NaNoNire

Let's See if I Can Keep This Up

2008-10-05T20:44:00.002-05:00

Well, it's the beginning of October, which means it's NaNoWriMo planning time again.

How many of you are participating? Do you know what you're going to do yet? And if you do, what's a one-sentence summary of the plot? For me, it's:

A stinky superhero and his gadget-girl sidekick try to stop the zombie apocalypse.

Curse You Blogger!

2005-10-20T21:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a post answering the question that I posed myself at the end of one of my previous posts. But I'll be damned if Blogger didn't decide it would be wonderful to eat it as a late-night snack.

Curses!

Guess I'll be rewriting it next time I have a chance...

Some Things are Important

2005-10-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

I just realized that my main character doesn't have a real name. I know what he's called after his descent into evil, but I'll be damned if I know who he was before that.

This? Is not good.

Helpful Links, Anyone?

2005-10-07T17:11:00.000-05:00

Here's a couple writing links that I've dug up from various places that I'm sure people will find helpful.

Copyright
What are the copyright laws? How can you use copyrighted material? How could you be breaking the copyright laws? Holly at NaNoNuts2005 givs us the low-down.

Previously Published?
What sort of rights are there? What happens when you post things somewhere on the internet? What is considered previously published and what isn't? Holly provides a simple explanation of publishing rights.

Publishing
Here's a writer's look into what happens between signing the contracts and actually seeing your book on the shelves. Maybe not relevent at the moment, but hopefully for some by the end of NaNoEdMo.

A Writer's Toolkit
This link takes you to a PDF file that guides you through the writing process. It's an part of a class assignment, I would assume, so some of the parts are less than 100% necessary. Give it a look-see.

Method Writing
How many times have you read a book and said "What the hell? Real people wouldn't do that!"? Mike Shea believes that this is caused by excessively plot-focused writing, by outlining and forcing your characters to do what they want. He proposes a solution: the writing equivalent of method acting.

Don't Suck!
While this article seems to be aimed at journalists, a lot of Gareth's tips on how NOT to suck apply to novel-writing, too. I recommend at least skimming the article for the relevent parts.

That's it for today. Enjoy.

It Just Keeps Getting Bigger

2005-10-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

Nanowrimo started in 1999 with a paltry 21 people participating (6 of whom reached the 50K word goal). By 2004, it had grown to 42,000 participants, of whom nearly six thousand wrote 50,000 words or more¹. This yeah, 2005, it's continuing to grow. The NaNoWriMo and 2005NaNoWriMo communities on LiveJournal are filled with "Hi, this is my first NaNo, one of my friends convinced me to join" posts. On October 1, when the website reopened for sign-ups and NaNoPrepMo², the amount of people accessing the site and signing up was so great that it crashed the servers in a major way. That had never happened before; the servers had always been able to withstand the strain of the two months. On October 4, the site reopened with new (more) servers.

As I stated earlier, I'm not sure how I feel about this. Sure, I'm not required to feel anything, but I know that I do. I just keep waffling between being pretty pleased (occaisonally) and slightly annoyed and concerned (most of the time).

On the pleasing side, it's good to see so many writers, young and old, learning to force their inner editors to stuff a sock in it and just write. As much as I prefer writing in complete solitude, being surrounded by a group of writers doing the same thing as me is inspiring. More people participating guarantees that there will be people in my area interested in doing write-ins.

However, the other hand, the much larger hand, is not pleased. At all.^³

A portion of this is, of course, the discomfort felt by a minor niche of the population when the mainstream decide what they are doing is "cool". I have the same issue with NaNoWriMo becoming so popular as I did with gaming platforms becoming the "in" thing, punk and goth becoming the looks to have, playing multiple instruments wasn't just for band geeks. Those traits used to be things I used to indentify myself, to set myself apart from the mainstream population. The groups who identified with me were often closeknit, providing a sense of family and belonging.

As NaNoWriMo becomes more mainstream, that sense is lost. In the beginning, it allowed the winners^⁴ into two subsets of the population: the first being those people who are participating in NaNoWriMo, the second being novel writers themselves. That first subset has grown so large that it's potentially considered (at least within the subset itself) not to be much of a subset anymore. In my own opinion, it's reached mainstream: most people have heard of it and many participate. The second subset has also grown larger as NaNoWriMo grows larger, thus somehow seeming to cheapen the glory of having a novel to call your own.

