NaNoWriMo 2012 – Day 2
After my relatively slow start yesterday, I came to find myself stuck again. For some reason I just couldn’t get into the right mindset to start today and so I spent my day with everything but writing. I swear, at some point I was even cleaning out my kitchen cupboards, just to get away from that blinking cursor! The problem was mainly that I was just in too good a mood to throw myself into the paranoid mood of my main character. With distance these things never turn out that great, so somehow the circumstances were all wrong.
23.30 and I thought, damn, there is just no way I’m going to write a word today. Well, I was wrong. I filled a bath, took my iPod with me and started typing away. Half an hour later I had managed to write 545 words and I was soaked and relaxed with a bit of the heavy feeling you get when your bath is just a tiny bit too hot. Still far away from my target of 1700 words, but it’s a start and more than yesterday.
I am not worried yet by the way. Just because I have some difficulties right now to get into it, that doesn’t mean that it will stay like this. If I feel inspired I can easily write 3000 words in one day. I just need to get into the right working mindset. I am also not bothered about reaching the 50,000 words in a month. If it happens, good, if it takes longer, also good. At the moment I’m mostly dealing with other things anyway, so the writing is just a bonus. I’ll just take it one day at a time.
NaNoWriMo 2012 – Day 1
So, today started NaNoWriMo and I was quite happy to get started. Or so I thought in theory.
What actually happened was this: First I woke up and didn’t really do any work right away, because I wanted to read something first. Then I thought, well, first I need some breakfast anyway and fried myself some egg and bacon and gobbled down some avocado as well, all while listening to a podcast. When I looked at the time it was already 12.30! Now I really had to get started! What did I do though? First I restarted my computer – I do that about once every few months, but a few days ago something crashed and since then it has been acting up. Once it booted up again I remembered that I hadn’t done any software updates lately, so I fired that up and another 15 minutes went down the drain. Then I saw the state of my computer desktop and decided to de-clutter that a bit. Once I was finished with that I realised that I was hungry again and got myself some yogurt. Oh well, if I eat something, I might as well take a little break, so I watched an episode of X-Files.
By now it was 3.30 pm and I was starting to get annoyed at myself. Stupid procrastination! Finally I sat down and started with the work. However, quickly I realised that I was utterly unprepared. I hadn’t read what I had written before and after all, that had been months ago! While I was reading through that stuff, I was smoothing things out a bit here and there, adding a few words, a couple of sentences. When I reached the end I thought … well, fair enough, I can work with this, but immediately I drew a blank as to where to go from here. No planning, no brainstorming, well, I had done nothing. I pressed about 300 words out, but then I was just at a loss as to where to go from there. It was a couple of hours later and I decided to take a break and have some more food with another episode of X-Files, before continuing with the work. Since that episode was a “to-be-continued” one, I got sucked in and one episode turned into 4. Suddenly it was 9pm and I was tired already!
No, no, no, I thought, this is not how this should be going! So, I finally sat down and did the leg work. I looked at the structure and scenes I had so far and then started to collect ideas. The problem is that the part of the story that I have already, came about pretty much through associative writing, drawing on actual things that happened to me a few months ago. Of course I put an entirely different spin on the events, by completely changing the interpretation and now it’s as far away from the actual events as it could be. Still, it was somewhat born out of a specific situation. Continuing this fictionally was the idea, but really, there needed to be a red line, a story, and not just some ramblings that connect by mere chance. It took quite a bit of staring at the blank page to finally get into it, but in the end I collected quite a number of interesting ideas for scenes.
So, all a bit of a difficult start, but I think tomorrow will turn out quite a bit better, now that I have actual scenes that I can just write down and see where they lead me! I really should have done this stuff yesterday, but oh well, you know how these things work!
NaNoWriMo 2012
Well, tomorrow it all starts again. The big NaNoWriMo writing challenge! Last year my dad participated in it and achieved his 50,000 word goal. I myself wrote a novel of 80,000 words at the beginning of this year and one month of it was spent writing 50,000 words in just the same way as during NaNoWriMo. This time round, I will join the actual challenge as well. From experience I know that I can make the word count in one month, if I concentrate a bit. I also really wanted to get back into writing regularly, since I am basically stuck at home at the moment due to a recent flare-up of a chronic illness, which makes me feel entirely uncreative.
These last few days I have been working on blog posts for my numerous blogs and I’ve generally brought myself into a writing mindset, so that I can just jump right in once November starts. I will make an effort to keep you updated about my progress on achieving my 50,000 word goal. The project for this month of writing will be the one that I alluded to in my last post. Here a short description:
The novel will be an exploration of mental driftwood. The main character jumps from association to association in a world coloured by paranoid delusions, dreams and coincidences. It will be accompanied by visual fragments, photographs or graphics that relate to the content in one way or another. The idea is to take normal everyday occurrences and interpret them in a way that is bound to seem threatening to the main character. The reader in this case will have to decide for himself whether he wants to get drawn in by the visual aids and the use of the pronoun you, or pull away into safer waters if that is possible. Main themes will be urban alienation, loneliness and depersonalisation / derealisation.
So far I already have quite a number of words, 11,000, so the goal for the end of November will be 61,000 words. At this I will probably not stop and try to get to 70 or 80,000, because 60,000 is still a bit short for a novel in my opinion.
Staying in the zone
I never had problems with writer’s block. I probably write too much and not too little. The problem is the quality about which I’m never quite sure. Today was probably the first time during this entire experiment of writing the first draft for my novel that I went back to re-write something. I told myself that I wouldn’t do that until I’m editing, because I can be a very harsh critic, when it comes to my own writing. And still, it was just such weak shit! I wrote it last night when I was a bit tired and not in the best mood. I had some inspiration, but in my state of mind I just couldn’t deliver. This morning I looked at it and thought of just deleting it right away, since I wasn’t quite sure where to put the scene anyway. Then it struck me though that it’s exactly what I told myself not to do until I’m done. And interesting enough, although it didn’t fit the general standard, it sort of fits into the mood. There was a place for it in a chapter that isn’t outlined yet, I’m sure of it. So I went back and re-wrote it. The scene became double the initial length, 10 times the amount of imagery and, well, swearing, and now, when I was just reading it out loud to check the flow, it gave me the chills. Not bad at all. Re-writing is fine, as long as you know that you need to add and not to replace. Spending hours replacing one word, is a waste of time. I added mood, atmosphere, coherence and doing it right now was also a good choice. It’s much better than trying to figure out what I was trying to say in a couple of months time, when I will be forced to edit this weak shit anyway. Instead of feeling that I wasted time last night, I now feel I have written something quite good when I combine yesterday’s and today’s efforts.
Earlier I also saw the film Naked Lunch by Cronenberg. In a remote sense it’s actually about writing, but actually it’s more about hallucinations and trying to find inspiration in drugs. I remember that when my mum saw it for the first time she got a blister from disgust, because this typewriter keeps turning into a bug. It’s crazy stuff. Still, it gave me something, a vague inspiration that had nothing to do with its hallucinatory qualities. It was about being in the zone and reaching a quality that makes you wonder where all this stuff came from. Maybe being just crazed by drugs will let you forget, but in fact I had times when I was completely sober and still wrote something utterly unbelievable. The next day, when I read it over, I was just: “Wait, who wrote this stuff?! Couldn’t have been me …” Call it inspiration, divine intervention, delusions, but in the end it just reads as if a higher power was guiding your hand. I guess that’s what writers are not getting, when they’re fighting the writer’s block and delete everything they write a few hours later. It’s less about not being able to write at all and more about feeling that everything you happen to write is just not good enough.
It comes down to this though: Writing a novel continually in the zone is impossible, unless you hurt yourself as much as people like Burroughs did. I don’t even want to be in the zone all the time, because it wouldn’t give me any time to plan my story. I don’t need to scramble to get there either, especially if I believe in my story. The zone will come, eventually when you’re in the right mindset and know what mood you’re trying to create. Ideally all of what I write every day, will get up to the same standard eventually, but until then I can also allow myself to have some weak shit waiting for editing. If then suddenly I end up in the zone, I can break my own rules, no problem. If you need to re-write, you do it. It’s just as important as the urge to write in the first place. The trick is to know when to stop. When to try to get out of the zone, go out, have a life and then come back to sit at your desk in the morning again. It’s knowing when to stop editing. Knowing when you’re too tired to write anything coherent anymore. I’m still working on that kind of knowledge for myself.
Vulgar and slightly pornographic
Progress, progress, progress. Yesterday I accidentally wrote a whole scene without using the word “fuck” once. When I noticed that, I was so shocked that I had to change the scene this morning. Tells you something about that writing style of mine. When I told a good friend yesterday that what I was writing was “vulgar and slightly pornographic” he said “I know, that’s what I gathered when you said you’re writing again …” Haha.
So, yesterday:
Today then the great surprise that I was about to crack the 40000 words, so 50% of my novel. This milestone crept up on me somehow without me noticing. The second lead character is getting more shape now, although most of the things that are known are things that this person doesn’t do. The scene about the things this person doesn’t do was quite a fun scene to write, because it’s reasonably difficult to describe these things people don’t do without being boring. It’s like the pink elephant you’re not supposed to think about. Writing about the things people don’t do, makes explicit how much can be said about us even by just observing our non-behaviour. Very strange. I should write a short story about someone who doesn’t do certain things. It would probably be fun and a cool experiment to still have a sort of change in the character within the story.
With my scene about the things the second lead character doesn’t do, I didn’t manage to crack the 40000. I cracked it with a description of the colour grey. There is quite a lot to say about this colour, mainly because it’s so versatile. 40000 words. Quite an achievement! And I’m still on track to finish the first draft on the 01.04.2012. I have to write 1900 words on average every day to make this deadline. So far I’ve not been having many problems to achieve that, since the story seems to be coming naturally to me.
Today:
The flavour of real people
What I am writing at the moment is supposed to capture a certain mood, which wafts through certain parts of society. It’s the mood of those, who are disappointed now, because even the good jobs nowadays make you feel useless and as if you’re wasting your time. Underneath it all there lies a certain truth. Namely that whatever you do, you’re trying to sell people crap they don’t really need. We need food and shelter, and then only when that is covered, we can even start to think about whether our work is fulfilling or not, or whether we even want something like an iPad. No amount of cash or shiny objects will ever make us happy, even if advertising tells us otherwise. No, it’s fundamentally what we ourselves do with our lives that matters. Living with dignity helps, so that you don’t have to apply for benefits even though you have a 40 hour job. Being valued, really valued helps. Not being a hamster in a pointless wheel helps. Doing something that you enjoy and makes you feel as if you’re contributing something worthwhile to society, that’s what has the potential for happiness. A lot of people don’t ever have a shot at something like that and this is at the core of what I’m writing. There is a lot of sarcasm in it and a lot of universal truths that are demonstrated with someone, whose life is shit for no fault of his own.
There are some very odd characters in it generally, interesting people you might not ever meet in real life, but they all have people I know as a basis. None of them is inspired by one single person, they’re all mixtures of different people, who have the characteristics of a certain type of person, who is trying and trying, but never really gets ahead. I’m trying to make these people more than stereotypes, because they are fleshed out with details, with conflicting emotions that make them inconsistent, like the real people out there. That’s where I’m trying to get, capturing the flavour of certain people, without copying them one to one. And every one of them expresses this fundamental need for meaning that society is failing to provide somehow, although they themselves also all fail differently at their attempts to live a different life. It’s not so easy, really, but I’m having a lot of fun writing it. I can criticise a lot of things, because they stay the opinion of the story teller, which might or might not be my own opinion. I can make fun of a lot of things and to be honest I’m also expecting to piss people off in the process. Fundamentally though, I’m just trying to tell a story of those people, who end up never getting what they really want, because that’s just how their life works.
I’m making good progress. Last night I couldn’t sleep until late and ended up working a scene over and over until it had just the right attitude to it. I was tired, so it was difficult, but in the end I closed the laptop at 2.30 am and was finally happy with what I had written. 2400 words again and 2 scenes. It feels as if there is still a lot of work to be done, but I’m progressing with the writing. Soon I will be halfway through.
Thanks, universe …
I had a few slow days with only some hundred words each, but today I got back into it and managed to write over 2000 again, finishing two scenes. I’m still on schedule for having the first draft all ready at the beginning of April. That is if I keep up the work and stick to the word count.
