Villain Work

I'm within three chapters of finishing my first draft (and they aren't even big chapters) but I've been fighting and fighting with them and recently realized that I can't write them without believing in my present bad guy more than I do.

So I'm backing off from the chapters and doing some villain work.

The villain is the main problem I'm facing, but working on him also made me realize that I need to make some other characters in the book less pleasant--there are too many nice people right now. I think this is a result of me being in my winter mode and wishfully writing what I'd like to be surrounded by, as though crafting nasty characters is just too hard for my brain in the midst of the dark and cold days.  I can imagine a sunny, warm day, sitting out on the deck and having a great time writing a really despicable character. But right now, when I feel the world is not an overly easy place to live in I'm doing a much better job crafting the kind characters--I've developed a sibling relationship that was a little thin and have filled in some of the (pleasant) background characters. But if I want to finish the draft, I'm going to have to get over the niceness hump* and write the meanies.

So I went out and bought a bag full of out-of-season non-local fruit: strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and kiwis. Maybe I can trick my brain into summer mode for a short while, just long enough for me to crank out some really nasty characters to make my book more interesting.

And if you have any great villains you think I should keep in mind, please let me know!

*The niceness thing does not apply to me. I am not nice to be around now. In fact the best I can do is resolve not to be as unpleasant this February as I was last year. That's hard enough.

December catch up

Just a little update for those who still check in here. As you may have noticed, blog posts have been scarce of late. I blame that on the 1600+ words I've been churning out for the 1st draft of the novel. By the end of my fiction writing I'm so sick of sitting still (and my wrists hurt) that even if I have an idea for a blog post, I'm too wiped to write it. So here are a few miscellaneous things that I've been meaning to post:

I finished NaNoWriMo! Unfortunately 50,000 words only took me to just past the half-way point in my novel so I'm trying to keep up the momentum. December is harder than November as far as making the time to write. I'm giving myself a break and not expecting any writing on the weekends--it's just too crazy.  But I've managed to add a little more than 15,000 words since the end of NaNoWriMo. I'm approaching the end of part 3 (of 4) so that feels good, though I'm thinking I probably won't be able to finish the draft before the New Year. The kids get out of school next week and finding time to write will become even more challenging.  

Gift/book wise: I'm giving a few family members The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell. Somehow I neglected to blog about it here but it was probably my favorite read of the year.

I have a hard time staying hydrated in the winter because drinking cold water when it's freezing flipping cold outside is something that I have to force myself to do. So lately I've been making an effort to make and consume the following two hot, non-caffeinated beverages. The first I call
Winter Comfort:  Make a half a mug of strong peppermint tea--let it steep for about 10 minutes. Then glug in vanilla soy milk to the top of the mug and nuke until the whole thing is warm. I know, it sounds kind of disgusting, but I really love it.

The second is Cheaper than Sweetwaters' Lemon-Ginger Tea: Put about 5-6 cups of water in a pot. Take a piece of ginger root, about 2 inches long, and slice crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces (no need to peel it). Chuck the pieces in the pot. Dump about 1 T of powdered ginger in there too (more if you really love the ginger burn). Then bring to a boil, cover and simmer for a few hours. Stir in the juice of 2 lemons that you squeezed and about 1/2 cup of honey or sugar and stir until dissolved. Taste and adjust for your own sweet/sour preference. You can strain out the chunks of ginger and keep this in a jar in the fridge for a while. Then give it a shake (the powdered ginger settles to the bottom), pour in a mug and nuke until hot. It's also very nice to settle a tummy that may have overindulged in holiday treats.

Past the half way point

It's day 19 of NaNoWriMo and so far I've churned out 34,992 words. So I'm a little ahead of schedule with the word count though I'm only about a third of the way through my plot map. Since I know that what I've written will need to be tightened up, I'm not too bothered by the length though I will have to keep this momentum up after November 30th to get the first draft finished.

