Out with the old, in with the new

So, I’m behind. Let’s pretend to be surprised. But I plan to get back on track tomorrow (Monday), and I’ll work hard for it. By midnight tonight, I expect to be at 256,000, the lowest word count that I’ve yet have had this for month (per day) but I’ll overcome it. I’ve got a new story that I’m working on and I’m excited about it. It’s going to go great and I’ll  be working through it for all of tomorrow, and because it’s 50,000 I’m very hopeful that I’m going to finish it, as I need 300,000 by the end of tomorrow.

This is getting harder. I knew that it would, but that doesn’t make the simple fact of it any easier. It’s easy to sit down at the beginning of the month and set yourself a goal. In the first week, when you’re full of energy, it’s easier to stick to that goal. It’s when week 2 comes around that you feel that subtle something deep down, that says that you don’t have to write right now, and that there will always be more time to do it.

I say no. I say that the time to write is now. I say that there are no doubts allowed and I will continue to write on throughout week 2, and with any luck, I will be on track by the end of tomorrow (Monday). If not that, then I plan to finish this 50k piece by before I go to sleep Monday night so that I can get on track for whatever I decide I’m going to do afterwards.

Enter week 2!

And so the nightmare begins

It was inevitable. One of these days, I was going to fall behind. Today, it was by 4,334 words. I’m in the process of making those up as we speak, but it means that today, I’ve got to write the better part of 39,000 words, which as we can see, I’m already having trouble getting to the 34k. *sigh*

In better news, I’m working towards the end of book 1 of the trilogy, called Balancing the Books.

I do have a plan. You see, by tomorrow (Monday), I need 300,000 words. So today, at the absolute very, very least, I need to finish Balancing the Books (I think this is possible), and then I jaunt over to my other 50,000 word piece, write what I can of it today (Sunday) and crank the rest out on Monday. It’s a much lighter and much less involved piece than this monstrous novel (which has actually not turned out so bad, all things considered), and so I think it’ll be a bit easier to write.

But it still sucks to fall behind.

Skin of the Teeth

Well, now I remember that it’s bad luck to talk about how well I’m doing. I wrote a grand total of 1,000 words before I went to bed last night, and then 2000 when I woke up at a sensible time in the morning (8-ish), the decided that I was too tired to do anything else, and so didn’t start writing any more until 11 am. I needed a solid 30,000 words today, including those 3000 mentioned above.

Today has been grueling, and I’m sincerely grateful for that little extra that I managed to pick up over the last couple of days. At just before midnight, I finally reached the 200k mark. Now I just have to do it all over again tomorrow. The key is just pacing. I don’t like having to write so many words in so few hours. I would prefer a late-night session, a morning session, an afternoon session, and a constantly-interrupted (dinner/tv) session.

Sadly, I lack planning skills in that department.

However, I am still on track, and for that I am grateful.

Grooooooovy (Day 5)

Okay, I’m going to stop coming up with these awful titles eventually. But not when I’m in as good a mood as I’m in right now. When I went to bed at 3(ish), I knew that I only had 28,000 words to write today. I woke up at a decent hour (8:30), and have been hitting my writing groove all day. The words flow easily, they make sense, I’ve learned all sorts of new things about the squids, and I’ve learned how much I hate my humanoid aliens, who are the most boring aliens of all time. I look forward to slaughtering them in the next book of the trilogy. I’ve even learned how squids, who don’t carry guns, manage to kill so brutally.

And also, thanks to the fact that I’ve been trying to keep to an average of 34k a day rather than 33,334 (I’m a little OCD about rounded numbers), I’m now officially 1,333 words ahead of where I need to be, which is pretty awesome. I plan to continue on the 34k for as long as I can so that on the day when my brain explodes, I don’t need to write as much.

I still don’t feel too much hand pain. The most obvious side effect of my writing more than a couple thousand in an hour is that my fingers tremble, but there’s no numbness/tingling sensation/excruciating pain, so I think I’m fine. Also, I convinced my mom to do this. It’s going to be a hard slog the whole way, but I think I’m annoying enough to boss her around and get her to at least make a good go of it.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways (Day 4)

Ah, this post is dedicated to my hands, and all the bits that connect them to my body, down to my fingertips that do all the typing.

So, today starts with a funny story. There’s a clock in my room that I hardly ever use, so I didn’t bother to turn it back on Sunday (being rather preoccupied with other things as I was), and so when I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was glance over at the clock (it, other than the computer and my phone, being the only time-telling device in my room). It said 7-something. Given that I want to get up early this month, I got out of bed, and went downstairs to discover it was actually 6-something. Sigh.

