A Bit Off the Mark

 

This week I fell a little short of my ROW80 goals.  Well, sort of.  

My goal was to hit 65,000 words by December 22.  I'm still well on target to hit that, and I wrote more than enough words on Monday and Tuesday to cover this week's quota.  However, I now know that I'm not going to hit story's end at 65K.  I'm hoping I'll hit it by 90K.  I'm going to push for 90,000 by month's end.  I'm also still pushing for finishing the story by the end of the month.  But if I'm going to do that, I need to get my act back together.

Monday and Tuesday I wrote lots, of course, to get to 50K and win NaNoWriMo.  On Wednesday, I gave myself a day off from the novel to get my November newsletter out, do my check-in blog post, and generally let my brain rest.  That day off was planned, so no problem there.  Thursday I planned to work on some outlining, and I did that, so that's good.  Friday and Saturday were scheduled as writing days.  I did not write.

Today is also a writing day.  I'm using this blog post as a little bit of a warm-up, then I'm jumping back into my story.  I'm not going to push for the whole 3,000 words I had planned for the weekend.  I'm going to go for at least 1,200.  That's a good day's work, should get me through the current scene and the end of Act I, and should get me warmed up and back in writing mode.

I've also re-evaluated my goals.  I'm increasing my weekly word goal from 5,000 to 7,500.  This is, in part, to help me get to the finish of the story by the end of the month, but also because 5,000 words a week is a little too easy a goal.  7,500 has a frisson uncertainty to it.  It's definitely a do-able goal; the NaNo goal works out to 11,669, and I know I can do that.  But 7,500 is going to be just tough enough to make me reach for it a little.  And I've realized I do better with some time pressure.  Or, as my boyfriend said when I was running this idea by him, "Makes sense.  You need it somewhere between 'no problem' and 'no way.'"  

Here's my game plan for the coming week, then I'll wrap up this way-too-long post:

Monday-- Planning day

Tuesday-- Writing day

Wednesday-- Planning day

Thursday-- Writing day

Friday-- Reading day (currently reading a book on outlining)

Saturday-- Writing day

Sunday-- Planning day; possible extra writing day

See you Wednesday!

I'm a Winner, Baby...

so why don't ya kiss me... With huge apologies to Beck for turning his cool song completely dorky and cheesy.  But I had to! See:

I suppose that's not actually enough of an ROW80 check-in, is it?  I guess I'll write something else here now.  But I had to get that out of the way first.

I ended up on this huge writing bender yesterday.  I had a hard time getting myself to stop so I could pack things up and go to my write-in.  After Monday's very slow, plodding progress, yesterday I flew through over 5,000 words in about 4.5 hours.  Except I write in 10 minute bursts with 5-10 minute breaks (depending on if I need to go get more tea or coffee or any other important things like that).  So it was a total of 4.5 hours of writing spurts mixed with breaks.  It was fast.

It was also fun, but it really threw me for a loop.  A couple of really cool new, very minor characters showed up. And I found out that my secondary antagonist is actually a nice guy who just can't help following his older sister's lead.  But he's not a bad guy, and that's going to change a few things.  This is good, actually.  It's going to add a lot later in the story.  But I wasn't expecting him to turn out this way.

I also think I'm going to end up way past 90,000 words on this first draft, because I'm at 50K and not at 55% as my little progress bar suggests.  That's okay.  It will be easier to trim later than add, I hope.

Monday I figured out how my ending is going to happen.  I knew what needed to happen but not how I could make it at all plausible.  Now I know how that's going to work.  And last night, I figured out how my MC is going to get to where she needs to be to make the ending happen.  This is kind of exciting!

Today, I need to write my newsletter.  And a guest post I promised a friend.  But I have my outlining materials sitting next to me to goad me on, because once I get the have-tos done, I get to play with these new ideas, these extra scenes that have cropped up, and all the rest of it and get them into some semblance of order so I can finally get to "the end."

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Time for another ROW80 check-in.  I've been managing to keep up with the check-ins but haven't been getting to as many blogs as I'd like to these past few weeks.  NaNoWriMo eats up a lot of time.

We're in the last few days of November now, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I have about 9,000 words to write in the next three days.  This is something I can do.  It's getting started each session, getting the first few words down that's always hard for me, but once I start the words flow.  So this isn't an excessive amount for me.  So I'm expecting a NaNo win.

