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My NaNoWriMo Diary | Days 8-12

15 Nov

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for only slightly shorter. The aim of the game is to get down a legible 50,000 words, which means completing an average of 1,667 words per day for thirty days. I’ve failed (drastically) once before, but 50k would bring me past the finish line of the first draft of Novel No.2, so…

But despite a good 6 hours of start time enthusiasm, Week 1 didn’t go so well. (Catch up here and here.) I managed a respectable-ish 7,635 words but soon floundered under the pressure of producing 1,667 words a day or… well, nothing actually happens if you fail, but you get the idea. I thought doing NaNo would give me the push I needed to add 50,000 words to my current work in progress but there’s something about authority that makes me want to do the opposite. (This is why WeightWatchers doesn’t work for me – my leader’s enthusiastic encouragement actually makes me want to eat cake.) Suffice to say, things haven’t been going well…

Day 8 | Monday 8th November

No words…

Day 9 | Tuesday 9th November

…still no words…

Day 10 | Wednesday 10th November

…and still no words. Disastrous! But I blame the delivery of Jane Wenham Jones’ amazing new book, Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of? (which I’m in, a little bit – have I mentioned that yet today?) and the shopping trip which was supposed to be for a winter coat but turned out to be for an amazing cupcake stand from M&S (pictured below), and mini gingerbread men which will fit PERFECTLY into the silver pail decorations I’ll hang on one of my two planned Christmas trees.

Distracted? Me? Never.

Day 11 | Thursday 11th November

Went to Dublin first thing in the morning…

Day 12 | Friday 12th November

… and stayed overnight. So both these days were write-offs, NaNo-wise.

And here’s the thing: I’ve decided to throw in the towel. I just can’t take the pressure, and I certainly can’t work under it. I thought that maybe making my NaNo efforts public would give me no option put to succeed, but it didn’t. NaNo, in my humble opinion, is perfect for experimenting with a project or trying a new genre or something, but for me it’s only having an adverse on my work-in-progress and I can’t afford to let it continue.

So I’m going to go back to write the way I normally do, which is to do as much as I can on any given day, but not berate myself if the imaginary voices in my head decide to stay quiet for a couple of them.

I hope the NaNo Overlords – and you, dear blog reader – can forgive me.

(And if you can’t, be kind!)

My NaNoWriMo Diary | Days 5-7

8 Nov

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for only slightly shorter. The aim of the game is to get down a legible 50,000 words, which means completing an average of 1,667 words per day for thirty days. I’ve failed (drastically) once before, but 50k would bring me past the finish line of the first draft of Novel No.2. Can it be done?

Well based on the evidence I’ve generated so far, I’d have to say no.

Day 5 | Friday 5th November

The word of the day is… ugh. Now – does anyone have another 1,666 of them?

Today went something like this:

7.45am: Wake up.

8.45am: Get up.

8.46am: Coffee preparation. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf House Blend in a one cup filter belgique.

8.57am: Morning rounds. Yahoo mail, Gmail account, other Gmail account, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Twitter again, Yahoo mail again, Novel Rank, Amazon DTP, Perez Hilton, TMZ, Google News, Twitter, repeat as required.

9.45am: Get dressed.

10.10am: Coffee preparation. Decide to open the Dunkin Donuts House Blend and make it in the french press as this will waste more time.

10.04am: Breakfast.

10.35am: I’ll just check Twitter…

11.15am: Open NaNo MS file. Start to write.

11.25am: Was that the postman?

11.26am: Read mail.

11.30am: I’ll just check Twitter…

12.15pm: Back to MS.

12.27pm: Isn’t it cold in here?

12.35pm: Move some stuff around. Note to self: cutting and pasting does not increase word count.

12.46pm: I’ll just check Twitter…

[Disappears down rabbit hole after following interesting link]

2.15pm: Coffee preparation. Back to the filter belgique.

2.28pm: Back to MS.

2.29pm: I’ll just check Twitter…

5.16pm: It’s past five? Really? Where does the time go?

5.23pm: Close MS. There’s always tomorrow. Well, until November 30th anyway.

Look what I found today: NaNo-generated stats. De. Press. Ing.

