YBPC?

Good news and bad news -Days 13 and 14

2005-11-14T23:47:00.000-05:00

First, the bad news. Sunday was the third awful writing day I have had this week. After having managed to write absolutely NOTHING on Thursday, then following that up with a whopping 457 words on Friday, I managed (drum roll, please)...341 words on Sunday. Do I rock or what?!! So, here are my stats after that pathetic performance.

Daily Word Count: 341
Total Word Count: 18,366
Words behind: 3,305
Completed: 36.7%

Now for the good news. I kicked ass today. Took some time off work and caught up. I fell a little short of my goal for the day, but that's OK, I'm back on track.

Daily Word Count: 6,041
Total Word Count: 24,407
Words Ahead (not behind, ahead!): 1,069
Completed: 48.8%

Day 12

2005-11-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I am still playing catch up, but today helped. Had a good day in terms of word count, and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of getting the story transitioned to the middle half. My wife took the kids shopping with her a couple different times today, and watched movies with them tonight. So I pretty much had free rein to spend as much of the day writing as I wanted.
Anyway, I'm still behind, but not as far behind as I was yesterday. If I don't make my goal of 25,000 words by the end of the weekend, I hope to at least get close.

Daily Word Count: 2,846
Total Word Count: 18,025
Words Behind: 1,979
Completed: 36.1%

Ouch. Days 10 & 11

2005-11-12T15:15:00.000-05:00

Not much to be said about Thursday and Friday, except that there was very little writing done. Over the course of the two days, I only wrote at lunch on Thursdsay. To make matters worse, the Springsteen concert last night was awful. Well, it wasn't really awful, it was just...boring. It was solo accoustic show. The audience was very quiet, except when Bruce Hornsby joined him for a song. I might have enjoyed it more if I'd taken my wife and another couple. But going with three buddies didn't work. We actually left early and went and had a few drinks. What really pisses me off is that fact that I didn't enjoy the concert leads me to view the whole experience as nothing more than lost writing time. I've got a lot of catching up to do today. I am, at least, off to a good start.

Daily Word Count (Day 10): 457
Daily Word Count (Day 11): 0
Total Word Count: 15,179
Words Behind: 3,158
Completed: 30.4%

Day 9

2005-11-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

Good day today in terms of word count, but I am still anxious to move the story along. One side effect of the decision I made a few days ago to alter the storyline is that I am a little thrown off in terms of transition. Based on word count and number of chapters, I should be transitioning to the middle half of the book, which I am not. I have to keep reminding myself that the first couple of chapters I wrote will actually move to the middle half when I go back and edit. So realistically, I still have a couple of chapters to work with before I have to make the transition. Which brings me two the second side effect of the change. Coming into this, with the original storyline, I knew what all my major transitions were. Now, I'm not a hundred percent clear on what "event" will precipitate the transition from Part I to Part II. Guess I'll just have to give that little detail some thought now, won't I!

Daily Word Count: 2,037
Total Word Count: 14,722
Words Behind: 281
Completed: 29.4%

Days 7 & 8

2005-11-09T16:50:00.000-05:00

Day 7 was most memorable for the fact that I fell behind in word count for the first time. I only wrote at lunch, and managed just 537 words. I had a much better day yesterday. I'm still behind, but I made up a little ground , and at least managed my daily quota. I have already managed to get some writing in today, but I will cover that in a separate post tonight.

Despite the fact that the words are coming, I still feel like I am in a bit of a rut. I think it's because I am a little anxious to get the story moving in a particular direction, but I'm having to do quite a bit to set the stage. Oh well, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Or is that an oncoming train?

Daily Word Count (Day 7): 537
Daily Word Count (Day 8): 1,743
Total Word Count: 12,685
Words Behind: 651
Completed: 25.4%

The weekend - Days 5 & 6

2005-11-06T22:20:00.000-05:00

Dilemma solved. I decided to go with what felt right and make the change. I will be able to use most of what I already wrote - it will just come later in the book. I will deal with all of that in the editing phase, AFTER NaNoWriMo is over! Not a great word count this weekend - but given that we had a birthday party for my daughter on Saturday, I had my football pool duties this morning and my sister-in-law and her husband were over for dinner tonight (not to mention mowing the lawn, etc., etc.) - I think I did pretty well. Anyway, I am much happier with the direction I am taking the story, and the words are flowing much more easily.

