5 posts tagged “nanowrimo”

Looking at the numbers, chances are only one of my neighbors will complete NaNoWriMo.
That's out of ten that entered.
What humbling odds, huh?
Three may finish, they may!  But if they do it will mean a tremendous sacrifice of sleep and family time.

I had always planned on writing a post to those who tried after November was over, but I decided to do it now instead.  So:

    I like to watch Mixed Martial Arts (better known as Ultimate fighting).  It may seem ridiculous to mention in conjunction with a writing competition.  I don't really think it is.  For a fighter to get into the ring knowing that EVEN IF HE WINS he is going to take a beating takes tremendous guts.  Even the best fighter gets his guts kicked in from time to time.  More likely than not he will leave every fight bruised and hurting.  Writing is much the same.  To get that first draft out there is always a beating.  You never know what it will look like.  Even when you complete it and feel good about it, it is still at the cost of a lot of sleepless nights and stressful days wondering if the time you are putting in will ever amount to anything.
    You have to respect every fighter that takes a match, and you also have to respect everyone who actually writes.  Because, WriMo friends, far more people TALK about joining the attempt than actually succeed.  Far more join and blow steam in the forums than ever write a word.  Far more are happier to live with the fantasy of being a writer than to ever walk into the ring, look their opponent in the eye, and see whether or not they have what it takes to actually battle it out. 
    I applaud your bravery.
    Even if you left the month of November bruised and broken and questioning whether or not you ever should have tried- you DID try.  You tried.  There are some incredibly skilled athletes with amazing technical knowledge that get knocked out in the first round.  Some of them go on to win their next fight, some decide that they would rather remain fans.  You may have gotten knocked out before clocking five thousand words.  Don't be ashamed.  That doesn't mean that you are a bad writer or that you don't have the skills it takes to participate.  Maybe next year.  You may have decided that you are a far better fan than you are an author.  That's okay, too.
    You tried.  You threw in.  You took the punches like a real author.  You have a taste of the fighter's life.
    We all applaud you.  At least now you can say you know how it feels to be in the sprawl.
    Seriously, guys:  I applaud you.

Finished my packing early, so I squeezed in some more precious NaNo hours.

    Now I must share.
    One thing I wanted to confront in my novel was the idea of a marriage arranged from birth.  The idea is tossed around casually in many fantasy novels.  Often a bold and beautiful maiden is forced to marry, and she showers her husband with withering gazes and contempt.  Sometimes the woman is tearful and scared and the man is gentle and understanding.  For some reason, those stories have never struck me as real.
    I wanted to make all of my characters very real and to act in ways that seemed real to me.  I always imagined that the men would be as scared as the women.  After all, men have a deep desire to be, well, desired.  The fact that a woman was forced to take his hand would undoubtedly have an affect on a man's ego.  And as for the woman- no matter how confident she was in her daily life, it is very important for a woman to feel her worth and value.  To be unable to earn such attention from possible suitors would have a cost on her development and her sense of self.  So I've often wondered- what would happen to these two people when they finally met?  Especially if it was only shortly before their marriage?
   
    I'm pretty pleased with the way it's turned out in the story so far.  Here's a short bit from the last scene, as the two characters speak shortly before the ceremony:

    Zantra fought back a sudden desire to hide her face in her hands and cry. All her life she had known her own worth to her country. She had been bold, confident, demanding, without fear of reprimand. Now, facing the man whose name had made her worthy, she realized that she had no idea who she really was.

The last hour's favorite line:

"Daughter," Marcella replied sternly, "you don't know much but roasting beef and scrubbing floors."

In the context, it's funny.  Trust me.  And it's not particularly mean.

SO:

6:00 and all is well.  One hour of writing.  6743 words.  I should break 10k today.

    Finishing this novel this month is starting to look more and more possible.  It will have to be over 50k to actually have the storyline be cohesive and as detailed as it needs to be, but it's possible.  It's possible!

    Yes, next week I will be all whiny and "no, it's NOT possible, I'm WRONG!"  Just slap me when I get like that.  It IS possible!  :)

6:30 and all is freaking awesome.  7425 words.

