I had to work late tonight and so got a late start on the evening. I didn’t read any of my novel, which I’d hoped to do.
I did work a bit more on the creation myth, but my heart wasn’t really in it.
Not to mention my eyes are tearing like mad making it very hard to see. I have something stuck in there and haven’t been able to get it out all day. Yes, excuses, excuses…
Last day of winter vacation for me. It’ll be a bit of a challenge fitting writing time in during the work week.
Today I started reading my NaNovel, as per the instructions in No Plot, No Problem. No red pen in hand. Just reading it to see if its worth salvaging or if it just gets to die a quiet death. So far I think there’s potential there.
And I started writing the creation mythology for the world the NaNovel takes place in, which is kind of fun. I get to create gods and devils and so forth!
So today is January 1st. Time for New Year’s Resolutions, fresh starts, and all that jazz.
I’ve been a real slug through all of December and I’m feeling guilty as hell, but maybe that guilt can motivate me now. I mean to write a lot this year. And to help give me incentive I’ve decided to keep a journal of what I’ve gotten done. I was going to start a new blog for it or something, but I update dragonchasers so infrequently these days that I figured I could do it here by just setting up a new category, which I have done. This is the first post tagged with it.
So what did I accomplish on Day 1 of the year, from a writer’s perspective? Well, for one I printed out The Fading Groves, which is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. Second, I joined NaNoWriYe which as you might guess stands for National Novel Writing Year. It isn’t nearly as slick as NaNoWriMo, but some of the friends I made during WriMo have gone there and I went to throw my lot in with them. I’ve chosen the 250 thousand word tier. OK, they chose it and I followed along. 🙂
Third, I dug out No Plot, No Problem to refresh myself on the steps to take with your NaNovel once its rested a bit. Mine’s rested quite long enough. And lastly, I started to document the world that Groves takes place in. Need to get a concrete list of characters, countries, expletives, gods and goddesses and all kinds of good stuff.
New Year’s Resolutions:
To write at least 5 days every week (and preferably 7)
To be more active in OFF-SFF and do at least one critique/week.
To read more. In particular writing books, but books in general.
So that’s about it for now. Today was kind of a ‘setting up’ day since New Year’s really crept up on me.
Tomorrow the work starts.
The careful observer will notice that I deleted Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Woolridge, from my “Reading” column over on the left. And yet, no review… what could possibly be happening!!?
I’ll tell you what. The books was so saccharine and fluffy and downright insipid that it actually made me angry to read it! Seriously, this woman lives in some kind of fantasy land, and I simply couldn’t stomach it.
Its full of advice like “Cut words out of magazines and paste them to cardboard. Label things around you! Label your refridgerator “Some pig”! And she goes on to regale us with stories of how much her children loved cutting out words and labeling things around the house. It was like a Captain Kangaroo flashback.
Gaah, that’s just one example and already I feel the need to take a shower. But I can’t judge the book because for some fluffy little bunnies who want to write poems about children playing in the rain and flowers and home baked cookies, its probably a fine book. I just prefer my poetry to have some depth…
So a week ago right about now I finished the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel. See my fancy badge over there? Yay me!
At the time it all felt rather underwhelming, honestly. Almost anti-climactic.
But since then, and you’ll think this is silly I have no doubt, but since then I’ve felt different. I see things, some of the time, with a different set of eyes. I read something in the paper or overhear people talking and I start imagining the events fit into one of my stories, usually with a twist.
Its cool. I don’t know how to keep this feeling, though, and I fear it’ll slip away. I guess I just have to keep on writing!
Well, this isn’t really the next step, its a few steps out, but space is limited, first come, first served, and all that rot.
I just bought a membership to the World Fantasy Convention that is being held next November (yes, a year off) in Austin, TX.
If you’re a fantasy fan, the list of attendees should interest you. Mike Stackpole says that this is the place to go to meet editors and other authors who might help you to get a book published.
And no, I don’t really imagine I’ll have a book in publishable form by then, but I still want to start networking…
Having finished writing my NaNoWriMo novel, I sat down to read the final chapters of No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. The book is all about writing a novel in a month, and though it says you can pick any old month, it was clearly designed to promote and/or accompany nanowrimo.org. And I was forbidden to read these last chapters until after I finished!
Baty has a lot of fun with the book and its a nice read even if you’re not intending to do NaNo. He walks you through getting ready to write, coming up with a starting point, and then sends you off. But the back part of the book has a chapter for each week of November, and it was uncanny how accurate they were. When he said I’d be struggling…I was struggling! When he said words would be flying by, they were.
The end of the book talks about next steps. Determining if your NaNovel is worth polishing into a finished novel or not, and if it is, how to go about doing that. (Interestingly, he suggests it’ll take about a year to do re-writes on the book you wrote in a month!)
Throughout this month-long process, No Plot? No Problem! has offered tips as well as inspiration. Doing NaNoWriMo would be really freakin’ hard on your own, I think. I was lucky enough to have friends who supported me in ways beyond imagining. But if you were on a desert island, cut off from humanity, this book could serve as your friend and cheerleader.
Absolutely recommended, but probably not until next fall when you’re gearing up for NaNo. (I’ll be re-reading it then, too.)
And so it comes to an end.
The last 5000 words were almost physically painful. I ran out of story before I ran out of words. In a real world setting, the difference between 48000 words and 50000 probably wouldn’t be that big a deal, but dammit I wanted 50000!
So I went back to the beginning and started editing/adding. But it felt like every time I added something, I cut another bit. Finally at 49,200 words I said ‘screw it’ and went back and gave my main character and his love interest an explicit love scene.
If I were ever to try to make this into a sellable novel I’d clip that bit out since it doesn’t really fit in with the tone of the story, but then I’m sure in the course of editing the whole thing I’d make a lot of additions and changes and who knows where the word count would end up.
But I wanted to hit 50K today. I got out of bed, started writing, and aside from 1 or 2 very brief breaks, I’ve been sitting here every since (its almost 4 now). I just NEEDED to finish!
I wish I hadn’t had to go cheap with the sex scene, though. But oh well. I need to get up and stretch. 🙂
Did a lot of chores on the way home from work, so got a late start. And I still have some things to do around the house; basically I’m trying to get the weekend free for one last big push.
Still, I broke the 40K barrier. And, amazingly, I think I have just enough story left to carry my through to 50K.
I’m really going to do this, dammit. I’m fucking amazed…
This link is NOT work or child safe:
iBuzz
The music-activated orgasm machine!