Day 6 | Saturday 6th November

Now maybe I’m a bit slow to catch on, but it was only today I realized that the progress bar in the word count widget (above right) is red in color because I’m behind. It’d be nice to see it green – does it go green? – before the end of the month.

It’s not happening today though. I managed 1,744 words but as I have now gone two of the last six days without writing, I’m waaaay behind.

Day 7 | Sunday 8th November

Managed 0.00 words today (that’s a Bronx Beat reference) but I have three rock solid excuses:

  1. Reading the Sunday newspapers took up nearly all of my morning
  2. The Brazilian grand prix was on for the whole afternoon
  3. The X-Factor results show absorbed the majority of my evening.

I’ve had a mini break-through though, which has me feeling hopeful about next week: I’ve realized the beginning of my novel is in entirely the wrong place. Does that mean the 8k or so words I’ve written this far are now basically useless? Yes.

But let’s not dwell on that…

Read all my NaNoWriMo posts.

My NaNoWriMo Diary | Days 1-4

5 Nov

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for only slightly shorter. The aim of the game is to get down a legible 50,000 words, which means completing an average of 1,667 words per day for thirty days. I’ve failed (drastically) once before, but 50k would bring me past the finish line of the first draft of Novel No.2. Can it be done? I’m not sure, but I’m going to try…

Let’s do this thing.

Day 1 | Monday 1st November

My NaNoWriMo Bid 2010 gets off to a shaky start: I sleep in.

Last night I did the responsible thing and went to bed early. Alas, my head was full of sentences (and Christmas present ideas, and To Do lists) and I couldn’t sleep. After laying awake in the dark for an hour, I gave up and decided to read a couple of chapters of the next book on my towering pile, The Lost Girls. I finally got to sleep around two, but woke up about every half hour – it felt like – for the rest of the night. Officially the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had, and that includes my last night in Orlando in 2008 when between stumbling home after a drunken night out and heading for the airport to catch a flight to Guatemala, I enjoyed exactly 55 minutes sleep. But as I don’t have a job – amazingly, my parents refuse to consider Dreaming About Being a Published Novelist a full time gig – and have a clear schedule for the day, this is no excuse.

(Can you think of excuses for me? Answers on a postcard please.)

I wrote for about five hours (minus 45 minutes for lunch and every other minute of the rest for prolonged periods of staring out the window) and managed a slightly painful 1,758 words. I know I should be using this Start of NaNo Enthusiasm I’m supposed to have to bank extra words – before the “Why did I do this?!” ghoulish wails start in next week – but my brain just doesn’t want to do it. We’re on the minimum required, for now.

Day 2 | Tuesday 2nd November

Some people snort at NaNo in the same way readers of NME spit out “X-Factor”. “Novel writing takes years!” they protest. “It’s a craft. Encouraging people to write a novel in a month is distasteful at best and a mockery at worst!” But they’re completely missing the point (fun – have you heard of it?) and the benefits of taking part: a rock solid deadline you cannot waver from, and a gang of people – your NaNo writing buddies – who will dismember you slowly if you fail to pass the finish line.

(Or something less violent and grotesque. I’m asking mine to shout at me.)

Do I have a point? Not really. I was just telling you all that to distract you from the fact that today I was a naughty NaNo-er and wrote absolutely zilch. I was out all morning and by the time I sat down at my desk to crank out the 1,667 words required to keep me up to date, my eyelids felt like they’d tiny weights attached to them and my brain was devoid of thought. (Well, it did have one thought, and that thought was, Afternoon nap? Don’t mind if I do!)

I blame The Lost Girls for keeping me up past my NaNo bedtime for the second night in a row. How very dare they.

I’m testing a theory whereby writing abusive messages to myself on my word count tracker encourages me to write more words. You can also see where I wasted thirty minutes figuring out what days I was due to hit the milestones (10k, 20k, etc.) so I could color them in. Then I allowed myself a green box which symbolizes Lots of Editing Done, which means you only need to hate yourself half as much today for not making your word count.

Day 3 | Wednesday 3rd November

Not a good day. Despite having no interruptions other than those of my own creation, I only managed to squeak out 1,750 words even though with my current One Day Behind status, I should have done at least double that.

