The Confabulator Cafe

Category: NaNoWriMo

  • November is National Novel Writing Month

    It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month. For those of you who don’t know, NaNo is a writing contest where you try to write 50,000 words in a month.

    Most of the Confabulators participate in this contest every year, so our format for November switches from monthly flash fiction to weekly liveblogging our progress.

    So follow along with us this month as we all set off on the great writing adventure that is NaNoWriMo.

    Flash fiction will return in December.

    So, best of luck to you if you are participating in NaNo, and we’ll see you on the flip side!

  • Leveling up

    I’m an eight-for-eight Nanowrimo winner. About every other year I go in with no idea, no inspiration, no outline. This was one of those years. All I had was a mildly unpleasant character and the LKFWriters’ Plot Twist Box of DOOOOOOOOOM! [0] Any time I got stuck or bored I’d draw another card.

    Every day I’d write my 1700 words and then not think about it for another 22.5 hours.

    I “won” on Saturday the 29th, killed off my character [1], validated my word count and stuck my notebook in a box, never again to see the light of day.

    Sunday, with time and little to do [2], I opened my calendar of writing prompts and 15 minutes later I had written a new story. It was short, less than 500 words, and unpolished, but it had all its fingers and toes. Beginning, middle, end, protagonist, setting, conflict, resolution.

    Huh. That’s never happened before [3].

    See, I’m good at thinking up characters and situations [4], but plots and structure are always hard. I can never think of an interesting antagonist, conflict, or response. But there it was, on the page, easy peasy.

    Yesterday I did it again. I’ll try again tonight. I wonder how long I can maintain the streak?

    This year’s Nanowrimo wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t all that fun, and it wasn’t exactly a swirling maelstrom of creative ecstasy and agony, but I’m pretty sure I leveled up my game.

    [0] AKA the Dare Box.
    [1] Trampled to death in a Zombie Walk/Fun Run populated by women he’d dated, then insulted on his blog.
    [2] All the people I’d normally hang out with on a Sunday afternoon were frantically pounding out their own last few thousand words.
    [3] No. Seriously. It hasn’t.
    [4] Bartender in an interdimensional speakeasy! City worker who maintains the municipal feng shui! Ten-year-old and her talking teddy bear in a Munchausian milieu!

  • NaNoWriMo Wrap-up: About the letters

    Every year during November, the Cafe comes alive again while we talk about our experiences as we write our novels for National Novel Writing Month. I decided to take a different spin on the “from the trenches” posts as we call them.  We write them the day they go live without another pair of eyes to edit them for us, in the heat of however we happen to feel about our novels at the time. Thus the “from the trenches” designation.

    I decided to write my posts using an extended metaphor of writing being a war zone and NaNo being my tour of duty. That is sometimes what it feels like to a “NaNo Veteran” (those of us who have done NaNo before call ourselves). I was able to project my thoughts and feelings about the writing, the struggle, the excitement, my duties as ML (and the loss of our family dog) to fit the metaphor.

    I did it to give myself an outlet for creativity in a month that sometimes feels like a slog. Instead of dreading my Cafe posts, complaining about how I was struggling with the writing or I was tired and my diet had gone off track completely, I looked forward to how I could turn my usual complaints about NaNo into something creative.

    Please note: I meant no disrespect or offense by this comparison. I do not mean to belittle any actual veterans or imply that writing a novel is anywhere near as important as those in the military serving our country. Or that I have any actual combat or veteran experience. It was simply meant to be a metaphor.

    Thanks for reading. I hope you had a pleasant NaNoWriMo experience and that maybe my metaphor was something you could relate to.

     

  • Post-NaNoWriMo: The End is the Beginning

    thumbI did it. I conquered NaNoWriMo with a few days to spare, aided in part by vacation and in part by a sickness that kept me home from my day job for two half days and one full day. The benefit of writing as an occupation (or preoccupation) is that you can do it even when you are sick. There are many writers who talk about writing every day. Stephen King famously writes every day (although I call bullshit on how strict he claims to be about it). Other writers have said every day except for Christmas. There is a range of scribe diets out there, but it is possible to write well when you are ill. You are sitting down. You can take breaks when needed, and you don’t have to worry about getting anyone sick.

    Aided by medication and sheer willpower, I finished my novel, writing between four and five thousand words each day towards the end. I am happy with the first draft, overall. It clocked in at right around 54,000 words. It’s more the skeleton for the book than the book itself. I started out as a screenwriter. I tend to be a bit too sparse on description and sensory experience. I go back during the rewrites and flesh all of that out. The final book will probably be closer to 70,000 words, which is a good length.