A few things I've discovered:

• I really like writing with a map. Whoa boy is it a different experience. Less choice is a good thing for me. It keeps me plugging through the hard parts and stops me from jumping ahead to the bits I know will be fun to write.
• My main character's mother is blind! And her father dies in the course of the book! I didn't know these things when I started writing, but that's the process of discovery.  As one writing site recommended (can't remember which one): it can be kind of fun to throw a whole lot of grief at your main character and see how they respond.
• I love Last FM. I don't think the interface or organization of the web site is as good as Pandora but the way it connects songs and groups is way more diverse. For example, if you are on Pandora and create an Iron and Wine station, be prepared to get swamped with Nick Drake and Bonnie Prince Billie. I like both, but not all the damn time. Last FM mixes in way more artists: Andrew Bird, Elliot Smith, Noah and the Whale, and plenty of other bands I've never heard of. I've been playing Last FM while I've been writing and it has proved to be a good way to keep me at the computer.
• The house is a sty, there are piles of mail that need to be sorted through and we keep running out of stuff like milk, bread and prescription meds. If I didn't have most of our bills set up for auto pay, we'd probably be getting threatening notices from utility companies. I'm barely remembering to get the laundry washed and dried and have had to tell everyone just to rummage around in the clean laundry pile to find what they need for the day because folding and putting it away isn't happening. But the kitties think the clothes pile new kitty bed is fantastic! Dinners of late have been mediocre at best. The thing that blows my mind is how people who work out of the house for 8+ hours a day get any of this stuff done. At least I can chuck in laundry and go back upstairs and write. 
• But hey, it feels good to be so jazzed with the writing that things that normally bug the crap out of me don't seem to matter.

Patterns/Maps/Plans (and the problems when you don't have one)

I've been feeling a little frantic lately. Halloween is approaching and I've been trying to figure out how to transform last year's bat costume into a dragon, for the girl critter. At least the wings are taken care of...but there's still a tail to construct and the pointy spikes along the spine to attach and part of me thinks it would probably be easier to start from scratch rather than trying to modify the old costume. Then I could go and buy a pattern and have someone else do the thinking part of how to craft it--all I'd have to do is follow the instructions. But the girl is rather attached to last year's costume (though won't be so easy going as to agree to be a bat again this year...) The boy critter wants to be an Ipod so that takes a big box and some time for him to trick it out--shouldn't be too big of a deal. But this week he also has his class Mythology Wax Museum and he chose to be Hermes, so we have to figure out how to make and stick some wings onto his sandals and on a hat, create a drapey toga thingy and a caduceus (thanks to the girl's reptile enthusiasm we have plenty of rubber snakes available).

I've also been preping like crazy for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm working on a new (NEW!) novel and, though I'm hesitant to curse it, the prep has been going really well. I'm not letting myself write any of it until I've created a really detailed plot map, including a chapter synopsis and scene by scene summaries. I got lost in the narrative of the last book and realized that once I'd generated enough text for a three volume series (and it still wasn't finished...) that I really shouldn't have been writing without a map. Maybe someday I'll have the patience and distance to be able to go back and force a form on that text, but for now I'm going to let it sit and start with a completely different mindset. I'm pretty excited about November starting--I feel like a dog that's been kept on a tight leash and on Monday I get let off of it to romp and play and write all the scenes and chapters I've planned.

Of course I am a little worried about the necessary time commitment and the way everything else in our lives will go to hell.

Which brings me to my kitchen.  Maybe because my brain has been so preoccupied with stitching and plotting, I haven't had much energy left over for dinner planning. So instead of feeling free in the kitchen, for the past week or two, I've felt really stressed. The farm share ended recently and while I still have a big box of winter squash and bags of sweet and regular potatoes to work through, the rest of my produce is now of my own choosing. It should be liberating, right? I can cook whatever I want! But it's a different sort of thinking and I've been overwhelmed by the liberty, so there's been a lot of 5pm grouchiness where I dig through the fridge and/or freezer trying to figure out what sort of slop to heave on the table and pass off as dinner, while the critters subtly hint (by gnawing on my ankle) that they expect to be fed soon.

It's not going to get better once November 1st rolls around and I put food (even) lower on the priority list while I try to churn out the book. So, this weekend I'm going to take a little break from my Scrivener plot mapping frenzy to put together a meal plan along with a shopping list (so I don't find myself tearing through the crisper drawers looking for the cilantro I forgot to buy).  I'm thinking of getting really regimented for the month of November--making Monday Slow Cooker night, Tuesday Pasta night, Wednesday Mexican night, Thursday Stir-Fry night and Friday Pizza night. I'll probably feel a little annoyed with how repetitious and rigid this plan is (and I know it would drive me to despair if I had to do this forever), but hey, for the next month I'm going to keep reminding myself that prose, not food is the priority. If I can follow the map in my novel, I should be able to follow the plan in my menu.

And hopefully, stay sort of sane-ish.

The creative schedule (and a biscotti recipe)

I've been having a really hard time getting into the writing groove after I shove the critters out the door wave fondly to my departing progeny. Being yelled at by two uncooperative beings who don't want to get up, don't want to get dressed, don't want to eat breakfast somehow ruins the mood for coherent, much less creative, thought. (Who'd of guessed?)

But for about the last week, my fiction ideas have been flowing fast and furious when I get up at 6 am. I used to read while I drank my coffee, taking 45 minutes or so for myself before the morning chaos began. But lately, I haven't been reading, I've been grabbing the laptop and pounding out what feels like really good plot solutions while I sip my black brew. But 45 minutes is not enough time--7 am comes around and I feel like I'm just getting going and that makes the process of bed-extraction and school-preparation even more unpleasant because it is tinged with resentment.

So what to do? Do I continue to return to the writing desk after the critter departure time and attempt to drag myself back to the ideas and inspiration that was flowing so well before all the morning stress and drama began? Or do I do something that sounds a little sick at first: get up at 5 am and add an hour to my creative me-time before anyone (except for the furry hair-balls) is conscious?

Yeah, it sounds kind of sick when I write it but I'm trying the 5 am thing. In my favor I have the fact that I'm a morning person. I won't be skipping down the stairs at 5 am, mind you, but I will adjust to and accept being awake at such an hour much better than my night-owl husband. But this creative schedule presents me with a problem: I still need to be functional in the afternoon and evening and I don't want to go to bed shortly after the bed-time critter-wrestling takes place.

I've decided to try a three fold approach: nap, tea and baked goods. I'm not much of a napper but I'm going to try and get myself to lie down and quiet my brain a little in the early afternoon before I have to collect the critters from their scholarly pursuits. I'll follow this forced break with supplemental caffeine consumption and a snack that might help provide enough sustenance to allow me to function (relatively) normally in the evenings.

The caffeine part I've got down: my sister got me hooked on a new tea supplier, The Tea Trekker. A pot of their Ceylon Fancy Silvertips tea should do the trick. The snack part just came to me as I was preparing for my Dad's 75th birthday this week. As a part of his birthday celebration he requested a batch of biscotti from a recipe my friend Lea gave me; I made these for him a couple of years ago and did not realize how much he liked them. Or maybe it's just that when you turn 75 you get a strong desire to break your teeth!

These are real biscotti, not the kind that have been prettied up with butter added to make the dough more tender. These babies are hard and substantial and, as I was making the recipe, contain a pretty good quantity of protein thanks to the copious quantity of almonds in there.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself snacking on the ends and crumbles of the batch I made for him with my cups of strong tea and I didn't have too much trouble functioning like a grownup that evening. So these babies are going into regular rotation in the baking plans--I might try and add some whole grain flours to the next batch to see if I can make them healthier.

Lea's Biscotti di Greve in Chianti (Orange-Flavored Almond Biscotti)

2 C all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 eggs and 1 yolk (reserve the egg white for an egg wash)
1 t vanilla
grated orange zest from 1 orange
1 and 1/2 C almonds, skins on, toasted

• Preheat oven to 325.
• Put the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times to mix.
• In a 2 C measuring cup, or something with a good spout, mix together the 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, vanilla and orange zest. 
• With the motor running, pour the egg mixture down the feed tube into the dry mixture. Process just until the dough is a shaggy mass--not collected into a ball. (Depending on your egg size you might need about a Tablespoon of water to get the dough to stick together. Drip it in a few drops at a time if needed.)
• Pour half the nuts down the feed tube and pulse several times; repeat with the remaining half. (If you have a smallish food processor, like I do, you'll need to take off the top and scrape down the sides/break up the big lumps with a spatula.) Don't over grind the nuts--you still want some recognizable chunks of almond in there.
• Turn the dough out onto a baking sheet lined in parchment paper and start to squish/shape it into 2 long loafs, each about 2 inches wide and situated 3 inches apart on the sheet. This is much easier to do if your hands are damp (the dough is super sticky) so keep a bowl of water to dip your hands in while you are shaping.
• Take the reserved egg white, add a dribble of water to it and brush the tops of the loaves with the egg white wash.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale gold. Remove them from the oven and leave until they are cool enough to handle. Using a serrated knife, cut the logs diagonally into 3/4 inch wide pieces. Lay them cut side down back on the parchment and bake for about 12 minutes longer. Then use tongs to flip the slices and bake the other side for about 12 minutes. If your dough was a little on the damp side, you might need to increase the second bake time by a few minutes--the centers of the slices should be dry and not sticky.
• Cool on racks.

