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.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Back in the Saddle
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.
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.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
The Good, The Bad, and the NaNoWriMo
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.
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.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Just Rewards
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.
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.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Quicky Post
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!
I am at 46,957 words.
Tonight is the last night to write.
This means I have 3,043 words to go.
Ta da!
Monday, November 28, 2005
Post Turkey Lethargy
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.
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.
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