Living the Fictional Dream

The NaNoing is still going well. I’ve actually been on quota or ahead for most of this week. It’s been a new and crazy feeling for me. I’m usually behind all month, and then pull it out with 7K weekends/holidays at the end of the month. It’s been fairly exciting to be ahead of the game. It sure would be nice to win one of those gift cards my writing group is awarding to the first two members to 25K.

Today I am slightly behind quota again. Wednesdays just are not conducive to writing time, what with watching kids in the church nursery. I don’t get home until way after 9 p.m. most Wednesdays, and I’m way too tired to do much more than watch TV or read. However, with today’s double-header write-ins (lunch and dinner), I think I’ll have no trouble catching back up, or at least getting close.

I’m still liking where my novel is going, but I’ve hit another rough patch. There are plot elements that I know need to happen, but we need some character development between here and there. For some reason, that has been difficult to push through. I’m not sure my characters are ringing quite true enough… But that’s what revisions are for! It’s weird, though — usually I’m all about character development and not about plot. This is a switch.

I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I don’t really write polished first drafts. I wish I did. Some people really do, which makes me jealous. I’ve critted a lot of first drafts that, while still needing a light polish, are really well put together. I have to get the whole glut of words down on the page, work the story down that way. When I’m in the midst of the flush of muse, I can’t stop to worry about if I used the word “looked” when I could have used something more interesting like “glared” or “glanced,” if I told instead of showed, etc. If I stop to do all that, I’ll never finish the story. The stories I send to my writing group are usually at least the second draft, if not the third.

But, all writers are different, and I do like my finished product — it’s starting to make sense to me why I’ve not yet completed a novel revision, though. With such a lengthy revision process, it’s so much more satisfying to stick to the short stories. I can actually get them finished in a timely fashion.

My hope is, though, that this novel won’t require a total rewrite like my other two do. If the plot works and all it needs is good smoothing out, maybe actually finishing novel revisions is something I can do this time!

While at the cabin this weekend, I typed my fingers to the bone and ended up on quota for NaNo for the first time this month. This is a first, actually — I’m the queen of dragging behind all month and then pulling off a miracle on Thanksgiving weekend. However, I have a feeling I’m going to lose that status today unless I force myself to sit down and write another 1200 words. I wrote some in the car on the way back, but I hit one of those moments where I’m not sure what should happen next, and it caused a bit of a lag.

I’m not worried, though. NaNo is what it is — it’s all about the end of the month, not the daily word count (in regards to winning). In the end, though, it’s the finished product that counts the most.

Checked my email when we got back this afternoon and found two more rejection letters. I don’t think I’m ever going to make it onto one of those fiction podcasts. I’ve been sending them reprints, but none have stuck so far. However, you never know, so I will keep trying.

Now, I have to run. My dog is waiting for me to pick her up from her hair cut. I can’t wait to see her with those little bows in her ears. She always gets them out right away, but they are so cute while they are there. Sometimes, when she has them on, she gives me this expression that says, “Must you?” It’s the same expression she gives me when I make her wear a Christmas hat for our annual Christmas card photo.

After the write-in tonight (where I finally broke 8,000 words, yeah!), I opened up my email account to find an acceptance letter. What a nice thing to hear in the midst of all this NaNo-ing. I’m at that point in my novel where I hate it, so a validation of my writing skills is very refreshing.

Every Day Fiction is going to publish my story, “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight.” Of course, y’all will be the first ones to know when the publication date is set. I wonder if it will appear in December, or if I will have to wait until 2009.

Hmm… I only have one story left in the EDF submission queue. I might have to remedy that. Though… I don’t know when I’ll have the time with all this novelling. Writing for length is such a different mindset than writing for writing flash.

And, speaking of NaNo (as always these days), I’d better go… I might be able to get a few hundred more words before bedtime!

Sorry if I’ve been neglecting the blog lately — one of the hazards of NaNo, I fear. My novel is progressing OK so far… I’m in that early stage of semi-hating it, but that’s not the story’s fault. The plot hasn’t actually fallen apart or anything, so I think we’re still good. I’m just about about 6K, so under quota, but I have two write-ins today, and I’m looking forward to a day off tomorrow and then a weekend at the cabin (no Internet!), so much progress should be made. (And, if the plot is going to fall apart, well, I should know by the end of the weekend!)

