I convinced myself over the last couple months to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but I didn’t have time to plan and prep like I would have liked. This, for someone who thought they were mostly a panster only to realize they are NOT, was a huge mistake.

I struggled for the first two weeks of the month to stay on track and fell way behind. I did a little catch up work in the third week, but as of Thursday last week I have not written anything for my work in progress (WIP). I know. LAME.

My numbers look horrid, and I doubt I can write the last 28,000 words in five days, although that would be pretty cool if I did! I’d have to write 9,333 words a day to accomplish that.

Still, even without winning, I am glad I signed up this year. Next year I’ll be better prepared, because I have learned a valuable lesson: Pantsing is its own special artform that not all of us are talented in. I am one of those lacking that creative flair on such a grand scale. Kudos to you writers who can pants with style!

For the rest of us planners, I also applaud you who’ve taken November to write out those well-planned, detailed, and long-simmered story ideas that couldn’t wait to fly across that screen!

And if you happen to win, no matter what style of writer you are, CONGRATULATIONS! I’m so proud of you.

What has Rachael been doing since Thursday?

Well, I’m glad you asked, because that means I can share a little challenge I had an opportunity to work on that really helped me learn more techniques for graphic illustration!

Paintable.cc is a website that offers master classes on digital art, and they are pretty awesome. They have now hosted five different five day digital portrait challenges where they teach you day by day, step by step, how to design and build (basically) a digital portrait. They focus on the details that give the image a realistic design, and the challenge was great for newbie artists to seasoned professionals, of which I fall somewhere in between.

I was dumb, though, and didn’t think to save images at the different stages to show you the progression, but you’ll see what I designed. I chose an image from Paintable.cc’s Pinterest page w/portraits good for practicing, and after four days of working on it, this is what I came up with:

So, no, I haven’t written anything for NaNo in several days, but I have used that creative spark which has been enjoyable too.

Now, instead of worrying about winning NaNoWriMo, I’ll do some better planning of my current WIP so that the story will have better cohesion and flow w/o the hiccups and frustrations of not having a clear end goal in mind.

Congrats my NaNoWriMo friends! Good work!