Writing in the morning; writing in the evening; a lot of shopping in between. That was Day 17 of NaNoWriMo. Something I’ve done before, but first time this month of writing.
Today is Day 18, and I’m just about to the finish line.
Whereas the night before the words struggled to get out, last night I found it necessary to shut down after finishing the current chapters. I ended up a couple of hundred words short of three thousand for the day, and I could have written more, but I’ve been pushing it hard for a couple of days, working through something that was kicking my butt, and I didn’t want to get into a chapter, then shut down a couple of hundred words in before heading to bed.
Why mess up a good thing?
That’s why this morning finds me thirty-two hundred words short of fifty thousand, and one of the finish lines is in sight. I stated a long time a go that NaNo is a marathon, where you keep a steady pace and don’t worry about sprinting your way across twenty-six miles of copy.
When you hold it up to that light, then you can say: the end of your story is the finish line, and the fifty thousand point is the wall that some runners hit.
It’s a very rare occasion–at least to my way of thinking–that when you write fifty thousand, and some plus, for NaNo, that’s it: you are through with your novel. I don’t mean through as in “I’ll never have to edit this sucker and make it presentable,” I mean through as in, “That’s it: The End, put this damn thing to bed for a while.” You’re going to go a little beyond the Fifties to get to the Endies, and that’s where the Wall is gonna come in.
Something like this happened last year. I stared out, but before I started writing, I knew I’d venture beyond fifty thousand. I figured, at first, maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy thousand, but not much beyond that. Then once I was through with Part One, I was thinking, “Oh, this will be seventy-thousand,” and it wasn’t long before I knew the novel was going to hit eighty thousand . . .
At the end of Day 17, I was a little over sixty-one thousand words into the novel, and would end up writing another twenty-five thousand in the next eight days. By the time I was into the last few chapters, I wanted it over. Sure, I’m like that with every story–I want to write “The End” and go off and do something else–but reaching the end of Demonic Majesty was a trial. I made it though, but it wasn’t the easiest things I’d done.
This time–not so much. I’ve written far more in the last year before this NaNo than I had before doing Her Demonic Majesty. That was the first real novel I’d not only written, but completed, and the experience taught me quite a lot. This time around, there have been a few bumps in the path, but nothing that I haven’t be able to work though.
The end is near . . . but the moment has been prepared for.
And I didn’t have to fall off a radio telescope to learn that.
The last couple of days I’ve been running on little sleep, but not really feeling it. Well, not much, that is. I felt it last night when I was writing. Or, should I say, struggling to write.
I had stuff to do yesterday, then there was time spent trying to get a fire going in the outdoor pit–note to self: you need an hour to get that sucker going–then, about eight PM, it was time to write.
Maybe it was the moon coming out of newness, or my hormones are freaking on me, or I’m just cold. I don’t know. But last night, I was really down. I didn’t want to write. I felt like I was spending this enormous amount of time cranking out words, then I’d do a check of my progress, and discover I’d written maybe two hundred words.
I had to look stuff up. As prepared as I was, I’m still finding things to research, and for about twenty minutes I was looking for one damn acronym so I could use it for a line in a chapter. I needed a date, and I couldn’t find the sucker. I needed the name of a town . . . screw it. This is what comes from working in the real world: you have to use real things from time to time. So not fair.
Then I got caught up in some social media drama. Someone posted something that they did a, “Oh, is this real?” then when you say it is, the comeback is misquoting something you said weeks before, and that they aren’t going to debate anything with me, ’cause obviously I’m a bad person. You keep thinkin’ that, love, and, just like last night, I’ll walk away because–wait, what’s that quote?
Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Mark Twain.
Yeah, that one.
It seems like that quote has been coming to bear a lot of late. Not just from “things”–whatever those things may be–but from people I know in the writing biz. It seems as NaNoWriMo drags on, you begin to get a very good feel for those who are writing because they are serious about being writers, and those who are writing because they think it makes them writers.
