NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 30

Well, it's finally here. Day 30. The end is here.

Wasn't sure I'd make it. I just barely got to being on pace the day before Black Friday, when I worked at 4:30 in the morning with the crazy people. (Yay, retail).

Surprisingly, Black Friday didn't break me. I dragged what remained of my carcass after the shoppers were done with it down to my local Starbucks and cranked out 1700+ words before the urge to collapse beat me into submission.

Black Saturday, however, killed me dead. Or perhaps the urge to push so hard on Black Friday did it and Saturday just nailed the coffin closed. Either way, Saturday was a zero sum day.

Drew it down to the wire, but powered through almost 5K on the 29th day. Was looking good to finish, with only 508 words to go...

Of course, then I had to go back to the retail hell, and I sat at a measly 508 words for almost 24 hours! Talk about feeling ridiculous!

What?

Oh, I've already given away what happened on day 30? My images?

Oh. Cutting to the chase then.

I WON!!!!

Seriously, though, it's been a great month. (Also, those 4K on the first abandoned NaNo project? Didn't count them. Felt like cheating.)

Now I just have to finish. Provide some answers. Resolve the story. ...get to the climax? Right, so... still have a ways to go.

But as of 4:30ish PST, I cleared 50K words (112 pages in all) and won NaNoWriMo. I think I'll take the rest of the day off (Except I'm stuck at Starbucks in WeHo for several more hours, so I won't. Bah.) I'll probably flit around Twitter for a bit and cheerlead for those still making the push. Because good encouragement can be all it takes to gets you through that last push!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 22

I spent days 18 and 19 over the moon, excited because I'd caught up to the "recommended" word count, felt like I was back on pace, and two of my characters had sort of opened up and decided on this amazing subplot that altered the ending and made everything lead toward a much more amazing conclusion than previously planned.

So naturally, days 20 and 21 played host to a migraine and it was all I could do to get through working my "real" job. Looking at a computer screen just wasn't on tap.

So now it's back to playing catch up. I think I prefer it, though, because it eliminates any sense of complacency or saying, "Well, I got out 1000 words today, I can hit more tomorrow."

No day but today.

And once more into the breach, dear friends. I have a web lies to untangle and a wedding to break up. And that's just the tip of the ice burg!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 16

Okay, so it's technically Day 17 now that we've gotten past midnight, but I don't have anything much to talk about since we're only an hour into the day.

Day 16 was a big work day, push hard to make significant progress in closing the gap between where I should be and where I am. Finished 5040 words today, bumping the total over 25K. Feels pretty good, and most importantly, I find myself arguing things out with characters and occasionally wondering who's in charge, me or them, which in my experience is a good thing. They get to that point and you're going to stick with them for a while, enjoy the ride, cuss the fights but later love them for tearing into you, and hopefully, come up with something on the page that isn't utter rubbish.

Of course, I was making the big push to break 25K total and 5K for the day which had me hyped and had me on a nice roll, good momentum, and after I cleared both those goals, I wanted to keep going. Got myself to mid-sentence and promptly stopped at point, so hopefully I can spin that into some great momentum for tomorrow. The downside is now that I got there and have stopped for till morning, I'm drained! Energy just died once I stopped.

Which I suppose makes it bedtime. Good night, all!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 09

An early post today, courtesy of the cracked out work schedule which has me going in at 5 (when everyone else gets off) and closing tonight. Still had to ride in to WeHo with my sister for her regular(ish) work day, so I've had quite a bit of time to work today (which is wicked sweet!)

Got over 3K words written, breaking the 10K barrier about midway through those 3K words. Have tomorrow and Thursday off, so equally hopeful that I can hit this thing hard during my time off, maybe clear 3K on each of those days (I'll settle for making goal of 2K though, speaking practically!!)

