Last night was Friday. My day at school went pretty well until the final block, when one of my little hard cases who is going through a significant life change and isn't happy about it decided it was Acting Out Day. This made for a frustrating afternoon, but it's almost impossible to not feel sorry for how unhappy this kid is. Almost.... So by the time I got home, it felt like a good night to eat dinner in front of the TV while catching up on some DVR. This is the first time I have allowed myself to do that in almost two weeks. It felt awesome.
This is what my Nanowrimo Life has been like: Wake up sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, drag my cloudy head out of bed and write for at least an hour. Maybe get back to bed for another hour or so when I finish, depending on if there's enough time to make it worthwhile. I try to keep this going, because I've learned I'm way more productive in the morning than I am at night. Then I go through my school day routine, beginning with the morning shower and ending with the drive home. I try to get home as soon as possible, but I know I usually will need to keep working until 5:00 or so, to make sure the next day is ready and I won't have to bring anything home to do. Because nearly every moment of spare time I have these days goes into writing.
And when I say writing, I don't necessarily mean upping my word count. The process of writing could mean reworking the chapter outlines I have from my prewriting to accommodate any story changes that have come up since I've started. These aren't major changes but there is a domino effect in play, so if one new spark of an idea came to me back in chapter 3, I need to think about how that's going to affect what happens between those characters in chapter 8. Then there's the non-revising, as I've come to think of it. To complete 50,000 words (or still hopefully at least 60,000, in my case) during 30 days you really have to keep the word count steadily climbing, and this doesn't allow for a lot of reflection as you write. If I wasn't caught up in such a sprint, I could take the time to think about why this one word I'm looking at doesn't capture what I'm trying to say as perfectly as I'd like it to. Not so much now. I can't take the time to craft the expression like I'd want to even if what I have really sucks, so I'll just go with the less-than-ideal placeholder phrase, label it with a comment so I remember to come back and fix it later, and on.
The word count push is going well. Even with one night of parent-teacher conferences under my belt, I've been able to maintain a 2,000+ words per day average. The first few days were rough. I had to struggle to find my footing, to figure out what direction I was going to go to make this version of the story as reinvented as I want it to be while still working from the same blueprint I had before. There were a few evenings when I'd sit down and just stare at the blank document and think, "So now what?" for a few minutes. I soon found it worked a lot better to consistently do what I know is a basic good writing practice: I had to make sure I was leaving off at a "good part," cutting myself off at a spot that I hadn't squeezed all of the ideas out of yet so I'd be able to jump back in when I returned. Having that starting point to return to helps a lot.
As I keep pushing forward, there are moments I can feel myself starting to ramble and get repetitive. Which usually isn't okay, but for now it is. I hate to get all artsy with the analogies, but all I need right now is the clay. I need something I can work with later, something I'll be able to sculpt and perfect into the story I already know this is, but just have to go through the little job of creating it. I know I can trim away all of the suck later when it comes to revising, so I'm not worried about it right now.
I'm a fairly goal-oriented person, so it's hard to not keep track of the word count as I write, just to be aware of what kind of progress I'm making. I was hoping that using the Pages full screen feature would help with that, but I was soon reminded that three things are displayed in full screen mode: The document itself, the word count, and the page count. So even though that mode helps get rid of several other distractions for me, it still lets that number keep its place in my brain. Which is sometimes good, and sometimes frustrates the hell out of me.
I've got the soundtrack pretty fine-tuned now, which makes a significant difference. For me, it's a big help to be listening to music while I write, if that music contains the same qualities I'm trying to infuse in the story. Being that this is a ghost story that in some ways is now leaning a little more toward a character-driven horror story, there has been some pretty dark and heavy music in my head lately: Black Sabbath. Metallica. The Cult. Dream Theater. Redemption. Tool. Coheed and Cambria. Judas Priest. Kamelot. Blue Murder. Dio. Iron Maiden. Even a little Ozzy and Nine Inch Nails. This is what I listen to pretty much all the time now -- when I'm writing, when I'm working out, when I'm driving, even when I have the ear buds plugged into my iPhone during prep time at school. I'm surprised I'm not having heavy metal nightmares from all of it.
To give you some perspective of the pace I'm at, I wrote this entire post between about 6:20 AM and 6:59 AM. I'm used to being up and working this early now. And this post alone will be close to 1,100 words by the time I finish.
What did you get done today before The Today Show even started?