I was telling someone the other night that in the run-up to NaNo, I received a bit of–shall we say, shit, about all the work I’d put into getting ready to write. It seemed there was a palatable poo-pooing hanging in the air before me from people who were aghast that I was doing something like–research! For a novel! Oh, heavens above, where is the fainting couch?
So bad had it become that a couple of people were insinuating–nay, insisting!–that if you had to plan things out in advance, you were some kind of formulaic hack, and damned if they’d go that route! And that’s fine if you want to do that; far be it from me to say my way of writing is far better than yours. And if you want to say your way of writing is farsuperior to my puny human efforts, Loki, that’s cool. Though don’t expect me to give you mad props any time soon, because your mind is a bag of cats, and despite the hype you’re yappin’, I ain’t seeing the end result.
There seem to be a goodly number of people who, while some seem to be trying to walk the walk, they spend more time wiping up drama about their very comfortable walking shoes. They go on an on about needing to sprint with people, when they could have been, you know, writing during the three hours they bitched about not having people around who can sprint.
Writing is hard, and last night it was very hard for me. But, around eleven PM, something kicked in. Something made the fingers fly. Something made what I was writing make a hell of a lot more sense than it had before, and when it was all said and done, I made my NaNo Count, I made my Personal Daily Count, and I was about thirty-five words short of forty-four thousand.
You don’t own me, Novel: your ass is mine. So saith the Muse and Me.
Keep talking things up, and keep living those empty dreams. I have other plans. When you’re bitching about not getting in quality sprinting time, I’m struggling through my two thousand words, but I’m finishing that total before I head off to bed. And just as a heads up: a few of the folks who sort of turned their nose up at my prep work–they’ve crashed and burned their Air NaNo plane, and I’m still here.
After fifteen days on the Crazy Train, my spreadsheet tells me I’m 83.6% complete, with 41,801 words banked. My own stats tell me that, after looking at the average word count per chapter, I’m on pace for a 63,930 word story.
It’s a lot of numbers at the moment, but there’s a story in there. You gotta trust me.
I knew, based upon what I was planing, that this weekend would be about the point where I’d cross the fifty thousand mark in the NaNo marathon. When I look at last year’s stats, I cross that particular Rubicon on 14 November, when I finished the day with 51,061 words. If I look at my numbers for the last ten days, there is a possibility I could end up at fifty thousand on Sunday night. To do that I’ll need to probably have one three thousand word day–
If not, then I finish on Monday. No big deal. I can see the stadium off in the distance, so the race is almost over.
As for finishing the story? That’s a bit trickier.
The chapter I’m working on today–and the chapter that follows–could get into some wordage. A couple of the chapters that follow could be pretty short, and by that I mean maybe a thousand words, or so. All that aside, I could still end up with a sixty-five thousand word story. With a bit of editing, I could get that up to seventy, but lets get the story finished first.
For a while I’ve had this feeling that I’m not writing with the same speed and urgency as I did with last year’s NaNo. Well, yes and no. I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with The Muse last night–she’s still around, looking over my shoulder, rubbing my shoulders when necessary–and I’ve discovered the followed: I’m not in a mad dash to simply throw words upon the page, but rather, I want to have it go out as a clean first draft, rather than a, “What the hell is this crap?” first draft.
My goal for NaNo was to get two thousand words a day behind me, and I’ve held to that. There was one day when I just barely made that total, but numbers be met, and I’ll take what I wrote. But as I told the Muse, this has also been one story where I’ve had to dive into the well and pull up research as I was writing, and unlike last year, that’s slowed me down.
Last year it was all about fantasy; this year it’s still about fantasy, but fantasy that exists in a real world wrapper, and there are names, there are weapons, there are streets, there are locations . . . hell, there’s even having to check what the stars are going to look like next year on a certain night on the other side of the world, and how one would eat pressed grilled bananas covered in sauce when your character are at the beach.
That’s where I was last night: I have my characters waiting to see someone, they’re standing on a beach front in the city of Makassar, and I wanted to set a mood . . . so I’m looking at how the sky looked at the time, and I knew what they were going to eat, but I wasn’t certain how they’d eat it, or how it would be packaged–and therein is the need to run off and look things up. Which I did.
