Enough Putzing

Have you voted yet? Go on, go. I'll wait.

Last week was the work week from hell (So far it's better this week, thanks for asking) that started off badly when I got some bad news from the Old Neighborhood. Yeah, that whole youthful I'm Gonna Live Forever vibe? Gone. Oh, it'd been slowly wearing away anyhow, what with drinking herbal tea, listening to Satanic smooth jazz, and bitching about local tax rates. Let's just say that when someone your own age passes away, someone with more to live for than I do (and I've got a LOT), it definitely puts things into perspective. Which is why, during what is hopefully my first in a long line of annual physical exams, I got the sort of exam that they say guys in their thirties need to start having. Not to mention getting a cholesterol test. I shudder at the possible results. What can I say, I'm from Cleveland, Land of perogis and smoked meats.

So, last weekend I caved and went to a local NaNoWriMo meetup and started something that I eventually titled EXPERIMENTAL PHASES. I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep going with it, though. My Writer side (the side that's the antithesis of everything NaNoWriMo stands for) has been pestering me with, "You've got two shorts to finish and one you haven't submitted yet! Get to it, NOW!" I got the submission in. But, instead of finishing the shorts, I'm blogging before work. Hey, baby steps, right?

Anyway, I've got my plans, I've got my time mapped out and...oh geez, 10 minutes before work, apparently.

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Calling to Me

No, I haven't decided to, yet. Haven't decided not to either, though I did swear it off last year. There are so many damn reasons not to, not the least of which is the need to write more stuff that'll sell.

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NaNo NaNo, NaNo NaNo, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

Thank God that's over.

This experience taught me a lot of things, but I'm damned if I'm going to write it all out now. Maybe next time.

Now, I can get on to some serious, hopefully publishable writing. Not to mention blogging!

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NaNo Be There

46,328/50,000 words.

93% to completion.

I could end it by tomorrow, and probably will.

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Mork Calling Orson: NaNo, NaNo

37,460/50,000 Words.

74.9% toward completion.

I'm 881 words behind where I should be at this exact moment.

What I've been doing is writing really long chapters (i.e. short stories) with the novel's characters. It's the George Lucas method, where he does his real "directing" in the editing room, rather than during the takes. So, I'm writing pages and pages of stuff, and plan to cut it out, later.

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Ain't NaNoOne's Business If I Do

This is pages 71 to 120 of my NaNoWriMo piece. I've cranked out another five pages tonight (I had another gig), but I gotta tell you. Week Three started out being the picnic that was promised in the book No Plot? No Problem!. But, it's killing me, now.

To be honest, I know why. That "Inner Editor" of mine, which believe it or not was more than content to sit quietly for two weeks, is now going, "Okay, you've had your fun. But, now you're just adding words for the sake of the word count and meandering nowhere--at least nowhere near the plotline."

In truth, there are only about two or three more scenes I need to wrap up the story and I'm pretty damn sure it's not 24,000 words worth of stuff. Anyway, I've decided on an uneasy compromise. I'm not going to write filler, but I've been trying to elaborate on all the background and exposition that I just haven't had the time to more skillfully work into the story. Then, I've done the same with some of the scenes I haven't written yet. It's frustrating to throw craft completely out the window, but that's what has to happen if I continue with the project within the spirit of the rules.

I guess I just have to accept that decision. If I want a submittable story by the end of the month, there's no reason I can't stop now and pare it down. But, I want to complete the project I signed up for.

Oh, and for the curious: 27,035/50,000 words, or 54%. I'm behind. I know. Stop yelling at me.

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NaNoNonsensical

I mentioned (Or, did I? My sense of time and place has become skewed for the past few weeks) having a temp gig three days last week. There was nothing today (though perhaps for tomorrow), so I had time to work on The Novel, Draft 0.9. I won't even give it the dignity of calling it a "first draft," because since last week, it's degenerated into a bastardization of narrative prose, blocks of text that resemble a Marvel Comics comic book script, and when I was too blocked to manage even that, plain notes.

I didn't believe it, but perhaps because my biorhythms are on their way back up (full moon is around the corner) the things I've been hearing about regarding a sort of Week Three NaNoWriMo quantum leap must be true, because it hit me. I managed to make up for a lot of lost time, despite some of the chores I got to today.

Right now, I'm at 21,502/50,000 words--43% to completion. Although, as bad as things have gotten, I don't even feel right about using the word "completion." Feels better to say "the goal." Anyway, when I wake up tomorrow, providing I don't have a temp gig, I'll be a hair's breadth over a single day behind where I should be on the 15th day of the month.

I leave you all tonight with an old article from comic book writer Warren Ellis, from a series of articles he did on, among other things, comic book writing. I read this ages ago and was pleased to find it again. It's sort of an encouragement (which is rare for him) to beginning writers. And, even though he's talking about comics, what he says easily applies to other forms of writing and jives a lot with what other people have to say about getting published. I would dare say it applies to anyone trying to succeed with his or her art.

But here's a secret.

95% of all writer's submissions are absolute [siht].

Seriously.

You want to impress an editor? Learn to spell. Lay out your pitch cleanly and elegantly. Be coherent. I knew of a writer who wrote the clearest, most lucid and beautifully structured synopses anyone had ever seen. The actual scripts, when they came in, was utter gibberish, made no sense at all, had plainly been written on acid. But the damn things were commissioned and paid for on the strength of clear pitches.