There's also the issue of what is being produced. The more people who participate, the more potential for there to be, to put it bluntly, utter crap produced. I'm talking about crap that can not be improved by that writer no matter how many times he or she edits and fixes it.

This was seen with the world of fanfiction a while back. There was a time (which I admit that I barely remember) when writing fanfiction was something that almost no one did. Back when it was solely 'zines, a fanfic'er had to work hard to get a story in one of the fanzines. When fanfic first started appearing on the internet and FanFiction.Net was created, writing fanfic still was not a popular hobby. Most of the people who did write and post online made sure their work followed canon and that it was written well. Now? You go to FFN and 90% of it is crap written by a 13-year-old on a sugar high who's only seen one episode of the TV show, read one chapter of the book, seen half an hour of the movie.

Of course, this isn't likely to happen with publishing novels. There's some sort of a guarantee that what gets published will at least have some semblence of quality. Or so you would think.

Have you read Eragon? Or Digital Fortress? No one could claim that those books were any good upon truly looking at them. And yet, they still sell many copies, they're still being produced, and the authors are still receiving royalties. Crap is still marketable.

It worries me that the increase in writers will cause in increase in bad novels being produced. And this will, in turn, create an increase in bad novels being published by legit^⁵ publishers. Nevermind how many inexperienced NaNo'ers will take their babies to a vanity press (assuming they can afford to do so), not realizing how much of a bad idea that is.

Every year, a NaNoWriMo newbie seems to find an article by Alma A. Hromic and posts it to the main community on LiveJournal, causing yet another mini hissyfit by some participants.^⁶

"Last year, the NaNoWriMo phenomenon gathered over 5000 hopefuls, of whom 700 succeeded in producing their 50,000 words by the midnight deadline. "They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists," the NaNoWriMo website says.

I'm deeply sorry to wreck this comfortable illusion, but this is self-delusional at best, a flat out lie at worst."

On the one hand, I understand where the responders on the two sites are coming from. The tone of the article is (more than) a bit holier-than-thou. Hromic really does seem to be overreacting to something that's more "just a bit of fun" than "serious business" to most people.

"So you want to write? Write. If you don't have it in you, that thing that drives you, the thing that needs to be said - then find another dream. Make the bourbon for the tortured artists to drink. Bake them a cake. Build them a house.

Don't diminish their accomplishments by calling yourself "a novelist." If writing is your hobby and your interest, that's perfectly fine. For many of us, it's a living. For some of us, it's a vocation. There are people who want to "be writers," and people who want to write. Find out which you are. If it's the latter, you don't need NaNoWriMo - you will not be scared away by the necessary time and effort, you will not be scared away by the bourbon and the coffee and the leftovers. You WILL write, because you cannot not write. If it's the former... find a real writer somewhere and cure yourself of the romantic ideas of what a writer's life is like. And then go and sin no more."

On the other hand, I understand where she's coming from. It has been my plan to become a "writer" since I was a youngling. Everything I've done in life has been to further my goal to be able to support myself on writing alone. Hell, I even have English-with-a-focus-in-Creative-Writing as one of my majors. I can't quite claim to be "a real writer" yet. Yes, I've won short story contests. Yes, I wrote a 80K novel before I discovered NaNoWriMo, but it was typical of a determined young teenager and not something that will ever be pubished. However, I'm working there on my own time, not just during November. Not even mostly during November.

I would agree that NaNoWriMo "cheapens" the non-NaNo-writer's career. Now that everyone feels that writing a novel is accesible to them, now that it's no longer a someday thing, but a thismonth event, writers are nolonger people to be idolized. A large part of my childhood involved looking up to authors. I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to be up there with Terry Pratchet, not with 14-year-old Jessie from down the street.

