November is over, and my goal for the month was a... qualified success. The success part comes into this because I did actually reach the 50,000-word NaNoWriMo "win" benchmark. But let's face it; after five previous years with winning marks it wasn't really a question of if I would win but what the final word count would be. And I say qualified because I didn't reach my secondary goal of finishing the manuscript. Granted, this one did balloon into something larger than I expected. But I tend to see the goals I set for myself in some pretty harshly defined either/or terms. Setting a goal to write 50,000 words in November for me would like saying "My goal is to get out of bed eventually and eat something every day." So saying November was a success feels a bit like a cheat -- even at 68,000 words. I still didn't finish yet. And I should probably give up on trying to explain why I see that as a failure before even more people begin to think I'm crazy. (But it is though. Even if just temporarily. I am going to finish this one, and sooner rather than later. Then I'll be able to let it go.)
So now I'm at my final month-long goal for 2013. This one will seem fairly simple: My goal for December is to have a happy month. Last year December wound up being something of a darkish time for me, and it came on in a very sudden way: All it took was one person saying one thing. I'm sure she didn't intend her comment to be as damaging as it was, but the damage was done all the same and things just went downhill from there. I would really rather not go through that experience again, so I'm going to make a serious effort to steer around a rerun of December 2012.
The best chance I can see at having a happy month will be to stay aware of the goal each day, then remind myself what I'm trying to do and why I'm doing it. December can be an overwhelming time all on its own with so many demands on our time and attention, but there are a lot of good things about it as well. With all of those positives, there should be plenty of chances for me to actively shove the pendulum in the other direction. I'm going to try to be more aware of the good moments when I find myself inside of them, and cross my fingers that from time to time things will just wind up going my way.
I'm not really happy about posting all of this (and anyone who knows how guarded I am won't be surprised by that), but I told myself in the beginning of the year that whatever goals I went after would be things I'd discuss openly here to hold myself accountable. And this is it -- the last goal of the 2013 Momentum project, and tonight it feels like one of the more important ones. Here's hoping the year goes out on a high note....
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The 50K Mark, and What Comes Next
Nano 2K13 is in the books... and that really isn't a pun that I just made because I think puns are awful, but since falling back on clichés like that seems to be one of my first draft writing crutches and I am really out of practice from doing anything but just letting my stream of consciousness pour out of my fingers without any regards to editing, I'm just going to let that weak phrase and this already out of control sentence stand as a representation of how ugly the first draft of the manuscript I took on this year will be when I eventually finish it. That sentence right there? Word count = 107. That's how you get it done. ANYWAY. Maybe, MAYBE with a little heightened November awareness of my futile attempts at someday becoming a published author, a blog post on the subject will draw a bit more attention than Summer Vacation posts typically see.
Just a quick check in tonight really. I thought I had hit that 50,000 mark early in the afternoon, but then when I went back to revisit the work, I remembered that earlier I had cut and pasted away all of the text from a document called "bayside park football" and replaced it with general story notes. Since I couldn't justify counting story notes as part of the word count, I pushed forward with another sprint and knocked off another four hundred words to hit the mark for real. And do you see what I just did there? Where I wrote "four hundred?" I actually typed that as 400 originally, but then reflexively thought "Hold on -- if I spell that out, it will be worth two words instead one. I'm going back" even if it doesn't matter for this. That's just the mindset now.
I still have six days left in November, and I would really like to think that I can finish the manuscript in that time because I know that if I don't there's a good chance it will wind up being shelved in an unfinished state. And whether or not this one will ever go anywhere (I'm predicting NO), I'd still like to bring it to completion. But right now it is nothing but first draft ugly. And it will keep being first draft ugly for some time. If I don't finish by Nov. 30, I'll keep pressing on at a reduced 1,000 word daily minimum until I'm done, but after that I'm taking a break. I might go back and do another proofread of Infinity, but it's a lot more likely that I'll be catching up on the DVR and firing up the XBox for a time. I'll probably be ready to start editing and revising by the time I get to a nice long winter break this year, and after I throw enough polish on it to hide the ugly, I'll be ready for interested people to take a look. I'd optimistically predict that will be in January, but I realistically know it could wind up being closer to the summer.
But hey, if anyone who's been following the word count this year is THAT curious, I do have other things you could read. Just because they aren't published...yet... doesn't mean they suck. Following Infinity is an emotional buzz saw of a book, and I get the sense that other people feel The Ghost of Lake Emily is creepier and maybe scarier than I had realized it would be. They're both upper middle grade books so the feature characters in that middle-school age range, and they're fast reads. Plus, like I said -- they don't suck. And if you know those two you'll have an appreciation for how far I went out of my comfort zone to get through this current one, which I can say is now is locked down with the title 5th Grade Zen.
