NaNoBlog 2002
30 days.
50,000 words.
No sweat.
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NaNoBlog 2002 |
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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Even more news on this novel. A couple of months ago, a well-established young adult author agreed to critique it for me, and gave me one of the best critiques I've ever gotten on anything. She understood the character and her dilemmas very well, and nailed so much of what this novel needs that it really amazed me. Although I haven't started implementing changes because I'm working on my midgrade novel right now, some of the insights in the critique just blew me away, and now I finally have ideas for approaching the rewrite. So, I'm excited and hopeful about this book again!
posted by Alison |
7:10 PM
More than a year later, this novel isn't much further along! 5 months after I sent the novel out, I got a rejection on it, though at least it was a nice personal rejection letter. The editor said she liked many things about the novel and my writing, but also said (not surprisingly!) that I need to work on plot. I've had trouble figuring out which parts work and which parts don't, or how to approach a major rewrite, but I have had a few insights into it just recently. Also, 2 writers whose opinions I trust currently have the manuscript for critique, so I'm hoping to get some even perspective on it soon. Meanwhile, I'm about 2/3 of the way through a novel for middle grade readers, and am hoping to finish the first draft of that one soon! posted by Alison | 11:28 AM Believe it or not, I sent my 2002 NaNoWriMo novel out yesterday! Submitted it to a HarperCollins editor who had actually asked to see it based on three sample chapters. I'm very nervous now but also relieved to have finally taken that step! I've mailed out short manuscripts before, and had some short things published--mainly short articles and poems--but this is my first time to complete a book, let alone send one out, & it felt rather momentous to mail it off, even if nothing ever comes of it. My dad even sent me an email to congratulate me for really doing it instead of just talking about wanting to write a novel someday. I'll see what happens! posted by Alison | 10:12 PM Cool! I've been despairing about this NaNo thing all day since I haven't come up with a good idea (I'm pretty sure I'm going to trash the whole idea I started writing on earlier today...). I've also been stressing about my continuing desire to send my NaNo 2002 novel to an editor--I aimed to send it around August 1, but have been paralyzed by fear it's nowhere near ready yet and complete inability to figure out how to make it ready. Well, I just got a fortune cookie that says, "The world will soon be ready to receive your talents." YES! That's certainly motivating, even if it is just a fortune cookie! posted by Alison | 7:53 PM Am I doing this again? I don't know yet!! I don't have an idea or even a character that I'm excited about yet. I loved NaNo so much last year, & found it so energizing, that I really WANT to do it (and am wearing my 2002 NaNo t-shirt right now for inspiration!), but so far I'm not convinced I carry it off. I don't want to spend that much energy and time on an idea I'm not crazy about--it won't be motivating enough to get me through 50,000 words. I decided to at least give it a shot today, with the closest thing to an idea I have so far (despite having several conflicting ideas for it), but 488 words in, I think the whole thing is doomed! It just sounds idiotic, and I can't imagine anyone turning the page to read more. Sigh! posted by Alison | 2:13 PM I am so stressed about the revisions I need to do to my NaNo novel! I don't know how to begin to approach them. My goal has been to send the novel to an editor around August 1, or at least sometime within the first week or so of August (if my birthday, August 3, weren't a Sunday, I'd superstitiously aim to send it that day, I think!). But at the moment, I can't imagine having it ready by then. I have revision suggestions from the professional critiquer I hired to critique it back in February, and I've hardly implemented any of them yet, because they're so big in scope and I don't know how to make big changes (like possibly changing what the main character WANTS!). I keep thinking--it would take months to make these changes. And of course I've had months, and haven't figured out how to use them wisely...but then I realized that it's pretty silly that I could write the whole stupid novel in 17 days and then think I could do nothing towards revising it in the next 15! I should be able to practically rewrite it all from scratch in that amount of time, if I could get into NaNo mode...sigh! Part of the problem is that back in NaNo month, I didn't care how great it was, as long as I got something written. Now it seems important to get it right! The other problem is that I don't know which way I want to go with it. I can see several possible ways to take it, and none stands out as being the perfect choice. And of course, this editor may have completely different opinions than the critiquer I used before. But I'm sure it's lacking something, and I know it has to be at least at a certain level to even get revision suggestions from the editor, rather than a flat-out "no thanks!" I sure wish it were as easy to find time to work on it right now as it seemed to be last November! Summer is so ridiculously busy. posted by Alison | 4:20 PM I thought the editor who wanted to see my NaNo novel was out of pocket until August, but I found out she's back at work now. Eeek! I don't feel ready to send the novel. I almost wonder if I should rewrite the whole thing first! I don't want to kill my chances with it forever.... I haven't been doing a lot of other writing lately, though I do have one poem out for consideration, and the magazine where I originally submitted the essay I sold to Chocolate for a Woman's Soul recently contacted me, 17 months after I sent them the submission, saying they'd like to print it, too! (Which is okay with the Chocolate book, which only acquired one-time rights.) I had to do a rewrite for them, to change the emphasis of the piece somewhat, but they seem to like it and my piece should run in September. Cool. posted by Alison | 3:09 PM I still exist, in case there was any doubt! I'm not doing the novel writing challenge I considered doing this month. Yet, anyway. I'm having a very busy month carting my kids to various summer activities, as well as reading for a summer reading program, taking care of necessary errands, etc., and we also went on vacation earlier this month. But I did write a children's poem this past week. Another children's poem, a very silly one about a house that is inside out, which was my first writing sale for actual money, is now up on the Guideposts for Kids web site. I still need to do some more novel writing or revision soon! I recently got a new computer and still haven't gotten everything transferred over to it or set up on it, but I did attempt to make some sense of the files I have so far with the novel I want to finish, and it turns out I have 5 or 6 versions of some of the early chapters! It's going to take me forever to sort it all out and figure out what the definitive current version is or should be! posted by Alison | 6:47 PM I've decided to create a NaNo-style challenge for myself, to finish a draft of my other novel-in-progress--which I started 3 years ago!--by the end of June. Starting tomorrow, there will be 40 days until the end of June, and I estimate I have approximately 40,000 words left to write on it, so my goal will be to write 40K words in 40 days. At "only" 1,000 words a day, it's not as tough a challenge as NaNo, though my real hope is to hit the regular NaNo quota of 1,667 words per day as often as possible. And since the real goal is to finish the novel, it's fine with me if I finish it before hitting 40K words, or if I have to keep writing after I meet the word count goal, as long as I finally get through it. It remains to be seen whether I can do this without thousands of other people going through it with me, though! Unfortunately, June won't be a great month for me to do this, either, as I won't have many, if any, daytime hours to write, without my kids' usual preschool schedule. My family will have to be really supportive of my writing in the evenings & on weekends! But my main reason to fear that I won't meet the challenge isn't that I won't have much time or that I won't have all the other wrimos doing it with me to motivate me (or even that my computer is barely functioning anymore!), but that I care more about this novel than I did about my NaNo novel when I was writing it! I have so much invested in this one that it feels like there is more at stake, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to let myself write as freely--or plan as little!