But honestly, I'm really looking forward to December and getting to the end of the story.  I'm seeing some things that are missing, some things that need to be tighter and stronger, some things that need to be added.  I really want to get to the end of this story so I can go back and make it good.  And I'm looking forward to December 1 because I'm planning to give myself some time during the first few days of the month to do some reworking and deepening of my outline, such as it is.  I'm really excited to dive into that and get to some bits that I really didn't understand or know about until now.

Oh!  And today I figured out how my ending is going to happen.  I had a loose idea of what needed to happen, but no idea how to make it happen plausibly.  And today I got it.  So I'm really looking forward to getting those intermediate bits in place to make my ending come about.

I have to remember to come back to this excitement within myself after November, when I don't have to rush of writing with thousands of other people to keep me pushing forward.  But this time I think I have a good chance of sticking with this and getting to the end.  Especially now that I have such a cool ending planned.

Write Away!

Um, wasn't it just Sunday like two hours ago?  These past few days really flew by!  It's already ROW80 check-in day.  Have I actually done anything to report?  Hope so...

I've been getting some writing done, but getting started each day has been a monumental struggle.  I spend more time wrestling with myself to get myself settled down and actually writing than I do getting the words down.  If I could find some way to get my mind more disciplined, I imagine how much I could get done every day.  So far, none of the standard mind training tricks seems to work for me, but I will keep trying.  Really, it takes me about an hour to write around 2,000 words.  But especially this last week I spend several hours leading up to the actual writing struggling to get myself to sit down and do it.

Some of the reason it's been especially hard getting started this past week is that I'm seeing that something is missing from my story.  I'm not quite sure what it is or how to figure it out just yet, and I'm not willing to let myself drift back into planning right now.  I'm really worried that once November is over and I don't have the impetus of NaNoWriMo driving me forward, I will lose my momentum and once again not get to the end of my novel.  So I'm going to just keep going with what I have, keep pushing forward and try to get to some sort of ending even if it's something that will need a lot of revision later.

It's not all bad news around here.  Really, I don't consider any of what I just wrote to be bad news.  I'm seeing a pattern of struggling with beginning, so that gives me something to look at and work on. I'm also seeing that making space for planning sessions in between writing sessions might be a really good thing for me to help me know exactly what I want to write next.

I'm also seeing that  my natural writing rhythm seems to be bursts of intense writing for a few thousand words, but not necessarily every day.  This means that my plan to write 5,000 words a week after November is probably going to work really well.  I suspect that I will end up writing 1,500-2,000 words a day a few days a week.  This won't mean that I'm not working on my story on the non-writing days, though.  Right now when I'm not writing, I find that I have the story in my head almost continuously.  I come up with bits of dialogue, a new scene to add in, a reworking of a scene I already planned, etc.

I think my natural rhythm is going to be bouts of writing interspersed with bouts of planning and maybe even some light revision.  This feels like something that will work well for me, so this is how I'm going to do things in December at least to see how it feels.  I'm not going to do it right now, because I'm so close that I'm not willing to give up on hitting 50K in November to try this new process, though, so I am going to keep pushing the write every day thing just now to get that NaNo win.

I need to add in or change a few other things, too.  First, I've adjusted my word goal to 80,000.  I can tell that I won't reach the end of the story even as a rough draft in 65,000 words.  80K is seeming much more reasonable.

I also need to work on better eating for energy and general clear headedness and feeling good--I have slipped into junk food because of the ease of getting it and being done with it quickly.  And I need to add in some movement, preferably something I can do any time (especially 8 or 9 p.m. when I get a sudden desire to exercise), and preferably something mindless that will let my thoughts wander and play with story bits while I'm exercising.  I will be actively working on ways to integrate all of this into my writing life, so there will probably be food and exercise updates sneaking into my ROW80 updates from now on.

That's everything I've figured out lately.  I'm looking forward to December so I can start playing with some of these new ideas.  But before that I'm looking forward to getting lots and lots of words over the next week so I can get one of those fancy winner badges for my blog!

Too Tired To Be Clever

It's Sunday night.  I haven't written today.  I wrote some yesterday, but not much.  I'm exhausted, and I can't seem to get myself back up and running.