Favorite line from the last hour:

That was when she saw it: The white cotton draping the dais, the priests, the Elders, the contingent of the Sisters of the Sun- Zantra wanted to turn towards Izabel and claw the smug look off of her face, but there was no time.

7:30 and all is till well.  9185 words.

My favorite line from the last [half] hour of writing:

    Needs explanation.  Brendon has just ignored Anaya while she stuck her proverbial foot in her proverbial mouth.    He was busy reading a book.  He says:

"I'm not sure why you're angry at me.  This is just a particularly fascinating passage."

8:00 and all is supercalifragilisticexpiali-well! 
            10285 words!

That means I can go the next five days without writing a single word, and not having to worry that I will kill my chances of completing NaNoWriMo this year!  WOOT, WOOT!

*splodes!*

I really, really love this scene.  It just captures both characters perfectly.  So, without further ado, meet Brendon and Anaya.  I don't care if having the male and female lead fall in love is petty and cliche.  It's petty, cliche, and yummy!  :)


    "I..."  Anaya searched for any words that she could say.  "I hate brown."
    "You're dressed in all brown."
    "And I hate it," Anaya said.
    "Which is why you've been crying?"  Brendon put his hand on her shoulder.  "Come.  Marcella will be setting out the meal soon.  You must be hungry."
    Anaya wanted to say no so that she could return to her room and try to think things through.  Instead, she found herself gladly giving in to Brendon's touch and walking with him.  It felt contrary to her nature to be led by a man.  With that revelation Anaya felt a sudden surge of hope.  I hate this, she thought.  I hate that he felt he could touch me, and I hate that he feels he can lead me even more.  "I hate this," she said out loud before she realized the words were coming out of her mouth.  They stopped in the entrance to the common room.  Anaya could see a scattering of people.  The room was far from being full, but also far from empty. 
    Brendon was staring at her with amusement all over his face.  "What precisely do you hate?"  He asked, "that I am taking you to eat, that you are obviously famished, that we are in an inn, or is it still the fact that your skirt is brown?"
    "And my tunic, and my bodice," Anaya said.  "No, I hate the fact that your hand is still on my arm, as if you had permission to touch me."
    Brendon dropped his hand and laughed.  He motioned with his other hand towards a table in the far corner.  "Where you lead me, I will follow," he said.
    Anaya walked to the table and sat.  Brendon stood, staring at her.  Anaya clasped her hands in front of her, sitting straight backed and trying to ignore the looks of everyone else in the room.  She cleared her throat and asked, "What?"
    "Most women in your position would be terrified," Brendon said, "unsure, and seeking protection."
    "I am not other women.  I am myself," Anaya said.
    "And considering that you don't even know what that means, aren't you the least bit frightened?"
    Anaya stared at him.  She looked at his face, which seemed chiseled out of hard stone.  She looked at his brown eyes and the fact that he seemed ready to burst in to tears.  She looked at the way that he was towering over her, blotting out the light from the lamps.  She looked at the way that everyone else in the room seemed to shrink out of sight every time he breathed in.  She thought of saying that she didn't need to seek protection, because protection had obviously sought her out.  She thought of saying it, but she didn't.  Instead she simply said, "I'm not afraid.  It may be the most stupid thing in the world, but I have the feeling that if whatever is out there really wanted me to be dead, I wouldn't have made it out of the woods."
    Brendon sat down heavily.  The table shook and the candle in the center nearly fell.  Both Brendon and Anaya reached out to steady it, their fingers momentarily touching.  Anaya went to grab her hand back, but Brendon held it.  He leaned forward, looking her directly in the eyes.  "Don't be foolish," he said.  "You aren't out of the woods yet."
    For the first time since she'd come to the inn, Anaya felt truly afraid.

7:00

30 minutes of writing, no re-read

1149 words

Time until kids wake up?  God only knows.

I am a NaNoWriMo rockstar.

For now.

Next week I'll be small and pitiful and defeated.  But for now?  I RULE THE WORD DOCUMENT!  BWAHAHAHAHA!

8:00

1 and 1/2 hours writing, some re-read

3083 words

Done for the time being.  Excerpt can be read here.  Is it horrible?  Probably.  Is it grammatically sound?  Surely not.  Do I love it?  Heck yeah!  It's NaNoWriMo, bay-bay!