The problem is this no editing business. Writing without correcting myself just seeing where things will go is like walking across a woodworm-infested rope bridge hanging hundreds of feet above a pile of sharp rocks with your eyes closed – I don’t like it. And what’s the point of having 50,000 words if 49,871 of them are total rubbish?

So I’m revising my NaNo plans. Instead of trying to get down any 1667 words on any given day, I’m going to aim to get down any 1667 words before noon, and then spend the afternoon trying to turn them into something sensical. My novel’s plot is planned out already and I feel that’s the only way I could make my words stick to it. We’ll see how it goes. And how long it lasts.

I suspect until about 12.05 tomorrow.

Another thing that would be helpful: finishing that bloody Lost Girls book. It’s way too distracting.

Also distracting: finding out that if you’ve a Google account (like Gmail or Reader) you can set your own background image on Google.com. Spent a good half hour trying different images out, even though I never visit the website but just type what I’m looking for in the handy Google search box of my Safari window. I settled on a picture of my favourite place, the town of Celebration, Florida, where I plan on moving to should I ever be lucky enough to make a living as a writer.

(The NaNo Overlords say: AS IF!)

Day 4 | Thursday 4th November

Today I gave myself a metaphorical slap across the face, grabbed myself by the shoulders and shouted, “Get a grip, woman!” I was stressing about the pressure of producing x number of words every day, and wondering if I really have enough time to not only write them, but make sure they’re not completely crap as well. Then I realized that I did, because I’ve done it before.

When I was writing Novel Number 1, I didn’t have a daily word quota. I only tried to get one chapter done per day, and these varied from 1,000 to 2,500 words. Starting the morning with a blank page, I’d write the a rough draft of the chapter very quickly – not so much writing the words as I wanted them, but sort of sketching the chapter’s layout – and then go back and rewrite until I was happy that although the prose might not yet be perfect, the story was going where it needed to go. I managed to do this without feeling like I had a panic attack coming on, which is how I’ve been feeling trying to get these NaNo words done. I need to start thinking more about what I’m doing – writing a book – and less about that awful number of 1,667. I want NaNo to help me write through the pressure of a deadline, but I could do without the shortness of breath.

Today’s distraction: these beautiful F. Scott Fitzgerald hardcovers by Penguin Classics the postman brought me. (There’s actually a set of six, I believe, but since I have no intention of ever reading them – just gazing at them – I figured five was enough. Maybe. We’ll see.) They are the equivalent of book cover porn for those of us who love our books as much as we love reading, and they’ll look great in my Fantasy Library of the Future, which will be in a light-filled, swanky apartment and stocked with white Billy bookcases.

P.S. This blog post is 1,265 words. So there.

Read all my NaNo posts.

NaNoWriMo: The Playlist

2 Nov

Keeping Track of Your Plot: How To Make A Novel “Bible”

1 Nov

After my NaNoWriMo Survival Kit post on Friday, a few of you told me how much you liked my Novel Bible idea (also known as The Only Possible Way I Can Keep Track of The Needlessly Complicated Plots I Write Myself Into) and so today I’m going to go into it in more detail.

My “don’t forget to put this in!” notes from Novel No.1 – and this was with only a chapter or two to go!

The reason I did this for Novel No.2 is the mess I made without it on Novel No.1. I get most of my ideas while writing, so I could be in the middle of Chapter 3 and thinking of things I want to put in Chapters 11, 21 and 34. I scribbled them down so I wouldn’t forget them when I actually got to Chapters 11, 21 and 34, but as I just kept adding to the same list it quickly got out of control. Starting a new chapter, I’d have to trawl through the list and pick out what I needed and then, once I’d finished it, go back and cross off what I’d put in. (And add the new ones… You can see how this turned into a nightmare.) I was also frequently re-reading the start of the book to remind myself of what I’d done which as this excellent post by Kay Kenyon on Storyfix.com points out can lead to editing blindness. And so I took Kay’s idea of a scene list, added enough paper to satisfy my love of making notes and a cute clip to satisfy my need to peruse stationery catalogues for hours on end, combined it with the idea of a “building a novel in a folder” that I’d read about in Wannabe a Writer? and hey presto, my novel bible was born.

So here’s how to make your own.