It's ROW80 check in day.  I am tired and don't even know what I want to say.  I am behind schedule for NaNoWriMo.  My story is feeling strong in the parts I've figured out, but I'm feeling a little (okay, a lot) overwhelmed and lost just now.  And so much going on--family gatherings, a beloved kitty who may not be with us much longer.  A sinus headache that I believe is now in day three million and eighty-six.  Too much going on, and I can't seem to get the space I need to get to my words.

So what's next?  Chocolate.  But after that, some journaling.  And a fresh start tomorrow.  And not giving up because even if I don't get any words today, I would need less than 2,200 words a day to hit 50K by the 30th.  And honestly, it's the settling down and getting started that is hard for me.  Getting that many words is pretty standard for the days I can actually sit myself down and write.

But for now, chocolate and a visit with my novel notebook to journal my plans.  And then I keep going because this time...this time I will make it different and I will go beyond just winning NaNoWriMo, I will finish a novel, I will get to the end of the story, and I will actually be a writer and novelist who really does the work.  I do not know right now how I'm going to make all of that happen.  I do not know the steps in the middle from where I am now to where I plan to go.  But I do know that I've spent a lifetime wanting to do it, dreaming of doing it, not doing it, and this time I will make it different and I will do this thing.

It's Sunday Night! Where's My Word Count?

ROW80 Check-in:

Actually, my word count isn't too bad.  I had planned to be caught up by tonight, and I'm not quite there, but I realized a few days ago that it wasn't going to happen that way, so I readjusted my plans to be more realistic, and I'm right where I want to be today.

My keyboard and I are spending a lot more time together lately

I think the best part of this year's NaNoWriMo is that I feel like I'm writing a book.  I've done NaNo for several years.  I've won several years.  It's always been a little more like playing a game than anything else, even though I've always had the dream of being a writer.  NaNo somehow felt like a break from my desire to be a "real" writer, something that happened outside my "regular" writing.  Not now, though.  I really do feel like I'm writing a book.  And, for the first time ever, I really feel like I might manage to not just hit 50K but to actually get to the end of a story.  Not in 50,000 words; the story is going to be longer than that.  But I think this time I know how to get the story to the end.  I will have to make sure I keep my motivation going after November, but that's what this group and these check-ins are for, right? 

So that's where I am right now.  A little behind on my NaNo word count.  Right on target to hit my ROW80 goal by December 22.  And feeling like I'm a real writer after all.

What's In a Name?

It's ROW80 check-in time again.  Already. Who is stealing all my time?!  (November makes me a little time crazy, even more so than usual.)

A rose...not actually by any other name

First my check-in.  According to my little word count widget over there on the right, I am 13% to my goal of 65,000 words on my novel by December 22.  I'm not exactly sure how many percentages I'm supposed to write every day to make that goal, but I feel like I'm pretty well on target.  I'm behind on the NaNoWriMo word count, but I have a good plan in place for catching up by the end of Sunday, and the writing is finally starting to some flow and some speed to it, so I'm not worried about where I am.

I've been using a trick I learned a few years ago from reading an article by Sue Grafton.  She said that she keeps a notebook, and before she writes every day, she writes down what she's going to write about (wow, that seems really complicated--I hope that made sense).  I have done this in an actual notebook in the past, and I've done it a few different ways.  The first try was writing a mini-essay about what that day's writing would involve, but that didn't quite work right for me.  After that, I tried listing the next several scenes using a one sentence description for each scene.  That was a little better, but sometimes I didn't know what all needed to be in a scene. 

Now, I'm doing two things differently.  First, I'm writing my list on the computer so I have it to look back on more easily while I'm writing.  Second, I'm writing a brief description of my scene, but then I'm making a list of things I want to have happen in that scene.  This seems to be working really well for me, so I'm going to keep with it as long as it's still useful.

Now, about those names...The love interest hasn't shown up yet in my story, but I know he's coming.  I know he's out there with his lack of a name I really like that really seems to fit him.  And it's nagging at me.  Who is this guy?  I know what he looks like.  I know all about his really cool antique motorcycle that he restored himself.  I know so much about him.  Why won't he tell me his name?  He's coming up scene after next!  So far he's been Cody and Dylan with a brief stint as Brad (he's really not a Brad!).  I am starting to think he's doing this on purpose, and he'd better knock it off, or I'm going to wreck his fancy motorcycle.

And with that, I'm going to go check in and say hi to a few of my fellow ROW80-ers, and then it's writing time for me.

Watch Out For Witches!

Halloween may have been last week, but that doesn't mean we can't still have witches!

