Reflections on November writing…

Wow.
Did I really do PiBoIdMo AND NaNoWriMo in November?
The month went by like a blur.
But I’m here to say:

 

It was a bit weird working on longer works while also brainstorming picture book ideas.

I started working on one idea, and low and behold, 4,000 words later,
I realized it MIGHT end up being something bigger than a picture book!

How did I do it?
I wrote every day.
Yeah, that was fun…one some days.

Some days I felt like this:
There was supposed to be a great picture here, but it didn’t get saved.
So here it is in words:

WOO-HOO!
This is some NEWBERY STUFF right here!
WOW!
How come I NEVER wrote anything longer than 700 words before?
THIS IS AMAZING!
2,00o words ALREADY? Let’s just KEEP GOING!

But many days felt like this, for which their is a picture:

I found it really challenging to just write horrible sentences to get where I needed to go.
I kept telling myself: first draft, first draft.

I almost never went back and wrote what I read before writing more.
This only worked because I had some plot points kicking around in my head for a while.

But writing every day was fun at times too.
New things came out.
New characters.
New problems.
Sometimes entirely new directions and ideas.

Confession: I did take one entire day off, and I found that it was WONDERFUL!
I got to do a lot of other fun things, and I think it was great for my writing.

All in all, I typed up those 52,000 words in 6  different stories.

• One I actually finished!
• One is about halfway done?
• Another is two-thirds of the way done.
• Two more are good starts, but maybe only one-fourth completed.
• And one came from a PiBoIdMo idea, and is only a few scenes in.

 

I have read a bit of what I wrote now.
And, like all my writing, I’m exited about some stuff, and not so excited about the rest.
But I know I can make it better.
And it’s good to have those stories written down instead of floating in the air.

Writing long stuff was great fun.
But it made me miss picture books.
I started getting ancy.
I would read the posts on Tara’s blog and think,

“AH! I just want to write a picture book!”
And then think of how many picture books I would have to write to get to 50,000 words…

It was if picture books were saying to me:
Picture Books were glad to know that I felt the same way too, so I responded:
And that is my December plan.
REVISE
RESEARCH
RE-FOCUS

on picture books.
I guess I should have put READ too?

Someone else was feeling a bit neglected:
I have an answer for that too:

In fact, check out tomorrow…
you’ll see a familiar looking sock monkey featured with the books I read last week.

And coming soon, his adventures at the Pop-Up Museum!

Until then, I’m tired!
And this was a lot of writing.
So far, 527 words 🙂

Enthusiastically yours,
KE and Singe Singe