You will need:

  • A4 paper
  • A large clip (like a bulldog clip)
  • Your synopsis and notes printed on A4 paper
  • A desire to procrastinate while appearing to work.

1. Decide how many chapters your novel is going to have. (You could also do scenes if you prefer and – of course – the novel isn’t written yet so this is all approximate.) Count out enough pages of A4 paper so that you have one sheet for each chapter. Write or print the corresponding chapter number at the top of each one and draw a horizontal line about a third of the way down the page.

2. My novel is divided further into five or six parts or sections, so the next thing I’ll do is take a page for each part and insert them in between the chapters where I think they’ll appear in the book. (I use my beat sheet to determine where there’ll be, although this could – and probably will – change.) If you want to be fancy about it, you could print out these as title pages and use a different colored paper so you can easily find the section splits when the document is put together.

3. I have a one-page beat sheet showing all the major points in my plot; that goes at the front. Then between that and our blank chapter pages I’ll put any notes I have/Wikipedia entries I copy and pasted. (Joking about the Wikipedia entries. Well… kinda.)

4. Make a cover. By law, this cover has to include the words “A Novel by” so that you’ll start thinking of what you’ll have once you’ve finished (OR it’ll heap tons of pressure on you, so much so that you throw your novel bible on the barbecue and go cry under your duvet). If you’re not ready to start writing yet, you can always waste a day or so mocking up a cover. At the very least, use some clip art.

5. Secure everything together with a clip. (A bulldog clip is what I’m calling it, but that’s not exactly the kind of clip I use, which is the one pictured above.) This way you can flick through it like a book, but add to or subtract from it whenever you want.

How to use your novel bible:

I wrote my first novel section by section, in that I planned out the first section meticulously, wrote it and then started planning the second one, and so on and so on. So let’s say it’s the first day of NaNoWriMo (oh wait – it IS the first day of NaNoWriMo!) and I’m about to start writing Chapter 1, Section 1. I figure out (with my beat sheet) what needs to happen in the ten chapters that make up Part I, and then I divide up the action between each of the chapters. Remember that horizontal line we drew on our chapter pages? Well now we’re going to write a couple of sentences or a few bullet points above that line that’ll remind us what needs to happen in that particular chapter.

This is the one I’m using now for the Dreaded Second Novel. I’m a bit weird about telling anyone else titles until the thing is written, so I’ve blurred that out. But I DID use clip art.

Let’s skip ahead to, say, Friday of this week when if my impossible-to-keep-to-schedule works out, I’ll be starting Chapter 5 or 6. As I’ve been writing all the chapters leading up to it, I’ve been scribbling notes down about things that need to go in future chapters on those chapters’ corresponding pages. So now I can flick to the page titled Chapter 6, read my summary of what needs to happen (e.g. “The unemployed Irish girl trying to make it as a writer runs into a rich, gorgeous musician with a US passport in the security line at the airport and he falls madly in love with her.”) and my own reminders to put in some of the smaller details (e.g. things like “In Chapter 2, Irish girl says she loves pancakes. In the security line, the musician should have to dump a packet of pancakes he’s carrying. This is their conversation opener!” and “Don’t forget it’s not lunchtime yet” and “BUBBLES! LOTS OF BUBBLES!”)

[I'm obviously making these up, but maybe there's a novel in there....)

Now if you’d like a big gold star stuck on your forehead, you can take this one step further. Every time you finish a chapter, replace its scribbly, messy page in the bible with a neatly typed fresh one showing a short summary of the scene in the top third of the page. And can you guess what we’ll do with this? We’ll use it when we do our second draft, of course!

NB: This is entirely separate to the manuscript, which I don’t print out until I’ve finished a draft.

Ready, Set, GO!

1 Nov

My NaNoWriMo Survival Kit

29 Oct

Frighteningly, National Novel Writing Month is only two and a bit days away. Starting Monday at midnight, us NaNoWriMo scribblers have 30 days to get 50,000 words out of our over-caffeinated brains and into our word processing programs, preferably in some sort of coherent order. I’m using it as the ultimate deadline in my quest to finish my first draft of Novel No.2 this side of Christmas. And although my best-of-intentions NaNoWriMo prep work got bumped this week for some really good books I just had to read (and The Apprentice, both the TV3 and BBC versions), I have managed to assemble my NaNoWriMo Survival Kit.

