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That’s me! As of Monday, around eleven-ish. I promised myself if I finished by midnight I would buy myself a winner’s shirt so Merry Christmas to me! I wrote ten thousand, thirteen words in a single day. A personal best, without a doubt.

Now I can clean up my house and give up soda and take up exercise to make up for abusing myself and my surroundings for the past month in the name of fiction. But first!

At the beginning of this month, a fellow WriMo asked me if it was harder to write my first novel or its sequel. I couldn’t really answer that question at the time, but I feel qualified to tackle it now.

Thoughts, Lessons, and Other Stuff from NaNo 2012

1. I finished writing several days earlier this year than I did last year. One might say I had become a better writer or that writing a sequel was easier, however my husband was able to point out from his relatively impartial perspective that I had all year to think about Starsand and plot it out in my head, while Grove was started in a seat-of-the-pants moment late on October 31st (or early Nov. 1st if you want to get technical). All year to sort out plots and playlists and ponder my characters and their motivations.

2. My actual writing was slower with Grove, because I was not particularly practiced and questioned my choices on everything from tense to specific words. Starsand was easier because those choices had been made, and I had a template of tone and world to follow.

3. On the other hand, I spent a lot more time staring at the screen with Starsand, debating with myself over how things would happen given my characters and world. How they would see things. How they would say things. I had parameters and history to contend with, I couldn’t just start fabricating things when the writing got rough without considering how it fit into what I already had.

4. I like Starsand now a lot more than I liked Grove when I finished it. That felt like the seed of something good, this feels like…something good. I am excited about it. I kind of love it. It isn’t quite finished, but it’s close.

5.  With Grove, I skimmed over events that I didn’t know how to write well…or ones whose place in the narrative felt uncertain to me. Sometimes it felt like writing scene-to-scene-to-scene. I wrote Starsand in a much more linear fashion, it flowed like telling a story out loud. I only skipped around when I got good and truly stuck.

6.  Writing Starsand was what I needed to do in order to be ready to edit Grove. It needs some fairly major surgery, but that seed of goodness remains. I just have a much clearer picture of what it’s supposed to grow into, now. I understand what it’s about. I understand all my plots and how they should relate. I am no longer terribly concerned that it will hurt anyone’s feelings or offend anyone or cause Conservative Christians to build book-burning bonfires (it might, I’m just not worried about it).

7. Last year’s NaNo was more exciting, more fun even (maybe), because I didn’t know if I could do it. I had that thrill of daring myself to do something ambitious. This year I started knowing I could, with my work clearly cut out for me. It was a different kind of challenge, and one that often felt like the work it was. A challenge of refinement, rather than one of creating something compelling from whole cloth.

8. I’m thinking I may try to become an ML next year because our region’s turnout has just been sad. I was completely alone at the last write-in!

9. I still do not have a firm grasp on how to punctuate dialogue.

10. I like writing dialogue and setting more than almost anything. Describing physical expressions/postures/actions and emotional states, not so much. A tendency toward the cliché.

Since I am sitting here listening to my Starsand playlist, enjoying how appropriate it ended up being despite the late-night addition of one seriously questionable song by Grizzly Bear,  that’s what I’m going to leave you with. If you don’t have Spotify, you should get it because it’s free and it’s one of the best things.


I should already be in bed on the off-chance that I get the dread Monday morning, 5:45 am call to substitute at a local school. Instead, I am here, updating my blog. “Why?” you might ask. I suppose I feel a duty, a kinship even, to the three people who will actually read this entry (as opposed to the half-dozen who stumble across this blog searching for “the selection fanfiction).

It was going so, so bad you guys. I didn’t write at all between last Monday and today because I was quagmired (the dictionary says I can’t use that as a verb, that it should be mired, but I like it the way it is and you can’t make me change it) in the plot of my story. Like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness bad. My book was the horse and I was Atreyu and I just kept pulling on the reins and crying and saying “please”.*

None of those actions get a book written. What does is sitting down and making yourself write a thousand words before you can have breakfast. Then two thousand before you can get a shower, and so on. I wrote just a bit over 8,000 words today and most of them were good. Some of them I like a whole lot. This novel has been tough. Sometimes my story is so amazing I can’t believe I came up with it, and so hard to write I can’t believe it. Other times it’s so completely crappy I can’t believe I committed it to paper (or pixels), and so hard to write I can’t believe it.

I am at 40k, and that means I really am going to finish. Today was make or break: I was going to catch up or blow it, flaming out in my second year and going off to kick rocks.

Bearing in mind that, as I told my pal Kristen over at A Scenic Route, I have late-stage NaNo brain…here are some tweets from this week:

Things looked up while writing: What frankincense smells like, ancient Celtic names, wards for dark magic. Sounds pretty woo woo. #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 19, 2012

Proof of late-stage NaNo brain: giggling at the typo “cooted” rather than “scooted”) #NaNoWriMo — LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 20, 2012

I was very glad when Justin woke me up this morning. He interrupted a dream about swimming in a murky pond full of alligators. #savedmylife — LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 25, 2012

This thing is turning into some kind of fantasy epic #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 25, 2012

Clown pants, hammer pants, underpants, pants, pants, pants.

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 26, 2012

*For those of you who are not children of the 80s, a visual (and auditory) aid:

If you aren’t a fantasy fan, I seriously don’t know what you’re doing here.

 

Taking a break from updating my writing playlist (recently added: Grizzly Bear and Chicane), in preparation for tonight’s work, to update my poor neglected blog. I didn’t get any writing at all done during the week, no forward progress between Monday and Saturday. It was a tiring week at work and I found myself zombified each night, and if I’m being honest I have to admit that my story had me more than a little stumped. I knew what was happening and what was going to happen, but not how to get from one to the other in an interesting and logical fashion.

