I think I'm going to try NaNoFiMo again. (I first signed up in 2005.) Maybe this year, I'll actually get somewhere. Some possibilities:
Grayed - started around 2002-2003, science fiction/suspense. An investigator searches for answers as the death count of an icy mining colony rises.
Salamander Hill - unofficial 2004 July Nano, fantasy western. A band of adventurers search for treasure in a fabled place called Salamander Hill.
On Vacation - 2006 3-day novel, modern fantasy. The Eater of the Dead takes a cruise ship vacation--except it might turn out not to be a vacation at all.
Baliser - 2006 NaNoPubYe warm-up, biopunk. The night janitor inadvertently stumbles onto a plot to kill people who are carriers of a very unusual disease.
Greenglass - 2007 3-day novel, historical fantasy/steampunk. A prequel to this year's Nano Vellum and Green Vitriol
Right now, I'm leaning towards doing Baliser because I have most of the world building done up and it relies heavily on my expertise (microbiology). I'm also quite fond of the main character who is a down-on-her-luck cleaning lady.
As the editor of the magazine Hot Tread slammed his office door shut, Stuart pulled out the newspaper that Mad Dog had so carelessly tossed. He opened The New Halis Times to the front page and began reading the headlines aloud.
"New Halis' most eligible bachelor receives inheritance. Ralph "Mad Dog" Bartlett, the editor of the up and coming magazine Hot Tread and most eligible bachelor of New Halis came into his inheritance that was willed to him by his great-uncle, Rodger Pellington, billionaire and founder of Pellington Industries..."
"Mad Dog?" said Rita, wide-eyed.
Mel peered over Stuart's shoulder. "Ah, so that's where his latest idea came from. That article is written by Eddie Outman."
A loud bang suddenly diverted the three journalists' attention from the newspaper. Plastered against the glass door was a horde of screaming women. Even from the closed door, they could hear chants of "Bartlett! Bartlett! Bartlett!" One of the women held up a sign that had been written with marker. It said, "I love you Mad Dog!"
"No wonder he locked himself in his office," said Stuart.
Well, I just figured I'll put in some of my personal stats for all the years I've done Nano, including this year since I'm finished with the story. It appears that my pace has been quite consistent from year to year to about day 15. Then things start diverging.
"I'm going to soak you in a nice vintage liqueur and slowly burn each page with one of those branding irons master chefs use to caramelize crème brûlée."
That bit of dialogue is from my villain. Who has a fetish for destroying books. Vellum and Green Vitriol is fantasy adventure, taking place in a 1920's England-esque landscape where grimoires are the main characters and most humans are clueless. Comparisons to badly written books are insults, paper cuts are deadly, and ink blots are far from ordinary. Or, as I tell people who inquire what it's about even though they're completely uninterested, it's about a magic book searching for her brother.
And It Goes Like This! This anecdote is more academic related, but it can be applied to pretty much everything. So go backup your novel. I have various versions in my writing notebook, my computer, my flash drive, a CD, in e-mail, and on this website. Where's yours?
It's interesting reading about other people's progress. For some people, it's a cathartic experience because they're finally writing out a story that has been living in their head forever. I can only imagine it as a security blanket that they're finally letting go. Because if there's one idea that keeps getting stuck in my head for years and years, I'd go mad. (This is what writing notebooks are for--to get those wormy ideas out as soon as possible.)
The ideas I come up for my Nano projects get developed the same year as that particular Nano. How I'm going to go about it might come earlier. For instance, I had already decided that I would write my 2007 Nano novel in first person after I finished the one in 2006. I thought that would be a good challenge to tackle since all my other novels up until this year had been written in third person.
As for next year, I'll probably decide after this one is finished. Maybe I'll take on sci-fi. Or a male POV. Or both.
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Notes about my current noveling progress: I'm finally in the last stretch. I'm still sort of vague about how the final confrontation will go though.
Which I found on the forums: Whatt-Evan's Laws of Fantasy. People always tell me that fantasy is easy. Not necessarily so--if you're making it easy, it's probably bad fantasy. Like any other genre, it needs to be consistent with its own internal rules.
Of course in Nano, you can throw all the rules out the window even when you're not writing fantasy in order to get the words down. They come back during editing though...
I passed 50k last night. I'm still writing though--I will try to get to the end of the story before the month is out.
It's sort of interesting handwriting. I have black pens that are clear so I can see the level of ink left. I've used up a lot of ink considering how many pens I've thrown out during the course of the month.
Favorite Line My favorite bit of dialogue begins with: "Don't tell me. You're the Key to Cooking."
