Daily Adventures

And We're Off

2009-11-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

Starting pistol: 1,672 words.

Didn't get anything done Monday or Tuesday, but I did change projects. The other one isn't ready and this one will need minimal research in advance. I don't know that it's going to be worth much other than the exercise, but that's at least something.

And I do like the story, I just need to get a better grip on the characters. Probably do some flashbacks tomorrow or Saturday to get them framed out a little better. And I need to add a modern boy in the mix of some kind. He's going to be a party coordinator... So he'll have to have some creative bits to make him not stereotypical.

And there's a tiny train. Hence the working title, Trains. Which have little if anything to do with the plot as it stands. But what the heck.

Back in the Saddle

2009-11-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

Alright. The chips are down, and the die is cast, and any other gambling western metaphor that we can come up with that sounds good you can fit in here as well.

This year's project is a little different than my usual fare in a couple of ways.

First: I'm shorts-ing it. For me, that's not quite pantsing as I have a loose kind of "covering the important defining bits" version mapped out. Essentially the beginning, the high point, and a couple of options for the end. Normally, I'm outline girl and have the entire book plotted out scene by scene (see Project 2006), but Visual Boy (still the husband) suggested that I might be a) stifling my creative mojo and b) using up the fun parts of writing early by my "have it all planned out" approach. Having been my primary editor and sounding/bitching board on every other major writing project I feel it would be remiss to ignore his advice. Hence the shorts-ing.

Second: There is no work make-up time available. In previous years, I had a gig where I could (when necessary) work in a couple of pages of stuff during the day if I needed to and even (cover your eyes previous employers) call in "sick" or just take an extra day off for the fun of it to work on the project. Now that I'm a corporate trainer, there is no wiggle room. Me being out sick last week called in any remaining favors that we had in the training department and so other than the already publicly mandated Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no spare days off in November to make up ground.

I'll talk more about the project itself tomorrow, but here are my rules for me this year.

Rule #1: Posting at the end of the day is required. It's a good way to keep me honest and on track. Last time through it was one of the things that helped me process through pretty well, too.

Rule #2: No posting until you're done! The lure of the blog is a strong one, so after today (which I'm working out as a planning day because I hadn't actually decided until this morning to put my money where my mouth is) until I've done my pages, I'm not allowed to wax poetic about the project.

Rule #3: I still have to do my chores, but I can't do them instead of writing. Nothing makes me want to clean the house more than having a writing project. I actually found myself a moment ago saying 'You know, these toilets could really use a good scrubbing. I mean, I should do that before I go get my writing organized. It'll only take a minute.' And anybody can imagine how much I ADORE scrubbing toilets. (This COULD explain why Visual Boy is so keen on me doing a writing project...)

The Plan

The NaNoWriMo goal is to write a 50,000 word novel starting Nov 1 and ending midnight Nov 30. It isn't going to be pretty, and in fact most of you will probably never ever see what comes out of my head because it's going to need mega editing (see difference the First), but a good thing I keep in mind is you can't edit what isn't written down. So, I write it, and then I can edit it later.

29 days (today won't get words)= 1724.14 (rounded up) words per day. Last time I tapped out at 2600 per day realistically (see January '06 processing). I also don't write on Friday and Saturday typically (it just doesn't happen). And, I've got some family obligations this time around I didn't have last year that I will need to work in on those days, too.

So. I'm going to give myself a daily (excluding Fri & Sat) goal of the 2600 words with the exclusions putting me at 21 days, which still leaves me make up words on each day if I hit my goal so that I would end up with 54,600 in a perfect world. It also gives me a couple of days of grace period if(when) they happen. And I can use Friday and Saturday when I have the chance or need to make up pages.

Also New Moon is coming out this month. So there will be girly screaming time required in there somewhere with my (already bought) midnight tickets.

So, that's the start. I'm going to go put together some things so that I can set up my work space and dig in to the writing bits tomorrow after work etc.

The Good, The Bad, and the NaNoWriMo

2006-01-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

So, it’s been a while, but one of the main reasons for doing NaNoWriMo in the first place was to be able to pin down some things that will help me with writing in the future, just like any other writing project. In particular in this case, my writing habits. I think that the hard deadline and the close track I kept of things really helped a lot in figuring out what my habits were and can be in the long run, as well as the journaling along the way. I’d really recommend it for anybody who is trying to figure out how to be more productive, because I recognized some habits that I hadn’t fully realized I had before hand. So, these revelations fall into a number of categories, I bet you can guess what they are:

Good:

o Word count is better than page count. Dialogue, as most experienced writers know, will lie to you. It lets you fake out your pages with big white spaces of nothing. This is why people pay by the word rather than by the page in general. I knew this intellectually, but I hadn’t actually put it into practice before. Most of the time when I’d been setting writing goals, I’d been setting them by page count instead of by words. Words are actually much more consistent and get you through the book faster than pages. Stories are told in words, not in page counts. I think somebody else said that at some point and it just hadn’t sunken in yet.

o My original goal of 3,000 per day was pretty close to the money, but the more realistic tap out is at around 2,600. For 19 actual days of writing, the average ended up being 3,125 words a day, even. That extra 400 or so on a normal day is more of a bitch than one might think. When I got to the end of my daily word count, I was pushing it at 3,000 after I’d been sick. More of them really were closer to 2,300 but I think a little bit of stretch is good. That not withstanding, there were 5 days that I actually broke the 3,000 marker and 2 that I broke the 5,000 marker. So, a word count of 2,600 is probably what I’ll stick with.

o I cannot write slow. If I’m not plowing through something when I’m writing, I get bored. More to the point, really, I need to finish a project fairly quickly after thinking of it. I actually started planning Super Frosh in July. Or, at least, I started talking about it in July. I was really ready to buckle down and start writing with what I’d gotten done earlier than I did, I think, I just let myself put it off until November because I knew I wanted to do NaNoWriMo. In the long run, this was a good thing because it gave me a hard deadline that I had to push for. But, at the same time, I should’ve gone with one of the other ideas that was more fresh for me. By the time I got to the end of the month, I felt like I was saying the same thing over and over again in a large part because I’d been thinking about it for too long. And, it’s entirely possible I was. I still have to go back over it and read it again.

