A New Chapter

My novel is currently 81,625 words long. Which means that for the month of August I produced a total of 31,625 words. So…

The Bad News
I did not complete the Camp NaNoWriMo challenge. I came up 18,375 words short, to be exact. So while others in my cabin did cross that elusive 50,000 word finish line within the allotted 31 days I did not. *sad face*

The Good News
While I may not have completed the Camp challenge, I have gotten a significant jump on MY challenge: to finish this damned novel. My goal, after all, was to finish the novel in 2011 as part of my Big, Fun and Scary challenge for the year. I didn’t start out my challenge with specifics on how long it had to take or how long the finished product had to be. So I can still meet my personal challenge, and that’s far more important anyway.

This month was great for me in this regard because it got me doing what I need to do to finish the damned thing. First and foremost, it got me writing. Simply sitting down with the document and typing was a big deal for me after going so many months without even looking at the thing. And it wasn’t easy at first- I had forgotten a lot of what occurred during those first 50k words and I had to get back into the swing of things.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it got me thinking about the story. My characters, their motives, the overall plot and what I wanted to accomplish. There are still a lot of things about this particular story that I don’t like and I’m pretty sure that should I ever permit myself to sit down and just read the whole thing I’d be pretty appalled at how far it is from any semblance of a finished product. But that doesn’t matter. What matters for me, since I’m not a professional writer, is that I get something out of this whole crazy adventure. And spending my time thinking about my story has been the only source of enjoyment in this whole thing. I like having my own little world in which I’m building things. It’s a nice break from worrying about work, household chores, and other activities of daily living.

Third, it’s gotten me to start to think of myself as a writer. That may sound strange to you, reading this blog in which I- you know- write. But what you need to keep in mind is that I am the most self-critical person on the planet. As such, I judge myself very, very harshly and usually against other people whom I have no business comparing myself to. For example, some of the other truly amazing writers I am regularly exposed to in Flash Fridays. I look at what you guys do and am amazed and when I look at my stuff it always pales in comparison. So I can’t put myself in the same category- can’t call myself a writer.

But I’m realizing more and more that if being a writer is defined by the act of writing than having this inexplicable compulsion to write, by definition, makes me a writer. It doesn’t matter if I ever get what I would consider good (and keep in mind with my critical nature that’s probably impossible). And it doesn’t matter if I ever get recognized by anyone else. All that matters is that I’m writing.

I went to college originally in order to be a writer. That was my dream, to write the great American novel. Needless to say, it didn’t work out that way for me. And now, so many years after college, I have a full time job and a family and many, many tasks and other interests which take up my time on a daily basis and keep me from writing. And you know what I’m realizing for the first time? That’s ok. This doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is. And more over, pushing myself to make it that is just going to suck any fun out of it anyway.

So I’m releasing my expectations. And I know, like anything else, I’ll have to release them every time I sit down to write. But if I can do that I might just be able to enjoy this practice. I might be able to finish this novel, in my own time, without feeling guilty for having not pumped it out in a month. I might be able to post a Flash Friday story without thinking of how much worse it is in comparison to someone else’s. I might be able to write without any unrealistic expectation of what it means for me to be a writer.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Pa-pow!!!

My biggest single-day word count ever:
7,364 words in one day.
Regardless of how this turns out, I am super proud of myself right now.
Yay!

Forward Movement

10,555 words. And a significant benchmark, finally.
I'm still- oh... 7,000 words behind where I should be right now.
But 10k is something. And after struggling for so many days to crack 1k I can't help but feel just the tiniest bit of relief.
This might be possible after all.

Rough Writer

So, the bulk of my experience in NaNoWriMo has been, in all honesty, just about how fast my fingers can tap along the keyboard to string words together into sentences. That’s what it’s all about, after all- the word count. And I get, or at least I think I get, why some of my friends whom I consider to be real writers don’t support the idea: word count doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a story being in any way good.

But at the same time, I remember something my college playwriting professor told me which I didn’t get at the time. He said that in order to write well, you have to write badly. He was of the belief, and his class objectives followed accordingly, that you’re a hell of a lot more likely to find the diamond in the rough that makes the brilliant moments in stories if you have a whole lot of rough. In that class we were supposed to be creating at least ten new pages of material each and every week. And he not only accepted but encouraged us to make that material pretty crappy. The idea being that if I can pull one good line or one good observation or one good idea from those ten pages than you're golden. At the time, my self criticism was so extreme that I could get out- at most- two pages which I’d revised five times over. Sort of defeated the purpose of the exercise.

This- in and of itself- is why it is so valuable for me to do NaNoWriMo. It forces me to write because of the pressure to hit the word count markers regardless of the quality of the material. It forces me to ignore that voice in my head screaming about how bad what I’m writing is, and how I should just erase it. It creates an environment in which you can do anything- contrived story lines, cheap ploys, whatever- to get the word count up. And every letter of encouragement we get reminds me that regardless of how bad it may be there will be some diamonds in that rough. And I can say, that from the bit I’ve been reading through, that there are some diamonds in there. Which is a huge surprise to me, to say the least.

