Time to Write.

30_days_insane @ 2008-11-08T10:54:00

2008-11-08T15:56:10Z

I know I'm behind, but I've cracked the 10,000 word mark and I am happy.

30_days_insane @ 2008-11-07T10:18:00

2008-11-07T15:21:12Z

I'm about one day behind. Writing at work has actually been an amazing boon to me, since I am able to do less and less writing at home nowadays. I'm starting to think that now that the seeds have been sown - I can be productive at work, I'm getting back into the habit of sitting down every day and writing - if perhaps I should continue to bring my laptop to work with me long after NaNo time is over.

The plot is progressing, althought he pacing sucks - I am not cut from novelling cloth, I am a short story writer through and through. However, plot is happening, even if it slow and boring and horrifically paced. The story is moving, and I'm finally approaching th moment that spurred the entire idea of the novel on.

I may not get to it today, really, but I will get to it soon, and I am excited about it.

Hope all goes well for you.

30_days_insane @ 2008-11-05T09:50:00

2008-11-05T14:50:08Z

I can see myself falling into the trap I fall into so often during NaNo; I fall behind (4000 or so word behind at this point, since I wasn’t able to really start until yesterday) and even though I have a moderate level of enthusiasm for what I’m writing, thinking about catching up is starting to make me anxious and is discouraging me.

I know the whole purpose of the month is to “just write;” there’s a word count goal, sure, but even if you fall short of the goal, you are to have experienced “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” (which is like, the best slogan ever).

The problem is, I either get so caught up in the word count that I wind up writing these long-winded passages that lead nowhere and don’t add anything significant to what is always and already thin plot, or I get so caught up in making the story move along so that I don’t fall into the above trap, my writing become scarce and minimalist (but not in a good way like Hemingway) – “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.”

The one good thing is that while I was writing yesterday, subplots and minor conflicts began to come to light in my mind; I feel like some of what’s going to happen is a little clearer now, given what I put down yesterday. \

I realized that Joy is not going to be her best friends’ darling, that they will be jealous of her exposure, and even her friend’s boss will resent her for taking business away from his bakery; her family will be bitter because of the way the film crew wants to portray them in the movie they’re producing; Joy will not be able to content herself completely with just the affections of the boy she thinks is into her… I’ve got a few things going on that weren’t even a glimmer yesterday.

But 4000 is such a daunting number – even though when I was in college, taking Creative Writing, I’d do that as an assignment all the time (4500 word stories). Something about knowing that I have to fit it into a coherent narrative (some NaNo-ers will no doubt say I don’t; that it doesn’t have to make sense, and that’s what December is for – while I try to stay true to most of the NaNo credo (no plot no problem, silence the inner editor, no deleting), that’s one thing I stand firm on – it has to be a coherent part of the story) makes it all the more challenging; I can’t just do a four thousand word free write, which would be all right, I suppose – I have to do four thousand words that somehow mesh with the four thousand I already have.

I’ve got a few hours today at work in which I will be free to work on my NaNo, since Kurzweil Support is bust until we get a new scanner and I’m fairly uninvolved in Band (I just need to find an electric outlet in the Band Room). I’ll report back later about how that went.

Hope your NaNo’s are going well. Cheers.

30_days_insane @ 2008-11-03T09:44:00

2008-11-03T14:46:07Z

Every year when November rolls around, I start to feel a little isolated in my novelling endeavor, which is always, ironically, exacerbated by visiting the forums, because I can’t escape the feeling that I am the only (or at least in the minority) people writing non-genre fiction.

It’s not that I have some vendetta against genre fiction (genre fiction, for the purposes of this post, meaning sci-fi, fantasy, or horror); several of my favorite authors – Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King – write in those respective genres. It’s just that, while I enjoy reading it, it’s not something I feel inclined to write about. I don’t know if I feel that it requires a level of devotion and/or inventiveness that I’m lacking (or at least, that I would be hard pressed to conjure up in the thirty day time limit), or if I just feel too self-concious when it comes to world-creating, but I’ve always felt more comfortable creating a microcosm for my characters within the macrocosm of the already existing universe.

This year I’ve opted to write a Young Adult (YA) novel, but I’m sticking with a non-genre work yet again – this will not be a Harry Potter or His Dark Materials so much as it will be a Princess Diaries or Perks of Being a Wallflower (two grossly incongruent novels, I know, but both falling under the same “general YA fiction” umbrella). Part of that decision is knowing what my preference as a young adult – and often even as an adult – were.

As a teenager – and this is going to sound cliché, but bear with me – the most important thing about a book was that it had to have something in it that I could relate to. Now I’m not saying that fanatasy or sci-fi, especially when well-written, won’t have elements that “ring” true for some people, just that – in general, and I know this is a broad statement – I don’t feel that’s usually the point of the novel. Or, when it is, it’s “truth” on a more esoteric level – not that there’s not a great deal of value in that, but when I was younger, I was more interested in truth on a personal level, sometimes even on a level so seemingly insignifigant, I feel like people would laugh at me if I told them what I meant – but of course, I’ll do that anyway.

When I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, there were passages that stood out, not because I had experience those events first hand, but because I knew they were grounded in my reality, and because the narrator spoke in a voice that sounded, at the time, like my own – that had I been in similar circumstances, I would have likely made the same observations. When I came across a passage like this:

…there is a feeling that I had friday night after the homecoming game that I don’t know if I will ever be able to describe except to say that it is warm. Sam and Patrick drove me to the party that night, and I at in the middle of Sam’s pickup truck. Sam loves her pickup truck because I think it reminds her of her dad. The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word “baby” in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy and we all got quiet.
Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the care and made air waves. And I just sat between then. After the song finished, I said something.
“I feel infinite.”
And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record, and I would tell you what it was, but truthfully, it’s not the same unless you’re driving to your first real party, and you’re sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two people when it starts to rain.

I’ve lived that moment. I’ve felt that feeling, and it’s a wonderful experience to read a passage and to feel it again; to have it recalled so fully and so vividly. It’s a non-event, a car ride with two friends; but it’s so evocative of a moment – or a period – in my life that I can’t help but still, years later, read that passage and be blown away by how wonderfully he captured it, and how he did it in a voice that rang true as a teenage boy to a (then) teenaged girl.

So I’m hoping there will be parts of my novel – though it will be, in tone, closer to The Princess Diaries than Perks – will have that note of truth to some people. And I hope someone else can appreciate my choice of non-genre writing and why I choose to do it.

30_days_insane @ 2008-11-01T08:58:00

2008-11-01T14:56:15Z

Ten hours into NaNoWriMo 2008 and I haven't begun yet, and likely won't for the rest of the day. However, as this is par for the course for my Novembers, and since I have such a positive feeling about my novel this year, I'm not letting it bother me.

(By positive feeling, I mean more that I have a good sense of my character, my voice, and the general tone of the novel - I've only got about two pages worth of plot, total).

This year, I will apparently also be novelling with my boyfriend, who has decided, rather spur of the moment, that it would be a Cool Thing to Do™. This may be the motivation I need to continue writing even when the complete and utter suckitude of my story becomes apparent 'round about November 15th or so, lest I suffer his mocking.

For those new people joining me this November, welcome; for those people joining NaNoWriMo for the first time, welcome as well.

I'll probably not be posting excerpts up here as a generl rule, but like all rues, there may be exceptions. Like previous years, this will likely be a place only to vent my own frustrations (when it might be slightly inappropriate to do so on the official forums) and to recount the issues that are unique to writing a massive work of fiction in only thirty days.

Happy novelling.