Ah, yes, again with the not updating. Well, I'm doing it now. I keep having all kinds of random thoughts about writing and NaNo that of course have to be shared with the world, but then it seems that writing them all down is a waste of time. Which makes no sense because that's exactly what I set this blog up for.

Anyway, I have passed the three-fourths mark today, which means at the pace I'm going I'm set to be done in the next few days. NaNo hasn't been as exciting or as consuming as it has been in previous years, which on the one hand is a good thing because it means that I've been able to get other stuff done this month, but on the other hand is a bit disappointing because look, it's been two weeks and I'm almost done, and when I'm done that's it.

I've faltered a bit (I didn't write at all last weekend and I wrote perhaps 100 words total yesterday), but unlike in previous years it isn't because I've gotten tired of the story. You see, 30,000 words is my wall. I hit that number and it becomes very hard to continue. I've passed the halfway point, which is exciting because it's a real show of having made actual progress. But as I continue to write, it occurs to me that I've only passed the halfway point; I still have to write yet another half. And since fatigue is always setting in at around week two, my motivation and desire to write goes way down. It seems pointless. I write in intense writing marathons of an hour here and there, where I mostly type with no regard for anything else. I have to do it this way because I don't have the luxury of sitting at the computer all day long, weighing my words and turning in my 2000 or so after a whole day's careful work. Can't do that. The problem is that it's so easy to just not do these intense writing sessions one day, and all of a sudden it's midnight and I've gotten no writing done, and if I try to make up for the next day that's just a whole bunch more words I need to take time out of my life to write.

So 30,000 is the point that's the hardest for me to get past. Once I've reached about 35,000 I seem to realize that there's not a whole lot left now, and I'm on my way to the finish, and I do finish with a lot of motivation to get there.

So my point is that even though this year I floundered at right around the time I expected to (like I said, I didn't write at all last Saturday and Sunday, and slacked off quite a bit on Monday and Wednesday, with a lot of writing to make up for it on Tuesday and today), it really wasn't because I was tired of the story. It was mostly because there was other stuff that I really had to get done, and I just had no time to work on my story.

I have no idea why I'm not tired of the story yet. Because I should be. It's a kind of story I've never written before, I have no idea where I'm going, it rambles, there's too much dialogue and not nearly enough description, and I'm making up all kinds of assertions about places I've never been and an industry I know nothing about with no research whatsoever. I should have given up in despair at this point. But I just keep writing. The characters keep speaking to me, and as I think I've said before, the fact that I can do this, can break out of my usual writing mold and be somewhat successful is probably the most important thing that this NaNo has taught me. And I still maintain that NaNo is pointless unless it teaches you something or makes you face some writing fear that you had before. I had some doubts before about what this NaNo was teaching me, and thought that maybe I had reached the end of NaNo being actually useful to me as a writer, but I've found there's still some value left in it yet.

I'm going to leave this entry there and come back later with different musings

I've passed the halfway point!

Yep, as of right now I have 26,398 words. I'm surprised that I've been keeping up with NaNo as well as I have this year. I was really worried at the beginning of the month that I wouldn't be able to finish this year, because my story ideas (not outline, I never outline, much less for something like NaNo) were even more nebulous than they have been in previous years, and it was a genre I had never previously attempted, which meant there would be considerably less genre familiarity to fall back on as a crutch to produce a quick product (see yesterday's entry for more details).

I mean, I can make a fantasy world in my sleep, and have my characters get all sort of magic powers and stuff like that, but writing something that ostensibly takes place in the real world? That's much harder. Although there is some science fiction in there. Okay, soft science fiction. Okay, maybe more like urban fantasy. And I keep adding more in. That's okay, because I never intended this to just be some kind of mainstream literature thing. But the fact that it kind of kept to those conventions for so long is something I'm strangely proud of. So I think I am learning something from NaNo this time around: that writing outside my genre comfort zone isn't as scary as I might think it is. My next fear to conquer is writing screenplays, but I'll focus on that some other time.

