Jottings

I’m back on track for today. I’m two days and 2,000 words behind for the month thus far but I’m sure I can recoup that! Hey… 2,000 could be written out as “two thousand.” Note to self.

[This post's word count does not count toward WrAnyMo2009 total.]

Getting up earlier in the mornings to write is starting to become problematic. Earlier in the week, it worked very well but by Wednesday, I was feeling uber tired by 8pm. Last night, I sat down to write a piece about my sister since it was her birthday yesterday. I got about 30 minutes in before I was falling asleep where I was sitting. In retrospect, tapping away on my wireless keyboard while reclined in bed was probably NOT the best idea.

A curious thing about writing when that tired: I edit MORE. I expected the opposite to be true; nonetheless, I found myself fighting the narrative stream appearing on the screen. I spent a lot to time going back and trying to impose order on my scattered thoughts. I am not one of those that believes that being “in the moment” and writing whatever comes out makes for good reading. I might do this in a journal but I’d never want to read that entry again. I certainly wouldn’t subject a reader to the pain of reading that crap either.

I don’t have a word count for what I managed to get out last night before crashing so I’ll have to update my word account again later. It was no where near the thousand I needed. I’m lucky if I got to 400. This puts my significantly behind but I’m not worried yet. When I was writing more regularly, I worked better with large blocks of time. This weekend I work Friday night and Saturday morning so I’ll have big chunks of time to write this weekend.

I’ve found a new advantage to the daylight savings time switch: I’m awake an hour earlier, which means that yesterday I had almost an hour of writing time before getting ready for work.  I managed to get more than half of the review done for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I finished the review this morning. What slowed me down in posting the review was all of the editing, tweaking and expanding that I was doing during the process of writing and after I was done writing. As it is, I KNOW there are still errors in the review I haven’t caught.

The review isn’t as thorough as I’d like but I’m never going to get to 30,000 words this month if I keep obsessively editing everything I write so that I can publish it on one of the blogs. This might mean that I’m posting less of my writing output (I hadn’t planned on posting any of my creative writing but I hoped that SOMETHING might be shared).

I am a little worried about keeping a steady flow of ideas so I’ve been less attentive to my RSS feeds the last few mornings and more intent on using bus ride time to brainstorm.  Every idea gets a new draft in my WordPress app (oh ho, that’s ANOTHER topic, the new WordPress 2.0 app <grumble>), which I’ll expand into a fuller post. Later, I can sort out whether I want specifics posts to be either public or private.

Things I’ve learned thus far:

• Don’t over-edit. In some cases, don’t edit at all.
• It’s not necessary to post everything.
• Wi-fi access is good if I’m finishing a public post and need to add links but very distracting if I’m trying to sit down and write creatively for a solid hour.
• When writing fiction or non-fiction, flag words, phrases or facts I’m unsure of and move on.

I noticed that my previously posted WrAnyMo meter was wrong (I used the NaNo 50,000 instead of my 30,000 word count goal), so I updated that post. I’ve included a progress bar widget on Puddles so that I don’t have to worry about including it on each post. I can’t do the same on Jottings because it will break my theme. The count above is where I’m at currently.

I hope to do some catching up tonight!

NaNoWriMo began yesterday. I am not participating.

Others who are not partaking of the NaNo: Kristen, who is busy shopping her first novel and has already started her second; The INTERN (whose blog is worth a looksie) is sans NaNo; and heck, countless authors¹ aren’t participating– OK, fine, writing is an author’s JOB, so really, November is just another month… but STILL.

I’ve seen a number of alternatives to ‘let’s write a 50,000 word novel in one month,’ in which, might I add, ONE WEEK is killed if you travel home for Thanksgiving². NaNoReVisMo, or, Nation Novel Revision Month, was proposed by The INTERN. While I have no desire to jump into writing a novel at the moment, revising a previous work is tempting; however, I wrote my last novel when I was in JUNIOR HIGH. That is not revision. That is printing the abomination and burning it. That is ripping out the drive containing Abomination and smashing it pieces. That is reworking characters and plot and completely rewriting Abomination as a brand new work. Right, perhaps not.