Weekend Word Count: 2,889
Total Word Count: 10,405
Completed: 20.8%

Day four dilemma

2005-11-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

Let's dispense with word count first. Only 857 words today, but I feel great about it. The only writing I did today was at lunch, and it came easily. In fact, I feel better about what I wrote this afternoon than anything else I have written to this point. And the fact is, I really didn't expect much of a word count today. I had a few drinks with the neighbors, watched a little tv - basically acted like a normal person tonight. Besides, I am counting on a good word count this weekend.

So what's the dilemma? Well, the scene I wrote today was back story. It was about how my main character got into the business he is in. It was my most fluid writing to date, and the further I got into the scene, the more I kept thinking that this shouldn't be back story, this should be THE story. This should be where I am starting the novel, as opposed to being a setup scene in chapter 3. And I could make that happen without changing the plot too much. The only real change would be my vision of the main character. I had conceived the storyline, in part, around the notion that he had been in this particular line of work for a long time (about ten years), and had grown cold and callous about the nature of the work he did. My thought was that the length and depth of his commitment to his work would make his struggle to redeem himself from it all the more interesting. And that single thought is the only thing holding me back from making the change.

So, I'm letting things rest where they are for the night, I'm sleeping on it, and I will take my chosen direction in the morning! Stay tuned!

Daily Word Count: 857
Total Word Count: 7,516
Completed: 15%

Day three

2005-11-03T23:47:00.000-05:00

REALLY struggled today. After I had gone to bed last night, I came up with some language that I really liked for a particular scene I had in mind. I wrote it at lunch today, a little over 500 words, and felt pretty good about it. But I was writing complete garbage for most of the night tonight. I didn't like what I was writing and felt like I was getting away from the plot a little. Finally, just a little while ago, I started on something that I felt good about and got into a bit of a groove. Now I'm just tired, so I will just have to hope that I can pick up on that groove again tomorrow. I really can't afford to fall behind, and on only the third day I have established a pattern of regularly declining word count!

Daily Word Count: 1,353
Total Word Count: 6,659
Completed: 13.3%

Day two

2005-11-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

I had a long day at work, and my wife had an early flight to Tampa - so I had to get the kids ready in the morning, make them dinner tonight, etc. Not a big deal in and of itself - just made for a longer day than usual, particulary when you are trying to write a novel in thirty days! I was able to close my office door for about twenty minutes or so during lunch today and write about 400 words. And my wife's trip was an up-and-back, so she was home by 7:30pm, which gave me some writing time tonight. I didn't get as much written as I should have, but I guess some progress is better than none. Very tired. Going to bed.

Daily Word Count: 1,525
Total Word Count: 5,306
Completed: 10.6%

One day down, twenty-nine to go...

2005-11-01T22:37:00.000-05:00

Well, Day 1 is over - for me, anyway! My current word count is 3,781. The way I figure it, that earns me a day off at some point. Fifty thousand words in thirty days breaks down to 1,667 words a day. Having more than doubled the minimum daily word count, I can, in theory, skip a day at some point. It probably won't happen, because I suspect that the words will be harder to come by the further into the novel I get - so I will likely need a few more days like today just to stay afloat. But hey, so far so good!

Daily Word Count: 3,781
Total Word Count: 3,781
Completed: 7.5%

Gimme a break!

2005-10-29T11:32:00.000-04:00

I woke up at about 1:30am with pain shooting through my left shoulder, my neck and the upper left quadrant of my back. I slept uncomfortably, when I slept at all, for the rest of the night. The pain wasn't the only thing keeping me awake, as I also found myself hounded by the nightmarish thought "How will this impact my ability to compete in NaNoWriMo?" Simply put, it won't. I won't let it. I've had back pain before - albeit not in such an odd, inconvenient location - and it typically lasts a maximum of four days. So, I'll just suck it up. Besides, I'm not really having any trouble typing this blog entry - just some mild discomfort - so I still expect miraculous feats of astounding word count commencing on November 1st!

