Take your mama out.

So what's going on with the novel is that I'll be brining the novel to a fast end, leaving out detail so that I can get 50k in November and because I'm not thrilled with it in its entirety right now. I've dsicovered a lot more about the book as I've been going, and now need to go back and fix it so that the beginning fits what I ended up with. What I didn't realize until late in the first draft process, after an unnecessarily long process, was that you can change the ending in the editing process.

you migfht not think so, ut it's true

this how iwrite without a right hand. the novel is worse for tthe typing difficukiteis. funny hoiw thsat works. that saidm , i'm goign to finish it in itme.

typos galore

So I took thanksgiving off, because of this rudimentary typing style that is frustrating and because I wasn't focused. i have to average 926 words a day for the last days of November to finish. I hope to do better than that this weekend, so that in case my other hand breaks, I can still finish.

wheels coming off

tomorrow is thanksgiving, and I didn't write last night because I'm managing about fifteen words a minute with my hand injury. I think I'll go to the doctor for the first time in forever. And I'm not any closer to solving my novel ending problem. My hand is grotesque and useless.

Typing life. Ruined.

Although I had some ideas yesterday afternoon in drive time, I chose not to share them at all with my computer. Instead, I took the entire night off, and it was nice. I realized I have a lot of other things to worry about, and thought that as long as I kept busy at home, I'd be fine, even if I wasn't writing. That plan worked for a little while until it stopped working and I watched a movie for half an hour, then got back out of bed to watch the last quarter of Monday night football, where the Packers got served.

I did manage to cause enormous swelling in my right hand which is making it impossible to type quickly. Photo on other blog.

Yes, we've got Trouble.

So where are we at? I was thinking of what I was going to say here last night, but that's gone. Typical. Here's where the story's at. I'm having a problem reconciling the way I want things to be in the story with the way things are. I'm having a hard time thinking of any justification for the behaviors of the characters that doesn't involve magic. I think that that might be cheating since my story is set in a non-magical world. A problem is that I'm finding that my underlying problem is going to be left not completely revealed, and without revealing that, I don't have a central conflict to resolve. In fact, you might say the novel is a big mess without a true center. It really, really is no good. The 2-dimensional characters don't develop and some storylines are left behind for chapters before being brought out again for no good reason. Awful.

I've painted myself into a corner, and I don't know what I'm going to do. I've got to have some brilliant idea to drive myself to the ending, which has yet to reveal itself to me.

working through the pain

Yesterday I managed to get some afternoon writing in despite the evening activity. I don't know that I'll get 6000 this weekend, but I think I'll try. If something else comes up, so be it. Just like last year, the sticking point is going to be my ending. I don't really know about how I can end it in a satisfactory way. I've just got the journey in my mind. Last year, I really didn't finish the novel, so this year, I have to be sure to do that. I've also got to learn to edit, but that's neither here nor there. I certainly don't have the momentum that I had when starting out, which is perfectly normal, I'm sure, although I'll get some more when I get closer to finishing, just to finish. Kind of like a marathon.

The law of diminishing returns

The word counts are getting lower and lower, but it's not like I'm just lounging around, either. I'm making a conscious choice that some other things are important, too, and figure I ought to be able to enjoy the fruits of my earlier labors. When I first started this year and last year, I could pretty much write anything I wanted. Your novel can go anywhere. Now I'm at the point where I know what I want to happen, but I've got to figure out how to make it happen. Is that contrived? Is all fiction contrived? It's like those puzzles where you have to put together a bunch of oddly shaped pieces to make a square or something, and at first you have all sorts of degrees of freedom to put the pieces wherever you want, but you paint yourself into a corner at the end. So I've got to figure out something clever here to get to the finish. This need for cleverness is also contributing to my lack of major progress. At least I'm not moving backwards.

League night leads to low word count.

I haven't had very good word count days, because I've bee distracted in the evenings, and I've had decent word counts in the mornings, so I haven't felt too guilty about slacking at night. Last year, I came home and wrote every day after work before dinner. This year, I'm feeding myself first, because by the time I get home from work, I already have 900-1000 words under my belt, which as a novelist, is really more of a garter. I really would like to be finished with it, because anytime you start something that takes effort, you want to be done with it, usually ignoring the fun to be had along the way. Last year at this time I was at 30,147 words. This year, 36,344. I didn't actually finish until the 28th last year, but this year I'm planning to finish on the 21st. There I said it.

