I just had to put down the book I’m reading to jot down ideas for a story. I can’t remember a time that this has ever happened to me. I’m going to celebrate my little victories while I can.
And yes, this is a horrible waste of a post but guess what? That’s right. This is my blog, not yours.
True to my nature, I finished NaNoWriMo by writing about 23,000 words in two and a half days. It was exhausting and it is seriously obvious. I rushed through the end and randomly switched scenes and jumped through time like a Time Lord. But I finished! Now I can relax.
I feel good, having finished. The writing is horrible but I did accomplish something. That’s the point, right?
In other news, I finished Atonement today. I had only ever seen the movie and of course, I preferred the book. I can see why some people wouldn’t like it (our copy was free and whoever owned it before wrote really stupid things in the margins) but it was what I needed to read at that time. It really refreshed my brain. Now to finish The Dharma Bums now that Indie Goddess has finished it.
First of all, today is my brother’s birthday. I’m a horrible sister because not only did I not get him a gift or a card, I only sent him a text message telling him happy birthday and I don’t even think he gets those. I need to send him an email, or better yet, write him a damn letter. I’ll get right on that! Tomorrow (or rather, later today, as it is past midnight – also note, I’ve set my time all wonky on this blog so it’s not almost 5am when I’m writing this)!
Erm. Where was I?
Oh yes. NaNoWriMo. After playing mondo catch-up yesterday, I’m feeling better about things overall today. Compared to the (still small) sum I wrote yesterday (over 6k!), today’s goal of just under 1,667 words felt like a damn cake walk. I think I’m partially buoyed by finally surpassing 25,000 words, a few minor changes in my brain over the past few days, and the fact that I can come back to all of this later and make it not suck so much.
Tonight as I tied up my loose ends around my daily goal, I realized that the problem that’s been plaguing me – how to get my boring ass story to skip a rather large segment of time without using something as stupid as “eight months later” – was easily solvable. So I typed up my last sentence, hit enter twice, and typed in all caps: PART TWO. Ha ha ha ha! Take that, sluggish storyline!
Fifteen minutes ago I felt like I could work on it some more, but now I am almost unreasonably tired. This whole being on a somewhat normal sleeping schedule is totally cramping my creativity.
I’m writing this on my ten minute nanowrimo breaks, so if it skips around a lot, that’s why.
You’ll notice a sad lack of updates! That’s because I wanted nothing to do with words of any sort. I just shut down mentally most of last week and this weekend. I was really frustrated by my lack of motivation and discipline. I think over the past five days or so, I wrote about 300 words. The thing is, I like my story. Maybe I don’t like how I’m writing it, necessarily (I mean, seriously. I’m writing at like, a second grade level. Pah), but I like the idea itself. I like my characters a lot. I just can’t find the motivation. Or couldn’t. Today is a pretty day, I was up early for some job search-related things and I ran lots of errands into the early afternoon. It has helped! My brain feels a little less cluttered and obsessed with shit I need to get done URGENTLY.
Okay, so I didn’t write on my breaks. I signed up for Reddit and read Tumblr instead. Whatever. But the good news is, I’m over the halfway point now! 25,587. I wrote 6,078 words today. I’m feeling pretty damn good. Might write a teeny bit more later but right now, I need to use the bathroom and get some food. I are hungry.
I didn’t post yesterday. Shame on me! But that’s okay, I had absolutely nothing to say. Writing went better than expected but I only overshot the day’s goal by about a hundred words. However, it did only take me about half an hour.
Today has gone slightly better. I’m a few hundred ahead already and finally my characters have decided it’s time to move the plot forward. I think I worried them so much in the beginning with having it last 50k words that they started wasting lots of time doing nothing. But now, things are moving forward, so I’m going to celebrate that. There’s still a lot of story left to tell!
We discovered an excellent snack tonight that I think everyone needs to try straight away (barring any allergies to the ingredients): plain animal crackers dipped in peanut butter and honey. It is so good y’all. SERIOUSLY.
The stupid NaNoWriMo website doesn’t observe the time change, so it jacked all of my stats for today once it passed 11pm. So now it’s telling me that I’m all behind and I’m not going to finish until December even though I am totally on track! What a jerky thing that website is.
Writing today’s 1667 was really easy. I hate that I’m skating by on the minimum but hey, whatever gets it done, right? Anyway, I let my characters do what they wanted and ramble about what they wanted to ramble about (seriously, Elias, shut up about Dallas already, geez). That made the word count easy to reach.
I’m really tired right now, so I’m going to turn in. My temp job ended this evening and it was really disappointing, as we got none of the overtime we were told we’d get and we barely even got full-time hours the entire project. Tomorrow is a well-deserved (at least in my mind) day off, which I plan to spend writing.