So even among the writing, even with all the research, there’s work to be conducted, things to find.
Thirteen days into NaNo 2012, which is always NaNo Number Two, and I did something I’ve never done before: I went to a write-in.
Hey, some times you have to.
I’ve written at the Uptown Cafe before. When I was writing last year, and I began coming down with a hard-core case of cabin fever, I packed up The Beast–aka, my six year old laptop, which was once the Official Laptop of the City of Atlantis–and headed out for a little snack and some coffee, and the hope someone might come over and ask me what I was doing.
That last never happened, but I liked the vibe I got from sitting there, surrounded by other, while I pecked away at the keyboard. Good times, all. There were even a few times when I brought the daughter along, to engage in some creative bonding.
I’d never been to a write-in before, and wasn’t certain what to expect. I knew I’d write, and I figured others would as well, but beyond that I had no notions of what would come.
But I needn’t worry about it long, as it was pretty obvious it would be writing, while chatting up a few people, and being able to ask questions about NaNo, and get into things like, “First NaNo? What are you writing? Do you come here often?” No, that last didn’t happen, either. Probably because I don’t look like the sort of person who hangs out in cafes that often.
For me it was the chance to get down and sling words. I’ve had more than my share of distractions while at home, and thought my word count is respectable–I am ahead of the curve by a good margin, and should hit my fifty thousand goal this weekend–I felt like I could do more.
So I was ready to go.
How did I do? It was like old days–sort of. Had two sessions, because I needed to get my daughter to her Science Olympia (Official Motto: ”Don’t Call Us a Science Fair!”). So I did a quick thirty minute run, got Miss Iceland off to the school for study, then returned for a second session, some coffee, and forty-five minutes of word cranking.
How did it all turn out? I managed to get all but twenty words of the NaNo Goal of Millennial Satanic Goodness Plus One, or the 1,667 you have to write each day to get that fifty thousand in by the end of November. Then I came home, told a room full of Indonesians about my Indonesian Horror Novel (yes, you read that right), and setup The Beast for a little more writing. By the time I stumbled off to be, I’d pushed my final word count to just short of twenty-five hundred words, and felt all was good in the world.
At least I didn’t have bad dreams last night. To be honest, I don’t remember what happened in my dreams, which is probably good.
There is another write-in tomorrow, and I may give it a shot. Not because I need to attended, because I be a writin’ fool, and I do it every day, no matter what, but because I like the feeling of being out somewhere different than the place that I call my Writing Spot, and I get to see other people, and maybe even communicate with them.
If nothing else, I can pretend I’m back in Paris, sitting in a small cafe, having an espresso while I ponder the fate of my characters.
These are feelings I like having, if for no other reason than to say, “I’m one of you; I fit in.”
I hate when I wake up in the middle of the night with something bothering me.
Allow me to explain:
Last night my two thousand words and change I wrote for my NaNo Novel involved an attack by a supernatural creature. The scene is still on-going, and I may, or may not, finish it today. But I had a great set up: a street section going dark, something that looks like a big cloud of badness, and one of my main characters getting knocked about.
Yep. Just another exciting night in the city of Makassar.
The computer was acting up bad last night, and I finally shut down once I hit my goal of hitting thirty-five thousand words. I was tired, so I figured I’d fall right asleep–which I did–and . . .
I can’t tell you what was really happening throughout most of the dream, but I know at the end, I was driving a van, someone else was with me. We parked, and they got out. And then . . .
The darkness closed in on me.
That’s just how it felt. I was sitting there, I looked back, and everything turned black. Not only that, but I felt something touch me, and remain in the room as I woke up. With a huge pain in my left leg.
This isn’t the first time something like that has happened, but it freaked me out plenty. Plus, the pain I had in my leg wasn’t doing a lot to help me get back to sleep right away. I couldn’t find a position that was comfortable. I tossed around for maybe thirty minutes before I dozed off again.
Only to wake up with this song going through my head. Which was going through my head when I went to sleep. Damn it all, why does this have to happen to me? I just want a good night’s sleep, and pleasant dreams. I don’t want demons of the darkness coming after me when I’m really hoping for is to have Christina Hendricks to show up and model lingerie.
It’s a tough world out there; show the creative types a little mercy.
That’s it, though: creative types have this shit going through their heads all the time. We go to sleep, and our dreams are usually full of insane things. It has to do with how we keep ourselves occupied. As Stephen King pointed out in his book, Danse Macabre, the kids that read books and comics grew up to be bright, intelligent, imaginative people, and the kids who didn’t grew up to be soulless, no talent hacks.
I saw a lot of this during the Go Go Reagan 80′s, where everyone who was hellbent on cashing out as a millionaire by thirty-five didn’t read anything as kids, much less science fiction and comics. One guy I worked with in 1985 would have licked the ground upon which Donald Trump was going to walk, and actually refused to speak with me after I pointed out that Trump inherited a ton of money, which was one of the reasons he was able to succeed in business without really trying. I wish I knew where he was today, because just imagine the fun I could have pointing out the insanity of his hero today . . .
You lay down with ghosts, you’re going to dream about them. Can’t be helped. It’s the way our minds work. Even when we don’t want them to bring the horror, they’re going do it anyway.
I’m going to start writing about Christina. I deserve a break tonight.
The weekend is over, and many things happened. Oh, yes: writing. It was a lot of it, actually: about seven thousand, four hundred words total. NaNo Fever: sometimes you catch it.
I won’t say I have it completely, because at this time last year I’d bested that total by quite a bit. But never the mind: I’m doing well, I’ll probably hit the NaNo total this coming weekend, and I’ll finish the novel before the end of the month. Pat yourself on the back, honey, you did it again.
The funny thing is, I still have people who ask me, “What are you getting out of this?” I was having a discussion with someone last night, and that was the question they asked–for the third time since November began. Which is something that puzzles me, because are they just trying to make conversation, or is it they never listen to anything I say?
Yes, I’m spoken of this once already, but last night I just shook my head (which they couldn’t see, as this conversation was occurring over the Internet) and told them the same thing I’d already said twice before: I’m getting the first draft of a novel, from which will come a couple of drafts, a final polish, and then submission–no, not that kind of submission. I’m not writing erotica here, okay?
But that’s another tale for another time, and I’m off onto something more chapterlicious. That is a word; I just made it up, so it must be real.
Someone else also asked me a question last night: why is it that when it’s time for the blood to fly, then the writing comes quickly? I think my answer made sense; it’s because you’re making it up, but you’re seeing it in your head as if it were something visual, like you have this movie playing in your mind, and you’re writing the novelization.
I’m very visual when I write. It might not always show up when I write, because if you tried to put every insane detail in your mind onto the page, you’re no longer showing, you’re telling to the point where you don’t want to leave out a hangnail. I think that helped, because it allows your imagination to roam, and it help you decided what it is you need to tell within your tale.
I’ve said that I don’t like writing action scenes, because what you say is never going to match what’s playing in your mind. But they can be fun, and if you want to get bloody, if you want to get violent–and you are getting into the story to the point where you make Micheal Bay look like an amateur, then the words fly from your fingers.
It’s happened with me–not in a while, because there are only a few instances where I’ve had to kicked major ass. But when I have, it’s been fun. Deep down a lot of writers like to bring the exciting, whether it be violence, or love, or action, or the sexy, and when we like it, we want to get it out as quickly as possible. Because it doesn’t want to stay locked inside: it’s like the Alien getting ready to burst out of your body, only not as messy.
So stand back, ’cause if you’re not careful, you’re going to catch a face-full when it come tearing out.
Which reminds me: I’ve got a demon attack to write.
Believe it or not, last night was the first time in over a month for me to actually get out of the house and go hang somewhere other than home. Yes, I stay at home and hang in front of the computer all the time–well, not literally hang, because I’m not a bat, or even Hank McCoy. But I’m always here, working on something, playing a game when I’m bored, or looking for Ugg boots and getting pissed because, one, they are so expensive, and two, they make nothing in my size.