NaNoWriMo makes it so that everyone can call themselves novelists, this is true. The more people who participate, the more people who win, the more people who are "novelists", the less special it is for me to be a writer. In a way, I'm watching the dreams of my childhood fall into the toilet. In a way, this is probably an over-reaction and I'm taking NaNoWriMo "far too seriously". But as long as there are people who view it the way I do, it's an issue.

So I suppose that raises the question, why do I even participate in NaNoWriMo then? I'll save that one for a later post.
___________________________________
¹data found in the NaNoWriMo General FAQ
²unofficial title of October, according to me
^³Forgive me for any disjointedness in this piece of my post. I "wrote" all of my major points while walking to class this morning and, well, five hours later, I've forgotten the majority of them.
^⁴I'll admit that I've never won. However, I've come damn close and "won" in off months when I completely both novels I started during November.
^⁵I, personally, do not count vanity presses as legit. When you have to pay someone to publish your book? That's pretty sketchy.
^⁶Emailed responses here and here. Scroll down a bit to find them.

October's Here

2005-10-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

The NaNoWriMo site is finally open.

So many people attempted to sign up on the first day that the server(s?), well, broke.

I have mixed feelings about that. Alas, for I can't detail them at the moment, as class is starting in a few minutes. More later.

Tis Almost the Season

2005-09-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

Originally, this blog was created specifically for NaNoWriMo. The issue with this being A) once I'm really in the swing of writting 2K a day, I don't really have the energy to update (read: write MORE) at the end of the day, and B) there's a max of about two months a year this blog gets attention.

Well, it's amost that time again. October will be soon upon us and planning for NaNo starts. Next month, my blog turns a year old and NaNoWriMo starts for real.

This will be the first October that I go through with a NaNo blog. Instead of posting my prewrite things flocked in my LJ, I'll be posting them here. Hopefully, I'll be able to get in the habit of writing and planning copious amounts daily, so that November will be less of a shock when it rolls around.

My plan for October: daily posts detailing characters, plots, etc in this blog. It will be a bit of a daily workout for me, a place to keep my thoughts straight that I can access from anywhere, and a way to psyche myself up.

My plan for November: write write write! Mostly by working on my novel, hopefully more frequent updates here than I had last year. And, hopefully, I won't choke the way I did last year and fail at NaNo. ;-)

Here's to a successful planning month and a succussful writing month. *CLINK*

Musicals

2005-02-07T13:43:00.000-05:00

I have a bunch of songs from musicals stuck in my head. And it's not. Cool. Cuz I don't know the songs that everyone knows from musicals. I know the odd ones.

The Last 5 Years - Shiksa Goddess ("...if your mother and your brother had relations with eachother and your father was connected to the Ghadi clan...")
Jekyll&Hyde - Good and Evil ("...Adam and Eve and the apple tore Eden apart...")

And, well, etc etc. Cuz I don't know the names to any more of the songs, I just know how they go.

::sigh:: I'm a musical bitch.

Failing is Fun!

2005-02-01T15:31:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update to let everyone who reads this know: I totally failed NaNoWriMo.

I got up to about 40,000 words or so and quit. I started to feel like emotional shit for some reason and just plain quit. :-P

So, yeah, I'm still working on it and everything. But it's not really NaNoWriMo anymore. :-)

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Thoughts of the Sixth Day

2004-11-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

The coffee chat was awesome. I was a bit skeptical going to it, just because I didn't know the people and wasn't exactly sure what was going to be happening because it was called a "coffee chat" instead of a "write-in".

It was different. We spent a lot of time just talking about how things were going and getting to know each other and stuff. I liked the people that were there. We talked a bit about the NaNoWriMo website and possibilities for the TGIO party.

I found possibly the only outlet in the place and ran my super-long AC adaptor cord all the way across the café to it so that I could work on my story while I was listening to them talk (it got to a point where I didn't have anything new to say because of my age/NaNoWriMo inexperience). I kept expecting the guy at the counter to come over and tell me I couldn't plug it in like that because it was a safety hazard (there was just barely enough slack to let it lie on the floor).

After about two hours, everyone left. I stayed for an extra hour and got my daily 2K written. I met this girl (and by met I mean we talked but I have no clue what her name was) that I would assume was a college student somewhere nearby (since she was doing what appeared to be HW) and we talked a bit about writing and NaNoWriMo and stuff.

