I was on the ball with last month’s video update. I had it published before the month actually ended and was happy with how it came out. I then forgot to publish the post on this site. I guess we can’t win everything. Thankfully it is only a few days late.

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If you would like to keep more up to date I do post often on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also read about my life in my series God Shows Up or in the category “Life.” If you’d like weekly updates check out my Patreon page. I do weekly updates for all my tiers and they start at $1/month.

This year I attempted NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month. It is when a bunch of writers attempt to write a full first draft of a novel in November. I had been working on the background work and outline for a new project. The project will actually be a series of short books, so I figured it would be a good way to start. The project is Royal Memories.

During the month I wrote a lot and learned some stuff. I didn’t finish the 50,000-word goal, but I got halfway. My final count was 25,451 words. I am not halfway through the story, though. I know that I have a lot of editing and writing still ahead of me. It is a great start, though. I didn’t write every day. In fact, I wrote about every other day because of my schedule.

There was a bit where I didn’t even write every other day. That was because of overdoing it the first week. I then got in a rhythm of writing and painting that worked for me. November was a wonderful month for me.

One Thing I learned

Doing NaNoWriMo also showed me that at least one lesson I keep hearing holds true. I heard a few authors say to read and review what you wrote the day before at the beginning of your session. I didn’t do that for most of the month and now I’m lost. The story seems to be dying. There is a fix though, I can go back to what I already wrote. As I’m reading it, I can edit it and build on what I have. I have done that a couple of times now and when I do I have added a bunch more words.

Right now the Royal Memories series is just a bunch of bones and bone fragments on a table. By going back and reviewing, I can find more bone fragments in the mess and make them into actual bones. My next few drafts can focus on putting the meat and skin on the bones.

I am glad that I attempted to write an entire book in a month. I found that I could do more than I thought I would be able to and may even get the first book in this series done before I was expecting.

Pictures from the Month.

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I used dice to decide on a few things and make the story more interesting. Most of the time it caused the characters to have difficulties with what they were attempting to do. I also had a few fight scenes, which the dice made more interesting. Using the dice also me write quicker, because if I got stuck I was able to roll a die to get unstuck.

When I got to 10,000 words I wrote an Instagram post. I was proud of myself to reach one of the first big milestones. I was planning on taking other pictures at 20,000 and 25,000 words, but that didn’t happen.

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If you would like to keep more up to date with what I am doing I am on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also read about my life in my series God Shows Up or in the category “Life.”