Writing – Andrea Pell

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo 2018!

October 17, 2018 No Comments

The National Novel Writing Month is almost here. Every November, writers around the world start scribbling with the goal of completing a 50,000 word long novel in a month.

I am getting ready to do it this year. I have been trying since 2013, but things have never worked out. I have been close to finishing novels, I have given up on a story halfway through or I have been too busy to dedicate some time.

I cannot tell if this year will be different, it might not, but I still want to try it out since I’ve been working on a new story idea for the past couple of months.

This year I have decided to prepare in October, so that come November, I can focus on writing, writing and writing.

Here are some of the things I’m doing:

Writing down a small summary of each chapter. I might end up combining some or adding more, but this is a great way of knowing beforehand all the things I want to write about. Planning a novel might not work for everyone, but I want to give it a try!
I am spending some time with preliminary writing of some chapters or parts of the story. I don’t think it’s cheating, if inspiration is coming right now, I won’t make it wait for a month!
Setting time on my calendar to write. This is super important because I start visualizing myself doing it, instead of realizing each day I have not written and I will have to write double the next day. I want to develop a writing discipline and NaNoWriMo might help me do it!
Getting excited! I’m really excited about this year’s book. This is the first time that I will try to write something that is not for children and that is not fantasy. I am stretching my boundaries and exploring what I can achieve. Who knows? something really good might be coming from it!

I’ll be updating the blog with my progress, and sharing sneak peaks to my story soon!

Writing

Week 2: Writing my novel with the help of FindFocus

September 10, 2015 No Comments

11:51 p.m. on September 10th and I barely made it.

But I completed my challenge of writing 3,000 words of my novel.

I’ve been using the app FindFocus.co to help me write this and each week I’m setting myself a challenge until I finish writing the novel I’ve been saying I will write for years.

This week I got sick and I just really didn’t feel like writing. But that was the perfect excuse, wasn’t it? Like when you’re in school and your mom writes a note to your teacher asking her to excuse you from not finishing your homework, but you had been sick. Well, my novel is never going to be published or read by anyone else if I give in to the resistance of minor things like this.

I think it is the accountability part that is really helping me continue. I have an accountability partner but I’m also writing my progress on here. If I don’t report on here, that will mean I failed on my challenge for that week.

Finishing things is not as hard when you just have no choice. And accountability helps you with that.

Writing

Week 1: Writing my novel with the help of FindFocus

September 3, 2015 No Comments

This is the end of the first week, and first challenge.

I had already started writing my novel, but was stuck at 9,000 words.

With the use of the FindFocus app, I challenged myself to write 2,000 words this week to continue on the path of finishing my novel.

I will be doing this for the next several weeks, increasing the amount of words written every week, until I finish my novel.

You can read it here, though it is in Spanish. It is about a young boy whose mother disappears and they have reasons to believe she’s dead, since they live in a very violent city. Julian, the boy, finds out she might no be gone, but that she might be in a completely different world…a city right under his city. (Probably the description will be better once its published).

Wish me luck! Next week I will have written up to 14,000 words!

Writing

Using FindFocus.Co to help me finish my novel

August 27, 2015 No Comments

I’ve been meaning to write a novel since I was 14 years old. I always have these amazing ideas and I spend a couple of months excited and writing but I have never finished anything.

This year Michael started working on his app FindFocus that was built for people like me: people that have something awesome they want to finish, but they haven’t. The app let’s you challenge yourself and have a partner hold you accountable. You can even put some money on the challenge, as an incentive to do what you need to do. If you don’t succeed your challenge, you will lose the money. It’s that easy.

I’ve been helping Michael build this app, so it also has a special place in my heart and I want to see it succeed. For that I will prove that it works by finishing my novel.

Wish me luck!

Oh and if you want to read my progress head over to Tablo and read La ciudad bajo la ciudad, The City Under the City in Spanish.