o I do better when I race. Or, at least, have someone that I’m up against in some way. I apparently am more motivated by competition than I am by rewards. I used to set up all kinds of rewards that I could have when I got done writing the pages that I was going to write. When you don’t have a lot of money to do rewards with, this gets tricky. I’ve heard of some great ones, but in the end, they just weren’t quite enough to get my butt in the chair. Competition, on the other hand, was. When Diana was a few thousand words ahead of me, you better believe my bum was in front of the computer and I got going. And when it was getting towards the end of the month and I had to push through to be able to make it with the other Nanus, I was there. So, challenge and competition are the way to go. Colleen’s said she’ll be my challenge buddy here over the next couple months, so now I’ve got that covered!

o I like my wall and sticky note outline system. I need to not do it in the living room. While some people thought it was a great conversation starter, my husband got tired of looking at it and picking the pages up off the floor in the hall as they fell down when the tape got un-sticky. So, I need to find a space in the office to put it up if I’m going to leave it. Though, once I’ve gotten the first round done, I think it should get turned into an outline rather than staying in its totally amorphous state. If I need to, I can always pull it out again and stick it up on the wall out of a notebook.

o I need to have really really developed characters. Not just a filled out form on a page. I think my next attempt for this is going to be writing up applications for them. In online gaming, and some other gaming though not as often, frequently you’re required to turn in a written background for your character along with any reasons that you have special circumstances that should be allowed above the normal beginning character guidelines. When I do this kind of thing for my gaming characters, I tend to know them backwards and forwards. This, of course, is much harder than stopping at filling out the forms. Typically my character applications are a good 12 pages in and of themselves. But, when I log on to play, I get to just go with the flow. When something happens, I know how my character would react. I’ve explained it for 12 pages already before I ever show up. And more than that, it generally has given me the voice of that character, because I try to write it up in some kind of creative way. I’ve done diary entries, epistolary email applications, tv interview shows with a bitchy reporter who is trying to make a name for herself using my character as a ladder. The next one I’m doing is in the form of an article the character’s writing in an academic style presentation to be turned in to some religious officials of her cultural group. The key with those is that I figure out how the character would say what I need to get across. Some of them aren’t going to say it to anybody out loud, so it’s a diary. Others are –only- going to say it out loud if they’re pressed, so an interview. It kind of gives me an angle on where they’re coming from in the beginning. Surprisingly, I’ve never done this for any of my book characters. Which is probably why they’re flat to me. So, my husband said I was silly and should try it. And, not unusually, I think he’s right.

o Sundays are really good days for me to write. Fridays and Saturdays not so much, as seen in a later explanation. But, the other days all came out about average. I missed one of each of the other days besides those two in the process of the month. But, in the end, I got where I needed to go, so I think it was all okay in the long run.

o Having the word counts up on the wall in front of me when I’m writing is also good. I had a monthly calendar on the wall where I wrote in how many words I’d written for the day, so on a tough one when I’d sit down and want to give myself a break, I could look up and see that I’d already had a couple earlier in the week, and needed to get over it and move on. Time was a wasting. So I’m going to keep doing that.

o I have a wonderful husband, especially when it comes to writing. I never once heard, ‘I haven’t seen you all month.’ Or, ‘Why do you have to go do that again tonight.’ In fact, in most of the advice I heard about either generic ‘book in a month’ or NaNoWriMo specifically, I always read things like, ‘Tell your husband you’re going to be ordering pizza when you need to.’ or ‘Get lots of casseroles for the month for him and the kids.’ I don’t have the kids thing to contend with thankfully, but on the husband side, I never had to worry about it. In fact, he cooked dinner every night, which he normally does, but it ended up that when I was done getting my writing done, there was either dinner coming off the stove or sitting in the microwave for me when I wanted it. And he didn’t mind when I came to bed at 1am and was grumpy in the morning. He’s used to the grumpy in the morning, but it would’ve been pretty easy to say something like, ‘Well, if you started writing earlier…’ or one of those non educated things that people who don’t write tend to say. In fact, he was very encouraging and always reminded me that we needed to get home from somewhere so I could get my writing done or told his mother that we couldn’t go do xy and z because I needed to work on my book. I’m really really lucky.

Bad:

o I wrote not a single word on any Friday or Saturday during the entire month of November. Not a one. This was after deciding that I was going to go ahead and plug on through and write Every Single Day. I actually think in the long run this doesn’t end up being too terrible a thing. What generally ended up happening is that we had people over at our house those days, even when we weren’t originally planning to. So, when I’m doing my writing schedule, I just need to remember that those days aren’t going to happen. Live with it, and move on. The up side there being, it isn’t as though my hands are removed on the weekends, so if I absolutely had to, I could lock myself in the study and ignore everyone else having a good time in the other room. I’m just not likely to do it, so there’s no point in counting on it.

o When I’m sick, I don’t write. The week that I got knocked out of work with the flu, I didn’t write for four of my seven days. Upside here, I don’t generally get sick very often. At least not really sick. And, I did write for those three even though I was out from work. Might not have gotten in stellar word counts, but I showed up at the keyboard. Bottom line, I need to plan in a little slack instead of running myself up to the wall. Which, in the end, I didn’t really do anyway.

o I cannot pants. I suck at writing without an outline. I must have something that gets me from the beginning to the end with steps in the middle. I might move them around, I might not stick with every little detail, but I have to be able to sit down and look at the mess and say, ‘This I have done, this I have not done, and this is what I need to do next.’ I don’t think I have to be as completely specific as I have in the past, but there were some benefits to it. I was much less stressed out and I got started faster. Which when you’re trying to knock out 10 pages a day of writing this is not insignificant.

