It Beckons

It’s been over a year since I last posted. Sometime after NaNoWriMo last year I had decided to get back into posting, but things just got away from me. And as NaNo approaches this year I’m starting to feel that urge to write come upon me again.

Several times over the summer I have had ideas spring on me and I’ve written snippets, but the only problem is, I have no plot. I just have a beginning, or at least one little glimpse of some other world. I could keep writing from these snippets, but I can’t find the words to continue. I don’t know where to go.

It’s maddening to have an idea, something that excites me, but then not know where to go from there The urge to write is growing everyday. The more I read the more I want to write. I’ve even started listing to the Writing Excuses podcast. My hope is that the spark will start to grow and ignite into a full fledged flame. But unless I give that spark some tinder, nothing is going to happen. So begins the writing. The writing with no direction. Words spilling forth with no purpose, no idea, just words. And maybe, just maybe, a plot will emerge.

Script Frenzy

April is fast approaching and last year at this time I told myself that I would definitely make an effort to learn more about scriptwriting and try and participate in 2011 in this offshoot of NaNoWriMo. While I am still unsure if I’ll actually participate when April finally rolls around, I am taking the steps towards learning more about the practice and art of scriptwriting.

Aside from articles on the Script Frenzy site, I’ve picked up two books at my local library and I attended a scriptwriting seminar this past Tuesday. Whether I’ll get through all the material before April starts is yet to be seen. And whether I’ll have time between packing, moving and working to write and with just a week till the start, I’m on the fence about how serious of an attempt I’ll actually make at trying to write 100 pages. That aside, I am excited about what I will be working on during the month, which will basically be a rewrite of my werewolf novel from November, but in a script format of course!

But I am still hopeful that sometime with in the next few years that I will make an attempt at scriptwriting just for the experience of something different.

I think as a writer it is important and beneficial to explore different types of writing, whether it be different genres, poetry or even scriptwriting. And it is for that reason that I have been making efforts at expanding my repertoire of writing skills. Even if I don’t become very accomplished or experienced in other areas of writing, laying down the foundations now, might prove useful later in life and in my writing career.

Are any of you planning on participating in Script Frenzy?

The end!

Of NaNoWriMo that is. I am not quite done, but I will be soon, very soon. And then I shall sleep for about 500 hours straight before I return to the land of the living.

I’m not sure when I was this tired last, but I can’t wait to rest my head down on my pillows and dream. I would wait to make this post till after I am officially done, but I don’t think that I’d be able to muster the energy by then. The only thing keeping me awake right now is knowing that I am just that close to my 100k goal.

I haven’t yet decided if I want to continue to post everyday. I’m not really sure I have that much to say. I am, in general, I quiet individual. I do tend to be a bit more verbose on the internet, but I’m not sure that letting everyone know how many words I’d written that day on most days would be all that exciting. However, I will continue to post from time to time as the mood strikes and if that ends up being everyday, so be it!

And sometime in the next couple days I will attempt to sum up my NaNo experience this year and any other thoughts I have on the subject.

See you on the other side!

Is it over yet?

I’m taking a real quick break from the cleaning I need to do so that I can get in a quick update!

That’s pretty much how I’m starting to feel right now. I’m definitely having a hard time of reaching my goal of 100k this month. I’ve got to write 11k tomorrow, but I think I can do it. I just need to get out of the house and away from distractions. It also means I need to stay away from certain other people who are chatterboxes at write-ins. I really just need to push, push, push.

And now, back to cleaning.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

A few years ago I had taken a break from doing NaNo, so much so that I nearly forgot about it the next year. Halfway through the month I had a crazy dream that inspired a story and I also realized that it was November and I had all of 15 days to write 50k. I loved every minute of it and I still love the story even if I’ve subsequently torn it apart and tried rewriting it about half a dozen different ways.

With just a few days left in the month, I’ve had another one of those crazy dreams that is building up a story in my brain. So, even though my #50kweekend is coming to a close, since I have tomorrow off, I will be seeing how much I can write in about 36 hours (Once I get off work of course). If things go well, I’ll have my first draft of a dystopian world.

NaNo Day 26

I’m supposed to be doing a #50kweekend (check this twitter hashtag to keep up with others doing it too), but as each day and hour passes, I’m falling farther and farther behind on that goal. I knew doing it in three days would be hard, considering that I haven’t passed 8k in one day, and doing 50k in three days means doing more than double my highest word count each day.

Ultimately, the best I can really hope for is to hit 100k by the end of the month, being still behind on that goal too. I’d still like to achieve that 50k weekend, but I’m going to need a serious amount of inspiration, being that I don’t have any sort of outline to help push me forward.

In fact, I keep trying different story ideas as I try and find something that can capture my interest. They are all things I’d like to write someday, but this isn’t the month. The almost 80k I’ve written so far this month is taking its toll on my creative side, being that I’m actually writing for quality rather than quantity this year.

Until I start learning to actually outline and plot large portions of a story to begin with, I don’t think I’ll ever be much of a speed writer; though I did manage to write the first 50k pretty quickly. However, I’ve never really been much of an outliner, not even on school projects.

The whole process is really making me think about what I could or couldn’t do month after month, and I think writing about 50k each month is on target for what I could do consistently. Not counting what editing I end up doing outside of writing new material. I guess as December rolls around I’ll get a better idea of what I can do.

What am I most thankful for?

While it might be a bit cheesy to say this, but I really am most thankful for NaNoWriMo. And the reason is this, I don’t think that I would be writing at all if it weren’t for NaNo. People always say that writers write because they can’t not write, but that’s not true, just ask Kevin Smith (warning: there is lots of cussing in the video, it is Kevin Smith after all)!

I am a sufferer of writer’s laze. I have a desire to write, but part of me (a big part) just wants to sit around and read or watch TV all day. But if it wasn’t for NaNoWriMo I wouldn’t get off my butt at least one month every year and write a novel, whether good or bad (mostly bad). But this year there is something in me that is starting to change.

That writer’s laze is still there, but I’ve been able to break it enough that I’ve written everyday this month so far and not just on my novels, but here too. And as I’ve been writing and struggling and having major success moments, I’m starting to feel like I really could do this year round; write at least 1667 words everyday for the next 365 days (that’s a grand total of 608,445 words!). It equates to about 1-2 hours of writing each day for me, if I can keep the writer’s laze at bay.

Of course, if I decide to edit my novels, which I really want to do this go around, I’m not sure that I could actually keep up with 1667 word a day pace, but I think that it if I could take at least ten minutes everyday to write something new, that it would be a successful year. It might mean I’d only write a few hundred words, but I could also write around 800. Either way, it is a win-win situation because it means that I’m taking that next step in my writing career. It means that I’m really making it a priority.

So I raise my glass to NaNoWriMo and say thank you for inspiring me to do what I’ve always wanted, be a real writer. Thank you for giving me the encouragement I needed to park my butt in the chair and just write. Whether good or bad, it can always be fixed. As Nora Roberts says, “I can fix a bad page, but I can’t fix a blank page.”

The Day Before…

Turkey Day!

Yeah, it’s tomorrow. In about 35 minutes I begin the crazy drive towards 50k in three days. With a day break in between (a day where I’m still hoping to pull over 5k).

I’ve really slowed down on the word count as I’ve been preparing for the coming weekend. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to write for my other novel. I tried outlining some stuff, but it just isn’t working out too well right now. So I may just start writing whatever comes to mind and hope it coalesces into something resembling a plot. But I’ll still be plugging away at the Space Opera 3000 here and there (even though I’m really starting to hate it D; ).

If any of you out there are joining a 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k or whateverk challenge for this coming weekend, I wish you the best of luck and may the words flow freely!

Can you do 50k in three days?

I’m not really sure I can, but I’ll definitely be trying. Have I suddenly gone insane? Maybe…

For the first time this year I decided to go chat with some fellow overachievers, because they always make me feel better when I talk about being behind, even though I’ve passed the 50k mark because they all understand being behind when everyone else views you as being ahead. So, a bunch of them have decided to do a 50k challenge this weekend. While most of them will be doing it Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be doing it Thursday, Friday and Sunday since I’ll be working on Saturday.

And before that even happened, I had joined the 20k challenge for my region which lasts several more days than this 50k challenge. So, in any case, I should reach at least 20k this weekend and I’m really hoping that I’ll make it through to 50k. Maybe I’ll even write a whole 70k! Who knows?

To prepare, I’m going to take some time today and tomorrow to do a small amount of outlining on a different novel idea(or even multiple ideas) to see if it’s something I want to try and do during the 50k challenge. I’ll also be attempting to make some sense out of the Space Opera 3000 which is at some point supposed to leave space and enter the atmosphere, but is about five billion months away from that at my current pace. I’m hoping that if I can get some sort of rough outline, that I’ll make better headway on it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if…

I could count all the words I’ve written on this blog this month towards my NaNo? But alas, this is not my novel. This is the place I come to talk about the progress on my novels and about other writing or NaNo related subjects.

That being said, I’m still currently behind on my wordcount (something which I always cringe to say when I’m, by official standards, ‘done’), but I also haven’t really written a lot today. I spent most of the morning catching up on all those blogs in my Google Reader plus some cleaning around the house. Now I’m doing a few quick minutes of writing as I wait for an extra shift I picked up at work to start. But once I’m off, I’ll still have over three hours left in the day to write and I plan on making use every last minute to make sure I get in at least 3334 words today.

Tomorrow I’ll be working a morning shift and then I’m going to get my snow tires on my car and as I sit and wait for half an hour (or more) I’ll be clicking away on my netbook and hopefully not freezing my behind off in the windowfull wonder that is the tire place. After that, I’ll probably go work out before I head over to the tea shop where we are supposed to have a write-in, even though I’ll be something like two or three hours early. But it’ll be two or three mostly distraction free hours, especially since there is no wifi in the area that is good.

And I’m really looking forward to having several days off coming up! There should be lots and lots of time to write. 🙂