NaNoWriMo 2013 Wrap-Up and IWSG.

Hola Friends. This month I am back on the IWSG bandwagon, after several months of forgetting and/or being too freaked out to post.

Yes, I'm too neurotic to participate in Alex J Cavanaugh's IWSG some months. Anyway, today is a long one. Sorry, probably because I got so used to writing in several thousand word chunks over the month that I can't cut it down now to a reasonable length.

I'm not going to apologize. I'm not going to apologize. I'm not going to apologize.

I won NaNoWriMo 2013.

Funny, I remember when that competition used to be something I looked forward to every year. I started it in 2005 and it was an amazing experience. It was similar the next few years, but by 2010 or so I was starting to dread it.

I had all this internal pressure to create a masterpiece, something so much better than anything I’d ever done before that even the first draft would sing to me like a siren (not the kind from an emergency vehicle, but like the pretty ladies that lure sailors’ to their death… wait, that sounds awful. Why would I want a story to kill me with its beauty? Oh, I forgot, it’s a metaphor – somehow, that’s a good thing to happen in my metaphor).

So I had this pressure, each word that would come out of the keyboard had to be great. GREAT! And each one that wasn’t was another personal defeat. Yes, English and I were locked in a game of death, where there could be only one victor, and in every case, it was English that won. And I can feel my failure weigh heavier upon me with each and every word I typed.

Every. Last. One.

As a result, I took a few years off.  So when the time rolled around again this year I’d be raring to go again.

But this year, the case almost from the beginning was English vs. Rusty again. I think I’d mentioned that my premise was pretty amazing. I think I had it on my list of the greatest things humans have invented for all time.*

A day into the story and all that greatness had slipped away.

A week into it and I’d quit. I’d spent three days not writing at all. I’d decided it just wasn’t going to work. But then, just like in a traditional three act structure in the Hollywood screenwriting style,  I was called to action.

Except it was just a gentle pat on the back I got from someone in my real life writer’s group that did it. Just a, ‘good job’ sort of thing. But it was enough.

I put my head to the grindstone… wait, that’s a nose that goes there, isn’t it? Ugh, that sounds awful too. Are all idioms so equally horrible sounding?** Whatever it was, I did it. I plowed forward, and had moments of hope that were enough to help me carry on.

But with a week left, after three weeks and about 35k words, I realized I was a fraud. Again. And wondered why I ever was stupid enough to try this writing thing in the first place. So I kinda quit again. I prepared my loser’s speech. Weirdly, though, If someone asked, I would say I was still doing it. After all, I was in the home stretch, I just couldn’t bring myself to type any more crap.

And it was really hard. I kept staring at the page and started typing. When I would read over what I’d already written all I could see was, crap, crap, crap, crap…. Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap. After a while, it just started feeling like there is no point. I mean, the words might be different from one another, but they’re all synonyms of ‘crap.’

See the flat parts? That's where I quit. But I kept quitting my quits.

I’m better than that. I can do better. I’m not as incompetent as what my words that I’d written down kept indicating.  So I thought, I should totally quit until I pull myself together.

And I sat there, on Friday. I’d been off from work, I was tired. I’d overeaten the previous day, but I had set aside this time to write. I stared at the screen for hours. Thinking of the story that should have been, that could have been, that would never be.

I did remember the story that Neil Gaiman tells about writing American Gods. He’d called his agent (maybe it was his editor, I can’t remember) when he was about half-way through and told them that he couldn’t do it. It was too hard, that what he’d written was so bad that it was unpublishable.

He said he was really going to trash the novel and do something else. But after some panicked conversations with people who refused to let him quit, he was talked out of it. He finished. The rest is history.

Then there is the story of Stephen King and his first published novel, Carrie. The story is that his wife had to pull the pages out of the waste basket that he’d thrown away when he decided he just couldn’t do it anymore. She put the pages back on his desk and refused to let him quit.

For a brief moment, I believed. I realized I wasn’t capable of determining how bad my story was. No one can when gauging their own worth. I knew I wanted to tell a story I found entertaining. There had to be something there I could salvage.

On top of all that, I was embarrassed for myself, for my failure. So I wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

Of course the difference between Gaiman, King, and myself is that while they felt like imposters, I’m a real imposter. Big difference.*** But for 48 hours or so there at the end. I didn’t care. I believed. I pushed through until I completed the challenge.

Now comes the long, ugly slog to a) finish out the draft, because 50k a novel doesn’t make and b) start that multi-year long revision process. But, one thing at a time. First, I’m taking a few days to bask in the glory of my victory.

Then, I'll freak out again.

Anyhow, for those of you that are so bored you can't stand it, I've put up an excerpt. Click and enjoy. 

*I did. It was number 1. Sigh.

** Like my grandma used to say, “If someone says something mean to you, jam a shiv through their throat.’ Oh god. I just realized what that means. Oh grandma, no.

*** Yes, that means they were fake imposters, or rather, imposter imposters. I’m the legit one, the one true imposter. See, it’s these sorts of insights into the mechanizations of the human mind that really point out how much I realize I don’t know what I’m doing in any endeavor.

Nano 2013: An Update, Plus Something Extra...

I'm behind, NaNoWriMo 2013, that is. I'm sitting on 25k word count on the 17th. That puts me two full days behind. It could be worse, honestly, and I think I can catch up... um, probably.

For those curious, I get the feeling that rewrites on this one will be extensive. It could take a long time to get into shape, but I'm very happy with where I think I'm going with it. So, yay.

And in other news, well, I don't really have other news, because everything I've been doing in my free time has been writing, which means I don't have anything else to talk about. Heck, I haven't even been reading much. I've got nothing.

So, carry on, write hard, and bring me the head of my enemies.

Nano 2013... I'm All In!

2013 have been a strange year for me. The biggest issue has been my complete failure in finding a way to manage my time appropriately. Work has become an ever growing presence in my life, time with my family now has to be scheduled – since the teens would only stop by for clothes and money if I didn’t. Hard for me to believe that there was a time that, while I never had tons of free time, I had at least enough to write some, read some, blog some, and still watch movies, have family time, and do whatever else struck my fancy.

(Now that I think of it, I make some sort of apology/excuse for not posting or visiting almost every time I put something up. Maybe I should just have an “I’m Sorry” tab that people can read. That way I can just link to it every time I post.)

Those days are gone. Not just work, but also things like my house, which seems to be aging worse than I am. Of course, with the house, that means I deal with its aging problems by building new things, adding new features, and generally spending more and more of my money and time trying to make it better.

The latest problem has been the rear deck, always a frightening thing to see, but of late has become a danger to us all. The new one will be up to code, and it should much larger. So yay.

But I’ve really slowed way down on my writing. I’ve probably written less in 2013 than I have since 2005 or so, back when I decided to really start dedicating myself to learning the craft. It’s depressing somewhat. But it is what it is.

So, of course, I’ve decided to try NaNoWriMo again. I think I’ve completed the challenge five or six times now. But I can’t say for sure. I don’t participate every year, and I think I did it for the first time around ’06. So we can do the math and figure out that I’ve missed a few years in there.

It makes me nervous because November promises to be a difficult month for me time-wise. But I’m starting to realize that I can’t just ‘fit’ writing into what I’m doing, I have to force it in, or I won’t do it anymore.

Really, it’s a big moment for me, realizing that.

So, I’m going all in I guess. I’ve got my genre picked out – Urban Fantasy – and my premise all set (It’s actually super awesome, maybe the best idea anyone has ever had about anything*). I've not quite got the plot figured out, which is okay, although I’ll feel much more comfortable if I can get my ending set, so I at least know where I’m going, even if I’m a bit confused on how I’m going to get there.

Please, if you're signed up, add me as a buddy.

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/rusty87d

*Okay, I know there are arguments to be made for some other things being as great as my novel idea. In my head, the most profound insights ever from humans go something like this:

1)      The premise of my NaNo project this year

2)      Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
3)      Darwin’s Origin of Species (even if you disagree with his conclusions… it’s damned amazing)
4)      The Scientific Method
5)      Fred Hoyle’s work on the life cycle of stars
6)      Descartes ideas on the nature of the human soul (despite how ridiculously wrong he almost has to be… still a great idea).
7)      Anything Tyco Brahe did, because… damn.
8)      The discovery of the circulatory system.
9)      The germ theory of disease.

10)   Newton’s discovery of Calculus.

11)   And Gravity

12)   Bruno’s belief in alien worlds.

13)   The many world’s aspect of quantum mechanics

14)   Alfred Wallace’s theory of evolution (because he was crazy!)

15)   Lamarck’s theory of evolution (because I have a bet riding on this one)

16)   The standard model of quantum mechanics (pretty cool, but not AS awesome as #13)

17)   My grandmother’s fried pie

18)   The Copernican Principal

19)   The Atari 2600

20)   The first Halo game

21)   The discovery of modern Fertilizer (btw Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize for this… but he also invented modern chemical weapons… and personally led the “Gas Troops” for Germany in WWI and killed thousands (his wife committed suicide over this and thought him a monster). Four other future Nobel winners served under him – if memory serves (always dicey), he was later convicted of War Crimes. Seriously, this is where the Mad Scientist stereotype comes from).

22)   The electric guitar

23)   Anything Leonardo Da Vinci did (who should probably be higher, but I don’t feel like messing with the list now… just mentally insert him up there ahead of Tyco Brahe – I mean, I don’t recall Brahe making into any Assassin’s Creed Games – then again, Brahe had a pet Moose that got drunk and died after it fell down the steps at a party. So there – also, lost his nose in a duel over who was better at math, and he died because he refused to pee… so, his actual accomplishment, cataloging stars, well, you try doing it so well when you’re partying with a Moose, losing body parts and obsessively trying to hide your data from competitors).