The NaNoWriMo:

o Thanksgiving weekend is not a weekend to use to catch up on writing. NaNoWriMo is November, so there will always be a Thanksgiving in it. Nothing to be done about that. And so, the temptation will be there for me to say, ‘I have the weekend off, four whole days I can spend on writing!’ This is a lie. I have a mother, a mother-in-law, a husband, and a reluctant brother who will all always be either impressed into service for or planning on having a holiday. This year, we had it at my house, which means the Big Clean. The literal Motherload of all cleaning that results in scrubbing the baseboards and wiping down all the cabinets, wishing you had time to rent a steam cleaner and getting out the bleach for the grout between the tiles in the bathroom. This is, in particular, an issue during NaNoWriMo. The month in which my already abysmal cleaning habits have been thrown to the wind in the interests of getting things on paper. While I could have said that we should do it at someone else’s house, this really wouldn’t get me out of much because then I have to cook something and get myself there on time after everything else. So, either way, Thursday is out. Friday is generally out because the friends that I never get to see actually have the day off of work. So it’s not going to happen. The whole weekend isn’t a wash, I can generally get back to it by Sunday. I just need to wipe out those three days for page count. Which as we’ll see below, is really only losing one more day.

o Have everything ready before hand. Again, this was discussed a little more in general, but the times where I floundered in particular were troublesome because I didn’t know where I was going. The no-outline system and I are not a mix. So, October has to be prewriting month. And it has to be done by the beginning of November.

o Save one file with all the pages in it as one document for the word counting. Don’t mess around with this business of saving chapters and adding it up. When you do this, there’s a panicky moment at 10pm on November 30 th when you need to upload your document and you can’t find some 3,000 words. Because the file’s been saved in some weird place on your hard drive, and you can’t figure out where it is. Have your backup file be one big long document. Save it on a disk. If it gets to big for one disk, two would be okay, but more than that is pushing it.

o It was a really good idea. I did have to push myself a little more than I normally would have to get finished in time, and I think that’s good. The expert panels on the NaNo boards were wonderful. They were a huge help with figuring out some specifics on genetics that I could have researched myself, but it would have taken me weeks to get the information that they were able to give me in a couple of days worth of waiting while I worked on other things. I’m definitely in for next year.

Just Rewards

2005-12-05T08:46:00.000-08:00

So, since I finished Nanunanu, my reward was that I got to play this weekend. I actually intended to write on Sunday, but my husband needed help with some things so I did that instead.

Friday, my rewards were going out to lunch (which I had a buy one lunch get the other free offer for), going to get coffee with a friend of mine (who ended up buying the coffee, thanks!), and then (not so much a reward) babysitting two four-year-olds who ran around like they were cracked out all evening. But, I got paid for that along with pizza for dinner.

Then, Saturday, we did a family ornament making day. It turned out that my mom and I had to go to the store for a chunk of the morning, so we didn't get started until later in the day. And the boys weren't really interested in ornament making, though they did converse. So, my mom and I made these type of faeries. We didn't have kits, though, my mother-in-law bought the book that has the instructions on making them in it and had gotten most of the bits at the after holiday sales last year. I really like mine, she is very cute. I need to name her though. She's got a sparkly skirt and a little green beaded jacket and blonde hair. I also made these card ornaments with my brother's girlfriend. If you end up making any let me know because I have some tips, but they look really neat and they're pretty easy. I'm going to add glitter to mine sometime soon.

Sunday we worked on characters for a new game that we're going to play on together and went to visit a friend of mine and hang out. I also made more ornaments. I think they're going to be the office gifts this year since poverty is a factor. ;)

I'm hoping to get back to writing tonight so I can have a good first draft before the holidays get into big swing.

Quick Update

2005-12-01T07:46:00.000-08:00

There'll be a bigger update later but, since I might not get to it for a while...

Quicky Post

2005-11-30T14:58:00.000-08:00

Work is crazy due to pencil week(s), and so, I have little time to post. But, here are (look at what happens to you when you're surrounded by English people) the raw data:

I am at 46,957 words.
Tonight is the last night to write.
This means I have 3,043 words to go.

Ta da!

Post Turkey Lethargy

2005-11-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

So, we're in the home stretch. Three more days to go.

Over the holidays, I didn't get as much done as I would've liked, but I'm still pretty sure I'll make it. We're at 39,458 which means I have 10,542 to go over three days. This further translates to 3,514 words a day. It's a push, but I think I'll make it.

We have reached the skipping around point. I'm jumping around to write the scenes that I know I want to have and leaving out the bridging scenes. Plot wise, however, at this point I think I'm over half way through really. So, honestly, if I do the rest of the high points over the next three days, I might be to the point that I need to sit down and work out what I need to go in between them and cut it down. I think my 90,000 word estimate is too long for the story I want to tell. I can also tell that it needs more super powers scenes. It's important to the story, but it hasn't shown up as much as I want it to.

But, in honor of being in the last week of Nanunanu I give you:

Superhero or cleaner?

I scored 15 out of 20.

Pre Holidays

2005-11-22T12:35:00.000-08:00

Well, for a brief update, I didn't end up bouncing around. Or, at least, I haven't yet. I'm not sure that I shouldn't, but I keep coming up with what I think should happen next, so I keep on going. I need to do something to get into the story again, though, because the characters are starting to get boring. Again with the shelf life.

I'm now at 29,291. Just shy of the big 30K. With almost exactly a week left to go. On a regular week, the individual word count would be doable. Just under 3,000 words per day. Which is good.

The down side is, after I decided to jump on the NaNo train, the family (in this case consisting of around 8 eaters) decided that for Thanksgiving my house is going to serve as the point of consumption. Squeek!!!

