Take a Deep Breath

NaNoWriMo is over. The school week is over. Unfortunately, the insanity is never over.

I managed to finish NaNoWriMo in the car on the 30th, which felt wonderful despite the fact I didn't actually finish the story.

Via ywp.nanowrimo.org

In fact, as far as story arcs go, this was probably the worst year of NaNo I've had. I completely lost the plot a few days in, and my characters decided that it would be fun to switch personalities, randomly leave entirely, and have fluctuating ages I gave up trying to keep track of. I managed to write plenty of great slice of life scenes in the not-quite-dystopian society I created, but slice of life is not really good novel material.

Although I am a little disappointed that my idea went out the window this year, I'm incredibly proud to have met the 50k goal for the first time within one story. (The first year I finished at 40k, and the second I had to write a novel and its sequel which never saw the light of day.) I had a crazy November to boot, and so the fact I was able to keep up with a rigid writing schedule impressed me. I've now been taking December off, but once the holiday season is over I'll probably start back up again, either to rewrite this story or start another one.


Speaking of the holiday season, my family and I roadtripped to Texas for Thanksgiving to visit family. It was a wonderful trip, and I learned a great many things (the American Banjo Museum is in the Bricktown portion of Oklahoma City, for example) but never shall I ever enjoy eighteen hour car rides. I managed to not only knit an entire scarf, finish the majority of my homework, and read an entire novel, but finish off NaNoWriMo in the car and watch more than eight hours' worth of movies and TV shows. If anything, car rides are great for my productivity, I suppose.


Now that the school week is over, I can finally get a bit of a reprieve to recollect myself and get back into the groove of things for the two weeks before Christmas break. I'm planning on reviewing a bunch of books soon, so you all have that to look forward to! Hopefully I can think of something creative to blog about over break.

The books I'm planning on reviewing are as follows: The House of Hades by Rick Riordan, Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.


Until then,

Hailey Jenkins