24)   Oh, Assassin’s Creed games

25)   SETI

26)   Playing Cards (I should totally look this up… who invented those things? Because they are amazing)

27)   Kepler’s three laws (might have come a lot sooner, if Brahe weren’t so weird about sharing data – he viewed Kepler as a rival).

Were I to start over from scratch, I’d wager my list would look much differently. Whatever though, as of this moment in time, these are the greatest things that humanity ever came up with. I’d note that my Grandmother has something on this list, so, yay. She is pretty great.

I Bought BOOKS!

I MADE MENTION in Monday’s post that I was back in the writing saddle now. All geared up and ready to roll with that fantasy novel I was working on last fall. I whipped out all these notes I made before I started writing, world building notes, my outline, even a synopsis of events leading up to the story.

None of that matched what I wrote.

I’m not sure what the point of an outline is if I don’t actually use it. But I apparently found some use for it. So, I went back and reread my 50k or so of stuff to see where I left off. Something jumped out at me right away.

I’m not as good as I thought I was.

Granted, I am not coming at this from a great background in fantasy, I’ve only been reading the genre in the past couple of years, and only been reading Epic Fantasy (what my novel is) for the past year. I read Martin’s Game of Thrones books, Sanderson’s Mistborn books, Peter V Brett’s The Warded Man, and maybe one or two more that I’m just drawing a blank on. 

What I have not done, is read much involving Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, etc. I have a book or two in my tbr pile that have dwarves and Goblins each with their own covers, so I presume that I’ll be taking a gander at those tropes soon enough.

It’s a well-known truism of science that innovators in certain disciplines are either very young, or are new to that particular branch of science.  The prevailing wisdom is that they have not been beaten to death with history of the greats that came before them and feel free (or naïve) enough to plunge headfirst without that baggage keeping them back.

I have peeked my head into the genre enough to know that my concept, which I thought was unique, isn’t so fresh as I once thought. That’s okay though, it’s all about execution. So I thought when I started I'd take my fresh concept and innovate the genre. So imagine my surprise when I go back over what I've written and I find out that it has one little flaw... it's not very good. 

Ah dammit. If there is some consolation, I was at Brandon Sanderson's site looking at what he had to say about his Mistborn books that I read recently, and he mentioned he went through seven drafts of his first novel (over about 6 years I think) before he had it in its final form. 

He also mentioned he's written thirteen novels before he sold his first one. Doubly impressive since his tend to be 250,000 word epics, not the 70k lightweights I've turned out in the past.

Maybe, just maybe. There is hope. I'll just need a whole bunch of work I guess.

SOMETHING FUNNY, I suppose, if anyone recalls, I did a post about Robert Wadlow recently, the poor soul that was about 9 feet tall when he passed away. Turns out, after running this blog for nearly 3 years that around a fifth of the page views I’ve gotten, ever, are from that single post last week. I assumed there was some sort of hacker related event that skewed my numbers, that sort of thing has happened before, although not on this scale. I checked and it looks like nothing more than a lot of people Googling Robert Wadlow led them to my post. That and my short critique of the Harry Potter films I did last December have brought in tons of traffic. I find the whole thing bizarre – especially since I had no idea that thousands of folks have been stopping by to see the giant man. If I’d known it would have generated that kind of traffic I would have A) found a way to tie it into my novelette, and B) spent a bit more time writing the post, you know, making sure it was actually good.

I can’t be expected to put that sort of effort into every post. I feel pretty satisfied if I manage to use there/their/they’re correctly through an entire entry.

FINALLY, my wife has had boxes and boxes of crappy cute romance novels in the back of her vehicle for almost a year. It has taken up the back and I can almost never use it when I need to (it's one of those crossover things, looks like an SUV, really its a car) and I finally told her I was getting rid of them, she thanked me profusely and I went to the used bookstore.

They gave me over a hundred bucks in trade for them! 

I picked up that haul to the right there and still had more than $40 left to use later. I was pleased to find the first two installments in the Thrawn Trilogy, which has been recommended by Andrew and Grumpy both (I could have gotten all three, but they had only one copy, and some other guy was there and wanted the same book... and he found it with me standing right there holding the other two - what a jerk) and I found two Daryl Gregory books, which made my day, as well as a stack of other books I've either wanted, or just realized I wanted after I saw them.

I feel like I've gotten away with something, like I should be in trouble. Combined with the Borders haul I got last year I have enough books to keep me busy for the rest of 2012 if I don't buy anything else. That won't happen, and there will be some of these books that I may not get to, 

Monday News... And PinkyHell 2012

Way back in January I mentioned some writing goals I had put on myself to complete this year. So far I've done the minimum amount required - but nothing really beyond that. I still have these big, nebulous goals I've not even worked on concerning novel writing. Stupid reality, it keeps dragging me down. 

BUT, I am so about to get right back at it. 

One of those goals was the completion of the first draft of my previous November’s fantasy novel. A more daunting task than it might seem because it’s got many viewpoint characters, an entirely created fantasy world, and a plot that is more intricate than anything I’ve ever written before.

