NaNoWriMo 2003

I'm going to spend this month, as I know you are also Tep, doing notes and getting a decent structure happening so I at least have something to work with/hang onto if I flounder at any point in November. I'm still wavering nervously over the topic I've picked, but at this late stage I don't want to start changing my mind again.

Looking forwards to it though. I feel like the literary equivalent of an impatient driver at the blocks, revvin' my engine.

Pray for me, everyone.

I ask this every single year, btw.

... what's the point of ever writing a novel?

A) Sign up for their website
B) Announce it to everyone
C) Write specifically Nov 1-Nov 30?

Basically I'm asking what people are meant to get out of rushing out a shitty novel and submitting it to a website where no one will read it or help you with it or anything, you just get an online sticker to put on your blog.

I'm not knocking anyone DOING it, I want to know why! Every year I get like this horrified confused reaction to the question!

It's a motivational thing for me. When you're as blocked as I am, you'll try anything. But to each his own, right?

ugh

You get a certain degree of moral support out of it; not people reading your novel, necessarily, and no, no one's going to help you with it per se, but they can't anyway. You get understanding -- you can blow everyone off and just write with much less complaint than at other times of the year, believe me.

Mostly you get a sense of accomplishment, and if you pay attention to what you're doing and don't just write aliens coming in to blow up the love triangle you don't know what to do with, for the sake of hitting 50K, you learn enough about novel-writing to figure out if it's something you really want to do again.

ugh

I hear you, Vic.

True enough, I suppose. Though I can never remember to enter the competition myself, it's always interesting to read what mates have spent so much time agonising over---then give them further validation when you're done.

Why do this? Its like why climb everest? Because its there. No one cares if I finish this or not or its even readable - except me. And that self-discipline is something I need a lot more of.

To me, writing a novel just always sounded like a neat thing to do. When I'm 80 I'll be able to say I wrote a novel at some point. I don't know. I love to read, but I'm getting really tired of a lot of the plot lines. I am interested in romantic comedies, but it's hard for me to find ones that seem geared towards me in particular. It's the same reason I started playing music. I needed something more for myself, something that spoke to me. So, basically, I hope to write a book I'd want to read.

I think the point of having it all in one month is to force yourself to get words out on paper. That's probably the hardest part. You can always go back and edit and do re-writes. It's getting that word count out there so that you can have something to work with that's difficult. I've tried writing stories a few times, but I usually ended up just staring at the computer screen for a long time and then getting bored. I hope I can actually push myself to reach some sort of closure this time.

Who knows, maybe some day I'll be sittin' at home, eating bon-bons, cat in lap, writing romance novels. And it will all start next month. Whoopee.

So how much of a plotline does everyone here have going? I had fun reading through some of the NaNoWriMo forums, but it's more fun discussing it with my fellow ILXors as I feel I sort of know some of you.

1666 words a day (if I remember right) is not as hard as it might sound. If you can write it, dialogue can make things go quicker.

I must say Tep, some of your "what I'm doing" tips on LJ have been a great help too.

I just need to lead up to this with some reasearch, as the core idea Ive come up with has some psychological and theoretical things I need to know more about.

Or maybe I could just talk shit. Who knows.

Writing 1500 words a day? Christ, that's easy. That's nothing. I could do that in the bath. When I was writing, I used to be able to bang out 10,000 words on a good day. Hah! So if I could get 5 days solid work, then I'd have a novel. Maybe I should do it. I'll think about it at the weekend and maybe sign up on Monday.

1) You don't need all THAT much planning. It's hard for me to gauge: mine was about Jesus. I pretty much knew the tentpoles[a], and I knew how it ended. Figure out the clock -- I should've put that entry into memories, but the clock of a story is the thing that has to happen in order for the story to end (and likewise, once it happens, the story is over except for wrapping up, and wrapping up should be quick without being rushed): the clock of Saint of Daybreak is Bishop figuring out what happened to him, and getting Nicky and Leah off his back. The clock of Die Hard is Bruce Willis defeating the terrorists (or more to the point, getting himself and his wife to safety).

Figure out what the clock is pretty soon into the story, if not ahead of time -- that way, any time you're stuck, just ask yourself, okay, I'm thirty miles from the clock right now, how do I move towards it?

[a] Tentpoles are probably obvious, but: don't think about plot as an inevitable progression, exactly -- yeah, there's the clock, but there are lots of ways of getting there, depending on what happens in the vast expanse of story. Think of plot as a collection of events that occur to lead up to the clock: the major ones -- or the fixed, inevitable ones, if you want to think of them that way -- are tentpoles. They hold everything up. You're always moving towards at least one -- and the stuff you're writing right now doesn't have to lead to the next one, necessarily, but the things you set in action can't ignore that next one, either.

