leo fair

The Real Hiatus

2011-02-04T22:45:00.001-05:00

I can't keep pretending nothing is going on in my personal life or that it can be cleared up in a few weeks. It's been leaking out in my flakiness lately. I don't want this blog to become a dark or negative reflection.

I had a post and excerpt from my '10 NaNovel up earlier. I took them down because I was going to use them as a series to talk about where my writing is and what I would like to improve about it, which I don't intend to do now. I also talked about four consecutive nights of nightmares and those were not caused by stress from missing the ABNA deadline as I implied. There are things going on and trying to stay upbeat is killing me.

I've never liked saying "in real life" to talk about my offline life. This is the phrase trolls and people who call you emo for having emotions are born from. Everything a person does is part of their real life. Just because I'm not using my birth name, just because there's "anonymity" (P.S. Here quotation marks are used to mean: Tch, yeah right.) does not give me an excuse to be someone else or to act in ways I would not be proud of. So far I have avoided this, but posting and tweeting as if nothing is up feels like a lie right now, but I also don't want to be a downer. This is not multiplication, you can't throw a negative at a negative and expect a positive product. When I vent I just feel sick and worse afterward. Beyond this general explanation, I don't want to do it.

I don't want to kick a hiatus off on a note like this, but I don't want to lie about why I'm doing it either. Until I'm out of this situation, (Which will be when I can talk about it without pronouns like "it" and "this situation.") writing here, on Twitter or the boards isn't going to help. I expect to lose people on this, but thank you for following here, on Twitter and the boards. Participating in NaNoWriMo has allowed me to meet so many amazing people and if you've ever read or heard me say you guys have restored my faith in humanity know that I was in no way kidding when I said it.

And with a gushing sentence like that, now I have to stay gone for a few months. :) Anyway, I'll still be writing, probably more now than ever, save last November. (I have no intention of writing another 174k in a month...at least not outside of NaNoWriMo. I think I may have learned never to say never when it comes to NaNoWriMo goals.) I hope to see you guys again in November.

Deadlines and Silence

2011-01-28T12:23:00.000-05:00

Blog forecast calls for continued silence into February as I shoot to make the ABNA deadline. Not terribly worried if I don't as I get a finished-finished novel out of it either way, but I'm still making a concentrated effort to do it this year. This book is good enough to shop around or self-publish via Kindle, so new bloggable adventures will occur either way.

February's forecast calls for taking a mini-golf, discount bookstore, air hockey, sandwich day once this is finished then using the rest of February to work on Control. (NaNovel '10 [2])

(Shudder)

2011-01-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, ramen phase officially over. I'm back to shuddering inwardly and getting a little queasy at the mention of it. (Although, if we're talking about real ramen, no shudder. Also, if you ever get a chance to see the movie Tampopo do so.) What's left of the twelve pack (10 packs) is now a year's supply. Viva real food. Currently working on a dish of raw carrots and pot of tea to get the MSG memories out of my head. (Although I must say the contrast between the two is making these carrots taste sweeter and more refreshing than if I hadn't eaten the ramen. Shudder.)

I just deleted the three paragraphs on food that were here because I was rehashing what I've said before. That was unpleasant, but it made this post better.

Segue?

Segue!

So you know what else I've recently made better by cutting parts out and redoing them? Yep, current novel. There was a passage on making pemmican, it's always about food with me it seems, that had to go. Am I fascinated by the concept of pemmican and is it possible for cooking scenes to be necessary and entertaining? Yes and yes. Does it add anything to story or character development in this case? No: CUT. There's still pemmican, there's still pemmican ingredient gathering, but the bit that read like a cookbook is now quarantined just in case I need to loot it for a story where it will work one day.

I've noticed I've been really chatty lately blog-wise, considering the fact that December only had like four posts total. I think it was a problem of spinning wheels in November and December. I was in a writing rut and now that I'm experimenting again and going for quality over quantity I feel really happy and energetic about my writing again.

You know what else makes me feel really happy and energetic? Not eating ramen. (shudder) Egh. The carrots are gone, so I have to go either reload my plate or eat an orange now.

Weird Habits

2011-01-17T20:22:00.001-05:00

Lately I've fallen into some weird writing habits. Note that I said "weird" not "uncommon." Technically you could use the two interchangeably, but with writers weird is par for the course. Then again, if weird is par for the course I suppose I should say lately I've fallen into some normal writing habits.

I made what is either a profound mistake or keen strategic move by adopting and cleaning up my mom's old four cup coffee maker. (She has a steady relationship with her Keurig machine now.) As a result, I'm up to two pots of cheap coffee a day plus tea. I also dropped the latte thing because I'm too lazy to steam and froth milk apparently. So basically I revived my black coffee no sugar and tea no sugar habits. Pleasant, cheap and healthier and faster than getting up for snacks. Plus my room smells like coffee most of the day.

I used to only make the faces my characters might be making while I was writing a scene, now I'm saying their lines out loud using their speech patterns. Crap. This is absolutely only when no one else is around, but activities like sweeping seem to wake up every character I've ever written and make them chatty. I hope no one walks in while I'm swearing to myself.

Ramen! I hate ramen. Well, not really, but at one point I was almost living off the $0.17 a packet kind, so I've had quite enough for one lifetime. Or so I thought. It's been long enough since the last time I had ramen that it sounded like a good idea again a few days ago. I fought the urge for a bit then used it as an end of chapter bonus. I've done this twice now and it's stealthily moving into (bad) habit territory. End a chapter, make some ramen. I tried making hell ramen (which is my term for ramen loaded up with pepper flakes, chili powder and hot sauce) to put me off of it, but no dice. I need to find something healthier to replace it with or at least get some fancy ramen from the asian grocer.

Sort of Edit: I wrote this post last night when I was down to one pack of ramen. I now have twelve. This is bad, but now I'm looking into ramen doctoring and balancing the rest of my diet around my pack a day habit.

Get Comfy; We're Going to Be Here a While

2011-01-15T16:03:00.000-05:00

Warning: Long blog post ahead because I had half a day to think while I was shaghaiied (actually, I half-volunteered) into doing physical labor yesterday and was finally able to get my reflections and plans for my writing into a relatively organized state. If you'd like to skip this one, the summary for this (and everything else I will ever write) is: foxes, pangolins and dragons are awesome, tea is delightful, fruitcake is nice. All right, so those are more basic truths than a summary, but if you're going to skip something because it's long and irrelevant to your current interests then why on earth are you still reading this paragraph? Anyway:

I was looking at a piece of writing yesterday that I wanted to like, but couldn't, so I opened a file, copy/pasted it over and started editing it to figure out what my problem was. I decided to add detailed explanations of why I made each cut and revision to make it a practice exercise. I was only two paragraphs in before I decided to start editing what I'm working on now instead. (Sans explanations in the interest of time. That would have been awesome for self-study, though, so maybe next time.)

I mention this because this year I want to experiment with how I write and find a different approach to it, one that's less inconsistent and one that results in books being finished. PreNaNo, I wrote very slowly and enjoyed every bit of it, mostly because I quit or jumped around in the story when the project became too difficult. I read a lot of books on writing and analyzed writing during this time without accomplishing much of my own.

NaNoWriMo gave me a work ethic for writing and helped me see stories through, though not to their final edited form. Mostly it helped me get past preconceived notions about writing I didn't realize I held. Namely that good books must take forever to write and that writer's block is a serious problem. It's not. It usually indicates you need to fix something that's not working in the story or address some emotional issue that's keeping you from writing, but it's only an indicator and once you find what it's pointing to, you can fight it. (And if you can't you can just power through it to be getting on with things.)

The drafts I have from doing NaNoWriMo are good, but flawed. Of course they are. They're practice novels. I probably wrote more fiction in November 2008 than I had in the rest of my life to that point combined. (Maybe. It would be close anyway, I'm sure.) Parts of NaNovel 2008 are lovely and brilliant, other parts revealed my many flaws, making them incredibly valuable in diagnosing my problems.

Between December 2008 and October 2009 I wrote more than I would have before doing NaNoWriMo, but in retrospect less than I would have liked. I wasn't taking it terribly seriously, but I still enjoy what I wrote during that year.

NaNoWriMo 2009. I tried to start writing at midnight the first day with a vague idea and panicked. I made a quick outline which, with some adjustments, saw me through the month. I went widely off outline at times, but having a map to refer back to allowed me to steer it back on course and put an ending on the story.

I did WriYe in 2010 setting a goal of 600,000 words and coming in at over 450,000 words. (I still refuse to go over what I wrote by hand and count it. Life is too short, but it wouldn't have taken me to 600k anyway.) I didn't make my goal or finish and edit a book that year, but I kept writing consistently throughout the year and got my typing speed up, so I did get a lot out of doing it.

I also did NaNoEdMo in 2010. What I learned from that was that I had a very disorganized approach to editing. The month ended with lots of notes, but only a small amount of the actual novel edited. A few months later I decided it needed a full out rewrite, so anything I did accomplish editing-wise is kind of a moot point. Basically, I tried to edit something that wasn't ready to edit with predictable results.

NaNoWriMo 2010. Given my positive experience in 2009, I decided that outlines were my allies. Unfortunately, I had very little idea of how to write an outline that would be effective for me. Instead of addressing my known weaknesses in writing and working through the tougher parts before they became major problems or plot holes, I mostly figured out the characters and rambled through plot possibilities for 25,000 words. Yeah. 100 page "outline." Not exactly the quick reference tool I needed it to be, but it was still useful. (I made smaller versions during the month, because I didn't want to deal with the unruly thing. This is why I kept saying "reoutlining" during the month.) I also tested my limits for speed and endurance, going from 83k in 2009 to 174k in 2010, 49k of which was written in three days. I was surprised when the second book I started during the month with almost no outline turned out well, at least for the first 48k, which is where it rests on my hard drive for now.

Those are the pieces; here's how I've been fitting them together between December to now:

First off, I haven't set any firm writing quota for the year. There definitely won't be a set word count for the year. I'm firmly in the habit of writing and I'm going to stay that way just because I love doing it.

Second, I've slowed down on my writing. Maybe I should say I slowly slowed down on my writing? I had been trying to burn through a minimum of two chapters a day on the book I'm working on now, but that's down to one plus more if I feel like it. I have until the sixth of February to get my ABNA entry in, so there's no need to go any faster if I'd rather not. I like enjoying the pauses, acting things out (read: I've started talking to myself. Uh-oh.) and thinking about what I'm writing. I don't want the experience of writing my books to pass in a blur and there's theoretically less that needs editing this way. The amount I consider low still isn't actually low, but it isn't a consistent string of 10k days either.

Third, I am editing as I go. With an effective outline this works as nothing will change so drastically that I'll have to scrap everything in chapter one. I've only started doing this, but my plan for the future is to write three chapters to start, then edit the first, write another chapter, edit another chapter and so on. This gives me a little distance from what I wrote, but my head's still in the story. When I'm finished writing it, I'll also be mostly done with editing, so I won't tuck the thing away in a folder because it just seems too big to get started on. Since editing is currently my weakest point, this is the subject that will be getting the most love this year on my blog as it's what I'll need to experiment with the most.

Fourth, I'm going to stop centering my writing around NaNoWriMo, WriYe, NaNoEdMo, etc. I'm still doing NaNoWriMo, talking on the boards and getting my halo, but it's not going to be something I look forward to all year because I will be intensely writing all year anyway. NaNoWriMo is a step. I don't bellyache over achieving a reasonable amount of writing in a day and I know that an imperfect something beats the hell out of a perfect nothing, that's what I'm taking into my own approach to writing.

Writing! It Looks Boring!

2011-01-12T18:38:00.000-05:00

I've covered this before, but when I'm working it looks incredibly boring and my ability to be interesting in conversation, or conversational tone in the case of this blog, plummets. It's bugging me that I haven't updated since the third, though, so here's what I do all day. (Or what it looks like I do to those without direct access to my brain.)

Sit at desk looking at either the keyboard or the screen as I type
Sometimes I get up to refill my water pitcher and make tea or coffee
Bathroom; this is related to the item above
Run into a tricky part of the story; consult outline and write a little by hand
Go make a big batch of something that will be good to have as leftovers so that I don't have to cook every day. So far it has been curried rice and lentils or spaghetti
Get some cookies for the tea or coffee; eat them over the course of an hour or two
Check word count
Check story as written against outline
Shower
Sleep
Get restless and use the under desk cycle exercise machine thing whose proper name I should look up but will not in the interest of time
Check email (I've got a two week streak going for only checking it once a day! Woohoo!)
Wikipedia soft fact check (In an attempt to avoid Wikipedia and research loops, rarely.)
Outside world intrudes; I go do things with or for family

I would write about the actual writing right now, but I'm just not into examining it until I'm finished. The summary is that I'm experimenting with how I approach writing and I'm trying for a very solid first draft by using an outline that addresses my predictable weaknesses. (Things like having a list of throwaway names [I HATE naming all but main characters] or working through tough scenes before I get to them.) I'm also using this book to find what my average speed for writing competently is. My best NaNo day was around 23,000 words, but I think I'm settling out to two chapters (roughly 6,000-10,000 words) on non-NaNo projects when I have the whole day to write. I printed my outline so that I don't have to click over to another file and I'm just writing in notepad because Write or Die can be distracting.

Should be finished with this book sometime next week, so I'll let you know how it went then.

This Year. Totally.

2011-01-03T11:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote the epilogue to Careful Execution which finally gave me a an it's finished feeling, followed immediately by an it's finished for now feeling. Second draft coming right up.

This time I do mean right up. I picked at some editing last year, then did a full edit of Plot Bunny Fields Forever. PBFF could use some improvement, but the point is it was an edit and it was finished. This grants me more writing exp. than half finishing a longer project and it has given me a little boost of courage to finish this edit on time. I'm letting it sit until next Monday before I begin editing. (Mostly because I'll be moving, yet again, on Friday and can count on a weekend full of family catch up.)

This brings us to the yearly ABNA I'm totally going to do it this year part of the post. Well, I'm totally going to do this this year and I have a finished first draft with no major editing issues to back me up this time. So there.

I'm not going to win, so why enter? Because:

I always say I will but never do.
It gets me to do something active with what I've written. (Editing, writing a pitch, exposing it to criticism.)
Amazon is once again offering a free Createspace proof copy coupon to all entrants. (It's at the bottom of the prizes page, though not really marked as a prize. CTRL+F "additionally" to find the paragraph it's in.)
If I do it once, I never have to do it again if I don't want to.

As I type this, I'm thinking about Control, the first 48,000 words of which could be entered without much editing at all. I think I'll try finishing its first draft while Careful Execution is on cooldown and see which one I want to edit for the ABNA competition once things calm down next Monday.

New Year's!

2010-12-29T16:48:00.000-05:00

An interesting effect of this anti-procrastination resolution is that I take care of messes as they happen now, including emotional ones. It seems I don't apologize enough. This is because I am always right.

HAH!

(Laughs for thirty minutes straight, passing out at one point from lack of air.)

Right, so anyway I'm getting better at apologizing and making amends within five minutes of whatever I'm apologizing for. I haven't had to do it that often so far, but when your brain isn't loaded down with emotional debt it's a lot easier to focus.

Tying this into writing, I'm not working through a sludged mind. I'm also not working through a sludged body. Back in March I had a very productive week, getting in 20,000 words without trying. During that week, I ate healthily; I don't think that's a coincidence. I function way better without a bunch of sugar highs and lows, so I'll be (And already am, putting off changes would be procrastinating, now would it?) watching my diet (in the laziest way possible, probably more on that in January) and making sure I eat at regular times. (Blood sugar issues) I'm at an okay weight, so this isn't a weight loss resolution, just something I hope will make my work during the year a little more pleasant.

As for actual writing goals, I'm not doing a minimum word count this year, but I am setting a minimum amount of novels to complete by year's end. I'll be experimenting with ways to accomplish this during January and February, so no firm goal setting here until March. I plan to be vague about these novels until the end of 2011, though, so I probably won't announce my goal and how I did until late next year. (Unless I meet it earlier than expected.)

You know what my least favorite part of writing nonfiction is? The end. It's weird because I'm okay with writing beginnings in nonfiction, making it the inverse of my fiction writing ways. (Hate writing beginnings, but endings are easy.) Why don't we just pretend I wrote a satisfying last paragraph to this post and leave it at that? Oh, wait, New Year's cop-out!

Thanks for reading this year! For reading in general, you've made the world a little more educated, but specifically thanks for reading my blog! I'd say I'll see you in the New Year, but I stopped checking Google Analytics, so I'll see you in the comments or randomly on the street where you won't recognize me and I won't recognize you, but we'll both wonder what the other was doing standing in the middle of a street rather than on a sidewalk. Lame tangential jokes mean it's time to wrap things up.

Cyst

2010-12-23T11:11:00.000-05:00

I wrote a post detailing the progress of my four 2010 NaNovels, but book four took it over, so I'll save the other parts for some other time.