But I’ve been noticing that there is more to it than that. I have, without even researching the tools and tricks that real writers use, started using some of them (I think). I was reading through some of what I wrote last night and I remembered- ‘oh yeah, I researched that’. Whether it’s fleshing out a location by drawing from a real place, trying to make a character more believable by looking into the little details in other books I loved that made them stick with me, researching how to pull in the little plot points to support that larger arch, whatever. I believe- and again I don’t know because I am not what I would consider to be a real writer- that this is what real writers do. From what I’ve read on the amazing blogs of people in this community these are the kinds of steps that are involved when writing a first draft. I never received any formal training on how to do this stuff, but I’ve been doing it.

And I think that this is one of the biggest advantages of this practice. By having this artificial environment in which I am asked to accomplish this task I start to do at least some of the things I will need to do for real without over thinking it. Because one of the big issues that I’ve always noticed in my class work is that I get too stuck in the how and miss the what. The how, usually, is just supposed to be a jumping off point. Especially in creativity where you’re supposed to be- you know- creative. Trying to follow someone else’s steps verbatim is not going to help you be creative. You have to change it, make it yours, make it work for you. This challenge is forcing me to do that because I’m not following some step by step guide that someone else made up; I’m finding my own path.

I assume that these lessons I’m learning are within the realm of “Novel Writing 101” as compared to advanced methods evolved by advanced writers. I’m fine with that. I make no pretense of knowing what the hell I’m doing. But I’m finding a way that works for me. And regardless of what comes of this novel- which I assume will be nothing- I am learning. And that’s pretty big for me.

Late Night at Camp

I was up till 1:30am last night writing.
I am exhausted, but happy.

Day One

So, right off the bat I am realizing why they have the whole rule of starting off from scratch. In trying to pick up where I left off on my story from November, I had to read over at least some of what I’ve written. It’s been a long time since I even looked at the thing and I’d forgotten some of the main character’s names, quirks, motivations, etc. I wasn’t stupid enough to allow myself to read through the whole thing (because I knew if I did I’d just want to scrap it and this whole camp thing altogether). But just in the few paragraphs I did read I found so many typos, missed words, even sentences so messed up that I struggled to understand what I’d been trying to say (missed words was by far the biggest issue). I couldn’t help but start to make little corrections as I went through.

Inevitably, I started thinking ‘Well what if I just got rid of this paragraph and re-wrote this section’ or ‘how about I just scrap this scene’. My finger was itching for the delete button like you wouldn’t believe! However, the point of this exercise is to finish the damned story- not to edit it! This is NaNoWriMo- NOT NaNoEdMo, I cannot delete everything and hope to make it out with 100k words- it’s just not gonna happen.

Now, I have signed up for this with the thought that it’ll probably take another 50k words to finish it but I will say that should the story roll along to it’s natural conclusion before that I will more than happily consider myself done. I just don’t think that’s gonna happen. Especially since I don’t even think I’m at the halfway point and I crossed the 50k finish line back in November.

At any rate, due to the minor edits I made as I scrolled through in attempts to reorient myself I only came out with an additional 866 words. Not, needless to say, my goal for the first day. But I am hopeful that I can pump out the words more easily now that I remember what was going through my main characters head when I left off and what needs to happen next in my story arch. Stay tuned.

The Night Before Camp

I went to a summer camp once when I was a kid. Once. It did not go... well. I did not like being away from home, I did not like having no one or nothing familiar and comfortable to get me through day by day, and I did not do well with the whole 'make friends with everybody!' set-up that is the primary reason for camp. I was never a skilled friend-maker and after many years of practice I am not much better at it. When left to my own devices, more often than not, I will still hide away in the corner and gravitate away from new people like an opposing magnet.

So, entering into this metaphorical camp which is based on the same ideas of adventure and getting rid of old comforts in order to explore new territory with new people is giving me a bit of anxiety. I am nervous about trying to make friends with other participants (get this- I’m going to be put in a cabin!). I am nervous about throwing caution to the wind and trying to be adventurous. I am nervous, most of all, about trying to reach the word count everyday. Especially given my struggle just to get a post up here everyday.

But, I am nothing if not interested in change and regardless of what fears or concerns I may have you can't let that stop you from making change, right? After all, they tell you right up front that this whole thing is "smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life". So it should be, accordingly, crazy. So, without further ado, let the insanity begin!

Camp NaNoWriMo 2011

Well, it's official. The Camp NaNoWriMo site is up and running, I have created my user profile and most importantly I have made the commitment to do this thing come August. Now, I was a bit confused when I logged on because apparently you have the option of writing your novel in either July or August and some peeps have already started their crazy journey. Me? I had originally thought it started in August so I hadn't prepared for July. (Plus, some of the site's features won't be up and running until August so it works out.)

At any rate, since I now have less than a month to prepare for this frenzy of crazed typing and obsessing over my word count I will need some prep work to get ready. Last year, in prep for NaNo I did a month of dictionary words of the day and it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

Not wanting to limit myself too much i'm not going to promise a month of words right now. I will, however, promise a post everyday from here until August. Both because I need to prep for camp and because I am massively behind on my post count for my 211 in 2011 challenge. Because I am not an endless source of fantastic ideas for stories many of these posts for the next month will be words of the day. But hopefully some of them will be worthwhile stories or fiction-y things. And maybe, just maybe, a very small few will actually be *gasp!* good. But i'm not making any promises.

Stay tuned!