Good day of writing yesterday, but as they say ‘All good things must come to an end.” Back to work today, but I wanted to share one of my difficulties with NaNo–I’m a self-editor. I admit it.
Either me adding a plot point or a Ford assembly line with a worker attaching a gas tank, circa 1923. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)
Nano is only successful when you plow throw the word count (okay only successful for ME I guess)–like the old Henry Ford Assembly line–“Keep it moving and we’ll fix it at the end.” I have a habit of correcting as I go which takes me out of the flow of the scene I see playing in my head like a movie–can be frustrating at times.
Which is why I’ve liked to do NanNo every year since I discovered it existed. The challenge is there to meet a certain word count while working full time and having the normal responsibilities of adulthood to attend to. I HAVE to continue to write without looking back to win. And I’m just competitive enough so that works for me.
Now that I have hit the half way mark, I know I’ve got this year’s win in the bag.
By The Way- Comments are finally fixed. I find them sexy, please leave one. 🙂
A few words written yesterday, Long day at work, so I knew i wasn’t going to get up to much.
Today is Veterans Day in the United States. It’s a day off from work for me–but it’s also a day to celebrate veterans of the armed services (not to be confused with Memorial Day which honors those who died in service to the country).
My father is a Navy veteran of World War II. I remember toying with the idea of joining the Navy when finishing High School. But at 6’3″ I was too tall to become a Submariner–which was the only branch of the Navy that appealed.
Anyway–Veterans Day.
While I’ll be spending the day writing and making up for lost word count, I’ll also be thinking about my dad and the number of friends and family who have served. We seemed to have gotten into a vicious cycle of wars and military actions in the last few decades. While my thoughts on these policies and political maneuverings are rather negative, I recognize that the men and women of the armed services have a difficult job. Their sacrifice is appreciated…and respected.
I’ll be calling my Dad today…and enjoying the freedom our service men and women have stood for by exercising my right to write!
Back to work and back to a limited number of words being written. After this weekend’s marathon writing session, I’m not that upset about last night’s minimal achievement and, besides, I’m still on target to finish this year.
I’m going to forego my normal blog on writing today to write about partners of writers. Not “writing partners,” but wives, husbands, significant others, best friends, supporters–whatever.
My wife is a wonderful and practical person. Brilliant, funny and incredibly sweet, but I never really thought she got my writing obsession. Last week, she asked me for my holiday and birthday list (my birthday is at the end of December. Bottles of Jack Daniels are always welcome–FYI). One of the items I put on my list–more as a joke than anything else was, and I quote:
“A Place to Write.”
Now, we live in Boston which is a damn expensive city. We have a lovely home, but it’s a small cape cod style. Two bedrooms, about 1100 square feet of living space. It’s cozy and comfortable and we love it.
But there isn’t a lot of room for my kids, who come visit quite often, or other guests who visit from time to time–My wife’s dad stays with us every summer, for example. There certainly isn’t enough room for me to have a regular, quiet place to just write. My point is, when I put on my list “a place to write,” I was being a bit facetious.
Writers are weird people. We wander around most of the day in a world very different from normal people. We live our character’s emotions, we talk to ourselves and we throw keyboards around when we’ve written ourselves into corners.
Well, that last bit might just be me.
Anyway, my wife knows I struggle to get “into the zone” in our cozy, but very busy house–we also foster and house many cats. Animal rescue is my wife’s passion.
Today, I got home and my wife pulled me into the basement. Half bemused, half hoping for an interesting sexual experience, I followed. She then walked me through the design for my new library and writing space that she and a contractor had discussed today.
“It won’t be ready by your birthday, but it should be done by February,” she concluded.
“Um….what?” I asked her, wittily.
“Your library. Your writing space.”
“I was kidding….” I started, still amazed.
“I know. I’m building it for you anyway. You deal with my cat obsession, I can do this for you.”
THIS. This was the look on my face.
I guess she gets me after all. I’m a pretty lucky guy. To my writing friends, go thank your partner today. To the partners of my writing friends, Thank you for understanding our weirdness.
Writers spend a lot of time thinking. Since I started down this author road, I find myself pondering stories, scenes, character “development” (otherwise known as “how can I torture her/him next?”), setting, tone…well you get the idea. I never stop thinking about writing.