Yesterday was laugh maniacally while you rework story four day. I actually said "Oh, I am mean" out loud and I am not the type to talk to myself.

Book four has demon hunters in it. Demon hunters whom I am now calling exorcists so that I can have the demons call them cysts which is something I've been wanting to do since I answered this forum post. Yes wanting to use one word can fuel an entire rewrite. :)

Not that that's the actual reason for the rewrite. (Find and replace would have worked just as well. Thank you, Technology!) Book four started as a mess because it was something I was writing as stress relief. Then the mess became bigger. Then the mess became awesome. Now the mess is becoming a book.

I had the three paragraphs above written as the update post yesterday. I still had a few hours of internet block left, so I saved the post and went back to writing. This is when all hell broke loose in book four.

It started when I decided I needed to change some names and two genders. The entire scenario was supposed to change in the rewrite, that much I was prepared for, but what I wound up doing was gutting it and plugging in the characters from NaNovel '08. This is officially the meanest thing I've ever done to '08's main character, Lawrence, (Delightfully mean.) but it works.

Basically, what I've been working on the past three years was practice. (You could also call it scrapped.) I have these characters down and that should make this rewrite/fusion much easier. For now I'm calling it Cyst, but that will proba--

Wait, so I'm working on Careful Execution, Control and Cyst? What is with me and "C" names?

Anyway, that will probably change.

As for the procrastination resolution, that is going well. For one thing, the house stays clean, for another, things get written. Today I have to do what I've been putting off since September or so which is to get a word count tally of what I've written this year for my WriYe goal. I think I'm at at least 400k-something, but I'm not so sure about the 600k goal I set. We'll see. And what does it say about me that my taxes are easier to do than my cumulative word count? (That I'm broke. Oh. Right.)

The Year the Romance Died

2010-12-13T11:05:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking of big, fun, scary goals this year and I've come to the conclusion that the most effective, feasible and only goal I need is to stop romanticizing procrastination. I can have a few other personal goals, (finish my current books, start another blog, save money and work on a few other projects tied into those goals) but this is one that will last the entire year.

Most people know why procrastination is a bad thing. You take time you could be living the life you want and piddle it away doing things that don't matter and won't bring you any closer to your goals. Not even your goals, your goals will always keep moving a little farther away as you go. That's how it should be if you want to enjoy a challenging life. Goals are important to set as guides to keep you on the right track, but the goals themselves are just markers on the ground you're going to run by. You live in the middle of goals, so that middle needs to be something that makes you feel alive. Those markers are flickers, no one wants to live for one day every few months or years. Personally, I don't want to live a life of burning through the good parts to get to the end just because I waited too long to get started.

This is very serious. You only have a certain amount of years, days, hours, minutes left before you are dead and all your I'll do it tomorrow passes are used up. Procrastination is not cute or fun any more than the stories of an alcoholic's drunk nights are cute and fun. Sure in the moment it might have been pleasant, but the hangover and disappointment at wasting another night are no fun are they?

Now, tying this all back into writing: there's nothing that makes me feel more alive than writing fiction. I feel alive in the act of it and alive in rereading what I've written. My ultimate goal needs to be to get as much writing and reading in as possible every day. To do this, the most logical profession would be author and to become that I have to start taking making money off of writing seriously. That means work, that means research, but it's going to be fun and it's going to be interesting because it's what I want to do.

Going back to procrastination: in order to write, I have to keep my body alive and in an environment where it can write. For now this means a bunch of little tasks that are not writing. These are as important to my goal of writing for a living as typing. You can tell because I procrastinate against these as much as the writing itself. There are still going to be moments where I do these things I procrastinate with now; simmering is important, but there's a difference between letting something simmer and letting the pot boil down to nothing.

So this year the romance of procrastination will die and be replaced by an addiction to real living and accomplishment. It's big in that it's life-changing, it's fun in that I enjoy doing most of the things that cause me to procrastinate once I get over the fear of starting and it's scary. Scary...maybe not. Most things are only scary if you dwell on them before or after the fact. I don't doubt that I can do this because doubt is just another form of procrastination. It's an excuse not to start. In fact it's procrastination distilled. You could as easily say I'm going to go doubt myself and my abilities for a few hours (days, weeks, years...) while I piss my life away on things that don't matter to me and won't help me get to the things that do. I'm not doing that anymore, but I am going to go write that line down for my custom paper slip insert coffee mug as a reminder:

If you're procrastinating, you're killing your dreams.

Plans and Wordle

2010-12-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

The final count for NaNoWriMo 2010 was 174885 words. That means I wrote enough for three people and procrastinated enough for six.

Combined I slept around 14 hours yesterday. It's as though my body was trying to tell me something, but what? Now I'm thinking of the forces we have to battle in November: the inner critic, the inner editor, the plot bunnies (which I did not quite win against if yesterday's post is any indication), the body and the NonWriMo schedule. I'm not really going anywhere with that; I just wanted to list them. Oh, I suppose I could say, but you, bearer of the 50k, you have triumphed over these creatures both fell and alluring and have come through your trials with a novel forged in the fires of adversity and quite possibly coffee.

So, now that that's over, two things: One: plans. Two: Wordle.

My plans are to finish Careful Execution and Control and add books three and four to my ever-growing list of partially finished story ideas I pick at once in a while. Schedule permitting (I had to give up part of yesterday to cleaning for my grandmother's visit & I'm not sure what we'll be doing with her while she's here.) I plan to have the first draft of Careful Execution finished by Friday night. After that, I'll spend the following one-two weeks finishing Control which will give Careful Execution time to cool down. Once it's cool, I'll read it and see what I want to do from there.

Now wordle! Wordle.net will make a word cloud of any text you copy/paste into it, edit out the most commonly used words (ie no "the" and "a" and such), and show you your most used words, highlighting the ones you use the most by making them bigger than the others. Here are mine for Careful Execution and Control:

Careful Execution:

Control:

And I resisted the urge to make one for this blog post.

Status Report

2010-11-30T03:28:00.000-05:00

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo. (or December 1st for some of you or an entirely different day because you're reading this in the archives) Here's the story so far:

First off, word count as of 1:00am:

Book One: Careful Execution: 91658
Book Two: Control: 48783
Books Three & Four: Unnamed: 30353
Total: 170,794

Now what's happening storywise:

Careful Execution is within four chapters of completion including the shorter epilogue chapter. I may actually finish it today. The first chapter needs to be rewritten or a prologue added and the first chapter heavily edited. I'm also not sure about one of the subplots I put in midway, but other than that it seems like a pretty good story.

Control is close to the halfway point, though it's still evolving as it's a mostly pantsed novel, so we'll see how that goes. (Just not during November.) It has turned out remarkably well given the fact that I only had the concept, beginning and end outlined going into it.

I decided to split the third book into two completely unrelated stories. Book three will be entirely abandoned unless I write the fox story in which case it will be important to that storyline and rewritten as a side story of it.

Book four. Oh, book four. Book four is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most self-indulgent story I have ever written. It is so self-indulgent that my brain has decided to play a trick on me by letting me write it well. It gets a kick out of something so embarrassing being good, so this one may actually be finished and edited, though I had absolutely no intention of doing this when I started writing it. (I had no intention of taking it beyond 3000 words really, but it's over 15,000 words at this point.)

Snacks:

I have a tiny bottle of champagne I need to chill so that I can drink it once NaNo is over. (or I reach the end of Careful Execution, or I feel like drinking it, whichever comes first) There will also be popcorn involved and chocolate. Dress is casual.

I have not run out of chocolate this year and have figured out that I'm only mildly interested in the stuff. Next year, less chocolate more popcorn.

And I can't think of anything else except that tomorrow the world outside NaNoWriMo begins again.

49k Weekend Urgh

2010-11-29T02:21:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I'm not terribly upset that I "only" (2008 self is beating me senseless now for writing that even with quotation mark containment system. [2008 I won with 50,077 words]) wrote 49,000 words in three days, but I was within 500 words of being able to say I once wrote 50k in three days! Oh well. Now I'll tell them the story of when I wrote 49,652 words in three days, no I will not round down to 49,000. I'll say 49,652 words every time I talk about it.

Anyway, lots of neat stuff happened today. I finally made 10k in 5 hours. (Yay!) I wrote over 23,000 words. And, get this: my wrists still don't hurt. I also missed posting to my blog on time for the first November entry ever.

Storywise, things went great today. I did a little writing on book three to start things out, then made progress on book one (90,600 words exactly now) and huge things happened in book two which is what I was working on as the clock ran out. It was fantastic for breaking the blocks I had been experiencing with books one and two. (Book three is a silly, incredibly self-indulgent story so I don't get blocked on it.) Everything I wrote today was in fact coherent and I think it's good. I would not want to do that every day; I wouldn't have time to do that every day

So, if that sounded like babbling, it's because my stomach has been growling for the past half hour and is now getting angry because I prioritized a blog post over it. I need to stop typing before my stomach decides to eat me.

Breaking through Blocks

2010-11-27T15:41:00.000-05:00

I've been half-blocked on Careful Execution for a few days now, most of my word count coming from working on book three. Since I've been doing the #50kWeekend, I've had to write faster and succeeded in getting blocked on the alluring and completely self-indulgent book three, which made me go back to book one and power through. As a result, I've written one of the most entertaining scenes in the book today and things are looking good to finish on time again.

Speaking of the #50kWeekend, I had thought of kicking back and just failing, but then I thought of my Black Friday bet. Crap. So, slow start on the #50kWeekend today, but as of yesterday I was on track to finish on time and the skies are clear of writer's blocks today.

Chopstick Typing Adventures

2010-11-26T07:15:00.000-05:00

I am typing this with two styluses on my DSi; it's a bit like typing with knitting needles or chopsticks.

Anyway, I was sniped by a Black Friday ad and I still wasn't going to go out since I'm doing the #50kWeekend (Yes I did just hashtag something outside of Twitter.) but I've been wanting to try out this method of writing since I got the DSi and this seemed like a prime chance. (Pause where I had to shake one of those little foot warmer things for my mom who is going out to wait for an hour in crazy cold weather. Have fun with that. I'll be in the car.)

Another reason I'm out here is I want some interesting memories of writing this year. Typing with two styluses on the DSi on a somewhat precariously set up system involving Yahoo! Notepad in freezing cold weather? Interesting. At least to me. My threshhold for what constitutes an adventure may be fairly low, though. (Just realized that if I had brought my camera I could have taken a picture of this writing set up in the wild. Oh well.)

I also brought a (Pause where I had to take an ad to my mom who is, again, crazily waiting outside in the elements. Did someone just laugh at my scarf? Hi, I'm from FL. I haven't sustained sufficient damage to my nervous system to make -5 windchill feel warm yet. And it's a nice scarf!)

Okay, anyway, I brought my novelling notebook which has not seen near enough use just in case this DSi is in peril of running out of battery charge and thus losing my work. See? Adventure! If that had happened, you wouldn't be reading this, so SPOILER: the DSi lasted the whole time.

Right, so what am I out here for? Careful Execution, or rather, because my main character's love of delightfully scented bath products needed to be researched firsthand (Note: It so did not.) and there was an ad for some interesting ones. And when doing a #50kWeekend, what better way to bribe oneself than with st--character limit discovered! I can either lose this post & connect to wi-fi or switch to notebook novelling. Notebook it is.

And I'm back. We're taking a break before we go to the store I want to go to, but yeah, good to know that character limit thing for future reference. These are technically Christmas presents, but my mom would rather give the gifts she gets for my sister and I to us as she buys them so that Christmas isn't all tied up in gift opening and such. Basically, if I finish this weekend, I get whatever bath supplies I pick up today today. If not, I wrap it up and get it for Christmas. I'll probably also do smaller rewards for meeting daily word count goals. (This would be because the real reward will be just taking a shower and bath supplies are in keeping with the theme there.)

Anyway, I got most of this blog post, a few pages of hand written story (I am a slow by hand writer) and some notes and one-liners for the Black Friday shopping scene that's coming up today. Pretty productive so far, let's hope I can keep this up for the rest of the day.

50k Weekend

2010-11-25T22:55:00.001-05:00

Today I learned that a rub can be as good as a brine or better since I don't have to deal with making the brining or slogging a wet turkey around. This increases the probability that I will willingly make Thanksgiving dinner again.

But that's not important. What is? 50K Weekend! Why?

I have three stories, none of which are finished or likely to be finished without some over achieving. I don't care if story three is finished (That one is a complete self indulgence topped with guilty pleasure and sprinkled liberally with Oh my god I hope no one reads this.:D) but it would be nice to wrap up the first two.
My wrists have not been in pain this NaNoWriMo. This is bizarre since they were when I wrote 50k my first year and 83k my second. Doing WriYe seems to have helped, but I've also been switching up typing positions and doing mild wrist exercises between sessions. (Remember kids: Type responsibly.) Anyway, I want to see if I can type a large amount of words without my wrists flaring up.
There's a support group and even a Twitter hashtag! (#50kWeekend) We're all a little crazy here.
I have leftovers. I've got at least two days of not having to worry about cooking or throwing something together. I want to use this to its full advantage. Nothing makes leftovers taste better like a huge goal to add to their utility.
It's fun! I have so much story left and I'm so excited about all three. Let's do this thing.

Word Count Sandwiches

2010-11-25T00:10:00.000-05:00

I spent the day cooking, so everything is ready for a just roast and heat up Thanksgiving tomorrow. I'm good at cooking and before I started writing novels Thanksgiving used to be what I planned for months in advance. I might regain some enthusiasm for it some day, but it will never be at the same level it was. Why shoving my hand under a dead bird's skin and rubbing salt into it while I can still see my hand through said skin (Related: I said I would take pictures of this rubbing process. I did not.) has lost its appeal I'll never know. It's a profound mystery.

Ooh, I just remembered I made candied sweet potatoes. (Yum!) It's been a long day and, if not for the menu I printed, I wouldn't really know what we're having tomorrow even though I made everything.

But you know what I do know I'm having? Leftovers. All weekend. Friday through Sunday I will not have to cook. This means word count. And I'm not sure that I'm doing Black Friday people watching even if I am where I want to be by then, so this means more word count. And you know what I'm having after the first helping of word count? Seconds. And then leftover word count. Word count sandwiches with a thin slice of cranberry jelly on top. No stuffing; I've got plenty of story left, so no need to pad it.

Oh, ~~interesting~~ boring fact: With the exception of baked goods, light fruits and herbal scents, I hate smelling like food. Can't stand it, had to take a shower the second I was done cooking. However, I love smelling like books and bookstores. An omen of my eventual falling out with cooking as a passion or creating connections where none exist? Neither. I'm just super tired of cooking and looking for ways to say never again without directly saying never again, as there is almost always an again. Or there will be until I start saying no or putting up the cash to take us all out for dinner or (secret joy considered taboo on this day of family and home cooking) having a frozen turkey dinner at home alone and writing the whole day. Mmm...

Black Friday Ransom

2010-11-23T19:56:00.000-05:00

I want to go out on Black Friday for novel research, but I'm currently stuck around Mother's/Father's Day in the timeline right now. The solution? Ransom. I don't get to go out and do Black Friday research (It's really unnecessary, just fun.) if I'm not up to at least Halloween in Careful Execution by then. The rules are simple: no skipping chapters, no compressing events simply to win a trip to Black Fridayland. I have to have written to that point or no shopping trip. Period.

There's nothing I actually want (except maybe a peppermint mocha, mmm...) so it may actually be Buy Nothing Day (or Buy Coffee Day [see: peppermint mocha, mmm...]) for me, but as my male main character would agree it's a fantastic day to people watch.

Thanksgiving Returns

2010-11-23T00:25:00.000-05:00

One thing I should know better than to do by now is to announce that a day will be perfect for anything. It will not. That's just how it goes. Today was an okay/good day for writing though and (thanks to a sleep schedule screwed up by week two shenanigans) I still have a few hours of writing time before bed tonight. It's looking like I may actually finish the first draft for both books before December 1st.

Due to some last minute rescheduling, I'll be cooking Thanksgiving dinner after all this year. (Note: Augh) On the up side, Thanksgiving food isn't all that labor intensive (at least not our menu this year) and roasting time does not interfere with my novelling time. (I did say I would make risotto to go with the duck, though. That'll take about an hour of pure work.) On the downside, we're doing a duck on Thanksgiving and a turkey on Black Friday (or Buy Nothing Day) so I had to butterfly and salt cure one today and I'll need to brine the other Thursday. Double upside, the FMC of Careful Execution is in a cooking class and the book has a holiday theme; I still win. (That and I just love Thanksgiving, so it's nice to cook even if I am busy.) I haven't cooked a full Thanksgiving meal since 2007, so this should be interesting.