And now, almost four months after I stopped working on it, I’m halfway through the first draft and can’t exactly remember where I was going with it. So I’ve been going back to my notes, notes about the story, about the world I’d made, about the characters, etc.

I can see why it takes George R.R. Martin a decade or so to write a novel. The damn thing can get to be this sprawling epic that is hard to keep a handle on. Of course, his are actually good. But aside from that, I think I have an appreciation for all the work he has to put in. It's really complicated.

Comment of the Week:

Angela won my heart with her mention of Wookies on Friday. Thank you Angela!

Let's see here, what else?I forget sometimes that there is a point to blogging, that it’s not just an excuse for me to express my awesomenity in written form. It’s actually a tool to raise awareness of not only my work, but that of others.

Brinda Berry, who kindly offers encouragement and pearls of wisdom when she comments here, as well as introducing me to the awesome digital painting videos on her blog recently, has released her second novel in her Whispering Woods series. Writing is hard, and I always want to hang on to stuff to do just one more pass, I'm impressed with her for plugging through, it shows real professionalism to be able to write till completion on her stories. I hope it does well. 

I feel like a warrior from a bygone era

Also, PinkyHell 2012 continues to plague me. It’s now been 2 weeks since that fateful day when putting on my t-shirt turned into a tale of overcoming adversity and overwhelming pain. Yes, I still manage to get dressed on my own, but I self diagnose as having some nerve damage, as it tingles still when I try to use it. It makes me happy that it’s pretty much only used for semi-colons on the keyboard, I use it for a few other things, but it can almost be ignored when typing.

And remember - It’s less than two weeks until the A-Z blogging challenge begins!

Oh No... I've Been Hit

Tagged actually, Briane Pagel tagged me with the 7/7/7 thing. I go to page 77 of a WIP, scroll down to line 7, then copy and past the next 7 lines. I'm struggling to etch in even a few moments to post right now, so I'll quickly go to the excepts.


From my super old WIP, and the novel for which this blog is named, The Blutonian Death Egg:

“What’s wrong now?” I asked, slamming my book shut and tossing it onto my desk.

Josh paced from one side of the room to the other a few times before responding. “The school sent a note to Granny, told her that I’m going to be sent to a school for problem kids.”

“They said that?”

Josh nodded, “I got caught with Mr. Patterson’s missing billfold and a bag of weed.” I think I’m done for.”

My eyes went wide, “Weed?” Does Granny know?”

And there you have it. I think that was seven sentences. Hard to believe from that excerpt that it's sci fi, but it was a random passage. Every sentence can't have flubodium or cheetah robots. 


You know what, just because I'm tired, I figured I throw in a bonus piece... from the same portion of last fall's unnamed nano novel. This one is a fantasy:

          Jeb opened up the door and saw a workbench to his left, there was a bloody surgical tool next to Lem’s bag. It was dark inside and he couldn’t make out anything further due to the darkness. He heard shuffling.

          “Lem?” It’s me, Jeb. Are you in there?”

          Lem stepped out of the shadows and into the light shining in from the open barn door. He had blood on his hands, his clothes, even his face.

Lookie there, twice what you asked for.... wait, if you asked for nothing then it's probably closer to three times. Anyhow, I do enjoy talking about my own stuff, you'd think I'd do it more often.

And I appreciate Briane tagging me. I think I'll fall back on the old, "if you want to be tagged, then please consider it done, don't make me call you out," defense. 

News, Notes, and Nubbins

I had a great time with Ciara Night's blog hop yesterday. Many of the authors found their books. Please stop by her blog and find out how others did.

First Item: That's right. I won the crap out of Nano this year. I think that makes it lucky number 7 for me. I'd have to go back and look to be sure, but I think that's right.

It was the most difficult year to date for me. I chucked my outline a few paragraphs in and that made it tough. I managed to squeak into that glorious winner's circle by churning out many thousands of words in the final days. Take a look at the nifty nano word count stats below to glean what wisdom you can from my ordeal. As you can see I was behind the pace almost from the very beginning. Well, really I guess I fell off the wagon at around day 5. I nearly quit around day 20, but I decided that even if I didn't make it, I wasn't going to go out a quitter. So I plugged away and during the last week I think I hit a stride of sorts. I'm not quite halfway through the story and am definitely taking a few days to do other things before I start writing again.

Item 2: Dr Grumpy himself has decided to get into the whole blogfest thing. Not by merely participating of course, but by hosting one, he's giving out prizes and everything. Please stop by, say hello, and sign up. Let's see, I don't think he has an official linky thing up.So comment HERE and I'm sure you'll be counted as in the running.

That's real money that will be changing hands there folks, real money.

In case you're curious, and can't be bothered to check the link above, the blogfest is dedicated to Christmas. Wait, scratch that, Dr. Grumpy has a vendetta against that word. It's a blogfest dedicated to the holidays, specifically, the twelve things you most hate about the season.

I know, how can I possibly narrow it down to only twelve. Just kidding. It gives us all permission to vent a little about some of the more annoying aspects of the holiday season.