Tentpoles in Die Hard: Bruce Willis evades the terrorists when they first take everyone hostage; terrorists become aware of Bruce Willis; BW makes contact with outside world via Twinkiecop; FBI becomes involved. That last one is an inevitable one, pretty much: in the world this story takes place in, the FBI necessarily gets involved in things like this, and so that's an external tentpole -- it isn't something that the other characters deliberately cause (although we quickly find out Hans's plans depend on it, but the point is no one in the story calls the FBI up and tells them to come over), but it affects everything. The others sound inevitable, but only because they define the story so well: if you stop thinking of Die Hard as a fait accompli, and think of the story as "an estranged husband who's a cop on another coast has to protect himself and his wife from clever crooks posing as terrorists," there's no reason why Bruce Willis would have to evade the terrorists initially, nor be separated from his wife, nor involve the outside world ... etc.

2) Dialogue fills up space quicker than action or description do, and still moves the story forward and develops character. Choose a story that puts the characters around each other as much as possible -- if I remember right (I have it right next to me, but I don't think I need to flip through to check), mine was basically all dialogue scenes with only one action scene, and then the expository epilogue.

Dialogue does so much of your work for you. Mind you, I don't mean your whole story should be in quotation marks -- dialogue scenes still need to have some kind of physical action going on, and plot in the sense that what people are saying needs to matter and needs to create and reflect conflict -- but it writes fast, and the pages fill up, and it's easier to let a dialogue scene go on longer than you'd originally intended than it is to try to beef up an action scene.

(Action doesn't have to mean vampires and guns, of course.)

3) It's 1666 words a day, on average, which means if you write 2000 words a day you have, what, five days off. It's even better if you can write a couple hundred words on those "days off" -- you'd be surprised how quickly you can write 200 words, if that's all you're writing that day.

4) The main thing you want to figure out before you start is where you need to start. Again, with mine, I was doing Jesus: but I didn't start with the birth, or the infancy, or the "lost years" ... I started with Jesus leaving John the Baptist's camp. That gave me pretty much exactly as much story as I needed -- but putting that aside, it set things up so that my story wasn't about Jesus's life, it was about Jesus's work. His baptism of/by John is when he sets out on his own, and that's ultimately what leads to his crucifixion. Figure out where your story needs to start in order for the clock to start ticking either right away, or in the first three thousand words, or to have been ticking from the start (in Bishop, the clock's ticking from the start, you just don't know what it is until the end of chapter one.)

5) If you do it in just November, it'll be over before you know it. Two months is a long time. One month, when you've got a wedding and Thanksgiving, goes quick. Next thing you know, you've written a novel.

6) I did it when I was sick! My gallbladder had gone kaput and I didn't even know it for months. I was in pain and not sleeping! If I could do it, you can do it.

(I also did 90% of my research as I wrote, but I didn't have many other committments, and most of them were things I could let slide; this year, I can't do that, and so I'm putting things together now by rewriting an old story from scratch ... probably. Still haven't decided for sure if I'm doing that or Space Robot.)

Of course, I'm just talking shit. I read that somewhere, I've never written a novel before.

Ack, I never sent Vic those earlier novels. :-( Must do that before I leave today.

Only for sale, unfortunately; http://www.cafepress.com/kingdomnovel -- overpriced, but it's self-published and print-on-demand, so I didn't have much control over that.

And yeah, the overplanning -> boredom thing is on the money, in my experience. I know there are authors who claim to plan everything out in advance, but I'm not sure I believe them.

The people were nice but very cagey and reluctant to talk about their ideas. Also a lot of wacky NorCal faux-literary types reading their character sketches off of their PDAs.

I hope this thread keeps going because I for one need motivation and inspiration. Sarah is already sat behind me bashing out ideas on her laptop, but she has written a couple of short novels before, and can easily crank out 10-15 pages a day. As evidenced by my presence on this board, I am a master of procrastination. So...hassle me. Give me hell. I will of course reciprocate if required.

I'll hassle you if you want. I've been making notes today, trying to get things together enough for an outline that's more extensive than what I have now -- a breakdown of the first couple pages, and some scattered "much later, THIS happens!" type notes.

Don't congratulate me on not smoking, cause it makes it sound like I've quit, which I haven't quite; the idea right now is just to only smoke when I'm on campus. That way I don't think I've myself as having quit ... and then December will come along with its three week break when I won't be on campus at all ...