 Time for the Sunday ROW80 check-in.  Already?  Really, the time keeps flying by me.  It makes me a little breathless feeling like I need to catch up.

Of course, that's just how I'm perceiving things.  I need to breathe a little and relax, I think.  I have actually, finally gotten in to my story for NaNoWriMo, but I am still behind where I "should" be.  Stupid should word.  So much pressure gets tangled up in there.  I keep feeling like I need to write thousands and thousands of words in one day to catch up.  I need to tell myself it isn't true.  The truth is, now instead of 1,667 words a day, I need to write 1,869.  About 200 more words a day.  Which is not a big deal.  So really, I need to calm down about it and just write.

I think the words are warming up now, so just sitting down and writing is probably going to be a lot easier than it was the first few days.  And that brings me to those witches.  Yesterday, before getting to work on my novel, I decided to do a bit of warm-up writing from a prompt.  It started with a description of an old house with peeling paint, and the next thing I knew my main character was part of my warm-up, and she went into the old house through a broken French door, and then, in an upstairs chamber in what seemed to be an abandoned house, she met a witch.  Yeah, a witch.  In my story about faeries in a modern, urban setting.  What's that witch doing there?!  I don't know yet.  I don't know if she's friend or foe yet.  But for now I'm keeping her even though she was completely unplanned, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with her.  I wonder if she knows a spell for increasing your word count?

So that's my check-in.  I'm going to do a few chores and errands now and then get my 2K this afternoon, and then I'll have some time to go around to some of the other blogs to cheer you all on.  Meanwhile, happy writing!

A Brief Excursion Away From NaNoLand

I remembered on Wednesday that I was supposed to be turning in a painting for the Audubon Society's Wild Arts Festival 6x6 project.  Today.  I'm just glad it's a small painting and that I remembered it before the actual due date.

Needless to say, my writing has been mostly on hiatus the past two days while I started and finished this little mixed media bird painting.  I call it "Listen."

"Listen"Mixed media: paper, acrylic paint, oil pastel, ink

And now that that's done (I'll be delivering it in a few hours), I can get back to the writing.  I had a burst of inspiration last night and plotted/sketched out several scenes, so today I am going to write 2,000 words, and all the work computers with viruses and random distractions around me are just going to have to step aside and leave me alone with my novel!

Whose Idea Was This, Anyhow?

Oh.  This writing a novel thing was my idea.  I guess I'll go stand in front of the mirror and point a finger at myself then.

You might have already guessed that this year's NaNoWriMo adventure isn't going very well.  I wouldn't even be updating about it right now except that it's ROW80 check-in day.  The most frustrating part is that it's entirely my fault that things aren't going well.

I started my prep strongly in late September.  I did lots of preliminary work for a couple of weeks, and then I got to the part where I was supposed to be doing in-depth outlining.  And I stalled. And I stayed stalled for the rest of October.  On top of that, I completely forgot my plan to do writing practice from prompts to get me back in the swing of doing creative fiction writing.

Now here I am at November 2.  A bit over 500 words under my belt and feeling stiff and uninspired. And worse yet incapable.  I haven't been writing fiction, or even random creative snippets, for a long time now, and yet I somehow expected myself to jump right into NaNo and start writing a novel.

So what to do?  I can't exactly drop out of NaNo.  I'm one of the municipal liaisons for my area.  I also don't want to do what I've done in the past and write such crap that it really isn't fixable without completely rewriting it.  What's the point in that?

I guess I'm going to spend some time over the next few days working with prompts but writing them using my current characters and settings.  Then I can possibly fit those bits into the novel, at least, plus maybe I'll get my words warmed up so I can get on with the novel writing.  I'm also going to keep working the system from Write Your Novel in 30 Days.  According to their calendar, I'm not actually behind!  I like that.  I'll keep it.

I'm also going to do some reading.  I've been busy the past six weeks or so and have read very little fiction.  I miss it, and possibly more important right now, I think reading good stories will help me remember how to write them.

That's all I have to report.  A slow start, a lot of whining, a vague plan that may or may not let me reach my goal and write 50,000 words in November and finish the novel by December 22.  But a maybe is better than a no way, right? 

The Calm Before the Storm

Two days 'til the start of NaNoWriMo 2011.  I don't feel ready!  I've stalled on my planning the past two weeks, and now I'm feeling frantic.  I also know feeling frantic won't be useful, so I'm going to get my head on straight here so I can do something useful with these last hours before November 1.

