NaNoWriMo Recap: Week Four Victory Lap

Throughout the month of November, I will be blogging on my progress, both as a motivation to stick with it and as a way for those unfamiliar with the event to get an idea of what the experience can be like.  Also: writing craziness, random daydreams, tips, cheats, and caffeine abuse.

Alright, folks.  Today is the last day of the month, which means that it's the last day of National Novel Writing Month.  If you're anything like me (and have been writing this month), you'll know that November 30th is a bittersweet day.  On the one hand, it's a relief to be done with the manic insanity of trying to write a novel in 30 days, succeed or fail.

On the other, at some point during NaNo a writer starts to hit a groove and can see real, decided progress coming along in the manuscript before them.  Sometimes a character evolves in front of you without you consciously deciding to make them do so.  Your novel has become a growing, almost organic thing, and there's nothing quite like having something both creative and constructive in your life. 

For those of you who have "won" and validated your novel already:  Congratulations!  Enjoy your fancy PDF with your name on it (or your certificate if you printed it out).  For those not in-the-know, when you "win" NaNoWriMo, you get a few icons that you can use for Facebook, Twitter, etc, and a PDF that you can customize with your name and novel title.  That's really all you get for winning this event.  It's totally worth it.

For those who have not yet won:  Keep at it!  It's that last day - finish strong!  You can get those final words if you try.  <Insert your own motivational encouragement here.>  You know what you need to do if you want those fancy icons and that PDF.  You can do it.

For those who are nowhere close to winning:  There's always next year.  Think about what you learned from this month.  Try to remember the best parts for your emotional motivation next year and use the hurdles you might not have cleared in order to plan how you will do next year differently.  Perhaps you've realized that you are a writer, but you need to do a smaller amount daily.  There's nothing wrong with the NaNo structure not working for you.  Writing isn't easy, but it is worth it.  Find what works for you and then do it.  There are hundreds of blogs and articles out there about how to make your own system that facilitates writing for you.

Now for some obnoxious bragging and "this is how I did it."
1. Last year I wrote entirely in the evenings and the weekends.  This years I tried something different.  Every week day I've been getting up at 5:30 in the morning to write before I go to work.  The best I ever did was about 1000 words, but the usual number is in the 250 to 400 range.  It's not a lot (usually less than a page), but it's more than I had before.  Having a few words written in the morning also makes the evening sessions shorter and more enjoyable.
2.  On weekends when I had nothing else planned, I wrote as much as I could stand.  It didn't make for the best days, but having 7500+ words written every Saturday and/or Sunday felt great.  In a way, writing is like tough exercise:  it's not always pleasant to write, but it's usually pleasant to have written.
3.  I carry a notebook around with me everywhere.  Whenever a snippet of dialogue jumps into my head, I pull out my handy notebook and pen and write it down, later typing it into the manuscript in a chapter entitled "Random Stuff" which is just a mess of these things.  It's not terribly long, but occasionally I could Cut-Paste into the actual story and save myself some headache.  And even if they're never used, at least these snippets reveal character or setting or plot.  At the very least, they help my word count.
4. The "strikeout" font treatment is your friend.  Does a chapter suck?  Like, really suck?  Just cross it out.  You'll skim over it when re-reading and know it's not officially part of the story.  BUT it's still in your word count.  I rewrote one chapter three times.  That's a lot of words.  If I decide to go back with some of the crossed-out text, it's still there, but I can always just erase it later.  Add "Strikeout" to your [MS Word] ribbon in the upper left corner, and it will be a quick keystroke away.  If strikeout isn't dramatic enough, change the font to white.  It accomplishes the same thing.   

Today I have over 70,000 words and I don't think I spent any more hours writing this month than I did last year, when I finished with just over 50K.

Future goals:  Even after hitting my goal, I continued to write and I plan to keep doing so.  I haven't been writing 1667 words a day because that requires addition/subtraction.  I've been trying to write two pages a day.  This is a much more modest goal, and more importantly, it's not all-consuming.  I still have time to watch seasons of Doctor Who, hang out with my friends, and cook actual meals.  In fact, I can get most of this done during my morning session.  By keeping up with this, one year's worth of writing will be well over 700 pages.  That's a sizable manuscript.  Never underestimate the power of small amounts of consistent progress. 