The Nubbins: Yes, just one last thing. I've put off a lot of stuff over the past month, and will be feverishly working on some of the things I've put off doing over the next few weeks. So everyone, if you're waiting on me to do something that I've promised I was going to do. I'll be getting my butt in gear in December.

I'm Trying Real Hard...

... But stuff keeps happening in real life that tries to derail me from writing. I'm at around 42k words and am running out of time to get the word count I wanted to for the month, which I'm sure you've already guessed is 50k.

All the other novels I've ever written have been in the 60-70k range when done. Very short. This one is shaping up to be a much longer project. Hard to tell though, I may end up cutting a lot. But I'm thinking it will still be around 120k when done. Long by my standards. And I think at the upper limits of what any publisher would even look at for a paper book from a unknown author.

So, here's hoping I have a couple of days free of too many other distractions, because... damn... you just wouldn't believe the stuff that's been happening.

My Nano Disaster

A metaphor for my novel

That's a strong word - disaster. I'll just call it a bit of an oversight. You see, a large portion of what I thought was the plot for my current story is actually not a plot. Yeah, I know, a rookie mistake. I thought I had a this great meta-story and then this really good personal story to tell. You know, love and betrayal, all that.

Well, that meta-story is really more like a backdrop. You know, like WWII isn't a plot for most novels, it's something that's going in the background while the actual plot unfolds.

Oops.

I'm not writing a literary novel, and I don't think I can carry the story using just the love pentagon I've developed. Sigh. Problems problems.

Even when I take the day off work, Monday's still find a way to suck.

It Started Poorly Then Got Worse...

After yesterday's rant, I had the brief inkling to continue to air my grievances today, but thought better of it at the last moment. I've got a list of things that infuriate me about the world that's a mile long. I could post every day about it, but it makes me miserable. So instead, I figure I'd throw something out there about the state of my writing.

After the full manuscript of my novel was summarily rejected by one big time publisher, I queried a big six publisher and cringe at the crappy query I sent. Really should have proofread that one one more time Still waiting for that next rejection.

A Dead God's Wrath is still hanging around there in the ebook world. Sales to date look like this:

Kindle          Barnes & Noble          Smashwords
25                            6                             2

For a grand total of 33 copies. I'm still pretty pleased with it. I think most of the sales have been to people who stop by the blog on occasion. I do realize I'm a crappy marketer, and would probably do better if I forgot the whole blogging/twitter thing and just wrote more. But I kind of like where I'm at right now with that. I enjoy reading the blogs I follow and I think I write about as much as the family will allow.

I do think I'm going to try to put something else up for sale in an e-format soon. Probably. I'll give it a few weeks for certain, I was listening to a podcast tonight and I started really thinking about why I'm sitting on so much stuff, I have short stories (a few anyway), novels, all sorts of stuff that I've been sitting on for a long time. Most of those need some editing work, which I think is at the heart of why I've not already done that part, as I am not a huge fan of editing. For me it's the difference between designing race cars and being a mechanic. One is a dream come true and the other is what you have to do for the damn thing to work.

So I need to do a lot more of the mechanic type stuff for a while. When nano is over this year I'll dive right into that.

There has been some push back from a number of authors in regards to pricing, as that race to the bottom seems to have, well, bottomed out. First, I saw a very minor author (meaning, they have a small following of fans that will buy anything they produce) selling novellas for $2.99 and it surprised me. Then I heard an interview with another author, one that has no professional sales to their credit, that is selling short stories for $2.99 and doing so with no fanfare, several pen names (for different genres) and no marketing at all on their part, and selling in the hundreds of copies per month. The latter mentioned in the interview that they saw a bump in sales of one of their novels when they raised their novel price to around $5. The logic being that the perceived quality of the cheaper priced book was poor, but when the pricing got closer to what a reader would expect for a professional product then they were more likely to buy. Weird.

So, two instances don't equal a trend, but I'm thinking of playing with my pricing some. I don't think I could ever justify selling something like A Dead God's Wrath for $2.99, I don't think it holds that kind of value. But I also don't think I can really run an experiment with only one data point either. That brings me back to my need to have something else out there.

Anyway, I'm just thinking with my fingers at the moment, typing away, and avoiding working on my nano novel. My town constable has been attacked and carried off by an unnamed assailant. I suppose I should go back and write his death... or not. It's a plot twist I'm anxious to reveal. One of many. So much fun to be had there.

Well, Crap.

I had a brilliant post all planned out in my head for today, but it was going to take a bit of work and I forgot. As this nano thing is going in fits and starts and I've been getting behind during the week and trying to catch up on the weekends. Of course, this weekend didn't work out that way due to unavoidable surprises. But, like a sick patient, barely hanging in there on life support, my story had a blip of life as I was mired in the depths of my craptacular disaster of a novel. Yes, I had a moment, just a moment, where I felt like it might be salvageable. Big moment. As I mentioned before, my outline went out the window almost from the first paragraph. Probably because I didn't have faith in what I was supposed to write. But it looks like I'm essentially writing three interwoven stories.