So. Lots of crazy stuff starting to happen now, most of it centered around my actor character, Jarad Flynn. Which is a bit of a change, since I originally thought most of the action would center around Reason McHenry, but he's actually been off on the sidelines for awhile. Too long, actually, so I've sent him off to stalk Jarad for awhile as a way to get him back into the main storyline. I've shunted Karen Breaker off to Florida to visit her kids for a bit until I can bring her into Jarad's storyline, too. Her family's story isn't coming out the way I wanted it, and I'm not feeling motivated to write her kids. So apparently James isn't going to be as important to the plot as I thought he would be. Although you never know. I'm making this up as I go along, after all.

Evan McFarland is becoming a favorite, and there was an interesting development with him that I left on a cliffhanger, so I don't really know what's going on there yet. Anna, Karen's assistant, is turning out to be the villain of the piece, or at least someone who's orchestrating some shady stuff behind the scenes. This surprised me completely but also makes perfect sense. One of the reasons I was getting frustrated with Karen's storyline was because she was so entrenched. She has her kids, she has her job, she has pretty set relationships with Anna and Evan and the other people who work for her. And yet I was making her too in the dark about stuff that was going on. This was for plot reasons, because she can't have clued in yet, but it bothered me because she SHOULD know what's going on. Breaker Productions is her company, and she should have people reporting to her every time someone sneezes. But it seemed she was kept mostly in isolation, and that was entirely my fault because I couldn't find a believable balance between her knowing everything that's going on and also having no idea what's REALLY going on. And duh, the obvious solution is that everything goes through Anna the personal assistant first, and of course if she's up to something she'd be selecting which stuff gets filtered to the boss and which doesn't.

But it's one of those things that I just couldn't see until I wrote a scene between her and Evan, and realized that Anna just wasn't responding to Evan's listing of weird shit happening in the studio the way she should have been. She should have been concerned. She should have been as anxious as Evan to find a way to get a hold of Karen. But she belittles him and walks away. And I've set up the enmity that exists between them (I worry they're starting to come off as bitter ex-lovers, when my original intention was that they were just two people with massive personality clashes, but oh well), but Anna is too professional to let that enmity extend to putting the company in danger. So I knew at that point that something was going on with her; she wasn't concerned because things are happening just as she planned (well, not just as she planned, actually, but the whole thing hinges on keeping Karen in the dark, so she obviously can't give in to Evan's demands to contact Karen). That created a whole new level to the story that inspired a bunch more writing today, propelling me past the halfway point.

And Jarad has just been confronted by his ex-girlfriend Kayla, except she says her name is Jessie and she has no idea who Jarad is. To be continued.

So it's the end of Week One of NaNoWriMo, and I still haven't been writing in this thing as much as I wanted to.

So. On a personal note, I'm way ahead on word count this year. I'm about the pass the halfway mark (although I don't know if I'll have the motivation to do that today) and it's only been a week. Of course, I almost expect to slow down a lot next week, but considering I'm just now getting into the meat of the story I hope I can keep up the pace.

Anyway, this leads nicely into what I wanted to write about today, which is that while I love NaNo and find it a liberating experience when it comes to writing, where I don't have to be chained to my inner critic or my inner editor, where I can do things with my writing that would never occur to me normally, where I don't have the time to second-guess myself and say, "No, that's a stupid plot twist." I mean, maybe it IS a stupid plot twist, but the point is that maybe it's not and I've got something I wouldn't otherwise.

But while I think NaNo is an excellent way to develop your voice (simply because you just don't have the time to try to do anyone else's), it's also a way to indulge the worst excesses of your voice. This is certainly true for me, I've found.

Because you're typing away like crazy, trying to put in half an hour here and there of writing while still doing your job, taking care of your family or your pets, spending time with friends, going to class, preparing for the holidays, and whatever else people normally do during the month of November. You don't have time for research, and, more importantly, you don't really have time for effort.