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Day 1
Yes, I know I just said I was going to take a break from writing here during Nanowrimo. But just this evening I decided it might be interesting to keep a record of the process as it happens, day by day, almost like some first-person journalistic perspective, if only for my own benefit. The whole thing moves so fast that it's all a blur by the end of the month, and I think I might like the chance to look back and remind myself of how it all happened. I don't know if this will happen daily, but we'll see how things go. I won't be putting any Facebook links here since I'm all but abstaining from that Time Hole while this is going on. Which will certainly slow down the hit count (not that it's impressive to begin with), but I don't care. If I do keep up with this, I'm doing it for me.
Day 1 - 2,024 Words
If I want to hit 60,000 words, I need to average 2,000 a day. Not impossible. I started early this morning, finding myself awake at 3:30 and just getting up and diving in instead of rolling over and turning on a WTF podcast to try and fall back asleep. I did eventually get in a couple more hours of sleep, and by the time I left for school I was already over 1,000 words.
I didn't really feel like I hit a wall until I started up again at night. One of the biggest challenges about writing is knowing where you want the story to go, but having to do all of the grunt work involved with planning out every footstep of the way it takes to get there. I've already spent a good amount of time sitting and staring, trying to get started. I have to remember at this stage it's all about word count. I can't be too picky. I have to leave the phone alone, no matter how many Words With Friends notifications I get. I don't need another drink. I don't have to delete this song from the playlist right this moment. I don't have to line up the desktop Sticky Notes so they're easier to follow. Just keep writing. This is just the beginning. There's a little voice in what I've got, but that has to be okay. I've got the outlines, and the character sketches, and the notes. I can always fix things later. I have to start strong and cover some real estate.
Hit 2,000 words and call it a night. Take some time to plan where you're going to start tomorrow so you don't have to face the blank page cold. Be ready to hit the ground running and build some momentum.
Day 1 - 2,024 Words
If I want to hit 60,000 words, I need to average 2,000 a day. Not impossible. I started early this morning, finding myself awake at 3:30 and just getting up and diving in instead of rolling over and turning on a WTF podcast to try and fall back asleep. I did eventually get in a couple more hours of sleep, and by the time I left for school I was already over 1,000 words.
I didn't really feel like I hit a wall until I started up again at night. One of the biggest challenges about writing is knowing where you want the story to go, but having to do all of the grunt work involved with planning out every footstep of the way it takes to get there. I've already spent a good amount of time sitting and staring, trying to get started. I have to remember at this stage it's all about word count. I can't be too picky. I have to leave the phone alone, no matter how many Words With Friends notifications I get. I don't need another drink. I don't have to delete this song from the playlist right this moment. I don't have to line up the desktop Sticky Notes so they're easier to follow. Just keep writing. This is just the beginning. There's a little voice in what I've got, but that has to be okay. I've got the outlines, and the character sketches, and the notes. I can always fix things later. I have to start strong and cover some real estate.
Hit 2,000 words and call it a night. Take some time to plan where you're going to start tomorrow so you don't have to face the blank page cold. Be ready to hit the ground running and build some momentum.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
A Few Things to Mention Before I Leave
It's the morning of October 29th as I write this, so Nanowrimo 2011 is hours away from beginning. I've been playing with different ideas over the past several weeks, looking for ways to build concrete ideas around collections of notes and random thoughts. And I seriously feel more prepared to begin than I have been for any of the three previous years I've taken this on. But right now that planning doesn't feel like it adds up to much, because the only thing I'm thinking as I get closer to the starting date is "Holy crap, is this going to be a lot of work." All that work I've done to try and wean myself off caffeine? Gone. Worthwhile sleep? Not so much. Too early mornings and too late nights? Here for the foreseeable future. It really makes me question why I'm bothering, and I don't mean participating in this particular marathon so much, but to question why I even bother investing the time it takes to try and write at all. The odds are overwhelming that anything I ever write, including any given post here, might read by maybe twenty people, tops, if I'm lucky. But I guess in the end it comes down to that in the life I've built for myself I simply can't see myself NOT writing. So forward I will go. Even if it means that 'Summer Vacation' will likely be taking a vacation of its own for the next month or so. I'll probably do a series of short posts to just clear my head from time to time and remind myself that the word count is actually moving forward, but seriously, knowing what I've got ahead of me this year, I fully know I'll be lucky to even get that much done here.
So today I'm doing another version of Take Out The Trash Day, or Big Block of Cheese Day. And even if the latter reference doesn't quite apply as much as the former, I like it better. And if you don't understand the references behind either of them, sit down and watch "The West Wing" already....