Kristen had a thought: make a pledge to blog every (or almost every) day in November. BEDN isn’t as catchy an acronym as BEDA (Blog Every Day in April); nonetheless, the suggestion is still in the spirit of focusing on writing output.

I will be writing this month. It may come in the form of scenes, character studies, short stories, blog posts, reviews, textual criticism or whatever else I feel like writing at the moment. I should probably keep a word count goal in mind. 50,000 words is rather arbitrary when taken out of the novel context but I do wish to keep quantity the focus.  I’m going to reduce the quota to 30,000 words in 30 days. There is no science to this number, I just like the number three. And what the heck should I call my little project?

• At Least I’m Writing Something Month (AtLImWriSoMo)
• Write Anything Month (WrAnyMo)
• Write, Gorram It (WriGoIt)

In the interest of not agonizing over the appropriate name/abbreviation all day, I will settle with WrAnyMo. I don’t want to cross-post everything I publish here on Puddles (and vice-versa) so I’ll Tweet links to all public posts, regardless of where they appear, using the tag #WrAnyMo2009.

I started yesterday on a creative piece and only hit 506 words but some blogging should quickly up that count and get me back on track for the slightly late start.

To Star and Jenn and everyone else who is doing NaNoWriMo: YAY! RA! GO! Best of luck : )

---

1. A mighty triumvirate of seriously cool women YA writers, Maureen Johnson, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Melissa Marr, have confirmed that they are not participating this year. Maureen has pledged to give NaNo advise throughout November, which is sure to be just the thing you need for procrastination and a chuckle. Back to text.

2. Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday, not because of the significance behind it but because of how it is celebrated: with family. I am not driving 12 (Jersey)-16 (Mass.) hours each way only to spend the whole visit 1.) feeling guilty for ignoring my family in order to meet my quota or 2.) feeling guilty for spending time with my family and not meeting my quota. If I make it back this year, it will be the first time in two years I’ve been home. I’m damn well making the most it. Back to text.

It’s becoming clear that I’m using the story, characters, and relationship dynamics in Jackal as a way to work things out in my personal life. I’ve gotten too close to this project, which is preventing me from getting any farther. I don’t wish to file Jackal away in my ever-growing story file. At the same time, I’m learning about works that deal with a similar premise of seeing the dead or interacting with the dead (I recently started watching Dead Like Me, which is an excellent show thus far). Sure, my story is different but I don’t want to wear out a premise that already has quite a bit of treatment lately in recent print, TV and movies because heaven knows, that if I wished to do so, I’d begin crafting a story about vampires. If I’m going to carry on with Jackal, it better be able to offer something different.

I’m considering utilizing the aid of a plot generator, much as Star has previously mentioned using (Star, if you’re reading this, do you still have that link handy? I muddled around your archives but couldn’t find it). It’s a rather backwards way to do things (ideally, you use a plot generator FIRST) and I don’t know if I’ll be able to let certain plot specifics go in order to accommodate new ones. On the other hand, using such a tool may help give me some direction. Even if it only acts as a spring board, it will be well worth trying.

Unfortunately, writing will have to wait for the moment, as I focus on moving the Starrynight website off of a CMS.

Found this rotting in my Drafts folder:

A self-sequestered night at Owen Valley Flooring while Russell worked at the drive-in a few months ago proved to be productive. I did some more exploring of Ramona’s character. I’m good about getting character traits but not always good about translating those into physical choices. Car or public transit? If a car, is this car fun? Fuel efficient? Merely operational? Sometimes, details help paint a better picture of the character. If I tell you that she loves funky hats, you may already have an idea of who she is or even what she looks like. Incidentally, Ramona doesn’t like hats at all and she rarely bothers with accessories, much to her best friend’s chagrin. Sketching out such details helped me discover who Ramona is. She’s not fussy. She prefers to keep things simple. She’s a little lazy. She’s unhappy because she’s static. She isn’t growing as a person and her friends aren’t helping her in this matter.

It was a little bizarre figuring out when she was born and what kind of culture she grew up in. She would have been roughly 5 or 6 when Pinky and the Brain first aired. She is of generation that always had cell phones (and her mom insisted that she have one when she was quite young, even though Ramona didn’t use it much until later in high school). I also found out more about her family dynamic and how this might affect relationships in the future.

Note to self: don’t ignore the details.