Work is gearing up again. Only two projects left for the year, both that should be more update than writing new stuff. But we’ll see. With the holidays coming, I have to get into high gear on those or they won’t be out by year-end.

I proofed the .pdf pages for my story in the EDF anthology today. I always love doing that — there is something about looking over proof pages that makes a publication so real!

EDF sister site, Every Day Poets, has been interesting since it’s 11/1 launch. I’ve been checking in on the poems fairly regularly. Some I’ve really liked (”School Uniform”!), and some, not as much. But that’s true of any publication. Poetry is always a little harder for me to wrap my prose-bound mind around, but sometimes a poem will just click.

All right… enough babbling for today. I have work to do, and then a write-in to prep for.

Happy writing, everyone!

It’s the second day of NaNo, and I’m moving forward slowly but surely. I’m just shy of 3,000 words right now, but I’m not worried. I always end up a little behind schedule at the beginning, but pick it up by the end. (In the years that I actually finished, anyway.) It’s easier to write at that frantic pace the closer I get to the end of the plot.

I have the basic idea of my novel’s plot in mind, but while writing I still have to fill in the small stuff. I could also really use a subplot. Right now, the main plot is about my heroine, but I’m thinking that I need at least a subplot for the male lead, too. Preferably something that would tie into her plot, at least thematically. And I need to figure out the specific ins and outs of the main plot — whodunnit and that sort of thing. Hopefully, it will all come together.

The thing about NaNo is that it’s quantity over quality. You rush to get the words on the page and the plot out there, without worrying as much about word choice, pretty sentences, and showing/not telling. It helps you to get around the internal editor (who can be stifling at times) and get to writing.

The problem is, it needs so much revision when you’re done. My goal this time is that I don’t want to have to rewrite the novel when I’m done. Revise, yes… but I’d like it to be plotted out enough that it doesn’t have to be a full-on rewrite to have it in a finished state. I think that’s been my downfall on my other two novels-in-progress.

The first one, I wrote when I was in high school. I still love it, and I’ve actually got all sorts of grand plans and schemes and dreams about how to fix it. My style has improved so much from those high school days. Back then, I was way too easy on my characters and didn’t understand craft like I do now. I’m sure in 10 years, I’ll think the same thing about what I’m writing today, but there you have it. Novel 1 (well, really it was novel 2, but the first one… no saving that sucker… it was just practice, notable only in that I actually wrote the whole thing) needs a total rewrite to fix the plot problems (which were extensive) and to improve the writing.

Novel 2 (my 2006 NaNo novel — the 2005 one was the one I never actually finished, even though I hit the 50,000 words) is the one that I realized halfway through should have been written in the first person. It was too late the change during NaNo, so that one requires a total rewrite, as well. Somehow, that one I’m just not as excited about. I like the concept, but getting back into it has proven difficult.

So, with this NaNo novel (assuming I finish it) I want to not need that total rewrite. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it, but maybe, if I can, I’ll have some revisions that are less mind-blowing than the ones for my previous novels. Perhaps, then, I would be more apt to actually get the novel through the revision process, which is where my previous novels have all bogged down.

November is here, and with it, National Novel Writing Month. I started my NaNo novel yesterday, and wrote 1,900 words. Just a bit ahead of quota. Of course, I have to write another 1,667 every day if I’m going to stay on quota. Just 29 days to go.

Good luck all you other WriMos out there!

I just got home from my writing group’s NaNo kick-off party. It was such a blast. We had it at Kevin’s house, which he’s been fixing up and now it looks awesome. The party was preceded by a write-in, during which, though I was late to due to waiting on the cable man, I managed to complete my homework assignment for the next writing group meeting (writing a paragraph summary/back cover copy style paragraph about my potential NaNo novel). Whew! So that’s out of the way.

We had a great potluck dinner with fantabulous food, too.

But, my favorite part of the evening was our now two-year tradition of playing what we call NaNo Balderdash. Basically, group members contribute people, places, and things from their potential NaNo novels (or any story they’ve written, really), and then we use them for game play.

If you’ve never played Balderdash, it’s great fun! Especially if you’re a writer. The game gives you names, dates, little known vocabulary words, etc., and you have to make up something that describes the clue (March 2, 1837 — The date shoelaces were invented). Then everyone votes for the one they think is correct, and you get points based on how many people vote for what you wrote.