First, we have to figure out where everyone is going to sit. This will involve the importation of a second table as well as many chairs from my mother's house. Normally, we'd eat at her house because she has a table that seats 12. However, she's getting new cabinets tomorrow, we all hope, and so her house will smell like paint. Not to mention the fact that she's in the middle of doing the family taxes, and I am not going to be the one to suggest that she clean up all the paperwork she's got spread out over the 12-person table for us to eat on it.

So, now, rather than having an extended weekend where I can just go somewhere and eat after cooking a little bit and then coming home and writing, the hordes are descending on my house which hasn't been cleaned all month because I've been doing Nanunanu. (Not that this is necessarily very different than normal in all truth.)

Will I be able to get my writing time in and clean the house and organize a three course mean for 8? Will my book get finished on time? Will my sanity survive? Tune in over the holidays to see what happens!

Half Way There

2005-11-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, last night we broke past the 25,000 mile marker. I ended up at 26,540 after going in and working on one of the scenes I'd skipped the day before.

I think we've reached the hopscotch stage of our writing process. Normally, I don't write things in order. I have a really detailed outline and I end up jumping around and writing scenes to suit whatever mood I'm in that day. With this book, since I don't have the detailed outline, I'd kind of been sticking to linear progression as I got to different scenes.

Due to the CLUNK phase I'm at, I think I might skip on to where some of the action happens and come back in and fill in with the information I need to get across when I get to the end. We'll see how writing goes this weekend and if I end up needing to bump over a couple weeks to be more interested again.

A Watery Grave

2005-11-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

The title sounds a little more dramatic than necessary, but I wanted to use it so there it is. I got my pages in last night, though only the 2,100 mark rather than the higher final goal mark. I actually had more done than I remembered, so when I got done and was only 800 away from hitting 25,000 total, I tried to figure out if I had it in me to push thorough to get there. But, I couldn't. I was tapped out.

I'm still kind of waffly on what I'm doing next in the plot. I'm at the draggy spot. The spot for me where I'm (book length wise) 1/4 of the way there, and things are just supposed to be picking up for the characters as they are on that part of the roller coaster where you here the CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK noise, and you know you're getting up to the summit where you really start rolling through the big hills and get to the loopy thing at the end and then go backwards. But you're at the CLUNK, so it's a little slow, and the anticipation is building, and you feel like you're being pulled backward down the hill.

Now, as a reader and a roller coaster rider, that's a fun part. You know there's something coming, you can feel the gravity trying to work against you and you know that you're going to beat it and zip around in just a minute. But as a writer, I always feel stalled. It's prelim, setup, and mechanics. We've loaded the passengers into the cars, they've strapped in, they're committed now to going on the ride whether they start to scream profanity at the end and wish they hadn't or not. But, important as it is, it's also just a little boring to write.

"As they ascended the hill, it gave them just enough time to think about their grocery list and all the bills that were waiting for them at home... all those things that were why they shouldn't be on this roller coaster. All the things waiting for them at the end. The chain underneath kept turning. Turning. Pulling them towards the top."

Or something.

I think I need to move some scenes up, and I think I know which scenes they are. So that'll help a little. Toss in some villainy or something.

Son of Cold

2005-11-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

Return of Cold wasn't going to be a strong enough title, so I went for the next level. What I thought was getting better instead got much much worse, resulting in a croaky Elly who sounded very much like a frog and spent four days lying on the couch alternately watching GTA San Andreas being played, Miami Vice on DVD, and Buffy on DVD. As well as some interspersed episodes of So Graham Norton on video.

Unfortunately, most laugh out loud comedies were out because when I started to laugh, it resulted in a paralyzing coughing fit that then lasted the next few minutes. I hate being sick. So, Monday after being sick for five days, I caved and called the doctor and had her call in antibiotics, which I also hate. Lesser of two evils.

So, now I'm back at work and drugged. And severely behind on my word count.

I did my work on Thursday, though I don't remember what the word count was. Sunday I again did some work, though I only hit 1500ish, not even the shorter goal. Which brings us to 20,500 or there abouts.

Yesterday was the half way point, meaning that I should've been at 25,000. Obviously, not so much. I am not, however, far enough behind that I've lost hope. Just far enough behind to be annoyed.

On the other hand, at 20K, I'm only at the end of chapter 4. With a 20 chapter projection, at the apparent average of 5K a chapter, that'd put us up at around 100K for final product. Now, before Diana cries, that's first draft length. I think there's some stuff in there that in the long run I'll decide to whack out. Plus, the scenes are rambling, I think. Or at least I feel like they're rambling a little. But I want to get the whole thing done and then mess around with pacing afterwards. I might be leading a little too much, I can't tell. Some of the stuff might be there because I need to know what happens and the reader really doesn't but since I didn't outline, it's getting written anyway. We'll see in the end.

I did write the big first arc climax scene(s) on Thursday though, so that was kind of nice. They need a ton of work, but that's fine by me. They'll get it when it's their turn.

So. For further projections:

If I want to finish up the whole shooting match by the end of the month I now need to step it up to almost 5000 words a day. 4964 to be exact. Not that it couldn't happen, but I don't think it's likely to in all honesty.

For my NaNoWriMo goal, I need to do 2107 a day. That I think is doable.

Things I've learned about myself so far, though, include that I don't write well on weekends. There's too much going on at my house for me to be able to get much done. We have people over a lot, so there are generally guests, and I tend to feel rude if I'm writing off in a corner in the office when the husband is entertaining. It's a southern thing, I think. Not that I haven't done it, there've been a couple nights during the week when we've had people over that I've just gone in for an hour and done my words for the night and then come out. But, I don't think I get the high return there, I cruise through what I need to and quit. So, in the future, I should probably not plan on getting in writing on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is okay because we tend to have a chunk of the day at home alone before people come over.