Morning Buzz

I've been doing my story mapping and now have a much better plan for how to shape and pace what I've written. So today I woke up ready to do some major revisions on my book. In anticipation of a whole lot of desk sitting and concentrating, I set myself up for success by doing some yoga (I'm loving Yoga Journal's video podcasts) and then made myself something to eat that is sort of decadent (because I respond well to treats) and yet still pretty healthy (so I don't crash and burn out). These whole wheat ginger scones were just the ticket.


Scones don't have to be unhealthy if you resist the urge to slather them with copious quantities of butter. These babies are made with whole wheat flour, plain yogurt and a minimal amount of butter and while they might not be my first choice for a decadent afternoon tea in which clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam are featured, they are a great mid-morning sustaining snack with a latte. You can vary the degree of healthy-tasting-ness by using different types of whole wheat flour: white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour will look and taste more like a traditional scone; all (regular) whole wheat flour will increase the nutty, toasty flavor, if that's what you're looking for, though the latter will also make the dough a bit more crumbly. I did a 50-50 split.

I paired mine with marmalade, but they would also be great with a small piece of sharp cheddar cheese. Or both if, like me, you are a fan of mixing your sweet and savory.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some marmalade to wipe off of my mouse before I get down to the writing part of my day.

Whole Wheat Ginger Scones
adapted from this recipe at Everybody Likes Sandwiches

1/2 C plain, lowfat yogurt
1 t vanilla
1 egg
1 C white whole wheat flour
1 C whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/4 C cold butter
1/4 C candied ginger, chopped into small pieces
2 T white sugar
zest of one lemon
1-3 T milk

(optional)
1 T milk and some demerara sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 425.

In a small bowl, mix together yogurt, vanilla and egg.

In a large bowl mix together flours, baking powder and salt. Cut or rub in the butter until the flour is coated but still has some small pea-sized lumps. Add the ginger, white sugar, and lemon zest and give it a stir to distribute. Then stir in the yogurt/egg mixture with a rubber spatula until it sort of sticks together. If your dough is still too crumbly to clump up nicely (depending on the flour you use, it may need a little more moisture), drizzle over 1-3 T milk and that should do the trick.

Turn out onto a counter top and knead just until the dough is fairly uniform. As a friend of mine once said when making pie crust, treat it like a liver! (very gently) Pat it into a circle with a thickness of about 1/2-3/4 inch. If you are going to do the milk and sugar topping, do it now (brush with milk, sprinkle with demerara sugar). Cut it into 8 wedges. Put on a silpat or parchment covered baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Mapping

I don't head out into the wilderness without a map. Well, I did once in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and, despite having a good sense of direction, got totally lost and was lucky to find my way back before nightfall. I remember being confused, a little freaked out and yet still hopeful that I'd stumble across something familiar.

That one time was enough for me to learn my lesson about the importance of maps.

So why has it taken me so long to figure out that I need a map for my writing?

I guess I thought that I knew enough from all my years of endless reading and class attending. But plot structure does not come via osmosis and I'm discovering that the way I've been writing is the equivalent of a hand drawn map on the back of a napkin when heading into treacherous territory. Because really, is there any territory more treacherous than my thoughts? (For those of you who have happy relationships with your thought processes, more power to you. However, my thoughts and I battle each other regularly.)

I recently had this "ah ha!" moment and have put the brakes on the work I've been doing on my book. In the week or so before the "ah ha!" I spent way too much time navigating, getting lost, moving chapters around, questioning turns in the plot and screwing up.

It was not the most satisfying week of work. In fact, I was a big time grump.

