Welcome to the website of writer Erin Boatkicker

Erin Boatkicker is a young writer with grand fantasies of using a handful of words to change someone’s life. She’s constantly busy and sometimes even surprises herself by how much time she can find to write. She’s a university student majoring, unsurprisingly, in creative writing, as well as working two jobs, learning to drive a car, planning a wedding, and dealing with her crazy but mostly lovable family. Right now, she's put all her other writing projects on hold and is focusing entirely on Only Make Believe, a novel she started for NaNoWriMo 2010. She hopes to have the first draft finished before November 2011.

Monday, November 15, 2010

NaNoWriMo: Week Two

So if you read my last post, about my baby sister (forgive me, my teenage sister) you'll know that I mentioned to her that I had hit a bit of a block.

My problem was that I was SO READY to jump forward to January (on the book's timeline, that is.) The scene that I have been DYING to write since I started takes place right after the kids (remember, it's set in a second grade classroom) come back from Christmas/Winter/Holiday break. Last week I was totally ready to jump from September AAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way to January, but there were a few other key scenes that I would be skipping that were important to the plot. It made me want to stop writing, because I didn't want to skip those scenes, but I also didn't want to write them.

Talking to my sister, knowing she wrote all that bunches of writing, made me want to write. She pulled me out of my block, and I had a FIVE-THOUSAND WORD DAY! Now to some, that might not be a lot. I have talked to a couple of other WriMos (or whatever the most accepted term is) who managed to write 10 or even 15k on day one. So I guess to them 5k isn't grand.

But it sure as hell is for me. So I managed to get past those scenes, I realized that there are a couple of other scenes I'm exited to write, and all in all, I've gotten past the dreaded "Week Twos" which are apparently a common problem (see, I never knew that until now)

More importantly, last year, I only managed to write 13,885 words (I thought it was 13,500 ish but I checked this morning) over the whole course of last Novemeber. This year, though I thought it would be awesome to reach 50k, I didn't think I would be able to do it. So my unofficial goal was to reach and beat my score from last year.

I've beaten it. And I've gotten far enough ahead of the game that I anticipate everything going smoothly from here on out. I reached 25,000 on Saturday. According to the "schedule" I didn't have to reach that until, well, today, Monday. So I'm confident now that I can win this thing!

I hit a bit of writers block earlier this week, but once again I'm back on track. I just keep telling myself: I will win NaNoWriMo this year. This upcoming week is going to be full of distractions: My birthday, the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, my Dad's birthday. (along with all the regular things like college stuff, and working awful hours.) But I think I can do it.

How has your week two been?

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