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.
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.
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.
That’s it folks, I’m eloping
Nah, of course not! I said I’d stick with the project, and I will. However, it might actually take a little more time than anticipated. As I have already mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had a great new idea while I was pondering my writing process. In fact, the idea didn’t want to get out of my head ever since. I’ve been in the process of developing the protagonist further. He now has a physical appearance, a character, life choices, and a serious attitude problem, which makes him not only interesting, but also the dangerous type I tend to stay away from in real life. I even wrote the first couple of scenes. It was a lot of fun because I could reminisce about my golden days, which is strongly connected to the story, the music, the films, all of that. I ended up with one really good scene that I probably don’t even have to polish much, since I completely like it already.
I just can’t help developing the idea further and I think I will actually keep it as my procrastination project. I even added a writing progress meter for that one too. By the way, procrastination is how I got through university: I procrastinated with the next project that I had to hand in. Why is it, that even when we do exactly what we want to do, we still procrastinate? Well, at least now I’m channeling that procrastination energy into something with great potential.
bearable is barely enough 