I am very well aware of my writing weaknesses and strengths. I struggle with the weaknesses constantly and try to overcome them all year long with my writing. With NaNo, although the point is to be free and unfettered, I don't like seeing my writing fall back into bad habits, which it does so easily, making me despair that maybe I'm just not ever going to improve. I fall back on my writing strengths and use them as a crutch, and it makes the story poorer for it. And again, that is kind of the point, because you're not supposed to come out of NaNo with anything publishable or even very good, but seeing my bad writing habits displayed on the page there before me and not having the time to go back and do it properly is painful (so maybe I haven't totally succeeded in silencing the inner critic). It's not slowing me down or making me give up in despair, but I still hate seeing it.

So, NaNo just emphasizes my writing deficiencies. For example, I like dialogue. I really like dialogue. Really, really, really. I don't like description so much. Often I have the characters clearly in mind, and I know what they're going to say and how they're going to say it and how the other characters are going to react. But I rarely have the setting in mind. My characters could be talking to each other against a white backdrop for all the detail I put in to what's going on around them. And when I do include description I go for the easy sense: sight. Sometimes sound, but rarely much more than that. A lot of the lack of description also comes from the fact that I don't take the time to do research. I have a literary agent character but little clue how a literary agent works. So I make it up. I have a character who lives in southern California, but I have never been there so I just don't bother to describe it. Basically, what happens is that my "story" becomes just a series of scenes of characters talking to each other in interchangeable settings, and it takes forever for anything to actually happen.

Which leads into my other major example, which is that I'm incredibly wordy. I think the reason I've been so successful at NaNo every year I've done is just because I am very able to stretch a phrase out on and on and on. I just ramble, and then after an hour I've written 2000 words, which is very good, but the words hold nothing of particular worth because most of it's filler. I literally just type stuff until I figure out what I want my characters to do. I don't stop to think about it, I just keep typing up their innermost thoughts and practically putting my worldbuilding up on the screen as it occurs to me. So I end up with huge chunks of dialogue interspersed with huge chunks of exposition or repetitive, boring, slow-moving character introspection. I constantly tell instead of show. I don't go for subtle; I just tell the reader exactly what's going on, with no respect for the reader's intelligence or my own ability to tell a story without spelling out absolutely everything. Also, I use adverbs way more than I should.

Which all adds up to a story that no one could sit through. I can't even reread it, and I wrote it! I know that's not the point of NaNo. I KNOW that. But it hurts just the same and makes it seem like in a lot of ways maybe NaNo is a waste of time. I have a ton of fun doing it, which I suppose is the upside to all this, but if I'm just going to write crap that doesn't represent any improvement or development in my writing, should I really be spending the time on it? Or should I keep plugging away at my other unfinished projects, at a slower pace, like I do the rest of the year? What is the value of NaNo for someone like me?

Day Five musings

Hmm, I haven’t actually done a whole lot of blogging about NaNoWriMo thus far. A lot less than I was originally planning to, anyway. But just let me get on with it…

First, I’m taking procrastination to whole new levels. I’m making a fanmix for my novel, which is just about the height of attention whoring, I think, just short of making its own fan site. All for something that no one besides me is actually reading, and I’m not even doing that because re-reading takes away from precious writing time. And I don’t want to remind myself how bad it is. My fanmix only has three songs so far, and they’ve been chosen more on the basis of how much I like them and not so much for their appropriateness. But my story is sufficiently amorphous enough that I can justify adding pretty much any song to the mix and claiming it makes sense.

Second, the story is so, so very bad, but the good news is that I’m having more fun writing it this year than I did last year. Last year’s story turned out decent, but I hated writing it every step of the way. This year’s is quite bad but it’s been a laugh to work on, and I suppose that’s the point. I think it’s going to remain some kind of insane, cracked idea I had and never develop into a proper novel, unlike my other NaNo efforts, but it’s mostly a collection of ideas that have been bouncing around in my head a lot lately, so I guess it’s good that I’m doing something about that. The story is also extremely wordy, because if there’s one thing I can do, its use ten words where one will do. So word count is not so much a problem for me. At the end of Day Four, which was yesterday, I had over 11,000 words. Which isn’t nearly as impressive as some people I’ve seen who are already seriously nearing 50,000, but I’m also only writing maybe 1-2 hours a day. I just don’t have time for anything else.