Plot Hole Spotted

2010-11-21T21:15:00.000-05:00

My main character in Control went into a library last night without shoes on and neither she nor the librarian batted an eyelash at this for 1000 words or so. I went back and fixed it so that she finds a pair of shoes hanging on a power line earlier in the story, not improbable since she'd just covered a lot of ground on supernaturally sped up foot. It was funny to realize the mistake, though. She'd been so clever and careful about covering her tracks to this point, but I suppose they're a little easier to cover when shoes aren't involved in making them. :)

My word count for the day is a little light right now, but that is about to change in a big way. One of the reasons my word count is lower than I'd like it to be right now is that I spent a good part of the day cleaning the house. The other part I spent setting up my early Christmas present from my mom, a Nintendo DSi. I'm less interested in the games right now (Although, whee!) than I am in the fact that I can use Yahoo! Notepad on it to write on the go. I have also received the gift of pizza, a large chicken and pineapple barbeque from Domino's which I'll have all to myself.

So basically, I'm in a good mood from receiving my mobile novelling unit early, have plenty of fuel and always write better in a clean house. That word count is going UP tonight.

Completely Nonlinear Gameplay

2010-11-21T00:11:00.000-05:00

Why do I click news articles? The only good that's going to come from reading that one is that I won't be sleeping tonight, so I might get some extra word count in. Ugh.

Anyway, I was thinking about where I am right now storywise last night and the fact that only ten more days remained of NaNoWriMo. Story One (Careful Execution) is just under 70,000 words and at least halfway finished, probably closer to two-thirds of the way finished. Story Two (Tentatively called Control because the word keeps coming up) is just under 25,000 words and maybe one-fourth of the way finished. My goal for the remaining nine days of NaNoWriMo is to get as much done as possibly on both and my big shiny gold (maybe platinum) goal is to finish both. I really love both of them and I think they're my most competent first drafts ever, (but by no means perfect) so I'd like to get as much of them done as possible while the NaNoWriMo festivities are going on.

And I want to know what happens next! Now. :D This is the feeling I used to get playing video games and watching tv shows. Better of course because it is a) productive b) free and c) completely nonlinear gameplay. Heading back into my head to reap some more fun now.

What Happened Today?

2010-11-20T00:22:00.002-05:00

Well, I've written 10,000 words today and have no terribly interesting blog post to show for it.

The 10,000 words were good words, it's just when you sit down and write it doesn't look very interesting and not much else happens that's worth writing about. Last night I finally figured out how to focus and do 2500 word sessions without any bellyaching from my body or mind. This is awesome, but it's also a bit anti-climactic from the outside. I'm just sitting down, setting a goal and not doing anything else until I achieve it. I keep it difficult but reasonable at 2500 words, which I can get within 90 minutes to 120 minutes, so about the amount of time it takes to watch a movie, except much, much more interesting and fun. I think I'm getting addicted to these "movie" sessions. (Especially since I popped popcorn for the last one. :D) Man, a write-in at a theater would be fun.

Ooh, and speaking of write-ins (I swear I didn't actually plan that segue, it just reminded me of this.) I might be too busy writing to make my hour long trek to the Saturday write-in tomorrow. We'll see where I am tonight, though. It would be nice to get some exercise in.

It would be great if I could stay in this frame of mind about my writing for the rest of NaNoWriMo. I'm completely relaxed and not worried about anything but finding out what happens next in both of my stories. And both of which I'm going to go work on instead of continuing this blog post.

Getting Back on Track with a Guinea Pig

2010-11-18T22:43:00.001-05:00

Something, something, something, oh right! I figured out what to write for the next 5-10k of Careful Execution, so I'll be putting my other book aside for now to work on that full force again.

Writing is tough for different reasons when my sister is here (she's visiting now) than when my stepfather is here. She's fun, we've always gotten along and she made cinnamon rolls for breakfast today. We also talk a lot, though, so conversations about Japanese television shows and hamster surgery in said Japanese television shows has a way of derailing writing.

I was assigned a guinea pig as my NaNoWriMo spirit animal. Live by the running joke, be assigned a spirit animal by the running joke. Anyway, I have named her Sarah and decided that she will eat my face in the night should I not make word count goals during the day. I think this is funny now, but I bet if I do go to sleep without making word count I'll wake up broken out or something, (because my subconscious has a wicked sense of humor) so I'd better get on that now.

Cleaning and Spirit Animals

2010-11-17T23:21:00.000-05:00

While I was trying to think of things to write about today, it became apparent that writing doesn't look very interesting from the outside. You either look dull, sick or manic.

Sometimes you look like you're cleaning, which is what I did most of today to get ready for my sister's visit. I'm up to 1857 words today, all of them on the new novel, and as soon as I get my spirit animal assigned, I'll be heading back into Careful Execution for a chapter. Chris Baty's assigning spirit animals to donor Twitterfolk today. This is fun and an excellent way to procrastinate since clearly I need a spirit animal to write. :D At some point he won't be able to think of real animals to assign and he'll have to break out the dragons. When that time comes, I will be there.

Game Called on Account of Rain

2010-11-16T21:20:00.000-05:00

The probability of missing this blog post is high, so I'm just going to go ahead and write it while I'm thinking about it. I'm not through with my other story, but I've started on another really interesting one I thought of today.

I'm currently going through a darkest before the dawn night. I just have to make it through this one night and peace will be restored.

I'm going to go work on the new story now. Writing something else should help me get through this night and give me a break from my main story so I can get back on track later this week, when my blog posts will return to consisting of paragraphs longer than two sentences.

Coffee Fox

2010-11-16T00:59:00.000-05:00

I am getting bored of my usual blog posts, so today I will tell you the story of my coffee fox, technically, my fox, Coffee.

Back in May when I was working on my fox story I decided my main character needed a spunky sidekick. I actually just decided he needed a fox familiar and started writing, she just happened to be spunky. Coffee turned out to be a talking fox with a fear of muffins, having been killed by a poisoned one in her previous life as a nonmagical fox. The reason she was poisoned was for making a pest of herself to the owner of a cafe, one with no love of delightful caffeinated foxes. Since it wasn't coffee that poisoned her, Coffee retained her love of coffee and all things caffeinated into her next life as the main character's familiar.

Coffee's just about the best character I can write when I'm feeling down or when I'm feeling excessively perky. I've been trying to work her into the revised version of the fox story (Which I'll begin once I finish Careful Execution) but now I'm wondering if she should be an editorial fox in her own story. This would be awesome, if only because I love writing her so much, but it's getting shelved for now.

And that is what's going on in my brain right now. Caffeinated foxes.

Plot Christmas

2010-11-15T00:56:00.000-05:00

After struggling a bit today, plot Christmas came in the form of a new character, one who was supposed to come into play in the next book in some vague unplanned way. She's here now, stirring stuff up and tying things together nicely. Interesting because when I decided to go ahead and use her in this one last night I expected things to become more difficult to write. Nope. One plot twist and she's made the whole book better.

I'm still going through bouts of mopiness, but that should clear up by Wednesday. In the last week, I think I've decided to officially do a Big Fun Scary List instead of half-heartedly picking at resolutions or doing WriYe next year. I want to be in a much better place to do NaNoWriMo next year (Still Co, just more in control.) and that should help.

Leaving it at that for now and heading back into the story.

The Marathon Day

2010-11-13T19:03:00.000-05:00

Today's off to a relatively slow start. The write-in today was quiet and only a little productive for me, but that's fine since I had to leave while the sun was still up and before the weather had time to change. I'm home now and thinking of how best to take care of this funk I've been in for a few days. What I need is a marathon.

A marathon that's half-work, half-fun, a combination of movie marathon and sprint marathon, though no movies will be watched. Soft word count goal: 5,000 Hard word count goal: 10,000 Beginning at 5:15pm mountain time, ending at 3:15am mountain time. I've got ten minutes to come up with interesting things to punctuate the sprint starting with. I'm thinking of basically just snacks and music since I'll be focusing on writing and not much else will have an impact without inviting procrastination.

Schedule:

5:15-7:30pm Snow novelling.
7:30-8:00pm Warm beverage acquisition and popcorn popping time/warm-up time.
8:00-10:00pm Snow novelling.
10:00-10:30pm Wish I was still outside snow novelling hot shower time.
10:30-11:30pm- Bring your sandwich to novel hour.
11:30-2:30am- Capitalize on the theoretic silence sprint
2:30-3:15am- Celebrate the fact that I'm getting closer to the holidays in the book by switching to orchestral holiday music and sipping hot chocolate with gingerbread cookies time.

And off I go to implement this schedule.

Snow Novelling

2010-11-12T22:09:00.001-05:00

This is the bench in the garden of sanity:

This is what it looks like when one bundles up at night to go write on the bench in the garden of sanity:

This is the view from the notebook at night in the garden of sanity:

I had to come in sooner than I would have liked because I didn't layer my socks well enough, but I will return to the garden of sanity where nary a sound of sitcom nor scent of garlic shrimp pierces the night air. I figured out a prologue while I was writing out there and it is nice to know that, should I need to, I can go out there and camp until things are quiet, and less shrimp-scented, inside the apartment.

Yeah, This Again

2010-11-11T19:16:00.000-05:00

I'm frustrated with nonNaNoWriMo things again today, so feel free to skip this one.

Very, very irritated today. On the one hand, had this visit occurred in December I wouldn't have NaNoWriMo to take my mind off of things. On the other, I don't like having other things on my mind during NaNoWriMo. I think I'm going to start using showers and brushing my teeth as coping mechanisms until this is over. Probably too much information, but one of the reasons I keep this blog is as a record of what happened during this year for future me to read and what happened today is I was sick (I woke up from pain after 4 hours sleep) and depressed for most of it.

Last night what helped was setting some time aside to write about the problem. That worked to bust a good portion of my stress so, after the shower, it'll probably be what I do to reset my mind. One thing I'm thinking of is going over my story and looking for places I could plug these emotions into. It might help me and the story and it will also be something I can add to word count, making this day seem a little better.

Hopefully I'll be in a bit better of a mood later tonight or tomorrow.

Week Two Arrives Full Force

2010-11-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

Until I have some distance and see the full effects of this week, I can't really say that the recent occurrences are bad things, so while I will not say something like screw you week two, I will say same to you week two. I'm wishing on you whatever you bring me, and that is where I'll leave it, week two.

Anyway, I'm writing this early because I need to pull some money together this week and as I don't have a job right now that means internet work. (Slight shudder.) It's not that I mind things like surveys, they're just a bit mind-numbing in large quantities and not something I wanted to combine with NaNo and a visit from my stepfather. This will be the last time I complain about it, though because neither event is avoidable and sulking helps no one.

But deus ex machina in my favor? I know for a fact you have my address.

This could be really good for my novel, though. Stress and doing different things means I'll be thinking differently than I did in the first week, which can be great for clearing out blocks and charging into week three. We'll see and I have enough to worry about without worrying about how much worrying I'll be doing over the next week.

Location Scouting

2010-11-09T21:17:00.001-05:00

I have a lot of anxiety right now because my stepfather is visiting for a week starting tomorrow. Luckily, my main character is in therapy.

Anyway, I'm currently scouting locations for where I could go during the day for that week via googlemaps. I'm hoping the secret library, secret in that I didn't know it was so close until recently, will let me write there during the day since I can't afford to pay latte rent on a Starbucks or cafe seven days in a row all day. (Urgh. Just realized the secret library is probably closed Sunday.) I should take pictures if I do go writing space hunting. Still, this could be a good thing in that I will need to walk and get out more because of it.

Today's word count is near nonexistent, but I'm about to go take care of that now. (Then pack a lunch for on foot location scouting tomorrow.)

Apple Cider Day

2010-11-08T18:57:00.000-05:00

I declare today apple cider day because I can and because my brain seems to think it's more important to obtain a mug of said cider than to get a day eight blog post written on time. In honor of you, brain, we make this day about the cider.

Ce n'est pas une métaphore.

I said something was hit and miss yesterday, which I thought was funny. The phrase is hit or miss, being hit and miss would mean whatever it is is simultaneously great and awful. Later that night I tried the brand of cider pictured above for the first time which is paradoxically the best and possibly worst cider I've ever had. It's spicy and tart with a wonderful burst of spices, but since it's from a Keurig maker, it has a sweetener in it, stevia, that I'm not fond of. The cider contains real brown sugar to balance it out, but in order to fit the desired level of sweetness into a wee little cup one can pop into a Keurig maker, they had to add a cloyingly sweet substance.
...
Welcome to week two!

In fact, welcome to NaNoWriMo in general: a month long burst of tart and spicy warmth with a slight aftertaste. It's something you may lose sight of if you've done this before, but fitting writing a novel into a month is a big thing, not every part is going to be perfect. First draft is a synonym for imperfection. Don't let one rocky passage in a succession of okay, good or even great passages slow you down. How you see your novel is your choice and that choice is critical to how much you enjoy this month and how much life you impart into your novel. Focus on the good bits, forgive the bad and you'll make it through. Ignore the stevia.

I love metaphors and I love talking to myself in the second person. I'm just going to embrace that for the rest of this month.

So, update time. I'm at 47,959 words and I'm leaving for a write-in in less than two hours; I should cross the 50k line sometime tonight. Hitting 50k for me is big for two reasons: 1) My free Createspace proof copy is assured, barring some unforeseen tragedy. No need to worry about missing the offer this year. 2) I have a good chunk of my novel written and a good idea of where it's going. I can spend the rest of the month tweaking, punctuated with a few high word goal "sprints" (At the rate I write, they're more like jogs or strolls sometimes.) for fun. Ah, and I just thought of 3) The rest of the month will be filled with visits from family beginning this very weekend, having as much of this novel finished as possible is very important for that reason alone. Having a set of safety headphones is also very important for that reason alone.

So I should probably start getting ready for that write-in either by outlining or hitting 50k so that I don't have to do so in public. I'm not big on celebrations in public places; I don't want to feel like someone just made the waiters come around to bring me a cake and sing a birthday song at a write-in. -_- Since this is generally a small group and calm, I'm not too worried about it, but I should make how I feel clear before we get started. Mmm, sweet open honest communication, you keep waiters from shouting and clapping to a public domain version of "Happy Birthday to You" right beside my ear.

Secret Goal Decided

2010-11-07T01:49:00.001-05:00

I was back and forth between making my secret goal to write 250,000 words or to make this the best, most complete NaNoWriMo draft I've ever written. Yesterday I decided on the latter, (After telling people at the write-in I was going for 250,000 words. Whoops.) which has given me a bit of a word count cushion, but has made the month no less difficult. It is a lot more fun though. When I get tired of writing, I can switch to working on the outline for unwritten scenes or tweaking what I've written. I also wrote an essay tonight to clarify what I think makes a good novel.

I wouldn't call what I'd doing editing yet, just being more careful as I go.

...

And now I'm wondering if it's the influence of the title I chose for this year's project that pushed me over the edge on this decision. Anyway, I'm sure my wrists will be happier for it by the end of the month.

Write-in! What Am I Doing Here?

2010-11-06T16:55:00.001-04:00

I'm writing this from the first write-in I've attended for one of my regions. (I'm on the edge of two this year.) You will note that this is not fiction, nor word countable. I've been here for two hours and have around 1600 words; I've gone slower but yeah...going to be another long night if I want to make my personal word count goal.

I hate being new. Raspberry mocha is here to help, but its social problem is the opposite of mine in that it needs to take time to cooldown before it's willing to join the group.

Can't we just play pin the tail on the donkey? That's a great ice-breaker! Works in any social situation.

Now checking my pictures folder for anything I haven't posted that I might be able to skew as relevant to this post.

Oh, here we go. Coffee with hot chocolate with two toasted marshmallows and a double pack of dehydrated marshmallows. Doesn't get more NaNo-Relevant than that.

Oh, things are picking up now. Well, enjoy the picture of coffee chocolate marshmallow anyway.

Caffeinetarian

2010-11-05T19:34:00.000-04:00

First off, I should have listened to the peanut butter and apple evangelists sooner. It is indeed a near perfect snack.

Second, forget yesterday's title. Getting rid of things I love is NOT the way to go about increasing my productivity. I went from three 8,000ish days in a row to 1200 something. I also decided to increase the amount of caffeine I drink. My favorite teacher ever was rarely seen without a cup of coffee in her hand; I intend to continue her legacy now, but occasionally mix it up by drinking tea as well.

Being a stereotypical writer, my main male character also has an affection for lattes and was also forced to go off them yesterday along with my female main character who he had managed to addict to them as well. We are all happy that yesterday is over.

I could have handled no caffeine OR no Twitter, just not both when I'm trying to do something big. I like the encouragement and comradery of Twitter. It moves faster than the boards and is just plain fun. Seeing people tweet about their word count, nanoisms and moments of soul eating is what social writing is all about. (Charlie Brown.)

Anyway, I had to put my writing on hold a bit to make a little more money for my write-in latte fund (there's a six hour one tomorrow) and do some house maintenance, so I'm at 2012 words for the day. That needs to go up quite a bit if I want to make my secret goal today, so I'm off to write again.