Best line of the day From yesterday: "How much havoc can a bunch of women cause anyway?"
Who Didn't Cheese To Make Their 50k? The question pertains to whether or not you always use the full names of your characters, lack contractions, put spaces in between the periods of an ellipses, and avoid hyphenation as tricks to up your word count.
I don't do any of these things. Not intentionally anyway.
And they travel. And they travel some more...and some more. Yep.
What would your parents say if they read your Nano novel? "This is really weird."
What word have you discovered you use entirely to much? "Suppose."
Can you see your novel becoming a movie? Sort of. It would have to have the sensibility of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the costume design of Gosford Park (and Amadeus for the upcoming carnival scene), the wit from a British comedy, the romantic tension of a Doris Day movie, and the subtle special effects one might get if The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings had been distilled to a point.
Who are you going to dedicate your book to? All those places which allowed local participants to meet for write-ins.
I've been mostly writing by hand today. I'm going to try to finish up another scene before I start typing things up. I'm also going to try to get my characters into Haven (a fictional city that's sort of like a cross between Edinburgh and Venice) before tonight is over.
As for where the story will be at when I hit 50k--I'm 99% sure it won't be the end (although it's slowly getting close).
Last night, I watched the first episode of David Attenborough's Planet Earth series. It wasn't the first episode I've ever watched--I'm watching them all out of order due to the availability of the DVDs at the library--but that's okay. David Attenborough nature documentaries are awesome no matter what order you watch them in.
So what does this have to do with Nano? Well, there's this scene in the first episode where a shark leaps out of the water and chomps on a seal. And Attenborough says:
"If surprise fails, there will be a chase. The shark is faster on a straight course, but it can't turn as sharply as the seal. It's agility versus power."
Italics emphasis are mine. And I was thinking, this is exactly the sort of theme I'm going to try to model my fight scene finale on. Of course, this is going to be sort of difficult since everything will be taking place in an underground sewer.
And speaking of fight scenes, there will be one coming up somewhat soon. Or maybe "fight scene" isn't the best terminology to describe it. Perhaps cheesy rescue scene. A parody of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn will make an appearance.
I don't know how often you check the Official Nanowrimo blog, but I just looked it up today. And I saw an entry on...ghostwriting. Oh man, wouldn't it just be easier to type 50,000 words over and over again rather than paying someone else to do it for you? Or is someone trying to get extra credit in English class without doing the work?
Sad. Sad. Sad.
The whole point of Nano is to do this yourself. This isn't some sort of rat race. It shouldn't be used to get ahead in anything except for your own personal creative endeavors.
I've never thought of it as "winning." To me, it smacks too much of competition. I'm not competing against anybody except, perhaps, myself. I don't really want any awards. Heck, while everyone else is busy going to Kinko's to print out their certificate in color and have some calligrapher write their name on it, I don't even bother. 50k is a goal. I'll be perfectly happy once I finish the story.
The write-in I went to yesterday was probably the first time I got very little writing done. For one thing, my brain was already fried--I had been doing scientific writing the entire day which is not the same as writing fiction. And another--I got caught up in another Nanoer's interview which for a lack of better phrase, required my scientific expertise. It's not every day that I get the opportunity to communicate microbiology to a lay audience.
It never fails. Every year, there will be some people who get discouraged because they're writing "crap". Or thinking that they might get encouragement from their friends and family, they show their work and get let down because they're being told that it's "no good." I can't stress enough that Nanowrimo is all about getting the words down--not so much the quality, true--but it is a draft.
And anyone who thinks a first draft is perfect is perfectly nuts.
There are perfectionists out there who want their first go around to be flawless. This is next to impossible. Writing is a lot like other things--you need practice to get better. An example: let's compare writing to doing a routine on the parallel bars. You'd be mad to think that the first time you do it will be good. For a non-gymnast like me, I'd probably hurt myself many, many times before I even reach passable.
So the mindset of this high velocity writing challenge is not really getting any output that is "good" or "bad." When you think of "disregarding quality", you should not make it synonymous with writing dreck. This is practice. Concern yourself with quality and editing after the month is over.
Ideally, I would be listening to a variety of soundtracks while writing. However, whenever I have been listening to music while writing, it has been cheesy pop music. I swear, it keeps me awake.
NaNo Ten (via Web Petals: check out her cartoon with the caffeine IV drip!) A list of links to helpful advice and noveling resources from Paperback Writer.
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Sometimes, I'm in a certain mood where I think--why do people need bribes to write? Writing is supposed to be in your blood; you can't make yourself not do it. Bribery is for something truly unpleasant.