Third, the story itself. Last time I posted I talked about Reason McHenry. His life hasn’t gone anywhere significant since my first 500 words. He still can’t sell a story, whether its one of his clients’ to a publisher, or his own screenplays to a producer. He’s starting to get a little frustrated with that. I’ve also introduced two new major characters: Jarad Grant Flynn, a rising star within the movie industry, whose ex-girlfriend Kayla No-Last-Name-Yet, also an aspiring actor, had been acting very oddly towards him. In the section I plan to start writing right after I’m finished with this (I PROMISE) I’m going to reveal a little bit more about what’s going on by giving poor Jarad a nasty shock. But that’s still to be written.

My second major new character is Karen Breaker, who is the head of Breaker Productions, Ltd., a production company she started with her husband Jacob (who is now dead, although how isn’t something I’ve revealed yet). She has three kids: Samantha, who is 15; James, who is 12; and Cassie, who is 8. They haven’t featured a whole lot yet but I think they will later on in the story. James especially may hold a clue to some of the mysterious stuff going on. I’ve also introduced Evan McFarland, who was just a name I mentioned in passing in one scene, but then he showed up in another scene and I think I like him enough to give him a much larger role. Anyway, he’s a director who works for Karen. He’s really stressed out right now because his movie shoot is not going as smoothly as he would like. Plus, some of his crew members are muttering weird things about how this movie should not be made, and he suspects there’s some sabotage going on, too. What’s the movie about? I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter. The stuff that’s going on has nothing to do with the actual content of the movie. It’s something much bigger than that.

Something I still haven’t gotten around to, after 11,000 words. Sigh. What did I say about the wordiness?

It's midnight!

Yes, I've already started my NaNoWriMo 2007 story, called Hanging a Lantern. I haven't actually started right after midnight since the first year I did this back in 2004. Anyway, I already have 548 words. My first sentence is: "It was a dark and stormy night." For real. However, it is not what it seems.

I haven't talked about this story much because I just have some scattered ideas and when I try to articulate them they end up sounding very stupid. So I'm just going to write the thing and not continue trying to describe it. As for genre, the "urban fantasy" label is probably the most appropriate, but I have a feeling this one is going to be all over the place.

I have one character so far. His name is Reason McHenry. McHenry because I like the way it just flows off my tongue, and Reason because I opened a book (The Dark Tower, the seventh book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, in case you're wondering) to a random page and stabbed at a spot with my eyes closed. The word closest to my finger was "reason." Actually, the word closest to my finger was "for," but that's a stupid name, so took the word that came right before it.

All that was just to say that there's nothing at all symbolic about the guy's name. Or probably not. It's early days yet. Anyway, he's a literary agent who's also an inspiring writer of his own. He's obsessed with finding the perfect story, but has thus far failed in his quest. Also, he's kind of a crap agent.

More later after I've slept and then had time to write some more.

I proclaim you NaNo Blog!

Hmm, I set this up and then wasn't sure what to do with it, but I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year and I think it might be fun to blog about it. I have a LiveJournal that I use to post the actual text of what I write, and I did a little bit of blogging about NaNoWriMo back in 2005 in my other LiveJournal, but I don't think anyone appreciated me talking constantly about NaNo all month long (well, really two months, because I always start blathering about it in October). So I stopped doing it. I think, though, if I have a separate place for my babbling that doesn't require anyone friending me on LJ (which you have to if you want to read the actual story), then that will work out well. And what better format than this blog, which I set up about a month ago mostly because I was curious about blogspot and then never used for anything?

Isn't it nice when things fall into place like that?