Total word count: 11,761.
I wrote a little over 4,000 words today, which is better than I’ve done so far this month. Hooray! It was tough. I just can’t get into it yet. I know that will change and I just need to keep plugging away at it until I hit that place but I hope it comes soon because I’m starting to get discouraged.
We did ten on, ten off tonight (ten minute sprints followed by ten minute break and so on) and on the fifth (fourth?) one, I knew it had to be the last. My fingers weren’t going where they needed on the keyboard and my brain was like “X said this. Y did this. X reacted like this.” and I hate when my brain gets to that place. Fortunately, that last sprint put me about a hundred words over the daily goal. Now it’s time for sleep and popcorn. Not in that order.
So peace out, friends. See you another day.
Every year I mean to update this blog daily with my trials and tribulations of novel writing. I’m six days late! Let’s hope I can keep up. In my defense, my temp job has been craaaazy and exhausting, so I’ve not had time to do much at all except sit around like a zombie.
Day 01/30: Started with a bang, I suppose. Broke the day 1 goal of 1667 words. Wasn’t sure what I was writing but just kept going because I knew the break through was imminent. Also: GIANTS WON THE WORLD SERIES THE NIGHT BEFORE.
Day 02/30: Wrote a bit more, kept a comfortable lead on the 1667/day goal. Still had no idea what I was doing. ELECTION DAY.
Day 03/30: Wrote nothing. Hated story. Did not want to ever think about it again.
Day 04/30: Continued hating story. Was struck by a brilliant idea on the way home from work. Commenced writing, broke a one-day goal of 1667 with the help of @nanowordsprints on Twitter.
Day 05/30: Wrote nothing. No motivation. Didn’t hate story but came off a rough week at work and didn’t want to do anything at all. So I didn’t.
Day 06/30: After spending the morning watching Brian Wilson videos on YouTube, I’ve inadvertently typed ‘Brian’ instead of the main character’s name three times. Brian, I love you, but please stop trying to force your way into my novel. It’s not even about baseball. Plan to break 10,000 today. Currently taking a break with 5,000 in sight.
Every year around this time, I stuff myself full of Halloween candy and delusions that I will crank out the most brilliant 50,000 words anyone has ever read. Given my writing style, I usually leap into November 1 with a skeleton of an idea and pray to the muses that they will stay with me for thirty days while I destroy the English language and the literary tradition. The past few years, I’ve attempted to give it a more professional go (I just realized that I haven’t said anything about what’s going on. For those of you not in the know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The goal is to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30.) I think a lot about brainstorming and outlines and all that stuff I don’t like but none of it helps me figure out what the hell I’m going to do for an entire month.
A few months ago, I had a flimsy idea that I quickly disregarded because it just felt stupid. I considered cheating and using something I’ve been working on for about five years that I recently restarted from a new angle (and with an updated plot), but I like being as genuine as possible about this project, so I quickly dismissed that. I have an online persona that I started out of boredom and a need for a new outlet for some things I was dealing with but that persona is barely “alive” and it seems like a pointless endeavor. Tonight I thought about taking elements of two separate old, unfinished pieces and reworking them to create a Frankenstein’s monster story, but one of the pieces is a cliched mess and the other is implausible.
I know all of this means I need to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone. It would be a good revitalization project and it would get me through the month. A friend suggested going the Young Adult supernatural/fantasy route, using a creature that hasn’t saturated the mainstream yet (I’m looking at you, vampires and werewolves). I love this idea a lot. The only problem is, I don’t know anything about any of those genres. I don’t read supernatural/fantasy/sci fi/horror books. I just don’t. It doesn’t interest me at all and I want to at least be interested in something I’m going to spend 50k words on.
One of my biggest problems is that I’m a hopeless romantic. I really hate to admit that and I hate that it’s true. I like to write about relationships and love and troubles and pain and life. I’m interested in interactions, personal histories, and damage. The more fucked up you are, the better. The story I mentioned above? The one I just started rewriting? It’s focused on mental illness, loss, and redemption with a little bit of love/hate thrown in for good measure.
I am tired of writing that cliched, vapid bullshit, but I don’t know what else I could write about that won’t leave me frustrated and feeling like I’m wasting my efforts on something I don’t get or care about (other genres, that is).
Side note: I took a vicodin earlier for the migraine that won’t die. I feel awesome but it’s only making me more frustrated re: what to write.
How do you guys do it?
Do yourselves a favor and visit this link. It’s SFW and everything! I can’t really expand on it because it says everything that needs to be said on the subject.
And in case you’re wondering, numbers 2, 7, 8, 10, 16, and 18 are very accurate where this writer is concerned. So keep that in mind.
I Should Be Writing 