I'm clearly not going to get much more of an outline done than what I already have.  And what I have is not that bad, really.  I have a fifteen point, sketchy, start-to-finish outline.  That really is pretty good. So what I'm going to do tonight and tomorrow is just write out some questions for each of those points, things that I'll need to figure out in each section. I'm going to read through a couple of article's in Writer's Digest's Write Your Novel in 30 Days.  I'm going to make a list of things I want to have happen in my first scene.  And then I'm going to stay calm and let the words flow as they will.

Writing, Writers, Written

Has it been a month?  I have no idea where the time went!  Actually, that's not true.  The time went to working on novel plans, reading about novel planning and outlining, gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and many other noveling type activities:

Yep, it's that time of year again, lots of words and lots of event planning as one of the MLs for my region.

Oh, and I had a birthday in there with a fun outing to take photos at historic cemeteries: 

Historic Columbian Cemetery, Portland, Oregon

I also had something of an epiphany over the course of the last month.  I realized that I really enjoy the coaching work I've been learning.  I want to be a creativity coach.  But it isn't my number one passion.  My number one passion is writing, and I haven't been giving it the attention it deserves in part because I somehow gave myself the idea that to be a coach that had to be my number one passion and get almost all of my time and attention with everything else--including writing--getting what was left over.

And I realized that this isn't working for me. Really, I knew for a while that how I'm doing things isn't working for me.  But I didn't quite realize that I had this attitude about coaching and writing and their places in my life.  When this came fully into my consciousness, I was so surprised!  I knew right away this wasn't the right way of thinking about this and running things, not for me.  So I have given myself permission to do what needs to be done for my coaching--take classes, write my newsletter, start building up my website, open things up for clients.  But I also gave myself permission to read all of the writing books and excellent stories I want--all the ones that inspire me and make me want to grab a pen and write things down.  I get to spend as much time as I want playing with my writing.  This feels so exciting!  I am happy with this.

This time of year, the writing is easy, too, so that makes all of this even more exciting.  But as always I'm thinking ahead to the non-NaNo parts of the year and wondering what to do when my enthusiasm flags.  And I think I might have found something for that.  It's a writing challenge called A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80).  You get to set your goal for the 80 day time period.  You check in twice a week to report your progress and see how everyone else is doing.  And this challenge repeats throughout the year, so there's always someone to check in with and help with that motivation thing.

Writing and ROW80 Goals

First my overall writing goal:  I intend to write and revise my current novel, Ordinary Girl, get it to readers for feedback and do more revisions (repeating that two or three times as needed), and have it ready to pitch to one of the agents at next year's Willamette Writer's Conference which is August 3-5, 2012.

For this round of ROW80 which ends December 22: I intend to write 65,000 words between now and then.  My hope is that this will give me a complete if somewhat sketchy first draft to add to and revise come January. After NaNoWriMo is over, I intend to write 5,000 words a week.  Some weeks I may write five days, some I may only write three.  My schedule tends to be shifty, so I'm going to try out a weekly word count goal instead of a daily writing goal.

On a final note, I've stopped reading The Artist's Way.  I am continuing the daily pages as I find those really useful, but I still can't get into the exercises like affirmations and some of the other things.  So once again I will set it aside with the possibility of a revisit at some point down the road.

Thanks for sticking with me 'til the end here everyone.  Stay tuned for novel updates--they will be coming!

Post-NaNo Plans

Just a quick note to send out to my writing friends who want to continue our adventure now that November and NaNoWriMo are over.

For December, let's keep the Twitter chatting going on using the hashtag #writeallyear.  I wanted to switch away from the #NaNoPDX tag and other NaNo specific tags we were using because some people who didn't do NaNo would like to have some writing company throughout the year.  This doesn't mean we will do away with #NaNoPDX or any of the others.  The PDX version will still be great for planning local meetings, write-ins, etc. But I wanted to create something that is more generic.

So, what are we going to do with this?  Post monthly goals, post progress, cheer each other on. Pretty much the same stuff we did in November. 

Later this month, I will be unveiling a new website (I hope) that will give us member profile pages and other things we can use in addition to the Twitter chat, but I didn't want to wait for that to be up and running to put something in place. Don't want to lose that momentum!

So, after you read this, let us know your December goals either here in the comments or on Twitter or both.  I'll let you know when the next phase is ready to go.