3:00

5064

That's what I'M talking about!

    First:  A public service announcement.  I'll be doing my NaNoWriMo blogging from my art & writing blog.  This one I'm cross posting.

    I have written three novels.  No, I don't think this makes me anything even vaguely approaching an expert.  None of them have been published and I haven't made a dime.  That said, I have learned a lot.  I'm also an avid reader, and I think the first requirement for being a writer is that you have to love writing.  The process, and the end product.
    So- out of the times I have done NaNoWriMo in the past, what have I learned?
    The first thing I've learned is that writing a first draft is an intensely selfish thing.  You go into the writing process not knowing if what you write will be anything approaching readable.  You go into it knowing that you will be sacrificing a great deal of time, and all of that only because you want to.  I've also learned that it's okay to be selfish.  Every book ever written started out with an idea, and someone taking the time to see if that idea would work.  Without the selfishness of authors the world would be bereft of literature.  So, go with the selfishness.  Do the deed.
    All first drafts have problems.  While there may be a few authors out there that get away with a minimum of editing, the vast majority of first drafts have huge errors.  The process of writing means re-writing.  That's a good thing.  Your first draft does not need to be anywhere close to the final product.  It must have the skeletal structure of the finished thing, but the meat of the story goes on in the finishing touches.
    You have your skeleton, you have your meat.  The third thing I've learned is that 1 must, always, come before 2.  Finish the first draft before editing.  You can re-read your work, sure, but the best way (for me) to go about finishing the first draft is to separate the two things in my mind.  I tell myself to lay out the bones before even thinking about putting any meat on it.
    Plot holes?  Don't sweat it.  The beauty of life isn't the planned, but the unplanned.  You go out to buy milk and see an old friend.  You plan a honeymoon only to get rained in and spend the whole time eating room service in a house robe.  The beauty of life is also the beauty of writing.  Often we find what we planned falls through once encountered with the reality of characters and the strictures of making a story believable.  Don't get so attached to your plot that you miss the real story.
    Write regardless of your personal feelings or mood.  Learn to put the words on the page even if the "spirit" isn't with you.  If you only write when the spirit takes you, you will never finish.  Writing is work, just like everything else in life.  It is a craft as well as an art.   If you can't learn the craft, you will never be good at the art.  Talent only takes you so far.  People born with a talent for basketball still have to perform rote drills.  People with a talent for business still need to crunch numbers and people with a gift for words still need to practice their craft even when it doesn't feel like art.
    The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it forces all of us to practice our drills, so to speak.  We learn a familiarity with our craft that we would never have without accountability. 
    My advice?  For what it's worth, my advice is to look at your NaNoWriMo writing as just the first draft, just the bones.  No one is expecting a work of art out of you.  All of us who have been there and done that have had a love/hate relationship with our NaNo work.  That's fine, and expected.  So throw yourself in to it, selfish as that may be, and learn to love the craft!

    A few survival tips:

1. Treat yourself.  If a double mocha with caramel drizzle will keep you at your desk, do it.
2. Choose now what you will sacrifice later.  You will HAVE to give up a few TV shows, some dinners out, some time with friends.  If you make the decision now to just record Grey's Anatomy and catch up later, it will be easier than hating the fact that you are missing it when you realize then that you won't have time.
3. Accept the fact that the house may be dirtier.
4. Tell your family and friends ahead of time that you will be incommunicado and may not return every call.  Ask them to give you space.  Don't let it blindside anyone.
5. Keep a notebook to write down word and page counts for each writing session, and to write reminders for the next.  For example, if you are writing a scene where one character gives another a blue shirt, and in the next scene the blue shirt will play a role, write "blue shirt, character A, needs to say "blah blah blah, etc."  That way you'll ward off plot inconsistencies.
   
6. Work ahead, don't catch up.  If you know you can't miss this or that event, work ahead.  You will feel better knowing that you're 5000 words past your goal than worrying about the 2000 you will have to make up.
7. Treat yourself.  I cannot stress this enough.  Make the writing a pleasure.  Fill thoughts of your desk with thoughts of chocolates and nachos, and it will make the time you spend there that much sweeter.

    Godspeed and good writing!