I wanted to write a blog post all through the month of November – to get my thoughts out about Nanowrimo, and how this year was different from last year for me – but no time felt like the right time to work on it.  I felt that if I had time to write – – I should be adding to my Nano project.

On one hand that way of thinking might have been the difference between winning and loosing this year.  I was able to complete the 50k words needed to ‘win’ this year, and I’m incredibly happy with what I was able to get finished.

The story I worked on last year was called ‘Touch of Destiny’ and I’ve known that it was going to be the first part to a trilogy for a long time.  I wasn’t able to finish the story last year, but I had time to pencil out the ending for the story so that I could start work on the 2nd part this year – called ‘Hand of Fate’.

Although I was able to ‘win’ Nanowrimo, I was not able to finish the first draft of ‘Hand of Fate’ – it turns out that the story is much longer then 50k words.  So a win – but with the promise of more work ahead of me before I’m finished.

The other thing that I think really helped me win this year, as opposed to last year, was the fact that I planned for November this year.  I took nearly the whole month off of work, and made sure that I had my office all set up for the grueling days of sitting in front of my laptop.  I even managed to weather a pretty severe cold over the first two weeks of the month while still managing to keep a decent word count going.  The last two weeks were hard in a different way, I had the time and the health looked after – but I seemed to loose focus on my characters and their goals.  It was during this time that I learned to love sprints.  I think those little things saved me in the end.  Its amazing what you can get down on the screen when you just let the words flow without second guessing yourself or your characters.

In 2013 I was only able to make it to just over 30k words, and I managed to add another 10k over the rest of the year.  Not enough to finish ‘Touch of Destiny’, but enough to give me a really good idea about where I needed to start ‘Hand of Fate’.  I hope to get more finished this year before I start the 3rd novel in November this year – ‘Arms of Light’.

I didn’t touch my writing at all during the month of December – – between returning to work and Christmas preparations – – there really wasn’t time, and I needed the break from anything to do with my story.

This year, the boyfriend and I stayed with my parents and had a quiet Christmas with them as well as my brother and his girlfriend.  We decided not to exchange presents this year, so it was a simple affair – but enjoyable.  We also ended up seeing the boyfriend’s family this year – although it was unexpected – including his sister, brother in law, and the 3 munchkins, the boyfriends mum, and a slue of his elderly aunts and uncles.  So many presents!  With this gathering under our belts, it was with waning enthusiasm that we also saw my extended family for boxing day.

As much as I love Christmas, and everything that surrounds it, this year felt like too much.  Too much family, and too much rushing around.  I was glad for it to be finished.

This year prompted the boyfriend and I to consider a 3 year rotation – 1 year with my family, 1 year with his family, and 1 year to ourselves.  We’ve never had Christmas on our own before, but thought that it might be something nice to try – – just the two of us.  Guess we’ll see how it goes.

January has proven to be a busy month as well – the beginning half of the month being filled with plenty of overtime at work, as well as working on preparing a baby shower for a close friend.  I got sick again before the shower – a flu I found out – only a week before the shower, which was being hosted at my place.  Thankfully, I was well enough to finish everything that I needed to, and everything managed to go on without another hitch.

There was no writing done in January, unless you count today.  Today has been the first day that I have actually sat down with the express purpose of getting things done – the first item being a blog update that is so overdue I’m embarrassed.

I have had a few days off of work this week – with which I’ve spent reading as much as humanly possible.  I’ll work on another post with a list of what I’ve read the last few months – some of the books have been fairly interesting and I’m anxious for the next installments to be released.

With one more week off of work – for the most part – I’m hoping to get some more work done on both ‘Hand of Fate’ and ‘Touch of Destiny’ in preparation for November 2015.  I’ve also managed to score the month of May away from work to get some serious work and revisions done.  I’m really excited to start writing again, it feels like I’ve been away from it for too long, so long that it’s actually started to call out to me again.  Its the happiest feeling in the world to know what you really want to spend your time doing – and be able to allot time to pursue it.

Well – until Sunday 😀