Not a misanthrope.

Thanks to some unintentional caffeine consumption last night, i got a little extra writing in. Last night I was headed towards tragic in the story when I realized what was going on and changed to comitragic. The story took its big turn last night, and now the payoff comes. i don't really know how long it's going to take to write the payoff, and probably in editing, I'll make a decision to move some of these reveals up further in the story to give it a hook. I also think I'm probably not allowed to add any more characters, and need to subtract some in the editing process. Merge some characters, because there are too many right now for me to keep track of and keep busy, like putting on a play with 15 actors and 5 parts.

"Because burning has its own taste."

So yesterday, as I suspected, I didn't get a lot of writing time, but because my morning session added 1100 words, and I got 20-30 minutes in before leaving the house again in the evening, I got past the 1667 count, although my morning session alone got me my remaining daily quota because I'm so far ahead. My problem solving situation is going well, although I just introduced a "ripped from the headlines" character who is probably going to need to be tweaked to make him his own person and not the malicious dork who he's based on.

Resurrection

I thought on my way home from writing yesterday and came up with an idea that I can't believe I hadn't thought of before. It solves almost all my problems, and I thought of a new good element, to boot. So I think I'm energized again, and I hope that this is the kick that I needed, my second wind, to enjoy my novel again. Because it was getting rote. I think I'm ready to have fun again. What will I do with the last 10,000 words that haven't been much fun? Well, maybe they can still be heartfelt. I'm going to be short on time this week, so it's good that I've gotten way ahead, and since my average is above 2000 words, even if I were to fall behind the 1667 words/day pace, I could catch up. So I'll hit 50k, that was really never in question, but will I finish and will I like it. Shout out to kudos.

exercise in futility

The audience. So I'm writing about middle school, and the typical audience for a book set in middle school would obviously be middle schoolers. However, I'm not intended it for middle schoolers, I'm intending it for adults. Because of this, I'm not nicing it up at all. It's a good thing this isn't a commerical enterprise, because probably this is too adult for kids, and no one would want to try to sell this to adults. I'm also really struggling with how the plot is going to play out. I'm thinking and thinking, but not enough. I'm not thinking while I'm writing, so I guess I'm really doing more wirting than thinking and planning. Problem. I've got too many elements, and some are being ignored for long chunks of time. Isuppose this is the type of thing that gets fixed in editing, and the whole reason we're doing this in a month is so we'll keep writing despite these concerns about the direction we're taking, because if this weren't nanowrimo, I'd probably not continue writing this until I had something figured out, which isn't necessarily the best thing to do.

I just feel like it's getting worse and worse, and less and less fun. Like I'm writing this death march story, and any sort of whimsy is gone. I need to take some time for reflection rather than obsess over getting 6000 words this weekend, which I did.

I am the cerebral assassin.

It's a good thing I got over 1000 words in yesterday's morning session, because I didn't get anything else written all day. I have trouble using the interstitial time during the day. My brain always feels like it just needs a break, which is probably how everyone's brain feels always, but at least I'm back on the horse on Saturday afternoon. I was not awake during the morning today. I'm enjoying what I'm writing right now, and I'm comparing it to television shows. The advantage the novelist has is that if the story changes form, you can go back and foreshadow it or put in supporting evidence and lay groundwork. On the TV show, those shows have already aired, and you can't change them. I'm hoping to have a pretty good weekend in terms of word count. My character is going through her school year, and I'm halfway through in word count, and she's in December of her school year. Considering that the ending will take more than its share of words in relation to the time it takes, and that January through April will probably take fewer words than the time they represent, I think I'm in pretty good shape. A good thing to talk about tomorrow would be the audience for my novel.

halfway done

I was looking at my word counts from last year, and I didn't get much done on Thursdays, probably because of bowling league. The mornings are helping with that this year, and yesterday I got over 2,000 words to keep up with Stephen King. I have a plan for the book that will give satisfaction to the reader, so maybe other people would like it even if it's not that good. I felt a little more comfortable writing yesterday, even though I'm getting fewer and fewer words down in the morning. Part of it is that I'm writing notes that aren't counting towards the novel word count. I'm also afraid of carpal tunnel. I don't really practice good ergonomics in my writing.

a place for fun in your life.

