Category: NaNoWriMo

  • Writer’s Log, Day 12

    Welcome to NaNo. This is my second from the trenches post for the season. What? You didn’t see my first post? It must have been a 404 error. I swear I wrote it. No! Really!

    Okay, so this is actually my first post because while I remembered to write it last week, it was never on the day it was supposed to go live. You’ll forgive me for forgetting, right? NaNo is all about being a scatterbrain after all.

    Last Wednesday was the day that kicked off week two for me. Last Wednesday I hit the first of the Idunwannas the first of the writingisstupids. That’s what happens when you’re ahead of word count, you hit the dreaded blues ahead of schedule.

    But don’t worry, by Monday I’d pulled myself out of my funk. Only to fall into it again this morning. Because, in case you were wondering, Wednesdays are apparently an evil pit of word suckage.

    Today I’m here to tell you that writing is the actual worst. But it’s okay, because not every day is a Wednesday. Some days are Tuesdays… and Tuesdays are awesome for the word count. I just have to not fall terribly behind before my next Tuesday.

    But hey, I’m 20k in and only just about to get my character out the door on her quest, so at least I know I have the plot left to see me through the end of the month!

  • NaNoWriMo Week 2: Second Letter Home

    My love,

    My apologies for my lack of contact. I had hoped to write you every day, but there hasn’t been time. My duties seem to gain weight each day, and the pressure mounts each day to keep up with them.

    We are deep into battle now. The casualties are overwhelming. People are falling left and right, left by the wayside. We try to go back for them, but there are so few of us remaining. A mere fraction of us were present at our last campaign.

    It is mostly us veterans who persevere. We know it gets better, even if things seem bleak now. I’m hoping it gets better. This time, I have real fear that I might not make it. I suppose I go through this every tour, but this time has been more difficult than any tour in previous memory.

    Still, each day I put one foot in front of the other. I put on a brave face for my comrades. I will not give up. Not yet. We are nearly halfway there, and so until then, I continue on.

    I do not know when my next contact will be. I hope to write again next week. Until then, take care, and keep us in your thoughts.

    ~S

  • NaNoWriMo Week 2 : November is Hell

    Week 2 of NaNoWriMo brought a revelation that I have possibly blocked out since last year. November is Hell. It is the busiest month at my day job, with fifty-plus hour weeks being the norm. On top of that, I have this Baty guy who seems to think that I need to pound out fifty thousands words to prove to myself that I have what it takes.

    That is what November is really about, trucking my way through Hell. This year has been particularly bad. My job has never been more demanding for such an extended period of time. I come home exhausted, sometimes after working all day and all night, only to find a keyboard waiting for me, along with that stupid little NaNoWriMo graph that is mocking me, calling me worthless and questioning my dedication to my art.

    “You call yourself a writer?!”

    Screw you, you little piece of digital graph crap!

    So…things are not going well. Today I wrote over 3600 words and I am still about a thousand behind the pace. The story is going well. I am excited about Very Dangerous People, and I am having fun now that I am working in the Lovecraftian elements, slowly adding a supernatural element to what has been a straight-forward world by this point. I have no problems with the quality, or lack there of (it is a first draft, after all). I just wish I had more time to invest in it, more time to think about the story and develop it away from the keyboard instead of chasing it down at roughly 70 words per minute.

    This week is another of hellish proportions before I take a week off to do nothing but write. Obviously, I should be able to make up any work that I am behind over the time off I will be getting between vacation and then Thanksgiving the following week. That being said, I have a hard time psychologically with behind behind or being late, and the sooner that I pull myself back into the expected range, the happier I will be.

    I’ll see you all on the other side of Hell.

    Current word count, as of Monday night: 15,827.

  • Nano 2014

    I’ve had two very different experiences with Nano so far. Two years ago, I completed a project that I was deeply invested in. It was a personal story, that just happened to have a bunch of aliens, psychos, and the Earth being destroyed in the most slow, suffocating way I could think of. Needless to say, I enjoyed it, and felt pretty accomplished afterwards.

    Last year, well, not so much. The project I worked on was too ambitious, and I didn’t really care about it. Writing it became a chore, and one I didn’t really feel was working out. So last year, I did not finish. I think I hit about 30k words by the end, but really, I had given up within the first 15 days or so.

    This year is something a little different. I’ve had an idea kicking around for several months now about a Wild West setting involving demons, steampunks, and anything else that sounds cool. While it’s not a personal story, it’s fun to write, something I couldn’t say last year. Whatever cool crap I can think of is being thrown in, and be damned if it makes any sense. I’m going for a pulp-western vibe, and after last night, when my bible-toting gunslinger dispatched a Russian with a mechanical arm, I can say I’m pretty excited about it.

  • NaNoWriMo Week 1: First Letter Home

    To my dearest love,

    My heart still aches, having left you behind yet again. Each day we are apart, I miss you all the more. I hope you will not forget me while I am away.

    I am writing this note on Day 4 of our tour. We nobly marched into the trenches this past Saturday, and we are all ready to do our part. Emotions are running high for everyone. There is a great deal of excitement and bravado, but also plenty of anxiety and dread. I, myself, have tried to inspire those feeling trepidation, since this is my tenth tour. My veteran status lends me a bit of respect in the trenches, and they often look to me to lead. I do my best not to let my men down, all the while ensuring I fulfil my own duties, as well.

    The food is terrible and sleep is fleeing, but all of this is as expected. We have made progress. We will soldier on. I will write again next week and let you know how we fare.

    Know that I think of you every day, and that we will be reunited again in less than a month.