So far, apart from the day of waffle about where I was going next in my bridging scenes, the looser outline has worked fine. So I might be able to back off a little on my prewriting anxiety and go with the flow a little more as long as I know where I'm flowing to next. Though, I do have a big thing coming up that I have no idea how I'm going to do. It could be fun to figure out, I might freak out. We'll see in the next day or so.

I don't write much when I'm sick. This is where the not planning writing on weekends will save my bacon in the long run, I think. If something comes up during the week where it's just not happening, I have the option of making up the words on the weekend. Though, there's a chance that that's just enough rope to hang myself with.

I'm apparently very motivated by numbers and competition. So, I should try and find someone else who's going to be a quick burn writer so that we can pit ourselves against each other in a battle to the finish line. I haven't found one yet. Of the 6 other people that I started NaNoWriMo with, all but two have at this point dropped out (I think). The numbers thing has helped, though. There have been several days that I think if I wasn't pushing for NaNoWriMo I would've gotten nothing done.

Tonight, I'm going to try and get in a chunk. That may depend on how badly the heater blew things all over the house today, however, as my husband had to come and stay up at my office and let the house air out. A great deal of vacuuming might be in my future.

Transformations

2005-11-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

So, the cold almost bested me again last night, but didn't. I ended up clocking in 1,780. I did two of the most important scenes in the book, and I don't think I'm going to end up being really happy with them in the long run because (as evidenced by word count) they're really short. But, that's okay. I can go in and edit them up later.

I started to do a different scene before them and realized that I needed to figure out which play Tilly was going to be in in the book. Go to bookshelves... nothing there but Ren Drama. Well. One Tennessee Williams play and a short three person play by someone I don't remember in a general lit anthology. Nope.

So, I decided that I'd do some searching this morning when I got to work to figure that out. It was going to be hard to do the audition scene and not know what she was auditioning for. Much less what she was in during the rest of the book. I figured it'd take me a while to come up with because I wanted something that was going to relate to the themes of the book. Something with a smaller cast, not Shakespeare, and kind of subtle.

The next step was to try and think of how to search for that on Google. Which lead me to thinking of synonyms for my themes. Transformation... metamorphosis... And then I had it. No searching required. Zimmerman's Metamorphoses. It is absolutely perfect. I mean, perfect perfect. You'd think I'd thought of the play and then thought of the story perfect. I'm tickled.

Stupid Cold

2005-11-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

It bested me last night. The cold. I had an ouchy throat, and a cough, and was sleepy. So, instead of doing what a good girl should have, I went and got my blankie off the bed and watched my husband roll pimps on GTA San Andreas. And fell asleep through most of it. Though, I did pretty well at the dance competition when he handed me the controller in a fit of frustration.

The good news, though, is that I'm having writing withdrawl today. Hopefully that means that I'm getting into the characters and the plot, not that I'm feaverish. But, have cough drops will travel. We've got a friend coming over tonight to help finally close the pool, I want to try and catch Sky High before it leaves the dollar movie, and then for to write. Or, if the pool closing goes quickly, between the closing the pool and going to the movie for to write.

Today also marks the 1/3 point for Nanunanu. Towards my 50K goal, I'm at 37%. So that's good. Towards my 90K goal, 21%. Not too bad, but not great either. Hopefully I'll be able to do some chugging this weekend.

Week Two

2005-11-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

I think what they say about week two is right. It's hard to get myself down in front of the computer to come up with what I need to. It's also hard because I'm coming down with a cold that's made my throat all scratchy and sore and given me coughing fits. So mostly what I want to do is curl up with a book and a blankie.

But, yesterday I did at least get my minimum page count in at 1,915. I also realized a flaw in the timing I was using for some major events so I've bumped things around. I think it'll work, though. So that's good. I'm going to at least get my minimum pages in tonight and then see how I'm feeling.

The pool still isn't closed. That'll be a trick. :P

Bridging

2005-11-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

I did look over my wall and end up figuring out what I needed to put in between the scene I was working on last and the next thing I have up on the board. I think I have another spot to fill before I'm ready for the audition scene coming up next. Probably something else with the drama story arc or something. I am planning on keeping with the loose outline rather than going for something more definite, though, I think it's good for my brain.

I got 3,270 words down last night. So, that got me to 16,900 which is 1/3 of the way done with the NaNoWriMo goal. Tonight I'll break 17,000. Wheee!

Mega Catch-Up Post

2005-11-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

Since I've got so much to catch up on with my dailies, I will break them down here.

Thursday:

I logged my requisite word count on Thursday, which should have gone in a Friday post but I didn't have time before I had to leave work. I clocked 3,125 words, bringing my total up to 8,526 at that point.

I did the post-it note workshop (which I'll elaborate on if people want) with heavy modification, and ended up with my outline on the wall in a space of about six feet by four feet. It's neat. I can go stand in front of it and see everything at once. In the last two outlines I've done, I went in and mapped out each scene in each chapter. So, I had a long synopsis before I ever sat down to write the book. As previously documented, the first one wasn't very good and the second never got finished owing to plot problems.

So, after lamenting my unfinished outline for a few days but still getting writing done, I realized that maybe my wall outline was good enough. I have the major points in order, I've tied up all my plots on there so I don't have loose ends hanging out there, and I've handled character development and continuity with the way it's put together. So, if I'm adlibbing the scenes between those, maybe that's okay and it'll keep it more fresh as I'm writing. I decided to leave it that way for a bit and see how it goes. I can always fill in more details if I need to, but maybe I won't get as burnt out on it before I finish.

Friday:

The day of pool closing. Since it's unseasonably warm here (it was in the 80s on Friday) we were going to take advantage of that fact and close the pool without freezing our fingers and toes off. We got started, but my brother was already conscripted on another project and it's just not a job you can do with two people. So, I spent all afternoon working on that and then needed to take him to pick up his girlfriend. Whose birthday was Friday, and so then there was the dinner eating and talking. And I was POOPED. However, I'd kind of anticipated not getting my writing done on Friday and Saturday and working on it on Sunday in a big chunk.

