A 2006 NaNoWriMo Journal

It is (not) Done!

2006-11-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

66,672. Tried for 66,666 but couldn't stop mid-sentence.

This is by no means even close to a finished novel. Turns out Insurrection will be at least two Books: Ezekiel and Jayanti. The first is the set up for the second. And the second may be two books as well, since I get the feeling that Jayanti might not survive to the conclusion either, and it may be up to a young Thippah'n to call game, set and match. Each of these books will be around 300 pages, and I see them as being sold as a single volume in paper trade. We'll see...

Now for NaNoFiMo, and trying to get this !#$@ first book in good enough shape to get rated and ranked as a winner for a little competition we're having in town. The writing has just begun. But isn't that always the case?

Words and Pie Parties

2006-11-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the second NaNoBruMo. Random stats:

Over twenty official participants. My 8y.o. had a friend over who, when she caught wind of what we were doing, pulled out some paper and a pen and wrote a smashing little short story right then and there.
3 dozen eggs, 2 lbs. eggs, a dozen bagels, 2 boxes croissants, 4 pots of Turkish coffee and two slices of toast.
I don't know the total number of words, but from the chimes, I'd say at least twenty five thousand little pearls tripped and tapped from keyboard to novel.
First guest: 8:55. Last guests joined the next party, which started at 3PM. I was still writing, trying to catch some words, at 3:20. I was not alone.
Best sound: about 12:30, when almost everyone was typing all at once and the sizzle and clink of food and dishes had subsided. The sound of all those keyboards hard at work was to the rainforest seed tubes like a pair of concert cymbals are to tiny triangle chimes.
Piece of lore revealed: The story of the chimes started when writer _Rachel_ was leaning backwards, laptop on lap. She slipped backwards, caught herself on the kitchen counter, whacking the chimes. She used the story about finishing 1,000 words as an excuse to cover otherwise explaining endangering a laptop she definitely could not live without.

I love these parties, and the incredible folks who show up at them!!!!

Squick

2006-11-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

How squicky (icky and/or violent) is your 2006 novel?

My characters don't have bodily functions or fluids (G)	14 % (43)
A seven year old boy would be fascinated! (PG)	17 % (53)
Lotsa ketchup and ooze, but nothing you could tie to an organ (PG-13)	28 % (86)
The blood/fur/red meat/weapons fly freely (R)	29 % (91)
I cover my eyes when I write this stuff (NC-17/V)	10 % (31)
Total Votes: 304 Total Voters: 304

Whew. Finally over the hump and looking 75k in the eye. Don't think I'll get 100k in, but my novel is finally blossoming now that the insane urge to add fluff, detail and color have subsided. (Still need to kill that !#$% main character so my original plot can unfold!)

One cool side note is watching the number of people hitting my 'squick factor' poll on the NaNoWriMo polling area. There were two polls: the other one for sexual content, but folks either mostly ignored it, or, as I suspected from an Americano-centric crew, lumped sex and violence into one category. Talk about squicky!

The snapshot to the left is from just now.

The curve is actually a little milder than I thought: I was betting on a 65%+ nasty (R+) factor, but apparently there are a lot more PG and PG-13 writers out there than I had assumed. And Bambi can breathe easier: there are at least 14% of respondents that would connect with him...

Unless they're so busy writing nasty, horrible stuff that they can't take the time to vote...

Almost...

2006-11-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

48,091. Quite a day, even if I didn't hit 50k. Characters are primed for another good writing day, though. I've got them about to get on stage for a news conference. Do you know how many times the same question gets asked by reporters during a news conference? How much description there is? How laborious it is to describe an assassination attempt? Yah, there's another 10k of day to go tomorrow. And Wednesday and Thursday are going to (hopefully) be great days in the Lushguin / Crabby battle!

Galumphing + Caffeine

2006-11-18T16:18:00.000-08:00

38.5k up to 44.1k so far today, and the keyboard is hot. 75k definitely, even with putting in a few hours of serious yard work. Or maybe because. That whole exercise thing may have something to it after all...

I still think this bugger of a novel will take 300k to flesh out at the current rate, and I'm starting to get worried about how to tell the rest of the story by 11/30 just to get the plot in, even if in sketch format.

I'll probably have a followup post this evening, if I don't wear my fingers out before then. Is 50k in the cards for tonight?

Shoot me now!