Here's the thing about where I'm at today. I like a little bit of what I've written, but again, there's nothing moving forward on the plot, really, and I don't know how I want to move it forward. My characters visited the Mall of America yesterday (they're still there, actually), and they've been having other little adventures and misadventures, and I've laid some groundwork for a plot, but also I'm still not certain what the plot is. I've said before that plot is overrated, but it's probably the easiest thing for an amateur like me to put into a book and I'm not confident I have the skills to write something interesting enough to be compelling without a plot.

lies and damned lies

Here's a trick I've learned this year: Use statistical feedback to motivate yourself. I set up a spreadsheet that shows the daily quota assuming you use the entire 30 days, then I enter my cumulative word count, which is constantly updated by the application I use, and my spreadsheet gives the daily count, an average daily count, and the number of days expected until I finish, along with an updated quota assuming I use all 30 days.

Although I feel fine about my main character, I don't think I've done a good job of creating my other characters. I'm going to try to do a little character study within the novel to help this out. My other problem is that I've wanted to do a mostly realistic novel. I don't mind having some outrageous parts, but within the realm of possibility. What I don't want is to make this science fiction or fantasy. What would be acceptable would be magical realism, however I'm not that well-read in that genre, although I've loved what I have read. I don't know how I'll handle that situation.

For the love of God, Montresor!

So i was happy about my writing last night, because of quantity, sure, but also because I wrote something where I got really sad for my hero because I am cruel to her. There's a difference between me being sad for my character, and a reader doing the same thing, but that's the best guideline I have so far. One of the tricky things about writing/storytelling is that you've got to know what to leave out. I have a tendency to want to tell every moment in the life of a character, when that's certainly not necessary, and, in fact, detracts from the main story. My tip today that I learned from last year's contest is that if you get to a point where you've gone down the wrong path and need to back the truck up, that's called editing and editing is off limits during nanowrimo. However, you're going to say that your novel would grind to a halt if you weren't able to back up. The compromise is to italicize the part you want to eliminate so that it still is included in your word count, which it should because you had to write it in order to know that it wasn't what you needed, and to erase it completely would be editing.

"this week or last week/I don't really care about it anymore"

Yesterday I nickel and dimed my way to a decent word count, working in pieces as small as 200 words, because there are so many distractions and other things I could be doing on the weekends. When I'm writing here in the morning, this is the only thing I could possibly be doing right now, so I'm right here in the moment. Not so yesterday, so even though I felt guilty I wasn't working harder, I worked not so hard often enough that it worked. Last year my novel was very linear and followed the main plot pretty much from start to finish. This year, my novel is more ambitious and less linear, and I'm finding more problems with it and anticipating much more difficulty in the editing process, because instead of just changing the wording, I'll have to move big chunks around, and go back and insert stuff that I neglected in the first draft. I'm a quarter of the way through, and I'm still on my first miniconflict. I've barely begun to lay groundwork for the main plot, and that's something I'm going to have to go back and fix.

Where's the joy de vivrevrere? ruh?

I've been writing without a sense of fun, and I believe that if I'm not having fun writing, then it's not going to be fun to read. I suppose this isn't necessarily true, but I'm not writing some Dickensian novel, I'm writing something with, let's be honest, a little less substance. So I better be having fun while writing, otherwise I'm going to end up with something forced like my college short story. It was like I was trying so hard to show some universal truths, well not even that, I was trying so hard to create a plot of show some of the characters doing Big Serious Things. My strength is in the fun, and I need to return to that.

And we've hit the doldrums.

On the other hand, you don't want to become obsessed with the novel to the point where you're avoiding beneficial human contact. This almost happened last night when I procrastinated, thus not reaching my quota, and then got a bunch of phone calls. I was considering not doing anything at all in order to finish my quota, but realized that that was silly, given that I am ahead in the game.