    Ever-faithfully yours,

    S

  • NaNoWriMo 2014, Very Dangerous People Week 1

    thumbNaNoWriMo is often a lesson on how hard the life of a writer can be. A lot of our deadlines are self-imposed. Unless you have a multi-book contract or have something you’ve sold that is currently in the editorial process, you work on your own. NaNoWriMo presses upon us a one-month, fifty thousand word deadline. Usually, in this career, you get paid for such an experience. In this case, though, it is all in fun.

    This month has been rough from the get–go. I have a very demanding day job, and it has been a nightmare time-consumer over the first week of November. I am a very productive writer, and a quick-typer. Even with those things going for me, I have only just kept my fifty thousand word pace. It’s required some quick typing, not wasting a moment, but it has also required getting up early, working my entire lunch break, and variety of other tactics.

    At this writing, a post that was supposed to go up Monday, mind you, I stand at 5,700 words. I’m not totally happy with the quantity of the writing, but I have been happy with the quality. I am three chapters in to writing Very Dangerous People, and I am enjoying it, so far. The supernatural elements that will be a big part of the story haven’t come in to play, but will probably be showing up in the next chapter. I’m comfortable with my protagonist, and his “origin story” worked out pretty well. I was surprised by some of the things that came up.

    The first three chapters have been the easy ones. It has been a free-flow of ideas to the keyboard, because they were all my ideas. However, this novel is not one containing only my ideas. Very Dangerous People is the story of a social group of professional killers who get caught up in a plot to release Lovecraftian elder gods upon the world. As a horror scholar, it is important to me to do the mythos justice, and to also write a good story.

    I imagine that the pace will slow for me as I enter into the realm of Lovecraft’s creations, having to weave them in to the world that I have established in present-day Salem. However, I think the story has a lot of potential and will have some surprised in store for me.

    I look forward to seeing how Dick and his band of killers deal with a dark Lovecraftian cult and the monsters that they release upon the world. Hopefully, I will be back on Monday with good news about their efforts, which in the case of fiction, often means bad news for my protagonist.

    Week 1: 5700 words

  • November Reflections

    I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about last month.

    Most people have already done their National Novel Writing Month thoughts and reactions. It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts together about those thirty days. It was a fun time: I always enjoy hanging out with my fellow Lawrence writers. But it wasn’t a particularly productive time. I didn’t “win”. Officially, I gave up at about 35k words and three days to go, but I’m pretty sure I actually gave up sometime in October.
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  • Thoughts Post-NaNoWriMo 2013

    I managed to finish NaNoWriMo by November 24th, but two weeks later my muse is still a withered husk lying crumpled in the far corner. I had an easier time of it this year compared to last, due in large part to pacing myself more and a wonderfully supportive writing group, but it was still far from easy.

    Thanks to NaNo and the Lawrence writers, however, I’m slowly beginning to understand what it means to be a writer. I’ve never been the type of person who had to write. I feel like a bit of a hack to admit it, but I have none of the overflowing passion that flings me from my bed to my keyboard every day like I’ve read in so many author interviews. I wish that I did.

    I love stories and I’ve always gotten great enjoyment from writing, but I also used to wait until my muse was fit to burst before I did anything and then rode the wave for however long it lasted. I could go months and even years between writing stints that way.

    It wasn’t until early last year that I became serious about writing and I’ve found that, while still great fun, it’s also a lot of bloody work. NaNo just compresses that workload into 30 days. Even without the frantic pace, it takes continuous effort to push back distractions, sit down every night, and really write.

    I’m writing this now, with no inspiration and dead tired after a long shift at work, as a testament to that. Thanks to NaNo and thanks to the Lawrence writers who have helped me learn what real writing takes.

  • Won and Done

    I realized I missed posting about NaNo last week. The holiday threw me off. I was out of town on Thanksgiving and had house-guests the day after. I kept meaning to create a post and back-date it, but the week got away from me. I caught a cold, had to work on my final exam, and all of the regular life stuff this week.

    This year, I hit 50k words a few days early, and unlike previous years, once I hit 50k, I was done. I didn’t keep writing. I tied up my character’s story, and then I put it away. I may not get it back out. While I did manage to balance work, class, editing internship, being ML for the region, and writing, as well as regular life stuff that included cooking for Thanksgiving, I never really got into my story. I never had the magical moment of it writing itself. It did take some twists and turns I wasn’t expecting, and the world is just as magical as I had hoped, but I never really felt it. Perhaps it was because I was too busy to really appreciate it and had too many other commitments to get sucked into it. I hope so. I hope writing hasn’t lost its magic for me.

    At any rate, I have bragging rights. I can say I have won NaNo eight out of nine years now. I got to hang out with my writing family so many times this month. I had a lot of fun. I really did. Just not so much with the writing part.

    In January, we here at the Confabulator Cafe are talking about having a writing month just for our group. I’m looking forward to a more relaxed chance to write with the gang. My editing classes are done, my editing internship should be drawing to a close, and I will have all of December to relax and do whatever I want. Perhaps I can capture the magic of writing in January. If anyone can help me with that, it’s my amazing group of writing friends!

  • Victory NaNo Get

    Well, another season over, and another victory under my belt.  I think year was also the earliest I’ve ever finished.  Not that 7 pm on the last day is any big celebration, but at least I made it.  It was pretty questionable there for awhile.  Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve never been that far below par.  Granted, it wasn’t all that big of a deficit in the grand scheme of things… but to someone who never misses a daily par, missing a handful of them is pretty stressful.  I don’t think I would have forgiven myself had I managed to fail NaNo my first year as ML, and the one year I actually decide to pre-order a Winner’s shirt.  No idea how often I’ll ever wear it, but after three years I figure I deserve something from the store.  Besides, this year’s theme was legit.  I’m really glad they chose Video Game Graphics this year- especially after last year’s awkward Venn Diagram theme.  But… I digress.  I won.  Yay, me.

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