 1) Abused wife finds out she has more power than she ever dreamed.

 2) Kid with an identity crises finds out he's a god, wait, maybe a demon. Whatever, either way, it doesn't help his self-confidence.

 3) Town constable finds out every person in the whole damn town is a liar.

 The part I do have worked out, more or less, is how these pieces intersect in the end. Thank goodness. I hope to actually write something entertaining at some point for this blog, but not today. It's Monday after all. I don't understand why we didn't name Monday after Satan. That feels right.

Memory Lane Continues!

Another doodle from work. I was too lazy to take out the rule lines on the notebook. Damn, does smoking ever not look cool? Yes, this is another recycled piece of something I'd already posted, but again. I'm pretty sure no one ever saw it the first time it went up.

I'm doing a fantasy novel for Nano this year, I'm thinking this is my obligatory wizard. The story so far, having a few issues. I'll try to get them all fixed over the weekend.

Well... That Sucked

As of this writing (Sunday), I'm way behind my writing goals. Namely my Nano plans. I had hoped to get a huge amount ahead early on during the month and coast through the rest of the month, but instead I got behind almost right off the bat. I've got a great idea for a novel that has been percolating for a while. I'd outlined it and once I started writing I got derailed right off the bat. Figures. Now I'm back to trying to figure out what I want to write as I write... I don't encourage that behavior. The big hope is that I'll write myself right back into my outline.

Still, it's fun, and I'm writing. I may be posting about my story for the next few weeks. Maybe make it a public brainstorming session. Maybe not. Just be prepared.

Nano update

Not going real well, I'm finding lots of things very distracting right now. Like, for example, the fact that I think I'm being featured at The Best of Everything blog today.

I need to stress that I only think I'm going to have something there today, as I tend to write these things in advance and you never know what might come up and make things go awry. Still, you should check out the site, I managed to reveal more of myself in that short interview than I ever have here, with nearly 200 blog posts under my belt.

Of course, if I'm not featured, check it out anyway.

A History of Me and Nanowrimo

It begins today. I didn't have my outline as fleshed out as I wanted to, but I got enough to at least start writing. I've been saying all along it's fantasy... really it's science fiction. But without me telling you that it's Sci Fi, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't know. As it's clearly fantasy. Well, that doesn't make a ton of sense, but I think my conceit is pretty clever. I won't give it away yet. As I want to pretend for a while that it's completely unique.

But I also realized that I've participated in several Nanos to date. I figured I'd recap previous years entries to see what I've done.

Year 1: James and Galfar: The Blutonian Death Egg. Yes, this book is my first ever Nano attempt. I had written several short stories before, but nothing serious. This was my first try at a novel. It was really, really bad. I had rants that went on for days. I had a kernel of a story I liked though. But I shelved this one, chalking it up for experience.

One sentence synopsis: An average guy ends up being humanity's ambassador to an alien race.

Year 2: The Alarming Alterity of James Coastsman. This was a sequel to the previous Nano. Even though I knew the previous year was chalked up as practice, I liked where I was going and so I wrote more. It was a much better attempt at a novel and I still really like it. I plan on revisiting this later this year.

One sentence synopsis: A new kid in school claims to have moved here straight from outer space.

Year 3: The Bleeted Undulations of an Aphasic Universe. This one was a framed novel. A present day story with a long novella length tale set about a hundred years ago within the larger story. I love the novella part, but not the modern day part. That's kind of a mess. I think I was trying a murder mystery, those things need more planning ahead of time. It might be salvageable, but I have no plans to try. Well, the novella will probably get recycled for something else.

One sentence synopsis: When a gas station attendant that runs a website dedicated to welcoming aliens to earth receives an artifact unlike anything he's ever seen, people start dying and he has to run for his life, all while trying to uncover the artifact's origins.

Year 4: The Blutonian Death Egg. I went back to year one's Nano and started over from scratch. This novel has been shopped around some without anyone showing any real interest. Although I continue to query.

One sentence synopsis: Twentysomething slacker and gifted codebreaker is drafted to take a top secret mission to discover the secret of an alien artifact that's been found near Earth's moon.

My personal life got a little crazy not too long after this and I didn't write for a couple of years. Well, I did write, but only short stories. So when I came back I decided I was going to really try to get something done and see if I can make this writing thing work. I'm still in the middle of that - I'll let you know how that goes.

Year 5: Crazy Shit with Space Aliens and Stuff: Yes, that is only a working title, I realize that it might need a bit of work. I wrote A Dead God's Wrath and another novella length piece set in the same universe. I even have a spreadsheet that details the history of the universe that I use as a guide. This one is set in the modern day and is probably the most fun I've had writing since I was much younger. Full of insane aliens and zombie attacks... as well as the possible end of all life on earth. I tried to raise the stakes here. Well, the end of all life on earth is something I've tried before. But this at least was more of an immediate threat. I really like the concept here, but this novel is pretty rough. It needs tons of work before I can start showing it to anyone.