Saturday:

The day of the family birthday. And more pool closing. The brother's girlfriend (BGF) had said that for her birthday she really wanted to do something all together with my family, which my family liked the idea of since we don't get to do stuff together very often. So, we planned a surprise sushi making class at my mom's since a friend of mine used to be a sushi chef and knows all the tricks. Saturday afternoon was supposed to be the day of going to the store and doing the pre-cooking things like cutting veggies and then the rolling would commence at dinner time.

Except the pool closing wasn't done. So, I got up at 7:30am to start working on the pool, and did that until it was time to go to the store at noon. Then with the cooking and cleaning from the cooking and eating the cooking, I didn't get home until after 11pm. No writing getting done.

Sunday:

Still no brother to help with pool. More pool closing work to do. So, we worked more on closing the pool and getting what we could done from about 10am until 4pm. This made for a very sore me, since that's three days in a row of bending over and fishing through water that's cold even though the weather on the top of the water was warm. Nobody to help cover pool, no pool covering happened.

But, I did sit down to start writing at 4ish. To find that my computer will only operate in safe mode. So, I ran through bunches of stuff like disk cleanup and defrag (after backing up my WIP) which meant that the writing part didn't actually start until 6:30pm. So much for the afternoon of writing. So, my 9,000 word goal didn't get reached. But, I did knock out 5,104 of them, bringing my total to 13,630. That caught me up on the minimum goal per day that will get me to the end of the NaNoWriMo event, but not for my longer goal.

I'm less confident with my loose outline plan now, though. I'm at a spot where if I continue to write chronologically, I'm not sure how I want to get from where I am to my next spot. I might just shift some things around instead, I haven't decided yet. Maybe it's just a good time to poke at the outline in the next section and see what it's going to do.

We'll see where we end up tonight.

Magic Numbers

2005-11-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

Well, last night I made myself sit down and do my full page count even though I still haven't gotten my outline to where I'd like it to be. But, there are several places that I know what has to happen so I figured I'd just jump in and write those until I do. I probably have enough to get me through the weekend.

I ended up doing my 3000 words and bumping over on to a 12th page, but of course I left my notebook at home. I know it was 34-- so, I figured for the moment I'd just make my total 5432 for symmetry. It'll all come out in the wash at the end.

The Journey Begins

2005-11-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

Alright, we've made it through day one. I actually did get some pages in, even though I still haven't completely finished my outline.

I have a good rough outline in place, and I'm going to work more on it tonight to try and fill it in and polish it up. But, I got enough of it done last night that I could go ahead and start. The beginning isn't going to change, I knew where I had to start the story, so I went ahead and got a jump on it.

I also figured out my page/word count breakdowns for the month. My actual goal is a 90,000 word novel because I just think that 50,000 isn't going to give me enough length to tell the story with the subplots that I have going. I'd really like to get all 90,000 done this month, so we'll see if that's possible.

To just meet the Nanunanu challenge, I'll need to do around 1,667 words per day, which for me translates into around 6 pages. That's probably not going to be a problem for me because I tend to write pretty quickly on a first draft. So that's my base goal that I'm going to push to meet every day no matter what.

For my 90,000 word novel goal, it'll need to be 3,000 words per day with no weekends off, yielding around 11 pages every day. I think I can manage that if I push. Ten pages a day during the week was my standard goal when I was working on my last novel, but I tended not to work on weekends. If I do weekends, I should be able to make it. And since the whole point is to push yourself, I'm going to try and do that.

Last night, I didn't actually get to start writing until after 11pm. But! I got my pages in. I ended up at 1989 words and 7 pages for the first scene even though I got started late. Diana still beat me. :P But that's okay, I'll catch up!

The Big Day

2005-11-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

It's arrived. The first day of NaNoWriMo (or, as Jana's calling it Nanunanu, which is I think going to stick for me).

I'm still outlining, I didn't manage to finish that up yesterday. I did get started, though, which is something.

I did some fun stuff today, though, at work that's going to help me out. I made pictures of my characters using the Hero Machine 2.0 which is quite the little gizmo. I came up with illustrations for Tilly, Em, and Pete. Unfortunately there wasn't an evil scientist option for a costume, so I had to leave off our villain. That's okay, though, I don't know that it matters all that much.

I also made myself a little superhero icon to get myself through the long days at work and remind me what I'm supposed to do at home. She's got a little dragon sidekick and everything. It's quite cool.

So, tonight more of the same. Except now with writing! I'm going to try and get through at least a couple pages worth to start my little word count ticker a buzzing.

Pre-Writing Jitters!

2005-10-31T14:47:00.000-08:00

Note to self: Planning on working on just about anything after working at the booksale all day is a DUMB idea. Dumb dumb dumb. The brain, she is dead. Plus, while the getting books and being around books is indeed inspiring, it's inspiring only so far as to encourage the pursuit of writing in a general sense rather than a specific get your butt in gear sense.

So, tonight I must do the outline as the tricking costumed folk come by. After I go to the book sale AGAIN. Once I figure out how to get to the booksale. Since Visual Boy (that's the husband) is working there again this afternoon and needs me to rescue him from their clutches.

I've printed out a slew of campus maps from different sized universities, so I think I'm in pretty good shape to cobble one together. Same with the dorm rooms, I've gotten a bunch of floor plans for them which is good. It seems like there's a standard style of the layouts between three options, which is also good. It'll mean that the descriptions will be kind of universal on the way the room is put together.

I also need to come up with a little bit of area history to help with naming the buildings, though some of that I can just do on the fly I think. As long as I keep it consistant.

But, tomorrow's the big day! The sitting down and starting day! Hopefully I'll get the rest of this stuff done in time. :p

The Lessons of the Flu

2005-10-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are again, like in olden days. Happy golden days of yore. Or something.

Our cautionary tale today regards what happens to your writing schedule when you get the flu.