For those of you who NaNo'd your heart out, I hope to see you next year.  For those who have never done it, maybe give it a shot?  And for those who never want to write a book and just want me to get back to writing reviews...I'm getting to it.  I promise.

Happy November!

NaNoWriMo Recap: Resurgence of Week Three

Throughout the month of November, I will be blogging on my progress, both as a motivation to stick with it and as a way for those unfamiliar with the event to get an idea of what the experience can be like.  Also: writing craziness, random daydreams, tips, cheats, and caffeine abuse.

Ah, Week Three.  This is traditionally the point in the NaNo month where I believe your Inner Editor is either dead or severely disabled.  By barreling through the blasted wasteland of Week Two with the jerk dragging along behind you, the Inner Editor has been reduced to a weeping, bleeding puddle.  Despite his screaming "That sentence doens't make sense!  Your characters are stupid!  Why are you still doing this?!" you have not lost hope, intrepid NaNo writer, and have made it to the sweet bounty of Week Three. Your tenacity has given your Inner Editor pause, if not silenced him outright.

Which means you, dear writer, are free to write whatever you'd like.  Does it have to make sense?  No!  Does it have to be music to the ears?  No!  Does it have to take a logical path or even follow the narrative from start to end?  No!

Don't get it right; get it written. That's all you have to do. 

This is the week where it will be good enough to write something along the lines of:
Things were good when they weren't being bad.  People could be really clever but then would be dumb the next second.  We were afraid of doing things and afraid of not doing things.  It was complicated and unless you were there you won't understand so I don't know why I'm even trying to explain it to you.
After editing, you'll look at it and say "yeah, that's not right..." and will polish it, step by step, into something more like this:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Keep writing and eventually you'll get to the sweet land known as Writing Nirvana.  Your fingers type on the keyboard like a maestro playing his masterpiece.  Hundreds of words pile on top of one another and except for fixing the obvious typos, you will no longer worry about if they are exactly right.  It's much easier to correct a sentence than it is to write it the first time. 

This might also be the part of the month where you are desperate to something, anything, other than write.  You might notice a dearth of reviews on this website.  Fear not, a couple are on the way, but in order to write reviews, one needs to read books.  Tricky how that works.  I've been going through reading withdrawal.  I'll be back on the wagon soon.  

NaNo Memories:  A few years ago my story was set in a pseudo-imperial setting.  At first it was more like a generic fantasy kingdom instead of empire, but as I wrote, I pulled in random details from both the Roman Empire as well as the British Empire, picking whatever details suited me at the moment.  While writing, this freedom to use whatever details jumped into my brain allowed me to focus on the characters and their desires.  Despite being somewhat inconsistent to critical eyes, some of the best (read: easiest) passages I wrote were when I focused only on the things that mattered, not the things that could be fixed later - if they even needed to be fixed.  This is the only NaNo I've written which has the vaunted "the end" as the final two words.  

Vague Description of My Plot Progress:  After surviving a shipwreck, the protagonist is settling into her new life, including meeting someone who appears to care for her as a person instead of a political prize.  However, with the arrival of a sketchy character, she is starting to realize that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.  I'm hoping for more progress in the next week.

Last Week's Goals:  I wrote ~15k last weekend and reached 50,000 on the 17th, a new personal record.  I'm still writing every day and trying to keep it up for the rest of the month. 

This Week's Goals:  I have a couple characters that are waiting in the wings.  Some have already been introduced and then were shunted off to the wings, while a couple others have been waiting for their grand entrance.  I'm not 100% certain which one needs to come back first but I would like to see at least two of them make an appearance soon.

Current Word Count: 62,000+  (This will probably be at least 120k by the time I can put "the end" on the manuscript.)