*I still can't wrap my head completely around this new level of social interaction called the Facebook friendship. I have several Facebook friends I see frequently, and yet we never mention anything to each other about anything that's come up on Facebook. Has commenting on a post, or even just reading one, or even clicking the Like button, taken the place of actual discourse? And how is it there are people you can have several common friends with but neither person pulls trigger to "friend" each other? For my part, I really hate the idea of trying to wedge myself into someone else's life in any capacity at all, even just being on a Facebook list, unless I'm positive I'd be welcomed, so I don't send out a lot of friend requests. And yes, I'll fully admit the collection of defense mechanisms that passes for my personality doesn't make it easy for even people I LIKE to reach my inner circle. But who are these people that have 900 or 1,000 Facebook friends? How do you even KNOW 1,000 people? Do you friend everyone you share a bus ride or a grocery store express line with? My point here is: Out of all these Facebook changes, I actually kind of like the group update thing. Even with the small number of friends I have, I can click those and see what's going on just with my family, or one particular group of friends, or whatever. It feeds my compulsive organization.
*Monday will be the Halloween party at school, which means the bunny suit will again be making an appearance. Based on the popular t-shirts at school this year, I'm curious to find out exactly how many people will be dressed up as Angry Birds or Wimpy Kids. I'm not sure how someone would pull off a Wimpy Kid costume, but something tells me the good people of the costume industry have already figured this one out.
*All week I've been listening to Coldplay's newest album, "Mylo Xyloto," which, even though it has a tragically awful title, is a pretty good album. Now, do I consider myself a Coldplay fan? Not really. If I'm a fan of someone, I really have to think they can do no wrong, or at least have a remarkably high average of doing things right. And Coldplay? Eh... not so much. I hate the song "Yellow" so much that if it comes on the radio it makes me want to scrape all of the skin from my face just so I will feel such an overwhelming pain I won't notice the song anymore. I bought their second album when I kept reading and hearing about how great it was, but when I listened myself I felt it was the musical equivalent of an empty notebook.
Being ever the optimist (?!) though, I still bought their third album "XY" when some of the radio songs were interesting. I hoped this indicated a new direction and they really were becoming a band close to as great as everyone kept saying they were, but it wound up having just a couple of interesting radio songs and more of the same dull. But then "Viva La Vida" came along, and yeah, even if that title song became ubiquitous in the summer of 2008, I liked the album so much it made me glad I gave them one more chance. It had a very strong progressive streak for a pop album and really broke around what was considered the template for popular music at the time. When they released the companion EP "Prospekt's March" soon after, I took the best songs from the two and made up my own playlist album that I think is better than either of them. So I was kind of psyched for this new one, since I expected they'd continue the more progressive trend and not fall back to the empty melancholy pop that defined them early on. And after a week, I'm very happy with this new one. Still prog-pop, but with a much stronger electronic sound to it. And I don't mind saying -- partly because I know it would offend the Coldplay antifans/musical hipsters of the world -- "Mylo Xyloto" has a musical sensibility to it that would easily let it pass as a lost album by Cloud Cult. And if you have issues with this? Shut up. My music can mean something to me without me caring if it means anything to you.
*I am completely addicted to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast. I have few moments of zen more satisfying than lying down in my offce and playing Bejeweled Blitz or Words with Friends on the iPhone while listening to Josh and Chuck have their researched conversations about things like asteroids, the Nile River, Quantum Suicide, Scooby Doo, hiccups, samurai, breathalyzers, alien hand syndrome, how dogs perceive time, lobotomies, James Bond, innovation, mountaintop removal mining, igloos, venomous animals, Legos, Spam, Twinkies, anti-matter spacecraft, or any other number of seemingly random but surprisingly fascinating topics. It's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Atlanta so I could hang out with these guys, if I was smart enough to keep up with the conversation. If you listen to Podcasts at all or are even just curious, I highly recommend going on iTunes and finding one of these to try out. Most of them are only about half an hour long. Pick a topic that sounds interesting and you'll be hooked.
*And now to close, a special dedication to Mr. And Mrs. Bomani, in light of the rather significant week they've had. Perhaps you won't entirely agree with the philosophy of these lyrics, but I'm confident you'll appreciate the poetry and sentiment behind them:
Taken from "Living Proof," by Bruce Springsteen from the 1991 album "Lucky Town."
Well now on a summer night
In a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms
It was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty
So fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof
And thank you for not naming him Brock.
Okay folks. Talk to you in a month. Wish me luck, and if you do see me in the real world, stay on my back. It takes a lot of pushing to come up with 50,000 words.
So today I'm doing another version of Take Out The Trash Day, or Big Block of Cheese Day. And even if the latter reference doesn't quite apply as much as the former, I like it better. And if you don't understand the references behind either of them, sit down and watch "The West Wing" already....