It was dark and windy. The south winds were blowing all day, keeping it warm enough to let people walk about in long sleeve shirts and leave the windows open in homes and cars. The moon is almost at the new phase, so it was plenty dark driving along the back roads.
But I didn’t think of scenes, or of characters, or what I should do next. There wasn’t any need.
I’ve busted past both my goals for my NaNo novel, Kolor Ijo. Thursday saw me brush past twenty-five thousand words, so I am half-way to the goal of “winning”. Yesterday, before blowing out of the house to go visit someone, I just squeezed over the thirty thousand mark, which gets me half-way to what I think will be the word count for the finished story.
Except I’m not certain if sixty thousand is the end. I know I might need another thousand words to finish this current chapter, which is the thirteenth chapter of the novel. I’ve laid out twenty-six chapters, so now I’m edging up the count, and may be looking at a total of about sixty-two and change.
And the next chapter is going to be a bit wordy as well.
I’m not complaining. If I get over sixty-five thousand words, or even get up to seventy, then the better chance the novel has of seeing publication, since most houses won’t consider anything below sixty thousand to be worth their while. So onward today. I need to finish up an in-story interview, then . . . fight! Yeah, it’s that time in the story to have a throwdown with the supernatural. How does it turn out? Well, I do have Part Three to write, so it’s not that bad–
Or is it?
Why didn’t I think about things as I drove through the night, as I have done so many times in the past? It’s likely because I don’t need that at the moment. I know where this story is going, and I know where many of my other stories are headed, so I don’t need to go all head cannon there.
It’s as I told a friend last night: at this point I know I can write, and I can polish, and I can produce a good story. What I need is to sell . . .
Notice, that’s not the same as “exposure”. I have exposure for the most part. What I need is for that exposure to turn into dollars. I need to get publishing in to the forefront, and as The Good Doctor said, keep sending out those manuscripts, and not let them get cozy on my hard drive. Exposure is no longer needed; it’s time to kick out the jams and get that name known to the right people.
I will “win” NaNo, but the novel won’t be finished in November. I may complete the first draft, but it’s not finished. There are other stories to write after that, and thing to edit.
I didn’t need to speak in the voice of my characters last night–
Because I know I need to speak for myself so I can start the next phase of my life.
I’m on a semi-crazy bend today. Don’t know why, but even with all the irritating stuff that’s coming up and hitting me this morning, I’m still optimistic. Why is that, you say?
Hell, man. If I knew, I’d tell you.
Part of it just looking around and seeing the hilarity of what others are doing. Not naming any name–no, I’d never do that–but this struck me as a bit of hilarity today, so I had to get Morpheus in on the action:
Yes, that’s me, getting all snarky about someone using NaNoWriMo as sort of a launching pad for everything but writing. I mean, I’ve just edged over twenty-eight thousand words this morning, on my way to thirty thousand, because I want to do this story, I want to write this novel, and I get sorta . . . irritated when I see others who say they’re writing not bothering to make an effort.
I know: First World Problems, right? Screw it. I know people in the NaNo game who are breaking their butts to get it done, and there’s nary a note of discord from them. But you know people: sometimes drama is more important than actually doing something, and more power to them if that’s their bag.
It’s not mine, so don’t be too offended when I go all funing on ya.
The other thing that’s making me feel good is related to the title of the post. Pure and Easy is, and always has been, one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands. The song arose out of what was going to be The Who’s followup to Tommy, a rock opera called Lifehouse, about a world where music, particularly rock music, didn’t exist. It was a hell of a concept to put to music, and because of–shall we say “creative differences” between the members of The Who–the album, as envisioned, never came to be.
(Though if you are really interested to see what this may have become, you can slap together the play list found in the link above, or consider checking out Lifehouse Chronicles, the six CD box set Pete Townshend put together in 2000. I should get this; I really should.)
Pure and Easy struck a chord with me today, which is what the song is about: finding the note inside that will liberate each of us to find our own dreams and make them real. Or, as Pete wrote:
We all know success when we all find our own dreams
And our love is enough to knock down any wall
And the future’s been seen as men try to realize
The simple secret of the note in us all
That’s a powerful statement, one that is pushing me today. Again, I know not why, but the song feels like liberation, and the sings of the ability to bring forth something that is within–
All you have to do if find it, become one with it, and making it part of your life until you die.