Tips for Writers and/or Wrimos:  Try to not look at your screen for a while. You will make a disgusting amount of typos, but by allowing yourself to focus not on what you ARE writing but what you WANT to write, you might be able to break through self-doubt and self-editing. 

Have a cup of not-really-needed coffee and get back to it!

NaNoWriMo Recap: The Desolation of Week Two

Throughout the month of November, I will be blogging on my progress, both as a motivation to stick with it and as a way for those unfamiliar with the event to get an idea of what the experience can be like.  Also: writing craziness, random daydreams, tips, cheats, and caffeine abuse.
 

Best advice you will ever get from a shapeshifting cartoon dog

For the two of you who are going to read this:  Welcome to the end of Week Two!  It only gets better - or worse - from here!  How's that for unhelpful?

Traditionally, Week Two is when many WriMos run out of enthusiasm and have to start pushing through their novels on willpower alone.  The idea that was started last week and seemed so promising is now starting to rust and fall apart before your eyes as you write it.  The characters who walked into your head almost fully formed, with profound emotional depth and complex motivations, have become walking stick figures, mere puppets who are all starting to sound alike.  The plot?  Two things are happening:  either A) it's going absolutely nowhere and your cardboard stock characters are just having "as you know, Bob" conversations like NPCs in a video game, or B) it has completely derailed and makes about as much sense as a frying pan made of out of Jello.

Achieving your threshold word count is like pulling teeth - your own teeth.  Using chopsticks. Made of string cheese.

Needless to say, it can be a rough week.  A lot of people seem to give up somewhere around Day 9 or 10, and who can blame them? 

Here's the part where I make everyone who reads this (all two of you) hate me:
I have never had a problem with Week Two.  In four years of doing this, I have never fallen behind in Week Two because of writer's block.  In fact, I had a bang-up weekend last weekend and not only caught up, but banked a huge surplus of words which has only grown day by day as the week went on.  I could stop writing for five days and still have extra words.

I would say "I'm sorry" for those who are struggling, but that would be disingenuous.  I'm not sorry at all!  HA HA!  I'm thrilled! 

But enough bragging.

For those of you who are struggling, think of this like the marathon runner's "wall."  Keep pushing through and eventually your grasp on your story will come back.  You'll reconnect with a character, a plot line, or a really great twist - maybe all three.  It might not be the prettiest thing, but you'll get to 50,000 words if you stick with it.  And getting to that finish line feels AWESOME.  Allow yourself to write complete crap (which you can improve later when time isn't a constraint) and you will find yourself writing better anyway. 

I think my favorite writing quote is (attributed to various people in various versions), "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."  This needs to become your mantra for the month.  You don't have to write, but you can't go on Facebook or Tumblr or Tickld.  You can stare at Word (or whatever word processing software you've chosen) or you can type.  For your Luddites, you can sit staring at a blank piece of paper and twiddle your pen.  Eventually your brain will un-constipate itself in a often-time messy rush of word-diarrhea and you'll get back on track.

Hang in there!

For those who are rolling right through, don't get cocky yet.  Bank as many words as you possibly can.  Stockpile those jerks like words are canned goods and you're saving them up for the nuclear apocalypse.
Worst case scenario: you have a cushion to fall back on when your brain (or your muse, if you believe in that sort of thing) decides to go south for the winter.
Best case scenario:  you look like a NaNo rock star and can validate your novel early.  There is still plenty of time for your novel's linearity and internal logic to disintegrate and for your characters to become drooling imbeciles.  It happens to the best of us.

Vague Description of My Plot Progress:  After failing to cut through political gridlock, my protagonist and her friends return to their home to watch everything they value crumble to dust.  Awakening alone - horribly alone - in the custody of her enemy, the heroine is offered a respectable position by a potential ally, though neither the offer nor the ally are really what they seem...