These days I’m mainly having difficulty with some of the filler scenes that drag the story along, but don’t let me shine with nice details. I’m not good at writing stuff that goes “and then this and that happened”. Those are the scenes that will need the most work in editing I guess.
By the way, the second lead character appeared now and that’s going to be fun as well. It’s still mainly focused on the main protagonist, but I’m fleshing the second lead out now with backstory. It’s all very distanced still. The character is there, but not many concrete things are known. I will keep this character the mystery throughout actually and the protagonist will never even find out a name.
In the third part another few people will appear and until then I should probably get some grip on the “this and that happened” bits. After that going back to the filler scenes for editing should be much easier actually. I can’t believe I’m already 40% into this project. How did that happen? All these years I’ve been trying to get up on a story that was flowing like this one. I guess the universe is giving me a break for a change.
Give me sarcasm
There are days when it’s harder to write. Today it was a difficult haul somehow, although it was all about stuff I know well and that I care about. Still, it was difficult. In the end I found my sarcasm pretty amusing and think it might actually annoy the hell out of some people. Probably just what I’m going for on this one.
I’m still on schedule and made my daily word target of 1800 words. Since I’ve been writing significantly more than I was meant to the last few days, the number for my daily target is falling. I still have that half written scene on my back though. Well, yesterday’s unfinished business is now the day before yesterday’s unfinished business.
Today I am past 33.3%, so I have 1/3 finished. And I’m still having a lot of fun with it. I think that’s the most important part!
Yesterday’s unfinished business
I guess, when things you normally would have to research just pop out of your memory, you’re writing about something that is very close to your heart. Today this happened to me and I was glad that somehow I could start making sense of some things that weren’t quite clear to me before. It’s as if there has been a secret motivation behind it, although it only just now became clear to me.
However, I got so tired in the end that I got stuck mid-scene, which is not really good, if your routine is to start your day by thinking up a new scene to write later while you’re still in bed. Yesterday’s unfinished business isn’t exactly fitting in that context.
In any case, I actually have a third of it written now. I need to just finish that one scene and write one more to actually be able to make a cut and start with writing the second part, which I hope will be at least a bit less context and a bit more action. Not entirely likely, since at this point it’s mostly still building the conflict for the third part, the calm before the storm, figuratively speaking. The third part is supposed to be all action and rip everything to shreds.
the shower: a creative fountain (pun intended)
Having a long shower is probably the most productive action a creative person can take.
“Hey, why is our water bill so high?”
“I’ve been writing lately …”
I somehow managed to get 4000 words out today, all thanks to my shower this morning. Came up with two whole scenes and wrote them too! Now I’ve written too much today to write about writing now, so excuse the fact that I’m merely boasting about my word count.
The big question about editing
Today I asked my friend Tony how his writing and editing process works. He already has several books out and he is a sculptor in his main occupation. I myself wasn’t quite sure whether I should do some editing already while I’m still writing. He told me that he first finishes the draft and doesn’t go back to edit during the writing stage. At this point he only has a clear view of the end, while the rest comes together in the progress with certain milestones he sets for himself. This is also how I work, although I don’t even have milestones. If I know the story in all its details before I’m even writing it, it’s too boring for me. I want to develop it as it goes. Especially since there are many things that might work well in your head, but that actually don’t fit once they are written down. So, right now I’m not quite sure what exactly is going to happen in the middle part, but I know exactly how it ends. I have even written the scene already.
Once Tony has finished his draft, he starts editing from the beginning. During the first edit he still makes big changes, and after that he goes over it at least one or two times more, to make sure it all fits together and catch some formal bits like spelling and grammar. After that he gives it to be read by other people to catch more of the formal stuff. In the end he then collects all changes in a single version. This is basically the point where he is finished with the whole thing and the rest is just the publishing stuff.
To me this sounds like a very sensible and orderly process, but I think when it comes to the actual writing bit, he’s just as much a mess as I am. I don’t necessarily work chronologically and sometimes I know I’m writing something that rips a hole into other parts. Then I end up going back and try to make it coherent again, which is the part I’m unsure about. So far these changes were all minor and were not really a big job, which makes me think that going back during the writing progress is ok for those things, but probably dangerous if you have to make bigger changes. That I create gaps or problems in already finished parts happens especially when I think of a sentence or a little fact that I’d like to bring into the story. They might have not so little repercussions for the story.
Generally the whole writing process is going well for me though and I’m making my main character more and more a whole person at this stage. I’m still setting the scene a little before I start the real action and I’m wondering now whether a structure with three parts might actually be appropriate. The first part would be what I’m mainly writing now. At the moment I’m not quite sure whether the second part really holds up like that though. However, even what I’m writing now is not exactly what I originally had in mind and it still works very well. I guess I just have to see about the structure and how well it all fits together when I get to the editing stage.
Today I again managed to meet my goal and wrote about 2100 words, mostly on a single scene that has one sentence I find just fantastic. It’s a bit vulgar, so I’m not going to quote it here, but it really paints quite a picture for that little a sentence. I’m quite proud of it, although it’s again one of those sentences that would make me wonder whether I’d want my mum to read it. Oops.
Aiming high
Although I didn’t have brilliant ideas today that made me chuckle about my own sarcasm I surely had a good day writing. I managed to get 2300 words down and finish an entire scene that I was writing. I’ve also been putting off writing a specific scene that I have in mind, because I just wasn’t in the right mood. Obviously I had enough to write about anyway.
And then I also found this great feature in Scrivener that shows you how you’re doing with your project target. You can set the amount of words you’re generally aiming at, set a deadline and it will calculate for you how much you need to write every day to keep your deadline. It also shows you your progress in a neat colour-coded progress meter, a bit like the ones I’m posting here, just more fancy. It even lets you set a Growl notification that pops up when you reach your session target. Today I moved from a red project target bar to an orange one, so it actually gives me nice positive feedback on all the progress I’ve been making today. Certainly motivating. If I would manage to keep my target of 2000 words a day I would be finished with my goal of 80000 words by the 1st of April, which is so soon that it’s laughable. I doubt that I’ll be able to manage that, really, but aiming high sometimes helps with the motivation. As you might have noticed, my procrastination project has somehow amounted to something proper that I’m really eager to follow through. After working on it properly for a few days I’m happy to say that there can’t be any doubt now: It’s a great and promising project.
Laughing about chainsaws
Today it seemed to me as if half the day was spent assembling my sofa that I had in storage for a long time. It probably took only an hour. Later I started looking through messages, trying to help a friend with some job stuff and then eventually I managed to sit down and actually write. By the time it was probably 4pm. Again I wrote less, only 800 words. However, I was laughing so much about one of my ideas (it features a chainsaw) that I think I can be happy with my achievements today. And also one of the places is coming together nicely now. I think I’m managing to give it a lot of life. I even spent half an hour searching online for a picture of a similar place and finally found a black and white photograph from the 1920s that had exactly the kind of feel I needed to imagine it properly. Then, later on up until now I spent another few hours just researching. I was listening to music, writing down titles and names, short excerpts of lyrics, that resonated with something I had in mind. Probably the part I like the most about this project: The writing it is fun, but the research is even more fun! Tomorrow I will attempt to start writing in the morning and then I hope I can get some more out, maybe I manage to finish the scene I started today as well.
One inch at a time
Something strange happened today. I turned my routine upside down. Instead of working dutifully in the morning and procrastinating mostly in the afternoon I did it the other way round today. I was writing messages to friends, checking the stats of my blog, reading facebook, tweeting, writing another message, listening to music and then finally I sat down and started to write. Actually I sat down with a coffee and then finally it started to flow a bit, maybe there is a connection there.
Today the writing went slowly though in general. I’m still working on the procrastination project, and since that’s the one I can’t leave alone at the moment, it’s probably a sign that it’s the project with the bigger potential. Right in the first paragraph there was this little detail that I needed to research, which quickly amounted to a major web search, but then finally I found what I needed. Even after that it didn’t quite want to come together until finally something popped, it all started making sense and the sarcasm was just flowing out of me (that’s a good thing in this case). In the end I even started chuckling about one of the sarcastic remarks, which almost never happens to me, and then I was quite happy with what I wrote today. It was such a struggle to really get into it though.
I’m also not quite hitting my preferred 2000 words a day mark lately, but that’s hard anyway if you’re still working on the story, the characters and the places at the same time. It’s more like 1000 at the moment, which is decent enough I guess and I believe that it will pick up as soon as I’m more sure about the details of the scenes. I already have a couple of new ones in mind, but they are mostly the challenging ones. Oh well, I’ll get there eventually.
It’s all about the voice
Do you know these days, when nothing is really wrong, but every little disappointment builds up to ruining your day? Well, that’s what happened to me today. If I would make a list of the things that annoyed me today, it would all sound very silly, and still I’m feeling sort of betrayed by a day that started out quite well actually. Already early in the day I managed to write quite a bit and then had a great conversation with a friend. Then I wrote some more and managed to find some music that was just the thing I needed to get on with my writing. Things still went wrong from there and I can’t even really pinpoint what it all was about. And with that, enough is said and probably tomorrow it all seems lighter and less depressing.
And on a happier note I wrote a scene for my procrastination project today that just flowed out naturally. It’s building the character of the protagonist and has some nice details, which show that I’m full of really weird sarcasm. I’m enjoying the writing process of this, because it feels like I don’t have to struggle to maintain a coherent voice. Due to the nature of the topic, which I can’t really say anything about yet, this whole project would lend itself perfectly to copying the style of someone who I personally admire. I would really have an obvious reason for doing this, but instead all that comes out is a different voice, maybe my own with a few more edges to it. It is really the first time that the voice comes naturally to me, because the voice that comes out is exactly what this story needs. Later on, about halfway through maybe, I will probably have to adapt the voice a little more towards the style of the mentioned person, but this I will have to do carefully after much more research and it will be much harder than what I’m writing right now. Difficult to say whether I’m on the right track or not, but the more I think about the idea, the more I’m convinced that it will be great once it’s finished. And the best thing is that the research for it is right up my ally, I don’t have to struggle at all or go very far from what I know anyway. I can just continue spending my time doing what I want. This is also why in the afternoon I stopped writing and started listening to music, since that is very much connected to the project.
If I hadn’t been writing and making progress today, it would have been a rather annoying day, but this way I have at least something positive to say.
The right environment for writing
Not even a single word did I write for any of my projects today, but honestly that’s totally alright. Instead I’ve done some research on one of the topics, thought about what really matters for writing great literature and I now actually have a desk and even more important: a very comfortable desk chair too. This is really a step in the right direction, because the right place and position to write can change your entire mind set. For me having a desk isn’t enough. I need a really good chair or I won’t even go near the desk.
I personally also don’t like offices. I rather work from home where I can put the music on, make good coffee and eat whenever I feel like it. I can also take breaks as often as I want in the way I want, which really helps productivity. If you force me to go and sit in an office I will work 1 out of 8 hours effectively, while at home it will be more like 5 or 6. Strange that employers are not more flexible about this.
Still, there has to be a bit of separation between the place where you work and where you sleep or else you will end up insomniac, like I’ve been for so many years. For the first time in my life I now have a desk that is not in the same room as my bed. A huge step forward on the sleeping front, I think, but also on the working front, if the chair turns out to be as comfortable in the long run as it is when sitting in it for a few minutes. I will see tomorrow how it holds up.
oh god, my mum will think I’m a pervert
Last night I just couldn’t sleep. I was wide awake until 7 in the morning and even then I only slept a few hours. During my first years at uni I always ended up writing emails to my boss at 3 am, because I couldn’t sleep. So, in the spirit of the old days I got up and decided to work a little bit in the kitchen. In the end I wrote a whole long scene that kept me occupied for hours. I was quite surprised about the outcome and like it quite a lot now. I’m not exactly sure whether I would want my mum to read it though. In any case, that’s a whole other story altogether. I wonder how many writers thought “oh god, my mum will think I’m a pervert” over the years.
Oh, and did I mention that I’m still not back on my original project? The procrastination project is keeping me all tied up. In the morning I wrote the end of the entire story. Although I’m not sure whether it is generally such a good idea to write the end so early on, I have such a clear idea about this particular story that I can risk it without hesitation. And I have to say that I envy the protagonist for his last sentence. I think that’s always a good way to finish a story. Now I just have to fill in the gaps in between the beginning and the end. In general it’s coming along nicely. I will post the current state of the progress meter in my posts from now so that I have a record later on of how the writing process progressed. Oh, I have big plans for this one.
bearable is barely enough 