2006-11-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

15,000 words behind. They're backing up on me faster than I can write 'em. I'll definitely break 50k, probably even 75k, but 100k is looking pretty iffy, unless I can get some serious and heavy writing time.

Lots of folks are "letting work pay for their novel this month." I wince when I hear that, because it's a moral and ethical issue, even if a person doesn't like their job. One hell of a case of theft if you take a person's gross, loaded salary into account. And work is pretty hectic.

Eldest is behind but is busy with RL and is making progress. Middler is doing great and is on track. I've read what he's written and, for NaNo work, it's fantastic. Even for measured writing it is great, certainly way ahead of his alleged grade level.

Youngest has over 1,300 words of a story that shows her writing ability peering behind the plot lines of other authors, but for her age, that's not only okay, it's a great way for her to find her 'voice' without worrying about plots and images that she's perhaps not ready to create for herself. I'm going to one of her readings this noon -- it should be cool.

Progress in the Shifting Sands

2006-11-11T22:17:00.000-08:00

32,322 is today's count. Still 4k or so behind, but I've definitely popped over the hump in terms of a 50k novel. Backstory is moving forward. I added a pair of close friends to the group -- pretty late in the game for a true novel; I'll probably put them in earlier at my first rewrite -- but it's nice to have more than MC, spouse and peons at various altitudes and orbits. I can't wait for the spouse to die so the rest of the story can start.

What a horrible thing to say, but such is life in NaNoLand.

Cummulative word count is going well:
Eldest: 8,000+
Middle: almost 18,000
Youngling: over 1,000
That's around 60,000 words for the family -- and we're only on the 11th of the month!

Under the Gun

2006-11-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

28,000+ words... but need to be at 35,000 by end of today. Not going to happen; too much on the RL side.

The frustration I'm having now is that, for padding sake, I keep drifing into minutiae on the story (what they wore, what food was on the table, etc.) instead of pushing forward with the story line. Compounding that frustration is that it's actually a good thing: I'm finding backstory and motivations for my characters that I didn't have a clear picture of until now. So I'm anxious to get ahead, but every time one of my characters helps me out, it keeps me down in the weeds some more. Ah, well; that's a NaNo writer's life. Words are great, even if you prune 'em on December 1st.

I'm in a local group's contest for the best novel to be voted on for group edits and internal publication. I'm on the fence as to whether I can even get this thing done by the end of December, but I'm certainly going to give it my best. That means this blog will have an extra few months of life to it -- kinda like the Mars rovers.

;~}

Am I a Werewriter?

2006-11-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

13,425 words at this writing, and there's more to come tonight. My story hasn't even gotten started; at this rate the whole thing should take (shuffles notes around) about 300,000 words!!! Ack!

What's amazing to me is that as I'm writing in NaNo mode (write and structure be dinged, if not downright darned), the scenes get easier and easier to write. Need an erotic scene? Ding! Heated discussion with multiple characters in a board room? Done! Sneaky scene in which a plane is sabotaged? Easy, sign me up.

My NaNoKidDos are doing great as well; I'm wonderous at how focused this folks, raised from pups, have turned out to be.

Lurking -- well, posting a lot as well -- on the boards shows me just how passionate many of the writers are. It would be interesting to see what the real economic impact of NaNoWriMo is in terms of number of publishing deals, POD sales and general book sales are influenced by NaNo.

What's a fact is that the NaNoWriMo charity has helped thousands of kids in the Far East by setting up libraries. And helped me find a wonderful passion to share with my kids.

Postscript

2006-11-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

... all writers met or exceeded their goals! Woo hoo!

Quote of the evening, by a man herding his three daughters to the barista: "Oh, they must be some kind of wireless group." What's with that? Doesn't wireless mean you don't need to hunch together?

Well, it's no stranger than writers, practitioners of The Solitary Profession, huddling in a mass over caffeine.

@ The Write-in

2006-11-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

7 adults, 1 kid (mine) all pounding away. All Dell laptops but mine (it's that kind of town). NaNo plate contents: $7.67: 100% adult participation. Two of us are shooting for 100,000, the other four (kiddo included) are going for 50,000.

Goals for the night: 10,000 words, 6,000, 3,334, 10,000, 5,100, 4,200. One who's writing by hand and enters text once a week. Things are looking good all around.

