Day 6: NaNoWriMo 2012

No life lessons in this post...

And that's the thing about writing... most of the time, the magic of writing isn't that magical. I'm sure you've heard the saying about 5% inspiration, 95% persperation? Well, it's a good approximation. Although, I do believe that coffee accounts for 10% and Nutella another 5%... good chocolate should account for another 10%. Snack. Snacks are good for 7.5%... but I digress.

All kidding aside, writing may be an art, but art can only be produced by the same methods that you produce anything in life.

If you want to have a vegetable garden, you can't just be inspired by the though of fresh veggies. You have to treat that soil, take care of the insects and snails, water the soil, manage the weeds and so on.

The basic principle is hard work and discipline. Because if your butt isn't in the seat, and if your fingers aren't moving on that keyboard, then words don't show up on your manuscript.

Speaking of words...

Day 6's total: 2,573
Overall: 16,590

Just Write!

It's not easy. I get it--trust me. Life gets in the way. But that's what we have to do. Otherwise, we would all be lawyers :)

Fight the good fight!

Day 5: NaNoWriMo 2012

Yesterday was one of those days that should have ended poorly, but didn't.

It is natural for "reasons" to get in the way of your writing. We are reasonable people. And we will use our reasons to stop us, slow us down, or give us an out.

As I mentioned on Day 1, I made a from-the-hip decision to write a mystery novel. As I've said, I read mysteries all the time, but that's out of love, not because I write them. In other words, I don't read it like a writer, I read it like a fan. I am not trying to pick up techniques -- What worked about that interrogation scene? What was the procedure for evidence discovery? etc.. -- I'm just reading.

Well... my story has broken into Act II now. And it became very clear that I was hitting knowlege walls. I needed research to help me with my facts. And I allowed myself to get into a funk -- questioing the wisdom of writing this story, questioning my own sanity, questioning why the sky is blue...

Then I remembered something that Stephen King said in his masterpiece On Writing. Research is for backstory. The key word is "back." He says, keep it way back. He advises, make up what you don't know. You can clean it up later.

And so I did.

Remeber this, you can't edit what you haven't written. Let the story roll. Don't let the fact that you are a reasonable human get in the way of following through on an unreasonable venture -- writing.

Day 5's total: 4,350
Overall: 14,017

As for my overall progress, I'm still on track. But remember, this is Act II. The long middle where you will hate your story, your characters, your scenes, and your third grade teacher for good measure.

Let me know what resources you use. Share your pain with me. Remember: misery loves company.

Fight the good fight!

Day 4: NaNoWriMo 2012

Yesterday was weak. Today was wick-ed.

Get it? Get it? Weak -- Wicked?

Come on! Give me a break, okay? I'm tired. I tried to come up with something that rhymed and that's the best I could do.

Today I nailed down 4,956 words. Yes, I basically doubled the output of my first three days on my fourth day. That puts my novel's grand total to 9,667.

As happy as I am about the results, I know that there will be days that I will not be able to produce more than a few hundred words. This is the truth about word counts -- daily goals are okay... weekly are superior. Some days will fall flat and others will give you gifts like the one I received today.

What went well today? Three important things:

(1) Yesterday was a busy day for family and friends, and although I got in about 1,300 words, there was a lot more I wanted to write. The nice thing about stopping when you still know what you want to write next is that the next writing session receives a turbo boost.

(2) As my day progressed yesterday, additional lines, scenes, and conflicts continued to bubble up. I took notes in my handy dandy notepad (you do have one, right?)

(3) And possibly the most important thing is what I posted on Twitter

The support I get from my wife is the driving force behind my work. Couldn't do it without her. And no, she does not read my blog, so I will get no points out of this one :)

I may try to squeak in a few more words, but I'm in a good place right now. I know what I want the next scene to include. I think I'll sleep on it and, as Stephen King says, let the boys in the basement do their magic while I sleep. 

Fight the good fight!

Day 3: NaNoWriMo 2012

I had a solid plan for Saturday -- I was going kill the word count.

But first, I had to clean my home office. It was a bit of a mess. I was having a hard time concentrating.

Before I knew it was lunch time and the boys were hungry. No problem. We can do that.

We ate, then I ran up to the office. Within 30 minutes there was a national emergency. The kids were arguing over who owned which Lego set. My wife laid down the law, the losers came to me, the united nations, to get compassion. Instead, I lost another writing opportunity.

Then my son had a tennis match. A great match and by the time we got home, we had to bathe, change and go to a friend's 40th birthday party.

We got back home just past midnight. The gin and tonic had worn off a while ago, but my eyes had given up for the night.

By the end of the day, I had put in a respectable 1,317 words (total word count of 4,711). Not bad. But not what I intended.

And I'm okay with that. Part of the challenge a writer faces is that time is never your friend. You will never master time or be able to wrangle the word count. We try to control it. But frankly, it controls us.

Don't make yourself wrong. Don't feel like you're less than, or not good enough. This is life doing what it's good at -- getting your attention and eating into your time.

The key is to write something --anything-- every day.

Fight the good fight!

Day 2: NaNoWriMo 2012

Apparently when I decided to do this NaNaBooBoo, I inadvertently decided to post updates as well.

Here goes. I had three hours to write while my son was at his tennis clinic. Always nice when those things happen. A few things came up today.

When I start a new story, I typically circle around the first chapter for a while. I'm trying to find the voice of my narrator. Also, I test the POV and tense. I thought this one would be a 1st person present, but 3rd person past is sounding better, more appropriate. 