NaNo Memories:  Last year, around Week Three, my story completely derailed.  I lost my touch with the characters and my tough-yet-tender female character became a caricature of the "Strong Female Character" in which authors mistake bitchiness for strength.  The male character became a fawning idiot and the second female lead became as bland as uncooked oatmeal.  I started jumping around in the story chronology, adding scenes or adding rewrites of scenes (while using "strikeout" on the banal crap to maintain my word count) trying to figure out at what point my characters fell into the Swamp of Stupidity.  I mean, this was a story in which there was a demon-possessed, carnivorous castle - so finding the moment of stupidity took some digging.  By the time November 25th rolled around (when you can validate your word count and officially "win" ), I was 200% Done with that novel.  The manuscript currently has far more than 50,000 words but the narrative is still unfinished.  Still irritates me, too.

Last Week's Goal:  I did not use "bloviate" correctly in a sentence yet.  But I have a snip of dialogue written in my constant-companion notebook and I know exactly where I'm going to use it, probably in the next thousand words or so.

Next Week's Goal:  I"m going to go out on a crazy limb and try to get to 50,000 by Sunday night.  It's only about 17,000 words away and as I have no life and no other plans this weekend, it should be doable.  If not Sunday, then by Monday.

Current word count:  ~33,500 out of the recommended 25,000.

Tip for WriMos and Readers:
I read - and took to heart - the advice on this website regarding story structure.  His advice is solid and even has some print-ready worksheets for you to use.  This has made a HUGE difference in how I approached NaNo this year.
Also a good concept to keep in mind when READING or reviewing books.  Want to know why a book is boring you even though you don't know why?  This might help.  It might not, but it certainly can't hurt.

NaNoWriMo: What's up with Week One

Throughout the month of November, I will be blogging on my progress, both as a motivation to stick with it and as a way for those unfamiliar with the event to get an idea of what the experience can be like.  Also: writing craziness, random daydreams, tips, cheats, and caffeine abuse.
 

Today is November 8th, which means the first week of NaNoWriMo is complete.

I started today finding myself in the unpalatable position of being several thousand words behind the threshold wordcount and with several characters without actual names.

My manuscript has a lot of wildcards in it.  If I have a character who is a doctor and needs a name, her name is written as "*Doctor" whenever she shows up or talks:  *Doctor slipped into her office and quietly shut the door before breaking down into tears.  It's not the most elegant of solutions.

I also use wildcards to act as placeholders when my vocabulary decides to go on vacation.  "*Doctor looked down her nose at the salesman with as much *disdain *hauteur *something like that as she could muster."  It's not a pretty sight, but it sure is good for shamelessly bloating your word count.   

I was trying to write by hand and then type up my progress in one chunk, but it turns out I can type so much faster than I can hand-write that the pen-and-paper might only be an option for days when I have tons of time.  This sort of sucks because I love physically writing on paper, but only sort of like typing.  However, I REALLY love watching my word count climb.  Advantage:  Typing.

For those who are curious, in order to write the recommended 1667 words per day, I have to sit at a desk or with my laptop for anywhere from 60 minutes to 3 hours, depending on how self-disciplined I am and how awful at typing my hands become.  Some days I'm a typing ninja,  some days (like today), I have to correct almost every single word I type.

This is glorious Week One, in which I still rather like my plot and my characters and nothing has really derailed yet.  That's coming in Weeks Two and Three. And probably Four.

Vague Description of Plot Progress:  After escaping a near-death situation, my characters were sent to get help but find themselves stymied by petty people and their politics.  They haven't admitted defeat though, and they're about to meet another feisty character whose friendship will affect their lives (whose name is currently going to be "*Duelist" until I can come up with a better one).  My protagonist hasn't really shown herself as anything incredibly special yet, but her moment will come when the sh*t hits the fan in about one chapter.

NaNo Memories:  Three years ago, I was typing up my story on my laptop when my husband offered me Irish coffee to help with my "flow."  It might have worked but for the part where I immediately poured the boozy coffee onto my keyboard and fried it.  Fortunately I was able to use USB drive to retrieve my novel-in-progress and through the miracle of Amazon Prime was able to get a replacement computer within three business days.  I never drink anything more complex than plain water near my computer now.

Current word count: 11835 out of the recommended 13333.

Pointless Goal for the Week:  Use the word "bloviate" correctly in a sentence.