Weird factoid: 5 adults are lefties. Co-inkidink? I think not!

Must leave... words are chasing me.

Galumpf, galumpf

2006-11-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

(Think running with galoshes on an Olympic speed trial.) Tossed in a bunch of words @ the bell, and will try the 'brick and mortar' approach going forward: make time to write blocks of text, and squeeze time between the cracks to make slip and mortar to glue it all together. Should cut down on the large chunks of time I'd otherwise need to write 3,400+ words a day to stay on track. Today, at least, I'm ahead; I don't expect that to be the case every day — but I will make it to 100k!

Little flippin', a little floppin' and a whole lot of cameraderie

2006-10-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

Just back from our kick-ass kick-off meeting. Lots of folks, including hatchlings. People getting ready to write for their first, forth, tenth time. Published writers seeking new genres and first-timers with not much more than the curiousity to try us out. Young reporters, receptionists, programmers, project managers, stay-at-home moms, professional travel writers, younglings. I drank in the creative passion of so many people in one space. Some of the proposed stories included: a cancer comedy, werewolves and the complications of modern life, a male-written romance novel.

Some of the writers had characters, plot lines, stories and time lines. Others had nothing but a title. I don't know many of these people at all, and those I know, I don't know well. But I love them; they're each and every one a sign that the amorphous, vapid American is not a pre-ordained destiny; that people thrive despite our educational and economic shackles.

Getting up to say my piece it all clicked. Insurrection is the name, the plot is as I'd indicated in my last post, and it is the third book in the series. It may not have many, if any, of the original two novels, but who's to say what's right? It'll work out. I'm worried about a 100,000-word novel count, but I'm determined, at least for November, to lovingly describe every scene, every meal, every person, every change in the weather. At the very worst it'll give me plenty of scrap to re-use somewhere else once I'm finished writing the novel in the way it was intended.

Rethinking some more

2006-10-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Nine days to go and I'm editing the premise (there not being any text). We still have the trilogy, but the NaNo book this year will be "The Proposal," and will not be part of tht trilogy. It'll stand independently, theoretically before or after the trilogy.

Think Jonathan Swift, but on a larger, and corporate basis. Without the Soylent Green literalness. I propose, gentle reader, that if Africa has become an insolvable mess, that the United Nations, and international corporations, might find better ways to employ the inhabitants and make use of their resources.

Starting some serious think

2006-10-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo Novel for 2004: Induction
NaNoWriMo Novel for 2005: Infection
NaNoWriMo Novel for 2006: Insurrection (working title)

Induction introduced the main characters, and tracked the MC's path from a man in control of his life to a fugitive from unknown but well-organized enemies that destroyed his life and captured his girlfriend. He is at the mercy of mysterious a group, a splinter group, it seems to him, of the very people trying to capture him.

Infection follows the MC's new life with the Thippah, leveraging his knowledge of history and cutting edge computer hacking skills to keep the Thippah hidden from the world, while still fighting other groups that would reveal The People as the world's true masters.

Insurrection pits the MC against both Thippah'n and human world powers. At stake is the fate of a continent: and possibly of the entire Thippah'n race!

At this point, Induction is in final edit, and should be ready for submission for publication by late spring (I've got NaNo, then other, writing commitments throughout the winter and spring). I've procrastinated on the editing, despite wonderful comments and suggestions from JNE (thanks!).

Infection will need a lot of work once I'm finished with Induction, but I plan on having it ready for publication by the end of the year: this next two years is writing/editing prime time for me.

Insurrection may be able to stand on its own, and will not need the same kind of editing as the other novels, as I'll be building on an "alternate universe" instead of pulling characters through 1,200 pages (!!!). It will start, I hope, at around 500 pages before editing and fleshing out. Previous experience has showed me that, for example, Induction went from 50,000 to almost 118,000 words from initial NaNoWriMo to (almost) finished piece.

I'd love to go into more detail on the story lines. However, my work and writing are somewhat at odds, and getting dooced is not high on my list of desired life experiences. These books will be published, probably under different titles and certainly not under my name.

Stretch

2006-10-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

That feeling you get when you're just waking up, and every muscle wants to pull taught...

That delicious sensation in the act of love when you know that one more caress will pull the whole wagon over the cliff...

Sitting down with a crew of writers determined to write more, faster and better than last year, all for the fun of it...

Yay!!!! NaNo's back in town!