I have a writing philosophy that I try to stick to: write forward. I try my best to not go back and edit the work I've just done. There are a lot of reasons for that:

• The story changes over time. Let it change. It's okay. This is a bit of the magic. When the story is changing, keep at it so that the hidden story emerges. You can go back later, when you're done and fix the little mistakes. Make a note on a post it and stick it to your forehead. Otherwise, just keep moving.
• Your characters do something completely unplanned. That's the magic of writing. Your characters are coming to life and they're deciding for themselves. Okay, so maybe you're actually the one deciding but what's really happening is that you hear their voice and their personality more clearly now. Let it happen. This is when the words begin to fly

Hint: The key about writing fast is to write fast. Yes, I am a bit of a guru :)

All joking aside. You can edit it later. Right now, you want to get words to pour out. And in my experience, if I can keep pace with how fast the story (the movie) is playing out in my head, then I have a chance at capturing some of the rawness that will make for a compelling read.

Having said all that, I did get stuck in the first chapter because I needed to get the tone, the voice, and tense right. 

The result of today's exploits is a nasty headache. I may continue writing after the double espresso kicks in. Or I may take a power nap (sleep for three hours then wake up) and continue working on this when the house is fast asleep. 

And for the moment you've all been waiting for... as you'll recall, yesterday I laid a goose egg -- zero word count. Thankfully, today I made up for yesterday's slow start.

Total word count: 3,394

Fight the good fight!

Day 1: NaNoWriMo 2012

I've done a lot of dumb things in my life--what's one more?

For those of you who don't know what this cryptic thing called NaNoWriMo means, thousands of writers from across the globe, both experienced and novice alike, are officially participating in the annual National Novel Writing Month. That's write right. 50,000 words in thirty days.

I must admit, I've never participated before and was not planning on participating this year either. I had been deep in rewrites of my latest manuscript and didn't see how I could possibly be done with that one and still jump into the abyss of NaNoWriMo.

As fate would have it, I finished the revisions late October 30th. I knew I would not look at my revisions for a good two to four weeks (I always give breathing time for my manuscripts before I read it again). 

So a stupid thought entered my damaged head. Should I NaNoWriMo?

Of course the answer is no. Rest should be top priority. But I hate making these types of decisions without deep and thorough deliberation. 

So I asked my wife, "Wife, should I play?" 

She said, "Husband, love of my life, why not?" 

So I asked, "What should I write about?" I have a lot of half cooked ideas, but I hadn't actually given any one of them a lot of thought. 

She didn't miss a beat. "A mystery novel."

I've never writeen a mystery novel. I love them. But not sure I can write them. I grew up on Agatha Christie and continue to read the modern masters. This was an interesting challenge.

If I was an established author, I would probably not stray far from my core genre. But since I'm still a nobody, there's nothing better than to jump into different genres, test different styles of writing, different perspectives, and frankly exercise a few muscles that I have not used to date.

NaNoWriMo it is.

Will I be able to write 50,000 words in thirty days? Sure, why not? I've done 60,000 in Ten days. Then again, I did get very ill after pulling off that stunt. You may think, that's stupid of me. But the real stupid thing is that I am doing this publicly so all my thousands and thousands (maybe millions!) of fans may see me crash and burn.

Enough talk, today is day 1 and the journey starts. 

So what did I accomplish on day 1? 

Thankfully I had a little concept that I had considered a couple of years ago. It was a basic idea with some elements that were interesting to me.

I have written the log line for the story (one sentence summary of the story). I have also written out the story beats as defined by one of my favorite guides -- "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder. I HIGHLY recommend this masterpiece for structuring your stories. Yes, it's meant for movie scripts, but if you're writing anything commercial in nature (genre fiction is ideal -- not so much for literary fiction) then with a bit of massaging, the framework is brilliant.

I also used the tools recently laid out by the great James Scott Bell on his blog.

So, Ara, what did you accomplish today? Drum roll please... Day 1, the word count is... are you ready? Zero words.

Okay, so that's not a good start, but I have the framework for the story and that has to count for something. I am not a heavy plotter. However, I do prefer to put in more than a couple of hours, so this is fairly close to being a pantser (write from the seat of the pants and see where one lands). I must admit, I like the way this idea has come together. If you're also participating, look me up. My user name is "araTHEwriter" -- very original, I know.

Send me some muse love... and coffee... and Nutella.

Fight the good fight!

Ara

The Burn

You're almost done...

By Jersey Tourism
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

You set out your workout goal -- twenty miles on the bike. You've never done twenty. But las time you got to seventeen. What's three more?

You pass your previous mark of seventeen and something happens. Your legs gain forty pounds in a matter of seconds. You begin to slow. Each breath you take hurts a bit more. You begin to doubt and the wind suddenly picks up--slamming you in the face.

You look at your distance watch... 17.2 Miles. It's impossible. You'll never make it. And then, the fire starts. The burn. That sensation that is universally understood but also misunderstood.

The breakthrough is on the other side of that burn. That burn is your body telling you to stop. That you've done enough. You're fine. Just stop.

But if you continue, if you press on, if you push through the tears, your body transforms. And so do you.

Anyone can exercise, just like anyone can write. But only those who stick through the hard times, the doubts, the BURN, will they come out better.

Only the author knows if they took a shortcut. If they stopped before the magic happened. Next time your inner voice tells you to stop, that the sentence is good enough, that the motivation is good, that the scene is memorable enough, stop for a moment. Do you feel that burn? Do you see the fear that stops you?

If something feels wrong, or weak, or incomplete, I can guarantee that you are right. Push through that burn. What comes out on the other side will be worth the pain. Feel the burn. It means something magical is about to happen.

Have you ever fought through and discovered something new about your story? About yourself?

Fight the good fight!