But now I know it was because I was lost. And yes, the feelings were remarkably similar to what I felt when lost in the forest except for the fact that it was all happening inside my head and I had plenty of tea and cookies* on hand to help me feel a little better.

So I'm backing up. I've pulled a few books that I admire off the shelf and I'm mapping them.** I'm re-reading them for structure and charting their movements chapter by chapter. And then I'm going to use them as models to map my own book. I can now actually say that I'm looking forward to trying again with my map in hand. It's kind of like getting myself psyched up to climb a challenging mountain, but I won't be going up it empty handed this time.
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*Speaking of cookies, I thought I made good chocolate chip cookies, but the newest chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cook's Illustrated in which you brown the butter before making the cookie batter, is amazing.
**One really good side effect of the mapping project is that I've discovered the central idea for my next book and plan to have a map in hand for that one before NaNoWriMo rolls around.

Writing Goals

It's hard when you are working on your first novel* to know what is a reasonable amount of time in which to set your goals. There are people like Joyce Carol Oates who crank out amazing prose at a rate that makes normal humans just want to give up and crawl into a cave. There are other writers who taaake-theiiir-tiiiiime and either do or don't feel bad about it. I'm still trying to figure out where I fall on the writing speed continuum.

I had a hard writing month in April. Not sure why--the weather was glorious so I can't use the excuse of seasonal lethargy. But maybe I can blame the lilacs for distracting me! No, seriously. I went through a couple of weeks in which my writing self-esteem took a nose dive and I thought, with some degree of despair, that I'd have to chuck this baby out the window.

I'm still not quite sure how I dragged myself out of this pit. I cooked a little, I knit a little, I tried to remember that I'm not totally incompetent at everything I do.

Here's what I'm planning for the near future in the writing department:

Summer is going to suck as far as writing time goes. I'm looking forward to some of the stuff I have planned to do with my critters**, but realistically I'll probably only get one morning a week to really be able to write. That means that I need to have a good intact draft done by June 18th (the critter's last day of school and my 41st birthday) with an organized to-do writing list of stuff that could, conceivably, be done with half a brain while simultaneously officiating a super-squirter showdown (typing on the lap top through a clear plastic bag, perhaps). That means it is more important to crank out that missing chapter now than to dig through the first 10 chapters checking for contradictions. The latter is something I could conceivably do with the critters in the immediate vicinity--the former is not.

Also over the summer I am going to get over my fear that the first person who reads this will look at me with pity and say "This is how you've been spending your time?" So I'm starting safe with my dear husband whose continued gainful employment has allowed me the time to pursue this project (I am still in awe of the fact that he likes his job and they like him and, oh yeah, they PAY him too!). Then after him, I want to find some other people--critical readers, fellow writers--who can be my early readers. Anyone out there who is interested in reading and constructively commenting on my YA/Middle Grade (still not sure which) fiction with a fantasy bent?

After I spend the summer with the above two projects (working on the to-do list and absorbing feed back on the project) then in September and October I'll plan for a big overhaul.

Hopefully this will leave me with a submittable draft that I can shop around to agents and will leave my brain somewhat liberated so that in November I can do NaNoWriMo and work on a completely new book. Maybe a different genre or age range or even (gasp) non-fiction.

Aggg. It's scary just writing this stuff down because that means people will feel like they can ask me about the progress I'm making toward these goals. If you do see me, and venture to ask, and I turn pale and look like I'm going to faint, please administer beer. A nice hoppy IPA should bring me back around!

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*Well, the first novel that I actually think I'll finish and try and pitch. There are at least two that I've started and worked on, one for a considerable amount of time, and then decided to chuck.
**Which is the topic of another post in which I will be trolling for ideas to add to my "how to stay sane and maybe even enjoy yourself" list.

My new love: Scrivener

Since the end of NaNoWriMo, I've been having a lot of problems with the organization of my novel-in-progress. Or I should say, the dis-organization. And the universe heard my frustration and answered with a tidy solution.

Here is the software solution to chronic disorganization:


Allow me to introduce you to Scrivener. (I even like its icon--the yin yang and quotation marks--perfect!)


Its like I have my own personal team of software developers who heard about my (writing) problems and created this software just for me--that is how perfectly it solved my (writing) problems. I downloaded it a week ago and have been using it happily all week.