We'll see.

My HUGE fear is lack of discipline. If I come home from work as it is and flop on the couch in exhaustion and dont touch my PC, wtf difference is it gonna make in 2 weeks time? Oy.

One of my tentative plans right now, especially since I'm in a wedding in early November and am handling many Honor Guy chores, is to get up an hour earlier and work. I'll be tired earlier, yeah, but I think it's more likely to work than my usual plan of "stay up late working," which can snowball quickly when my ideal work period is 10pm-3am, and I teach twice a week at 8am.

We'll see. It's been months since I've managed the kind of intense focus I've had in the past, but there are a dozen factors responsible for that.

Am also angling for a week holiday in November which will help trmendously if they let me have it.

I don't have too much of a structure. I mean, I have some basic themes I want to explore and I've thought about my characters a bit, but I don't really know yet where I'm going with it. I'm sticking to the advice that if you figure out too much ahead of time, you'll kill your inspiration, or something...

I'm going to a party Saturday night (a late Halloween party). I plan to celebrate my first day of novel writing. :)

YES! I'd read it!

(as if I have the time. . .)

Dear Mr. L,

Thanks for your multimedia contribution. We at NaNoWriMo are baffled by the doodles in tribute to Malkmus, though we can appreciate the amount of creativity. Please enclose a primer for the layperson.

Thank you

Cookie Dough Has Feelings Too

My Fucked Up Family Has Exhausted Any Chance I Had For a Normal Life

There was so much I wanted to get done this week so I wouldn't have to worry about it during November, and this damn cold's made it impossible to do.

It was actually rather entertaining asking my boss "Hi can I have the first week in November on leave?" "probably, whats it for?" "Oh, I'm writing a novel" I said casually. He looked like I'd just insulted his grandmother in klingon or something. I think he thought I was making it up :D

but it's all good though.
bring it on, you heartless month:
I will knock you OUT

(Oh, and along those lines: I'm reminding myself that it's probably better/more productive to take a day to outline and not write, if I've slowed down because I'm not sure where I'm going with something, than to end up with eight days where I'm barely cracking a thousand.)

But I have trouble with even mildly autobiograhical material to begin with; my based-only-in-premise-on-fact "I found a severed finger on Decatur" story is like pulling teeth.

The movie soundtracks thing, for sentimental scenes, can be broadened to "listen to music that fits the mood you want." I have dozens of mix CDs laying around for action scenes, action scenes with guns, action scenes without guns, action scenes with Popes, etc.

*yr picture, natch

Figure, looking for a job isn't likely going to take more time than working a nine to five job, right? So if you could do it while working, you can do it while looking for work. Unless you're reeeeeally efficient at using your time, Nanowrimo time isn't likely to cut into time that would be productive: so why guilt-trip yourself over spending time getting better at something you want to be better at?

All right, dig it, next post is long, cause it's the first 1667 words of an unrelated novel I wrote, just to show last-minuters and cold-feeters a) what 1667 words looks like (it's the average daily wordcount you need) and b) just how little needs to happen in 1667 words. It really can go quickly.

I grabbed her wrists and yanked her across the bed, rolled us both to the floor, kicked the bathroom door open bare-footed and listened to the floorboards.

"What the fuck --"

"Shh!" I covered her mouth. Shit, I'd forgotten that it hurt to land on wooden floors. My hip sparkled at me in frustration. Those little things, those little things, you could forget them so easily. "Ever been religious, Maggie?"

She spoke through my fingers. "Mass every Sun--"

"Got a cross, a crucifix, rosary beads, anything?" She didn't answer, clearly thought I was the latest in a string of Crazy Johns, but her eyes flicked to the box of costume jewelry on the bureau. I imagined I could hear footsteps in the bar downstairs, or the creak of the door to the stairwell, but of course I couldn't: of course I was being swayed by the paranoia of the pulse.

Didn't have time to be nice, so I shoved her into the bathroom and leapt across the floor, imagined footsteps up the stairs, grabbed the jewelry box, found the rosary beads with a crucifix attached and flung them to her even as I dropped the box and kicked the glass out of the window over the wrought-iron balcony.

She was screaming but it didn't matter, and it wouldn't matter if they heard the glass break, because they knew I was here and they'd find me if I was there to be found. They could smell me, sweat and sex and beating blood.

"Pray, Maggie. The Devil's real and he's on his way. Find your faith and pray, or you'll die."