Saturday, I gave myself permission to hop in the time machine and travel to scenes both past and future.  The result was one scene of total garbage that I didn’t even add to my word count, and two that I love. With encouragement from my husband (and the promise of a Holiday Mint McFlurry on completion) I hit 25k before bed last night! Twenty-five thousand three words, to be exact. What does that mean? It means that there is less to write than I have already written! Hooray!

Here are some tweets from yesterday/last night:

Suspect I had to be this tired to write the scene I just wrote. It was awesome. Hit my goal for tonight of 25k. 25,003 words, to be exact.

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 18, 2012

@chicowrimos Just 2 at the write-in today, Got a lot of dirty looks for holding a big table by myself LOL. Behind, not irreparably so. You?


Now w/ 100% more sexy makeouts and adorable babies. Warning: some experience adorable babies as a side effect of sexy makeouts. #NaNoWriMo
 The upshot of all this is that I officially feel out of the weeds! I love the scene I wrote just before bed last night, it was hitting all the right notes, and even though I’m deep in the soup of my novel I’m no longer drowning. I know where it’s going, I’m beginning to understand where it needs to have been, and lord help me I’ve got enough plot for the next installment.  Goal for tonight is 30k by midnight. If you want to join me on Twitter for some mutual back-patting and butt-kicking it’s part of my plot pondering distraction rounds.

I will admit that I am a bit surprised at how sad my book has gotten: my MC is being put through a lot and it’s not over yet. With what I wrote last night, there is no possibility for everyone to get their happy ending. That’s how I know it’s getting good.

Here are some Grizzly Bear lyrics, ‘cuz:

Prove it all to me
Check again to see
Leave me with no words
If you call again, subside

And I know I’ve made it all a lie
Shuffled back and forth, it’s only in my eyes
And I always wanted to resist
Everything I bought into is no man

Fool me once, it’s fair
The floodgates leave me there
I count on you in a way
There’s nothing left besides

And I want to hide it all away
Taking back all of the silly things I used to say
And I’ll give you all of my time
Because I’m foolish and never know how to resign

Looking back and forth, turn around
One that makes no sense but feels good anyhow
And I’ll leave it all as it should be
Where you are you and I stay me

So talk to me: how is your NaNo going? Are you happy with what you’ve written? Tearing your hair out? Sailing along toward a win or hacking your way through the jungle back to caught up?
 

It’s Day 11 of NaNoWriMo 2012 and I, ever the model of efficiency, have just boiled a massive pot of water and tossed in half a dozen Candy Cane Lane teabags that I might lay in provisions for the campaign ahead. I started this battle with three Writing Buddies this year, and as of this moment we are all still in the fight. Some of us are ahead, some of us are behind, but we write on!

This week has been rough on me. I had to take some time away from NaNo to prepare and send work out to a gallery show (at a cost greater than I could really afford), and I fell farther behind in my word count than I was comfortable with. Then on Wednesday, as I was heading out to a write-in at a local frozen yogurt place hoping to make up some lost ground, the starter on my truck gave up the ghost. Not only did I not make it to the write-in, my husband and I had to absorb a pretty big financial blow. It’s really going to hurt come Christmastime and we had to cancel plans to see family for Thanksgiving, but we’re not homeless yet by George!

We only have one vehicle, so I had to take an unpaid “vacation” from subbing until we could get the truck fixed. This might have been a boon to my NaNoWriMo word count if I had not developed an ear infection walking home from the garage in low temperatures and high wind. It’s in the inner ear, so not only is it quite painful but my brain is working about as well as a steamed potato at the moment. I went into this weekend about 5,000 words behind.

Oh yeah, I also had to go help choose the next President of the United States and vote on California’s eleventy-billion ballot measures. The first time I’ve had to wait in line at the polls.

All is not lost! We have a good garage and they got the truck fixed up in a jiffy (it had also been regularly scheduled for new shocks and brakes at the end of the month), so I was able to attend the Saturday write-in at the local coffee shop where I met one new WriMo and wrote about 800 words. Then I came home and wrote 3,000 more. The ear was worse this morning so I spent several hours with a clove of garlic jammed in it and then took a long nap. I’m now feeling like I might be able to put a few thousand more words to paper, and end this weekend in the green.

Some of my tweets this week:

Love it when I have a legitimate reason to use the word “smithereens” #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 5, 2012

I don’t think tonight it a writing night, unless I want Autumn to have fever dreams #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 6, 2012

Pondering: what would happen if someone ate my spirit animal. #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 10, 2012

15,095 words. I might just catch up this weekend. I could even get ahead! On second thought, let’s not get crazy. #NaNoWriMo

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 11, 2012

@galleycat Been doing about half my #NaNoWriMo draft by hand, and I’ve noticed that I write faster and better by hand than by typing in a WP

— LesYeuxHiboux (@TryScience) November 12, 2012

Jammied up and ready to write. Imagine a V8 revving. #NaNoWriMo


Looking through one’s old tweets really is an exercise in inanity. Yikes. Incidentally, if you’d like to follow me on Twitter that’s dandy, but I will warn you that I retweet a LOT of astrological stuff. Which is why my Twitter is not connected to this blog via widget. Now, to send you back off into the NaNo night with fresh vigor for the writing that I hope you are doing, some fresh writing links:

I will leave you with a song from Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, in hopes that you jump into your metaphorical racing-car and zoom through the next 5,000 words!

I couldn’t find the full clip of the video, but if the song is your thing it’s worth it to check out the cupcake dresses on AKB48.