Keep an eye on that word count for a few more days. I've crossed the finish line, but I still haven't won the race just yet....
Just a quick check in tonight really. I thought I had hit that 50,000 mark early in the afternoon, but then when I went back to revisit the work, I remembered that earlier I had cut and pasted away all of the text from a document called "bayside park football" and replaced it with general story notes. Since I couldn't justify counting story notes as part of the word count, I pushed forward with another sprint and knocked off another four hundred words to hit the mark for real. And do you see what I just did there? Where I wrote "four hundred?" I actually typed that as 400 originally, but then reflexively thought "Hold on -- if I spell that out, it will be worth two words instead one. I'm going back" even if it doesn't matter for this. That's just the mindset now.
I still have six days left in November, and I would really like to think that I can finish the manuscript in that time because I know that if I don't there's a good chance it will wind up being shelved in an unfinished state. And whether or not this one will ever go anywhere (I'm predicting NO), I'd still like to bring it to completion. But right now it is nothing but first draft ugly. And it will keep being first draft ugly for some time. If I don't finish by Nov. 30, I'll keep pressing on at a reduced 1,000 word daily minimum until I'm done, but after that I'm taking a break. I might go back and do another proofread of Infinity, but it's a lot more likely that I'll be catching up on the DVR and firing up the XBox for a time. I'll probably be ready to start editing and revising by the time I get to a nice long winter break this year, and after I throw enough polish on it to hide the ugly, I'll be ready for interested people to take a look. I'd optimistically predict that will be in January, but I realistically know it could wind up being closer to the summer.
But hey, if anyone who's been following the word count this year is THAT curious, I do have other things you could read. Just because they aren't published...yet... doesn't mean they suck. Following Infinity is an emotional buzz saw of a book, and I get the sense that other people feel The Ghost of Lake Emily is creepier and maybe scarier than I had realized it would be. They're both upper middle grade books so the feature characters in that middle-school age range, and they're fast reads. Plus, like I said -- they don't suck. And if you know those two you'll have an appreciation for how far I went out of my comfort zone to get through this current one, which I can say is now is locked down with the title 5th Grade Zen.
Keep an eye on that word count for a few more days. I've crossed the finish line, but I still haven't won the race just yet....
Friday, November 15, 2013
Day 15: Half a Novel in Half a Month
I was supposed to be bowling right now.
The social committee at my school planned a bowling outing for tonight. We've had two of them before. I've gone to both and planned on going to this one as well, but I wasn't feeling so hot by the end of the day today, and with a big family weekend about to commence I felt it would be better to take the night to pull back and rest up instead. So I'm kind of disappointed about this turn of events, even though I'm pretty sure it was the right thing to do.
But I figured that this might still would work out for the best. I know I won't get much writing done this weekend with everything else going on, and since I'm well ahead of my pace I'm really okay with that. For me reaching the 50,000 word mark isn't really much of a goal because I know I'll make it. After all, I'm five for five in that department since 2008. But this year I'd really like to complete the story in the November time frame, regardless of what the word count winds up being. I surpassed the word count last year, but still haven't finished telling that story. And it feels exactly as incomplete as it sounds.
So far things have been going pretty well this year. If you read my previous post you have some idea about the premise, and as of halfway through the month it's remained pretty true to what I originally planned. The ideas have been flying at my so hard and fast over the past fifteen days weeks I've taken to keeping a Notes file on my phone to write them down before I forget them, and I'll pack a small journal in my gym bag in case something comes to me while I'm working out. And when a really good idea comes along, it doesn't take much extrapolating before it can balloon its way into becoming a whole chapter, and then somehow it just takes turning the puzzle piece around enough times to figure out how it will fit in with what I already have. So as far as story construction goes, I'm very, very happy with the progress I've made.
Of course most of the writing ugly, and I don't mean that in a self-deprecating compliment-fishing way; I mean it's really ugly, as first drafts are meant to be. Any writing that comes this fast just doesn't have the care put into it that it should. Which is okay. As I recently explained to someone, the first draft is only the clay being molded into a rough shape of what the idea is supposed to be, and the real sculpting takes place in the subsequent drafting and editing and revising. This year I'm just working on the drafting without paying much thought to how much work will come afterward to make it into something readable. And actually, that approach has been surprisingly freeing. I seriously think I've come up with different lines and phrases that normally I wouldn't have tried out if I was being as intentionally careful as I normally would be.