Stupid storybook words for a stupid storybook night, but all I had time for. I fell through the window, leading with my shoulder and pitching myself over the balcony, slamming against the closed dumpster hard enough to have broken my arm if I hadn't rolled with the impact. Wood splintered apart in the room I'd left, and Maggie's screams became shrieks. If she found her faith, she'd live: if she died, she'd die quickly, because they didn't have time for play with the bonus levels, they were gunning for the big boss.

Idiot. I shouldn't have stayed, shouldn't have taken Maggie up on her offer. Shouldn't have been out after dark. Should've just collected my guns and gone back to the hotel. Should've known even a bitch pup like Bango would've gotten the word out this quick, when the word was what it was.

I started running without taking the time to stand up straight, bare feet smacking against the pavement, feeling the artery in my throat pulse like a beacon. I needed a crowd, a herd, something to get lost in. No one was around except a few drunks huddled by the corners, a few cars lumbering by. Bourbon Street. I had to get to Bourbon Street.

I could taste copper in the muddy air of the Mississippi River, a foul mist rising up around me.

"I can smell you on her, Bishop! You won't survive the night!" That was Vict's voice, carrying further than a human's could have across the humid streets. Not as close as I'd worried, though: they were having trouble following me. Having trouble scenting me. Good.

Bishop. I was effectively excommunicated, dead among the dead, but few of them were old enough to have any other names for me.

I reached for -- oh fuck. Oh fuck I was stupid. Near-perfect memory replayed it for me: taking off my piece at the hooker's insistence, not minding because I didn't want to sleep with a woman who lacked the sense to take care of herself, putting aside my security in a stupid moment of the meat. I could see it, black and oiled and brand-new and loaded and left in my jacket on the chair by the door. No jacket, no gun, and I had maybe four minutes to do something about it, if I was lucky.

Didn't need a watch to know it was six hours till daybreak. Old habits, old skills. You keep track of the moon and stars, like a salty sailor. Keep an internal clock you could time an atom by.

Think, Tomás.

I ran while I thought, feet slapping, hitting puddles of beer and shards of bottle and fuck but I hoped I wasn't bloodletting, wasn't giving them more trail, more scent. Four minutes would be tough enough to catch as it was.

Rampart Street.

I headed away from the river, forgetting Bourbon for the moment, sticking to the outskirts of the French Quarter where tourism and T-shirts gave way to tattoo parlors and biker bars. Time to get into character.

There was a guy coming out of a bar without a sign, nothing identifying it except the neon Dixie logo twinkling like green glass fireflies. Looked the type. Just drunk enough, just burly enough, unnecessary leather jacket in the September heat. I ran up to him -- and almost collapsed, forgetting how lungs worked, that when you ran and ran and ran they'd stop giving you enough oxygen, make your head go empty and your muscles dumb.

I raised my hand, the universal symbol for "gimme a second here" since time immemorial, and like a good boy he waited, hands reaching not for the right side but the left, for a pack of cigarettes, thinking I was going to bum one. God bless the international confederacy of smokers.

"Need --" I wheezed. "Your -- gun." Southern rock was blaring from the bar and he couldn't hear me, shook his head, gave me The Concerned Look which usually prefaces "you okay there, buddy?" God but I'd marked him, just like the old days of last week and the century before, and if it were then instead of now I'd be --

But it wasn't.

"Your -- gun!" I wheezed again, and he shook his head slowly like maybe he'd heard me this time but figured he couldn't possibly have.

Fuck it. I'd lost too much time. I drew the gun from the waistband of his jeans, smacked him in the side of the head with the butt, let him fall and took the jacket. Too big and smelled like whiskey but it'd give me a little bit. He was groaning, which meant I hadn't hit him as hard as I'd wanted to. It was too soon, I wasn't used to this yet, wasn't compensating.

How far away were they?

I ran again, down the side streets, crossing over an alley towards the sounds of noise and drunk and too many bars with too many jukeboxes: Bourbon Street, blessed Bourbon Street, where I was just another guy in jeans and leather and bare feet.

"Bishop!"

Shit. Shit, I'd doubled into their path. How many? I weaved through the crowd as I hit it running, stealing a look down the street as I moved. Four. Only four? No, don't think like that: think four, four you gotta take care of. Don't get weighed down by ego tripping.

I recognized Vict and Stepping Razor but not the girl or the long-haired skinny kid. Didn't know if that was good or bad and didn't have time to decide.