Plus, I was ridiculously tired this morning, and so after writing 3,000 words, collapsed off to take an 1.5hr nap. By this point, it was 11, and I still needed 30,000 words.

So for the next 3 hours, I did a 4-2-4 (4k/hr, 2k/hr, 4k/hr), bringing me down to needing 20k

Took a shower, and then, because it was the afternoon and I had to start dinner at some point, I did 2 4k hrs (12k still needed), and managed to fit in another 3,000 while dinner was cooking (down to 9k).

And then between 6:30 and 8:56, I wrote another 9,000, catching up to my target even though I never thought I would.

Normally, I don’t push myself to write too many consecutive 4k hours. It’s not really very good for my hands/wrists/arms and I’m sorta attached to them. But my hands have performed beautifully today, with nary a complaint. Oh hands, how I love thee, and may you live long to type!

Day 3 (or, psych out!)

So I said yesterday that my stumbling block was dealing with badly fleshed out worlds/cultures (see laziness in October postings), and I convinced myself that humanoid aliens would be way easier to write than squid aliens.  I struggled and struggled through the humanoid portion yesterday and today. And I was dreading moving on to dealing with the squids. It breezed right by. Fancy that. My favorite part thus far remains the regular humans, because there’s more intrigue and stuff (read: I fleshed this bit out before November).

I hit the 100,000 earlier than I had expected to, due to some rush work because my mother had to pick up my brother from his band practice. This is important because we usually watch television from 8-11 at night, and usually eat between 5:30 and 6:00. I was back upstairs writing at 6:00, and had until nearly 8:45 to get out another 5,000 words, which led me to the 100,000. I’m really happy to have hit it. I know that the next few days are going to be a struggle, because I’m only exactly on target, i.e. 33,333 words a day, but I’m confident that I can pull through, particularly now that I have some sense of the worlds that I’m working through.

I don’t plan to strive for much more than the bare minimum, unless inspiration really strikes. What I mean is, I’d like to get ahead – why wouldn’t I? – but I get the feeling that this monstrosity does  not bear well to being pushed beyond its limits. Once I am done this first one (the end of the week), I may attempt another 50k day with my other 50k novel to give me a little breathing room, or to catch up if I fall behind (a real possibility).

But, from the Kateness room, all is well in the night sky. The squids, humanoids, and humans are all written and I know something about them all. Tomorrow will be another day, another dozen writing sessions.

Day 2

Blah. Comparatively slow day. At least I’m managing to stay on track (and losing the 16,000 word headstart I gave myself yesterday, but ah well). I even know the reason for the differing wordcounts.

And it’s not my hands. My hands don’t feel any different than they did yesterday. But today I started This is How it Ends, my massive trilogy. It involves a stupid number of disparate worlds, a lot of characters that I still haven’t named, and it’s generally just not well-prepared. I think in this instance, having an outline makes things *worse*; I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I don’t know how to put it in the right context. In the first of the three, there’s only three separate plotlines, and until I’ve tackled each of them once, it’s going to be slow-going. After that, I expect things will pick up again. I’ve dealt with one, and already feel more comfortable with it. I think I’m going to avoid hitting the squid aliens until later-ish tonight and go onto the humanoid aliens which I’ll be more comfortable writing because at least they’re roughly human and I’m assuming they think in roughly human ways.

It’s 5pm now and I’m at 65k. I need at least 2,000 more. I’m going to aim for at least 5,000 more, maybe even 10,000. I think that I’ll be writing after midnight tonight, unlike this past night, when I watched TV until 1 and then hung around in the chatroom, getting tireder and not sleeping and not writing. If I can get to 75,000 before bed, I’ll be happy.

Also taken down the excerpt from the fantasy one. For the next few days, the excerpts are going to be from this sucker.

day 1

(note: they’re probably not going to be as broken down as this in the future; just want to give some idea of my process/thoughts as day 1 goes by)

12am: Time to go!

3am: 12,000 words done. Going to slow down to 3k/hour (over 4k…yes, the math doesn’t work because of the clock switch-back, but I rested 15 minutes between blocks of 4k) for the next 2 hours. I think I can legitimately get to 24,000 before bed. Coolness.

5am: 18,000 words done. My hands are feeling much better; they were shaky and sore at 3. Still, this next hour is going to be a 2k hour, to make sure my hands are properly doing okay. After that, might do a 4k hour before I finally pack it in for the night. We’ll see.