Productivity Tip: Lose A Bet

2010-11-04T03:01:00.001-04:00

So yesterday, I decided to break my nonwriting funk, it was past noon and I'd barely written anything, by challenging myself to write 10,000 words in six hours. I got to 7808 words with a little over half an hour to go, but had to go to the store. (Note: The best I've ever managed was 3000 words in one hour; there's a 90 percent chance I would have lost anyway.) Late in the game, I asked for penalty dares on Twitter, so today I'll be noveling sans caffeine (gasp!) but this will be balanced out by the fact that I have also lost my Twitter privileges today. (Joy. -_- Well, actually, it is a time suck and an addiction, so: Joy! At least when I'm writing a very large amount of fiction in one month.) I'm going to avoid the forums today as well so I can fully take advantage of my temporary bout of self-discipline.

Yesterday I also learned to respect the backspace key. I switched it off on Write or Die desktop edition to try to make up some time partway through the challenge. Never. Again. I hit the backspace key A LOT as it turns out. After the challenge finished I went back to edit what I had written and found that I remembered making nearly every mistake I corrected. I like to think I'm less of a perfectionist now, but clearly some part of younger me remains since typing over five different spellings of my main character's name seems to have left some mental scars. I did write a little faster and every word of it was a painful ordeal I do not wish to repeat. (Although it could be interesting to try in some other month to get my accuracy up.)

Things are getting interesting in my story now which means the challenge may have been enough to break through the gloomy funk I ended on yesterday.

Oh, I should go add the caffeine Twitter dares to the dares tab even though they're not going in my novel. I...I want to hashtag that, but can't. :( #SadFace

Update: Getting started writing today has been both rough and slow. I miss my tea's mood regulating caffeine and Twitter's word count competitiveness/general silliness. I'm going to go for a longish walk to get some energy going the healthy way and work off a bit of stress. Oh, and I'm taking a notepad + camera just in case. Never leave home without one in November.

This Is Day Three

2010-11-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

...And this is my inner critic. Inner Editor is off with my muse which unfortunately leaves me mostly unprotected.

He's been complaining about everything today: I'm too tired, this chair is too uncomfortable, I'm not caffeinated enough, I'm too caffeinated, this keyboard isn't at the right level, you spent 9,000 words talking about a pancake diner, I need a slice of gingerbread loaf, I think I'm getting sick, this isn't going anywhere, you don't know what you're doing, I want to go for a walk, how hard is it to come up with an outline, can't we just play video games?

Fortunately, he seems flattered by the attention I just gave him. (An entire blog post and a tenth of his complaints transcribed.) I think today I may sit him down with a movie and steady stream of sugar and caffeine and see how he does.

Yes I was going to talk about regulating caffeine energy, but--actually, why not?

So, I'm limiting myself to a cup of coffee a day which has become a bit more difficult since my mom bought these little cups of condensed heaven called Dark Magic blend for her keurig maker. I call the coffee a power shot of caffeine, or for the Final Fantasy fans a limit break. It's good for breaking myself out of a funk as I just did before I started this blog post. Years ago, I used to drink Mountain Dew for the same reason, which may work for some people, but sugar and caffeine have an exaggerated effect on me, so that just made me manic with a huge crash afterward.

The energy from tea caffeine is a bit more mellow. I don't add sugar, so there's no crash at all and it gives me that little bit of focus I need to make it through my word count. The basic cheap tea I have doesn't seem to mind if I forget it for an hour or so while I write and tastes just as nice cold. (If I weren't so lazy and or busy I'd make a pitcher of iced tea to keep in the refrigerator.)

And now I feel better. Yay blogging in November! ^_^

A Report on Day One and My Write-In Schedule

2010-11-02T12:53:00.003-04:00

So yesterday was my best NaNoWriMo opening day ever, but just like every other year I've done this, it was hard. I am not part of the majority of WriMos who have an easy first week. Beginnings are my writing weakness. Since I know this, I created a detailed outline for the first chapter on the 31st which helped me reach 8,535 words without having a panic attack. (Aw, a first day tradition broken.) One nice thing about writing so much on the first day is that I can't go back and read the whole thing unless I want to lose a lot of time.

Today, and for the rest of the week until I find something that works, I'm trying to figure out what writing schedule and writing programs work best for me. I like Write or Die desktop edition for write-ins but I'm trying to figure out whether it or a plain text file are best for every day writing.

I went to a write-in last night. (A cozy one with only three people including myself.) And, barring some bizarre confluence of events, I'll be attending an online write-in tonight. I'll also be going to a six hour write-in on Saturday, again barring a bizarre confluence of events. So, Mondays, Tuesdays, Saturdays are my social writing days. Tonight I hope to be at at least 6k before the write-in begins, which is why this blog post needs to end now.

(Tomorrow may be a post about caffeine regulation and using the snack cache before passing out.)

Edit: Urgh. I'm just barely at my technical goal for the day, but I'm not going to bed until I've met my secret goal as well.

Discoveries!

2010-11-01T17:14:00.000-04:00

I'm only 400 or so words from my technical goal of 3,334 words a day. I also have a secret goal, which I'm farther from and a forum post goal of 5,000 words on day one, so I'm a little behind. In addition to writing, today I have discovered and rediscovered a lot of things that are not writing my novel including:

Playing on Twitter
Making a sandwich
Moving all writing supplies from my desk to the couch to the table and back to the desk
Checking the mail too early, necessitating another trip out to check the mail later
Taking pictures of my mom's new hedgehog
Writing a blog post before I hit my word count goal for the day.

And others. I may come back and update after the write-in I'm going to tonight, but I want to be at at least 5k by then so I'm signing off for now.

Odds and Ends of NaNoWriMo Eve

2010-10-31T19:41:00.001-04:00

I've done a bunch of little things which are NaNoWriMo-related today, so rather than finding a way to tie them all together or making separate posts for each action or event, I thought I'd just post them together in different parts:

Part One: Focus

I have a cute little postcard of a fox kit that sits on my desk. Normally this is fine, but this year I'm restraining a fox story plot bunny until I make word count on my main story. The solution:

Careful Execution Mode: A distilled outline or you could call it a custom Careful Execution Magna Carta.

Fox Story Mode: Remove the Magna Carta to release the foxes!

Part Two: Word Count M&Ms

I was going to save these for one big word count day, but now I think I'll just use them as I go. I've held off on loading them into the candy holder until now so that they won't go stale as quickly.

Part Three: The Advent Calendar

I finally loaded my advent calendar which, with distractions, took about twenty minutes. Behold:

You can fit up to three Hershey's minis in a compartment, but I went with two.

Part Four: The Emergency Escape Kit

My stepfather is coming out for one week in November, so I have prepared this miniature emergency escape kit. It only has $1.56 and a $5 Subway card so far, but it will do to keep me out of the house and fed for a few hours.

Part Five: Trick-Or-Treaters

It's currently 5:37pm here. We haven't had any trick-or-treaters yet, but that may change. If we don't have many, or any, drop by, then tomorrow will be the great candy harvest.

Part Six: Midnight

It's not impossible that I'll be staying up till midnight to write, but highly unlikely. I've been going to bed at 10pm or so, and I'd rather not change that. I'll just have to get up a little early and not let myself on Twitter (except maybe to report in on starting my NaNovel) or the forums until I've met word count.

This post is getting a bit long and I've got an outline to work on, housework to do and dinner to make still, so that's all for now.

The State of the Outline Address

2010-10-31T10:57:00.001-04:00

So, today is Halloween. (Although it may already be November 1st where you are.)

I have a chapter by chapter outline for the first three chapters of my NaNovel, a lot of backstory and sequel stuff and an end. I've heard this "middle" business is overrated anyway. At this point I may just write act I, then put "Use your imagination," with a picture of a unicorn and a rainbow for act II, and head into act III.

I start updating the blog daily tomorrow. Not too concerned about that because I can always turn it into a cooking blog halfway through the month if the entries start getting too boring.

I'm handing out candy to trick-or-treaters tonight. As I was typing "I'm handing out candy," I realized I needed to finish by clarifying that it was to trick-or-treaters. Sadly I lack the means to hand it out to deserving WriMos (read: anyone who attempts it) through the internet. I can give you some virtual candy, though:

Huh, that was almost stream of consciousness writing. (Practice for tomorrow? We'll see!) I'll probably be back later today with another post when (if) my thoughts start feeling less fragmented. I still want to finish my chapter by chapter outline today, (even if some chapters only get a sentence) load my advent calendar, do a little housework and rearrange my writing space yet again.

Oh, and this is your last chance to help NaNoWriMo win the Goodsearch toolbar download contest if you haven't already. Details here. And it is not a monthly contest; that's just a mistake I made earlier this month. (Oy.)
Edit: Done and won. We took second place and won a total of $1100 for NaNoWriMo. The same prize as first. :)

Plot Bunny Vent Ninja Strikes

2010-10-27T09:34:00.000-04:00

So, on October 27, 2010 around 6:50am-7:00am something crawled out of the floor vent in my room then scurried back into it. I didn't get a good look at it, but: Something. Crawled out. Of vent.

Since I'm something of an opportunist, the thing must now pay for its intrusion by appearing in a story. I'm using my two tweets about it as a starting point:

Creatures allowed to crawl out of the vent in my room: pangolins, foxes, baby dragons, unicorns. All others need not apply.

I still don't know what that thing was, but it was not one of the previously listed creatures, so it had no business visiting me.

This means I may actually write the story in the first person which is something I don't normally do. I might also write this during November since working on a separate story last year was fun.

Let my experience here be a warning to you: Seal your vents tight at the end of October or risk plot bunnies coming up through them.

Mirrors and the Fell Inner Critic

2010-10-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

I finished editing Plot Bunny Fields Forever last night. I felt like I was going pretty slow, then I realized I'd made it through 39 pages of editing in two days. Only a WriMo would consider editing 20 pages a day slow.

The problem with editing isn't that it's difficult, it's that you have to stare into a writing mirror for a very long time. So long that I usually find reasons to give up. Editing a self-contained work with only 39 pages may have helped with that. It was long enough to trigger my tortured writer reactions but short enough that I kept going regardless. What I really learned from this experience was to separate the much vilified inner editor from the true villain the inner critic.

Sure they're annoying, no one likes being told they're wrong even by themselves, but your inner editor just doesn't want you to look like an idiot. The inner editor wants you to produce something you can be proud of for years and something coherent enough to share with others. The inner critic is the creature you may confuse your inner editor for. In fact, you may have fused your inner critic with your inner editor. You must undo this if you want to make any editing progress.

The inner critic is a spoiled lush. It has no concept of hard work or time and thinks everything should be served to it in perfect form on a silver platter. If anything is imperfect in what you serve it, the inner critic will throw a magnificent tantrum and tell you how worthless you are in an amazing variety of ways. Note that coming up with insults is the only way in which an inner critic is creative.

The inner editor is all about progress. Show an inner editor an imperfection and she'll get on figuring out how to fix it. That is, she'll get on figuring out how to fix it if she doesn't have an inner critic cutting her hamstrings every five seconds.

What I've gained some experience with over the past two days is distinguishing between positive comments from the inner editor (I may not always like them but they are constructive) and negative comments from the inner critic. You'll know the latter because they'll involve a lot of negative words and phrases and deal primarily with opinion and useless comparisons rather than fact. (Ie: This is crap.[opinion] This isn't as good as [insert name of author here]. [comparison] )

What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo? Despite advice not to, many people keep their inner editors with them during the month of November. That's fine if it helps you write, but don't keep the inner critic around. At all. Kill it if you can.

Reasons to Keep a Blog this NaNoWriMo

2010-10-20T07:49:00.000-04:00

2008 was the first year I started blogging every day of NaNoWriMo. I remember why I signed up for a blog, Livejournal was donating $1 to the Office of Letters and Light for each new user who won that year, what I can't remember is why I decided to post an entry every day.

People seem to think blogging every day of NaNoWriMo is difficult, but really it's not. First off, what you blog does not have to be good. At all. It doesn't even have to be long. Just throw a sentence up on the site and hit publish.

Second, it can give you a quick sense of accomplishment which you may find you sorely need on certain days. Didn't make your word count goal? Well, at least you made your blog post goal.

Third, writing about your NaNoWriMo progress somewhat randomly can lead to some interesting story developments. It can also act as a form of stress relief, especially when something happens outside NaNoLand and you need a place to vent or just to get your thoughts in order.

Fourth, it provides you a record of both where you were as a writer that year and who you were as a person. I'm waiting till next year to read my 2009 blog, but I can actually read 2008's livejournal without cringing and what's really awesome is that was my newbie year. As long as I keep this blogging streak up, I'll be able to see myself mature a little more every year. (With the previously mentioned one year reading gap.)

If you've never given blogging during NaNoWriMo a shot, why not? There's no law that you have to post every day just because some of us do and in a few years you may be happy that you did.

Stress! And Plot Bunny Fields Forever

2010-10-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

Today I found out I'm moving...this weekend. The short, short notice is because I'm currently staying with my mom who does travel assignments and she recently transferred to a new job one town over. The company is adamant about her moving to an apartment within that town. I'm very happy that this did not happen in November.

Overall this is a positive move for me because I'll be able to attend more write-ins in that town and still hop a bus to the morning write-ins in this town. The problem is I wanted to put Plot Bunny Fields Forever up tomorrow after a bit of spiffying up and illustration work, but now I have to pack.

So, here's my compromise: I'm putting up the first draft here as a separate page on this blog then I'll be rewriting some parts before I make a shinier version sometime next week. There's at least one part I can't let slide without a rewrite, so I'll be posting it in full either later tonight or tomorrow.

Once it goes up, you can leave any comments you have here. Ooh, and now my crippling self doubt is kicking in; pretty sad that I can't even transcribe something without getting writer's jitters. I'm going to indulge it, but if you want to live under the illusion that I am a confident person, please skip the next paragraph.

If you start getting bored, feel free to skim. Don't feel like you have to read this. You get what you pay for. I know that part is a bit dull. Please choose one of the following apologies: I'm sorry it's so short. I'm sorry it's so long. I'm sorry I'm apologizing so much. I don't care what anyone thinks, tweezers and shins are always funny.

Whoops, had a little bit of self confidence leak in on that last line there. Darn NaNoWriMo won't even let me stay in a proper mopey writer's funk anymore.

Other Ways to Donate When Broke: Part Two

2010-10-11T05:58:00.000-04:00

Last year I wrote this post on other ways to donate when broke. This is for people who really, really want to do something for the Office of Letters and Light though their wallets may be bare. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with new options. Frankly, since I covered a lot of them last year, I've got next to nothing. (Or next to nothing that just about anyone could do online.) So this year I'm keeping it simple by adding only two options to my previous post:

Option One: Do surveys. You won't make a ton of money, but you could easily earn the $10 donation halo by the end of October or November. Wisebread has a (now rather dated) article listing survey companies and providing reviews of them. Mysurvey123 is updated more often and has a wide range of survey companies arranged by country. (I like Pinecone research myself, but they're a bit unpredictable when it comes to survey frequency and it can be difficult to find a sign up link.) You do have to provide a lot of personal information to most of these places, so take that into consideration before signing up.

Option Two: Help us win a $1000 donation by downloading the Goodsearch toolbar. This costs nothing and it's easy to do (You can even uninstall it if you don't like it.) but your download will absolutely make a difference. We need to stay in the top five until the first of November and while we have a healthy lead, that could change quickly. So far we've already earned the $100 bonus donation by being one of the first 100 (The first, in fact.) nonprofits to reach 100 toolbar downloads.

Oh, and I made a mistake when I said it was monthly in the first post; it's only for the month of October. Oy, I hope we get 500 posts so we can start a new thread without that error.

Noveling Fuel: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

2010-10-10T01:04:00.000-04:00

Today we talk pancakes.

Not just pancakes, but all sorts of noveling fuel. The effects of coffee and chocolate on speed noveling performance are well-documented, so I'll skip that and use this post to talk about more important forms of fuel, specifically food. You need it, you need it fast and you need it in quantities large and healthy enough to keep you alive until December first.

There's a NaNoWriMo cookbook (which you should definitely download and read) but the problem is there are a lot of recipes in there and not all of them are quick and easy. (Some of them are, though. You really should check it out.) Anyway, I'm going to give you three options for each meal of the day just to get you started.

Breakfast-
Painfully simple- Cereal and milk + a fruit. Seriously, stock up because you may wind up living off this stuff.

Simple- Cinnamon toast. I used to have cinnamon toast all the time when I was a kid. Just butter some bread and sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on it. You could also use pumpkin spice in lieu of cinnamon, which is very nice. Just put it on a cookie sheet and pop it in a 375 degree oven for about five minutes. Make a little extra and you can snack on it later.

Kinda simple- Pancakes. Yeah, you kind of need kitchen experience for these, but it's about the simplest food you can make with cake in the title that doesn't require a lot of time or ingredients. This is probably going to get its own post either here or my Careful Execution blog since pancakes figure into the story a bit. (Oh, and the name of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel is Careful Execution, since I haven't announced it here yet.) Top these with fresh fruit for a little health boost.