Ducked through the crowd into the bar with the most bass, which would make it tougher for them to follow my heartbeat. Breathing exercises. Remembered my breathing exercises, which I hadn't had long to come up with. Hoped they'd work to keep the panic out of my pulse, keep me focused. The butt of the gun jutted comfortably against my side as I moved through the bar crowd, jostled through the dance beats, and buttoned the jacket all the way up to cover my throat with leather. Better safe than buried.

Christ, it'd only been a couple nights and they were already after me without so much as asking for my side of things. Not that I had a side, but shit, couldn't I get the benefit of the doubt?

There was a fire exit just beyond the trail of beer and butts leading to the restrooms. Unless the girl or the skinny kid had pulled alpha, Stepping Razor would be there waiting for me, figuring on the other three flushing me out.

Good. Stepping Razor was a guy I felt like hurting. Near-perfect memory flashed again to a devil in a powdered wig, slashing at soldiers on both sides of a civil war they'd call revolutionary later, slashing with the saber he'd replace with a razor later, blood hanging in the air around him like greasy smoke.

Grabbed a girl waiting in line for the ladies' room, clutched her by the throat and couldn't help but notice that flash of panic and something warm across her eyes, but I was all business right now, just feeling her pulse, feeling for that rhythm. There it was. Yes. The beat inside the beat. They were here. Either it was Stepping Razor outside or it wasn't, but either way my four minutes were up and it was time for the show.

The furniture in the bar wasn't wooden because metal and plastic hosed down easier. Plan B was dangerous, not because it wouldn't work but because it was going to show more of my hand, remind them that no matter what my status now in the underchurch or the world at large, I was still the Bishop and would not go gentle into that good night.

[Okay, it's 1651 words, but I hit a paragraph break and it was a good time to clip. Easy-peasy. Guy jumps out window. Run. Run. Punch. Run. All done.]

I'm excited about hitting the laptop (ha ha, not really hitting). I've had lots of ideas bouncing around my head about this story for a while now.

This probably varies a lot for people, but finding the right music can be incredibly key for me. The story the above bit is taken from? Whole thing turned around when I heard "England 2 Colombia 0" and ended up playing that while writing most of the fight scenes. In high school, I wrote almost all of my horror stories to the Cure's "Lullaby," although really that has more to do with the fact that I was in high school and listening to the Cure's "Lullaby" all the time. (But seriously, I think hearing that song made me go, "Oh, you know what? I think I want to creep people out. Yes. For the rest of my life. Oh, but without going to prison.")

I guess I'm going to have to listen to the romantic comedy soundtrack mix cd my sister made me for xmas many years ago on repeat...

If I am well enough in time, I'll break out the tried and true secret combo maneuver power-up: Red Bull & tequila. Rrrawr.

Haven't decided on music yet. Probably Nick Cave, cause it's Halloween, and I think it might be Halloween in my story too.

Shh! I was hoping no one would remember that. Don't heckle the pep talk!

"So NaNoWriMo is where you write a 50,000 word novel, like you just do it and you don't worry about it being shitty, because you've just got to do it and not put it off for the rest of your life, right? Okay, so I had this idea for it, it would be like the Bhagavad-Gita but set in New York City after 9/11, so I would get to do all this research into Hindu epics and New York City, which I love, right? Like the Gita was great when I studied it in college, except I don't remember much of it, but there have got to be some good story lines and a bunch of parallels that I can exploit, right? Like Shiva! Destroyer of Worlds...Trade Centers!"

Him: "So is the point for it to be shitty?"

xpost haha rob!

I've been wondering how the hell I'm going to just physically churn out that much each day and now it seems, well, not easy, but reasonable.

It's definitely reasonable. That's the thing, different kinds of scenes are different ... what, densities? Dialogue can eat stuff up quickly. Action scenes can eat stuff up quickly -- that scene up there, that's just action and exposition, and the action is almost entirely running around. And the exposition barely covers anything! (I think it stopped before it got to where he says he used to be a vampire, right?)

my life is too short to generate more shit

This Eco translation is going slow as hell. I was hoping to get some outlining done today, but I've barely cracked this thing ... I may be starting tonight's Nanohooptie without really knowing where to go next if I do get those 3000 words written. That's all right, but I wish I had managed to get ahead on work this week.

And everyone else. :)

I have not even looked at my notes for this all week. That's very unlike me, but I'd been trying to focus on getting other things done, and then got suckerpunched by the cold. Sheesh. I'll go do that now. Possibly I've been brilliant without remembering it.

Chapter 1 is up.

Oh, and:

So...hassle me. Give me hell. I will of course reciprocate if required.

-- adaml

HASSLE HASSLE HASSLE.

Agh! Delete! Delete!