Once sentence synopsis: When his grandfather dies, a man finds his grandfather was part of an ancient secret society that has vowed to protect the earth from an unnamed threat - that threat has now arrived.

Year 6: The Wizard's Secret. That brings us back to the present. This year is again, an attempt at fantasy. That medieval society with monsters and magic and all that. I've tried to spend some time doing some worldbuilding. I haven't got as much as the story plotted out as I meant to. Enough to get started I suppose, but not what I wanted.

One sentence synopsis: When Jeb flees his village and into the forbidden lands beyond he stumbles upon a dead wizard, and is now the only hope to save the world from an ancient evil.

And now you know. Wish me luck with this year.

A One Track Mind

How many times have I heard that phrase in my life? “You have a one track mind.”

Well, I do. I think might self-diagnose as borderline OCD. I have a tendency, once I start something, whether it be writing, drawing, playing music, whatever it is, to do it at the exclusion of everything else. And I mean everything.

Of course, much like Ben Franklin before me, I am a big believer in self-improvement. He famously had a list of things he wished to improve about himself. I can’t recall the chart he used, but I do remember the story he told about it. He was bragging about how he hoped to, one day, be the perfect human, and was proudly marking all his character flaws and personal shortcomings off his list as he finally defeated them. when a contemporary of his pointed out that he really needed to work on his humility, well, that was just one more challenge to conquer.

If I recall his diary correctly, after some time he remarked that he had finally mastered humility, or at least the appearance of it, which in his mind, was close enough. He proudly wrote that he no longer shouted down men who approached him at gatherings as being morons, despite the fact that they clearly were. Nor would he talk over his compatriots when he realized they were blathering on about something stupid. Yes, he’d finally mastered it.

I’m not entirely sure if that applies to what I was going to make here, but that is a story that bears repeating, even if it doesn’t fit in with my larger point. Which is: I’m really obsessive.

Part of the inspiration for me coming out with that is because it’s NaNoWriMo time again. Twitter is full of it, I’ve seen several blogs mentioning its approach, and it’s been on my mind. Turns out, I need Nano to keep me sane.

You see, when I wrote my first novel, I wrote the first draft in a little more than a week. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, I didn’t eat, sleep, or even go to work. That didn’t really bother me, as I’ve always been that way. When I used to dream of being an artist, I would draw for entire weekends, huddled in my bedroom closet, producing page after page of adolescent scribbles, mostly barbarians cutting the heads off of dinosaurs. The perfectionist in me would invariably throw every single drawing in the trash upon completion. I have very little artwork from my childhood remaining.

The point is that I find it unimaginably annoying when I’m working on something, and I mean something that is important to me, and I have to stop. That’s why I don’t like writing over a long period of time. I have become better at it, writing the novella I finished recently over a period of about a month. But I want to come home on a Friday evening, lock myself away, and write until Monday morning when I have to go to work, assuming of course that I'm finished by then.

Being a grownup has meant that sort of behavior is frowned upon. My wife sure doesn’t appreciate it. My kid probably doesn’t dig it too much either. So I find I put off doing a lot of stuff I want to do, because until I can really commit to it, I don’t want to start.

NaNoWriMo is like Ben Franklin’s self-improvement list for me. It tells me I can write until I get 1667 words done, then I can stop. I may do more, should the mood strike, but I don’t have to write until I collapse. It’s a means of self-improvement. It’s funny, and like Andrew said in his last post, it’s really a game you play with yourself to get things done, and in my case, an excuse to stop.  I can get lost in my head sometimes, this year, I have plans to dabble in the realm of fantasy for my nano novel. I’ve never written a fantasy book before, but after I reviewed what I’d read so far this year, I realized I must have read more than a dozen fantasy novels. It wasn’t that long ago that I ranted on this blog about how much I hated the genre, looks like I’ve kinda come around.

What do you want to bet that means the whole genre is about to crash?

So, everyone get geared up, I may be doing a few nano related posts – maybe not, but I’m just laying down the groundwork so there is no surprises later.

Nano: Day 30... oh crap.

After slogging through 30 days of writing, thinking about writing, dreaming about writing, talking about writing and complaining about writing, the month is finally drawing to a close. Where did all that time go?

I managed to annoy my wife to no end, use up all my vacation at work (no Christmas time off now), and piss off my children by ignoring them. Hell, I'm pretty sure my dog is mad at me (I got her a rawhide last night, I think we're cool now). Was it worth it? Check this out:

I'm pretty sure my family would agree. It's awesome, and therefore I am awesome.

In case anyone is interested it the boring details: I think I've made it known so much in the past here that it does no good to bother repeating it, but I love science fiction. So when I start to write I always will have a science fiction(ish) story to tell. I don't think I'm capable of anything else.

A quick synopsis of this years Nano novel: A guy has no idea what is happening, but things just seem mysterious. So he wonders around the city commenting to himself about how mysteriously creepy everything is. Then aliens, zombies and sociopaths just start crawling out of the woodwork. He then proceeds to defeat them.