Lunch-
Painfully simple- Sandwich, bonus points if you put enough veggies on it to constitute a salad. Deli meat, or meat substitute, toppings and bread, pretty simple and you can make an extra one in advance for the next day or dinner.

Simple- Chicken, tuna, turkey or egg salad. Americans, take note of the turkey option; it's a fine use of Thanksgiving leftovers. This one's a bit more involved, but it'll stay good for a few days in the refrigerator. Perfect for me since I can write until I'm about to pass out from hunger then roll into the kitchen. (Literally, dragging is overrated. Just be sure to leave all the doors between you and the kitchen open so you don't have to stand up at any point in the journey. I suppose you could keep the bread in a cabinet at floor level as well.) It's also nice because you can cram a few bits of celery, slivered almonds or grape halves in there and pretend it's a healthy lunch.

Kinda simple- Bean burritos. Really, this is a simple recipe, but since you may need to consult a folding diagram to get it right, I bumped it up a level. Just heat a flour tortilla in the microwave about ten seconds, add some warmed refried beans, taco sauce and cheese then fold and you're ready to go. Now for the folding diagram which I made approximately forever ago:

Dinner-
Painfully simple- Nachos. Heat up some refried beans, (You bought some for the burritos, right?) put some cheese and salsa on them, open a bag of tortilla chips and call it good. You can get fancy with stuff if you'd like, but that's about as much effort as I'm willing to put into them.

Simple- Pasta with parmesan and olive oil. This is what I go to when I really need something satisfying quickly. Just boil the pasta according to the instructions on the bag or box,(pour a little salt in the water, too) drain it, and toss some olive oil and parmesan cheese on top. (I also add mozzarella if I have it.)

Kinda simple- Roast chicken, potatoes and carrots. This doesn't take much time to throw together. Just remember to listen for the oven timer, better yet set an alarm wherever you're writing, or you could be in some serious smoky trouble. Usually, I use chicken breasts or thighs and cut the potatoes and carrots in large chunks, season with salt, garlic powder and onion powder, sprinkle a little cooking oil on it, and cover with aluminum foil. I think it's 375 degrees and an hour to two hours cooking time, but I just cook it until it's done. Meaning I take it out of the oven and check it after about an hour to see if the chicken is done and the vegetables are soft. You can add onions and garlic, but chopping it may leave your fingers smelling like said onions and garlic and you need those for noveling.

I'll talk about shelf stable alternatives to all of these in the next food post.

Supporting The OLL

2010-10-08T09:38:00.001-04:00

This year a group of us on the forums are doing our best to get people to download the Goodsearch toolbar so that the Office of Letters and Light (ie NaNoWriMo) can win a $1000 donation. You can find out more about that here, but that's not exactly what I want to talk about.

Last year we were trying to do something similar for a different donation contest, which sadly we didn't win. Someone posted a question in that contest's forum post asking if we should really be supporting this when there were so many other charities we could be supporting. I imagine there are people wondering the same about this contest and it's understandable, but here's the thing: Events like NaNoWriMo help turn people's ideas into reality. This goes beyond writing a novel in a month.

What may come as a surprise about NaNoWriMo participants is that not all of us want to be professional writers. Some people just love the creative challenge and comradery of it. I believe these people will leave NaNoWriMo and take the same enthusiasm into their careers and true passions. They won't look at huge problems and automatically think they're impossible; they'll get to work on them and figure things out as they go. Mistakes will be made, but they will be learned from and fixed.

What the Office of Letters and Light does is give people the confidence and support they need to create something big from next to nothing. It trains a person to set goals for what they really want to do and meet them. It trains people to act, to turn their some day dreams into realities and that changes lives.

There are other reasons to support the OLL, of course, but this is the one most relevant to me and the one which I think has the most power. (Again, I'm biased.) Feel free to leave a comment on what NaNoWriMo, Script Frenzy or the Young Writer's Program have done for you.

Plot Bunny Night

2010-10-03T01:56:00.001-04:00

It's been too long since I've posted a picture.

The plot bunnies currently own my brain. Until I get them out of there, I'm not going to be able to fully concentrate on anything else. So, tonight I'm getting as much work as possible done on Plot Bunny Fields Forever. To kick things off I took the pages I printed a week ago and cut them up so they can be sandwiched between the pages I've written during the week and whatever additions I make tonight. Or maybe not. I may just edit on the computer to save paper and ink, but having a physical copy usually helps me work through ideas, so we'll see.

Also, there is pizza. Pizza is an important tool for productivity matched only by Chinese food and coffee.

Oh, and in case you saw the advent calendar post in the All-Ages Coffee House earlier, this is the advent calendar I'll be making once I've finished with Plot Bunny Fields Forever: http://kidscraftweekly.com/advent_ideas_issue.html (The matchbox drawers variation.)

PreNaNoWriMo To-Do List

2010-10-02T16:21:00.009-04:00

Now that the forums have relaunched I'm going to have to get organized if I want to complete all my PreNaNoWriMo projects on time. I'll be adding to this and crossing out things as I go, but here's what I can think of so far:

~~1. Finish Plot Bunny Fields Forever: A Study in Plot Bunny Care and Husbandry~~ (Complete! At least the first draft.)
~~2. NaNoWriMo Advent Calendar (Plus pictures and links to instructions.)~~(Complete! ~~Or it will be once I finish the instruction post.~~ Which I did.)
3. Finish NaNovel 2010 Outline
~~4. Start Plot Bunny Challenge Thread in NaNoArtisans Forum~~
~~5. Start Odds and Ends Thread in NaNoArtisans Forum~~
~~6. Start NaNoWriMo Decor Thread in NaNoArtisans Forum~~ (I decided not to do 4-6, or at least not to make them a priority.)
7. Add to the Twitter Word Sprints Tutorial (So we can get as many people to participate as possible.)
~~8. Write a New Tutorial on Other Ways to Donate When Broke~~ (Complete just not yet posted)
~~9. Write PreNaNoWriMo Prep Post One and Post by October 9th~~ (Complete)
~~10.Gather More Noveling Treats and Supplies and Update the Treasure Chest Page~~ (Complete)
~~11.Earn Money for NaNoWriMo Donation and Novel Title Domain Name Registration~~ (Complete)

Numbers 4-6 are optional. I'm going to try to get 1-9 out of the way before Tuesday and do 10 when I have a better idea of what my November employment status will be.

404

2010-09-29T02:36:00.002-04:00

I'm currently 404ing on the NaNoWriMo Forums. Technically, I'll only have to be inactive for a day or two to see this joke through, but we'll see how long I actually hold out.

So while I'm not posting on the forums I'll be working on "Plot Bunny Fields Forever" so that I can put it up as close to site relaunch as possible. Something I've been wondering: Where on earth am I supposed to post this thing? I'm not actually too concerned about it (Once I hit "post" it's Dragonchilde's problem. Hah!) so I'm just taking a stab in the dark and putting it in the All-Ages Coffee House once I'm finished.

I'm thinking of posting this chapter by chapter in the forum post itself instead of just linking off site, because I don't want people to have to leave NaNoWriMo proper to read it. That could get messy, so I'll probably make a page for a nicely (more realistically, adequately) formatted version of it here as well. Not actively worrying about this right now, but if you have any ideas on how I should post/distribute this please share them in the comments.

Ah! I finally got closure on the Tom Selleck painting in the NaNoWriMo office. It's not a "Meet the Robinsons" reference, which I thought it might be, just pure coincidence! What are the odds of that? This is awesome, of course, much more so than a simple reference would have been. Is there a Pottery Barn for Tom Selleck merchandise somewhere?

Keep Moving Forward,

Leo Fair

Edit: Well, the 404 joke lasted twelve hours before far too interesting to pass up forum posts went and killed it.

A Letter to the NaNoWriMo Forums

2010-09-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

Dear Forums,

Hi, how are you? As you know from my refreshing every 5 minutes, I'm quite distracted myself. If it's not too much trouble, could you stay down for about three days while I finish some projects? I promise to resume my obsessive refreshing come October 1st.

With love,
Leo Fair

P.S. If you could take Twitter with you for those three days, my productivity would greatly appreciate it.

Well Can You?

2010-09-26T02:05:00.001-04:00

I was just going to leave this here, but it occurred to me that not everyone would be familiar with the signs this is based on. You can buy signs with a silhouette of a dog breed with something like: "I can make it to the fence in 3 seconds. Can You?" that function as "Beware of Dog" signs.

Note that this is what happens when you stay up too late and let yourself play with MS Paint. Don't ever do that.

Plot Bunny Fields Forever

2010-09-20T15:50:00.003-04:00

Two posts in one day. Way to rope in that enthusiasm, Leo.

Since I recently found out it's a hard book to come by, I've been working to transcribe my copy of "Plot Bunny Fields Forever: A Study in Plot Bunny Care and Husbandry" by Ilea For in time for NaNoWriMo. I'm a little under 2000 words in including the forward I've added to explain the book's history and some of the changes I've made in transcription:

Originally distributed as a promotional item for Literary brand carrots, "Plot Bunny Fields Forever" was later revised by the author and republished by Pens & Pens, a small press specializing in writing books for farmers.
While "Plot Bunny Fields Forever" never achieved the popularity of "On Writing Wells" and "The Elements of Stys" it has nonetheless become an essential source of information for speed novelists everywhere. Who among us has not at three in the morning held a crying plot bunny in our arms and wished she knew why it was breathing fire and how to stop its political diatribe long enough to get a night's rest?
Sadly, few copies of the Pens & Pens edition remain intact and fewer still of the Literary carrots edition. This NaNoWriMo edition is a transcript of my own severely battered Pens & Pens edition, and where pages and illustrations are missing or illegible, I've done my best to reproduce them. Those fortunate enough to have read the original edition will note I have updated some of the text, particularly the history section. It is my hope that these additions will help continue the book's legacy as a solid reference on literary lagomorphs.

I need to find an original Literary Carrots advertisement to include, but my searches aren't turning up anything, so I'm doing artist's renditions from what information I have. Hopefully, I'll be finished with the full transcription and reproduction of illustrations by sometime next week or early October.

10k Weekend and Twitter Spam

2010-09-20T03:44:00.001-04:00

Sixteen non @reply tweets in 9 hours probably means what you're saying should go in a medium without a 140 character limit. Not that I just spent 9 hours Twitter spamming people between word sprints or anything.

I finally got my writing speed up to around 2000/words an hour up from 750 or 800/words an hour last year. I think that takes me from the slow to the average range (Or at least I know a lot of wrimos who can type faster than that. I always wonder if the friction from their fingers starts to melt the keys and if their fingerprints have become fainter and fainter over the years. In case my speed continues to increase, I'm tempted to take a picture of my fingerprints now for posterity, and my word, this is a long aside.) but it's definitely an improvement that makes me super happy, so yay average!

Right now I'm still doing outline, research, and exploratory work on NaNovel 2010, so I'm not sure that that speed will carry over into November, but it's good to know that if I need to I can increase my words per hour to that level. It's also good to know that this may finally be the year in which I make peace with the 10k/5hour challenge. Maybe. 2011 for sure if not this year.

I also completed a 10k weekend challenge and I think that may be the first challenge from the Word Wars, Prompts, & Sprints forum that I have ever completed. (Hence, the giddy tweeting earlier.)

I'm very glad that I still have over a month to prepare for NaNoWriMo 2010 since I want to try it with a thorough outline this year. (2008 was almost completely plan-free, 2009 was outlined, but not thoroughly.) I'm going to try to rope in my enthusiasm and wait till October to start posting here regularly once more, but once the boards are wiped, I'll probably start making more preparation posts.

Outlines and Organization

2010-09-15T00:08:00.000-04:00

I've been outlining a story because I thought I would write it before NaNoWriMo, but now I'm wondering if it's going to become my NaNovel this year. (Mainly because this outline is getting to be so long that it'll be the end of October by the time I finish it.) This story's a little special because it will be the first nonfantasy, nonsci-fi story I've ever taken to novel length. Provided I can keep the humor going throughout, it's a dark comedy involving assassins.

As for organization, I added links to last year's November posts and my ancient NaNoWriMo Livejournal account from 2008. Was I ever that young? Of course I was just looking over some of the 2009 posts and thinking the same thing. I'm not setting ludicrous word count goals this year (until I go back on what I just said) but I don't think I'll have nearly the issues with making my daily goal as I did in '08 and '09.

What I really need to organize are the tags for every post I've ever written, but I'm not gonna and you can't make me. So there.

Back in CO; Sanity Slowly Returning

2010-09-08T23:49:00.000-04:00

These two facts are related enough to merit the use of a semicolon. (Of course, I think all phrases are related enough to merit the use of a semicolon. For example: The duck is blue; I like cheese.) I am once again withholding my vague explanation of July-August. Incidentally, I update on Twitter like it's going out of style. That's only for if you want to read letters to my mailbox and manufacturers of not-so-fine printers when I go missing, though.

So the Rocky Mountain National Park is like Frontierland, but REAL. I was not aware of this nor the fact that various types of "wild" (Which here means farm-raised.) game jerky and meat sticks could be purchased for $0.99 at the souvenir shop nearby. There's a character in one of my books who makes some extremely good venison jerky, so I've been wanting to try it for awhile. I also had a nice elk stew. This concludes my adventures in meat research.

I restarted my fox story shortly before moving back to CO by folding in an abandoned story that just glued all the pieces together in it. I'm pretty sure I can link it to my dragon story now. (Which is what the meat research was for.) While I didn't see a fox at the park, I did get this postcard, which I folded an origami frame for so it could sit beside my writing space.

Yes, I'm a tourist. No, I don't care. And it was only $0.30, a lot less costly than being a tourist in Florida.

On the NaNoWriMo front, I have enough stories that have only been partially started that I'm just going to choose one to start over on a week or two before NaNoWriMo. At that point, I'll work on the outline and gather any research materials (read: story-relevant snacks) I need to finish the book.

Other interesting things have occurred, but I'm ending here so I'll have something else to post about later.

Playing with I Write Like

2010-07-13T07:23:00.000-04:00

After getting Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Chuck Palahniuk, and James Joyce (Whah? But I didn't say Dublin even once!) from a few samples of my real writing at I Write Like I moved on to playing around with it in an attempt to find some of the 40 authors you can get as results. (Kind of like button mashing in a fighting game to find special moves.)

First I went with something that sounds like it was written by Rorschach from "Watchmen": (The comic not the movie. In retrospect, thinking of the movie is probably why I wrote bastardized.)

"A man wakes up. Has coffee. Goes to his computer. Sits down. Writes succinct sentences. It's all a game to find out where the end is. He'll never find it. Life is the only thing that ends. His work will outlive him. Be bastardized. Mocked. People will type mocking sentences into an analyzer. It's his fault for caring. Writing for others is his mistake. Yet his lights are still on. He has coffee. These words keep the potboiling."

and received the result: Harry Harrison

Then I went with a repetitious essay to see where that would lead.

"Things that are written repetitiously may result in unpleasant results. The result of which may depress the person who has written these words, yet without writing these words the repetitious writer will not know that he is repetitious. Therefore, it is important that a writer first write repetitiously in order to improve his writing whether he choses to remain repetitious in word choice or not.

The repetitious writer may also be too detailed. For example, the repetitious writer may describe a character going to the store to pick up milk thusly:

She went to the store because she was out of milk. The milk was in the back of the store. She walked to the back of the store where the milk case was. She took a carton of milk from the case. She went to the front of the store to pay for the milk. She left the store and put the milk in the car seat beside her."
This resulted in H.G. Wells.

Putting in small excerpts from "Ann Veronica" by H.G. Wells gave Stephen King as a result while larger samples correctly guessed H.G. Wells. (It does warn against using small samples.)

A recipe for chocolate lava cakes reads like Stephen King, but to be fair I wrote the instructions for the version I copy/pasted over, but then I put in the original and got the same result. Martha Stewart recipes are real page-turners.

Copy over every paragraph preceding this one, and you'll receive Chuck Palahniuk as a result. I'm going to guess that means he varies his style quite a bit. (I've seen Fight Club the movie, but I've never read the book or any of his other books, so I wouldn't know.)

I'm going to stop playing with it now, but I thought you should know that the lyrics to "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" also read like Stephen King. (At least from the site I copied them from.)

My analysis is that you should take whatever results you receive from this dead seriously. :D Seriously, though, this is a fun toy if you want to be challenged to tweak your writing style. Start with one sample of writing and see how much you have to change to get a different author as your result.

NaNoWriMo Savings

2010-07-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

Seems like most people have recovered from last NaNoWriMo and started planning for the next. I'm waiting to do the outline for this year's NaNovel until October so that I don't start writing it before November first, so my prep has been mainly in storing up goodies on a budget of roughly $0. (Well, $0 is my starting point.) Here's what I've been doing so far:

Provided I have a stash of resources, I don't actually need money itself that badly for NaNoWriMo, but it's important to me to earn at least $10 to donate. For this I'll continue doing online surveys, so it shouldn't be a problem. This is a slightly dated, but good article if you want to give this a try yourself.