Nick, dude, you can't let Sarah beat you! (Sarah, get in!)

And Ned, you're a machine, but you knew that.

My Alizee CD came today! It's like it knew it was needed.

I have the mostly-description preface done and the very first scene. Sex in a Funhouse, so far. Violence and WTF forthcoming.

Lo, chapter 4.

Thank god I have the week off to catch up...

Damn sideburns are slowing me down...

Where's The Ilx0r Formerly Known As NordicSkillz?

Watched most of White Oleander this morning while doing dishes and having coffee and etc., and while Michelle Pfeiffer was very good, a not-specific-to-Nanowrimo reminder: avoid porridge. You know, when one character is too nice, and the next is not nice enough, and the third is just right? Or any too-X, too-Y, just-right combo like that. It's fine for freshman essays and fairy tales and nothing else.

Well, yeah.

*Stumbles in*

Sorry guys, I've been boozing in the Napa Valley all weekend. But I'm home, and starting now!

*glares with envy at Ned's progress*

Glad you're starting, Nordic!

Chapter 10

Ned, hon, I'm building you a shrine so you can be my literary icon. You are obviously squandering away your talents by not being an insanely popular and prolific novelist. Eleven chapters in two days -- oh my God, I am amazed and impressed and my mind is swimming. I will immediately have to print out all these chapters and read them the first chance I get.

If it's as good as the one story of yours I read... wow.

Chapter 13 -- I'm past the halfway mark! All downhill from here.

10 PRINT "Hello!"
20 GOTO 10

Ow

one of the boys mentioned on the 'this is the thread where i say' threads is proposing we partner up and each write a version of the same plot or something. Hmm. . .

I reached 4700+ words yesterday, but compared to lots of people on this board I feel way behind! I am a little worried about what I'll be writing mid-month, since I think this first part is the easiest. I am really enjoying it so far though. I might do something during my lunchbreaks like Nick and just brainstorm for an hour for my nightly typing. Maybe later on, I'll even bring the laptop to work for lunchbreaks...

My major concern with my book right now is that it won't be funny. It's supposed to be a romantic comedy, but I want it to be more fresh and intelligent than most. I tend to consider myself a pretty funny girl, but it's hard to translate that on paper.

Anyway, Chapter 14.

Haven't written yet today, gotta finish the Eco translation since it needs to be typed and I won't be near computers tomorrow. Argh. I was awake all night coughing, which isn't helping any.

Did write chapter 2 yesterday, though. Yes, 2, not 14. I am sub-Epstein at best compared to Ned's Freddy "Boom-Boom" Washington.

Finally finished my Eco translation and am going to go buy some more cough medicine before starting to Nanowrime for today. Aren't my updates thrilling?

if nothing tonight
(distinct possibility!)
then I'm out for sure

but out on my shield:
late-night visits last two nights
from troubled people

plus my wife is gone
on vacation so I'm all
alone with the kids

shoulda named this thing
laundry and dishes or baths!
then: it writes itself

Hai, you could do it even if you don't get anything done tonight! Look at how fast Ned "Professor Zoom" Raggett is going! (The Lightspeed Librarian, The West-Coast Whizzer! Excelsior!)

xpost - Yeah, I know, I think I painted myself into a corner. For example: I only have three characters and one setting, and I can't add any more without using flashbacks/dream sequences/etc. due to the ramifications of my bullshit plot. So I'm going to abandon the rigors of writing a "good" novel or even one that makes sense. I'll string it all together in December. For now, it's pure hallucinatory goodness.

Chapter 15. A bit of stock-taking chapter, a bit of a time-killer, but it's helping me figure out where the final ten chapters should go.

Without the prerequisite pink puppy.

(Apparently, I've much reading to catch up on. I'm getting comfortable.)

300 words so far. Arrgh.

Well, first my two ovoparious female humanoids have to have sex, and then get interupted by the invasion of their homeland, and then...Maybe somewhere around the 50,001st word?

Rah. Chapter 17.

I have other things I need to write this month, and am crazy busy, so I can't take part. Also I have no real desire to write a novel. But if people say they are stuck, it just means they don't know what to write next, and I am offering (awful but hopefully doable) suggestions for people for what to write about.

Because, come on: If you're at 300 words and don't have anywhere to go, it's because your characters don't have anything to respond to, right? So I'm offering a digression or a subplot (and even if they're all females, there's such a thing as female circumcision; and even if they're not really human, obviously some part of them could be ritually removed).

I mean, obviously you don't have to listen to me.

But I should slog though my email, first....

Chapter 19 has emerged.

