Independent Component 1

I, Andrea Yzaguirre, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents approximately 56 hours and 25 minutes of work. I got the most help from the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty which was a step by step guide to surviving Nanowrimo. I also received help from my fellow nano writers via email. They sent me lots of support and encouragement! 

In the month of November I took part in National Novel Writing Month. Along side thousands of other ordinary people around the world, I decided to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This seems sort of crazy, and it sort of was. 30 days to write a novel? With my schedule? With no previous experience? How was that going to work? Well the first thing I did was prepare myself. I read Chris Baty's accompanying novel and it guided me step by step. I planned my daily writing sessions, started an 'inspiration notebook' and created a playlist for writing specifically. Every day of November I was supposed to write about 1,666 words so that by the end of the month I could reach 50,000. Of course that was just a hope and in the end I often fell short of my goal. luckily a few days out of the month I would find a strange sort of inspiration and I would manage to cover large chunks of my story. It was a very stressful month as I tried to juggle senior project as well as classwork and the writing.  I went to a few meets with other writers at coffee shops or libraries where we worked side by side without discussion. Other times I would write in the back of Mr. Rivas's room on a recliner as students passed by. More often than not I would use my car rides as mandatory writing sessions. That's where I wrote most of the novel. And indeed I succeeded. On the last day of the month I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to cover the last 7,000 or so words.  I ended at 10:50 pm with 50,103 words and I had officially won. It was absolutely amazing! I had received my certificate from the official Nanowrimo website and then proceeded to have a dance party by myself as everyone else in the house slept.  If you would like the day-to-day breakdown then just look at my posts tagged Nanowrimo. At the end of every day I posted an update on the writing  as well as my new word count.

This was a perfect assignment for me. It not only introduced me to other authors and new resources, it also gave me first hand experience as an author. When I reflect on my research I can now examine it in a whole new way. I don't have to speculate on how an author might react to something because I can use my own reaction. Not to mention it was really eye opening on a whole new spectrum. I know a lot more about the formatting and procedures involved in writing. Authors don't usually like to talk about those sorts of things very much so this was perfect. 

The following photos are in chronological order. 

Here we have the first meeting with my fellow Nano writers, prior to November. 

Snap chat is a great way to log anything so of course I used it to count the days. 

This was from Day 1. 

I think this speaks for itself. Things were difficult in the beginning.

The seniors went on a hike and I took advantage of that by taking 

photos and stealing rocks for reference.

This was taken the day of my first write in! Local Nano writers and I met at a cafe in Rancho to write in silent companionship.  

Ah yes, I built a writing fort along the way to help me concentrate.  

An important thing about writing was to keep snacking. Other wise you would get sleepy, so I ate lots of oranges and chocolate covered blueberries.  

This was taken towards the end of the month near Thanksgiving. I was excused from helping in the kitchen as long as I was writing! 

I recieved this the last day of the month. I had to copy and paste my story into a word counter on the NaNoWrMo website. It didn't post the story or anything, just counted it up and announced I had won! It was a great moment and I plan to print this out and put it on my wall.