That’s what I feel with my writing. I moaned at length about how it seem so many get tons of crap for wanting to follow their dream. Well, this is why they bitch: because they can never hear the note. They will never know the joy and beauty that lay within, that will bring the noise to those who will eventually ride your star.
A day of raving and resting does wonders. It was a case of doing a few things that I wanted to do, and to relax and get away from the computer for a while. Sometimes that happens: you need to recharge the batteries, and sometimes the best way to do that is to disconnect and be a real person for a while.
Writing is a good thing, but as William Gibson has said, if nothing is coming today, don’t force it. Do something else, and let the writing relax. And I did. I got out for a bit. I did a little window shopping online. I put the NaNo book away for a bit.
Then I came back at 8:30 PM and started writing.
I had a bit to day, and I started saying it the way I thought my character would embrace the words. And she did. She was like my little phoenix, rising up from her ash funk, and returning to that pretty bird she was at the start. It was personal, and it didn’t hurt to write. Probably because it was meant to be a cleansing moment for her, to allow her to understand who she really is at this point.
When I had originally envisioned this scene–and this is something I’ve done many times before–I had my main character having a bit of a freak out due to her being seen, in the story, as some kind of Queen of the Supernatural. But then I remembered how I’d created her, and how she’d grown in the first story. Now I’m taking two years between that story and this one, and thinking about how she would grow even more . . . and she still wouldn’t rant. Maybe have a tearful moment alone, in her home, wondering why she is walking the road she is upon–but she would eventually realize this is her jihad, and she is there for a reason.
That means less raving, more introspection. It’s her way.
That’s how I went with the chapter last night. I pushed the story up over twenty-five thousand words last night, so I’m over one NaNo hump: The Fight for Fifty. I’m half way there after eight days. Tomorrow I should hit the thirty thousand, and that puts me over the hump for My Novel is Finished, Time For Ice Cream. With a cherry on top. That’s really important.
My view of what I’m doing this NaNo is slightly colored by what I did last NaNo–or what I think I did. If I check my page, I see my word count as of 11:30 last night was 25,275. By Day 8 last year, I’d reached 30,617. But two days earlier, I was at twenty-three thousand and change–and Day 5 I was at twenty thousand. I’d had a huge bust of creative energy during that three day period, and I was The Girl on Fire, figuratively. Couldn’t have been literally, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to tell you this right now.
We’ll see what happens in these remaining days, and in particular, this weekend. Last year I averaged 2,889 words a day. This year, so far, without any input this day, I’m at 2,808 words a day. So I’m at the same pace, which means there shouldn’t be a panic that I’m burned out and tired of this crap.
Oi. The horror, the horror . . . the horror of word count! Well, it’s not that much of a horror, but sometimes it just drives you crazy enough that you want to go, “Hummmm . . . why am I doing this again? I could be doing something worth while like cooking meth. Or selling myself an S&M club. Or hanging on Facebook making fun of people–oh, wait: I do that now.”
You get the point. Sometimes even the best person who’s doing this work wonders why they bother. ’Cause lets face it, if you ain’t a writer, you are mystified by this thing called, “Story Tellin’,” and it tends to bend your little mind. (Notice I didn’t say, “Bendy Wendy,” because there’s no timey whimey involved. Straight up cause and effect, ya understand?)
Unless you’re a “name author”, you’re toiling in obscurity. And I do mean that: friends almost never ask me what I’m working on, co-worker give less than a single shit about my stories, and even here at home, the family unit doesn’t ask about about anything beyond, “Are you still writing?”, or “How is your writing?”
To be honest, I get it easy on the family front. A lot of people I know talk about how the Other Halves are in their shit a lot, arguing that they’re wasting their time with something that isn’t bringing in money, that they should be working on something worthwhile. It’s always that little dig at the end that puts the cherry on the top of the You’re Disappointing Sundae, because if you aren’t living up the expectations of others, why then, you must be screwing around.