The game is even more fun, IMO, when we’re making up aliases and happenings for the writing group’s characters and fictional happenings.

Though, lately, I’ve come to think that putting your own twist on a game is even more fun than playing by the rules. The past few months at game nights we’ve been playing the game Loaded Questions, but we make up our own questions. (In that one, everyone answers a question like “If you had a superpower, what would it be?” and one person has to guess who wrote which answer.) Made-up Word Scrabble is also fun, though we didn’t have time for that tonight — in that one, you make up the words/spellings with the tiles you have in your rack, but you have to make up a definition for whatever “word” you come up with.

It wouldn’t work for all games… Settlers of Catan, Shadows over Camelot, etc., wouldn’t be as fun if you made up rules. But it totally works for all those group party games.

Well, I guess that’s it for now. Time for me to quit rambling and head for bed! I hope  everyone has a really good Monday!

This weekend, my writing group is having its NaNoWriMo kick-off party. There is an official DFW kick-off (which I would have enjoyed attending, had my schedule permitted), but every year I really look forward to the group’s own event. It’s fun to relax and brainstorm with a group of friends, and we play games like made-up word Scrabble (the most fun part is defining your made up words!) and NaNo Balderdash (using clues from our novels or stories-in-progress).

Throughout November, we’ll also be having write-ins several times a week. They are open to any DFW Wrimo who wants to join us, but at least the group will have each other to write with. There is something about that creative air at a write-in… it’s inspiring. And word wars (who can write the most words in 5 minutes) are hilarious (unless you get hit in the head with a Snickers bar, which did happen once, though I can’t remember now why we were throwing candy).

Even if I weren’t doing NaNo this year, I would still love our group’s kick-off and the weekly write-ins. They are a great time to spend together and to get writing done. I know some people probably find write-ins more inspiring to chatting than writing, but I love that they are a dedicated time where I know I will be working on whatever project is on my mind. It’s hard, sometimes, to carve out that writing time when you’re at home, and there are always good shows on TV, good books to read, laundry or cleaning to do, etc. A write-in is an event, and that helps me give writing a priority.

Hello, fellow writers and other assorted readers!

Is it just me, or has it been really quiet around the blog-o-sphere lately? Perhaps everyone is madly preparing for NaNoWriMo and too busy for much else? I hope it’s not that everyone else is as work-crazed as I have been of late. I don’t want to get into the work thing too much on this blog, but suffice to say that the fall is our busiest time (gotta get those manuals out by year-end!), and every deadline I meet has another one right behind it.

The nice thing about fall has been the weather these past few weeks. If everyone else has been having the same great weather Fort Worth’s been having, I would highly recommend leaving the computer and enjoying the cool breezes and sunshine. It’s been such a relief after those 100+ tempertures that accompany a Texas summer. This morning was the first one that was positively chilly outside. I pulled my favorite boots and turtleneck out of the closet with glee, as I haven’t been able to wear them since last summer.

My lack of time for writing lately has given me fewer ideas for blog topics lately. I did notice last night that I have stories out at 16 locations on submission. I think that’s a good total. Maybe a few of them will bring home an acceptance! I think the creative part of my brain is taking a rest before NaNo madness — I can’t believe that Saturday will begin the one-week countdown!

Well, I suppose I’d better quit babbling for now. I hope all is well for everyone out there, and that you are enjoying a beautiful autumn thus far!

I’ve been a busy writing beaver lately — sadly, it’s all work writing, not fiction writing. Hopefully, that will change once the big deadline this Friday is met.

I’ve been wishing I could chuck it all right now and whisk my husband and I off for a beach vacation — either S. Padre Island or maybe the Outerbanks in NC. **wistful sigh** Sadly, busy season deadlines wouldn’t allow it. And, even if they did, it would take all my vacation and leave none for Christmas.

I’m getting excited about November. My writing group is planning tons of write-ins, which always rock. Even the year I didn’t write a NaNo novel, I still got tons of writing done in November. It’s a great time to challenge yourself to write more, no matter what you’re writing.

Well, I should stop avoiding those governmental financial statements. The life of a technical writer is such that the day-to-day writing/updating is on boring topics (my particular line is products for CPAs), but it still must be done. At least I’m on the last big update of this product, and this it’s on to the 1065 tax return project. The plus side of the boring subjects is that a gripping plot or witty sentences don’t distract me from doing my job!