I ended up getting behind this weekend because the people that I was supposed to be workshopping with weren't at the point that I was on their projects. So, instead of getting to the outlining point that I needed to be at, we ended up just being at the brainstorming point for getting things going for them. What lesson did I learn from this adventure... I should have broken off and done my own thing. Since we'd decided in advance what we were supposed to be at the point of doing, and I was the only one there, I obviously wasn't going to be able to get the help from them that I wanted. Or, at least, I should've known that that was a definite possibility. I was glad to help them out, and that's part of the fun of workshopping, but in the end I didn't feel like I really got very far.

It wasn't a total loss, what we ended up doing was another Holly Lisle workshop on outlining which approached it from a different angle than my earlier synopsis workshop and helped add in a couple of things. The idea of 'candy bar' scenes was really great for the novel I'm working on.

Then, I caught the flu. This was bad enough that it meant I stayed home from work on Monday all day, only came in for a partial day on Tuesday, and then was home all day on Wednesday as well. I'm doing much better now. Just in time for the public library booksale that I'm a volunteer at all weekend long. The good news is that being surrounded by books generally means that I get inspired, so hopefully since the sale doesn't run too late (in fact it's probably more like I'm at work for a half day really) I'll still be able to get plenty done this weekend. But, I'm way behind.

Lesson learned from this, it's good to plan in that wiggle room so that when you get sick, you aren't behind. Now, I'm behind. I'm not so far behind that I think it's going to eat my lunch, but I'm enough behind that it's starting to worry me. I've got some pretty basic stuff left to figure out yet, and hopefully they'll fly by, but if they don't...

One of the things I need is a name for my book! So, here's my mini pitch:

Tilly is a freshman off to the big city to start at the U with her cousin. Everything seems to be going great until she wrecks her car over fall break, ends up in the hospital, and wakes up with super powers! It was bad enough when all she had to figure out was how to make it from one side of campus to the other, get a date with the cute guy from Bio lab, and nail her audition for her first college production, but now she's got to figure out how not to flood her dorm room when she has a nightmare on top of it!

The ones I've got so far are:

A Boy, a Girl, and Her Superpowers
Your Average Super Hero Freshman

This is, of course, just a working title. But, I'm horrible with working titles. So, thoughts?

TGIF!

2005-10-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

We made it to the end of the week, my little novel and I. Last night was a tough one. We went over to my mother-in-law's for dinner and with full tummies they went to look at stuff on the interweb and I sat down with my notebook to put some stuff into it with a trusty holepuncher.

The good part of this was, I had done research at work during the day for some things I needed to puzzle out, and had gotten some good stuff that I wanted to file in my trusty notebook. And, since they have an 'Experts' board over on NaNoWriMo I found two people to answer my genetics questions that have been worrying in the back of my mind about putting together my book. So, I got to ask people who have a chance of knowing the answers some questions that I'll hopefully get answers to in the next few days.

Bad side, I got to turn on the idiot box and watch HGTV, which is like my reality show addiction. "I just want to see how this room comes out!" It's horrible. It's also a good thing I don't have it at home to distract me. What that meant was, when they got done working on stuff on the computer and asked if I wanted to watch more Battlestar Galactica, I had to be the party pooper and say that I needed to go home and get some work done.

However, my wonderful husband supported me and got right up and said that I was right and we should go. So I collected my writing implements and we said our goodbyes and headed home. To where I then had to set up again and get ready to get down to it. Starting was tricky. I was already pretty tired, and my tummy was still full, and I just wanted to go lay down on the couch and watch tv.

But, I didn't.

Instead not only did I get through my Carmichael Plotting/Synopsis Workshop and end up with a basic outline, but I also did the family tree for my characters that I'm going to need for later. I'll want to enter in some information into my mom's geneology program from what I've figured out so far, but I don't have to do that right away.

So for the weekend, my plan is to have a more expansive outine session on Sunday with the post-it notes workshop thing, and work on my conflicts a little more to flesh them out.

Moving Right Along

2005-10-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last night was more of the same. I finished up the character profiles on the girls and the villain, so hopefully tonight I'll be able to get into my plotting templates.

Ideas for stuff come up at the weirdest places though. I did this quiz about telling the difference between a serial killer and a computer programmer based on their pictures (of which I got a 7 out of 10) this morning. Then when I went back to empty my bulk email, I found a message about sending away for 'A bunch of Halloween goodies'. So... this got me to thinking. What if there was a serial killer who went trolling for people by sending out spam emails about free giveaways, got their addresses and profiles, and then went to their houses on Halloween... *shudder* So, there you go. Halloween creepies for everyone to share!

Characteristically

2005-10-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned that I was going to try and work on my five point outline and characterization if I needed it. Well, I needed it. I realized as I was working through the really cool workshop by Kathy Carmichael (which I'll talk about more when I finish it), I didn't know enough about why my characters were doing what they were doing.

What's Tilly's major? What's the boyfriend doing in the sciences? What kinds of reactions is Tilly's cousin going to have to things?

Ergo, I started off on the outline workshop crib sheets and went directly to the much longer characterization worksheets instead. I started off with the boyfriend because for some reason he seemed easier than either of the cousins or the professor. Which he was for the most part. I got through the lion's share of his questions and since that took me an hour, I decided to take a shower before moving on to the next one.

Pondering things in the shower, my mind ended up turning to my villain, which was good because I hadn't really figured his angle out yet. That meant that when I was done with the shower, getting through his questions took about half the time it had taken before. I also came up with Tilly's major, which I think is going to make things interesting and helps out a lot to figure out where she's coming from.

Now I have most of Tilly's stuff left and her cousin's stuff all together that I'll work on tonight. The boy (who's also trying to do NaNoWriMo) and I have set Sunday aside as a group prewriting day, so I want to have some major scene points figured out by then so that I can do the post-it outline system to fill in things that Nancy Cochran came up with (or at least that's where I heard it from). That'll leave me the week before Halloween weekend for research.