--as I did with my NaNo novel. I've been blocked on this one for ages, & am not sure a challenge will help with that.... posted by Alison | 9:50 PM So if an editor has shown interest in my NaNo novel, I should be walking on air, right? I actually feel like I'm going to throw up! I think I figured out my biggest concern about it, which is that the 3 chapters the editor saw make it seem like a book primarily about the relationship between my main character and her neighbor/friend. But that's not really how the rest of the book works out! That was the initial premise when I started writing, I guess, but that's not how it ended up, and I'm afraid the editor will be disappointed with the direction the book now takes. I also scared myself by thinking that maybe that WOULD be a much better focus for the book, and that maybe I should get rid of the WHOLE THING other than the first few chapters, and start over with a whole different plot! I got another plot idea which might take things deeper... Ugh! I also haven't implemented my paid critiquers' suggestions yet, which are not minor or quick fixes. They are things like--give the book more of a plot and fewer subplots, make the main character more sympathetic and less whiny, figure out what she really wants, etc. I'm not sure whether to tackle these things before sending the novel to the editor, or to see what she suggests, because she may have a completely different take on things (the critiquer actually suggested possibly deleting the chapters that the editor liked!), and I might mess it up instead of making it better. The thing is, I know editors ask for revisions and help the author shape the original novel into a better one, but I'm not sure it's to the level yet that the editor would even want to bother with. I'm not sure if it's close enough to get an editor's interest if she saw the whole thing! Of course, I feel bad even saying these things when I know I have a really exciting opportunity right now that every author would like to have, but I'm just so afraid I'll blow it royally & not get another chance! posted by Alison | 12:43 PM I'm still alive! I got amazing news today. The critiquer I mentioned in the previous couple of posts, who is an editor, liked my novel excerpt and wants to see the whole thing! Wow! She doesn't want to see it for a while due to her other obligations, so now I have to figure out whether to revise it heavily before sending it, or just to send her what I have! I've had major, major writer's block lately, so this certainly helps to jump start my interest in writing again! As should the conference I'll be attending this weekend. posted by Alison | 2:37 PM I did send the critiquer an excerpt of my NaNo novel, but because I'm rethinking & reworking the first chapter right now, I skipped Chapter 1 and sent the next 15 pages, along with a note of explanation as to why I was doing so. I think that excerpt holds together nicely, & also ends at a much better place than it would have if I sent the first 15 pages. Now to see what she says...eek! I won't get the critique until mid-May, though. posted by Alison | 11:56 AM I'm going to yet another writing conference in May, where I think I'll be having another critique with an editor (no confirmation yet that I got a slot, though...), in which case I need to have my critique materials (up to 15 pages of a book manuscript) turned in by next Monday, which means I probably need to mail them by Friday. And I still haven't figured out what I want critiqued! However, I'm thinking it'll probably be the beginning of my NaNo novel. Unfortunately, it still needs a lot of work & I'm not happy about showing it to an editor the way it looks now. Hmm... Not sure I can fix it in one or two days, as I'm not sure where to start! I got some more good news this week. Yesterday I found out a personal essay I wrote is a finalist in the non-fiction division of a local writing contest. I felt empowered enough when I learned that to try to find someplace to submit it (I'd submitted it to one magazine before, & 14 months later I still haven't heard back, so I assume they're not interested!). I found out about some anthologies called Chocolate for a Woman's Soul, etc., and e-mailed my essay to the editor last night. I got an acceptance for it this morning!! Wow, that was quick! My essay should appear in their next anthology, sometime next year. Too cool. And of course, it would be nice if it won the contest, too...! (Winners don't get published, so it's not a problem that I am getting it published elsewhere.) posted by Alison | 8:52 PM I haven't edited anything in my novel since signing up for NaNoEdMo! Oh well. I don't really feel like writing at all, with all this war stuff going on. My novel seems really stupid & shallow in light of that. I think we definitely need stories to get us through tough times, and just to be human, but my whiny, angsty protagonist seems way too self-indulgent at the moment. That helps me cement the decision to focus more on my humor novel-in-progress for a while, because it's at least more escapist. posted by Alison | 2:22 PM I joined NaNoEdMo today, mainly because I missed the NaNo atmosphere from last November (and I've never gotten that "25 in 30" site link to work again). I don't know how much I will really participate, as I have a different novel I need to write! Of course my NaNo novel does need lots of editing, rethinking, & rewriting, but after burying myself in it last month, I think I need a break to work on my other novel! My brain needs time to stew on it. I still have a list of minor things to fix in it, though, so I can do those things without too much stress. I'll see if I can go back & forth between writing one novel & editing the other when I need a change of pace...but right now I'd be doing well to work on either one! Ack. posted by Alison | 10:09 PM Today I got an acceptance letter & check from ByLine for a short humor article I got the idea for when writing one of my first posts on the NaNoWriMo forums! The article, called "Fast Food for Thought," is the strange but true tale of how fast food has inspired much of my writing, including the ideas & main characters for my NaNo novel. It's mainly just an expansion of my NaNo forum post! Too cool. posted by Alison | 4:16 PM I got my novel critique back yesterday! I found it very helpful, and worth the money. In retrospect I realized the critiquer hadn't even commented on some whole storylines & characters, but I'm hoping that means she didn't see a big problem with them! Most of her comments fell right in line with my own vision for the novel & characters, but were things I'd had trouble clarifying for myself. There will be a lot of work ahead of me rewriting, rethinking, and possibly restructuring most of the novel, but I already knew most of that was needed, and now I have some ideas to start from! The biggest issue was that she didn't know exactly what the main character wanted--& I realized it wasn't all that clear to me, either (whoops!). She also said it seemed like a lot of sub-plots but no main plot...which also seems true, but it's funny, because in most of my writings I end up with one overly simple simple main plot and no sub-plots! (But the craziness that is NaNoWriMo doesn't allow for a lot of complex plotting or outlining--at least if you don't think about it much before November 1!). She had thought the main plot might be about my main character's father's wedding plans, but said it came up too late in the story--around page 80. I really meant for that to come up by Chapter 2, it just took longer than I thought to get to that point when I started writing! I probably need to revise it with that in mind. I was happiest that she didn't suggest getting rid of my Dexter Monday character--anyone who read this blog as I was writing the novel might recall that he was an afterthought, not part of the original idea at all, & I only threw him in to liven things up. I wasn't sure he fit at all, though, & I feared she'd tell me he added nothing. Instead, she said the novel took on new energy with his arrival, & said I might actually want to start the novel with his arrival & keep him around the whole time instead of having him move away! (Though I'm not sure how I feel about that, particularly the last part. If he sticks around, he'll need to fail the main character in some way, & I want him to be one person who is all he's cracked up to be, & only "fails" her by leaving.) In other news, I entered the novel in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' Work-in-Progress grant competition today! They accept applications postmarked in February every year & give out the grants in August. I applied for the grant for a "Contemporary Novel for Young People." I had to send an excerpt of up to 2,500 words, a synopsis of the whole novel, and an application form explaining my background and what I'd do with the grant money (I said I'd mainly use it for childcare while writing, as it's hard to write with a 2-year-old and 4-year-old underfoot!). I think I have a very slim chance at winning, especially since I plan to improve the chapter I sent them as a writing sample, but I didn't see a reason not to enter, since I have a fairly well-developed novel and it didn't cost anything to enter. Also, I got a "good" rejection letter on a picture book manuscript today! It was from the editor who gave me positive feedback at a conference last October and offered to look at my other novel-in-progress when it's done. He rejected my picture book, but the rejection letter was more funny & chatty than the typical "not right for our list" rejection letters I often get, & he actually said he remembered my other project "fondly" and that it was the high point of the critiques he did at that conference!! So now that I've entered the NaNo novel in this grant competition, it may be time to shelve that project for a bit and get that other novel finished & ready to send to this editor before he forgets me! (I originally meant to have that done a month ago--oh well!) I like the looks of NaNoEdMo, and I certainly need it, but I might should do 25 in 30 instead. Wish I could do both, but I'm not sure my family will put up with either! posted by Alison | 3:56 PM I finally sent the novel off for critique today! I couldn't imagine how much trouble it was getting it all polished & printed out. And of course, I found 16 more things I needed to change or fix when I skimmed it all before sending out! But nothing too major--extra spaces, or certain phrases used too often or too close to each other--and sent it out that way, anyway. I'm sure those are by far the least of its problems! I also printed it double-sided, as the critiquer said I could do that, so it was "only" 117 sheets, plus a title page & blank end page. I can't imagine how I'd mail it if it were printed on one side--especially if also trying to enclose an envelope for them to send it all back in. I've heard editors prefer envelopes to manuscript boxes, but a box would certainly be easier for me. So anyway, now comes the hard part--waiting to see my work dissected and/or shredded! posted by Alison | 5:01 PM I just spent a very harried weekend working on my NaNo novel most of the time. I only got 4 or 5 hours sleep Friday night, then stayed up Saturday night until 5 am, working on the novel all night! And had to get up around 9. I was so wiped out, but still ended up working on the stupid thing until about 1 am the night after that. And I was only making minor changes for the most part! Well, I also wrote a few new scenes and expanded some scenes, but I didn't delete any large chunks or rearrange anything. I'm probably making it even more of a mess. The book is now 60,228 words, with 40 chapters taking up 233 double-spaced pages. I am done with my current revision of everything but Chapter 1, which has driven me crazy. I printed out 4 competing versions of the chapter last night & was glad I could weed 2 out immediately when I read them later. (It was probably the stuff I'd written while fuzzy-headed at 3 or 4 am!) I'm now down to the last 2, and I'm asking my husband to give me an opinion on those, but even within them I have something like 30 places where I'm trying to decide whether to rephrase or revise something. And I'm still not convinced at all that the chapter will look anything like this in the future, but I'm at the end of my rope with it for now. I hope to decide TODAY which Chapter 1 to go with, then to finish my final edit of that chapter, print it out, & send it off for critique tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm also trying to polish the synopsis, which isn't quite as done as I thought it was the other day! posted by Alison | 3:56 PM I plan to send my NaNo novel out for professional critique early next week, which probably means I'm about to shell out a few hundred dollars to have my ego & my hopes for my novel squashed! But I just don't know where to begin revising it--which parts are working (if any...) & which parts aren't, & whether there's enough of a story in it at all. It's impossible for me to see it objectively at this point. I did get a critique of the first chapter from a writing friend this week--the first person I've showed any of it to, other than one person who never commented on it (!). It was nerve-wracking, but at least she didn't say it was unredeemable! She did agree with my assessment that my 1st chapter is really more of a character sketch than a novel opening, though, and I have NO idea how to start it instead, or where to work in the necessary background info if not there. Even getting the novel in shape to send to the critiquer has been a pain. I thought all I'd do was some minor line and word changes, but in reading it through with that in mind, I've found some bigger problems! The worst was a continuity problem in which I skipped a whole day. To that point, I was giving a play-by-play of every day, and certain things have to happen on certain days so I can't just rearrange the timeline. I have to account for a whole day now & am having trouble doing so & still keeping it consistent with what I've written before. And even the minor changes are taking me forever. For instance, when I discover that I've used the same phrase 4 times and it wasn't that great to begin with, I'm stuck trying to figure out how to rephrase 2 or 3 of them... I meant to send the whole thing out already, but now I think it probably won't be until Monday. posted by Alison | 5:50 PM Happy Groundhog Day! Lately I've been doing some line editing and copy editing on my NaNo novel. I've taken out or shortened some of the extraneous words & phrases I had used to boost word count, filled in a few details I skipped the first time through, & clarified some sections. I haven't done any major revisions such as rearranging scenes or chapters, or adding or deleting scenes, though I suspect it needs that. I'm not sure if I did a decent job of plotting or of maintaining tension throughout, and I'm not sure it exactly has a climax! (It has a turning point near the end but it may be too vague.) It still stuns me that I wrote it, though. I can't figure out how I did it, & can't imagine doing it again! I've written a few short things since November (or more accurately, finished some things I had started prior to November), & wrote about 30 pages of a children's chapter book (some of which an editor critiqued for me & thought had an unworkable premise!), but am having trouble focusing on the other novel I need to finish. I just entered the first chapter of my NaNo novel in a regional writing contest, & was iffy about it because I think the first chapter may be one of the weakest, but the idea of rethinking and rewriting it, even with a month to think about it, seemed more daunting than writing the whole novel in less than a month! (And my husband liked it, so I went ahead & sent it.) I may get a writing friend to critique that chapter soon. The standard advice is to start a book with action (or at least an actual scene) instead of narration or character introductions, as my book starts now, but this is a young adult novel, which may be a different animal, as voice and character are so important in YA fiction. Also, the book is about my character figuring out who she is & where she fits in, so it may be appropriate to start the way I do now, with her musing about those things. Who knows? posted by Alison | 1:55 PM I was up until 3:00 this morning finally breaking my NaNo novel into chapters! I'm considering sending it out for professional critique, but needed it to be in chapters first, & I'd never done that. I'm thinking it was a bad idea not to write it in chapters in the first place! It may have flowed out faster this way, but now there's no obvious structure and I don't always have a good place to end a chapter, especially if I want to keep the chapters to the same approximate length. At the moment I have 39 chapters that range from about 1,000 to 2,000 words apiece (mostly 1,200-1,800), but I've already changed a lot of the chapter breaks today, and am not at all sure I'll keep them the way they are! At one point I had 40 chapters, and I kind of liked that round number. I'm also trying to write a concise synopsis of the novel. I'd love to keep it to one page, but so far have only managed to get it to one page and then a paragraph on the next page (311 words), and that may be as good as it gets! posted by Alison | 1:48 PM My writers' retreat with the editor was so-so. I enjoyed the social aspects of the retreat, but was admittedly a bit stunned when the editor didn't really critique my manuscript because she didn't think the subject was workable. She said I could write well but the premise was too uninteresting to carry a novel (this was not my NaNo novel, but a different novel for children). I had anticipated many different possible criticisms, but never that one! It has certainly made me second-guess myself. She was more positive about my picture book manuscripts, but thought they started stronger than they ended. Anyway, I took my NaNo novel with me, and would have had an opportunity to show her a bit of it, or at least to show her the plot summary I wrote for it, but I chickened out. Although I did briefly tell some things about it while we were chatting, I decided it just wasn't polished enough yet to show her. But now I am kicking myself, because I realize I didn't really have anything to lose by showing it to her. I'm not necessarily planning to submit anything else to her--she apparently doesn't like the kind of stuff I normally write. So the worst that could have happened is that she would have disliked the novel as well, but what if she had liked it? It definitely has some elements she mentioned liking in novels (realistic story, romance, and a theatre connection). And I'm considering paying big bucks for a professional critique of it, so I'm not sure why I didn't think to get a free professional opinion on at least the plot summary or opening! Sigh. At any rate, it was nice having a couple of days to just hang out with writers and talk about writing, etc. I didn't get any writing done because I was a bit jittery the whole time, but I really enjoyed the creative atmosphere. posted by Alison | 7:29 PM I re-read my whole NaNo novel for the first time last night! I just read it on the screen. I meant to be writing on a different project, of course, and procrastinated by reading the old novel instead. I liked it both more and less than I thought I would. The worst thing is that I think it has a lot of problems, but I am not sure exactly what they are or how to fix them! The problems didn't look as clear-cut to me as I hoped they would. I don't think it's particularly consistent, but then I'm not sure which parts work best & which don't...so not sure which ones to change more! I may look into a professional critique after I clean it up a bit (I did find some outright errors, typos, and continuity problems). I was surprised to laugh out loud in some places, though, as I hadn't recalled it having much humor, and there were a few scenes I loved. I just wish there were more than a few I loved...I wish it were all of them! I'm not sure how on earth to make the rest of the book as good as those few scenes. In all, I felt it could be salvageable, which I had once wondered about. The storyline isn't bad and I liked the characters more than I worried I would when I read it over. But I don't know if it stands out enough to be published...if it says anything new or different or particularly insightful. My other novels-in-progress tend to be so offbeat that they definitely stand out, whether for better or worse, but I worry this one may be "just another novel." After I read the novel, I skimmed the entire book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne & Dave King. It did give me a lot to think about on the subject of "Proportion," but I still don't feel I have a good road map to help me get started with revisions--I'm just not sure how to approach it. posted by Alison | 3:23 PM Hello out there! I don't have much novel-writing news to report. I still have yet to pick up my NaNo novel again to even read back through it, much less to start revising it. Part of the problem is that my printer goes haywire all the time & can't be trusted to print such a long document. I'm thinking of printing it at Kinko's--you can even submit documents through their web site and pick them up at the store later. I've also been trying to finish a draft of a children's novel before going to a retreat next weekend with an editor who will be critiquing the first 15 pages of it, but that's obviously not going to happen! I'm only 9,000 words into something I expect to be at least 20,000 words long and possibly more. I wrote that much in a week of NaNo, but I can't get back into that NaNo writing frenzy again, & I have a lot of other things to do this week. I did put up a writing web site for myself earlier this month. I'll stick a permanent link to it in the Links section of this site. posted by Alison | 1:37 PM 2002 has certainly been a big writing year for me. I made two more sales in the past week! One was a poem I wrote the first version of at age 13...and I'm in my mid-30s now, so that should show you not to give up! Another was my first fiction sale, which I just got the acceptance letter and check for today, on the last day of the year, ending the year with a bang. It is a children's fiction story called "All's Fair at Science Fairs," sold to On the Line magazine. This is a great way to end the year, as well as a nice validation of my chosen path as a writer of children's & young adult fiction. The amazing thing is that last year at this time, I'd gotten a total of four acceptances in eight years of (sporadically) submitting my writing for publication. As of now, I've gotten ten! Not to mention that I wrote that NaNo novel this year.... Here is a wishing a great writing year to all wrimos in 2003, including success for 2002's novels and more great novels next November! posted by Alison | 6:16 PM If anyone reads ByLine magazine, check out my short article, "Goofy About Writing," in the January 2003 issue! I got my copy today, only 3.5 weeks after I got the acceptance letter & check for the article! Amazing! The poem I was writing about selling hasn't even been published yet. But what a nice way to end the year! I hope all wrimos can look back over 2002 and feel that they've really accomplished something this year, whether they reached 50,000 words or not. I have one writing resolution for 2003, which is to finish my other novel-in-progress, but that one is going wayyyy slower than the NaNo one, and isn't going at all at this time of year! Best of luck to everyone with the NaNo novel revisions, too! I don't plan to start those until I have finished a draft of the other novel. posted by Alison | 3:35 PM Anyone still reading this? I have not been looking at the forums much lately. Or writing much lately. Not just because NaNo's over, but because of the Christmas crunch. I'm not in the holiday spirit yet this year, but have still been busy trying to buy & mail gifts, prepare for holiday events at my kids' preschool, etc. But I do need to do a lot of writing. I'm going to a writers' retreat in late January with an editor from Viking, and I've sent 15 pages in advance for her to critique. But I want to finish the whole thing (a children's chapter book) by the conference, on the off chance the editor likes it & wants to see it all! So if it seemed easy enough to write 58,000+ words in less than a month for NaNo, why does it seem so daunting now to try to write about 10,000 more in 6 weeks?! posted by Alison | 6:08 PM I'm too lazy to post anything new right now, but I'll add something I posted to the NaNo forums a bit ago. There's a poll up about whether NaNo was easier or harder than expected. I hadn't really thought about it until I saw that poll, but then realized it was actually easier than expected. Here's what I posted about that: I expected to finish, because it was very, very important to me to finish. But I also expected it to be hellish, and to cause a lot of strain on my family and my life in general, and I expected to barely pull it through on November 30th at 11:59 pm, with a lot of pain & angst up to that point. I was stunned that I actually finished early, in 17 days, that it did not cause undue stress on my family life (it was stressful but we're always stressed, so this wasn't out of the ordinary stress!), and that I even wrote more than 50K! On the other hand, the novel is also a lot worse than I hoped it would be. posted by Alison | 9:35 PM December 1! Extra congratulations to the approximately 2,070 wrimos who crossed the finish line in November! Wow, that's a lot of novels. I had mine verified by Journalers & Bloggers NaNoWriMo the other day & got a spiffy new icon (see INO50000 icon over to the right). Their word count came out 161 words less than mine, but hey, it was still over 58K! posted by Alison | 1:08 PM The last official day is here!!!! Congrats to everyone who has finished so far, good luck to everyone who is still rushing to finish (though I hope those people aren't wasting their precious time reading this blog...!), and for EVERYONE who has persevered this long, whether you finished your 50K or not, major kudos for sticking it out through the long haul. It's a great accomplishment to have stuck with your writing for 30 days whether or not you've reached some arbitrary number of 50,000 words! And now, for those who are done and have a moment to rest, 'tis the season to be jolly! Enjoy your new life as a novelist. posted by Alison | 9:45 AM To all the wrimos celebrating Thanksgiving--may it not be too stressful if you're still trying to write, and may you end up with a lot to be thankful for! And to ALL the wrimos laboring to get your novels done this weekend, good luck!!! I hope to see a whole slew of new winners' pages by Sunday morning! posted by Alison | 8:43 AM I got my second writing check today! I sold a poem to Guideposts for Kids in September, and then I wrote up the story of my first sale and today I got a letter and a check in the mail from ByLine, accepting the first sale story for a future issue! That almost makes up for the rejection earlier this week, not to mention the two poems that failed to place in ByLine's recent children's poem contest. (But a cheesy romance story I wrote did get an honorable mention in their genre fiction contest...nice!) So, November has been quite a month! I've written 70,000 words (58K on the NaNo novel plus about 12K on 2 other writing projects), had a humor piece published (unpaid), and made my second sale. And I have NaNo to thank for a lot of it! I credit NaNo with nearly all of the 70,000 words (even the non-NaNo words, which were still inspired by NaNo having gotten me into a writing mode), and I also might not have submitted the article to ByLine when I did if I hadn't been trying to hurry & get it submitted before NaNo started (I sent it out Oct. 15). And on a more NaNo-specific note, I had my first dream about NaNoWriMo last night. I dreamed that a bunch of wrimos were camped out in the parking lot of a big Target store, working furiously on their novels from within cars, vans, tents, sleeping bags, etc.! The store had lots of literary merchandise to sell to everyone, like stationery and scarves with book designs, but I thought the cutest things were some kids' t-shirts and underwear that said something--I can't recall what, but it was something like "WRITE TYKE." They weren't in my kids' sizes, though, and while I was debating whether to get any anyway, they all sold out to other people who didn't even have kids! I was bummed we didn't all have name tags with our usernames on them so we could recognize the people we knew from the forums when we saw them in person. posted by Alison | 8:47 PM One of the NaNo forum topics I saw today is about how your novel would be reviewed. My guess for my own was: "A quiet, self-indulgent coming-of-age novel that meanders about without managing to go anywhere. Though the prose is competent, there are no surprises here and it fails to add anything to the genre." Sad, huh? I'm feeling particularly bummed today about my potential to have a book published, because I got a rejection today for my first picture book submission. I know everyone gets lots of rejections, and it's certainly not my first rejection or even close to the first this year, but of all the things I've ever written, this is the one I thought was closest to being a shoo-in, and I had submitted it to an editor I'd met personally. She rejected it personally, but the best thing she said about it was "I do admire certain things about the manuscript." Not exactly glowing praise! She said the subject had lots of appeal for young readers, but didn't say as much about the writing! Eek. I have no idea what to do with it now. I'm considering sending it to the editor I met at the conference last month, but I'm afraid if he doesn't like it, he'll be less inclined to look favorably on the novel I hope to send him later! posted by Alison | 8:05 PM No, I haven't fallen off the earth or forgotten all my partners in frantic novel writing, now that I've "completed" my novel (and "completed" is hardly the right word because it needs months worth of revision!). It is rather anti-climactic to be done and not to have a daily word count goal to get me motivated every day! I'm still readjusting to a life in which my fingers aren't getting a constant workout. I did lose a couple of pounds while writing my novel--probably because I wasn't eating well when focused on writing, but maybe it was just in my fingers! ;-) I think NaNoWriMo is one of the most liberating & empowering things I have done for myself, and am so glad I did it! I was already getting into a habit of regular writing (which helped), but I am sure if I hadn't done NaNo, I still wouldn't be much further along on my other writing projects, and wouldn't have any of this novel, either. Now I'm a whole novel ahead of where I would have been. I have proved to myself I can sit down and make myself write even when I don't feel like writing or don't think I have anything to say, and that I can make myself push forward instead of agonizing about getting it all out perfectly before I move on. I have also proved to myself that I can occasionally finish something I start! My NaNo novel is about the seventh novel I've started in the past 10-12 years, and the first one I've gotten past 7,000 words on. That feels good! But even though I meant to put it out of my head now & let it sit for a while before even reading it again, much less revising it, I can't get it out of my head yet. I still find myself thinking about it and what's wrong with it all the time, and last night I even sat up in bed & turned on the nightlight to jot some notes about things I need to flesh out, & even a snippet of actual text to add. Some of the problems I've noted are: * not enough happens--it's too much dialogue & not enough action * not enough is at stake--the character doesn't like her life as it is, so making it worse isn't a big enough threat to her * the main character isn't likable enough--she has no real interests, & I don't know why the other characters would like her or why the reader would care about her story * I have her trying to meet people from the Internet but never mention security concerns (which I meant to, but then overlooked) * I need to research hair dye & henna tattoos * I need to figure out what size town she lives in & where it is * having a character spout platitudes that help set the main character straight is pathetic * I need to research the musical The Music Man, which she supposedly performed in & I know next to nothing about...or else choose a different show * the character needs more development in terms of what she was like as a child--I want to show that although she had more friends in childhood than she does now, she was always a bit of a loner even before some difficult experiences made her withdraw more from other people Most of those are not easy fixes, so I expect the revision process to be much longer and more painful than the writing process, but I also don't plan to undertake a major revison until at least January, if not later! I have another whole novel I want to write now, and then a short children's chapter book I would like to write. The latter should only be about 20K, and seems like it will be pretty easy and fun, after writing 58K words! posted by Alison | 9:07 AM The first draft of a very bad novel, written by me, is officially DONE. 58,466 words, 102 single-spaced pages, and 2,596 revisions! (I'm so paranoid I save a lot.) Total editing time, not including the first day's writing, which was in a different file: approximately 78 hours.  I hate nearly every word of it, but wow. I did it. posted by Alison | 9:52 PM I am a zombie. I am a zombie who has written slightly more than 50,000 words in the past 16 days, not counting non-NaNo things I've written. And I am a zombie who has written more than 11,000 words today after lying in bed awake until past 4:30 am. You can imagine how bad they are. I think it looks like an entirely different novel than the previous 39,000 or so words seemed to be from. And here's the kicker: I'm not near done. I have not updated my word count on the NaNoWriMo site because I don't want to get that little green "done" bar until I feel I'm really done. It already feels anti-climactic to be past 50,000 (like, 50,057, I think) without being done with the story. I fear there may be 5,000 words left to go. At least. It's like a long, dark tunnel I don't want to go into, since I just got out of one, but if I don't go in soon I might never do so! I know, I should be thrilled. I'm just too zonked to be thrilled right now. I typed for seven hours straight today, only eating lunch at 2:30 when my husband brought me food and kept bugging me to eat it. I only stopped typing at 6:30 because he wanted me to come down and help with the kids--otherwise, I probably would have kept right on going. I thought I'd go back, but the last kid just got to bed and I don't think I could write a coherent bit of narrative right now. And as it is, at 9:30, I still haven't eaten dinner, even though I'm starving (all I had for lunch was 2 chicken strips, & no side dishes since KFC stuck the wrong side dish in my meal). My eyes are doing weird things, I have a crushing headache, I'm shaky all over, and my brain isn't functioning quite right. I almost feel hallucinatory, or at least like I'm sleepwalking. This is not the heroic, happy way I wanted to reach 50,000 words. It's no fun to feel like a zombie and realize my last 10,000 words or so seem to have been written by one. Why didn't I pace myself? I was just so worried about not completing it. Anyway, I hope to finish tomorrow and get verified and all that fun stuff, but I'm terrifed to think of all I still have to write, especially without a word count goal to keep me going. Now it'll just be slogging through, and I know I'm going to rush through important scenes just because I want to be DONE. I'm also sad about it being over. I think it's cool to finish early, but also worried no one is going to want to see posts from me on the forums anymore, with the shocking green bar over there on the sides of my posts. I've already fallen out of the top 10 posters and now may fall out of the top 15. Oh well...I'm just too tired to think about it right now. Good night! posted by Alison | 9:34 PM I hate my printer! Or print driver, as the case may be. I'm trying to print out this whole thing, so the sight of it stacking up will motivate me, but last night I added a scene in the middle of what I'd already written, so I needed to print about 34 pages.... I sent it all to the printer, and when I went to check on it, it had used up ALL my paper (at least 100 sheets that I'd just loaded in) printing out random gibberish! (Not my novel...that's non-random gibberish.) UGH. So I still don't have a new printout. I've decided to change my character Paige's name to Gena, but not until after I finish the novel and print it all out. I don't want to print it out from scratch now, and if my husband ever decides to read it, I don't want him to get confused by the sudden appearance of a Gena. The scary thing is, this thing is already 67 pages single-spaced! And not done. I don't know how you go about revising something this long. I can't even wrap my brain around it. (Figuratively or literally.) posted by Alison | 3:50 PM I've been messing up my novel file by sticking a bunch of notes in near the end about what I might want the plot to do from here, and where it should end up. Some of it is scraps of actual scenes & dialogue I want in there, & some is just notes. So I can't get a handle on my actual word count right now until I clean it up some. But I'm so excited, anyway, because now I have some ideas how it's all going to wind up, AND I found another way to tie in my title of Chasing Monday. I can't seem to give up the stupid title, so this is a good thing. It also looks like it may even wrap up near 50,000 words. We'll see. (Though I'll still have to go back later & add more foreshadowing and/or motivation throughout the first parts.) posted by Alison | 10:48 AM I actually wrote 4,475 words tonight (Wednesday night)! Before I wrote anything, I sat down & brainstormed & wrote a list of what might happen next, & a list of what I thought the next few scenes might be. I spent probably half an hour just doing that. Then before I could bring myself to write anything new, I went back & added some background information earlier in the novel. I had one scene that was just a paragraph long and didn't seem to work, & I decided that would be a good time for my main character to talk about some lousy things that happened to her a few years ago & how she came to feel like a misfit. It doesn't work as it is...it's too informational and more a laundry list of issues than a real narration in her voice...but I'll fix it in revisions. I think it really helps to have more info there, though, or somewhere. Anyway, then I just started with the scenes I'd outlined & they just flowed out. I think it's way too much dialogue with little to no action, so it may not work, but at least I've moved the story forward and she's now somewhat on track for her road trip. She's about to go to an online friend's house for Thanksgiving. I was hoping to end it all up at Christmas, though, so I'm not sure how this is going to work. She also still doesn't have enough motivation. But I am stunned I wrote that much. Of course, it is around 2:00 am now! posted by Alison | 1:59 AM When I just read what I blogged earlier, I realized my character's story parallels my own life way more than I had realized. My parents are still married & her dad is getting married for the fifth time, she's more rebellious than me, and I actually liked high school pretty well, while she hates it...but I now see the parallel in her feeling of being trapped in a place with no one she can relate to. I now also see I don't necessarily have to stick her in a small town for her to feel stuck! I felt stuck in a university of 50,000 students. My freshman and sophomore years of college, I felt isolated from my friends back home, who seemed more like me than anyone I was meeting at school (I did have friends at school, but it was just never the same, and without a car I felt stuck on campus). I ended up moving back home for junior year--looking for that place I fit in better. Of course, everything was different when I went back. I made a whole new set of friends, found new faith, and ended up going back to my original university at the end of the year, where I still didn't know what I was going to do, but knew I was now more able to face whatever life offered. And it did, indeed, all work out & I got my degree from there. And I later returned home again, where I met my husband in the group of friends I had made that year I was home (and now have moved back to my university town!). My story could not be resolved in a short road trip, but I see that it has the same elements I wanted for her story--feeling like a misfit, searching for a better fit, and not finding exactly what she's searching for but finding new strength that makes it okay. And still having hope for that better fit somewhere down the road. And until this moment, I had no idea I was writing anything that had to do with me! posted by Alison | 11:25 AM Only 16,134 words left to reach 50,000. If I write 1,667 words a day, I should be done in 10 days. If I take until the end of the month, I only need to write 897 words a day. However, at the moment I see no hope of finishing the actual novel in 50,000 words! I suppose it's a problem if I'm not even sure what it's about yet... (imagine big-eyed icon from NaNo forums here). I'm beginning to think it has no plot. My character just seems to accept whatever happens to her--she grumbles, but doesn't really try to change anything. A character pretty much has to try to change things for there to be a plot. My original plan was for her to sort of run away--take a road trip and look for a place she fits in better. She'd seek out 2 different online friends & then her former step-sister, and learn stuff along the way but realize it was her that needed to change (somehwat), more than her situation. She'd go back to the less-than-ideal situation but she'd be a stronger person, more ready to face what life threw at her. Well, 33,866 words in, she has yet to consider that trip! I don't think I can squeeze it all into 16,000 or even 20,000 words without it feeling rushed. I think I completely distracted myself--and her!--by throwing in the Dexter Monday character she developed a major crush on. I don't plan to take him out in revisions because he livens it up so much, but he did make her stick around too long! She thought he was going to make it okay to stay where she was, but now he's leaving...but it's getting awfully late in the story for her to suddenly hit the road. If this were an adult book that was supposed to be 75,000 or 100,000 words, I'd be at a pretty good place with it, but I really wanted it done by 50,000 or 55,000 words! posted by Alison | 11:07 AM About 3,500 more words so far today...mostly written on my PDA while the kids were in Mother's Day Out. Hooray for Mother's Day Out! (Or Mother's Day In, as the case may be.) I also got my copies of Once Upon a Time magazine today, with my humor article, When the Muse Strikes Out in it. It's about time, since I wrote my first draft of that maybe ten years ago! posted by Alison | 4:24 PM So I've hit 30,000 words, as of 12:30 this morning, but I also feel like I've hit a brick wall. I actually do know what to write next, because I've left my main character right at the beginning of a psuedo-date and I still have to tell what happens (which I don't know yet), but in general I'm running out of steam. I was thrilled to get this far, but it's going to take a lot of stamina to get through 20,000 more words of this, and I'm not sure it has that much life in it! I feel like I'm not writing a novel so much as I'm writing a big mess of words that has some of the same characters appearing throughout. ;-) It's hard for me to keep my focus. I actually wrote 3,000+ words in the past couple of days on a new novel for children. I have NO idea where it came from, but Sunday morning I just found this line in my head: "Ever since I fell in love with the enemy, things haven't been quite normal." Turns out the "enemy" in this case is a contraband brand of bubble gum. It's just silly & I was having great fun with it. Then I also started a children's poem about flamingos, and even jotted ideas from a poem written from a fork's point of view! All of which are fun...but not what I should have been writing! I didn't write a thing on my NaNo novel Sunday, but did make myself sit down & slog through about 1,700 words on it Monday night, just to get back into it. Emotionally, though, I'm still not back into it. posted by Alison | 9:36 AM I'm stunned. My hope was to get to 25,000 words by the end of the weekend, and I'm already past 28,000 on Saturday night (early Sunday morning...). I wrote around 7,000 words today! Half of which I wrote on a car trip! We took a 3-hour round trip to take the kids to the zoo, and I wrote exactly 3,500 words during that time, with my Palm device & my fold-up keyboard. I just tuned everyone out & went for it. (I use a large, collapsed cardboard mailing box as a desk in the car--works great.) Then after we got home at night, I wrote about that many more! It's pretty disjointed since I was skipping around some in the story, but I am still amazed. I'm having my doubts I can finish this novel in 50,000 words, though. I feel like I'm still introducing stuff! But young adult novels, which this purports to be, really are around 50,000 words. Much longer than that, and I couldn't dream of getting it published someday. So maybe being so wordy isn't a good thing! On the other hand, it may be better to end up with too much, and have stuff to cut, than too little when you don't know what else to say. And it may be that I'm telling a different story than I think I am... Maybe I'm not going to end up with the lengthy road trip I was expecting to have! I have been writing this in a slow, day-by-day format (that is, the whole thing so far has taken place in one week), and that does contribute to wordiness, because after the main action occurs, I still have to explain what she does the rest of the day, even if only in a sentence or two. posted by Alison | 12:51 AM Wow, both my kids napped today, & at the same time, & I managed to get another 2,500+ words written. That's more than 6,000 words in the past 24 hours! But unlike the words last night, which I rather liked, I am not sure if today's will stay in the completed novel at all. I wasn't feeling that inspired...just felt I had to take advantage of the time to write. I just realized to my annoyance that I have prominent characters named Shay, Blade, and Paige, which all sound too similar--one syllable with the long a sound. I like all those names so I hate to change them, but Paige is the least important character so I guess I'll change hers, even though I thought it worked well, and leave the other two. I'll have to have a Paige in a different book.... posted by Alison | 7:02 PM I can't believe it. After putting off writing for about 2 days, I've stayed up until 2:15 writing again...and got nearly 4,000 words written in one writing session! And I even like most of them! I wrote for about 3.5 hours straight. I got the next two scenes down, plus a flashback scene, for a total of nearly 3,000 words, and then I updated my word count and was about to shut down for the night. I read back over what I'd written, & was worried because I'd gotten the main character into a completely new, upbeat tone of voice, but I'd already written some of the later parts and they were glum again, and I didn't know how I was going to get her back from happy to glum, or if I even should. Then it suddenly came to me, and in about half an hour I wrote 900 more words of a transition scene that brings her crashing back down somewhat from the happy scene before it. Too cool. posted by Alison | 2:24 AM Oh. Duh! I realized I already left clues in the first 15,000 words that people have tended to misunderstand my main character and jump to unfounded conclusions about her, without ever giving any examples. I wondered why I had even put that in there. Now I know! I'll bet I can come up with some past incident in which there was some big brouhaha about her, based on unfounded assumptions or accusations, that made her withdraw from the people around her. The subconscious mind is so fascinating. When I was little, I would sometimes try to come up with a completely random string of words that had nothing obvious to do with each other: camera, taco, submarine, lemur, peninsula, etc. My dad kept telling me it couldn't be done for any extended period, and that really irked me, so I kept trying. But I never managed to disprove him...five or six words into my list, I'd always come out with something with some sort of clear connection to one of the ones before it. My husband says that in studies, they've even given people lists of words randomly selected by a computer, asked them what the words had in common, and most of the time people could come up with some way to connect them or make sense of them together. Basically, our brains seek and generate patterns everywhere. They are always trying to make sense of things. The other night I got a flash of inspiration and suddenly knew who the new character was that I had wanted to introduce into my story. And I was amazed how that made lots of other pieces fit together in ways I hadn't consciously planned. So, I realized my brain is kind of like a big supercomputer, and I don't necessarily have to sit down and force myself to think up every possible plot twist or development in the novel...I just need to feed some pieces I want to fit together: Lydia, anti-social, guy in fedora, school, step-sister, and leave my brain to work it out and spit out the answer when its done. Except, of course, that with NaNo, I don't always have time to wait for it to work! posted by Alison | 3:00 PM I didn't write a single word yesterday, and I don't know how I can write one today, either, when I am confused what this whole novel is about or where it's going. My original plot ideas seem too flimsy and not interesting enough, and they don't really follow well from what I've set up so far. I also just started thinking that there may need to be more reason that my narrator, Lydia, is as anti-social as she has been. I've been trying to make her sound slightly more social in the last few parts I wrote, but now I'm thinking maybe something happened to push her to where she is now. More than just her father's divorce when she was 11, which had been the biggie up to now (she had been close to her step-sister, but when her dad got divorced, they were no longer step-sisters). Like, maybe she got ostracized at school for some reason, by people she either thought were her friends or just thought had never noticed her at all. So now she has built up resentments and/or feels she can't trust people. But I don't see her as someone who is ostracized now...so maybe it was just one big incident that left its scars. I don't know, but it seems like if I'm going to put something like that in there, it would have already needed to come up in the first 15,000 words! :-0 posted by Alison | 12:47 PM Thank goodness. After writing only 680 words yesterday, I wrote 0 all day today. This was even supposed to be a big writing day for me, since it's the day my kids go to Mother's Day Out in the morning. But my older son was sick & couldn't go, & I didn't get a thing done. I was so tired in the evening I just lay on the couch, & expected to go to bed with nothing written. I was about to shut the computer down--it was probably 12:30 or 1:00 am already (so not really the same day, but whatever)--and thought, heck, I ought to write at least one word on my novel! One word turned into more, and now I've been up until nearly 2:15 am already, but I got on a roll and got 1,440 more words written! Still not 1,667, but since I was expecting 0, I'm quite happy with it. Especially because I was actually enjoying the story for a change. I finally introduced the Dexter Monday character, and I really like him! So does my main character...more than I really wanted her to, actually. Hmm. And now this may open up a lot of new directions for the story. posted by Alison | 2:17 AM Two miracles have occurred. One is that I've managed to write something new on my story in the past day, even if it was only 255 words and I didn't quite make it by midnight. I did it exclusively by reading over everything I'd already written and padding it some more! I still can't think of what might happen next. But the second miracle is rather extraordinary: I read what I'd written so far without hating it as much as I feared I would! I even sort of liked my character. I did find I used the word "pathetic" a few times too many in it, though, which may be telling...! posted by Alison | 12:30 AM A few things that have been rattling around inside my head: - How come I can think of so much more to blog about than write about? I still haven't written a word on my novel today, with only 2.5 hours left in the day. But I've been taking notes for the blog! - Although I'm paralyzed by my active dislike of my story so far & my confusion of which direction to take the story in now, I'm starting to realize that with 37,000 words left to kill, I can afford to experiment a bit. So perhaps I can take my plot in one direction now and somewhere completely different later, and fix it all in revisions. - It's hard to type when your fingers are cold. Mine aren't working too well right now. - It also doesn't help that NaNoWriMo falls in a month when it's just started getting dark earlier. The early darkness, combined with the fact that it's uncharacteristically cool & rainy for Texas, puts me in kind of a dismal mood.) - It struck me that maybe my character needs something to love. Even if it's just music, or drawing, or a certain TV show...anything. She doesn't care about anything enough, so it's hard to find her sympathetic. Does a character need to love something? I said before I've thought of her as being a bit like Daria, and also like Enid from the movie Ghost World (though not nearly as well-realized as either of them!). Why do we care about their stories when neither of them seem to really love anything? - I've been bummed out lately by the tendency of writers to eat their own. One writing group I've frequented has some real "snipers," as one other person there called them, who like to rain on everyone's parade for whatever reason, and make it no fun to visit anymore. And over there, I was made to feel like a loser for not writing enough. But lately on the NaNo forums, I've noticed some griping about people writing too much--so you just can't win! People who write less than you are hopeless slackers, and people who write more are not like "the rest of us" or something. I don't think it's really prevalent yet, but in some NaNo discussions I've seen almost an us vs. them thing, with the strugglers venting about the people with higher than average word counts. I feel like one of the struggling "us," and hate the idea that just by getting off to a fast start, some people might see me as one of "them." I know I'm not in the 35,000-word category or something like that, but last I checked I was about number 51. I felt deflated by some of the attitudes I saw, like I wouldn't be welcome to gripe anymore. And maybe that's part of why I'm not writing. Like I want to drop down in the word count list so I'll still be one of the "us." The only reason to write a novel at the same time as 12,000 other people, in my view, is for the camaraderie, encouragement, support, and extra accountability and challenge, so I don't want to find myself without that sort of encouragement. - My 4-year-old started & finished a whole book today. It's called Shapes, & he made it for his best friend & plans to mail it to her. Not surprisingly, each page has a shape. Except for the last page, which has "a number thing." He wrote the names of each shape by copying them from other shapes books we have. Oddly, he wrote the word "rectangle" as a complete mirror image--right to left, with all the letters backwards. He didn't notice this until I pointed it out, & still didn't seem to quite get what I was saying. I have no idea what it means, if anything. - Is it cheesy to put a romance in my novel? I thought it was, and I was sure that my character was not going to be involved in any sort of romance, even if she has a few passing attractions. So far everyone around her seems to be pairing off, which was not my intention, but I was determined to keep her out of it, since it's definitely not a romance novel. But...I don't know, maybe it would help. When I was 15 (her age), I was completely hormonal. I couldn't not think in those terms. Although, as I'm typing this, I suddenly fail to remember why I was even wondering about this! I can't recall any potential romance I was considering for my main character. It does seem beside the point. I guess I was considering having her obsessing about someone from afar, but I'm not sure how that would add much right now. posted by Alison | 9:35 PM Remember the tortoise and the hare? I always wondered why the hare stupidly stopped to rest when he already had the race in the bag. Now I know. He was TIRED. Just like I am tired of this stupid novel after racing through 1/4 of it in just 3 days. I