So with this novel, I'm going outside of really what I know, in that I'm not familiar with middle schools in my life right now. This is a problem in creating dialogue, but I can't worry about that anymore. There's no turning around now. I just have to plod forward. I still don't have an overarching plot structure other than the simple development of the character. Be patient.

But here's the problem with missing your quota: Your quota gets higher, creating a potentially dangerous feedback loop.

Let's see what i can get done right now.

Some sort of "story" emerges

So while I've talked about the process, I haven't talked about the novel itself, and that might be something one might want to include in blogging a novel. I'm writing the story of a student who enters a newly consolidated rural middle school. It's mostly an exercise in catharsis to exorcise the ghosts lingering from my junior high days. I want to write a laugh out loud story, but what I really like are the stories that make you laugh but have heart, too, like "Freaks and Geeks." The idea is heavily influenced by the TV shows I've been watching, in that the (imagined) structure of the novel is much like one season of a TV show, and the possibility of subsequent volumes is definitely open. So far, I've spent almost 7000 words describing the first day of school in a novel that's supposed to cover an entire school year. There will need to be some jumping ahead.

Day Two recap: Crushing the Words

Yesterday was an even better word count day than the first day. In fact, it was a new record of 3384. This before work time is making a huge difference. The problem remains, though, that this is going to be a much longer book than 50k, so really, I might not even be keeping up. I suppose I have some control over that. I wouldn't be a good situation to make 50k but not to finish the novel. That's kind of what happened last year, and I just finished that one last month. The thing about that is that without the external motivation, you stop working.

My advice to others doing this, as someone who finished last year, is to keep up your quota. If you're on a roll, take advantage of it early on. Then later, when you're feeling very, very unproductive, you'll have that cushion. Last year I'd come down and write for an hour before eating dinner, when usually I'd have dinner straight away because I was hungry. Then I'd return later on, and usually set the timer, making myself write for, say, half an hour. Then, break. You want to be pretty much within sight of the finish by Thanksgiving, because you might have some days around then where you don't get much done. Ooh, and "park on a downward slope." When it's getting close to time to stop, stop at a point where you know what you're going to write next. This way, when you start again, you'll get going right away.

Day One recap: We're going to need a bigger book.

So yesterday was a really good word count day. I was looking at my daily word counts from last year, and see that yesterday's total of 2715 would have been my fifth highest word count from last year. That's the good news. There are, however, a couple downsides. First of all, the first day is probably the most effortless day. There's no fatigue from having done this for how many days in a row, and you don't have to worry about repeating any story elements because you haven't written anything down yet. The other downside, and this is specific to my 2005 novel, is that this thing is destined to be much more than 50,000 words. So I got my quota for yesterday, but that's assuming that I'm stopping at 50k. I think most people would agree that what defines the end of a novel is the ending rather than putting down a book once you've read 50,000 words.

In terms of the entire endeavour, they play this up like it's some massive undertaking, that you can kiss all your free time goodbye for the entire month. I guess it depends on how busy you are to start off with, and it helps that I have an hour of writing already scheduled into the day that I'm using. This doesn't account for unexpected distractions, writer's block, emergencies, etc. And now that I think about the other writing project with deadlines this month, it gets a little trickier.

It's 7:23 and I'm already over 100 words for the day. Go early birds!

Day One: The author forgets what voice he's writing in.

It's on. I'm running a little late on the first day of Nanowrimo 2005, which carries over nicely from the stress I experienced last night having kids staying after school and knowing I had to buy Halloween candy and then serve trick or treaters, and also get ready to write today. So I think I'm ready. I haven't started a single word of the novel, but I've prewritten way more than I did last year, which was pretty much nothing. There's this online community of wrimos, as we're called, and they do in person write-ins and meeting sessions, but I haven't participated because I don't know why. I've made some fundamental changes to my novel concept in the past 24 hours, so we'll see how that plays out.

I got almost 1000 words in this morning, and if I can do that every morning this month, that's 15-20,000 words I didn't get in last year. Of course, I won't be staying up so late.