Actually, that is an understatement: I have been **spazy** and **thrilled** to get to my computer each day and to get my paws on my story. It's like my computer now has a magic organizing fairy inside!

Instead of wading in the mire of folders that I had in the word processing program that I usually use, trying to find what I know I wrote last week and want to now incorporate into my master document, and tearing my hair out because I can't remember whether it is in the file titled "Scrap" or the file titled "Fearless Risk Taking Writing" (which I named on a day that I needed a little pep talk) or in the file titled "Rewrite" or the file titled "Gaps to fill". Scrivener helps me actually find what I am looking for pretty quickly.

It has even transformed my non-creative days into productive days. I did not write much new prose today--my brain was foggy and groggy and really not sharp enough to spit out sparkly words that anyone would want to read. But with my buddy Scrivener I was able to solve some other important problems that didn't require a creative mind: things like in which POV a troublesome chapter should be written, how to integrate the antagonists story in the flow of the plot (rather than my previous method of having a separate file called: "Bad Guy Stuff" with little stars inserted into the main document where I thought parts might eventually be inserted). I was even able to come up with some chapter titles. This is all stuff that I would have struggled to do with my word processing version--it was just too big, too long and too much of a mess.

And even better, since I was a NaNo winner, I got 50% off the regular (reasonable) price of $40. I can't even quantify how much the $20 I spent on this software has increased my productivity.

Coincidentally, the same week that I discovered and started to use Scrivener, I read a terrific book, probably the best book with an unreliable narrator I've ever read, called Liar by Justine Larbalestier. I'm not going to blather on about the content of the book because it does have a nifty plot twist that I didn't see coming and I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Let me just say, it's a really well written YA novel that I'd bet a lot of adult readers would enjoy. The Scrivener coincidence came up when I finished the book and was reading the author's acknowledgments (I like reading these--does anyone else? Though I confess it bugs the crap out of me when they are positioned before the book begins. I think you should thank people at the end of the book). In it she says that she used Scrivener to write the book and didn't think she could have managed the complexity of her plot without it.

I started reading this book the day after I downloaded Scrivener and now that I have played around with it for a week I can completely see how it would make her novel much more manageable. Another reason for me to feel grateful for Scrivener since it enabled me to read a really fun book!

Now I just need to see if the smart people who created Scrivener have another program that will solve the rest of my problems. Anyone know of software that can tackle the problem of every horizontal surface in my house being covered with paper? Earlier this week I waded through a mountain of bills, catalogs, the girl critter's many drawings of dragons, the boy critter's homework that I have no idea whether or not he was supposed to turn in last month, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names, coupons that I'll probably never remember to use, printed out recipes, book reviews, torn off pages from the Cute Overload calendar, business cards, school phone directories, and so on. I thought I did a pretty good job of organizing and recycling, but now that it is the weekend, I look around the sty house and it has all reappeared.

If someone can write a program that solves this problem, I swear I will drop this novel writing nonsense and devote myself to pitching your product until you have made your first million.

Winner!

I did it! I added 53000 words to my novel this month.

Whew!

That said, my novel is more done than it was but still not a full draft. I'd say the last third is still pretty sketchy. The first third is now pretty darn good and the middle third is on its way.

But the best thing about NaNoWriMo is that I realized that it really wasn't that hard to crank out 2000 words a day. I really loved the little statistics page on the NaNo website where you saw your word count compared with your daily goal. I'm going to set up a spread sheet and log in my efforts on my own to keep this momentum and motivation going.

Today I am going to clean the house and make dinner and deal with a lot of the stuff that I let slide in the past month. I know that sounds like a sad way to celebrate but asserting some order on my real world (as opposed to my fictional world where all the organizing energy has been spent of late) will feel good. I'll blast loud music and make cookies, too.

And tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting down and cranking out another 2000 words.

Progress!

I just passed the 25,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo--that's the half-way point and supposed to be today's goal. Because Brian and the critters are up north enjoying the beauty of Michigan in Autumn (and possibly freezing their asses off, but the weather has been kinder than in past years) and it is not yet noon, I suspect I will be able to add significantly to that word total in the second half of the day.

One thing that has really kept me going during NaNoWriMo has been new music. In the past I've written mostly to classical music--some traditional (the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Bach cello concertos in heavy rotation) and some less so (Steve Reich and Philip Glass minimalism which can get me into a writing trance and make me forget how long I have been sitting in front of the computer).