1. A clicky pen

I do all my writing on computer (I don’t even write shopping lists) but I have to have a clicky pen to hand at all times. It helps me think. Plus the incessant clicking noise keeps everyone else away so it guarantees solitude, and should a book deal suddenly materialize, I have a pen to hand to sign it. Bonus!

2. Alison Well’s NaNoWriMo post

The internet is awash with blog posts, tweets and telegrams telling you everything to need to know about how to do/survive/ignore NaNoWriMo – and then some. Don’t bother reading those. Instead, just read this: Alison Well’s pre-NaNoWriMo post, “How To Do NaNoWriMo If You Don’t Have the Time.“

3. My Mac

I love my computer, which is small and light enough to take anywhere, and has keys that don’t make an extremely annoying clacking noise when you hit them. I’m just going to have to cut the umbilical to my wireless internet connection or we won’t get anything done…

4. New music

I have something ridiculous like 2,000+ songs on my iTunes, but somehow I only ever end up listening to the same 50 or so. With them constantly on repeat, this can get pretty boring after a while and constantly pressing the Skip Forward button can really interfere with the old word count, so for some serious writing to get done, new music is required. This NaNoWriMo I shall be listening mostly to Speak Now by Taylor Swift, Battle Studies by John Mayer (as I haven’t burnt that out quite yet), No Line on the Horizon by U2 (skipping “Breathe” which I have worn out already) and whatever songs from the new Take That album I can, um, source online.

5. More coffee than I can feasibly drink in November

It was a lucky coincidence that I got to go coffee-shopping in the States recently, and brought home four bags – and four blends – to last me through the entire NaNoWriMo slog. Tip: now is not the time to try a new espresso blend. Stick to mild mediums. Coffee-drinking is pretty much essential to my writing, and if I’m drinking a lot of it then I don’t want that horrible coffee aftertaste that sticks around after a really strong cup. Medium weaker blends are best for prolonged bursts of creativity, trust me. (And yes, it’s in my fridge. Opened bags of coffee stay fresh longer this way.)

6. My novel’s “bible”

Here’s how I keep track of what I’m writing: I take a ream of A4 paper and count out as many pages as I have chapters or scenes. My novel is also divided into sections, so I print out a title page for each of these. I also make a fancy cover using some clip art. Then I take all my notes (printed out on A4 too), put the chapters/scenes separated by their section title pages behind them, put the cover on the front and bind the whole thing using a large bulldog clip. It then becomes a “book” I can flick through, but because it’s only held together by a clip I can add to or subtract from it at any time. When a chapter/scene is written, I scribble a summary of it on its relevant page, and write any notes that have arisen out of it (i.e. “Kevin mentions Tom; this needs to be addressed the next time Kevin appears”) on the page representing the chapter ahead that the note refers to. Then when it comes to start a new chapter, I simply open its corresponding page in the “bible” and all the notes and reminders I need are there waiting.

(I realize this sounds complicated but you get what I mean, right?)

7. A clear desk

If there was a stray paperclip within reach I would play with it – that’s how easily distracted I am. Therefore a clear desk with no potential playthings is an absolute must if I’m to get anything done, a desk that looks the exact opposite of the one pictured above. (Which is my actual desk just before I left for holidays. It only looks this bad on weekends, I swear…)

8. Inspiration

Whenever I feel like I can’t be arsed, I have a flick through some of my favorite writing books: Wannabe a Writer? by Jane Wenham-Jones, On Writing by Stephen King, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner and How Not To Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid At All Costs If You Ever Want to Get Published by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. I’ll also be using Save the Cat by Blake Snyder for plotting tips, as always.

(Click here to read about my favorite How To… writing books.)

9. A novelty mug

Any excuse.

10. Enthusiasm

This may wane by the end of next week, but right now I’m fired up.  50,000 words by the end of November? You betcha!

If you’re looking for another NaNoWriMo buddy and you’d like the opportunity to scream and shout at me when I get stuck around 11,000 words, I’m cathryanhoward on NaNoWriMo.org.

GOOD LUCK!

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