Meanwhile, keep writing!

(My December goal: 15,000 words; trying to be realistic and plan for the holiday crazies.)

Yeah, Baby, I'm a Winner!

Love the monkey, but it's missing the year, so:

And now, cheesecake.  Winner's cheesecake!

Words, Sensible and Otherwise

Tonight, I'm at the Soiree of Furious Typing, an awesomely fun six hour write-in put together by one of our Portland NaNoWriMo people.

Now for confession time--I stopped writing about 45 minutes ago.  I hit my 2,000 word goal for the day, and I stopped.  Mostly because I'm so tired that it was getting to a point where I knew I wasn't going to be able to write anything sensible or coherent.  And while the point of NaNo is mostly to get things down and worry about coherence and whatnot after the first draft is done, I just can't stand to type complete drivel.  If it's something to do with the story, and I'm just not quite getting the descriptions right or full enough or something like that on the first try, I'm okay with that.  But I'm so tired, I found myself repeating things, so I knew it was time to stop.

But, it's all fine.  Yesterday, I wrote just over 7,600 words.  Today I wrote 2,082 words for a total of 45,794 which puts me a few hundred words over today's goal of 45,009.  I may even finish this out tomorrow, although Monday is more likely.

Now, it sounds like it's time for cleaning up as the Soiree ends in half an hour.  It's been fun, but I am so looking forward to my bed!

NaNoWriMo Day 21

I didn't write yesterday.  I had a relapse of my nasty cold on Friday, and yesterday was generally miserable, too.  Today, finally, I feel mostly better.  I still have a bit of a cough, and my throat is not completely better, but it feels so much better by comparison!  Now if I could just stop needing to sleep so much.

So, NaNoWriMo. My plan for the rest of the month is to write at least 3,000 words each day.  Thursday being Thanksgiving may put a bit of a kink in that plan, but if I do at least the 3K over the next few days, I'll have a cushion going into Thursday and will be fine, especially because Friday I am off work and can write all day.

I'm starting to see a pattern in my writing schedule.  I think I'm not an every day writer.  I seem to do really well with 3-4 writing sessions a week, especially if I can make them 2-3 hours long.  That's actually a really good thing to know.  That's also a writing schedule I believe I can easily fit into my life even when it's not November.  That should let me easily reach my 25,000 words a month goal I'm planning on.  I may even find that 25K is a little low, but I'll wait a few months and see how it goes. Maybe I'll revisit my plan and adjust my monthly goals at the end of March--three months should give me a decent idea of whether or not my plan is a good one for me.

Back to NaNo. Today I've written 2,027 of my 3K.  I'm taking a break now to clean up and go grocery shopping.  It's cold and wet and nasty out, so I'd really rather stay here and write.  It's so hard to drag myself out of the house on days like this!

But drag myself out the door I must, because I am not excessively rich and have no servants to send out shopping for me.  Anyone feel sorry for me?  I didn't think so. :D

Have a great Sunday, everyone! More writing talk tomorrow, I'm sure.

NaNoWriMo Day 19

Broke 25,000 words tonight!  Hurray!  I am happy dancing over here.  Okay, my feet are.  The rest of me is lounging on the bed nursing a nasty cold and sore throat I've had for three days.

I'm still a little behind in my word count (but catching up a bit more every day), but I'm also still loving working on this story. This story is the first time in a while that I feel as if I'm really learning something about my own writing process.  I think some of the things I've been studying--especially the stuff from Larry Brooks at StoryFix and Tami Moore with her awesome plotting kit--are really helping me learn how to fill in the spaces between the major plot points.  I feel like I've made a big leap forward with this story, and I'm getting really excited to see how the story goes.  And I'm also getting really excited to use the stuff I'm learning to finally finish the two really great stories I started that I didn't quite know how to finish.

Now, though, I'm going to settle into bed for a bit of TV and a long night's sleep so I can hopefully wake up tomorrow feeling better and ready to write.

NaNoWriMo--Day 16? Yikes!

This awesome image, as many of mine do, comes from Stock.xchng. You should check them out.

I haven't been writing as much as I'd planned.  I'm definitely behind on my NaNoWriMo word count.  I'm not feeling worried about it, though.  I'm not so far behind that I can't catch up pretty easily, and I know the coming weekend is wide open for writing sessions.

