Winner

I did it. Late last night, I passed my word count requirement for Nano. But on verifying the word count with Nano, I found myself lacking about 2000 words. So, I got up this morning and wrote more.

Now the novel is not finished. It's only about half done. But I completed my first nano and did it with style, so I'm happy. I'll continue working on the novel in my spare time over the coming months. I might print out the whole thing and edit what I have so far. I also need to make up a name glossary. Many of the characters are referred to as Miss. C or XX through the book because I can't remember what I called them. Nano is no the time to be looking back in other files for names.

Thanks for sticking with me through this. Now, I have to shovel snow and get on with my life.

Moving at the speed of ...

I hung the keyboard. All of a sudden, a message popped up on the screen which I was unable to read and I couldn't type anything in anymore. I tried shutting down processes, but still, I was frozen. I could hear the keyclicks, but nothing would come out.

Luckily, mouse was still working, so I saved and rebooted and now I can type again.

the thing that really sucks, was that I was in the middle of a rape scene and it was really hard to get my mind into it and I was just rolling along getting the words down when . . .

So now, I will have to start all over again and get myself back into the frame of mind I need to write this.

Even so, 38580 words so far. Sigh.

Tom, I know you will read this eventually. So I have to ask you. Do you remember the secretary at Coby who used to come into the DP lab occasionally to use the terminals? She used to type so fast she had to stop every once in a while to let the buffers clear or she would hang the terminal?

That's me!

I just hope this scene is as compelling as I hope it is.

The Slowdown

Well, things have slowed down greatly as expected. I'm up to 34347 words now. I'd like to do a push to 40000 this weekend. There's a scrapbooking night this Friday at remcat's, but I'm going to pass it up to write instead. Not that I'm ready to continue work on my scrapbooks anyway. But still. It will be good to get another 6000 done by Sunday night. I keep thinking I have Thanksgiving weekend coming up and I'm not sure if I will write at all then.

So changes in the writing style. I've stopped writing chronologically and started writing key scenes that are clear in my head. For example, last week I killed off one of the characters. I'm not saying who. It got to the point that I will have to go back and do so much rewriting for things that lost context, that I might as well type in key scenes and jump around at will. I think by the end of this exercise, I will only have about half of my novel if that much.

Now that doesn't' t mean that I have a 100000 word novel in the end. I'm sure much will be cut. But there might be much to add. On looking over my timeline though, I feel like I have hardly touched the story.

Dialog is very difficult to write. I can hear it in my head, but as I put it on paper, it seems awkward. It will be interesting to go back in a couple of months are re-read it to see if it sound so awkward or if it is just the delay of mind to fingertips that is making it sound bad as I write.

The other thing is environment. Since I'm back at work, I'm getting more time to think about my most productive environment. It seems to be sitting at a computer with a hot cuppa joe and headphones on playing great music. My most productive CD is the Go Gos and Genesis.

Years ago, when I was sophomore in college, my sister's boyfriend (now her husband) gave me a tape of these two albums. It was my only good quality tape, made on a well designed system using memorex tapes. Sorry Genesis and the Go-Gos. It was piracy. But as a fairly low-income kid, I couldn't afford to just go out and buy any album I liked. So I listened to this almost constantly. It was the only good quality music I had. I mostly listened while studying. Even now, it puts me in a very hard-working mode. Whenever I have a lot of writing to do, putting on the Go-Gos and Genesis helps.

Last year, I got both albums on CD for Christmas. So, see? They finally got their royalties. I've been listening to Genesis at work and I'm still amazed at how much that album (abacab) gets me going.

The other night, I put on a different Genesis album and hooked my earphones up to the PC to listen while I typed. Unfortunately, I got a phone call from my friend and was unable to complete my quota for the night. I did finish over 500 before the call though.

Gotta pull out that music this weekend. Let's see how many words the go-go's can pull out of me.

Casey

The Halfway point

Of wordcount that is. I'm less than a third of the way through my plot so far, but I've reached 26,744 words.

this has indeed been a tough week for nano world. They say week two is tough because you start to handle the complexities of your plot in this week and it is difficult to move the plot along. I would say I agree with that. It is very difficult to move the plot along at this point and I do see a number of areas where I will need to go back and correct or rework. But not now. Now is for the exercise of just getting it down.

Tuesday night, I did over 2100 words. I've decided to give myself Wednesdays off because that's my night out with the girls and I'm over halfway, so I deserve it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tonight I did over 2600.

Feeling good.

First day at the real job

I had forgotten how much I hate the cube farm. The sound of loud air conditioning systems and the dryness of the air. My eyes are still burning.

Not to mention that I could have used a CD player and earphones so the noises were less distracting. And, oh yes, glasses? I keep forgetting how old I am and how sitting in front of a computer screen all day will kill my eyes.

But I survived my first day without anyone pointing at me and shouting Fraud! She's not a writer. In fact, she has few brain cells left!

It was weird, sitting in my first engineering team meeting after 5 years. Surrounded by geeks again. Listening to people going on and on about service connection points and ports and firewalls. I really need to work on my mask. I'm having a hard time pulling off looking interested for an hour.

I was pretty exhausted by the time I picked up the wee ones at school today. So I'm impressed at the 2738 words I pushed out tonight. Maybe there is hope that I can complete this novel this month. I think I will take Wednesday's off since Wednesday is my night out with friends and I don't want to have to plug in 1500 words at 10:00 when I get home. That could be disastrous.

