Adara VS Nov 25 ~ No NaNoWriMo November
This month I’m looking back at my author activities in November 25, exploring juggling three projects instead of the one required for NaNoWriMo.
Video Image Description: Shows a desk, with a laptop and monitor on a stand. There is an anime avatar representing Adara. Adara has purple hair and light blue bangs. In chibi mode she has white feathers on her back and above the ears, and is wearing a blue dress. The ending screen shows a banner advertising Drawing Red, with a link to www.adaraspence.com/books. The paperback and ebook cover of Drawing Red shows a teenage girl drawing in a notebook with a large protective red and white wolf standing protectively behind her. It's set in a moonlit forest. The hardback cover is black with a grey outline of a tree on it.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Adara, author of the YA paranormal romance and sci-fi novel Drawing Red, and this is my November writing roundup.
I love November. There's always a buzz in the air in the writing community in November. My goal this month was to turn up and write, having realized last month that I spent far too much time playing around on my streaming and my vtubing setup. I made it my mission to get to work every single day straight after breakfast in a bid to form a new writing habit. And that started with putting a kettle in my writing space. A literal kettle. Now, I don't drink tea or coffee, but a warm breakfast of a pasta mugshot in a cup was perfect, giving my blood pressure a much needed wake up call. Thanks, Pots. It was my time uninterrupted before the rest of the house got up with a warm mug in hand as the cold days drew in. Cosy! Until it wasn't. More on that later.
I originally decided to make a plan to write 500 words every day. Not exactly Nanowrimo, but I'd be happy with that - until I was drawn to work on other projects. I found myself juggling three. Number one, the Drawing Red audio book. Number two, Drawing Red's sequel, which is in revisions, and then Project Angel, a first draft of a paranormal romantic comedy, which has brought me a great deal of joy. I also spent time doing some research, writing craft study, and revisions on the first draft's opening. I know, I know you're not meant to do that now, but it kind of really needed it to set the precedence for how the rest was going to go.
So, I abandoned my 500 words a day goal to keep up with my bigger goal of producing one chapter of the audio book a week, which also went on hold due to my health. Despite many tech gremlins, I did commit to holding writing streams every week on a Monday at 1:00 UK time, turning up to host sprints on YouTube. They were incredibly productive and it's always fun to bounce off other authors and also for people to say, "You might be taking that a little bit too seriously." "Give yourself a break." "Oh, that sounds fun." Yeah. Just to bounce off people, it's nice.
I also revived my rewards tariff. For every 500 words I've written each day, I would give myself a gold star. Same for every 25 minutes worked on something else kind of author related. Note: author not streaming. I made that mistake in October and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole.
But in total, I wrote 7,303 words. I did one hour of writing craft study from the book The Complete Comedy Writer by Dave Cohen. I did 50 minutes of revisions, 50 minutes of research, and 2 hours and 50 minutes of audio book production. Not bad since after my live stream on Monday (23rd Nov), I became ill and took a week off to rest. So, this only accounts really for 3 weeks plus living with chronic fatigue. That's honestly pretty good. All of the projects are progressing at about the same pace, which I'm pleased with.
My morning habit was broken by having to wait an hour before eating breakfast because of an antibiotic and then just having to twiddle my thumbs before eating, which kind of threw the whole be immediately productive vibe out the window. Now, I've heard that's a thing. If anyone's ever seen the healthy gamer Dr. K on YouTube. He said that the very start of the morning kind of dictates how the rest of the day is going to go in terms of pace. I felt that. I got back to that though this morning. Immediately got to work after having had some breakfast. Thank you blood pressure saving salt for pots. I've been using my own 15 and 30 minute timers for that which has a chime at the start and end of each session. I use the silent ones when I'm working on audiobook production. And for versions of drafting or revisions, I use the ones with Lo-fi. Then during my live writing streams, I set a timer on the screen in the classic 25 minutes Pomodoro style with Lo-fi and chimes to signal the beginning and ends of sessions and rest. Usually, I'll do three 25 minute sessions and then five minute breaks in between.
In total, I earned 22 gold stars. According to my own rewards tariff, I unlock the right to buy myself a new book for every 10 stars I earn. So, two new books for me this month.
And on that note, last but not least, I would like to take a moment to commemorate and remember the life of my Kindle, which sadly can no longer retain battery. I'm going to attempt a factory reset, but there are a lot of documents and PDFs that may be lost during the process. If this doesn't work, thank you for your service. You will be missed. Now it's time to read on my phone, laptop, and from my good old physical books again.
How did your November go? Did you set any challenges? Let me know in the comments. My goal for December is to continue to turn up to work on my writing projects every morning. And for the live streams on a Monday, and I may be lurking in other people's live streams. Sometimes I say hello, sometimes I don't. Depends what I'm up to.
And remember, any progress is better than no progress. Even if it seems you're not getting anywhere, eventually you will have a finished product. Bye!
Credits
Ink Live 2D Model: IAmKyoki on X
Ending theme – Adara Spence
Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_official
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKA -
Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter
Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE
