NaNo-No-Mo

If any of you have been wondering where the November flood of fiction is, I'm sorry. No Nanowrimo for me this year. The last two years were fun, but this time I'm just not feeling up to it in terms of time, energy or ideas. I still have mixed feelings about not doing it, though. On the one hand it was a definite relief to make that decision, but on the other, writing entire novels is really cool and it's a lot of fun to have done once it's over. Oh well. It would be nice to find some other creative project to work on, though. ("How about making an elemeter baromophant?" I hear you suggest. Good idea, but I've already got one.)

If nothing else, I should at least post to my blog more often. (NaBloPoMo, anyone?)

NaNoFinito!

50,160 words, that's what I ended up with for this year's November novel. You can read the whole giant mess of it here. Further comments on it all may come later, when I feel like typing more. In the meantime, I'm going to go do something other than write, and you may commence dispensing the praise, admiration and accolades.

Writing Time

One of the big things about NaNoWriMo is dealing with time. It seems as though evenings after work are both incredibly short and incredibly long when you know you have to write 1700+ words before you go to sleep. It's weird.

Also, I'm at around 35,000 words right now, and I still don't know if I'm going to run out of stuff early, or stall too long and have trouble wrapping it up in time. I'm not precisely sure how it's all going to work out, even now. (Think it's suspenseful for a reader? It's even worse from over here in the author's seat.)

The Beginning

Here we are at Day One, and the new novel has begun. Read along if you like at NanoGraham (site feed).

All Novel's Eve

Here it is again, the night before November. I've managed to work up some various bits of ideas for the next novel, luckily. No title, but some character names, situations, and the beginnings of a plot. Not enough to keep me from being nervous, but it should do. I won't be able to start writing until at least 8 PM tomorrow night, I'm afraid, but the first installment should be posted towards the end of the evening.

As for Halloween, the scariest part of tonight involved hula dancing. Two itty bitty girls dressed as hula dancers came trick-or-treating, and we asked them (very nicely) if they wanted to dance for us. They seemed too shy, so a bunch of us (three or four grownups) started humming encouragingly and waving our arms and shaking our hips in typical pseudo-hula fashion. The girls actually hid behind their mom and wouldn't take candy from us. I had to go put candy in the bags for them while I apologized. I felt very bad about it, though it was hilarious as well.

Ideas! I Need Ideas!

I've got about two weeks now until November. Meaning I'm in the pre-writing worry stage of this year's NaNoWriMo novel. It would be really nice right now to start getting some plot ideas. Or at least some characters. Or really, at a bare minimum, some decent names for characters, just so I can at least have someone to write about once I jump blindly in. Unfortunately, I tend to balk at actually thinking about these sorts of things, and my brain shuts off. Though actually, I'm okay on coming up with little ideas, things like an interesting scene, or a magical object. But what I need is some sort of general framework that I'll be able to stick those sorts of things into. Right now the most I can say is that it will very probably be another magic-realism sort of thing (a la Charles de Lint, or Neil Gaiman) because that's the sort of thing I like and most want to write. Other than that, suggestions are extremely welcome. :-)

In other NaNoWriMo news, I've so far got three other people I know planning on tackling it. Any other takers? It'll be fun, really.

Na-No-Again-Mo?

So it's getting to be that time of year again. National Novel Writing Month begins on November 1, and signups started a few days ago (minus some server downtime). I've been having very mixed feelings about it recently, to tell the truth. A great deal of me would both love to do it again and love not to.

I think that approaching it for the second time might actually be harder than the first. The first time around, you don't know if you can do it at all. And if it turns out you can't, well, an awful lot of people have never written a novel. You can just remain one of them. But now that I've actually done it once already, I'm in a bit of a pickle. If I don't make it through this time, then I'll learn that I can no longer do something I could do a year ago. And really, I have no clue if I'll be able to manage another book or not. So that's a bit scary, without even factoring in the time and effort involved (each considerable).

On the other hand, it was awesome to actually write an entire novel of my very own. I rarely get to do creative work of any kind on that scale, and it's an incredible feeling when you come out the other end of it and realize what you've accomplished. The insecure artist inside me really wants that boost.

Anyway, what it works out to is that I did go ahead and sign up. And over the next month I will hope and pray that I'll come up with something resembling a character or even (gasp!) a plot. And then we'll see what happens in November.

Watch His Writing

Since I mentioned the other day a category of "books that make me want to write," I'll go ahead and give Watch Your Mouth, by Daniel Handler, as an example. I've read certain other books written by this author under a certain other pseudonym, and I was very curious to see what sort of stuff his alter ego came up with. I chose this book only because it was what the library happened to have in stock the day I was there. It turned out to be excellent. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first, given the somewhat excessive horny-college-kids and incestuous-family themes. But it worked out to be a kind of fascinating web of complex crazy people, with a monster story mixed in for good measure. So it really stayed intensely interesting all the way through.

The structure of the whole book was extremely unique, which I liked. (There's nothing wrong with a nice, standard, straight-through story, but I'm always intrigued by new ways of putting things together.) A little over half of it is written like an opera written like a novel, and the rest of it is like a 12 step recovery program. Sounds bizarre (especially since I didn't realize that the opera was going to end midway through the book) but somehow it really works. The opera section in particular had some really brilliant moments. The story-telling version and the opera version blend in interesting ways, and some of the descriptions really tickle me. Such as at one particular (ahem) climax of a scene, where he says "seizuring so hard that the orchestra has to extend its budget and hire some additional percussionists just for these ten measures or so."

Another smaller scale thing that I liked was a twisting of perspective within sentences. As an example, the narrator was in a diner when he found out that he needed to go somewhere a couple exits farther up the freeway. He says "I signalled for the check and then for the left-hand turn at the end of the ramp." The driving doesn't need to be mentioned, but he makes the ignoring of it interesting, by slipping it in there and sharing the signalling between the check and the turn signal. When he gets there, he says "I parked in a lot crammed with mid-life crisis cars, red and shiny and probably divorced," describing the drivers by describing the cars. The book throughout is filled with clever little bits like that.

So anyway, great book all around, and a good example of some of the things that make me want to have the kind of creativity that produces novels. In unrelated news, Book 12 of A Series of Unfortunate Events is coming out on October 18th. I will be looking forward to that.

Rebibliomorphing

I took a look at my NaNoWriMo novel tonight for the first time since November. I want to get it printed up at Cafe Press so it can be like a real book, rather than just a Pinocchio blog-book. I've been thinking about doing a major editing process on it, but I just can't quite work up that much motivation or time. I'm thinking it's interesting enough as it is, as an artefact of my first novelling attempt, and I don't have any particular hopes for it beyond that. So what I'm doing for now is just rereading the whole thing, and giving myself permission to make slight alterations as I deem necessary, without feeling pressured to do major revisions. Then I'll get it formatted up all book-like and anybody who wants one can get a copy. Haven't decided on a cover yet (any suggestions?).

I'm not very far into the rereading yet, but it's comforting that so far it hasn't made me cringe (at least not too severely). It's neat to be reading it as an actual, complete story, flaws and all.

NaNo-Done-Mo

November is over, and I have a new novel. Wow. Anyone who's interested can download the entire thing here: Bibliomorph.pdf (348kb). Final word count: 50,895. Right now, my main reaction to it all is that I'm glad I'm done. It's been a lot of writing and I was really ready to be finished with it. But unlike banging one's head against a wall, I'm also glad to have done it for reasons besides the fact that I got to stop.

It's pretty darn incredible to stop and think that I have actually written an entire novel. After the first chapter or two I had probably already surpassed the entire fiction output of my life up until that point, but I ended up getting it to 170+ pages. It's not going to be winning any awards or anything, but it's one long coherent story and it still completely boggles my mind that I was able to do that at all.

I'm also going to be reading novels entirely differently now that I have some first-hand experience of what goes into actually writing one. Already I find myself noticing and paying attention to more and different things because of the way I can imagine myself in the author's place. And I like that.

Thanks to everyone who read along and/or encouraged me as I went. It was a little nerve wracking at times to think that people would actually read the stuff I was spewing out, but it also helped me get things done, knowing that someone was waiting for the next installment. And I really appreciated the support and occasional brainstorming assistance. Congratulations also to Andrea, who finished a few days ago, and to Chris, who should finish tonight after he writes the last 7,500 (!) words.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

NaNoWriMoPlaLi

Just for fun, I started putting together a NaNoWriMo-themed playlist. These aren't things I listen to while I'm writing -- I've actually been finding silence better for that. But just songs that seem amusingly related somehow. The Mark Graham songs are the ones that got me started on this. So here's my list. Any other suggestions?

• Mark Graham: Monkey with a Typewriter, Life is Hard When You're Dumb
• The Beatles: Paperback Writer
• Elvis Costello: Every Day I Write the Book
• Sheryl Crow: The Book
• Moxy Früvous: My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors
• Prokofiev: Suggestion Diabolique (whose idea was all this, anyway?)
• Tom Waits: November, Looks Like I'm Up Shit Creek Again
• They Might Be Giants: Impossible, No One Knows My Plan, I'm All You Think About (to be sung by the novel), Memo to Human Resources (for the line "I'm busy taking stock of all the things that I've forgot / And making mental notes of just exactly where I lost the plot")

37,320 / 50,000

One of these days I'll get back to posting something other than NaNoWriMo updates. But "one of these days" will probably be December. I periodically have other things I want to post about, but no extra writing energy to actually do it. In the meantime, yeah, the story's still going on. It seems to be going pretty well sometimes (and less well at other times) and it's pretty cool even to have gotten this far. I just have to keep myself going until the end, and resist the temptation to summarize the rest of the novel in a few paragraphs.

Halfway

Writing was a bit of a slog today, but I managed to clear the 25,000 word mark in my novel a full day early. Very cool. Too tired right now to write any more than that.

6,956 / 50,000

That's the word count on my novel so far. A little behind schedule, but I've decided I'm mostly going to focus on word count milestones at the end of each weekend. That way I can use the extra weekend time to make up whatever writing I didn't manage during the week. So I've got about 5,000 words planned for the next couple of days.

So far, all this writing has been surprisingly fun. It's a little worrisome during the day when I'm not actually writing, because I don't really know what I'm going to do next. But once I get home and start typing, things start happening. Pretty neat. I just hope it keeps up, though. 'Cause I'm gonna need it.

The thing I find myself wondering about the most right now is pacing. I've never written anything remotely this big, so it's hard to tell whether I'm dragging stuff out too much or whether I'm going to run out of material before I get something that's actually novel-length. I know I started out kind of slower than I meant to -- I wasn't feeling very dramatic on November 1st, so I mostly just did a lot of background info. I think it's been picking up since then. I'll probably have to just reread the whole thing in December though. I'm too much in the middle of it right now to tell.

As for the physical act of writing itself, I've found an interesting way to get myself to be more productive. Sitting at a desk to type something like this just doesn't work for me at all. It's too easy to stand up and pace the room, which makes it hard to type and leads to distractions. Plus, my desk here at home isn't terribly ergonomic. But I've got a laptop! This is wonderful. I can just unplug it from anything and make myself cozy on the futon, sitting up with pillows and blankets and a cup of tea, and then type right on my lap. It's more comfortable for my body and it puts my hands in a better position. Being underneath my computer makes me less inclined to get up without a pressing reason. And only having a trackpad mouse (which I don't care for much) means I'm less likely to waste time checking email or surfing the web. It's easier to just type. So that's all pretty good.

Anyway, I'm heading off to Friday Night Waltz pretty soon, having managed to squeeze out another thousand words since I got home from work. Then it will be a weekend of typing.

The Scariest Thing About Halloween

Is that it's right before November. NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow and this is the point at which I really start wondering what I'm getting myself into. I have no concept of what it's like trying to write 50,000 words at all, much less all in one month. But I guess I'll be finding out soon enough. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Right. I'll just keep telling myself that.

Anyway, for those of you with a morbid curiosity in bad writing, you can follow along as I blog the whole thing over at NanoGraham. Note that I will be posting pure, unedited trash, so brace yourselves accordingly. Posting over here on the regular blog may be rather sparse for a while.

I'm opting for a good night's sleep tonight, rather than starting right at midnight. Unfortunately though, I may get a bit of a slow start tomorrow. I've got to go to work of course, and then I've got my class afterwards, so I probably won't get a chance to write anything until at least 9:30 p.m. But we'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck!

Blogging Your Novel

My new Blogger Knowledge article is out: Blogging Your Novel Part Two. (Biz did Part One last week.) It's got a bunch of tips for people doing NaNoWriMo on their blogs as well as for people who already have entire books that they want to publish. Check it out if you're at all interested in that kind of thing.

The Two Magna Cartas of Novel Writing

I was rereading some of No Plot? No Problem! this weekend, in preparation for November starting in just a few more days. One interesting exercise in it involves making two lists, which Baty refers to as the "Magna Cartas" of novel writing. In the first list, you write down what makes a good novel, in your mind. Items can be as vague or specific as you want. The second list is the opposite -- everything that bores you or that you dislike in novels. These lists are very handy to have when working on your own fiction. Chances are, the things you like and admire most about other people's books will be the things you'll have the best chance of doing well in your own book. And the list of negatives reminds you to keep an eye out for things which could kill your writing momentum if they start sneaking in.

Here's the initial version (probably subject to additions) of my "Magna Carta I," the good list:

• Journal / notebook style (e.g. Any Human Heart, The Tattooed Map)
• Supplementary drawings, documents, footnotes etc. (e.g. The Tattooed Map again, Off the Road, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
  
• Humor
• Unusual, unexpected, but perfect descriptions (e.g. Douglas Adams)
• Characters I can relate to, that exemplify or acquire traits or attributes I want for myself
  
• Background stories / information (e.g. The Princess Bride)
• Good first lines that hook you in
• Magic interacting with everyday life (e.g. Charles de Lint)
• Magical artifacts (e.g. the pensieve and Tom Riddle's diary from the Harry Potter books)
  
• Self-aware main characters

It's evil twin "Magna Carta II," is a bit shorter so far. I think this is probably because I don't spend much time these days reading books I don't like. But here it is:

• Dull or boring writing (I'd like to think of a way to define this better)
• Obscure point (yes, this is relative to my analytic skills)
• Inaccurate technical references (e.g. to music)
• Characters who make things overly difficult for themselves (i.e. in ways that I think are too obvious)
  
• Protagonists that die
• Self-referential writing (possibly excepting fiction posing as non-fiction, as in A Series of Unfortunate Events)

OEDILF

This is just wonderful: The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form. The only disappointment was to find that they are only working on a limited set of words at a time -- Aa to Ar right now. So I can't submit the entry I already had for "waltz" (and it'll probably be a very long time before I can). Still, I can see myself spending an inordinate amount of time writing limericks for this thing.

NaNoBlogMo

Biz came out with a new Blogger Knowledge article today, in preparation for National Novel Writing Month: Blogging Your Novel (Part One). I'm working on Part Two, which will appear next week. I've also created NaNoBlogMo, a new blog to gather together participants who want to blog their novels. It'll be a place to browse through and see what everybody is writing about. And if you're going to be blogging your own progress through November or posting a completed novel, you can fill out a form there and I'll add you to the listings. (Assuming I don't get entirely swamped -- we've already had a lot of submissions just since this afternoon.)

NaNoWriMo and the Magic of Deadlines

Signups for National Novel Writing Month opened today. If you haven't heard of this before, idea behind it is for participants to write 50,000+ words of fiction each during the month of November. This works out to something like 6 or 7 pages a day, so it's not a small job. You don't get any prize for passing the word count except a PDF certificate to print out and, of course, your very own novel. But I'd say that's enough. Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, has a new book out: No Plot? No Problem! It's all about writing a novel in 30 days, and it's excellent. Amusing, inspiring and encouraging all at the same time, so definitely recommended for anyone interested in trying this.

The genius of it all is in the deadline. A great many people daydream or talk about writing a novel "some day," but very few actually do. Being given a mere month to write an entire novel basically gives people permission to write complete crap if they need to, as long as they write enough. And that gets them through the hardest part of novel writing -- getting started and getting the bulk of the text written. Plus, if lots of other people are doing the same thing during the same month, you can get people together for writing parties and support groups and whatnot, which helps, too. When it's all over, you can decide to go on to edit and revise your novel, and try to make it something worth actually reading. Or you can just let it all go as having been a fun exercise in creativity. Whatever.

I'm signed up for it, so I'm going to give it a shot. I haven't a clue whether or not I can actually do it, and it's moderately terrifying to think about. But on the other hand, it could be extremely cool. What have I got to lose, anyway? Andrea, one of my cube-mates, is going to do it too, so we can encourage each other through it.

The rules are that you can think up characters and plot outlines and such ahead of time, but you can't write any prose until 12:00:01 am November 1st. So I will happily accept any ideas people might want to throw my way. What should I write a novel about?