All posts filed under: Chasing a Dream

Life after 50K

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Before I get caught up in the December festivities, let me take this moment to celebrate the month that was. November. To most, it’s that time of the year to play catch-up—with the work and personal goals they haven’t quite achieved yet, with the pre-Christmas-rush shopping, with their friends and family before everyone gets busy with the holidays. To aspiring authors, it means only one thing: NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, aka the month of uninhibited word vomiting, of ignoring the backspace key, of backing up documents to the point of paranoia, and of shamelessly indulging in excessive amounts of coffee, chocolate, and junk food (that is, unless you’ve got GERD like I do). This was my third time to join NaNo, my third time to win it, and my third time to not finish my novel in thirty days. The first time, I came in without a plot, simply armed with an idea that I thought was totally brilliant. I wrote the required 1,667 words a day when I could and made up for what I …

Things I learned from 8 best-selling YA authors

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In honor of it being midway through NaNoWriMo, I thought it was the perfect time to write about one of my favorite parts of my freelancing gig—interviewing published authors. It’s been a long-time dream of mine to publish my own novel, and nothing inspires me quite like talking to people who have done it, and done it well. More than celebrities, it’s authors who bring out the fangirl in me. It’s always such a pleasure to meet them and realize that they aren’t just extremely smart and well-spoken, they’re also down-to-earth and, well, awesome. Like I said, total fangirl. Thanks to National Book Store and Hitlist.ph, I’ve been able to meet several authors whom I never would’ve dreamed of being in the same room with, let along talking to one-on-one. I’ve picked up some great insights from them, and I thought I’d share them with you all. I hope you find these interesting and useful too, and if you’d like, you can click on the links to each of my articles to check out the full interviews. Enjoy! …

50K or bust!

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Hello, #NaNoWriMo2014! I’ve got my outline, character guides, and setting pegs locked down—I’ve never prepped so much for NaNo before! Hoping they’ll serve me well this month. I’m trying reverse NaNo this time around, ’cause I’m sure things’ll get busier in the next couple of weeks. Now that I’ve publicly committed to my goal, let the typing commence. Caleigh and Jason, I’m ready for you lovelies. Here’s to a month of frenzied writing! Are you in?

To Making It to the Finish Line

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Last January first, I promised myself that this would be the year that I’ll finish and submit my first novel. You see, I’m pretty good about starting new things…it’s the part about finishing them that I can’t seem to get a hang of. I can’t count the number of notebooks and diaries I have that are half-full of ramblings and chapters of different stories that have since then been left unresolved. The finishing part also applies to the actual notebooks themselves–sometimes I get tired of a specific notebook and switch to another one even when there are still a lot of clean pages remaining. I know. Deplorable. Thankfully, I’ve switched to Evernote since getting a smartphone so there’s no need to waste any more paper. Anyway, the reason for this post is that I now have four–FOUR!–unfinished novels sitting pretty in my laptop. The first of the bunch, the story of Matty and Ty, was the one I started last NaNoWriMo and was what I was supposed to finish this year. Then I joined this …

NaNoWriMo Tales 2: Crossing the Midway Line

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I did it! After four days of sporadic writing followed by two days of marathon writing (the last of which amounted to an as-yet unprecedented total of 6,453 words in one day—YAY!!!), I finally conquered the elusive 25,000 word count—and neglected my blog in the process. A friend of mine told me recently that I should choose between travel writing and fiction writing, and concentrate on just one. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought ever since. True enough, I am having a hard time doing both. I’m not even gainfully employed yet, and already I’m struggling to keep the balance between updating my blog and keeping my novel on track. Because of the extremely tight deadline dictated by the NaNoWriMo gods, though, I’m focusing the majority of my energies on my fiction writing—at least for the duration of this month. It’s been one heck of a challenge so far. I’ve followed my gut and skipped scenes not once, but twice. The second time was brought on by another major bout of writer’s block. …

NaNoWriMo Tales 1: The First Week

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It’s the end of my first week of NaNo-writing — or the start of my second, if you’d rather — and thus far, I have a grand total of…(drumroll)…11,535 words. It’s nothing to scoff at, but it’s not exactly near the 18,337 word count that I should have by now. You might ask: if I’ve got a ton of catching up to do, why am I wasting my time writing in my blog? I suppose the best answer would be that this serves as some sort of a warm-up exercise for me to get the my fingers tapping away at the keyboard and my brain juice flowing. As of this moment, the thoughts and words come in trickles rather than the much-anticipated torrents. I haven’t even started the real action in my story yet already I’ve come across that major villain called writer’s block. And my God, it’s a big one. So big that I’m actually considering doing an entire rewrite…which would probably amount to NaNo-suicide as that would mean starting off with nada once again. Nope, I don’t think …

Here’s to a month of crazy, manic writing

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This is going to be a quick one. Somehow, I lost my mind two weeks ago and signed up to join NaNoWriMo 2012 for the first time. It’s a goal of mine to publish at least one novel in my lifetime, and I figured, what better time to start than NOW? Thing is, I’ve forever been starting a new novel, but never get around to actually finishing it. SO. 50,000 words in 30 days = 1667 words a day. Talk about a mind fart. I officially started last Thursday afternoon by jotting down a couple of words in my little notebook, then switched to typing on my iPhone’s Evernote application. You could say that I was distracted, as I had white sand between my toes and could hear the lure of the gentle waves of the beach. I managed to write what I later discovered what was almost a thousand words — a whole first chapter. That was November 1. Since then, I’ve only written a handful of sentences, when I should be nearing 6,667 …