So my total is 22269. I could be halfway by tomorrow.

Sunday writing session

3526 words for today in two sessions. I'm over 19,000 words and looking forward to early completion of my halfway point of 25000 words by week end. That is if I can keep up the 3000/day which is doubtful. I will be either working or with kids at all times from now on.

A moment of silence for the demise of my free time.

That's right. I'm heading back to the work force today. I'm all dressed up in my business wear with my brief case packed and visions of cubicle life looming on my horizon. The kids pack onto the bus in 10 minutes.

Some musings on the process. It seems my weekend strategy of writing for an hour, taking a break (a very long one) and then returning to the keyboard for an hour or so is working. I'm consistently going past my quota of 3000 using this method. I could continue but I do have to sleep sometimes.

I can see how some people would be very stalled at about the 20000 word mark. As I write, sometimes my characters decide to do thing I had not planned in my outline. These plot tangents sometimes need to be controlled and sometimes make more sense or support the story better. In the case of the errant plot tangent, I simply delete and redo. In the case of the natural evolution of plot, I will need to go back and edit the original manuscript to correct for the change. For example, let's say I decide that Maria has two older brothers, but later in the plot it becomes illogical for her character as it sits in the plot to have two older brothers. It's better in the NaNo world to just continue on as if they never existed, but to go back in rewrites and excise them. It' is verboten in NaNo to go back while you should be writing.

I need to come up with some strategies to remember these things though. I think I will begin using my footnote area or a different color text to write notes about these plot changes as I go. Unfortunately, this may show up in the Word wordcount. So maybe the post it note tool will be better. Will try some notes techniques tonight and see how they show on word count and usability.

Two writing sessions.

3310 words today. Total 16005. That's more than a third of the way and we are only 5 days into the contest. Maybe I can take some time off at Thanksgiving. Let's see how writing the novel goes after I've spent a whole day writing dry user manuals. If my plot becomes suddenly very boring and technical 1/3 of the way through the book, y'all know why.

Some done over coffee in the morning. The rest in the past hour before turning in to bed. Sometimes it is really difficult to transition the plot into a new scene. Once it starts the momentum just pulls me. Some pre-planned plot details have changed; some because the logic just didn't work as it was, others because the characters just took a path of their own.

Interesting how writing works.

Coffee

Sat down to write early today. 3337, words. Not bad. Writing is much easier over a cup of hot coffee.

Lastborn is home with a cold today and I worried that I wouldn't be able to get anything done. But he really is sick and spending most of his time cuddled up in the big blue chair in front of the TV, which has been off since Monday. It was good planning to ground Firstborn on Monday for bad grades. :-) Now the TV is forbidden treasure to be savored, instead of the ho-hum everyday background noise.

Question for other writers out there?

Do you keep a character dictionary of some sort? I'm finding myself having a hard time keeping track of minor character names from day to day. I have to keep going back and reopening a previous chapter to see what I called the grocer or what that English teacher's name was.

Have you ever written a large cast book where the main characters have no last name? I want the main group of girls in this book to have a sort of every-girl feel to them. So, I wanted to call them by their first name only, but I keep having to refer to supporting characters as Xs mother or Xs father. It seems choppy and I refer to all the other adults by their sir names because that was the style in the 60s. It would be OK to refer to the parents as Mr. and Mrs, but seems to take away that every-girl first name thing.

Any thoughts? Am I even making sense?

Day 3, making up for lost time.

In two writing sessions today, I completed 4378 words for a total of 9358. That's almost 1/5th of the way.

My husband asked if the founder of nanowrimo was going to read every novel completed. He wondered what the point of the exercise is if not to get some feedback.

So, just to clarify for those unfamiliar with nanowrimo, the point is not to prove that I'm a great novelist. That can't be proven in one 50,000 word novella. The point is to see if I can produce 50000 words ina month. Why? Because to be a novelist, it's not enough to be able to come up ith great scenes, great dialog, complex characters and believable scenes. You must be able to produce! Lots of words. A novel would be about 100 to 150, ooo words. So if you can't get through 50000, how can you possibly get through 100,000.

No one promised they would be readable words, thought I hope they are.

So the interesting thing this has shown is that I can produce that many words and maybe even more. I've been spending about an hour to 2 hours a day on the 3000 plus I'm producing and no one ever said a whole novel had to be written in a month. So I think I have proven that the work of writing my thoughts down would be reasonable. So once I finish this, I can move on to EdMo and get some kind of idea as to whether my thoughts are those that someone would want to buy.

Who knows. Maybe once I move to Ohio, I can spend all my days at a desk in front of a big window overlooking the vast expanses of Dayton, clicking away on my keyboard and creating the next NYT best seller.

And then, she woke up.

Busy day

1966 words. Not bad in a half hour. Hoping to get much more time today.

Helping to support a book who's profits will go toward Katrina relief.

3014

words written, fueled by junior mints and a butter finger. Is this the real reason why NaNoWriMo starts the day after Halloween?

Woo!

Day 1

Will I ever get a chance to write today? Between the car service, appointments, karate and kids, time is in tiny, unfocused pieces.

Tonight. It must be tonight.