 Hello, my name's Jackie, welcome back to my channel and if you are new here I am an aspiring writer who is attempting NaNoWriMo for the first time so it is now the 23rd of November which means it is day two of week three. Week three? Week four. So it's day two of week four. As per usual I did no writing on Friday which means I've got a little bit of catching up to do so I had 36,144 words when I finished up on Thursday which was about a thousand words ahead of where I needed to be so today I should be only, I should only need about two thousand words or so to catch up. However I don't know if I'm going to get all that writing done today because something that's been working for me for the last couple of weeks is mapping out the scenes I want to write before I write them. So in October I did a whole month of prepping, I tried three different plotting methods to map out three different book ideas I was playing with for NaNoWriMo and even though I really tried and I really wanted to have a complete outline by the time November started the time did not stop being time days continued to pass and November started even though my plots weren't as developed as I hoped so what I've been doing since then is I had an idea of the main scenes in the story but I hadn't really thought about, I hadn't really mapped out the scenes specifically so I knew that main character was going to get kicked out of home but I didn't know how that was going to play out so one of the things I've been doing over the past couple of weeks is for the next two or three scenes I've been going okay well I want this to happen this tap and this tap and sometimes when I'm doing that I might think of some dialogue I want to put in there so I have a little screenplay going on and that's been really helpful for getting me through my words quite consistently and it's one of the reasons why last week I finished ahead of where I needed to be the problem is I've gotten to the stage in the book where other than maybe three scenes I can think of off the top of my head I'm not sure what else is going to happen so to give you a better sense of what I'm talking about this is the board I did as part of my Save the Cat plotting process and you can see so each of these post-it notes is a scene and you can see the first half of the book has a lot more in it than the second half now I'm currently sitting before the midpoint that I'm approaching it so what I want to do today is take a step back and spend a little bit more time plotting to see if I can get a better sense of the scenes I need to get from where I am now to the midpoint and then what I need to get from the midpoint to the if not the climax to the all is lost dark night of the soul moment and that will probably be at least let's say one two three four five let's say six to ten scenes so having that mapped out even though it's not the rest of the book that'll be plenty to get me to my fifty thousand words just based on what I have so far so given that I might not actually get that much writing done today having said that that doesn't worry me too much because my husband and I are off work for this week which is going to be amazing so we're going to Italy on Monday and even though like it's not a writing retreat we're going to be out and about and eating lots of pasta and pizza and so on but it does mean I'm not working a full-time job for the next week so even if today isn't a very high word count day I think that that's not a problem because I will have a lot more time and a lot more energy to devote to this in the coming week but for now I need to start plotting rather than starting with what needs to happen next in the book I thought I'd start with what I already had so I just scrolled through my word document to give every major plot point a one or two sentence summary and what's really interesting is that there's so much more in the book than what I thought about last month when I was doing all of this preparation work like there are you know some of the big events are the same they're things I thought of back then but how one leads to the other some of the different layers or elements that have been in that have been introduced that help tie everything together there's a lot that's brand new and I'm looking at it going obvious it's a first draft it needs a lot of work but I'm looking at it going oh my god like well done Jackie's brain you were you've done good work here so um yeah it's I don't even know what this snippet is for I just thought yeah I'm I'm a little bit pleased with myself it's like um if writer Jackie was a separate person I would be giving her a pat on the back right now because I think um I think what's there is working well and yeah now the next step is just to think about what happens next so we have a problem as you know my plan was to try and map out not the rest of the book but from where I am now to the midpoint and then from the midpoint around about to the climax slash dark night of the soul the problem is I'm only up to the next new scene and it just makes me want to write the next new scene rather than continuing with the plotting and I think I'm going to no I don't think I know I'm going to so I'm going to go ahead with mapping out just that scene and then writing it because this is a challenging part of the book because it's where Hannah the main character needs to basically switch her perspective she needs she needs to change sides so until now her goal has been to go back to her family and get accepted by her father and this is the time when she's really going to go over to the dark side if you like so she's going to go against her father and really side with the mob who are who are his main enemy and I'm not sure so I know action wise what's going to happen I know there's a conversation and they're going to prepare for this mission and they're going to try and steal the father's research but I'm not sure what happens emotionally to make that change occur and I feel like I can't go on to the next scene until I know that so I'm going to put a pause on plotting and write that scene after which I will decide whether there's still time left to plot today or whether I should finally finish the Christmas shopping and get back to plotting tomorrow so after I went and said that I was so excited about the next scene I had to write that I had to write it then I couldn't