*I still can't wrap my head completely around this new level of social interaction called the Facebook friendship. I have several Facebook friends I see frequently, and yet we never mention anything to each other about anything that's come up on Facebook. Has commenting on a post, or even just reading one, or even clicking the Like button, taken the place of actual discourse? And how is it there are people you can have several common friends with but neither person pulls trigger to "friend" each other? For my part, I really hate the idea of trying to wedge myself into someone else's life in any capacity at all, even just being on a Facebook list, unless I'm positive I'd be welcomed, so I don't send out a lot of friend requests. And yes, I'll fully admit the collection of defense mechanisms that passes for my personality doesn't make it easy for even people I LIKE to reach my inner circle. But who are these people that have 900 or 1,000 Facebook friends? How do you even KNOW 1,000 people? Do you friend everyone you share a bus ride or a grocery store express line with? My point here is: Out of all these Facebook changes, I actually kind of like the group update thing. Even with the small number of friends I have, I can click those and see what's going on just with my family, or one particular group of friends, or whatever. It feeds my compulsive organization.
*Monday will be the Halloween party at school, which means the bunny suit will again be making an appearance. Based on the popular t-shirts at school this year, I'm curious to find out exactly how many people will be dressed up as Angry Birds or Wimpy Kids. I'm not sure how someone would pull off a Wimpy Kid costume, but something tells me the good people of the costume industry have already figured this one out.
*All week I've been listening to Coldplay's newest album, "Mylo Xyloto," which, even though it has a tragically awful title, is a pretty good album. Now, do I consider myself a Coldplay fan? Not really. If I'm a fan of someone, I really have to think they can do no wrong, or at least have a remarkably high average of doing things right. And Coldplay? Eh... not so much. I hate the song "Yellow" so much that if it comes on the radio it makes me want to scrape all of the skin from my face just so I will feel such an overwhelming pain I won't notice the song anymore. I bought their second album when I kept reading and hearing about how great it was, but when I listened myself I felt it was the musical equivalent of an empty notebook.
Being ever the optimist (?!) though, I still bought their third album "XY" when some of the radio songs were interesting. I hoped this indicated a new direction and they really were becoming a band close to as great as everyone kept saying they were, but it wound up having just a couple of interesting radio songs and more of the same dull. But then "Viva La Vida" came along, and yeah, even if that title song became ubiquitous in the summer of 2008, I liked the album so much it made me glad I gave them one more chance. It had a very strong progressive streak for a pop album and really broke around what was considered the template for popular music at the time. When they released the companion EP "Prospekt's March" soon after, I took the best songs from the two and made up my own playlist album that I think is better than either of them. So I was kind of psyched for this new one, since I expected they'd continue the more progressive trend and not fall back to the empty melancholy pop that defined them early on. And after a week, I'm very happy with this new one. Still prog-pop, but with a much stronger electronic sound to it. And I don't mind saying -- partly because I know it would offend the Coldplay antifans/musical hipsters of the world -- "Mylo Xyloto" has a musical sensibility to it that would easily let it pass as a lost album by Cloud Cult. And if you have issues with this? Shut up. My music can mean something to me without me caring if it means anything to you.
*I am completely addicted to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast. I have few moments of zen more satisfying than lying down in my offce and playing Bejeweled Blitz or Words with Friends on the iPhone while listening to Josh and Chuck have their researched conversations about things like asteroids, the Nile River, Quantum Suicide, Scooby Doo, hiccups, samurai, breathalyzers, alien hand syndrome, how dogs perceive time, lobotomies, James Bond, innovation, mountaintop removal mining, igloos, venomous animals, Legos, Spam, Twinkies, anti-matter spacecraft, or any other number of seemingly random but surprisingly fascinating topics. It's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Atlanta so I could hang out with these guys, if I was smart enough to keep up with the conversation. If you listen to Podcasts at all or are even just curious, I highly recommend going on iTunes and finding one of these to try out. Most of them are only about half an hour long. Pick a topic that sounds interesting and you'll be hooked.
*And now to close, a special dedication to Mr. And Mrs. Bomani, in light of the rather significant week they've had. Perhaps you won't entirely agree with the philosophy of these lyrics, but I'm confident you'll appreciate the poetry and sentiment behind them:
Taken from "Living Proof," by Bruce Springsteen from the 1991 album "Lucky Town."
Well now on a summer night
In a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms
It was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty
So fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof
And thank you for not naming him Brock.
Okay folks. Talk to you in a month. Wish me luck, and if you do see me in the real world, stay on my back. It takes a lot of pushing to come up with 50,000 words.
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