5:46am: 20,000 words. Tiredness is majorly setting in . I’m resting until the top of the hour, when I’ll decide whether I want to put out one last hour of work or give in and go to sleep. In any case, if I don’t keep going I’m perfectly happy with a 20k kickoff. That means I’ve got 14k to write the rest of the day. A bit under 4hours of work, though I’d gladly take more.

6am: decided to go to sleep. Alarms set for 8,9, and 10. My bet is I’ll get up around noon. thank god for moms.

10am: awake again. Not going to start writing for half an hour so as to let my brain turn on. Hands feel fine. I think I’ll start with 6k in 90 minutes (4k/hour pace) and see how I feel at noon.

12pm: 26,000 words. Time for a shower now. After that, more words.

Okeydoke. That’s done. Now 8k before 3pm, which will take my to my necessary 34k.  I don’t know if I’ll make it to 50k today, but I’ll get close. I figure I can get at least 45k, and if I can’t get to the full 50 by midnight, I’ll just stay up a little late and get it done.

1:17pm: 30,000 words. Hands still feeling okay. Teensy bit shaky, but that’s normal at the beginning of the month. It’ll get better as time goes on.  Alternating on and off with the wrist braces; they help to a point but also cause stiffness in my wrists.

2:45pm: 34,022 words. Going to take a bit of a break now, an hour or so. I don’t have to write any more words today, but I think I’d like a bit of padding for days when I can’t get the 33,333, when I’ve got the time to do them. Falling behind with goals like this is deadly.

5pm: 36,000 words. Okay, yeah, long break. Back to work. Goal: 40k before dinner. If only I knew when dinner was

6:31pm: 41,009 words plus dinner. (yum chicken in my tummy).

TV starts at 8. Want 46,000 by then. Then I’m going to take the laptop downstairs and write while I watch TV. Goal? 1k per hour of television =3k = 49k, and then I just have to chug out another thousand when I get back upstairs.

Holy shit. This is doable. I woke up this morning really not believing.

11:00pm: 48,000. I stopped because that chapter is the only one in the whole damn thing that I really don’t like very much. I need my absolute concentration to write. I decided to stop, and it’s meant that I have to change the ending, though the ending I had wasn’t very good.

11:11: 49,014.

11:29: 50,052. Fuck yeah.  I’m not totally in love with the ending, but I think there are some aborted subplots that could deal with being explored in a future draft. Because I’m actually really liking the way this one turned out, no matter I wrote it in a day (24.5 hours if we’re being really picky)

I’ve been thinking about the mess that is my synopsis/excerpt page. I think starting from now, the only thing that will be up is the synopsis of the one I’m currently working on, and then the excerpt as my favorite scene I wrote that day (so the excerpts will change daily, if I remember), and thus the excerpt for this one will be up until midnightish tomorrow. I’m taking the one down that I put up earlier today and debating between a couple of scenes I really liked.

*self-satisfied smile*

I’ve never done this for a NaNo before, and of all the pieces I’ve written 50k in a day (about 3 or 4), this one is the most coherent and most enjoyable one I’ve written.

NanoEve

As predicted, no progress made on the trilogy. Definitely I’m not starting with that one. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to start with one of the 50k ones, though it may come down to a coin toss right before midnight that actually decides for me. I’ll wait and see if either of them strikes me with sudden inspiration before midnight. I plan to go for the 50k on the first day, just to see if I can, though I’m not certain I’ll get all the way there.  The extra hour helps of course, it means I only have to average 2k an hour, which I know that I can do, it’s just that I’m not that great at going without any sleep, plus I probably have to cook dinner at some point or the family will be perturbed, and I’ll probably watch tv in the evening.

I have to admit minor jealousy of those who’ve already started; I’ve got just 10.5 hours to go. I know, I know, I finish after them so it all evens things out, but that’s not much satisfaction as I watch their word counts slowly but steadily rise. At least I’m not the last time zone to start (I feel sorry for those on Midway Island, 17.5 hours to go!). I’ve successfully managed to keep myself from listening to my NaNo music, so that adds extra anticipation to midnight.

I’ll probably spend most of the rest of the day distracting myself from the fact that it’s not midnight yet. I can probably find something to read, though given the restless mood I’m in, I’m more likely to read five pages of thirty books than read a whole one straight through. I probably won’t do much more work on my NaNos (even though I know it needs to be done, I just won’t be able to focus very well on it. Bah. I’m more ready than I was last year; then I only had an outline for one of my four projects and had to make it up as I went along. Miserable).

I’m not going out trick-or-treating tonight, because I’m not a big Halloween fan. I’ve got a bag of candy corn in my desk drawer, that’ll be good enough.