continue plotting it was a really hard writing session so I did 2177 words and I think the first 1500 words of that was crap like I just I know I just couldn't get into it I so I actually think that psychologically and emotionally the scene I'm in now is the midpoint because and I was thinking it would be a sequence of scenes and she wouldn't get the information for another couple of scenes but the way I planned it out was that she was so she's just basically being tattooed by the mafia against her will so isn't particularly happy with them and their planning a mission and want her help and she went to the meeting was all stroppy like oh well I'm not going to help you and then one of her main contacts said okay come with me and gave her this file and the file actually has all of the information that we've been hinting at until now and when I came up with the idea of just doing it in this one bam and she gets all the information and needs to put it together until it makes sense I thought oh that could work really well I I don't know if it can't or if I just haven't done it well but yeah describing someone going through documents isn't the most captivating read so the first 1500 words was really hard I really struggled to get into it I did consider not writing anything today and just putting it off until tomorrow but I pushed through and I think the last you know six to seven hundred words are good because that's the moment when she sees something goes oh that doesn't make sense and that creates the snowball effect that where um you know one thing piles on another it's like oh my god look at all of this stuff is done and my father is a really bad person and we should stop him so it gets to where it needed to get to in fact I haven't finished I'm like partway through the realisation sequence but I need to think of so I've basically got three kidnapped children at this stage I want I know the final secret that I want to reveal I'm not sure how it can be revealed though it would be nice if I could put a dead body in there though anyway so I wasn't sure how to do the last piece of information so I'm stopping partway through the scene and we'll get back to that tomorrow so the scene did or will end where it's supposed to I'm not sure how to fix the beginning part but it is a first draft so this is this is a future Jackie problem and I'm sure future Jackie is going to love me when she sees this video in a couple of months time so I'm calling it a day it is what is the time it's five o'clock I'm going to head out for some last-minute Christmas shopping hoping that I can get the last few gifts knocked off in time to send tomorrow because that's probably the last opportunity to get them back to Australia in time and tomorrow I will attempt to finish the scene and I will also get back to plotting and I was going to say and I'll actually finish plotting this time but who knows I might get to the next scene and decide I just have to write that so we'll see what happens it's always an adventure anyway I'll see you tomorrow so it is Sunday the 24th of November and my husband and I are going to Florence tomorrow which is going to be amazing so I thought I'd chat with you while I pack today because packing is of course the most exciting thing that you can watch me do so I just passed the 40,000 word mark on my NaNoWriMo novel which is really exciting and I finally got another badge so very happy to NaNoWriMo for giving me that badge because I haven't had one since I hit 10,000 words which was a couple of weeks ago now I the reason I didn't film while I was doing my usual writing and plotting today is because this wasn't folded very well is because yesterday I felt like having to report on how I was doing was actually getting in the way of the plotting exercise and I wanted to see how I went without the expectation that I would need to give an update when it comes to how I did I didn't actually do that much better unfortunately and I'm not sure I'm not sure if it's a problem because so we're at this point in the book where Hannah has just realised that her father's an asshole he's done a whole lot of really bad things and she's decided to side with the mafia to help steal some of his research and so we've got this scene now where they're sort of planning the heist and then they're going to break into his home to perform the heist and then they're going to discover it was a trap and he's going to trap them in there and basically demand that they give her back which which is kind of cool so one of the things that's fun about working on the book is seeing how things evolve in a way you didn't expect so a few weeks ago I had this idea where he was going to have infiltrated one of their bases and his face would appear on all of the computer screens and start talking to them and basically say I've put all these bombs throughout the network and I'm going to blow it up if you don't give my daughter back and now um that's actually leading on from this scene which is cool but that means we've got this sort of midpoint sequence with plan for the heist the heist it's all a trap oh no what do we do and then I know that I want Hannah to get recaptured by her father at some point and logically that should flow right on from here I'm worried if it flows but that's supposed to be the dark night of the soul moment so I'm worried that if it flows right on from here there's not going to be enough in this third part of the book and there's not going to be so generally you go straight from the dark night of the soul to the big climax which is going to be an epic battle and um that means that I'm almost there I'm only a couple of scenes away from the climax which was not what I'd expected I put a copy of my board on the screen now this is one of the save the cat exercises that I did back when I was reading save the cat so the board comes after you've done your beat sheet which is the 15 different beats that Blake Snyder recommends on the board you're supposed to divide your story into four parts so first row is act one the second two are part one of act two part two of act two and the final row is act four now what you'll see in my storyboard is that there are different colored post-it notes now you're supposed to use different colored post-it notes for different points of view however because this story is just taking place in one point