19 posts tagged “nanowrimo”
It is that time of year again, time to write a book. I think this one kind of snuck up on me, I have a party at my houses on the 1st and then in-laws are coming on the second weekend. Plus there is the election, when I may stay up all night and cheer silently while hubby sleeps through history. (Pretty common at my house.) We’ll move sometime in there from house A to house B and generally settle into life in the new house in November. It all seems rather strange, trying to do that and on top of it all trying to write a book. But I have learned that if I’m not writing… well… things go a little haywire with me if I’m not writing. So… I’ll see what happens I suppose. We shall see. If I can’t fit it in between everything, I just can’t and that is fine. But on the off chance that I could actually break through some of the blocks to a project I’ve been thinking about for years… (Yes we can! Yes we can!) I’m going to at least try.
A friend of mine wrote a book in the first 15 days of Nano last year and I have a copy of it, signed with my name in the Auther's notes in the front. (Yay!) I have an increasing number of writer friends, some of whom are actually published, with people that read their books and everything. LOL! I want to do this, I've wanted it for a decade or more, I just want it more now.
If you are planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year, please look me up online. My user ID is “artzycarmen” and my number is: 215959. I'll take all the encouragement I can get!
I sat down with my copy of “Broken Time” at about 3:45 or so this afternoon and didn’t come up for air until 9:30 this evening. The writing style is a breeze and goes by so fast it will leave you wanting more.
Set in an underground world of labyrinth corridors, bunkers, artificial lighting and Big Brother style oversight, the parents of a small ill boy battle their way to each other and to wholeness. Doctors seek to balance discovery with personal sacrifice and come up wanting more than science can offer. Nearly every page holds a complex melding of sci-fi biology, and super calculating systems of both biological and technological origin. And yet the text manages to be human, warm and intriguing, even compassionate.
The story is a truly creative look at the space between life and death and the question of wholeness and identity. Complex themes of love and loss are interwoven with strong maternal instincts and grace. All in all an excellent read, and the most creative tale I’ve seen in ages. Bravo!
Here is the book’s description:
A dangerous new virus is spreading across the globe, Emergent Atoximia (EA). When an unemployed widower, Henry Poems, son Buddy is diagnosed with the new disease, his world collapses. Henry painfully watches his options disappear and knows there is only one chance left to save his son. He will trade five years of his life to the Burkette Group in exchange for the promised cure. The trade seems like a bargain until the Deep Sleep Statsis program, run by a one of a kind organic super computer named MARI, starts to develop a few glitches, plunging Henry into a world of trapped souls. Forced to navigate the endless hallways of a surreal landscape, Henry encounters a diverse group of characters that try to help him understand his connection with MARI while reintroducing him to missing parts of his own identity. On the outside, a desperate race for a cure is coming to a surprising conclusion as Dr. Alcorn begins to suspect that EA may have gone self-aware.
More info here: http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=2350732&fContestID=1&submit=%3C%3C+Back+to+Content This is the hardback version, a paperback version is available and also an e-book.
I should also mention that Tony wrote this book during the first fifteen days of Nanowrimo last November. And to create this whole world (rough draft) and cast of complex characters in FIFTEEN DAYS has really completely blown me away! And I am mentioned in the “author’s note” page. J Which I’ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating. I am so proud of him I could just burst!
Well, I’ve blown off church again. As I was waking up I could feel the pain in my body so I got up long enough to take a pain killer, eat a roll and crawl back into bed. I figured if I was feeling better when I woke up – I’d take a bath and then head off to church. Well, I woke up at 9:55 when one of my dogs decided to have a nice bark. And church starts at 10:00. Tsk tsk, I missed it. Hubby will be annoyed with me, but hey, he missed it also. Because he’s working. I just missed it because I’m… uh… well…
I’m half way through my NaNoWriMo project. I was ahead most of the time, keeping up with my daily word count and such. Then everything kind of hit at once, the dealy with the neighbor’s dog, the visit of the inlaws, Misde’s seizures and then working really long hours at work. I didn’t add a single word to my total in about a week and a half and got about 15,000 words in the hole. Crap! Hard to come back from that. So anyway, my response has been to write something – even though it’s more like a journal entry at the end of the manuscript – just to see the word count go up. I don’t know if I’ll keep it in edit or what, but at this point, it’s at least a documentation of how I’m feeling about my life at the moment. Yeah, my life is in this crappy stuck horrible place. I hate it. Blah! Me and my brick wall. May the Lord have mercy on my soul.
I guess I’ll try and see if I can bang out the remaining 25,000 words to reach the nano finish line this week. I’m not going to work endless hours into the night on it, I just don’t think I want it that much. I don’t know that all these words will make it through the final cut to become part of the novel – but it’s words. And it’s first draft, so it’s ok. And right now, absent a great passion for the work and motivation… well, that will just have to do for now. Maybe one day when I DON'T think my life is completely stuck, I’ll come back to it and work till it all sorts itself out.
I am so tired. After Misde had her series of seizures last night, I didn’t want her out of my sight. But I had to sleep… Not like I can do anything about it if she has another one anyway. I don’t think I slept well at all. I think most of the night I was kind of listening for any strange sound from her.
So, I went to my first job this morning, did my little routine there and went over to my studio and tried to get my email and stuff and the internet wasn’t working at the building again. I think our internet guy has gone screwy in the head. He changed out a piece of equipment and now we’re having all this trouble… Anyway, just an annoyance.
I went back home and gathered up Misde to take her to the vet. Hope didn’t like the idea of being left behind but she didn’t make it into a drama – so I was very grateful for that. I told her she was not going, and she seemed to understand that. So Misde and I went off to the vet. And after a bunch of tests that seemed to go ok, she said that it did not appear to be rat poison or antifreeze. But if it was rat poison, it would work itself into her liver and kill her over the course of the next week or so. Good grief! Why do we “civilized” humans think its ok to kill rats this way? No more Decon for me, baby. No thanks.
It still doesn’t rule out some other toxin and she also could have epilepsy. And if they put her on the epilepsy medication to keep her from having seizures, she’ll have to take it for life and the medication will eventually cause her kidneys to fail, thus killing her. And my reaction to that is pretty much “hell no!” The vet was not recommending that we do that unless she seizes again. They took her back to give her some fluids because she’s dehydrated and also for some anti nausea thing – which I tried to talk her out of but she insisted. Why give her meds for something she isn’t experiencing? She came to me this morning demanding her breakfast, snarfed it and we never saw it again. She even made the car ride without urping. Oh well, I guess I should have been stronger and more insistent on refusing that medication. The vet really didn’t make the case to support giving her that one. And whatever they did back there in the treatment room got her all spooked. Not cool. So we’re going to keep a very close eye on her and see how it all goes. I really hope and pray this is an isolated event. And I also hope she doesn’t think of the vets as a bad place to go after whatever happened to her there that got her all spooked this morning. And I didn't get out of there cheap - no sir! Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching! That is not where that money needed to go right now!
All that before work at the bakery. No one seemed to notice that I had a rough morning and I tried not to take it out on them. The lady who ices my cakes noticed that my hands were shaking. Oh well, so I shake. Life’s a bitch.
Nanowrimo.org? What the heck is that? I don’t think I even know. I haven’t written anything in days. And I was going to try to get ahead for the fact that the in-laws are coming this weekend. It’s not happening. And I’m losing any sort of internal motivation to make it happen. A friend of mine has finished his nano but not his novel. He’s passed the 50,000 mark but still has story to finish up. Wow! I’m so completely floored by how impressive that is. Amazing!
Work – well, I have an order for sugar cookies at work. We have a display of cute baby shower sugar cookies, only we didn’t realize that we no longer have the equipment to make these cookies. Apparently they belonged to the previous cake decorator who took them with her when she left. Which is fine that she took stuff that belonged to her, but we keep finding a little bit of this and that missing. And it keeps slapping BL upside the head. And it’s frustrating to look for equipment that isn’t even in the building.
3:36, and my dog is jerking around in her sleep. That actually could have been one of the smaller seizures. See? Every time my dog twitches I’m going to be thinking – “Oh &%$@! She’s having another seizure.” I think this majorly sucks! Why, why why??!!??
BL is giving me some space in the bakery to put out stuff I’ve made for them to sell on pseudo consignment. So I should really be working at packaging up goodies and making displays and moving in my inventory. And if I had any energy at all right now – that’s what I should be working at. I’d like to have it all in place this weekend for the Thanksgiving crowd. Which means that is what I should be doing right this moment. Which is a royal pain, because there are forty other things I really should be doing this moment also. And I’m exhausted.
3:55 My dog is twitching again. The vet was explaining that there are actually quite a few jerks and twitches a dog does that can actually be seizures. I don’t know whether to make lists of this little stuff and call the vet or only call her if Misde has another grand mal. I don’t know how this is going to end. Which I guess is a good thing. But really!
I saw snowflakes this afternoon - briefly. And then nothing. If we could have enough snow to keep my inlaws safely in their portion of the country - that would be sweet.
Oh well, buck up baby. It's going to be over soon. Maybe not quite soon enough, but soon.
Well, what an adventure! I scrapped my NaNo this morning and started over. And I worked on it starting at about noon and it’s nearly 1 am, so I’ve been at this for about twelve hours or so. I did take frequent breaks, pausing to drive to a friend’s house to see if I could get her cat to come out – I couldn’t. I'm "kitty sitting for a friend but her cat won't leave the house so it is an exercise in futility. And I took a break to watch Extreme Home Makeover and that PBS drama about the Amazing Mrs. Pritchard. Hubby went to bed and I turned off the tv and I got back to work.
At 5:00 I had 6811 words
At 7:00 - 8197
(I set it aside to watch tv for a while.)
At 10:00 - 8235
At 11:00 - 12511
At midnight I had 12946
And now I have 18492.
Most of the time since 10:00 pm has been mining passages from the first manuscript for the new outline. It makes more sense the way I have it organized at the moment and I can sort out the rest of the organization issues in the next draft. Ha Ha! I feel a very renewed interest in this work and clarity about what all needs to be written yet. I'm hoping to get seriously ahead of the curve tomorrow because this weekend is going to be a complete wash.
Ok, this has been a very unusual Sunday at my house. I skipped church. I know I know – sue me. And then I scrapped my NaNoWriMo project. But I slept late and got up while hubby was preparing for work. He made the two of us a nice breakfast and off he went. I brushed my hair and washed my face and headed for the laptop computer to see what could be done about my NaNo. I sat looking over the pages from the previous days and my 16,094 word count and pretty much found it an annoying disorganized mess. So after trying unsuccessfully to categorize and separate out the different kinds of writing, I gave up. I had some sections of the novel written as a journal, some were memories of an earlier time and some were straight narration. Well, it was confusing crap. So I started over with a blank word document and set my word count on the NaNoWriMo.org website back to zero. (gulp!)
I started in with a new vision and wrote for a while. After a while I’d get to a point where I remembered something I had written in the first draft and so I’d go cut and paste it into the new document. It was kind of an interesting process.
At 12:30 pm I had zero words
1:00 – 618 words
2:00 - 3102 words
3:00 - 4478 words
4:00 - 5429 words
And at 5:00 I had 6811 words.
Now THAT was FUN!
I’m taking a break fairly often and since the dogs keep wanting to be let out and then let in – I’m interrupted often but I think that might actually be good for me, who knows. So, I’ll see how far I can get for a while and then lay it down until tomorrow. If I get really frustrated with my word count I’ll just go word mining in the old document and cut and paste a really big chunk. But at the moment the story line still kinda makes sense and I’d like to keep it that way. I guess that's the tension between simply writing first draft and allowing it to be what it is (crap) or going back in and messing around with the stuff that has already been written. Anyway, I'm feeling better about the project and as far as I'm concerned - that is the point.
And it felt gooooood! It’s official. I’m starting over. About 16,000 words in and I’m not seeing how to get to 50,000 from here, so I’ve set it aside. Well, I’ve only set aside the original document but not the original idea.
After some serious consideration this morning I believe I have hit on a new vision of this idea that will take this project home. And it is more than a “mid course correction.” First, it wasn’t mid course – only about a quarter of the way in. And secondly, it’s not a correction – it’s more of a complete overhaul.
So I’m starting with a clean word document, and a whole new vision of the big picture for this project. I hate disorganization and so far it was just feeling like bits and pieces that were all over the charts and I wasn’t feeling the direction. I will use the original document as a resource to work on the second. I will do plenty of cutting and pasting I’m sure. So all is not lost – only reorganized. I'm going to set my NaNoWriMo word count back down to zero. (Uh, gasp!) And once I get on my way, and start plugging in the bits and pieces I already have – the word count should jump nicely from time to time.
Renewed hope and energy for the project. A little less frustration. I don’t like to spend my energy on things that have lost the inspiration and gotten more into the category of “I Should…” The “shoulds” are never enough reason to do anything, they are just heavy burdens to add to the rest that I already carry. And reading around through some of what my writer friends are going through made it clear to me that I’m not alone in that feeling. So anyway, here’s to try number two (or forty as the case may be.)
And I LOVE Sue Grafton and loved reading her pep talk just now! Great stuff! And great advice also! Very cool lady and I have enjoyed lots of her books!
So I'll raise my glass to Ms. Grafton, writing a novel, and to new beginnings. CHEERS!
The nanowrimo wagon. I have not written anything on my novel since Thursday. I was a little ahead at that point so it wasn’t a big hairy deal but my head is seriously out of the game. If I don’t write anything today then I’ll officially be behind on my word count at midnight tonight. I can really sink myself back into it over the weekend I hope, but then work gets increasingly hairy as we close in on the weekend and my in-laws are coming to town which means less time to breathe because the house needs to be put in order, great food made and so forth and so on. There should be a law against in-laws coming to my house when I’m in the middle of something – but I’m always in the middle of something and their timing sucks. They are good people, they just manage to get on my nerves anyway. Oh well, tonight, tomorrow and Monday I really hope to do some serious catching up. A friend of mine (user ID Vilgiate) is at 29,722 words! Yeah, can you believe that? I’m hoping to catch up soon.
And my novel is about a quarter done. Whew, how weird is that? Am I about a quarter way through the story? It is hard to tell since I have the outline in my word document and I’m basically writing where ever I want to within the outline. I don’t know if that’s how anyone else does it, but that’s how I’m doing it.
My word count is 15,027 which is just a little bit ahead of schedule. And I’m finding fiendish glee in being briefly ahead of some other folks on my buddy list who totally left me in the dust early on. I hope to get back to the work tomorrow sometime, though I must admit, since I’m a little ahead and also getting pretty tired – I may take an evening off. These late evenings make it hard to get up for work and I don’t want to wear myself out with this. I must say though, seeing the word count go up is a pretty satisfying feeling.
Oh, and I decorated a wedding cake today. I made it with hard drying icing that gets hard as a brick, and it is designed to be used as a display in the bakery. I'm really delighted with how it turned out. So I hope it goes over well with the customers - who knows, I could be doing alot of these.
It is 12:39 am on November the 7th and I’m up to 12,144 words and my Word document is 32 pages long! Yay! Finally I made some progress on this. I had started to feel dreadfully behind. Now I’m actually a little ahead, or at least I was a half hour ago at midnight. It’s a new day and I’ve got some sleeping to do.
My goal is about 50,000 words for two reasons – one (and most importantly) that’s what the NaNoWriMo.org website will accept as a “winner.” And also, I’d like to be a very concise and to the point kind of writer. I don’t want the novel to be ANY longer than it needs to be. Shorter is always better.
I have even tried my hand at 50 word stories. It’s a challenge but a hugely satisfying one. It’s just an interesting little exercise passed on by another writer friend. Very interesting and you wouldn’t believe what al you ccan fit in a 50 word story.
Anyway, I had trouble last night with trying to write and then continually finding that I had fallen asleep in mid sentence. I even once dozed off with my finger on the “e” and there was a long string of “eeeeeee’s” across my screen. Tonight I came armed. I sat down at my laptop with a saucer of potato chips. Now we don’t usually have potato chips in the house at all, but each time I was fighting off sleep – another chip in my mouth would perk me up enough to finish a sentence or two. It doesn’t change how tired I am, but it makes it possible for me to work through when I am this tired. And that’s pretty cool.
It’s off to bed for me. Nite nite foxy voxers and Sweet Dreams!