I am feeling worried about something else, and I just realized last night that this has been going on inside my head for a while.  More than a while--probably for years. 

I went through a period of being afraid that I don't actually know how to write a whole novel, that I don't know how to finish one.  I've been working on that for a few years, and I think I'm at a point where I can make it happen.  We'll know for sure when I actually hit the end of this story (end of January, that's still the intention). But now that I'm feeling a bit more confident in my ability to actually write a whole novel from start to finish, I discovered that there's been a companion fear hiding back there all this time.  I learned that I'm even more afraid that, once I have a completed first draft, I won't know how or be able to revise it into something submittable.

There's good news here.  Not because once I recognized the fear I knew it was unfounded.  I don't have any idea if I will know how to revise my novel into something I can shop around. But now that I've seen the fear and recognized it for what it is, it doesn't stand a chance.  I usually only get completely derailed by amorphous, unnamed fears, and this one has a name now, and that means I own it.  And I will not let a fear that I can see, that I know is there, stop me from doing something I want.

This isn't a quick process for me.  It won't be "Oh, I see you, fear, and now you're out of here for good."  I know I won't traipse through finishing my first draft and then skip merrily through my revisions.  I know the fear will grab me and throw me down and hold me in the corner.  For a bit.  But then I'll shove it back in its box and keep going, because now I know it, and it can't control me, and I will win.

NaNoWriMo Day 11

This is Stumpy.  He's our Portland Region mascot. Isn't he great?

I won't lie.  I am behind on my word count.  Oddly, though, I'm not worried.  I'm going to settle down for a long writing session this afternoon, and I'm probably stopping in at a write-in this evening, so I'm probably going to give my word count a good boost today.  But I think that's not the major reason I'm not worried.  I think I'm not worried because, for the first time, I feel like I am a writer. I put these words and sentences together, I pour this story out onto the page, and I know that this is what I do.  I can do this.  I *do* do this. And what's more, I am feeling confident about my ability to finish this novel.  Not just reach 50,000 words but actually reach the end of the story. Not by November 30.  But I know that I really do know how to keep going and write until the end of the story.

What's my plan?

• Write a beginning of the month post with my word count goal for that month and what I'll be working on (because someday, not too far from, now it will be revisions!)
• Write update posts at least twice a week about what I've done on my goal that week (Thanks to my one of my writing buddies for this idea: The Crystalline Aerie)
• Post these goals and updates to Twitter for my writing buddies to see
• Write a wrap-up post at the end of the month (although there's the possibility that this one might be part of the goal setting posts instead of a separate post; we'll see)

 Obviously, this month my goal is 50,000 words (I'm at 13,149 right now).  Most months will probably be about  half of that. I think 25K words December will probably be quite a lot less because of the holiday craziness.

I plan to finish the first draft of my current NaNo novel--Chasing the Moon--by the end of January.  Then I'm going to set it aside for a resting period and work on Ordinary Girl, my 2006 NaNo novel that I never finished. I'm expecting that one to take 3-4 months.  After the first draft of OG is finished, I'll go back and start revisions on CtM, but since I've never gotten to the revision part of a novel, I don't know how long that will take, so I'm not going to try to schedule things any further out than that.

So, yeah.  There it is, that's my plan. Now, I'm going to go get some of those words written. I'll report on that later.

Wishcasting Wednesday--Enjoy!

"What do you wish to enjoy?"  Thank you, Jamie, for this question today.  I need to get this into solid words.  I've been thinking around the edges of this for a while now, and this is a great opportunity to actually look at it.

I am a writer.  So why do I so often not write?  Why do I put it off, ignore it, give it minimal time then try to write during periods when I know I won't have the energy to really put in the proper effort (like when I'm really tired and need to go to bed, for example)?

 

I want to allow myself to sink into story, to live there for pages and pages and hours and days and not constantly be pulled out by worries of other things I need to do, other places I need to be, other people's schedules and needs and interruptions.  I want to not care that I only have 45 minutes before my boyfriend comes home--I want to write anyway, enjoying it, living it, not worried that I have to do something else sometime soon.

This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  During November, I manage to put everything else on low priority and delve into my writing.  I want to find the way to do this all the time.  I know that I won't always have time to give my writing this much space and attention every day the way I do in November, but I desperately crave having this focus regularly during the rest of the year.  So that's what I wish for--I wish to enjoy my writing and stories all the time, not just in November.