of view I decided not to do that and just had everything in yellow so since I had all these colors available what I did yesterday was when I went through what I've written so far was I added the new things I'd added in in blue so what you can see here is yellow is from the original board I did and I removed some of those sticky notes that didn't work blue is what's already in the book that I've added and orange is what I plan today and what I'm planning to write and as you'll see there are only three orange post-it notes plus the remaining yellow ones so there's actually not a lot left of the book I'm not sure I think this is a problem I'm not sure how big a problem it is because so if you look at story engineering which was my favorite plotting approach because Larry Brooks divides your book into percentages there are keen milestone events that happen at certain percentages through the book so the event that sets the plot in motion happens at 25 percent the midpoint happens at 50 percent which is when the protagonist gets more information that moves them from being in a purely defensive reactive position to being in an offensive attacking position and then there's the 75 percent mark which is the climax so that's when all of the information that's going to get introduced has been introduced and there's the big battle that will lead to the resolution now I have these moments the problem is that I've got so much between the 25 and the 50 percent mark that if I wrap everything up so quickly that means all of those percentages are going to be in the wrong place and the book structurally won't work as well as it should so at this stage I'm actually not sure what to do I'm not sure whether I should just keep writing what I have and focus on those few scenes that I know I have or I'm not sure if I should you know try and fix this now so try and think of what bits are missing first rather than having to fix it up later having said that though I need socks but so the problem with doing your washing in Estonia or at least in Talinn in our building is that the water is very hard here and all of my socks which were beautiful and soft in Australia have gone all like crusty and yuck so I have a handful of socks that I like to wear because they're the ones that are still softish and they're out drying because we did the washing this morning so I don't want to pack any of the socks I've got left in my drawer so socks will happen later oh that pair's okay so what was I saying yeah so I'm not sure how to approach the rest of my book I think unless I'm inspired to do something else I think I'll just get through the next few scenes outlined on the orange poster notes just because that's what's in my head that's what I'm inspired to do and they might end up being long scenes so there are some like some of these post-it notes are actually like sequences of scenes rather than just being one scene per post-it so it could end up being something like that where even though it is only three post-its that ends up being 15 000 words and it brings this part of the book up to the same length as the first two parts which are currently 40 000 words so we'll see but all in all I'm yeah really happy to still be on track I would love to finish in the next week just because that means I can tie up the week four vlog with um with hitting my 50 000 words and being able to give a recap of how nano went I'll also have a better idea of how much longer I need to finish my book because I already know it is going to be more than another 10 000 words but let's see how the next week goes in any case I'm going to Italy tomorrow so good things are coming so hello from Munich airport Drew and I are on our way to Florence and one of the really annoying things about living in Estonia is that it's very difficult to get direct flights anywhere so we had our two hour flight here and now we have four hours until we can get to Florence tonight the good thing is though that I found this cool little area in the airport where I can do some riding so on the flight I was basically mapping up heist and that's going to take place in the book now because now this is a heist book and so I mapped out the heist and now I know enough about how it's all going to play out that I could take a step back and start doing the planning scene I've also come up with an extra scene that's going to go in between the planning and the execution of the heist which is going to be a chance for the main character to really bond with some of her new mafia mates and that means that when everything goes wrong in the heist and her father shows up and basically demands they need to hand her over in order to live with their lives it's going to be a much bigger sacrifice to have to hand her over than it would have been if she was just hanging out with them they hadn't bonded so now all that's mapped out I have four hours I'm going to see how much more I can get ridden today from Florence so my husband and I got in at about 9 30 last night and a very very bad night of sleep now we're in an amazing location we're right next to the central market problem is we're also right next to a square where on a Monday night people are out and talking until 2 a.m because no one works in Florence I guess so the heating in this apartment was really high there was no way to turn it off so that meant sleeping with the windows open which meant hearing all of the noise from outside around about 2 a.m things got quiet so had a lovely sleep until 5 30 when the garbage trucks started coming out so um a little bit tired but the good news is that that meant there was time for riding this morning before my husband gets up and before we go out and explore so I did 2368 words today which brings me to 44805 words I just had this great Russian drinking scene which was lots of fun and everyone's bonded so that'll make the stakes feel higher in the next scene the good news is that I've already planned out the next scene because so if you've ever like watched any heist type films um you'll notice that there's always you know they have to go through all of the obstacles in advance so you know how hard it's going to be and um what a big achievement it will be if they actually successfully pull off the heist so in order to do the preparation scene I already needed to know how the heist would go so I actually already mapped