don't even want to think about it again right now. I'm going to try to force myself to do my 1,667 words sometime before bed tonight...but now is not that time. posted by Alison | 2:52 PM 13,201 words! I just realized I'm more than 1/4 of the way through my 50,000 words. Funny, the story doesn't feel 1/4 of the way done... I couldn't think of anything else to write for the moment, so I left my story off with a cliffhanger: "What I'm not prepared for is..." By tomorrow I'll have to figure out exactly what it is she's not prepared for! posted by Alison | 4:45 PM Dexter Monday hasn't made his way into my story. I can't figure out how, or if, he should. I even wore a t-shirt to bed last night that says "just researching my novel," as a cue to my brain to work on it while I slept, but it didn't work. I'm no longer racing through the story. I feel stuck. I've almost hit my 1,667-word daily quota today (103 words to go), but I'm not thousands of words up or anything, like I was yesterday. I'm just hating my story. I should have stuck to humor (what I usually write). My character hates her life in the first place, so who cares if more bad things happen to her? It can hardly make it worse. I think what I need to do is give her some hope--some real, strong, thrilling hope--and then threaten that hope. So it'll matter more what happens. Maybe that's where Dexter comes in... I have no idea. I originally saw my character as kind of like Daria from the cartoon show, but Daria is both funnier and smarter than my character, and she just deals with her sucky life instead of venting about it. It's not working out like I'd hoped. The question is, if I change it now, do I go back and revisit everything I've written before, and change what I already have? Or just start writing differently from here on out? Or go ahead & finish the 50,000 words in the mood & style I've started with, and then feel free to change it all violently during revisons? I wish I knew! posted by Alison | 3:23 PM Excellent! I know I'm up too late, but I not only got to 11,068 (!) words on my NaNo novel by the end of Day 2, but also wrote 1,424 words on my other novel--the one I've been blocked on for ages! I think I have Chapter 5 of that one now (though Chapter 3 is still a hideous mess and Chapter 4 needs a lot of work...). I still don't have chapter breaks for the new one. I've had this crazy, weird idea to add a whole new character to my NaNo novel. Not just a new character, but some sort of larger-than-life persona who might be a major influence throughout the book. Maybe even the catalyst for the plot or a major subplot! OR, not in there at all. I'm not sure yet. The book was just boring me to tears, so blah and predictable and angsty, and when I read on the NaNo forums that someone had a cat named Dexter, I suddenly pictured this guy: Dexter Monday. All I know about him is that he's charming and wears a fedora. I don't know if he's someone my main character knows in real life, or someone she knows about, like a local or national celebrity, or some fictional persona or someone she only knows from online. But I could picture him being some mythical person throughout the book, who somehow represents something she's grasping for. How, I don't know. Why, maybe just to liven things up. And to make this book about something other than my narrator's moaning. The problem is, I can't introduce something like that for the first time 11,000 words in! Not when anyone who's read that far will be expecting a completely different story. So I'd have to go back and insert references to him from the beginning. I don't think it would necessarily change what I've written significantly, but would just add more interspersed through the current scenes. But I still don't know who he is, so how can I write it? Sigh. Why couldn't I just continue as I was? And I might. In the light of day, after a night's sleep, it may seem like the stupidest idea ever, and I can merrily go about writing more of my crap. Or maybe my dreaming brain will come up with the perfect way this all fits together. But more likely, I'll still want to use the idea but will have no idea how to incorporate it, and won't be able to write a thing... posted by Alison | 1:41 AM I can't believe it. 10,446! I'm 20% of the way there! And of people who have reported their word count so far, I'm actually #31 in total word count! But it's so, so bad that I don't know how it can count... I think this may just be a typing exercise! I keep saying the same stupid thing over and over (that the narrator is afraid her dad is going to marry her annoying neighbor's mother), when I meant to just have that be a given from about the second chapter on. Ugh. It's not like it's suspenseful. This may end up being one very looooong character sketch. And why can't I write this much on my OTHER novel? I have yet to look at it today, but since I don't really want to finish my NaNo novel so early that the whole thing becomes anti-climactic, maybe I should switch to that one. It's hard, though. This one is easier because it doesn't count. posted by Alison | 4:20 PM 7248 words! I'm now more than 300 words above the word count of my previous longest document ever. It keeps coming out...and I still have more in mind to write on it right now. But unlike my previous longest document ever, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere! It's just narration. There are some scenes & some dialogue, but the character just keeps telling and telling and telling everything, instead of my showing you what the other characters are like. I know I'll never be able to fix this well, once I get 200 pages of this mess! The other odd thing is that I haven't been writing it in chapters...so far it's just one long document. If I started thinking of it in chapters, I fear I'd find it really didn't flow well enough to be broken up that way. Also, there doesn't seem to be enough going on in the story as it is. In my other novel-in-progress, there is both a surface plot and a deeper, emotional growth type of plot, but this one has the two levels too tied together. There isn't enough to hold reader interest. And I still worry my character just sounds like a brat. Eek. But I'm going to go with the flow for now.... I am going to try to write some on my other novel today, too, though! It may seem easier now, though it may be much harder since I actually care a great deal how that one turns out! posted by Alison | 1:47 PM For some reason, I've been able to keep writing & writing & writing. Probably because I haven't been pausing to think about it much. But I still don't think there's much, if anything, salvageable in it! The character probably isn't likable enough, and it's all about her. It's all in her head, for the most part. There's not nearly enough action, probably (though it'll be a "quiet" book in any case), and not enough suspense. No real reason for someone to keep turning the pages. Boo hoo. I've also surprised myself by writing most of this in first person present tense. I never thought I'd write a novel in present tense! Of course, there is a lot of past tense as she discusses things that happened before, but because of that it makes it really tricky, going back and forth between tenses. I would prefer to write in past tense but it has just come out this way (maybe because I'm used to blogging now, and a lot of that is in present tense?!), and when I tried to rewrite a couple of short passages in past tense, I couldn't get it to work. So I've continued in present. I'm up to 6294 words now! When I get 632 more words, I'll have more words in this novel than in the one I started 2.5 years ago! posted by Alison | 11:33 AM Midnight came and brought despair with it. I thought my fingers would be flying, but I sat there for probably 15 or 20 minutes, paralyzed, unable to type a thing. I finally referred to some old notes I had and managed to get it started. And then I ended up writing 1181 words by 2:30 am, and a few more with a notebook in bed around 3 am...and a lot more today so far. I'm really trucking on it now, but not at all sure there's anything salvageable in it! I have this fear that there's nothing about my narrator's personality or situation that would make anyone want to keep reading. The good thing is that writing does seem to beget writing, so that the more I write, the more my brain is working on the story and the more I have to write. Not that any of it is probably worth writing! posted by Alison | 4:52 PM Not even 12 more hours! Ack. I am SO not ready! I expected to have more of my life "in order" by now, so I'd be ready to start this! But it's not, and I'm not. I did go over some of my notes for it last night, but they just confused me more than I was before, and I fell asleep while I was still trying to figure out what my protagonist's father does for a living. I don't know how I'm going to start it. I haven't figured out my Palm keyboard very well yet (i.e., how to use the keyboard commands instead of a stylus, mouse, or touch pad). I don't have as free of a schedule as I'd hoped, since so many other things I meant to have done by now are still undone. And my toddler is sick! Yuck. We are still going to go trick-or-treating for a bit tonight, though... My kids are dressing as a frog & a bear. And I do plan to stay up for at least a while past midnight to start the novel! I'm going to try to view it as "typing" 50,000 words, since that sounds so much easier than "writing" 50,000 words! ;-) posted by Alison | 12:35 PM
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