T Minus 13 Days

2005-10-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

So, we're at the 13 day mark. I'm not going to say I'm positive that I can get through all the prewriting I want to so I can sit right down on the first and kick on my novel writing playlist, but I'm certainly getting closer. And I don't feel like I'm not going to make it. Maybe I won't have absolutely everything done, but maybe I plan too much.

So.

Last night I worked through Holly Lilse's Pre-Writing Questions. If you haven't gotten to look at any of her workshops, you might check them out. Not all of her stuff works for me, but a lot of it is designed for fantasy writing, which isn't what I'm doing right now.

I'm also not as visual a thinker as she is, and I don't cluster well. So I did the same questions in an outline format instead. They worked out pretty well, and gave me some insight into things that are going to be helpful I think. I need to go through and do some of the questions for one more character, though, I realized this morning. I left off Tilly's cousin who's going to be her partner in crime through the whole novel. So she'll be good to flesh out a lot more.

I also named everybody. Well, the characters I know about so far. And while the names may not stick, they'll be helpful for when I'm plotting and stuff. It's much easier to write "Peter" rather than "The Biology lab tech Tilly gets a crush on that works with the evil professor" over and over again.

I think tonight I'm going to either work on a five point outline, or characterization. I also might end up bouncing back and forth since I think I've got a handle on a lot of my character elements, but I don't have the details nailed down. So as I'm plotting I might need bits. But, I might get into it and not.

The Best Laid Plans

2005-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, so since someone is quite interested in seeing a post about this weekend, I'd best get it written up.

This weekend my plan was to work on my more detailed outline and get started on character information. So, I dutifully went home on Friday afternoon and pulled out my Prewriting Notebook with all my Prewriting Articles and Forms (With tabs organizing them no less. And information indexes. There's a theory here that I'll get to sometime, but it isn't particularly exciting and I have other things to say today.)

Inside my file was a great article by Jennifer Crusie about doing a prewriting collage. I'd copied it out of the magazine I have it in so that when I was doing my next prewriting project I wouldn't have to find it, it'd be right there in my prewriting folder.

"Wow!" I thought, "This is perfect! I'm doing this highly visual superhero thing with my next project, what else could be better for prewriting than doing a collage?!?"

So, I reread my article, found my cheap board book that I had kept in reserve for my next collage project, and pulled out my boxes of collage magazines. I got all set up on the floor, spreading the boxes out and getting my trusty scissors as well as a plastic envelope to keep all my clippings in until I had enough to start arranging them and gluing them down.

Nothing.

I found a handful of images in the copious magazines that I had on hand. And that's including a pile of comic book catalogues that I had left over from my days as a comic schiller.

"That's okay," I thought, "I'll just go to the library and look at some different magazines since these seem to be for a different demographic than the one my novel seems to be working in. Then I can pick out some to buy at the store if I need to."

Nada.

I looked at entertainment magazines, fashion magazines, stuff with bright colors. None of it jumped out at me as something that would go with my book.

So, apparently, the collage for this book is not meant to be. Which is too bad, because I think it'd be really helpful. But, that's just the way it goes sometimes I guess. Instead, I think I'll try doing a blocking technique after I've gotten my outline drawn up that I read about in a couple books on writing for comics, giving a snapshot of the scenes kind of like the boards for a movie before it starts shooting.

What I did get done, however:

I started naming my characters: Our heroine is named Tilly which is short for Matilda, a good German name that she received in honor of her paternal grandmother. The woman she adores, the name she hates. I came up with a couple other names for some of the cast that I have written down at home as well, but don't have character significance at this moment.

I got a cool idea for a completely different book series when I went to see my best friend at her reading table at the psychic fair. Which I did not allow to derail me from my current project and instead just wrote down on a notecard for my ideas folder.

I went to see Serenity again, which is fast becoming my favorite movie even though I'm grumpy about people having bad things happen that can't be fixed later. If you've seen it, you can probably guess who.

Tonight: Helping with the Romance section of the Library Book Sale setup, and then going home and trying to get more of my plot questions answered while my husband cooks dinner.

In the Beginning...

2005-10-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

So far my need to write something down to have something to write about has been a success. Of course, we're only on the first day.

Last night I came up with the basic plot outline for my book. It's not all filled in yet, but it's got a beginning and a middle and an end. And even some character points. The characters all still need names, though. I'll have to work on that.

This weekend the plan is to do the five point outline, and then start on the character stuff. We'll see how this goes.

I'll hopefully have something to report on Monday.

What's the Big Idea?

2005-10-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well, it's this. I've decided this month to participate in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. Or, in my house, Book in a Month because it's shorter and for some reason easier for me to say. I think it's the Ns. Anyway. I've decided to help chronicle my process on a blog, so when I look back later on and say, 'Oh, that was so easy!' I'll remember the days of agony. Or, if it turns out to be a breeze, help keep myself from getting excuses and not doing it again!

But, you may notice, that NaNoWriMo doesn't actually start until November. Which is not October. I worked that out myself. Well, I decided that October would be prewriting month. Because unlike some of my illustrious (and already published) colleagues, I can't pants. If I don't have an outline, I sit in front of the blank computer screen like a drooling idiot for a long while and/or mess around with my playlist on my RealPlayer and don't actually get anything accomplished before the dinner bell rings. (I don't actually have a bell for dinner. But, we did when I was growing up. Anyway.)

So, I decided this back in August. Which is also not October. Nor is it September. But, today is nearly the middle of October, so I best get myself in gear. Because 'Incomplete prewriting will not excuse you!' as Prof. Snape would say. So, here we go. I went through and put together my prewriting notebook with my prewriting forms (yes, I'm that OCD) last night. Tonight, I'm going to sit down and at least get going with them, filling in what I've got so far.

We'll just say it's Super.