out the next scene which is really good so we're in Florence until about 3 p.m this afternoon then we're getting a train down to Siena which is where we're spending most of the week that train is I think an hour an hour and 20 minutes so I'm hoping I can get into this next scene then having said that I did think I'd get a lot more done yesterday at the airport and after my initial writing session I was just dead so we'll see how it goes in any case um I am actually ahead of where I need to be again which is exciting so I have no idea what's going to happen after I finish the next scene but how many words hmm I'm just looking at my word count I've got an anorimo open on the table in front of me so I've got six no I've got 5200 words left and I'm just thinking is the next scene going to be 5200 words and it could be in which case I don't need to worry about what comes next to finish an anorimo but at this stage I'm optimistic about getting the next scene done I'm not 100 percent sure what's going to happen next but this next thing will be at least 3000 words I think it might be 5 in which case there won't actually be that much left for me to get to my 50 000 words which is kind of surreal anyway that's my day 26 update and hopefully I can get some nice footage of Florence today and happy Wednesday it is the final Wednesday of Nana Rimo and we are in Sienna Italy which looks absolutely gorgeous though we only got in last night so haven't really seen that much yet I did sleep for 11 hours though which was a big achievement and I'm feeling I'm still feeling really tired though I don't know if that's just like a Nana Rimo hangover type of thing that it's not even hangover because I'm still in the middle of it but I don't know if I'm worn out because of Nana Rimo or if I'm just worn out in general or if maybe I just need two nights of 11 hours of sleep and then I'll feel better who knows but yesterday morning as you know I had a pretty good session I did plan to write when we got on the train to head down here yesterday afternoon I was so worn out though that I just used that time for reading because I'm also running behind in my Goodreads reading challenge for the years I think I've still got 12 books to do by the end of the year which should be interesting but today so today I only had like an hour to write before my husband got up we're probably heading out in the next 20 minutes because we've got a cooking class today which should be fun which means there isn't a lot of time for writing so I did about 1400 words this morning which means I'm still on track but I would really like to do more especially because now I'm in a scene that's already mapped out and because I slept well last night I do think I'll have some energy this afternoon to continue writing I don't love what I wrote today again I it's really interesting the scenes that seem like they should be the most interesting so the shooting scene the first part of the vodka drinking scene this is the high scene they're the ones that seem like they should be the most interesting but when I write them it just feels like it feels like I'm just listing my new show like all of these little things need to happen to make the scene happen but they're not interesting little things I'm not sure what to do about that but because this is an anorama I'm just focusing on moving forward so hoping that um don't know if I'll get to my 50,000 words today I think tomorrow might be a possibility those depending on how this afternoon goes in any case I will keep you informed I think I did it so according to the nanorama website as of yesterday I had 46,239 words which means I needed 3,761 words to hit 50,000 and according to for the words today I've written 4,339 so assuming that everything's working properly at the nanorama end I should have one nanorama I should have 50,000 words so let's enter my numbers into the site 50,578 words 50,000 word badge now let's claim my winner goodies first 50,000 word this November you wrote a novel not quite in my case but getting there this is no small feat 50,000 words in 30 days requires you to develop a mastery of time collecting seconds minutes and hours every day to create something brand new out of that shining raw material what an incredible way to shape your time your space thank you for writing thank you for doing it with us congratulations again and again many times into the future I'm done I'm also dead I you know I've been up for four hours and haven't had breakfast yet so I think um I'm going to have breakfast and enjoy my day and touch base later once I've replenished my words for the day because my brain needs a break but I'm done I I mean this week I knew I would finish because the end of week three I had enough words that I knew like I'd make myself get to 50,000 there was only 14,000 words left I think which is you know it was more than a week left so I think it was pretty much spot on with the nanorimo target of 16167 words a day so I knew with that amount of words left I would get to the end but thinking of where I was in October and where I was at the beginning of the month it's still a little bit shocking but yeah I'm going to go off enjoy my day and I will come back when my brain's working a bit better it is the end of the day I have had very good pizza and reasonably good gelato and I am feeling somewhat revived however I was going through the footage that I did this morning and I don't actually think there's that much more to say I won nanorimo still sort of pinching myself and still feeling a bit worn out but really really happy with how this month has gone the only other thing I wanted to bring up was that obviously my book isn't done I think I'm about 60 to 70% of the way through which means I've probably got about another 30,000 words to go so let me know would you like me to keep doing weekly vlogs while I'm working on this project at this stage I'm hoping I'll get it done by the end of the year just based on what my schedule's looking like in December so that would be basically weekly vlogs for the next month so if that's something you'd like to see let me know and I'll do them and if not I will stop spamming you with these vlogs in any case I hope your nano's going really well please let me know in the comments below and if you like this video please remember to like and subscribe until next time bye