I know what you must be thinking. Wow. But believe me, if it were really as awesome as it sounds I would be living in a tropical paradise drinking the fruity alcohol of the natives and smoking cigars that were lit with my discarded one-hundred dollar bills.

I'm being written out of your novel? 

If my previous attempts at revising a novel hold true then by the time I'm through with a second draft the story will be about a homosexual alcoholic that moves to a country town and battles prejudice, all while mending his relationship with his estranged father.

Then, before it's over, the main character will become a 9 year-old girl who gets lost at the circus and befriends a chimpanzee. Together they track down a pair of jewel thieves and decide to open a detective agency.

The point being that in order to make this disaster I have in my hands now into a real story I still have a lot of work to do. I love writing a first draft. That part is fun. I can do whatever I want and not worry about it making sense, it's the 7 year-old in me that gets to come out and play.

I'll maintain my excitement for a few weeks and then I'll start that ugly process of trying to mold it into a real story. It'll sap my will to live and I'll give up.

But I don't want to give up this time. That stack of manuscripts in my closest has gotten big enough. Maybe it's time I finish something.

Nano: Day 26

Well, I've only 4 writing days left and I'm about 6k behind schedule. By the end of the day I think I'll be about 2 - 3k behind where I want to be. Funny though, in years past to fall behind wasn't too worrisome because I could pump out 5k words in a couple of hours if I wanted.

Now days, not so much. I think what I write is more readable now certainly, but it ain't fast. I figure that going so long without writing anything at all has dulled my skills somewhat, but also I have found that it takes some effort for me to figure out what happens next.

And that is my real frustration, in my younger days of writing I had the opposite problem, stuff was happening all over the place and I had to reel it in a bit to avoid overwhelming things. Now it isn't unusual for everyone, good guys, bad guys, folks in between, to all stop and use the restroom, eat, take a nap. Whatever they need to do, they do.

I'm sure that it has much to do with how much of my day to day existence boils down to my desire to do those sorts of things. It wasn't that long ago that staying up all night, going straight to work and then back out again afterwards wasn't too abnormal for me. Now, as soon as it hits 8:30 I'm wondering if I took my pills or not.

Oh the woes of a thirtysomething.

So, I've complained about my lack of advanced plotting already and I won't rehash it here again. But I feel that I've changed in the past few years. I'm just not the person I was not so long ago. I would like to say that I'm better all around, but I feel more like if I could have looked at myself a few years ago and seen who I am now I would be a bit disappointed.

C'mon self, be cooler. Write better. Nothing like Nanowrimo to take my soul and crush it.

Sigh.

Til next time.

Nano: Day 22

Wow. Hard to believe the month is nearly over. I've enjoyed this year of Nano, as I always do. However, I have been close to 10,000 words behind schedule it seems from the very beginning. I just hit the halfway mark last night, two-thirds of the way through the month. Looks like I'll have a busy week ahead of me if I want to finish.

I would like to think that despite my chaotic process for writing that I've finally hit my stride. Unfortunately, that would be a lie. I'm still struggling to figure out what my story really is about and am constantly having my characters stop what their doing and ask one another what's going on.

So I send in a bad guy to shake things up, whip out a gun and start shooting things up. That'll really jump start my story, right? Nope, my characters simply cajole him into joining them all for tea and then asking him why he is trying to kill them. He drinks the tea and grumbles nonsensical answers about an employer and then they all talk amongst themselves some more.

And it goes on and on and on. Page after page of stuff like that. I can smell my Hugo award already. So I promise myself that in the future I will have my story plotted out BEFORE I write it... if that fails I will at least have a premise.

Of course, if having a premise seems too difficult for me then I will, if nothing else, at the very least, have something that resembles a romantic interest. Then I can whip up some tension or love triangle or... or something that would at least be entertaining to write.

Wish me luck.

Nano: Day 1

November is National Novel Writing Month. Or, NanoWriMo for short. I love this time of year, it seems to be the only time I ever buckle down and make an effort to really produce something. After taking last year off, I was bound and determined that this year was going to be a really good one for me.

I succeeded in finishing in 05, 06, 07, and 08. None of those novels are quite ready for publication as of yet. Although I feel the 06 version was about as inspired as anything I've ever managed to do. But I haven't really written anything of substance in quite some time. I've edited some old stuff, written a short story or two, but otherwise, the past two years have been really sparse.

One thing I've always lacked though, is a tightly plotted story, I've felt that my past writing, no matter what it was about, has been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of thing. Again, when inspired, it can be a thing of beauty. But it can be a messy process. This year I had hoped to have detailed outlines and character bios ready to go.

No such luck. I don't know how a day can really sneak up on someone, but today did sneak up on me. I have nothing more than a desire to make it happen. Sigh.

I did manage to crank out a few thousand words. But I don't think I've often written crap like I did today. I hope the ol' inspiration bug hits soon. Many more days like this and I'll be hitting delete pretty quick on this year. I just gotta hang in there.