Really glad I made the decision to switch stories. As usual, enjoying my villains the most- my out and out villainess who plays so many games she ought to be named Hasboro, started the first of her ploys today, which was a blast to write. I also got to write about Daniel, who is much more coherent while drunk and has the misfortune of currently having been forced into sobriety. I let him go on a little tangent today which actually ended up creating a great comic beat that resolved on a very serious and somewhat sad beat for him. Not bad for a 'eh, how bad can it be if I let the sober drunkard babble a bit' moment. Daniel's a bully and has the loyalty of the lowest snakes, but there's something tragic and likable about him, not to mention the fact that his rambling often proves amusing, so he's another enjoyable character. My main character (antihero) Hunter is interesting, but being an anti-hero, he doesn't get to have quite as much fun. But he is proving delicious to torture, and I have plenty more of that planned!

Next on my to-do list though, is looking into finding a public library or different coffee shop to work in near my workplace. Today at Starbucks has proven to be TEH DRAMA all day long! Not to mention dodgy internet connection! Suggestions welcome!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 4

You may notice if you look back at the day 1 post with the counter widget that today my word count hasn't gone up much. That's not really accurate. The counter only reflects what I wrote TODAY.

Early in the October planning process, I was caught between two plots. Definitely something to be grateful for now, because I was struggling ridiculously with the one I chose, and sometimes fighting myself to get to work on it. Worse? It felt boring to me. I picked something outside my usual style, genre, and medium to be a challenge, but maybe going toward all three was a little much. Plus idea #2 has been nibbling away at me for DAYS. Unlike the first NaNo idea, it hasn't petered out this week. Fortunately it was still early, and after reading what I'd written so far, I decided to try switching ideas today.

What a difference that made! I wrote over 4K words today. I wrote more today than I've managed to squeeze out in the previous three days.

I'm going to have to push hard to make up the gap in words that restarting 4 days in has made, but it's definitely worth it. Sometimes taking a step back and looking at the options in front of you is a good idea. And in this case, it definitely is.

I feel rather flaky with this year's NaNo project, which is almost funny, because usually I'm the opposite. I get too attached to an idea or character, and it takes me longer to see it needs to be cut or changed. Hopefully coming from the opposite side in this project will help me find some good balance in future writing projects.

Tonight, NaNoWriMo.org featured the pep talk from Mercedes Lackey which is an amazing read and unlike many published authors, not disparaging of authors who aren't working on original projects. I have to agree with her, because I also feel fanfic makes excellent practice work. And my chosen field leaves very little room to talk, to be frank. TV writing has us break in by writing spec scripts, which when you boil it down, aren't all that much more than fanfic. Okay, granted, it's not the kind of fanfic featuring gratuitous sex and such, but it is formatted, gen, fic in a way.

I also decided to work today at Starbucks, because minimizing distractions is good. There was no, "I could just go clean this" or "Hmm, you know I haven't seen last week's Merlin" (I still haven't by the way, no spoilers!) just a nice green tea, my headphones, and air conditioning. Not usually essential, but it was over 90 degrees in LA today. Frak you, global warming.

Day four... let's just say it kicked my ass hard, so I started kicking ass back. Here's hoping the momentum remains through day five!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 3

Not much to report today, except for the reminder that when you schedule every moment of your waking day, your word count suffers. As mine did today...

Thank goodness I've got a day off tomorrow and I can double down to get back on track.

A secret from Ms. Meredith Lindsey, aka Merlin to her friends and fans, to tide you over:

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 2

First, the quick and dirty: Still ahead of goal, though as you'll notice from the counter (see previous post) not by nearly the margin I held yesterday.

I really loved Lindsey Grant's day 1 pep talk as I read it this morning, especially this line:

"As we write our novels this month, join me in taking complete omnipotent ownership of our novel-worlds, where we, the writers, reign supreme and unopposed."

Yes indeed, I am supreme Goddess, all shall love me and despair!

Except today of course, when I resumed writing and my main character David had himself a little fit and sat int he corner and refused to speak to me till I saw things his way. And sure, maybe his way was right, and I was fighting him and should have known better but still... my universe!

I bet Yahweh never had this sort of problem. Noah wasn't like, "God, I know this is your Bible and all, but two of EVERYTHING?"

Just for that, I'm going to reveal one of the post secrets I created for David:

NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 1

And so it begins...

Got off work and spent my time in a Starbucks, typing away. This will become my natural state of existence for the next 30 days.

Felt like I was behind, because so many did a midnight kickoff, morning sprints, etc. I had to work, so I was asleep well before midnight, at work all day, and didn't start till 5pm today.

But at the end of the day, I still surpassed my goal for today, I'm on track, and I got an early kick in the butt reminder that I'm on my timetable, my goals, and to stop worrying about being behind or not keeping up. I'm here to write... and to do some quality cheerleading for my cohorts, most of whom, it turned out, were feeling just behind and in need of that reminder themselves.

Time to kick butt!

NaNoWriMo 2010: T-Minus 9 Days

As expected, it was an eleventh hour decision on which project I'd move forward with, and I mean that in a very literal sense. At 11pm on Wednesday (which I affectionately referred to as 'that day by which I'll make up my frakkin mind or else the hat comes out') I reversed my decision of six hours earlier... and not by drawing it out of a hat, either. Actually made a decision and have started kicking the whole show into gear.

I've been getting the music stuff in order. If you don't remember from last year, I do two lists- one all instrumental or languages I don't sing in and the other directed at the theme, lyrically and tonally. The instrumental is for writing, the other is for kicking my butt into gear in the in-between times, like driving in the car. Last year's favorite music for writing came from "Friday Night Lights" and the band "Apocolyptica", both of which will still provide a ton of music, but this year's awesome music is the "Inception" soundtrack. Have you listened to it? It's amazing stuff, plus totally hits the right zone in my brain to keep me moving but not hearing the music. Tempo and tone over content is how my sister describes my music when I write, but this is pretty amazing on all counts. On the lyrical playlist side, it's a heavy "What If" mix, lots of songs asking what if, because the project is all about "what if".

The plots are coming together nicely- yeah, plots. It's the story of the types of relationships fracturing out from four alternate choices made by the main characters, but in all four lines, they're connected by a death. Yes, I enjoy making things stupidly complicated. One of my main characters would call it "unnecessarily playing cat's cradle with string theory just to study characters and relationships", but she's got a vicious streak and likes talking back already, so I totally ignore her at times like that. She's going to be more trouble than my other main character, David, who seems pretty content and along for the ride.

Four story lines, so life gets interesting-- four post secrets for each of two characters, for example. Four parts to my music list, which is about to get divided into four lists. And even though it's the same two people, because I'm all about giving them a lot of life's left turns, I'm exploring a lot of range on who they are and what can change them, which means deeper character breakdowns, sometimes labeled with multiple answers by plot line.

Part of me is still wondering if I should have picked the nicer "retelling of Wuthering Heights" idea, but for the most part, decision made. And stuck to. Maybe.

... no idea where I'll be at in nine days. Starting one or the other. And as long as I don't psych myself out, starting a NaNo version of underwater basket weaving. And possibly tempting my sanity. Yay NaNo!

NaNoWriMo 2010: T-Minus 17 Days

I think my "Dear Plot" letter summed it up best earlier today:

Dear Plot #1 and Plot #2,

One knock down drag out fight. Only one may emerge from the octagon. Seriously. One of you needs to kill the other. That way I can focus on just one of you and make it work.

Don't make Mommy choose. Sort this amongst yourselves. And maybe next year, the loser can come play.

Thanks,
Your author

I see myself drawing one of the two titles out of a hat in the near future! And sadly, there is no hope of merging these two bastards into one idea, and neither is falling into the tangle of plot holes or irreconcilable logic failure.

I know, whine more. Because it's actually an awesome problem to have. Suspect I may lean more toward the modern relationship/character study fiction piece, because it is a little more removed from my comfort zone. The fantasy "apocalypse meets Wuthering Heights"? Yeah, that's right up my alley. Both original and novel format, so no rebel writer status for me this year. I'm doing it straight old school! ;)

For now though, I'm continuing with both outlines, both sets of character developments, and plodding through set up work on both pieces. I've given myself till the 20th to make a decision on which project to go through with, so about then, I'll start some of the more fun projects, like covers, post secrets, and sketches. After a name comes out of a hat.