But this time I'm writing to songs with words. I used to find the words in songs terribly distracting to my own attempts at prose generation. But this time I'm not distracted or annoyed but feel it pushing me gently to keep going. I'm using Pandora Radio to keep a stream of good stuff coming out of the speakers. So far my best writing has come from a station* composed of Great Lakes Swimmers, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Iron & Wine (who I just discovered will be at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival on January 29th). Men's voices, particularly kinda soft ones, seem be doing the trick which is strange because this isn't music I've written to or even listened to that much in the past. I've tried making stations based on some of my favorite women singer's voices but they haven't kept the words flowing like the boys. So thanks boys!

Do you have any particular artists/genres that get you writing? What is on your writing playlist?
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* I'm not sure if that link will take you to the station or not...I can e-mail individuals with a link that should work if you ask (nicely!)

Wake up brain, it's time to wriiiiiite!

Garlic naan bread with cream cheese, sliced raw jalapenos and ground black pepper.

Combining the above spicy breakfast with a strong cup of Roo's French Roast, I'm fueled to punch out my daily word quota in record time.

And then I'll collapse with caffeine tremors and a capsicum burned tongue!

Wow.

It kinda works.

I'm 6 days into NaNoWriMo and I've added 12,199 words to my manuscript. If I can keep up the pace then I think I'll have a complete first draft done by the end of the month.

It helped that for the first two days I was under the mistaken idea that I had to generate 7000 words a day. I have no idea where I came up with that number--maybe I read it on the blog of someone who knew they could only write two or three days per week and thus set themselves an insane daily word goal? I mean, I'm not that bad at math (50,000 words divided by 30 days makes 1666 words per day)! But the goof up turned out to be kind of useful since for the first couple of days I really cranked out the prose (and ate a lot of the kids' Halloween candy). I didn't make 7000 either day, but wrote about 8000 words in two days. That got me ahead of the curve so that, when the critters had the day off school on Tuesday, I had enough of a buffer to skip a day and didn't have to feel guilty about wanting to park them in front of crap videos for hours on end.

And since my initial burst, I've found that writing 1500 words per day isn't that hard. No, they aren't the best words I've ever written, but some of them are decent and others hold the germ of a good chapter. The important thing is that I'm getting the damn plot cranked out and not getting all OCD and revising the first 50 pages over and over again.

I needed something to slap me out of the pattern I'd fallen into and it looks like NaNo was just the thing.

Throwing down the gauntlet

I've signed up and I'm going to do it: the National Novel Writing Month challenge!

After reading Stephanie Perkins' particularly compelling recruitment post, I decided this might just be what I need to get that completed draft cranked out before the end of the year.

It's tempting to procrastinate and write a long meditative post about what I hope will come out of the experience, but the clock is ticking and I have 6,387 more words to spit out today!  Wish me luck!

In which the word "fuck-wit" is exemplified

Sigh.

I am a fuck-wit.

If you don't know what a fuck-wit is, come on over and have a look.

I still can't figure out how I wound up with the only copy of my work-in-progress novel being a version from September 22nd. Somehow all the work I'd done and all the versions saved since then went into the trash and, being a little compulsive (as fuck-wits are) I emptied the trash. Bye bye 3+ weeks of work!

Thank god for Mac Time Machine. It saved my ass, though only after a great deal of psychic pain and self-flagellation and the waste of a good writing day (or, if not a writing day, a good day to go for a walk--sun shining! leaves changing color!) But the fuck-wit was inside grinding her molars down into stumps.

About the only thing I feel proud of today is the fact that I have not turned to the gin (yet). Later, once small people have been toted to piano lessons and other forms of cultural enrichment, I, the fuck-wit, have a date with the gin bottle in the freezer.

Whew

Just a quick note: Thanks for the words of support about the writing block/crisis of confidence. I really appreciated hearing from people about their experiences. I think it is one of the big benefits of the internet to make this incredibly isolated endeavor something that can be shared.

And the good news is that on this stinky hot and humid day, I've got the critters at camp, the AC on, and I've managed to pick my writer self up off the ground, dust off my keister and get back to writing. It isn't flowing like the magical day a few weeks ago, but it is moving and I feel a direction and shape and purpose.