During the next month, I think I’ll try for daily or every-other-daily updates, but it’ll depend on how much extra time I’ve got hanging around.

*sigh*

I haven’t yet received my first nasty Nanomail accusing me of cheating, but I expect that to start within the first few days of November. I can’t tell you how disheartening it is to wake up, log on, and see that I’ve got 5 or 6 messages. Of them, odds are that one, maybe two, of them will be positive. They’ll ask how I do it or just generally offer support. Those people are awesome and deserve great novel karma and total happiness. But then the rest will be people flat-out accusing me of cheating. And they piss me off. A lot. I’m generally a pretty calm, blase, take-the-world-as-it-comes kind of person, but of all the things I do/have done in my life, this is pretty much the real-est. I work my ass off for hours a day, every day, for 30 days. I love doing it and hope to do it for many years to come.

And do you know what surprised me as I was wandering around the forums this year? People were timing their word counts in 10/15 minute intervals, and quite a lot of them can type as much or more than I can in the same period of time. Yes, they’re doing one burst and not sustaining that speed, but that just takes practice and a lucky-good set of wrists. And yes, you’ve got to have the ideas in the first place, which I understand other people sometimes have trouble with. As for quality, the only difference between me who writes a couple thousand in an hour as part of a long day, and the person who procrastinates until 10 at night and pushes all their words out in an hour, is that I was doing it for more hours that day. I remain convinced that the quality of my work is not significantly worse than anyone else’s, on average. And yeah, I understand that most people don’t have the time to dedicate to what I do, and that’s fine. If/when I get married/employed/have kids I’m sure that I’ll have to cut back, and that’s fine. When it happens, it happens. I’ll deal with it then. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and priorities too (no, I’m not saying that it’s a wrong priority to put your job/significant other/children/pet first, I’m saying that it’s a decision), and mine allow me to do this, and my lifestyle allows me to shunt other things into the background for 30 days to do something insane.

Why would I cheat? What the hell would my gain be? Sure, yeah, I get to parade around the forums talking about my word count, but in general, I try to confine that to threads where people are talking about their word count, and even then I don’t post a lot. When I was doing JulNo earlier this year, and was doing word wars with people, after a while I participated silently and didn’t report my count at the end of the war. Because I hate making people uncomfortable with my word count, and I hate making them feel on any level like they’re doing less work than I am. You can see in the previous posts on this blog that I talk about the things I’m going to write, I’m happy to talk about them. The only person losing if I pretended to write those things would be me. As I always do with those who accuse me of cheating, I will do it again this year: if you don’t believe me, I would be delighted to send you all the work I’ve done this month to date.  It will be a rough enough first draft that you’d have to have my notes and a lot of patience to make it anything publishable, and I’m not all that afraid of theft. Sure, I can’t prove that I’ve written it all in November, but it’s the best I can do. If anyone else would like to suggest a way for me to prove I’m telling the truth, I’d be open to all suggestions.

The reason I’m getting this off my chest now, rather than later in November, or another year, is that there’s a lot of commotion going on in the forums about what can and can’t be done, and it’s getting heated on all sides. I’m trying to stay out of it, because making enemies isn’t what I’m on that forum to do, and I’m hideously outnumbered. And the subject of this post isn’t to criticize marienbadmylove. I’ve said my piece about him, and that is all I plan to say. I won’t let him ruin the month for me, just as I won’t let anyone else. All I know is that I will be waiting here, computer on hand, as the clock ticks slowly towards midnight, with a fresh word document open, waiting to begin the month.

As for the how it’s not just random crap spurted out onto a page, which I can understand some would think, the answer is outlines, character pages, maps, and a good memory. If you put together everything I’ve written in preparation for this month, as much as I denigrate my laziness in other posts (which I am. Shamefully lazy), you’d still probably round up at least 30,000 words. Yeah, it’s going to need editing. But what written in a month, 50,000 words or a million, isn’t going to need editing at the end? But it’s not total crap. It’s not just stream of consciousness. I use contractions, I don’t break the fourth wall, and I’m fairly sure that in the four years I’ve done it so far, that I’ve not inserted text from another source (as quotes or anything else). If I run down the list of cheats, I’m 99.99% sure that I’ve not done any of them, and don’t plan to. (Again, not criticizing those who use them). I can read most of what I wrote last year and not wince too much. It’s a bit wordy, and I can tell where I got bored writing it, but I could sit down and read it, and it makes sense.

It has always been, and will always be my view that whether you write one word or a million, if you take the initiative and start that novel that’s always been hiding in the back corner of your mind, just because it’s November and NaNoWriMo, you’re a winner.