I mentioned that over the weekend I did some location scouting. Spent a lot of time on trains–and I find that (barring idiots yelling on their cell phones) trains are a great place to think. So, as well as snapping a few photos and getting location notes down, I thought a lot about my current NaNo story, and some deep personal things that have happened.
One of my main protagonist’s struggles in the first book was trust. I’ve had reasons to think about trust myself over the last couple years…and today I enjoyed writing a little ironic reversal. I tapped into my own feelings, doubts and anger and wrote the confrontation I’d been planning for a while. It’s pretty powerful, even for a first draft. Once I’d gotten that out of my system and had a bit of a cry, I jumped into the first of two scenes involving trains. It was very different from the emotional bit I’d just typed. More adventure, intrigue and action ending in…oh wait. No Spoilers. You’ll just have to read the final product for yourself.
Taking that day to think really energized me for week two of National Novel Writing Month. Normally by now, those great ideas for the first week have turned into a bit of a panic in week two. Not this time. It was a really good weekend for writing.
Only a couple hundred words written yesterday–but what an amazing day! Took some amazing photos–specifically of the T system in Boston (and others that would be more spoiler-ish, so I won’t post those). I have a scene in mind where my protagonist is attacked on the Green line when the train is out of the tunnels and trading the streets. I also did a tour of some of the abandoned tunnels and stops for a later scene. Traveling the T lead me to some very interesting parts of Boston and spawned a few more ideas–even went as far as the Aquarium and the Blue line.
Research is so important when writing urban fantasy set in a real city. I’ve always found that when the setting is spot on, it grounds the more fantastical elements of a story. And, although word count was impacted, it was well worth the time spent. Spoke to a few train fanatics and explained to them what I was writing about. I guess my “sales pitch” was pretty good–that couldn’t wait to help me explore the T–both what’s operating today and what’s been lost to time. I’ll be crediting them in the forward to The Lost Empress, assuming I get the book done, of course! Hopefully all the ideas born from my journeys yesterday will keep the momentum of the first week going. I’m excited about the direction I’m running in, so hopefully, when completed, will the readers. They’ve waited a long time for The Prodigal’s Foole sequel. I really want to ratchet up the tension in book two–and the train components, and who Symon meets because of the trains will have a lasting impact on the series.
Sorry for posting a bit later this morning. Last night was a late one and my darling wife let me sleep in a bit this morning. Many people use the weekends to “catch up” on their word count. And I’m now a couple thousand words behind. I really want to get to 20k words by Sunday night. However, as planned, I have a bit of a research day ahead.
The weather in Boston has been amazing for November–73 Degrees (23C for you more metric minded folks) yesterday. It’ll be a bit cooler today, but still warm enough to head into town to do some location scouting. I want to take some photos and check out a few spots I’ve written about already. I’m also riding the rails for an upcoming scene that I’ll be working on tomorrow that takes place on the “T” (The Boston rail system). A conversation is planned with a rather obsessed man who loves trains, specifically Boston area trains. He’s even going to try and get me into one of the old abandoned stations to research a pivotal scene for The Lost Empress.
The only scene worth watching in “The Lone Ranger”
Going to be a busy day. For all you fellow NaNoWriMos–keep writing!
Still running a few hundred words behind where I wanted to be at this point. The story is progressing nicely, but I’m beginning to hit the “self edit” issue. In a sprint like NanNo, what works best is to get in the zone and go. I shouldn’t be worrying about editing and revising until December. For now, just write. But in the middle of the night, I realized I’d written a scene that probably should come later. Rather then fix it now, I’ve now implemented a ride along “note book” for NaNo. It’s job is simple–syphon off all the random thoughts that interfere with the word count. It’s not easy, to be honest.
Not easy for ME. Dumbledore’s a show off
So tonight is a birthday party for a friend–not expecting the word count needle to move much. But I’m bringing my note book to catch the stray thoughts. Which (hopefully) means this weekend will be free for word count busting.
Not as much written as I would’ve liked last night. A friend of the Wife’s was in town with her new fiancé and we met them for drinks and dinner after work. The late night (for me) in combination with the fact that I kind-of write rubbish after a few glasses of wine means I’m slightly behind of my planned goal.