Second we have free samples, which would be a fine way to increase stores of minor goodies if I would just stop using them the moment they get here. There are a lot of free sample sites, but I just check the Big Big Forums for things that interest me.

It's interesting when improbable plans come together. I've been playing online instant win games trying to save up gift cards and resources (By resources I mean chocolate.) for NaNoWriMo fuel this year and it's actually been working. Nothing major, but I've won a few gift cards and a bag of custom M&Ms, which I plan to print with "100 words" and use as rewards for big word count days. About.com's sweepstakes section has a regularly updated list of instant win games if you want to try your luck.

Other than that, I've just been planning for back-to-school sales, or harvest time as I like to call it.

Handwriting and Getting Over Editing Inertia

2010-06-30T04:31:00.002-04:00

Self pep talk time. I write these to get my head straight and I assume they're pretty hit or miss for others, so feel free to skip it.

For the first fifteen or so years of my life I had terrible handwriting. I know this because for the first fifteen or so years of my life (Well, minus the first four, entering kindergarten raised other people's standards for my writing.) people were quick to point out that I had terrible handwriting. For your reference, telling a person they have horrible handwriting on a daily basis does not make their handwriting any better. It makes them never want to show anyone their handwriting, which may evolve into a general paranoia regarding showing anyone their writing in general, assuming they don't interpret bad handwriting to mean bad writing and avoid the act of writing itself.

If you think that argument is a bit of a stretch, imagine how you would feel if the first thing someone you cared about did when you handed them something you wrote was to frown, furrow their brow, and make a critical comment about something you're painfully aware of and can't hide. (Couldn't hide then. Now I would probably get around that by leaning on email and printouts, but this was pre-ubiquitous computer and internet use.)

Anyway, at about thirteen I stopped caring about what other people thought of my handwriting. I had no idea how to change it (and had developed a chip on my shoulder about it) and whatever minor improvements I made never registered with anyone. I decided the best course of action was just to never show it to anyone.

Naturally, this was around the time my handwriting became legible. Once I released myself from the pressure of pleasing other people (Ooh, I smell a moral acomin'...) it improved over a few years. You can make the argument that that may be coincidence, but since the top way to make me freeze up over doing something is by adding an element of judgment, real or imagined, I doubt it. I also don't think it would have improved if I didn't like writing fiction enough to begin practicing without pressure.

What has me thinking of this right now is where I "should" be in editing. Should gets quotation marks because there's really no set time limit or definite path to finishing a book. Compare this Peter Carey quote from his NaNoWriMo post-event pep talk with this quote from Holly Lisle:

"If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too." - Peter Carey

"And let’s debunk one bit of writer myth while we’re here: Doing a seventeenth revision on a project does not make a writer an artist or move him above the writer hoi polloi any more than dressing entirely in black or wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or big, black drover coats. These are all affectations, and smack of dilettantism. Real writers, and real artists, finish books and move on to the next project." -Holly Lisle

So yeah, different methods, different time frames, and plenty of grey area in between. Juxtaposing examples like these helps me relax about my writing. I'm only going too fast, too slow, or too anything when I start breaking out the comparisons.

Here you might make the argument that you don't want to write like [insert author name here] they're clearly [circle one:] over/under-doing it. Good. They have their own strengths, weaknesses, and neuroses; they can only teach you to deal with the ones which overlap with your own. These writers found a way that worked for them that took their writing to the place they wanted it to be and you have to do the same thing in your own way.

Circling back around to what made me think of my handwriting in the first place, I could look at other people's handwriting, people could even show me how to make shaky facsimiles of the letters and stigmatize me for doing things differently, but until I stopped worrying about what other people thought about how I did things, I couldn't improve regardless of how I tried. I had the basics, I just couldn't figure out how to polish them into something more presentable until I relaxed which is exactly where I am in my book's progress right now.

My advice to me is: don't tread water by making useless comparisons between what "should" be and what is. You've read enough books and articles on writing that you have the basics down. What you don't know you can look up when it comes up, and honestly, would you expect someone to read through calligraphy books before they begin learning to write? Fine if you want to write "perfectly," but you just want to write like you. Do the best you can and move forward in your own way.

Createspace Code Used

2010-06-22T03:10:00.000-04:00

Things haven't changed much since last month, but I've adapted and there's no real benefit to be quiet anymore. I can't talk about what's happening yet, (this would be because blogs are public spaces) but it's not tragic, dangerous, or jury duty, just incredibly frustrating, so I'm keeping calm and carrying on. You could also say I'm (Language warning on this link if that kind of thing bothers you.) synthesizing happiness to bring me back up to my baseline. (This originally linked to the Dan Gilbert Ted talk, but the Zefrank synopsis is more succinct and funnier.)

Anyway, I didn't stop writing; I just switched to a subject a little further away from what was going on at the time. I also collected my notes from December and NaNoEdMo into an editing workbook which contains the 467 pages of my first and a half draft for NaNovel 2009 and some lined pages to write new notes on. In total it came out to 640 pages which I had printed with my free Createspace code.

The immediate effect (Almost immediate; it only took four days from pdf approval to bound book arrival.) of this was to earn my book much more respect among my family. I'm guessing this is why they call it a proof. You can say you wrote 97,000 words on one story, but till you hand someone a tarantula killer of a book it just doesn't sink in. (In my case I handed it to them then quickly took it back. I remain the only person who has read this.) The physical form itself is neat. (My sister pointed out that if you move your fingers across the ink you can very easily feel the words on the pages, which makes me wonder if you could use this to print a book in braille if you used better spacing and a larger font size.) I used a cover template and a low resolution image, so the outside's not that impressive, but here's a picture nonetheless:

I'll be filling this up and tweaking it for most of the summer and should have an acceptable draft complete by [Date censored because I never meet any deadline except the one for NaNoWriMo if I say it out loud.] After that, I'll begin planning for NaNoWriMo 2010 and may switch things up by prewriting some blog posts for October, November, and December of this year.

May Eighteenth: Project End

2010-05-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

I'm going to have to end this month's 50k project now. Details when I can, and apologies for the drama.

May Eighteenth: Just No

2010-05-18T19:39:00.000-04:00

Today's game tentatively called on account of noise and life circumstances. I'm backing up my writing and heading to the library.

May Seventeenth: Short Update Day

2010-05-17T20:32:00.000-04:00

Forecast calls for excessive noise, work, and everything else until at least 12 tonight, so I'm posting a short update before I have to go back in it.

I made some progress last night and I'm really starting to relax into the story now. Writing chronologically frazzles me for a few days (I hate, hate, hate starting writing beginnings.) then becomes a breeze to write once I get past the awkwardness of starting a new story. I'll have word debt to return to once I return from the craziness, but not a scary amount. (I have got to join up my files soon; I'm as bad about this project's organization as I am with all my other WriYe files.)

May Day Sixteen: Pseudo-Break Day

2010-05-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

Pseudo because I only woke up at 2pm and I'm still going to work on it today, but I'm mainly talking about 12am-8am when I was still awake.

Yesterday I got more nonfiction writing, reading, and outlining done than fiction writing. Today my biggest accomplishments so far have been getting a green tea Frappucino (Happy hour + someone else paid. :D) and repairing a shirt I haven't worn yet. (It had a hideous pseudo-vest. Pseudo is today's word.) That'll change in the next few hours. Ooh, or maybe the next hour since I just remembered I washed the coffee pot earlier.

May Fifteenth: First Dark Day of May

2010-05-15T05:36:00.000-04:00

Actually, most of the dark part was yesterday...hopefully. That's not something I really want to go jinxing.

So, despite the fact that I'm nearly caught up and doing well. (No 5,000 words and no frappucino, but I did have a latte at home.) I was thinking of quitting because the not novel stuff in my life is just so vicious in tearing up my mind right now. It's standard depression mind loop territory and I'm reading some old journal entries, preparing to exercise in a few minutes, and keeping some suitably upbeat (but not depressingly so) music on my headphones to help it. It very much sucks to feel this way, but writing really, really helps, so quitting is something that would just make things worse. Writing about writing, even though it doesn't seem particularly insightful, is incredibly helpful in organizing my mind and processing what I did that day and what I'm going to do the next.

The probability that I'll be skipping ahead to a more upbeat part of the story is extremely high today. I may get a new subplot out of this or I may switch to another story until I'm feeling a bit better.

May Fourteenth: Likelihood

2010-05-14T04:56:00.001-04:00

This will probably be a day with a high likelihood of me passing out on the keyboard at around five in the afternoon or so, so I thought I should make this entry early today. Current word count debt (leftovers + today's 1613) is at 3741 words, not damning, but not good. I intend to stay up both to reset my out of whack sleep schedule a few hours and to take that debt to zero or negatives; 50,000 words is a great start, but I'd like to have more or to be able to go back to editing NaNovel 2009 by the end of this month.

I'm enlisting the help of one bribe to help bring me back to zero today. Rewards don't work that well for me (If you've seen the Dan Pink Tedtalk, you'll have a theory as to why this is.) but Frappucinos are half-price from 3-5pm. The time limit, price, and special event feel of this reward make it too appealing to pass up. I'll have to be at zero by 4:30 (Actually, I'll have to be about 1,000 words in the negative since I said 5000 words on Twitter earlier.) to buy myself a raspberry green tea Frappucino. (I really liked their blackberry green tea frappucinos, but they seem to be gone forever.) I might be too tired to go even if I do make the deadline, but that's what tomorrow is for.

If I don't make this deadline, I'm not terribly concerned. Also, I may change Frappucino here to something like the prepacked sushi Publix sells or something equally nice yet still relatively cheap. Or maybe I'll just learn to make a decaf latte at home without a milk steamer. (There would be a lot less sugar this way.)

Hmm, that sounds pretty appealing. This may be learn to use decaf lattes as consistent fuel day rather than blow $2-3 bucks on Starbucks day now. We'll see.

Going to go turn food and water into words now.

May Thirteenth: Catch-up and Humor

2010-05-13T20:09:00.000-04:00

Still catching up to where I need to be today. I have word sprints tonight on Twitter, so that will cover a bit of it, but I need more and for that more I need lemon meringue pie. Well, not really, but I'm going to make it anyway.

I mentioned my main character doesn't have the sense of humor most of my other main characters do before. There are differences between their senses of humor, but they're willing to make a remark when something is funny. Current main character has a darker sense of humor, when he has one at all, which he generally keeps to himself. As a result, I've had to stop myself from making comments where he definitely would not. It's really interesting to write him because he does recognize jokes, their value in softening blows, driving home points, and such, but he's so desensitized to them and bored of them that he has no use for them himself. It's not that much of a stretch to write him, as I'm more likely to recognize something is funny than to actually laugh in most situations.

But now it is pie time. (Then it will be exercise to justify pie time time.)

Day Twelve: Home Brew

2010-05-12T19:37:00.000-04:00

I compare writing my own books to home brew wines, beers, and cheeses a lot, at least privately. There's better stuff out there I'm sure, but for custom tailoring to your tastes and a challenge you just can't beat making your own. Furthering my wine analogies is a research trip to the library, which yielded an armful of books one of them on wine.

I've been doing a lot of research on this book. By research I mean cooking and eating nice food, buying a lotion that has a key scent from my story, and drinking a half glass of red wine almost every day. (I love wine in cooking, but I'm still adjusting to actually drinking alcohol.) The not as fun but still interesting research I'm doing involves Latin, wine types + making, and MBA programs. It's doubtful that I'll really need that much of the book-related research I'm doing, but I think it will give me ideas if nothing else.

Still in word count debt today, though slightly less than yesterday and I haven't really sat down to write yet. (I still hold that the pizza helped.) I began writing chronologically last night, so that will continue today. I hate writing beginnings and it's likely that this one will need some serious attention once the rest is written (Most other people would consider the current introduction very boring.), but at least it has one now.

May Day Eleven: Pizza Case: Break in Case of Word Count Emergency

2010-05-11T15:46:00.000-04:00

I need to write 3049 words today to be back on track. This isn't quite a word count emergency, (It's just today's count + leftovers from the weekend.) but I don't want to fall any further behind therefore pizza is necessary.

I wrote a much more fleshed out outline to replace my old one last night. It's about 1600 words covering the first ten chapters. Chapter ten is aggravating me at the moment because I'm exactly 50/50 divided over how something turns out, something that will effect the rest of the book and therefore blocks my progress on the remade outline. My solution is just to take notes on things I know will happen past this point and finish rewriting the outline once I know what happens. This will probably happen as I write chapter nine or ten.

I have to go debate the merits of various pizza coupons, offers, and suppliers now.

May Tenth: Home of the Bottomless Pot of Coffee

2010-05-10T19:57:00.000-04:00

Coffee is a very nice luxury to have when you're a wee bit broke and do things which require long stints of solo work. It's cheap, but it's still a comforting luxury that will stay warm while you work your way through your word count. (If not, there's always iced coffee.) The only thing book or writing-related about coffee is the relationship that's been romanticized and pressed on us, but I enjoy some ceremonious relationships, (And again, it's cheap.) so I don't particularly mind being marketed to here. I'm drinking it decaf and black this month so I can enjoy the smell and warmth without the calories or jitter-energy.

That has very little to do with the word count debt I'm still carrying. How much? Um, less than two days worth (including count due today) but more than I'd like. I'll report real numbers tomorrow.

May Day Nine: Mother's Day and Word Count Debt

2010-05-09T21:52:00.001-04:00

Mother's Day is the Thanksgiving of May in that it'll hamstring your word count progress if you're not watching out for it. I wasn't*, so instead of the 1613 I should need to write today, I'm still carrying word count debt from yesterday bringing the total I "should" (Quotation marks because it's not as though my NaNoWriMo totals are right on the 1667 every day either.) have by midnight up to 2,653. Not bad, but I'll have to have it cleared by tomorrow for my own peace of mind.

One thing I'm going to try next week is checking my word count less. I'm not doing it as obsessively as I did the year of my first NaNoWriMo (type three words; check; repeat) or even as badly as my second (type three paragraphs; check; repeat) but I tend to write more when I focus on the story first and goals later.

Once I start writing chronologically, I'm going to do a chapter in one day challenge. My chapters range from 14-40 pages printed, so I have no idea how difficult or easy this may be.

Off to clean the coffee maker, which is still in my room making it smell like a bookstore everyday. I should also go pack/plan a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner so I can stay on track without eating, oh I don't know, we'll say seven crumb donuts within the space of 24 hours.

* As a result of Mother's Day, I did learn that in Wii Bowling it's best for me to throw left-handed and compensate for my slight left curve, or massive right curve if I bowl with my right, though. Whether this was worth the word count debt is debatable.

May Eighth: Still Don't Have A Self-Cleaning House

2010-05-08T20:46:00.001-04:00

Including today's word count, I'm roughly 2000 words behind. I'm taking care of my backlog of ignored responsible things right now, mostly cleaning and laundry so I won't have to choose between formal attire and beach wear when I take my Mother's Day present to my stepmother tomorrow. All that should be finished by midnight at which point I'll switch to decaf coffee and writing. Possibly decaf coffee, writing, and donut if I spend a little time justifying one with exercise. And now that I think of it, I can use that little under the desk bicycle thing and write while I exercise.

I've been taking notes of scenes I want to write during the day again, so while I may be behind I'm not stuck. Huge difference as I'm sure you know if you're reading this blog.

Sadly, nothing has folded or scrubbed itself while I've been writing this blog post (insolence!), so I guess I should take care of that.

May Seventh: The Noise Became Really Annoying Right Before I hit Publish

2010-05-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

I'm 850 words away from today's goal. That would be because today I took care of buying mother's day and birthday presents (there's a slew of them in the summer in my family), hung out with my sister, and did a little money work rather than writing. Forecast calls for a 90% chance of noise continuing until midnight with clear silence through the morning.

If I were a wee bit more interesting (ie thought I had a chance) I would try this 48 Hour Magazine thing. I may still do it; I have plenty of time, right?

May Sixth: On Track

2010-05-06T22:00:00.000-04:00

I've met the day six goal for 50,000 words in 31 days (1613 words a day), and I'm within 100 words of hitting the traditional NaNoWriMo (30 day month) goal for day six. This is what we like to call very neat. I haven't been writing chronologically this time. I figure I'll start once I'm finished with the part of the story that's helping me flesh out the background for the rest of it.

I'm doing one word sprint tonight then I'm heading out to see Iron Man 2 with my sister. The first Iron Man was okay, but I'm fairly neutral to the existence of a sequel. If it doesn't catch my interest pretty quickly, I'll have a notepad ready to go in my pocket. (Though realistically I'll think it's too rude to do something distracting like that when other people are trying to watch a movie around me. I'll probably just sit there and half-watch half-think of plot developments for this story.)