Off to play catch up on the rest of ILX.

Interested to see what dramas the rest of you get into prose.....

Chapter 20.

(check your email, BTW, when you've time)

Luna, now you are officially over the hump. You go, girl!)

Is anyone else sick of their characters already?

I think when I get home today, I am going to start from scratch. I know, bad idea, but fuck it.

No, Nick, you can still afford to start from scratch. Better not to, yeah, cause you could keep what you have, but better to start from scratch now than to putter for another week, not be into it, and then start something new and never get near 50K. You can totally do this starting today.

Actually the first sentence is a quote from Kobo Abe, "Even if you lose your way, you cannot go wrong," but I haven't decided yet if that really counts towards the word count (in other words: if the story is less than 50,010 words long, it DOES.)

The first line is:

And on the seafront, nothing happening, nothing important, anyway, there is a newspaper wrapping itself around a bench on which an elderly couple share a sandwich and stare grimly out to sea, trying to discern a view in the whipping mist.

Excellent, Matt! (I'm biased in favor of stories that open by the water. Genuinely. And no, I don't know why.)

Chapter 25 is done, the novel is done. I'll post a message reflecting on it and pointing out useful strategies later on, but I'm going to have a celebratory meal at Wahoo's to reward myself. :-)

Seriously, next year will be a comic one, as so far my efforts have alternated serious/comic/serious. I presumably will also allow myself to relax then, but this was a story that just happened...

Also, if this hadn't been mentioned on the thread yet, everyone please donate if you're participating. They only ask for $10 and it does help them cover the costs; I think it's worthy. Just sent mine in.

Today: 8506.

And yes, this is me killing time waiting for the girlfriend to be ready to go :) It's easier for me to pack, my clothes can all be rolled into balls and put in my backpack.

I can't remember my final word count as of this morning, but it's over 9000.

As my disclaimer on the main page for the novel states, this whole thing came out of a random thought involving the musician Jandek, who has (very carefully) maintained a specific public image of not telling anyone anything if he can help it. I really wasn't too sure what to do beyond a general thought of tracing time via his albums, idea being a chapter an album (as there are much more than 25 albums at this point, I decided to edit a bit). I knew I didn't want to do an actual attempt to tell his story per se, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to make it comic or completely weird or what.

The two most important parts of the story came after I started it, though -- first was the decision to completely steer clear of actually calling him Jandek or referring to him by name (as well as his label, Corwood, his hometown (?) of Houston or any of the actual album names). Second was to steer away from anything other than the most basic biographical details to let whatever the story was develop. I knew I wanted to end the story in Ireland partially due to a bemusing shift in Jandek's cover art pattern where just a couple of years ago he started showing some photos of a trip to Cork, so I figured I wanted to get him away from his 'place,' generally described.

The whole important of the house as obsessive focus of his attention and the story's grew out of a similar obsessiveness in the cover art examples, but if it wasn't for my random thought about ghosts at the end of the first chapter, it wouldn't have turned into the exercise in psychological horror that it eventually turned into. I guess if there's a line of descent it's Poe to Shirley Jackson, but trying to transform Jackson's waking world terrors into something much more ambiguous -- I'm not aiming at determining the reality of the main character's visions and I don't want to explain everything in them, whether dream or reverie. I kept resisting the temptation to put something obvious in the dream sequences in particular -- some sort of specific thing encountered, some kind of symbol -- in favor of trying to freak myself out with a series of set pieces that never resolved into an answer. I got enough chills up my back at points to know that it worked for me at least, hopefully it will work for others.

How this came out so quickly and thoroughly I'm still not sure -- I think what happened was once I found a rhythm I just kept at it, and as I said above I wasn't sure how or what it would all resolve into, and I wanted to find out. There's a hell of a lot to tweak and edit, possibly expand and maybe contract, but at least it's something to work with.

To everyone else still writing -- just set aside the time, keep plugging away and don't worry about the loose ends or the perfection or any of that, as has been said. If you want to do something more about that, you will, just get the words, the actions and the thoughts on the page. After that, editing and expansion will be so much simpler.

Best o' luck and I hope to read all of what you've got as I can. :-)

My notebook PC has very kindly decided to DIE ON ME as of yesterday. No warnings, no obvious reason why - it just refuses to boot up, do a POST test or ANYTHING now :(

Its still under warranty so Im not concerned - except I assume I'll be sans-PC while it is being fixed.

I am really fscking PISSED off. I have another perfectly good PC but I didnt back up what I'd written so far, did I?

I'm going to cry now.