Which is of course is why my daily planned goal is slightly higher than the recommended daily word count. Having done NaNo before, I know things will come up that may pull me away from the keyboard. So I try and front load as much as possible. My personal end date is before the November Thanksgiving holiday in the states.
Because loads of turkey AND wine will really be bad for my writing.
Long day yesterday. My day job is…well, it mostly pays the bills so I really can’t complain too much. But 12 hours of work with an additional 2 hours of commuting,,,I really wasn’t in the mood to write last night. But, for the first time in a long while, my lovely wife actually gave me crap about not writing. So, while she made her way to bed, I opened the Macbook and continued chapter three.
This is moving into a fun area, as I’m dealing one of three things left hanging from book one. A confrontation between two characters I adore–my main protagonist, Symon and his old friend and boss Eden.
A confrontation like this…except between two people and no Millennium Falcon
Next thing I knew, I was 2500 additional words in and it was past midnight. That was about four hours ago. It’s now 4:39 AM and I’m up typing a quick blog before heading back to work.
Can I do this for the rest of the month? We’ll see.
I’m a morning person. My favorite time to write is early in the AM—steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a keyboard in the other. Last evening I working through Chapter one and have the bones of chapter two completed. Over-all, I’m happy with where the story is heading–and was surprised at the evening output—especially when the day job tends to sap most of my energy. I’ll get to why in a moment.
If some asked me whether or not I’m a “Planner” vs a “Pantser” (Working off an outline verses flying by the seat of my pants), I would say I was a planner, with a caveat.
Some of my writer friends have seen how I outline. I use one of those large accounting notebooks, divide it up by time and color code key plot points. As I’m working on a series, I have to outline the stand alone story along with moving the over-arching series stories. It’s an interesting juggling act that I add an additional ball too by sprinkling in hints for future books.
But with that sort of planning, one would think that there is no room for creativity. Last night I proved that wrong again. Characters, when I’m really into the writing zone, will speak to me. Last night, a minor character that’s I’ve developed suggested a change in tact that not only made sense, but ratcheted up the tension quite a bit. This revelation is why, I think, I was able to add a significant number of words to my NaNoWriMo count. And that’s the caveat. Listening to the characters when they are speaking.
I looked at and tweaked my outline a bit this morning and will hit the keyboard again this evening. There is a long way to go…but I’m hopeful that this first draft continues along the path I’ve scripted.
I also hope the characters continue to voice objections when the path isn’t sound. Plan for the story, but plan to deviate when needed.
Although Some Characters need to Keep Quiet.
It’s nice to be writing every day again. Let’s see how the month ends up.
Having the kick-off for NaNo on a Sunday made the first day relatively easy. As always, I jump into the month with vim and vigor–with outline in hand and a firm direction in mind.
But Sunday is my normal writing day–Today, however, will be the challenge. Back to work day. Had a major project go live over the weekend so there will be residuals to deal with along with the normal packed meeting schedule.
Today begins the real test. Can I get 2000 words written? I have a draft of the prologue and about half of chapter one done. The goal is to get through the first chapter and finish up the setup for the first act.
Oh, and the dragons. According to Tolkien, I’ve gotta work in the dragons…
This month I’m doing something that I haven’t done in a few years. I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short.
Simply put, thousands of authors around the world will be spending the month putting together a 50,000 word (or more) first draft of a novel. My personal goal is to write 2,000 words a day or have 60k done by the end of the month.
There are loads of writer friends doing it this year and I’m hoping we will be inspiring each other to work away on our first drafts. For years I’ve been struggling with book two of my Arcana Chronicles series and I realized that the story was off and, quite frankly, not of interest for me. I plan on mixing some of the ides from my still born book 2 with the ideas I had for book three (The Lost Empress) to create something I’ve been excited about since I started working on the new outline back in October. Here is the new blurb I’ve worked up:
Fame is a deadly mistress.
Symon Bryson has rejoined his magic practitioner friends, only to find himself in virtual lockdown after multiple assassination attempts from unknown assailants.
While members of his team are searching for the Morningstar, Symon is asked to deal with a strange request from his shady past leading him on a collision course with a crime lord known only as “The Empress.”
When all that stands between Heaven and Hell is magic, more than faith will be tested.
I’ll be blogging quite a bit during the month so check back on progress and–as always–comments are welcome. Wish me luck! And here is the most-excellent cover designed by Kip Ayers:
