo.

I don't know where to start, so I'm just going down the list...

Jackie of My Ever Expanding Library and @seolmara on Twitter.  If you follow me on twitter you know her and I where in this eyeballs deep together.  We cheered each other on and sprinted together.  Yes, sprinted - going for 20 minutes (or 15) straight none stop, not looking back, to see who got the most words.  I say we tied. ;)

Melissa of He Followed Me Home... Can I Keep Him? and @hefollowedme on Twitter.  She was our cheerleader through out the process. :) She helped us keep our spirits up when we where ready to say we couldn't do it....back in the beginning when we where trying to get started.

Skyla Dawn Cameron (her blog) and @skyladawn on Twitter.  She has really helped keep me going.  Being a published author and all she still had time to give me the peep talks and busts I needed to keep going at the beginning and through it all.  She doesn't know it but she was the one to keep my word count going in the beginning.  I'm just glad she was working on 3 books at once.  I have this streak in me that I don't like to give up and definitely don't like to loss.  Which kept me going but tracking my word count daily against Skyla's helped keep me going.  She is a quick writer and I wanted to keep up, a little healthy competition for me.  (don't tell her)

Another author that doesn't even know she was helping me as I watched her word count jump by leaps and bounds and wanted to keep with here was Elaine Corvidae.  She is found on twitter @ElaineCorvidae and on her blog.  In the end she took off with the word count and no I couldn't keep up with her, but I loved the rush of trying to do it. :) And she was another to help cheer me on as well.

 Love these authors!  It's amazing how kind they are. ;D And suffer the same worries and troubles as I did, even with me just starting and them being veterans.

Melissa of Books & Things... @BooksThings on Twitter She did not need the whip.  But she did threaten me with it a few times.  And I jumped!  That thing is deadly, let me tell you.  Spikes and all.  She is viciously accurate with her aim as well.  LOL!  She is one of the many followers how stuck with me through the month here and gave me all sorts of support to keep going. :)

Bastard Books.... @BastardBooks on Twitter... well, what can I say to someone with a name like that?  lol.  He helped pick (along with a few others) a book to read on the side lines that kept me going.  Then he was the devil on the late nights when I was saying on Twitter I was heading to bed but still had thoughts to get out.  By devil I mean that voice that tells you to keep writing, keep going, who needs sleep? lol. Yep he held up to his name. ;D But in all that, I got some great stuff out that I probably would have forgotten about by the time I got home the next night to write.

Sadly, I know there are others to acknowledge, but I'm brain dead!  I'm sorry if I missed you.

Thank you all for the boost all month to keep going.

A few things I Learned and Found I liked...

1)  The Sprints.  I was scared to death of these, but found they helped me push forward and not worry on each word at that moment.  Yes, I'll have loads of clean up but they pushed me through the thoughts with quickness.  I really loved this.

2)  Friends are HUGE!  It is great to have friends help keep you going, whether through friendly competition or a shoulder to cry on.  It makes all the difference in the world.

3)  So much support!  I felt going in no one would want to support me; I'm new, never finished a book thought, blah blah blah... All true about me, except I was so wrong about no one wanting to support me.  I was pleasantly surprised and tremendously grateful!  Even established authors have the same worries and trials as a newbie like me.  That alone helped make me feel more comfortable along with being so kind and inspiring.  AND my followers!  You all kept coming around all month cheering me on.  Just stopping by to say hello to me made me feel better. :) Thank you all!!!

4)  When in doubt, Kill your character.  Or at least try.  Every time I got stuck, I tried to kill my characters... okay so there might be a lot of fights as I tried it a lot... but in doing that it kept my fantasy read going, made me think on the world and other characters around.  And those darn characters with a hero complex came to the surface.  Ha!  And the chickens hide.  You learn a lot about the characters that way.

5)  When stuck, DON'T STOP.  Push through with something, you can always fix it later.  Skip to another scene and fill the gap another time.  If you ask, it will come... just maybe later.

6) FIX IT LATER! - I can go back and rewrite it, fix it, add to it, delete it, whatever later.  But get the thoughts out now while they are there.  You just never know where those thoughts might lead to, so use them.  You can fix it later.


Now for the hard part... rewriting and revising. :) Will you all help me? lol. Thank you!!