Oh, and I got organic water-process decaf coffee today. Soon my room will smell fantastic.

May Fifth: Coffee

2010-05-05T21:35:00.001-04:00

Things were going well anticaffeine-wise until I named a character "Coffee" today. (She's a pet, but still.) CarolinaJayBird suggests I give in and just get the decaf coffee I want. I will implement this idea the next time I'm at Whole Foods.

After last night's word sprint and a few things I thought of while I was out today, I'm getting in the zone again. I'm 850 words short of today's word count for the moment, though, so I'll be getting back to that in a few minutes. This will be after I experiment with making a raisin-merlot fruitcake. :)

May the Fourth

2010-05-04T19:23:00.000-04:00

I started unpacking more stuff today and found out my two boxes of cute dragon tea (Again, Marketers, put a cute dragon on your product and I will at least try it.) plus general stash of tea have been given away in a moving accident. That sucks since I'm currently staying away from coffee (preferred fuel of noveling) and down to two bags of free sample Yogi tea. Still, the hot water maker is back, which should make my life approximately 23% better.

No ground-shaking revelations in my current story yet, but it looks like I'll be excerpting my main character's grandfather's journal while I figure out the mechanics of this world and the main character's family relationships. There's a good chance his father will be upgraded from dead to absentee within the next 5000 words. Oh, and I mentioned fruitcake, so now I'm likely to make that.

4386 of the 6452 words needed to be on track written.

May Third: This House Is...Interesting

2010-05-03T21:54:00.002-04:00

I was about five seconds from typing: "Tomorrow I should be able to get a lot of writing done before midnight." but of course that's not what happened. I cleaned four or five hours straight right after I ate breakfast today, then went to a really interesting remaindered bookstore an hour away from where I live and had dinner with my sister after window-shopping for awhile. I came home to some mildly irritating family stuff, but they're never going to be perfect, so I'm just going to chill on that front. I also got to eat some fresh mochi today, which the local Asian grocery store started carrying in four packs while I was away in Colorado. I need to leave again so they'll start carrying smaller sizes of an pan and strawberry-filled mochi.

...and I have 1513 words to write to meet today's quota as a result. Whoops. This actually won't be that difficult since I had all day to think of it, but still.

Oh, and getting caught in a wikipedia loop from that mochi entry I linked earlier is not helping matters, so I think it's time to log out and go get some word count.

Edit: I'm leaving it for posterity, but I have to wonder why I believe it's a good idea to name blog posts before I have any idea what I'm going to write in them.

May Day Two: Skewing the Sleep Schedule on Purpose

2010-05-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

I'm a little less than 700 words from today's goal. Very exciting update, I know. I'll try to be less boring tomorrow.

Today I realized this is a very loud house to work in during the day. It is also a very Florida house to work in during the day and from what I understand the air conditioner just broke. I'll be working at night when it is cool and the neighborhood, residents, and pets are all wonderfully quiet. I think the dedication of the Createspace copy of my book should read:

To everyone who keeps normal hours so I can get some work done, you have my thanks and since I'm wide awake and you can barely make hot water in your current state, maybe I'll even make you coffee and throw something in the crockpot before I go to bed.

May Day One

2010-05-01T23:23:00.000-04:00

I went out for dinner and shopping with family today, which doesn't quite justify the fact that I'm only at 1,283 words today, but I did get a free shrimp dinner out of it. Due to said shrimp, I'm going to call this a good start and get the other 400 or so words in the next thirty or forty minutes.

Right now I'm working on one of my more self-indulgent stories and wondering why my headphones are acting screwy. Once I hit 1,667 words, I'll unpack the rest of my writing gear and redo my editing outline from March for NaNovel 2009 or start working through the relative mess that is NaNovel 2008.

The main character I'm writing right now is a fairly humorless guy unlike most of my other main characters. Usually when I write I notice more humorous things; today I noticed my timing was off at dinner and the deliveries on the few jokes I made were rough. This is what I get for method writing and for the record if I'm not at all funny for the rest of the month, I blame him.

Forecast for May: Blog Spam

2010-04-16T11:43:00.000-04:00

I'm moving yet again next week, but this time should stick for a bit longer...maybe. We'll see.

Anyway, I'll probably continue this month's pattern of hiding out from the blog for the rest of April, but I'll be doing 50,000 words in May, and any time I purposely write 50,000 words in a month that means blog posts everyday regardless of whether or not they're interesting. Some could argue that since I'm writing 600,000 words this year (I do have more words written than the bar to the right says; I just haven't collected all the .txt files and done a word count yet, so it is still plausible.) that means I should be updating daily everyday this year. If you are one of those people, I stick out my tongue at you, good sir.

So to summarize the rest of this month: packing, organizing, writing without writing about writing. To summarize next month (and this entire blog): Wheee! This is easy! -> I barely made word count today. -> I sure do like posting pictures of writing snacks. -> I stalled. -> Argh, why does family have to be like that? -> This is even easier than the first time I said it was easy! -> You don't have to publish; writing is awesome! Rewards don't work as well as a reliable source of snacks. ->I barely posted on time today. -> I wrote the whole day and got to eat pizza!

The fun thing is I'm not mocking myself; that's just my pattern and I'm comfortable with that. I'm looking forward to: "This is even easier than the first time I said it was easy!" and "I wrote the whole day and got to eat pizza!".

Stuffy Headed Bits and Pieces Excerpt

2010-04-08T07:37:00.001-04:00

I don't know if it's just a side effect of my allergies (which are worse in CO than they ever are in FL) or if I'm sick-sick, but I've slept more than I've been awake the past four days or so and I've felt both icky and achy.

(This concludes the whining portion of my blog post. The remainder contains a series of excerpts that probably don't make sense out of context, so feel free to leave now if you don't like skimming stories.)

I've been writing whatever I felt like while my head's been alternating between being in a vice and leaking, (oop, now the whining portion's over) so I don't have chapter one finished yet. I was rooting around in my NaNoWriMo 2009 folder a few hours ago, though and found the semi-abandoned (which just means abandoned for November) story that had my main character from my 2009 fantasy nanovel writing that very same fantasy novel in a non-fantasy world for a school assignment. Even after I officially booted it out of my word count bar, I kept writing bits of dialogue as the month went on as therapy/entertainment/stalling. In its finished form, it would have (or will) contain equal time for some of my other transplanted fantasy characters (Lawrence is from nanovel 2008), but the parts with Liam and his nanovel are easily excerpted and relevant to this blog. This isn't edited and anytime you see a line break it represents a jump forward in time without explaining anything, so reader beware. (Oh, there's also swearing.)

Lawrence thinks everything is busywork and Liam gets the assignment:

Lawrence hated peer editing. He and Liam huffed simultaneously. Liam passed him his paper quickly before someone else could claim him as a partner.
"I don't give a damn what you write on it; I just don't want to hear any comments outloud."
Lawrence passed him his own essay and said:
"Same."
Lawrence steeled himself to read Liam's paper, but found it was much better than he expected. Liam just had no clue grammatically and he seemed to love run-on sentences. An oddly out of place word let him know it had been spell-checked. Correcting it reminded him of sixth grade English busy work. The sound of Lawrence's pen scratching so much seemed to annoy Liam.
"You might want to save some ink for your other classes," Liam whispered without looking up from Lawrence's paper.
"It's just grammar stuff; I'm not changing any of your sentences."
"Yeah, I can tell you 'just' do a lot of things and 'only.'"
Lawrence looked up from Liam's paper.
"I thought we had a deal, Captain Run-on?"
"Sorry, you were just writing so much. I only wanted to make sure you weren't being a condescending ass."
"Well, I just needed to make word count. They're only there so I could get this stupid busy work over with."

"So, let me get this straight: I can write whatever I want, even if it makes absolutely no sense, as long as I hit 50,000 words by the last day of November and in exchange I don't have to do any homework or class assignments all month?"
"As long as you follow the loose guidelines for what counts as word count, yes. And it's pass or fail; no grading, I just skim it to see that you completed the assignment. But, you will come to class every day unless you have a real excuse for missing school that day."
"Can I wear headphones?"
"As long as you don't disturb the class, you can do whatever you want during class, but I recommend you use the time to write."

Selected scenes from Liam's slow descent into wrimo madness:

"I'm doing National Novel Writing Month this year," Liam said. "So far my main character has just run around yelling for about an hour, but he's tired now, so I think all his shouting is about to attract a dragon."

Liam started laughing to himself partway through the class. Once he realized people were looking at him like he was crazy, he looked up from his laptop and apologized. Mr. Drake smirked then continued the lesson.

"I love my novel," Liam said.
"We. Know. Would you please shut up about it?" Veren said.

"I suck. My novel sucks. I hate myself and want to die."
"When's the last time you had something to eat?"
"I don't know. Sometime. Maybe yesterday."
"Okay, let's go get you some coffee and a sandwich," Lawrence said.
"Coffee and sandwiches are for winners," Liam said without lifting his head from the table. "I'm never going to finish this. Everything I write is a sin against my wonderful characters; they deserve better than me. Lawrence," Liam picked his five subject notebook up off the table and held it out to Lawrence. "You're their father now. Please take care of them."
"Okay, maybe food and a nap," Lawrence said.

"What is this? V8? Sun Chips?" Liam said.
"Moderately healthier food. Given your diet--,"
"How the hell do you know anything about my diet?"
"How do paleontologists know anything about dinosaurs?" Lawrence said, "You left cup ramen and microwave burrito fossils all over your room."

Liam checked his posts on the National Novel Writing Month forum. Most of the posters were of the general, "Write whatever comes and revise out in December! :)" persuasion, but some agreed he was abusing a tired cliche aimed at young girls and fetishists. They also seemed to believe he was a teenage or early twenties girl despite what his profile said, but he let that go and continued the posts regardless.
"Okay, but I've already written the main character and I can't just scrap this story. How can I write this out of it?"

"You're quoting song lyrics now?"
"I needed a hundred words to make word count; it's a legal word padding technique."
"It's not Regina Spektor's pass or fail. Don't overdo it."
"Well, I wasn't feeling anything at all last night when I was trying to write," Liam paused and smirked. "but I feel better, better, better, so it shouldn't happen again."

And, just because you're no longer in a fantasy setting doesn't make your brother any nicer:

Liam lay curled up in a ball under his covers, and the pile of clothes on top of his covers. His alarm had gone off an hour ago; he had already been up most of the night, so he ignored it. There was no point in honoring his agreement with Mr. Drake not to skip class now that his novel was gone, just one more failure. Getting out of bed felt impossible, but he had been hungry for four hours or so, so he slid out of bed and took a shower.
The sun was appallingly bright on his drive to Whole Foods. He bought something to eat and something to drink then went to the dining area beside the hot foods and lay his head on a table.
Liam was far more depressed that he had lost his novel than about losing his "easy" grade. Failure was the natural state of his school work, but he really loved that stupid ridiculous book. He looked over to his little flip notepad, the last shred of his book that remained and suddenly felt very guilty about the first few pages of his book. He wondered if in some alternate universe there was a Newberry award equivalent for killing the main character's book and if some author there was Newberrying him as he had his main character's dog. He lifted his head from the table to have another sip of his drink. At that moment, Mr. Drake walked past the Whole Foods cafeteria and glanced at him, his expression as surprised as Liam's own.
"You should be in class," Liam accused before Mr. Drake could say it.
"I have sick days; you don't."
"And you don't think that's a horrible double standard?" Liam said.
Mr. Drake took the seat across from him.
"We had an agreement, Liam." Liam lay his head back on the table.
"My brother killed my files and incinerated my flash drive."
"You shouldn't leave these things where children can get to them."
"He's twenty-fucking-eight."
"Oh. Off the record, your brother is a bastard. You didn't make any other backups? What about the internet?"
Liam laughed mirthlessly.
"I don't put anything online I don't want leaked and my National Novel Writing Month novel synopsis and excerpt was some stupid joke about not attempting to ride dragons unless you were willing to reciprocate the favor. This is all that's left."
Liam slid the little flip notebook across to Mr. Drake, then drew his hand back quickly as he realized his burnt fingertips showed under his too long sleeves.
"Liam, I have a saved copy of every day you turned in your flash drive. You've only lost what you've written since Friday."
Liam sat up straight immediately.
"Oh thank god," he said. "That's really creepy of you, though."
Mr. Drake smirked.
"I thought you might get into one of your moods and delete your copy. And do you really think I'm going to end this project at 50,000 words?"
"What?"
"Having you write a first draft implies there will be others, Liam."
"You bastard."
Mr. Drake laughed.
"Well, if you want to go back to the regular curriculum after you've finished, be my guest."
Liam sighed and put his head back on the table.
"It still doesn't matter. Ramsey's just going to destroy everything again."
"You might have time if you had detention every day for the rest of November. You did lose an important assignment and skip class. What was your last word count before it was deleted?"
"Destroyed. I don't know; I stopped checking last week."
"Really?"
"It was driving me crazy."

The Newberry thing is about the high percentage of Newberry award winning books where at some point in the story a dog dies or is injured. I, and this version of Liam, killed off the fantasy novel Liam's dog pretty quickly, causing us to wonder if we might subconsciously be after Newberry awards. (He also has to deal with issues of having written a self-insert character when it comes time to edit the book, because I am mean. :) )

It's either curl up under the covers or allergy medication time now.

Edit: And sorry about the tiny font for the quotes. I'll try fighting with blogger later to make it easier to read.

The E-Ticket

2010-04-01T20:47:00.000-04:00

I didn't clock the full 50 hours for NaNoEdMo (My last log entry had me at 37:28 non rebel hours.) and my first chapter's going to be finished later than the April first goal, but not never. I'm starting to believe I actually am something of a rebel at heart. (I was going to go into a long story with examples from my life, school-life, and past jobs, but I want to go write fiction, so just trust me on this.)

The main character in my 2008 nanovel has a great dane that lives in his tiny apartment with him and his mother. During the writing, he was known as Merle the word count dog, but his apartment/big dog issues became (or are becoming) a metaphor about limitations after I went over the story. But those were limitations from society; my limitations with my writing are self-imposed. The problem I had with the April first deadline and NaNoEdMo hours is, I got a taste of outside, and I'm not scratching to be let back in just yet.

I did say I'd have chapter 1 finished today, so I feel disappointed that I don't. But I believe in keeping my word, and believe I'll do this a lot better now that I'm not worrying about staying inside the apartment, or even the yard, in regards to time and others' ideals of writing or how to write.

Or I could just say: Spacey and flaky that's the Leo Fair guarantee. Hmm.

Switching to super energetic happy mode:

I learned so much and got so much done last month! It was awesome! I know I need to do a full post, but here's the biggest thing I addressed in my writing:

The first draft is half-outline, half-story. You're going to write in too much information to the first draft, (telling as they say; also giving too much of the plot or characterization away at once) but chances are you'll address it more subtly later. During the edit, cull the information dumps, and give the reader space to explore and be surprised by things. You'll both enjoy your work much more that way.

Maybe I'll just post snippets of things I learned, then collect them into one post later. Anyway, back to writing! Or maybe reading these blog posts I missed. In any case, something that is not me blogging is about to commence now.

20,040 words

2010-03-27T02:55:00.000-04:00

That's why I haven't been updating as much as I had been earlier this month. Over the past 6 days I've written 20,040 words on another story. I loved doing it. It was fantastic, and I don't regret ignoring my 2009 NaNovel to do it. That said, from this point on, I'll be working on both projects till the end of the month which gives me five days to clock the remaining hours I need for NaNoEdMo, but more importantly I have five days to finish the first chapter I promised I would post here on the first of April. Much as I love zone writing, I'm looking forward to some zone rewriting, which makes me wonder: Did I just take a week off from writing to write? I'm going to say my interests aren't terribly varied.

The past week has been an important one for me, because I realized I really am free to write whatever I want in any way that I want. NOTE: I don't mean I can write about controversial topics or things my dad would disown me for (P.S. that ship sailed years ago) I'm talking about experimental writing. NOTE AGAIN: I don't mean stream of consciousness, second-person, I used no adjectives or I used only adjectives stuff by this, but stuff that follows my trend of aggravating vaguery that I'm not going to detail here (or to anyone until it's finished) and therefore shouldn't have blogged about in the first place. The only reason I do mention it is that this is the first time I feel I'm doing something more permanent than sketching; this feels like I'm starting on something bigger like a master work or at least a definitive piece that will greatly affect the rest of my writing.

The past week can really be summarized as: I've become entirely self-motivated as a writer. To me, writing fiction is the best thing in the world and I can have as much as I want. I'm just so grateful to be doing what I am now that while words could express it here, I'm going to go write a much more accurate portrayal of the feeling in fiction.