Be good. That's what'll capture an editor's attention. Because 95% of that pile of submissions next to them is inexcusably awful, and they know it. You will stand out from the crowd because there are no semen stains on your submission, because a cursory examination shows that you have a basic grasp of English, because it reaches for concision and appears professional in its approach, because the covering letter isn't headed "Dear Bastard." Etcetera.

There, doesn't that give you hope? All right, then--good night.

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Bad NaNoer, Bad NaNoer

I'm not really doing anything "bad" according to the NaNoWriMo rules. The point is word count, by any means necessary short of typing out "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over like Nicholson did in The Shining. But, I've now resorted to what I feel are dirty tricks to keep myself at a decent pace (which is to say, two days worth of work behind).

In those spaces I feel stuck, I've resorted to putting things in brackets, like [Okay, right here is where I wanted to put the scene where the aliens stop the pickup truck, beam three of the four people on board, leaving the forth one who, for some reason, is able to resist the paralyzation beam and yadda yadda yadda.] (No, that appears nowhere in my "novel," but you get the point.)

But, tonight it was even worse. Rather than hammer out the scene I was working on, I just cobbled a transition into another scene I had planned that wasn't supposed to happen for at least one more chapter. Well, the one upside is that while I know I'm going to end up with something that's certainly not going to be confused with Proust, I know I'm making it good enough to have decent material that I can sift through later. Maybe pare down to something short that I can submit somewhere. Personally, I see nothing wrong with the thought of writing a "novella" as opposed to a novel, but if anything, I'd rather see a good 5,000 word submittable short story come out of this than a novel/novella that stands a snowball's chance of seeing the light of day.

I was sort of hoping to have a marathon session tomorrow, but I've been letting stuff slide around here. I made a half-assed attempt at housework when I got home just so I could scribble down what I got down tonight.

Since there isn't a counter anymore, I have to say that I'm at 15,064/50,000 words, or 30% toward completion.

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My Weekly Personality Analysis

You will probably win Nanowrimo - it's a brillant
opportunity to lord your mighty brains over
your less well-endowed friends. Whatever.


It's Nanowrimo Time! Will you reach 50K?
What kind of novel will you write?
brought to you by Quizilla

I was going to let this slide this week, between NaNoWriMo and a little temp gig I picked up. But, since the meter broke down (click the broken link over there--it's kind of sad, really), I wanted to mention that I'm at 14,335/50,000 words. That's 29%, and while it may sound impressive, I'm still running about two days behind schedule. The mathematics says I should be at 16,670 words by today, and while I could theoretically pull a James Joyce and ramble on for two thousand words in the next forty minutes, I ain't gonna.

Anyway, I gotta get to bed.

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I Try to Walk Away and I Stumble

I did say that I'd blog less in November, although it just seems like I'm posting at the usual (dismal) rate :).

Seems like most of the people doing NaNoWriMo who keep blogs like to brag about how they're taking part. I was down with that. I even put the meter in the sidebar from an adjunct "this site is in no way officially affiliated with NaNoWriMo" website that a lot of people use. What I hadn't planned on doing is being one of those who complain about how their progress, or lack thereof, is kicking their a$$.

But, it's like I always say: Just when you start thinking you're unique, just remember that so is everyone else.

Yes, I've heard all the criticisms of NaNoWriMo, and even agree with some of them. So, please don't post them, or stock tips, or he/she/it pr0n ads, or anything else that would make me have to start doing all that comment verification/moderation stuff. I'm doing NaNo to get myself into the discipline of writing--seriously writing--first drafts. Period. I'm doing it for the same reason I still do the kata Taikyoku Shodan, because the basic, basic skills from that kata have translated directly into my ability to learn and to perform the skill sets from every martial art I've studied since TKD. Every one. If you can't use your hips, I don't care where your art is from; to you, it's worth two things, jack and siht.

But, I digress. I'm here to complain about my NaNoWriMo progress, or lack thereof.

I didn't do a lick of writing (for NaNo) today, although I spent a bit of time planning the novel out a little further. I seem to have written myself into a corner in that I hit the transition between Act I and Act II much earlier than I planned to. And now, the number of places I can go from here is starting to scare me into paralysis. I realize that it's entirely possible that I don't need what was left out, that it would just interrupt the flow that's already in motion. I can accept that, and maybe I have to.

In any case, I've got 3,334 words to do before I go to bed tomorrow night; difficult, but theoretically doable. I think I just need to keep going at this point. And then, I'll have to cope with what is apparently the notorious Week Two NaNoWriMo blahs.

On a more positive note, I have to say that seeing thirty-five pages of manuscript, devoted to a single piece, is nice.

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Blogging in November

There will probably be very little of it this month because of NaNoWriMo. It's Day 2, and I'm just on track. I was about 20% ahead of schedule last night, but hey. I had other things to do earlier today and Law & Order was on. Hey, where else can I catch actor Richard Brooks since good vs. evil was cancelled? (The character of Henry MacNeil is right behind Jim Kelly on the bad-assedness scale.)

Of course, now that I've opened the blogging door, watch this turn into a big procrastination tool.

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