I almost lost everything twice because I kept accidentally unplugging my laptop (thus rendering it unworkable) or closing everything. Luckily, each time I had just saved so I was okay.

Oh, and I learned that while I don't love espresso, I like it. So that's the only kind of coffee I'll drink. Nice, eh?

Before I went to bed, I wrote a hundred words or so. Had I built up any steam I was going to continue and try to reach then 4K mark, but it didn't happen.

Also, I read the chapter on Week Two from No Plot? No Problem!. It was interesting and the "feeling" that I'm "supposed" to be feeling during Week Two is the same one that's been there almost since the beginning. Because I've had this idea running around my head for so long, I kind of hope it means that I'm just on a slightly different motivation schedule than most other people. Which means sometime in the middle of Week Two, I should be hitting the Week Three motivation level.

At the coffee chat, we were talking about first year vs. second year. Everyone was of the belief that the second year was the hardest for various reasons, so that could be it too.

Days Four and Five

2004-11-06T17:29:00.000-05:00

DAY FOUR THOUGHTS:

When viewed singularly, today was a productive day. I wrote a bit more than 4000 words. When viewed as a catch-up, though, it was sub par. Instead of going a hundred or so words over my 2K words goal, I went 15 over (for each day) at the most.

But, my morale is back up there. I brought my laptop into school and got to school an extra hour early. It was semi-motivating to work in the CC. On the one hand, my friends were interested in what I was doing and the ones who already knew were bugging me about my word count. But on the other hand, the ones who didn’t know wanted me to explain NaNoWriMo to them and what my plot was. So that was pretty distracting.

I talked to Sid a lot about the plot and what was going to happen. That helped me get some things ironed out that I hadn’t thought of and he pointed out a couple errors in what I was thinking (note to self: Rome is NOT in Greece…). One of the suggestions made in No Plot? No Problem! was to not talk about what you were writing with other people. While I can understand the basis behind this – for a long time my idea was just talk because it was so much easier to talk about what I was going to write than actually write it. But I’m finding now that it helps a lot to discuss what’s going on with other people so that they can point out the flaws in my logic that I’m missing. I’m sure that it’s costing me something in productivity because it is a lot easier to discuss what’s happening than write it, but it’s saving me editing time in the long run.

I did a lot of writing in front of the TV today. It made everything go a lot slower and it was a lot harder to concentrate on what I was doing, so I probably won’t do that again.

DAY FIVE THOUGHTS:

Wrote a bit in the CC, wrote a bit during Elements of Writing, was going to write a bit during CS but the battery in my laptop wouldn't work.

I went over Bethany's after school and by the time I got home I was exhausted, so I didn't get anything else done. Oh well. There's a coffee chat tomorrow at the Border's in Framingham, so I'll try to get tons done there.

Thoughts from Day Three

2004-11-04T18:41:00.000-05:00

I didn’t do much of anything today. Before my calc lab, I read some more of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but not much of it.

After the lab, I drove to the Panera in Smithfield, RI, where people were meeting for another write-in. The Municipal Liaison was supposed to be there at 5pm to make sure there was going to be enough space and enough outlets. When I got there at 6-ish, there was no one there. I waited until 6:30 and then left.

Later on I found out that the ML had gotten lost and the people at Panera were really bad at giving directions, so she didn’t get there until 7. No one else showed up, so I didn’t miss much.

I didn’t get any writing done. Once I was at home, I was too tired to concentrate on anything, so I went to bed.

I guess I’m going to have to bring my mum’s laptop to school tomorrow and work on it before classes and such, because now I have to write twice as many words to make up for missing today.

Thoughts on the First Two Days

2004-11-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

FIRST DAY THOUGHTS:

It was difficult to get into the swing of the story. I thought I had a good idea and a lovely beginning. Well, my idea is good, still, and I can feel it. But the beginning is… not good.

I think my problem is that I've been thinking about this for far too long. The beginning, the end, the major plot twists are all known; I'm not all that curious to find out what's going to happen.