Now, I'm going to leave before I gush more on the subject. :)

I'm Learning

2010-03-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

I've made some progress figuring out how to edit this month, but this will definitely not be the month that I finish editing my nanovel. (I'll probably put the first chapter up as scheduled, then we'll see about chapters two and three.) Next time I do this, I'll be able to approach it with more confidence and a solid plan for editing. Also having done this, my next nanovel will be exponentially better just as 2009's was a huge improvement over 2008's nanovel.

I've been in the zone for writing my other stories, so once the shine wears off them again (usually takes 2-5 days and I'm on day three) I'll finish up my 50 hours on the nanovel and polish chapter one as well as I can before I put it up.

Urgh...I've had so many thoughts I want to blog about in the past few days, but more than that I want to go write my stories, so I've taken notes for future posts, and I'm darting away for now.

NaNoEdMo Day 17

2010-03-17T23:47:00.000-04:00

Today's editing can best be summarized by saying 5 pages became half a page of sentences to incorporate into a rewrite, 90% of what I wrote was unusable in this instance. To be fair, this is a passage I wrote the first day of NaNoWriMo, so it's not quite a representative sample, but still impressive.

You'd think this might make me all moany and depressed, but it's actually a lot like the feeling I get when I'm trying to improvise repairs or assemble things and it's going well. What does have me a bit moany and depressed is counting hours for this thing. To put it plainly: I hate it. I'd rather be measuring by edited pages or edited word count (something like edit 50,000 raw words; you don't have to finish with that many) at the end of the month. The problem is editing is so subjective that these measures wouldn't work for some people either. I'm giving this an honest shot, though, so I won't quit until I hit 50 hours of what they consider editing. (Implying I won't go out of my way to clock more than 50 hours.)

In other news, I finally broke out my colored editing pens and started color coding my markups. (Editing pen color key: Black is for notes, green is for grammar, purple is for moving, red is for cuts, orange is for rewrites/additions.) It's very pretty and when I look at a page I know instantly what I need to do to it.

Sometimes I try to wrap up my blog posts neatly at the end. This isn't one of those posts.

Important Editing Question!

2010-03-16T04:09:00.001-04:00

After taking the weekend off to listen to an audiobook copy of Sir Ken Robinson's "The Element" and doing some sequel writing (which is NOT NaNoEdMo procrastinating; it's clocking word count for WriYe ;D), I'm back to rewriting my old chapter 15. I have a bit of a problem that I'd like some input on, though:

I need a flavor of ice cream a lot of people dislike, but which is nonetheless a feasible or even common flavor. (Ie no garlic ice cream, though I know it actually exists. And no sashimi ice cream, because I have plans for that already. Basically anything that's not savory.) I think rum raisin has a bad enough reputation so that's what I'm going with for now. I'm considering mint (though I love mint in everything else; in ice cream it just tastes off to me unless it's with chocolate). I might go with something like clove and have it numb out the character's tongue for a while after eating it or possibly butter because it sounds gross despite probably being delicious. Any suggestions?

(Note to Kingdom Hearts fans: No sea salt ice cream either, but only because I want my book to be as reference-free as possible.)

NaNoEdMo Progress Report Day 13

2010-03-13T17:59:00.000-05:00

I'm still writing new chapters and scenes and marking places that need to be repaired. Right now I'm at 24 hours 21 minutes clocked, so I think I'm going to relax today by reading some of my books on writing. I might even do some of the exercises in them since I was reading an article from 2002 by one of my favorite nonfiction writers and got the urge to print a copy and mark it up. (Mostly, I'd be replacing ands with semicolons and periods, which is just a preference and weeding out cliches. This is the sword I will die by. Really I could die by it in this last paragraph, but blog entries are for showing and examining my raw style, not for being polished.)

Theoretically, my discount random geek shirt will be here by the 17th, and I can't open it till I hit 50 hours, (Well, I could, but it'll be worth more to me if I wait.) so I'll probably clock more time before bed. I'm kicking myself for printing front and back. That's made my rough draft easier to read, but harder to manipulate when moving scenes around. (There's a reason it's called "Cut & Paste" on computers.)

The New Chapter Two: Check

2010-03-11T11:49:00.000-05:00

8,214 words later, I have a new chapter two that has shaken the foundation of my novel. I wrote an outline for the new chapter two, and while I did hit every important point, the way I hit them changed dramatically from the way I was going to approach it. But, with the other new chapters and a good read-through it should integrate with the rest of the story, and, hopefully, strengthen it.

I am NOT rereading that chapter until the others are written. If I stop now, I'm just going to tread water. I have a stack of outlines, a checklist for the new chapters and scenes I need to write, and a schedule to keep me from running in circles while editing. (Poor schedule; you need to be rewritten so badly.)

In other news, I decided on a $5.99 grab bag shirt (meaning I won't know which shirt it is till it arrives) from Think Geek as a birthday present/editing reward. I hope it's interesting and weird; I'd rather use it as a shirt than a night shirt.

Going to go grudgingly accept the fact that I need sleep now.

Birthday! A Depressing Subplot?

2010-03-10T00:59:00.001-05:00

Today I mostly did birthday stuff, but I also realized the new chapters I need to write all have a common thread of a subplot, so I'm very excited to write them now, or at least relieved to have a little more of an idea of where they're heading. I bought some pencils for the line edit today, because I somehow only brought 1 with me (Still trying to figure out how that happened.) and I like to do major editing in pencil because I have a tendency to rethink things and I like to be able to see the original text under my rewrites.

That subplot is pretty dark and depressing, though, so as much as I want to write it I kind of want to get it over with, too and that's exactly what I'll do...yeeheeheehee!
...
Sorry for that; I'm wearing a Jack Skellington nightshirt right now, so it happens.

Ebooks, 2.25 6x9", and Half a Meatball Sub

2010-03-08T05:45:00.000-05:00

Is it a bad sign when you read that Julia Child "died peacefully in her sleep on the eve of her birthday" an hour before the eve of your own birthday? I...think I'll pull an all-nighter tonight, thanks. I wanted to embellish that with emoticons to let you know I'm not going to worry about that till the eve of my 92nd birthday, but it's in pretty poor taste to use emoticons right after talking about the real death of a real person. And yes, I was reading "Julie & Julia." The library here has ebooks you can download online whereas the one back home only has downloadable audio books. I've come to realize that I may be at a point of equilibrium for my book reading preferences. Now that I have a netbook which is lighter than some of my books (I'm looking at you, Oxford English Dictionary) I love ebooks as much as the paper versions.

As for the editing work, I filled up 2.25 sheets of a 6x9" writing tablet with the new chapter two today. I'm determined to kill at least one cheap pen during the course of this edit, but I should probably wait for the line edit to do that so I use my editing intensive month more efficiently. Still, writing by hand is a useful tool when you get stuck somewhere, (Remember this the next time you find yourself trapped in an elevator.) so I'll probably switch out a few times this week to coast over the rough spots. (I have completely different personal imagery for that phrase now that I've ridden over extremely icy roads.)

There's half a meatball sub in it for me if I get some serious editing work done today. (The first half was the down payment to edit, and also delicious.)

The Estimate and Oh, Yeah. That.

2010-03-07T06:34:00.000-05:00

I finished writing outlines for the new chapters and based on my average chapter length I'm guessing I have around 30,000-40,000 words to write to smooth out my nanovel; a large number.

Then I thought: "Wasn't I already supposed to be doing that?" -_- I've been keeping up with my writing, but it's been nearly a month since I updated my WriYe total. Get used to it little box in the upper right corner; you'll get attention in April--

Wait, that's Script Frenzy. Okay, you'll definitely get updated in May. I still haven't consolidated all my files into one easy to count master file, so that's why it's such a pain to do when I have other stuff going on.

Back to editing, though. I'm not quite sure whether this part or the line edit will take longer. I'm going to guess the line edit, so this coming week will be limit break week as I try to get the 30,000-40,000 words out of the way. Just like NaNoWriMo, I suspect my first week is the worst. Now I have a plan and outlines. I'd say writing is also the fun part, but I really like editing-editing, too, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the month in general.

Hmm. Maybe I should call next week #wordsprint week? Prepare to be Twitter-spammed.

NaNoEdMo Schedule and Treats Acquired

2010-03-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

That's what my editing schedule looks like. I'm highlighting the steps as I go. So far, I've finished the index cards summarizing my first draft and have moved on to outlining the new chapters I'm going to need to write as part of the next step. I was going to type up my full plan, but it's getting revised as much as the book is, so there's not much point. Right now I'm hiding out here instead of writing the outlines for chapters 19-23or24. (If I ask you where I am, pretend you didn't see me, okay?)

I made it to the store last night and came back with some editing candy, a free box of Oreo Cakesters, a cheap pen armada, and some daffodils. (I've been wanting flowers for a month or two now, so $1.50 for a bouquet of the birth flower of March? Sold!) Not pictured: Regina Spektor's song "Edit." I think NaNoWriMo is going to have to have a cheap flower budget this year; they're so nice to have around. I post pictures and talk about these writing treats a lot, but the odd thing is I don't really over indulge in them; it's just nice to know the chocolate's there if I do hit a rough patch.

And I should probably get back to editing. (Blog entries also count as treats, just so you know.)

NaNoEdMo Progress Report: Day Four

2010-03-05T07:09:00.000-05:00

I've combined steps 3 and 4 of my editing plan (create scene index cards and write outlines for new scenes) and I made 1400 words of progress on step 5 (write new scenes) with word sprints earlier. I'm trying to write all the new scenes chronologically so they'll have a tiny bit of time to age before I go through for the continuity/logic check and the line edit after that, but first I have to write the "missing" chapters. The story's okay without them, but it would be a lot better with the 3-6 extra chapters I have planned. Since they're the biggest holes, they'll be filled first for--um--safety reasons and to give me a nice feeling of accomplishment.

As Chris Baty says in No Plot? No Problem!: "You have not been put on this earth to cook meals for yourself and write a novel." That goes double for editing, so I'm looking forward to getting some editing treats today. I've been drinking decaf or half-caf coffee, tea, and Spicy V8 as my main treat so far, (sadly the chocolate soy milk did not last very long) but I'd like to have some emergency glucose reinforcements as I head into week two.

In what I like to refer to as a birthday miracle, my mother bought me a netbook as an early birthday present. I celebrated this by rerouting my netbook savings into my NaNoWriMo/Script Frenzy donation fund. (The moral of this story is: When I get a netbook, we all win. ^_^) It is everything I hoped it would be in addition to being a nice shade of red wine. I named it Rune after a character in my 2008 NaNovel.

I also entered this contest: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123573329 but forgot to mention it last post. I only had a few hours to put my submission together, which is good because I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Though I don't think I'll win, it was fun and I need to participate in more challenges like that.

NaNoEdMo Progress Report: Day Two

2010-03-03T02:19:00.001-05:00

In terms of hours, I'm par for the course right now with just over three clockable editing hours. I say clockable because the rules of NaNoEdMo state:

Editing is defined as changing previously written material. Editing does not include writing a completely new novel. It does not include planning or researching. It does include anything from correcting the grammar and spelling to substantial rewriting of the novel.

Personally, I think planning and research should be included, but I like this rule for increasing the difficulty of the challenge, so I'm abiding by it for the hours I clock. I have a lot of planning and outlining to do, which won't be reflected in the NaNoEdMo hours I log.

I have the premature line edit I did in January for chapter one to finish typing tonight. I thought I was going to need to scrap the entire chapter after I finished it, but now I'm thinking I may be able to get by with a few additions(and some noteworthy subtractions). I would have ignored this until I'm through applying all the December notes, but I'm using a physical copy as reference and chapter one is all marked up, so I decided to go ahead and make the changes I have then print it and do another line edit of it and all the other chapters when the proper time comes.

I was reviewing the notes I took during my December read through and was surprised by how helpful they seem to be. I'm going through them with a highlighter once I finish typing changes to the first chapter to try to organize them a bit. (I'm drawing my eye to unwritten scenes and continuity errors so I can address those in the next steps...and I love highlighters.) Right now, I have a 13 step plan that I'll probably type and post here later. Currently, I'm on step one and line editing doesn't begin till step eleven.
...
This is why today's blog entry ends here. :)

The Fool's Edit

2010-02-27T02:03:00.000-05:00

You know how sometimes things seem like a good idea in the middle of the night when you're a little sleep deprived? I'm going to put money on this being one of those times.

So, you've probably noticed I don't do many excerpts 'round these parts or any parts for that matter. In fact, if you've read most of my blog posts, you've probably read more of my fiction in the two or three paragraphs I've posted than anyone except me has ever seen. Occasionally, I get the urge to change this by letting someone read my rough drafts or, horror, just making one straight out accessible online. One possibility always stops me, though: stubborn readers.

I'm going to level with you, I would rather you stop reading my fiction if you're not enjoying it. I don't want you to wait around to see if things will improve or force yourself to read through it just because I sent you the whole 83,000 word first draft. I hate to put a beta-reader on the spot like that. I can't be the only one with issues like these, so I'd like to extend a challenge to anyone else who never, or rarely, shows their work.

March is National Novel Editing Month, the month where WriMos try to reach the goal of putting 50 hours of editing time into their NaNovels (or other manuscripts). If you're like me, you don't think 50 hours is going to cut it for deconstructing, reconstructing, patching, and repairing your entire novel.

How about the first three chapters, then?

It's a large enough task to be challenging, small enough to be feasible, and long enough to give readers a solid taste of your writing. For my particular issues, it's also just the right length. So, around April Fool's Day I'll be sharing the first three chapters of my 2009 NaNovel, (most likely as a pdf so that it doesn't start showing up in search engine queries for dragons and, um, egg-cabbages) and if you're on the fence about sharing your writing, I--was going to say "encourage you to do the same" but if you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't have to share your writing with anyone else to make it worthwhile. Whether you'll be displaying it or not, I encourage you to use March to bring your book closer to what you want it to be and come back in April if you'd like to see me make a fool of myself.

The Five Day Sprint and Netbook Saving

2010-02-23T16:56:00.001-05:00

Weather permitting, it looks like I'll have a five (sixish, but I I like to leave a little room for error) day block of time only interrupted by walking my mother's miniature schnauzer wherein I can just write. For those who weren't immediately excited by the last sentence, receiving the gift of time is the writer's equivalent of receiving large sums of money, which we would generally just spend on books, writing materials, or living expenses so we can keep writing anyway.

No word count goals for this five day sprint. I'm just going to do my best to make a clean start on my new story, which I should be able to use to flesh out the world of my 2009 NaNovel. (Since the two have so many overlapping elements, it made sense for them to take place in the same world.) Since the NaNovel is called Syphon, I'm going to tentatively call this one Sigil. This sprint will mark the return of chronological writing and our friend the outline. Hooray!

Now, since I haven't posted a picture in approximately forever, let's see what I can dig up in the way of writing fuel and treats for this week's (It starts Wednesday or Thursday) sprint. Actually, let's just do the beverages of this week's sprint:

Not pictured: Chocolate Soy Milk.

I don't like sweetened drinks, save chocolate milk and juices, so I lean towards tea and coffee for writing boosts. As you can see, the probability of me buying a particular brand of tea is largely contingent upon the company's willingness to adorn its box with cute dragons. On an unrelated note, thank you Blogger for auto-saving drafts since my laptop just crashed again and thank you laptop for providing a segue into my next writing-related topic of saving for a nice reliable 6-8 hours on one charge netbook for my writing needs. ><

So, my laptop has issues. Mostly cord related issues; all of them my fault for dropping it right on it's power cord last November. It still works, but when one is afraid to move for fear of causing a power overload-related crash, it becomes a serious hindrance to one's writing. I intend to get it fixed, but I've decided to start saving for a netbook both for the battery life and so I'll have a backup for this laptop.

Reverse Psychology

2010-02-15T20:38:00.000-05:00

I'm going to say I'm officially on blog hiatus, but only so I'll be inspired to write one tomorrow or the day after. (Note: This happens 75-90% of the time I make a declaration like that.)

Nothing much has been happening writing-wise, or nothing I haven't talked about before. My wpm on the Tuesday and Thursday Twitter sprints I do went up a bit last week, so I think I'll make one of my goals to average about 1500 words for two hours of sprinting.

NaNoEdMo is getting closer, so I need to start thinking about how and if I'm going to participate. Other than that, I'm thinking of starting a holiday/food blog since I wind up talking about those two things a lot on Twitter.

Dark Places Hooray!

2010-02-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

I started a new story early Sunday morning (although I made a scenario synopsis on the car ride to and from Colorado Springs Saturday) and I'm now up to 3,455 words for it. I've only written one story with elements as dark as the one I'm writing now and most of the previous darkness was backstory. Right now I've skipped ahead to the addiction arc. Once I'm finished with that, I'll go back and write the story chronologically, and it's likely I'll rewrite or discard what I've written so far. I don't want to write everything out of order because my stories just don't get finished that way, but writing this part has helped me develop the story outline. The story idea was pretty light-hearted during the car ride, but writing this test chapter made it apparent it wasn't going to stay that way, so I need to prepare for the switch early.

Still in the zone on this, so I'm going back to writing.