I got two words for these people, and they aren’t “Happy Birthday.”
Yes, what I do with this writing this involves doing something that isn’t bringing in money on the spot; it takes time that means I’m often away doing something that prevents me from doing something else; and it will involve being alone and misunderstood, because if you have months to spend putting words into a computer, and then fixing those words, and then fixing them some more before you send them off without any expectation of getting paid–then why can’t you do something useful?
Oh, piss on it: Fuck You. Got it? Or as Pete Townsend told Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock, “Fuck off my fucking stage!” Now, I’m not gonna hit anyone in the back of the head with a guitar, but you get the point. You’re in my world now, Susie Sunshine, and tread carefully, because I will throw your ass in a story where your character is emasculated by insanely vicious chihuahuas, and I’ll love every second of the ongoing groin chewing.
Yes, I’m not generating money with my writing. Yes, I might not ever generate any money with my writing, and the time will come when I’ll say, “The hell with it,” and stop. And, yes: this writing thing mean that I won’t have time for whatever stuff you–and you know who you are–think I should be doing.
I’ve been writing through issues that should block me. I’ve had headaches that have been blinding enough to make it impossible to think. I’ve heard bullshit from people that has set my teeth on edge to the point that I think my head is on sideways.
I’m still here; I’m still writing.
No, the payoff isn’t always Sunshine and Unicorns and Lady Fans who want to take us to their boudoirs so they can make us writhe like we’re possessed by demons. Sometimes you make zip. Sometimes you make a little, just enough to keep teasing you back to the computer. If you do make bank on your work, you might clear $50 thousand after your expenses. Might.
Chuck Wendig has laid out the smack for NaNo, not once but twice. He talks about prep; he talks about number; he talks about doing it every damn day, ’cause that’s the only way you’re gonna get better. But he lays out this little gem, and it’s worth repeating in its entity because it is too damn awesome (From 25 Motivational Thoughts for Writers, by Chuck Wendig, from Terrible Minds):
20. How To Image The Haters
If there is one thing we have learned upon this old Internet of ours, it is: haters gonna hate. You will ever have disbelievers among your ranks, those who pop up like scowling gophers, boring holes through your well-being, your hopes, your dreams. It is very important not to prove the haters right. It is very important to know where to place the haters in rank of importance, which is to say, below telemarketers, below any television show on TLC, below crotch fungus and garbage fires and anal cankers. Imagine the haters herded into a pen. Eaten by the tigers of your own awesomeness. Then digested. Shat out. And burned with flamethrowers. The only power you should afford the haters is the power to eat curb.
I’m working on a story that requires a lot of work, a lot of research. Last night I finished a chapter that wasn’t easy to write, because I found it hard to get into writing. I ended the chapter, which involved my character being questioned with a police officer, with one of my characters saying she could stand a little more konro, which is a beef rib soup dish one finds in Makassar.
I screwed up that word “konro” maybe six or seven times, and only today got around to fixing it. This after having looked it up maybe four or five times since Monday. But I finally got it right because–I’m a writer. And I’m writing. This is what I do.
So word to the haters: get off my tits. I am me, you are you, and I’m not asking you to pen a novel. I’m decided to do this insanity on my own, and if, per chance, you find it strange that I’m not down with what you think I should do, tough.
‘Cause if you’re not careful, one of my characters is gonna get dressed in her finest Lolita outfit, dig out those platform goth boots she loves so much, buckle them on, then find you and curb stomp your ass into the nearest hospital.
Only because, you know, I’m totally into non-violence.
The 6th of November will be remembered, not with bonfires and a terrorist’s face becoming a well-known symbol for hackers, but with an enormous wave of people on Facebook declaring the world has gone to hell, the Apocalypse is upon us, and that they are moving to other countries as soon as they find one that doesn’t have any socialist tendencies.
As for me, while I’ll have something to say about last night’s election, I won’t say it today. I need time for the brain to calm down, and for the head to stop hurting.
Oh, and there’s other writing I need to do as well.
The last couple of days have been difficult. Stress, stress, stress, and I’ll admit there was a fair share of it coming from the lead up to the election. It was giving me headaches, sometimes to the point where I found it difficult to think.