Then again, I was exhausted last night. Maybe that was a part of my struggle to reach 2K. Clearly, I did so in the end, but I couldn't make myself write any more. Considering I got it done, there's also the possibility that my lack of motivation is just another symptom of the general apathy I am feeling and have been feeling.

Have I started Week Two early?

I wonder if, since this is my SISP, I can get the school to cover my "expenses". Probably not…

I wish I had a laptop so that, when I went o write-ins, I could just type everything instead of having to write it out and type it up later.

The first write-in that I knew about ahead of time is tomorrow. It's from 5-10 at Tealuxe in Providence, which is half an hour from my house. Unfortunately, I need to leave straight from school, so that's an hour of riving because there's no good way to go from Worcester to Providence. Parking will be a costly bitch, but I don't care. It looks like it will be fun.

SECOND DAY THOUGHTS:

This was another day of struggling, unfortunately.

Right after my CS lab, I drove down to Providence. In trying to find Tealuxe, I only got lost once and realized it almost immediately. I got there and managed to find a parking space that was on one of the streets it was on and taught myself how to parallel park.

Inside, I bought an absolutely delicious chai. It was pumpkin and something and something. But that's not the point.

Tealuxe was incredibly crowded and there were six of us (including me). It took a while for there to be enough seats open that were next to each other, but it eventually happened and we all sat down. I met this very cool guy named… Rob, I believe.

Everyone had laptops but me, so that was kind of frustrating. They were all clicking away, and I had to sit there with my pen and notebook and scribble. I didn't get much work done because I was more interested in watching people and listening to conversations (to provide fodder for dialogue in my story, though!) to write a lot.

The RI ML gave me some of last year's swag. Well, she gave everyone who came some of last year's swag if they wanted it. I now have a pen that says "Magical pen of wonder / National Novel Writing Month / 2003", which I used to write the majority of what I got done at Tealuxe.

It was a good motivator, though. I think, had I had a laptop, I would have written a lot more. At least the 2K that was my goal. When I got home, I went downstairs and found one of the ancient laptops Mum got from school and dragged it up here to get it working so that I can bring it to the next write-in. That was incredibly frustrating and took a while, but it works now, so I'm all set.

Once I was home (and I didn't get lost once going home) I finished up the 2K. That took an abominable amount of time, especially considering I only had to write about 600 words. So far, I'm on schedule and building up a bit of leeway so that if I absolutely can not make my goal one night, I won't be totally screwed.

Oh, and I should mention that I finished No Plot? No problem! up to the Week Two part. I plan on reading (like it's suggested in the beginning) each week's chapter the first weekend of that week. There were some good tips and tricks, but most of them didn't apply since I'm already so incredibly unmotivated.

I also started reading Eats, Shoot and Leaves which is turning out to be hilarious and really interesting. Hopefully it will improve my grammar a lot.

That's all for today.

4,311 / 50,000
(8.0%)

First Wordcount Update

2004-11-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

As of right now, this is where I'm at:

2,202 / 50,000
(4.0%)

I might add more later on, though.

Character Info

2004-11-01T17:31:00.000-05:00

NAME: Skyler

AGE: 30

GENDER: female

WORK: adventurer/archaeologist/researcher

FRIENDS/FAMILY/LOVE: Arich is her friend and eventual love interest. She's a loner and travels a lot, so there's no one else to talk about. Her only living relatives are her mother and father. But they live far away and are disapproving of her job and ideals. There was her grandfather, who she was very close to, but he's dead. Possibly going to make appearances in flashbacks.

LIVING SPACE: Messy, but with an underlying order. Her workspace is messy while working, but gets cleaned up at the end of every day (that she works). She's very particular about where things go in the mess and has a neurotically clean bathroom.

HOBBIES: movie-watching; her work is her main hobby

PAST YEAR: same thing as now; met and took on Arich has her apprentice; work = life

FIVE YEARS: worked with her grandpa a lot; then gramps (a spry old man) was killed; she took on her quest as his and has been doing the same thing since then.

VALUES: much emphasis on respect, loyalty, trust; loose morals otherwise; not main-stream religious; pagan, sort of

POLITICS: conservatively liberal; not a tree-hugger, but pro-abortion

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NAME: Arich

AGE: 27

GENDER: male

WORK: apprentice to Skyler; languages; inherited $$?