    I like where the story went. It took some turns that I didn’t really expect, and there is a lot of work to do to clean up that mess and make it all work together. I’m not happy with the way I used present tense, and I changed a character’s gender about a third of the way in, which will be messy. Not to mention, this is a Lovecraftian novel, and the guy didn’t exactly pick common names for his deities. I can’t wait to see what a travesty I made of some of those names.

    That being said, December will not be a time to revise this book. I like to leave some distance between the first draft and my revisions. It helps me to see the book from a more neutral place and not fill in gaps automatically. I have several short stories that I would like to revise, as well as a novel and a novella from previous NaNoWriMos.

    The hardest part about NaNoWriMo, I think, isn’t November, but December. In November, you power through the draft by thinking that December 1st is just around the corner. Then you get to December and lose some of that steam. That’s fine. It is bound to happen, but I think the goal should be to lose less of that steam every year and carry that momentum forward in to a writing habit that will foster your creative productivity until next November. Easier said than done, but I am going to give it a shot.

    There will be short stories to write, and I have half a novel from a previous half-NaNo. Then, there will be revisions. Endless, tedious revisions that will remind me that the real work of writing isn’t getting the words on the page, but getting them to make sense to anyone else.

    Today, however, I can bask in the bliss of victory, knowing that I accomplished a goal, and that I have once again earned the right to be called an author. With that, I wave goodbye to Very Dangerous People, with the promise that I will return to it again, when I reach another end that demands another beginning.

  • NaNoWriMo Week 4: Last Letter Home

    I finally received your letter.

    Your news is difficult to accept. One always thinks of the trenches as the place where one loses ones comrades. The news of death at home, where things are supposed to be safe and apart from the battles we fight, has shaken me to my core. Words cannot express my grief at this news. Our poor girl. She will be missed.

    I find that this news colors my last week in the trenches. It should be a time of celebration. The war is almost won. The first wave of soldiers has already made it home. And yet, all I can think about is what will not be waiting for me when I get home.

    In the meantime, I try to refocus my energies and keep true to the task at hand. My victory will still be a victory; I know now that unless an unexpected attack comes, I will succeed in my mission. But somehow this victory seems hollow. The whole experience has seemed tiresome. Not as I remembered it.

    I have a few more duties to complete for my comrades at arms, and then I shall be free to lay down my arms. Possibly for good this time. I have spent ten years dedicated to a cause that I find I no longer believe in. I do not believe I can fight this fight anymore, nor lead people into this fight another year.

    I am tired, my love. I look forward to a long rest when I return. Perhaps I will tell you all about my tour in greater detail when I am back in the arms of familiarity and the comfort of my normal routine again. I cannot tell you how much I long for things to go back to normal.

    Soon, my love. This tour is almost done.

    ~S

  • NaNoWriMo Week 4: The Homestretch

    The Homestretch might seem like a better title for last week, the stretch of NaNoWriMo that I got to spend at home. My NaNo vacation was not quite what I expected it to be. I had a hard time forgetting about work. I was on the phone with work pretty much every day, so it was always on my mind, rather than being able to pretend I was a full-time writer like I originally planned. Additionally, our family dog, who has been a near-constant presence for me ever since I started writing, died on Friday. You can read more about her on my blog. Overall, I would say it is the worst NaNo vacation I’ve had in the four years I have been doing this.

    That being said, despite my generally cynical outlook, I did meet my writing goals for the week. I wanted to average in the neighborhood of two to three thousand words a day. I wrote a little over twenty thousand words during the week. As I type this, I am less than five thousand words from winning NaNoWriMo. There is little doubt that I am going to win, barring any unforeseen catastrophe.

    In many ways, NaNoWriMo is a lesson in the writing life. There are going to be a lot of days when you don’t feel like writing, when you don’t have the time you expected to have. You are going to be trying to write happy scenes when you are depressed and depressing scenes when you are happy. Your novel is not going to care about what is happening in your life and the relationship between the writer and the work starts to feel parasitic. There isn’t much you can do about it. Just keep pushing forward and hope for the best.

    Neil Gaiman says that you write when you are inspired and you write when you aren’t, but when you look back you can’t tell which words you wrote when you were inspired and which ones you wrote because they needed writing. I think about that a lot in my approach to being a productive writer. NaNoWriMo is a good way to learn that sort of persistence. It is so easy to fall behind if you stop for even a day, and a few days away can quickly add up to what seems like an insurmountable challenge.