Software

The prospect of using Microsoft Word to pound out my masterpiece just didn't appeal to me, so I went in search of a writing program that suited my needs. I found some great posts in the NaNo Technology section of the NaNoWriMo Forums. There were several alternatives to Word discussed - RoughDraft, yWriter and Jer's Novel Writer among them. Each program has certain features that are helpful for novel writing, and they can all be downloaded for free. Jer's Novel Writer sounds appealing, but is not an option for me, as it is a Mac program. Both RoughDraft and yWriter have a lot of support on the NaNo Forums, but RoughDraft seems to be the most popular. I downloaded both programs a couple of weeks ago and began tinkering with them to see which I preferred. yWriter is definitely the application for me. There is nothing wrong with RoughDraft, I just found yWriter to be better suited to novel writing, and the vagaries thereof. It has a great outline feature that will create the corresponding chapter and scene files when you have completed it. It also has a place to do character bios. Importantly for NaNo, it has a nice word count feature as well. I found some features to be less than useful - such as the ability to rank the importance, quality and humor of a scene on a scale of one to five - but such features can be ignored, and shouldn't be held against this otherwise fine program.

One thing that surprised me in perusing the NaNo Technology Forum was the fact that no one mentioned any of the supposedly "professional" novel writing software packages like DramaticaPro. Having never used it, I don't know if the lack of mention stems from the cost (around $200), a preceived lack of value as a novel writing application, or possibly the fact that NaNo has kind of an underground vibe to it. I suspect that spending a lot of money on a fancy schmancy piece of software can do a lot to dampen one's feeling of being part of an underground movement.

Progress

Not much. I didn't finish, or even work on, my character bios yesterday. I hope to accomplish that today. I have also made a significant story change that I need to reflect in the outline. I had successfully outlined the first and last quarters of the novel, but was struggling with the middle half (I'm going with a three section, 25%, 50%, 25%, breakdown). I came up with a new conflict that I think will work nicely in the first section, which allows me to transition the bulk of the original Section One conflict to Section Two, where I think I can get a lot of mileage out of it. Crap, I have a lot to do! Gotta run!

Am I really doing this?

2005-10-26T23:20:00.000-04:00

Well, I think I am really doing this. "This," of course, is NaNoWriMo 2005. Duh! Oh, never heard of it? Neither had I, until a couple of weeks ago. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. You can check out the details on the website at http://www.nanowrimo.org/, but the basic idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Crazy? Maybe. But it sounds like a helluva lot of fun. And it may be just the kick in the ass I need to write one of the novels that have been floating around in my head for years.
So, how did I find out about NaNoWriMo? Well...

It was a dark and stormy night in mid-September, when suddenly, my life changed forever. The FedEx guy delivered my iPod Nano. My wife has an mp3 player, and I had used it once or twice. But this, this was different. I had been waiting for a player that suited me, ultra-compact design coupled with plenty of storage and good sound quality. In preparation for its arrival, I had loaded all my cd's into iTunes on my desktop. When I started messing around with iTunes, I discovered that I could download audiobooks onto the Nano. Then I discovered that there was a little gadget that would allow me to listen to the Nano in my car.
But it was what happened next that lead me to NaNoWriMo 2005. I heard about podcasts. Podcasts? What the hell are podcasts? Initially, I couldn't have cared less. But eventually, my curiosity got the better of me. A friend sent me a link to a Yahoo! podcasting site, then I started looking on iTunes, Podcast Alley, and several other sites. I started searching for podcasts about writing, and came across a couple that looked promising.
I started with Mur Lafferty's "I Should Be Writing" and Michael Stackpole's "The Secrets". If you are into writing, I highly recommend both podcasts. I was listening to Mur's podcast in my car when she mentioned NaNoWriMo. I looked up the site as soon as I got to work, and the rest is history! I have written most of my outline and will finish my character bios by Friday. Come 12:01am on November 1st, the writing begins!
Initially, I intend to use this blog to share my NaNoWriMo experience. From there, who knows?

Note to self - don't mention the iPod Nano and NaNoWriMo in the same post again, it prevents my lazy ass from abbreviating NaNoWriMo to NaNo without causing unnecessary confusion!

My ass, circa 1967

2005-10-26T22:32:00.000-04:00

My ass, circa 1967.