Whew.

Down at the mouth

Two weekends ago, I sat down at my computer at 11 am and didn't leave it (except for quick snacks and bathroom breaks) until 5:30 pm.*

And when I left the computer at 5:30 I went for a walk -- no, correct that -- I was so giddy about my wonderful day of writing that I went for a float.

Not only did I produce probably a whole chapter's worth of new material, but I had confidence in what I had already written--I saw the shape of the book, even the parts that I have only vaguely sketched out, and I felt all I needed was the time (say, starting on September 8th when the kids go back to school) in which to fill it all in.

Where did that confidence go? Why am I presently in such a muddle? It's a beautiful day, the critters are behaving themselves, there is no reason to be down at the mouth. But my confidence in my ability to write this book is simply gone. All I've been able to accomplish since that very productive day is some very minor editing.

The only vaguely positive thing I can say is that at least in reading what I've written, I wasn't tempted to delete it--I thought it was pretty good. But right now it feels like a different person wrote it.
__________
*Brian took the critters away overnight to do some choo choo stuff so I had no interruptions or distractions of a human nature.

The day my character came alive

A strange thing happened today.

The main character in my work-in-progress novel just came alive. And it turns out that she is 15, not 12 and she has straight dark brown hair, not light brown frizzy hair, and she's short, not tall.

I have to say, this is a little weird.

I have written almost 60,000 words and while many things have been falling in place, there was something that was holding me back. I was getting the plot points, seeing where the story was going, developing conflicts, figuring out resolutions. But all the while my main character felt a little off: stiff, not quite real to me.

Then today while polishing off my second cup of black coffee and eating my new favorite not-so-healthy breakfast (garlic naan with cream cheese, Turkish aleppo pepper and cherry tomatoes) how she should be was so apparent that my hands started to quiver with anticipation of typing it all down. I don't know where she has been hiding, but now that she's here it feels like any of my residual reservations have fallen away.

This is going to necessitate some changes to the rest of the book--now I think it is pretty clear that this will be YA, not middle grade so the voice will have to be tweaked and some of the relationships rewritten. But this doesn't sound overwhelming--with her here beside me, it sounds like fun.

wow

I went for a walk in Bird Hills Park yesterday wearing shorts.

I saw a fat robin doing its hop, hop, hop.

I had the windows (well, the newer double glass ones that don't have storms) open and there was fresh air in the house.

Is it possible that Spring is here?

I didn't see this coming; I kept waiting for a major Winter depressive period to hit me and whatdayaknow, it never did!

Is Winter really Winter if I don't go through the emotional wringer?

wow.

But hey, while my mood is mighty sunny, my writing production is really lousy. I didn't write a word last week. I wrote two sentences yesterday. I really don't want to write today; I want to go clean up my garden and plant some peas.

Maybe there is a little hope--it is supposed to rain tomorrow.

Not how I planned to get my writing time...

I'm in sunny San Diego, home of fish tacos and tangerines growing outside the door! I thought I was being wildly optimistic when I printed out and brought along the manuscript of my novel, but I thought maybe I'd snatch a few moments to do a little writing on the plane or when the kids were poking their fingers into tide pools.

Yesterday we did plenty of the tide pool poking--it was an exquisite day and we went to the beach near the house of the friends we are staying with in Encinitas and then drove to Cabrillo National Monument and hiked and explored the amazing tide pools. The girl critter was out of her head happy to get to see and touch wild hermit crabs and critters like the Sunburst Anemone. We even saw some small sea stars with legs so long and delicate you couldn't believe that they routinely survived the bashing waves and tides.

Now the poor girl critter is simply out of her head. She slept in today and woke up hot and cranky, then after some juice and milk, threw up all over me.

So Brian and Ian cleared out of here and went off to Palomar Observatory for some good geeky fun. Mostly the girl is sleeping with the occasional bout of dry heaves, but other than a few requests for a cooling damp washcloth, prefers to be left alone.

I didn't plan on getting my writing time in this way, and I do hope that this is just a brief blip for the girl. But I am enjoying the quiet--the birds singing outside the window, the warm breezes and sunshine--as I work my way through my manuscript, editing and writing, adding and elaborating. Other than the sick girl in the next room, I imagine this is what a writer's retreat feels like.