But as happy as I am with my progress, all of this writing and thinking and tracking and planning and developing? This whole endeavor is no ride around the lake. I'd liken it to someone trying to complete a triathalon: No matter how prepared you think you are or how many times you've done it before, you aren't going to remember just how soul-draining of an experience it is until you're far enough through it to know the quickest escape is to just keep pushing forward and finish it off. My word count is well above the daily average, but there have been a few days when I've had to limp forward just to knock off a few hundred token words so I can tell myself I actually got something done. And frankly it gets easy to go a little scooters when you're doing this. The idea of down time simply evaporates, and you don't really get an appreciation for how important it is to have that time to just mentally recuperate until you aren't allowing yourself to do it anymore. Sleep isn't just restorative, but it becomes sanctuary... right up until you hit the night when you catch yourself dreaming about your characters. Which sometimes helps, but is also kind of unnerving.
So if anyone was curious about the process beyond what you see in my daily word count, maybe all of this will answer some questions for you. But for now, I've got another fifty minutes ahead of me I can use write now to get a few more pages done, and I have to jump at those time windows when they open.....
The social committee at my school planned a bowling outing for tonight. We've had two of them before. I've gone to both and planned on going to this one as well, but I wasn't feeling so hot by the end of the day today, and with a big family weekend about to commence I felt it would be better to take the night to pull back and rest up instead. So I'm kind of disappointed about this turn of events, even though I'm pretty sure it was the right thing to do.
But I figured that this might still would work out for the best. I know I won't get much writing done this weekend with everything else going on, and since I'm well ahead of my pace I'm really okay with that. For me reaching the 50,000 word mark isn't really much of a goal because I know I'll make it. After all, I'm five for five in that department since 2008. But this year I'd really like to complete the story in the November time frame, regardless of what the word count winds up being. I surpassed the word count last year, but still haven't finished telling that story. And it feels exactly as incomplete as it sounds.
So far things have been going pretty well this year. If you read my previous post you have some idea about the premise, and as of halfway through the month it's remained pretty true to what I originally planned. The ideas have been flying at my so hard and fast over the past fifteen days weeks I've taken to keeping a Notes file on my phone to write them down before I forget them, and I'll pack a small journal in my gym bag in case something comes to me while I'm working out. And when a really good idea comes along, it doesn't take much extrapolating before it can balloon its way into becoming a whole chapter, and then somehow it just takes turning the puzzle piece around enough times to figure out how it will fit in with what I already have. So as far as story construction goes, I'm very, very happy with the progress I've made.
Of course most of the writing ugly, and I don't mean that in a self-deprecating compliment-fishing way; I mean it's really ugly, as first drafts are meant to be. Any writing that comes this fast just doesn't have the care put into it that it should. Which is okay. As I recently explained to someone, the first draft is only the clay being molded into a rough shape of what the idea is supposed to be, and the real sculpting takes place in the subsequent drafting and editing and revising. This year I'm just working on the drafting without paying much thought to how much work will come afterward to make it into something readable. And actually, that approach has been surprisingly freeing. I seriously think I've come up with different lines and phrases that normally I wouldn't have tried out if I was being as intentionally careful as I normally would be.
But as happy as I am with my progress, all of this writing and thinking and tracking and planning and developing? This whole endeavor is no ride around the lake. I'd liken it to someone trying to complete a triathalon: No matter how prepared you think you are or how many times you've done it before, you aren't going to remember just how soul-draining of an experience it is until you're far enough through it to know the quickest escape is to just keep pushing forward and finish it off. My word count is well above the daily average, but there have been a few days when I've had to limp forward just to knock off a few hundred token words so I can tell myself I actually got something done. And frankly it gets easy to go a little scooters when you're doing this. The idea of down time simply evaporates, and you don't really get an appreciation for how important it is to have that time to just mentally recuperate until you aren't allowing yourself to do it anymore. Sleep isn't just restorative, but it becomes sanctuary... right up until you hit the night when you catch yourself dreaming about your characters. Which sometimes helps, but is also kind of unnerving.
So if anyone was curious about the process beyond what you see in my daily word count, maybe all of this will answer some questions for you. But for now, I've got another fifty minutes ahead of me I can use write now to get a few more pages done, and I have to jump at those time windows when they open.....
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