I purposely left my outline wide open because I'm rather prone to digressions and tangents during Nano. My tangents to date: random and quirky secondary characters that pop in and out. But after a little thinking about them, these secondary characters do fit a sort of mold. Like cranky old men with a few screws loose. And middle-aged women with crushes on my main male character. Not to mention greasy henchmen and dramatic villains who come to bad ends.
Hm. I will probably have to put a crazed, yet extremely unusual bibliophile somewhere in the story to really creep my characters out. Maybe I'll introduce him or her once my characters board the Hinterland Express to Haven.
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I really like one bit of advice on the forums about "telling" the story rather than "writing" it. In one way "writing" seems rather slavish while "telling" is more laid back. Rather than stressing over the words, picture what's happening and simply describe.
There are similar threads throughout the forums on summarizing your plot. A lot of people seem to find it really difficult. "There are lots of things happening in my novel," they might exclaim. "It's impossible to talk about it in less than five minutes. People might as well read the whole thing!" Maybe people are making it a little more complicated than it should be--of course, as the author, you think everything in your novel is worth mentioning. But when you're talking to someone who most likely doesn't care, it's better to distill everything to a bare-bones sentence.
In other words, think of it as a newspaper headline. Eye catching. To the point. Great for short attention spans. And perhaps, even a little shocking.
Some participants say that Nanowrimo is something they put on their resumes to spiff it up and catch attention. I'm taking a professional development class right now and one of the assignments was to prepare a CV. I don't want to put a damper on things, but sometimes, you shouldn't put certain things on your resumes or CVs--depending on the job you're applying for. One of my professors gave an example: if you're applying for a teaching job, it would totally piss off the search committee if you put your research experience first. If you're going to put hobbies down, it had better be related somewhat to the job or you're going to place doubts in people's heads.
So unless my career prospects totally veer off track to Never-Never-Land, I am never going to put Nano in a job application or mention it at an interview.
According to that 1667 rule, I've finally caught up to where I'm supposed to be. I went to another write-in last night which turned out to be fairly productive, even hand-written. The funny thing is, wacky secondary characters seem to insert themselves all over the place. Unplanned secondary characters. But I'm not one to turn down extra words.
I don't make extensive character sheets before I start a story. Usually it's just a bare paragraph description. It's actually the story itself that will be used to flesh them out. In one of the more recent chapters, a bit more of my characters' backgrounds have revealed themselves--hints of rather unpleasant and bloody histories. I might slowly unravel it as the story progresses, depending on the direction it goes.
Right now, my novel is running on a lot of dialogue. Some of it just cracks me up because it isn't planned, it just somehow flows out there from my unconscious without my control. For example, in my latest chapter, my main character insulted a powerful grimoire by comparing him to Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. It's a Victorian handbook for wives on how to run the domestic side of things--the recipes traditionally viewed as the epitome of British cooking. Except in reality, those recipes are horrible.
I have a feeling the 2007 Nano novel will see a lot of book-related humor before the month is over.
Okay, so I shouldn't be wasting time reading on the forums, but there was this thread (unfortunately accessible to MLs only) that totally brought home the fact that you can't ignore the reality of life even though Nano is generally a fantastic community of writers.
For anything that includes a gathering of people who don't know each other very well: there will always be wackos. So have fun, but more importantly, be careful.
Yesterday, my schedule was pretty much: lab, rush to the write-in, go home to sleep. Unfortunately, I left halfway through the write-in because I was on the verge of falling asleep while writing. Parts two and three are probably not going to make much sense since my brain was on autopilot when I wrote them.
I'm going to try to catch up today, but I'm afraid sleep is still looking quite appealing at the moment. A thirty-hour experiment really wipes out a person.
I've been up since 6 AM yesterday, been in lab the entire time except for one hour for a class and yet another hour to grab dinner. I haven't really had much down time either except for a small hot chocolate break. So yeah, I haven't been writing much.
I have to be in lab for six more hours and then I'll head straight to the write-in. It's probably not so good to go in sleep deprived, but as a municipal liaison, I have to set a good example. If the ML doesn't even bother to show up at the write-in, then why would the other participants do so?
In my defense, all I can say is that it was not my idea to set a long running experiment on these particular days.
So I won't update my word count or post the new parts of my novel until maybe late Sunday. Once I get some sleep.
Well, I've started quite late. Despite all my intentions, I woke up at my usual time instead of a couple hours earlier, and my day has mostly been filled with work at the lab. In fact, with the amount of lab work ahead of me, it's beginning to look a lot like this summer during Script Frenzy (which I failed miserably). Yep, that means staying overnight in lab--doing bench work, not writing.