But today . . . I think the roller coaster is through with all the twisting and turning. I think it’s coming into the station, and I can relax. Oh, sure: there are still things in my life that are pretty crap right now, but those will diminish in time. And then I can do what I like. What I want.
I did write last night, but the distractions–oh, my. I got the chapters in; on finished, another started. I got over twenty thousand words last night, but it was a squeaker. Today, there needs to be more attention paid to the words on the page, and I have to get ready for a big chapter in my NaNo Novel. Not big in that one will see a gazillion words written, but big in the sense that I have to lay bare a character’s life, and that is going to be painful. My poor, maimed, little Indri: you’ll be better for this when it’s over. Trust me.
I’m checking the word counts on my chapters, and I’m on my track of about sixty thousand words for the story. A check last night said I was going to end around fifty-three thousand words, but I have a couple of big chapters coming, and that’s going to tip the scales in the end. There’s even the possibility that–gasp!–I could go more than sixty thousand.
As I always say, the story ends when it ends. I’m still writing, so when I get closer to the end, I’ll know.
There is something else that I feel, and it’s that I might not end this story before 30 November rolls into town. Getting my fifty thousand? Sure. Getting to the end of the story? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. After all, just because the calendar flips and becomes 1 December doesn’t mean you go, “Oh, shit, NaNoWriMo is over! What time does My Little Pony come on?” It doesn’t work that way.
You have to keep writing.
I will. I have this idea that I’m a writer. I’ve had other people tell me the same. And, hey, this is crazy, but I keep writing, and someone will buy me maybe.
2012 is all about change. It’s here; we saw it last night. Go with it, or get run over at your own peril.
Yesterday . . . what can I say? Well, I could say it sucked, but that would be unfair. The day didn’t suck, but I sure felt like I sucked.
It was a day of big-time headaches, and there were a few times when I was almost yelling due to the pain. I mean, remember Tony Dogs gettin’ his head put in a vice in the movie Casino? I felt a little like that, only my eye didn’t pop out of my head.
Brutal, I’ll tell you.
But, just like the time I was turned into a newt, I got better. By night time I didn’t feel that bad. If anything, by the time I went to bed, I felt like I was doing pretty well. But during the day–no. Not feeling good.
However . . . I kept writing.
I wasn’t blazing through the story as I have been. In fact, it was a real struggle. I think some of the headaches are coming from having to copy street names found in Makassar. Here is my document notes for the chapter I finished last night:
From the square at Jalan Pasar Cidu and Jalan Tinumbu, down Jalan Lamuru to Jalan Mesjid Raya, to Jalan Jenderal Urip Sumoharjo, on to Jalan Perintis Kemerdekaan, to a road past Rumah Sakit Bersalin Daya Grasia Hospital.
Ya got that? You spend part of the day typing “Sumoharjo”, and your head is gonna hurt, too.
It was an interesting chapter, though. I had my main character chasing another van that was being driven by . . . no one. Ooooooh, spooky. Really, they not only chased it, but they managed to get next to it, and one of the characters decided she needed really good video of no one driving a van, so I had her hanging out of her window for about a half a kilometer.
I liked the scene. I could see everything in my head, and the flowed nicely. The chapter ended up running four thousand, three hundred fifty words, which was a good run, and my biggest chapter yet. I know I’ll have a few more that will be this big, and a couple will even be larger. When I run the numbers, Nate Silver Style, I find that the story is inching toward fifty-nine thousand words, which is the goal I’m aiming towards.
Thing are going according to plan–yessssss.
I’m actually a bit surprised that the story is going well. There was some concern before NaNo that I wasn’t going to have enough of a story to fill out sixty thousand words. But that doesn’t seem to be the case now. I know where I have ahead of me, and when I look at the places where the novel is going to stretch out a bit, I see that sixty thousand isn’t going to be a problem. I’m actually thinking that sixty-five thousand isn’t out of the possibility of reality, either. But I’m not going to count my words before they are written.
Just let them come, one at a time, and the story will end when it’s time.