FRIENDS/FAMILY/LOVE: Skyler is his friend and eventual love interest. His friends don't make an appearance until the latter half of the book. He's a loner like Skyler, so doesn't have all that many friends. His parents and such are dead. His master is his only family, but they have an incredibly bad relationship.

LIVING SPACE: Organized, but not meticulously so (can handle Skyler's mess)

HOBBIES: sword-fighting; not many/not known

PAST YEAR: sent to work with Skyler

FIVE YEARS: being reintroduced to mortal culture and getting used to the pill and its effect.

VALUES: moralsome; big against lying and such; quite upset that he has to deceive Skyler

POLITICS: nothing; no opinions and avoids it

General Info

2004-10-31T20:55:00.000-05:00

Here's some general info about my NaNovel.

Working Title: Children of Darkness and Light

Genre: a lovely mix of fantasy/horror/action/adventure

Short synopsis: "A woman on a mission to carry on the work of her grandfather comes across more than she bargained for." Skyler's life work is to continue the work of her grandfather, that is uncover coverups and changes in the Christian religion. She and her protege, Arich, go on various adventures to recover writings and such. In the end, it all comes together in the ultimate truth, or the One True History.

Main character(s):
--Name: Skyler
--Age: 30
--Relationship status: single for most of the story
--Sexual orientation: straight
--Gender: female
--Hometown: Middle, Nowhere, USA (maybe NY?)
--Job: Relic Hunter/archaeologist/researcher
--Personality traits: sarcastic, sad, superior
--Physical description: soft soft soft brown hair, almost cinnamon colored. Blue or green eyes. Maybe change depending on what she's wearing? Tall, a bit stocky. Round features.
--Any special quirks, talents or unique qualities? Just her brain and the ability to use it. Possibly knows something about martial arts, swordfighting, and archery
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--Name: Arich
--Age: appears 27
--Relationship status: single for most of the story
--Sexual orientation: straight
--Gender: male
--Hometown: somewhere in Wales
--Job: apprentice to Skyler
--Personality traits: quiet except when around close friends, shy, put-on-a-happy-face
--Physical description: dark dark dark brown hair and striking blue eyes. Short and thin/wiry. Sharp features.
--Any special quirks, talents or unique qualities? He has a rare disease (doesn't like to talk about it/refuses to talk about it) that he has to take pills for once a day in order to be a functioning member of society

Anything else you'd care to add about your story: The plot idea was originally designed to be a short story that I would later continue into a longer thing. I'm not sure if that's going to affect how I write it or not.

Hallowe'en

2004-10-31T17:53:00.000-05:00

Tonight's Hallowe'en. Know what that means?

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow!

I'm so incredibly excited because this year I have a chance of reaching 50,000 words. Last year, I came in during the last 10 days. It got to a point where I calculated it out and it was physically impossible for me to finish. I would've had to work 24 hours a day typing something like 200 wpm to finish.

Anyway, I'm going to use this journal to post the trials and tribulations of NaNoWriMo2004. When it's over, I suppose I'll cross-post things from my LJ into here and stuff, but... Yeah. :-)

As of this moment in 6 hours and 4 minutes I can start.

I have a plot an characters this year, too. And a basic outline. This idea has been bouncing around my head for a year or so. Hopefully it will come out brilliantly and I can sell it, since it is my Senior Project and all.

Ah, and that's another reason why I have a better chance of finishing this year. MassAcademy is such a stressful school that I was spending more time working on homework than on writing. But WPI? Such w00shw00sh courses this term. Sort of. Ooo, maybe not.

One requires tons of writing. Academic writing, unfortunately, not creative. The other one requires tons of programming. Yay for Java. And the last one is Calc2 which is apparently a pain in the ass. Plus I have college apps that need to be filled out and stuff.

Who on earth decided that November was a good idea to do this??

Today I went and sat in B&N for two hours. I ended up buyint two books. Supposedly, they're both very good books. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss and No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. I can't wait to read them.

I suppose I should get some more homework done before it's time to start writing! It's really too bad I have class at 9am tomorrow, so I can't stay up till 2 writing.