Dear Carpal Tunnels:
Please stop aching. I am not going to stop writing until I hit 50k. I promise to stop as soon thereafter as I can, ok? Then I will rest you and ice you and everything. Seriously. I'm taking ibuprofen for you and everything, so quit yer bitchin!
Love,
Ealasaid
Well, it's over. The TGIO party was last night (and it was awesome!) and now NaNoWriMo is over for another year.
I completed it, making me five for five in the years attempted/years won department. Go me. I even got a couple fans at the party telling me how much they enjoyed my excerpts and reading! Wow!
I am now really determined to work more on my fiction this coming year. I want to finish outlining my reworked Jaspa novel and actually write it. Interestingly, one of my pals, Mitch -- a supporter but not a NaNoer whose wife does NaNo every year -- told me that he realized I concentrate on characters when evaluating movies/tv while he concentrates on the story, and he thinks this is the source of many of our disagreements.
Upon reflection, I think he is right. I have a really tough time coming up with plots for my stories. I adore creating characters, though. And when I watch a show or movie, if the characters are interesting and engaging, I will like it, even if the story sucks (case in point: Num3rs, one of my favorite guilty pleasure TV shows. The stories are stupid, but I love the characters!). He is exactly the opposite. A crappy story ruins the movie or show for him, even if the characters are interesting.
This tells me a great deal. I think the reason I have become obsessive about plotting my novels out thoroughly is that if I don't, I can't generate a complex and interesting plot organically. At least, not well. I didn't plot out this year's NaNo very thoroughly and found myself dreading writing it at times. It was really hard. I loved the characters, but the story was weak.
So, that's something for me to work on. Maybe I'll spend some time this year analyzing the stories of novels I love, diagramming their structure and stuff. Something to think about, anyway.
And next year for NaNo, I am damn well going to have a detailed plot!
Well, it's over.
I finished. Again. This makes the fourth year I've done NaNo and the fourth year I've hit the magic wordcount. This year I finished by padding a lot, which is why I stopped at 50,001.
So now I'm catching up on blogs, including Wordweaverlynn's. She wrote some time back about a person on LiveJournal who posted a bunch of advice for writers.
In that post, the person wrote that NaNo will kill your urge to write fiction. Now, this may be true for some people, but I will say this: I wrote my 50k in 51 hours or so, according to my notes, and that was going slow sometimes because I was mixing writing with other stuff. The person who posted said they write 50k a month - and apparently it takes them 25hrs/week.
I have two things to say to that: (1) the writing one does in NaNo is very different from professional writing and (2) geez, man, why do you write so slow?
NaNo is about freeing yourself from the inner editor that tells you to stop writing. It's about writing through writers' block, writing when you're scared you suck at this, it's about just writing. And if you buy into the theory that one has to write a million words of shit before writing anything really good (which I do) NaNo is a great way to get all that out of the way. I have learned a lot about plotting and character by doing NaNo. I've even produced a draft which I plan to clean up and submit somewhere (if I can get enough time - I'm a freelance writer and educator and am freakin' busy!). Maybe I'll sign up for NaNoEdMo this year and really do it, not crap out like I did last year.
Furthermore, I know I'm an anomoly, that most writers don't write this fast, but I was trained as a journalist, and am used to crazy deadlines. I'm used to turning out a 1000 word article, ready to publish, in two or three hours, max. I don't think this is bad or crazy, I think it's useful. My writing gigs mostly pay by the piece, not the hour, so there's further incentive to write quickly. NaNo is extra training for that. If you're creating Art, sure, you go more slowly. But if you're trying to communicate something, speed works just fine. With my novels, I'm trying to entertain, to tell a cool story, that's ALL. I can do that quickly. That doesn't take pondering. I am more at the Conan/Tarzan end of things than the High Fantasy end of things. Yanno?
Anyway.
Viva la NaNo! I know a lot of people in the South Bay writing group are talking about quitting NaNo, but I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine giving up this wonderful, insane month where I just tell my story and get it out there. I mean, if I don't write these stories, nobody will. They only exist inside my head until I put them on paper, and that alone makes me want to tell them. They entertain me, maybe they'll entertain other people, too.
Filched from Lauren.
BASIC NANO STATS: 2004
NaNo ID: Ealasaid
NaNo since: 2001
Working title: Johnny Theremin and the Faceless Chickens, Aliens, and Questionable Women
WIP Genre: Mixture of noir/detective and sci-fi.
Projected word count: 50k-60k
AT THE START: DO YOU...
Have an Outline? yup.
Scene-by-scene? Only the busy chapters
Know how it starts? Yes.
Know how it ends? Yes.
Have your climax in order? Yep.
Know your main characters yet? Yep.
Have a particular tone in mind? Yep.
Plan to Draw on your own experiences? Um... no.
IS YOUR WORK GOING TO BE:
Funny? Hope so.
Serious? Hah.
Sad? Hah!
Semi-Autobiographical? HAHAHAH!
Based on another story? Sorta.
Influenced by any authors/current publications? Authors, maybe.
HOW HAVE MUCH YOU PLANNED? HAVE YOU USED:
A paper journal? Yes.
Pens? Yes.
Multicolored pens? No.
A computer? Yes.
Index cards? No.
Lists? Yes.
Bulleted lists? No.
Plot Charts? Yes.
Character Charts? No.
Character formulas? No.
Favorite writing resource: Don't really have one.
ODDS AND ENDS
A line you would like to use: Can't think of one.
A scene you would like to include: Ditto.
A concept you would like to explore: Gilled underwater theives.
A cliche you would like to avoid: I love cliches.
A character you would like to use: Got 'em all laid out already.
FORWARD THINKING
Do you expect to be able to complete it? Yup.
Do you intend to complete it? Yup.
Could you ever try to publish it? Not sure I can, what with it being Mr. Gaiman's story and all.
What do you expect to get out of this month of frantic writing? A sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Also, impetus to plot out my 2002 novel properly and redo it for NaNo 2005.
Well, I finally got my plot outline done. Yay! Major smooches to Antwon, who gave me the idea for what the Men Without Tents are really up to.
And as long as I'm bragging, can you believe this: Neil Gaiman forwarded the email I sent him about the fact that I'm doing NaNo with the Theremin synopsis to the gal who runs JohnnyTheremin.net with the message "Isn't this cool?"
EEEEEEEEEEEEK! He knows I'm alive and thinks my project is cool! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!
Oh, and SoBaNaNos.org is online. Go now! Look!