    In November, I face my busiest month of the year, holidays with friends and family, inclement weather, and a host of other things that would easily be excuses to not get in my fifty thousand words. In the end, I have always reached my goal, and I am very proud of that.

    Five thousand words. It seems like nothing now, as if I could sit down right now and hammer them out. The torture of the blank page, of not knowing my story and wondering if I can sustain it, has changed in to the bliss of reaching the climax and discovering how it all turns out for my merry band of professional killers.

    I am excited to reach the end. Things have taken shape that I didn’t expect, and I think the final scenes will be a lot of fun to write.

    Current word count: 45,000

  • Writer’s Log, Day 19

    Guess what! I found a plot!

    Guess what! I broke the Wednesday curse!

    Guess what! Yeah me too. I’d also like to know what comes next.

    I managed to write a solid 1800 words today progressing the plot in a direction I’m mostly pleased with. Yay! I’m managing to stay on par (barely) but for the first time in my NaNo career, I’ve had days where I ended below par.

    I don’t like it.

    Like, seriously. This year is hard, y’all.

    I procrastinated on writing this and it’s late at night and I’m tired so…

    Captain out. Keep with the wording.

  • NaNoWriMo Week 3: Third Letter Home

    Dearest,

    We are at the height of battle. My comrades and I move ever forward, meeting our enemy and emerging victorious more often than being overcome. We have fallen into a routine. Sometimes that routine is thwarted by unexpected obstacles, but still we perservere. The end seems not as far off this week. We have crested the rise, so to speak, and can see in the distance our final destinations. We are encouraged.

    I have finally felt as though I have gotten my wits about me and my feet underneath me. I feel as though I no longer flounder like the rookies. We still have a ways to go and I miss you terribly, but only the length of what we have already endured yet remains.

    I will make it home to you. This is swear.

    All my love,
    ~S

  • NaNoWriMo Week 3: The Full-Time Writer

    thumbDid I mention that November is Hell?

    This November has been the worst I can remember in terms of demands upon my time, even more so than the grad school years of 2012 and 2013. This week brought another 55-hour work week at my day job, which left very little time for keeping up on NaNoWriMo. The half-way party also meant another lost day. My writing came in large chunks, especially day 10 and 16, which encompassed over 6,000 words of my count for the week.

    I am on vacation from the day job this week. I like to take a few days off during NaNoWriMo and fall in to what would probably be my normal full-time writing schedule. I am hoping for between 2000 and 3000 words each morning with editing on other projects in the afternoon. I am only a day behind as I write this. By the end of the week I ought to be sitting pretty going in to week four. It will be nice to do nothing but write, even if it is on a temporary basis. I think that is the fantasy of a lot of writers. So few actually get to do it. It will be nice to pretend that I am one of them for a week.

    Very Dangerous People is going well. I made a discovery that will have a profound impact upon my story’s conclusion, a secret that I can’t share. I need to save it for any of you that may read the book in the future. That is one of the joys of “pantsing” (writing without an outline). I’ve had a character change genders on me, and now another character has an agenda that I never knew was there.

    I’m happy with the story, and while I know there is going to be a lot of work to do after November, I have high hopes that the novel will be worth it. This should be the best NaNoWriMo yet.

  • Nano 2014: Week 2

    Quick status update on the novel. It’s still quite a bit fun to write. My protagonist has little developed character besides shooting evil things in the face, and I kinda regret that, but it’s also kinda nice to just shoot things in the face.

    That sounds worse then I intended.

    I’m typing on my phone again this year with a wireless keyboard. I’ve done this for each Nano, but this year I’m using Google Docs, whereas in years past I’ve used a couple different word processor apps. I’m not a tech person by any means, so I can’t give you any hard details about what separates Google Docs from other apps, but there are three things that stick out to me. The first being that being able to access my novel from any place without having to transfer files is very convenient. The second is that it gets laggy when there’s about 1200 words on the page, necessitating different documents every day, which is rather inconvenient. The third is that there is no word counter.

    I actually love that there is no word count on the mobile version of Google Docs. There are a lot of psychological benefits. I don’t worry about word sprints, I’m not obsessively checking my word count every few minutes, and I don’t feel the need to be “finished” if I hit my word count for the day. I can just write, and I’m usually pleasantly surprised when I check my word count when I get home, and see just how much I got done.