Maybe I should just start a different story, heh.

(And Ned, your concept is really cool; I promise I'll read it in December.)

I'm back from New Orleans and I'm way behind; I just didn't have nearly as much time to myself while I was gone as I expected I would. I wrote a couple hundred words at the wedding reception, a thousand or so the night before, and so on, but I've got a lot of catch-up to do. It's fun, though.

Sarah, are you still on target?

Thanks! :-) Hope everyone is doing well with theirs!

I am getting to the point where I'm spitting out my ideas as fast as possible, which makes me think there might be quite a lull in the chapters to come!

jel, have you started yet? If not, write about Transformers and Poison. I'm so not kidding.

Trayce, have you decided what to do about your computer crisis?

We have not lately heard from Adam or Christine, I think. Or Rob!

Aimee and Brian got off to quick starts, how're you guys doing now?

Yesterday I wrote about a fictional chocolate company based in a fictional Louisiana town. I think it satisfied some odd urge that's been lingering since I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 22 years ago. Today I'll find out if the new Pink album makes for good writing music.

"I never liked Wellington boots"

Oh well.

~5000 and counting, here we go.

I was pretty worried about getting to this point where the next bit of real action is quite some time ahead, but it is actually pretty easy to make up every day scenarios as I go along.

My lappy!! You Aussies are too cute. (btw, i really hate using the term 'aussie')

Der beast is being taken by my loverly boyfriend to the fixit shop today (32 degree heat and he's going out in it to trudge out to the burbs, what a dear)... hopefully all will be well by weeks end!

Bit too late for Nano goals now though :( This is the third time Ive tried to write a novel - nano or otherwise - and I just dont think I'm cut out for it. Short stories are my thing. *sigh*

As for me, I've redone the math, and in order to catch up ground lost while I was in New Orleans, I need to write about 2500 words a day till the end of the month (I'm not counting tonight because I may take tonight off and catch up on school nonsense).

I got my NaNoWriMo newsletter over email this morning and it made me all excited. I'm doing it! I'm really doing it! (ha ha)

Brian, I can't make a specific recommendation re: running out of plot since I haven't read your story (my first instinct: "kill someone off in the next chapter"), but there are always ways to keep things going, especially when we aren't desperately concerned with quality. As long as everyone's alive when the plot "ends," there's still more stuff that can happen. Jump forward ten years.

I'm still way behind, but I think I'm more or less caught up to my revised catch-up-from-being-behind schedule, if you see what I mean -- and I've turned in the only paper I have to write before December, and am done with classes for the rest of the month, other than the one I TA for Tuesday morning. I've got a hundred and something papers to grade this weekend, and the morning of December 1st I have to start working on a research paper (cause it's due the morning of December 4th), but... I'm still on the bus.

Anyway, though. Right now I'm speeding up by writing things entirely out of sequence, just writing the scenes I know will happen, and then I'll fill in the blanks that become obvious. It's worked for me before, although usually when I'm closer to the ending.

How's everyone else doing, in the final stretch?

Funnily, I've been writing short story stuff again though, with pen and paper. But I've had a crappy time of it creatively lately, and I'd hoped this would fix everything magically. It didnt.

Still, congratulations to all of you for sticking it out! :)

Except for me. I quit a few weeks ago. I've been writing other things, though, so it isn't a total loss.

Sorry, I'm bad with numbers. It certainly feels like 500,000 at this point.

That's definitely not cheating! I'm gonna be doing something similar.

Congrats, Matt!

The final 20,000 words of it were written this weekend.

Glad to have finished, though. I wasn't as good about keeping with things as I wanted to be during New Orleans and then catching-up-from-New-Orleans, so I'm glad it worked out.

I am belatedly getting in Matt cause I was so up in my own deal last night I didn't even see he'd won! Excellent.

Sarah, 40,000 words is still great, and having stayed on track so long is an accomplishment in of itself. Glad you're going to finish it.

In March: Nanoedmo, which I'd never heard of before, so maybe they didn't do it in 2001, I don't know.

Next up for me -- a research paper due Thursday which I haven't done any reading for yet, another batch of papers to grade, exams, and then I'm going to take a look at this past month's puppy and see if it at least makes sense. Or at least makes sense in the places where I want it to.

I think I got about 50 words, oh dear :/

didn't make it, for various reasons. about halfway though, and i intend to do the other half in the first couple weeks of this month before holiday insanity takes hold again. screw these "rules" maaaan.

i like the march revision idea, i think that could be very helpful. i have a lot of stuff that'd be definitely readable w. some revisions.