Jody's 2003 NaNoWriMo Blog

I'm wondering if I'm actually going to hit the 50,000 words this year. I've only got a little over 31000 at this point, and I've lost all interest in my characters and my plot. It's like pulling teeth to actually write.

So last night, I started a new chapter that had a new character, had nothing to do with anything else in the book (yet) and can just be goofy for the sake of being goofy. 1000 words flew out of my fingers. If I had any hopes of turning what I've written so far into a "real" novel, I'm sure I would be able to steal bits and pieces from this new material, so I'm not saying that I've canned the first 30,000 words. I'm just letting them simmer. My plot backed me into a hole, actually. Realistically, one of the characters would have to disappear off the face of the earth at this point, and I don't know what I'd do with the other one if that happened. The reason behind him being in the book in the first place feels flimsy to me, and I either have to make the humor broader so people will just excuse any plot holes, or I really need to shore it up. That smells too much like work (and editing) so I'm not going to do it yet.

So meet Cara, whose father left the family when she was young to go to Hollywood to be Scott Baio's body double.

Ya, that's right. 19,000 words, here I come.

As you can see, I'm waaay behind. I'm only at the halfway point, and I should have been there on the 15th.

I'm actually starting to question whether or not I'll be able to finish this year. Knowing that I already did it twice does make it a little easier.

Look, I'm like a million words behind, I hate my plot, my characters are boring, and I'm so close to quitting this it isn't funny. I've got OTHER things to do, you know?

So I've decided to throw quality into the old septic system and am now pounding out sentences like the following. I'd like to point out that all I need is 25 or so like this and I've got another thousand words written.

"Meg took careful aim and bonked Ray on the head with one of the throw pillows. It was purple with a pretty flower patter and some of that fringe stuff all along the edge that her mother liked and she used to hate but now that she was an adult it sort of struck her as the appropriate thing for a throw pillow."

Being unemployed had its benefits, when it came to NaNoWriMo. I broke the 17,000 barrier last night before I had to get some sleep. I am not having a lot of luck writing from 10pm on - I get exhausted. So I shut down the computer, climb into bed and...have lots of wonderful ideas, snippets of conversations and what-have-you running around in my head, with no energy to do anything about it.

Some of these ideas and snippets are just great, but they don't fit in with what I'm currently writing. I'd take the time to capture them (I mean, if I was awake) but I want them to count toward my word count, because hey, that's all that matters, right? Well that and I hate my book and nobody will ever want to read it. The really fantastic plot idea I had last week? Now I don't like it. It's stifling me. The best situation for word count in NaNo is having characters who don't know each other so they can spend pages and pages telling stories about their lives. I've removed all that by making my couple married. While in the long run, it's more original as far as a novel is concerned, it's stifling my word count. Just so you know.

More Sleep Writing. I don't even know where I was going with this one, as it's in the middle of a conversation about how paper money isn't used much in the future.

"What about all the identify-theft obsessed people? Are they still a big deal? I would think that is why people don't want to put their kids on the bus, or why they maybe just ignore it when little Ryan comes home and doesn't have the right here."

I love it. I have no idea where it comes from, but that would explain why dreams are so bizarre, wouldn't it?

God, I'm soooooo behind. *sigh* I think I cracked the 15,000 mark last night, but I don't have the file handy to check. This weekend is the halfway point, which means between now and then I need to come up with 10,000 words.

I am seriously losing my enthusiasm for my novel, too.

Wow, so many people have been stopping by this page, it's a wonder my hosting company doesn't make me start paying more money for bandwidth issues! Not.

Okay, I'm at about 14250 right now, far behind where I wanted to be, but not yet in the land of "I'll never catch up". I got a nice chunk out of the way describing issues I had with a movie that was related to the "plot" of the novel. Which is still a moving target.

I'd talk about the plot here, but I did that last year, and I just saw a book in my bookclub (QPBC) that is a very similar premise, so now I'm being a little more protective. Except of course, for the fact that it's disjointed crap that I couldn't sell anyway!

I wrote a dozen pages that will immediately be scrapped in December. I wrote them and then realized too late that things were just moving in too serious a direction. I want to write like Vonnegut, but that's not where I was headed. So I just started typing as if none of the previous dozen pages existed. Fun, huh?

Man, I just can't catch up. Well, that's not true, I caught up last night - but now I'm behind again, and it's really time for me to go to bed. Plus, my novel went off in a direction I wasn't intending and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I need to try to rope everyone back in the direction of my outline, or just wing it. One night as I finished up for the day, this guy appeared in a restaurant where the protagonist was eating, and I spent all day the next day trying to figure out who he was. When I did decide, it pretty must blew apart where I was going with this thing.

I guess I need to think about it a little more, but it's going to have to happen without the computer in front of me. It's been a REALLY long day, and I didn't have a minute to myself. Tomorrow is starting to look the same way, but I will have to be here to do laundry, etc., by late tomorrow afternoon, so I'll see what I can do then. But so much for catching up over the weekend.

Just as a heads-up, today's the day you're supposed to have 10,000 words if you're working on the 1666/day pace. I think I can get that by the end of the day, if I don't get bogged down trying to explain what the hell an antique blow-dryer is. And trust me, that could bog me down. (How old does something need to be to consider it an antique?)

Just looked over what I wrote last night, and the very last sentence is a beaut:

"Trudy and Val had no idea who this person was, and they found themselves casually reaching with either their feet or their hands to try to touch their antique blow-dryer. "

I just had a flashback to when my cousin Jacqui and I used to do Mad Libs for hours at a time. But antique blow-dryer? What kind of crack was I on last night? I believe I was intending to say "purses" but, hey, maybe I wasn't. So the question is, do I leave it like that? If I do, do I ignore it, or do I have to write about an antique blow-dryer? I'm not really sure how I could work that in, but maybe that's today's challenge.

I've now watched Finding Nemo two times in two days. I suppose I should add some fish to my story. I actually have a way to do it that wouldn't be forced. Okay, fish it is. I'm headed up to my room with the computer to begin my nightly sleep-writing. Last night I didn't write anything too goofy, but I'll bet I can do it tonight.

(I'm actually stealing the entire entry above and putting it in my protagonists journal. She's a freelance writer of travel articles, so you can see that it will all fit.)

I can probably catch up today, if I'm a good girl and clean my plate, er, write like I'm supposed to.

Word count tip of the day: Dragging behind? Have your protagonist keep a dream journal. You can stretch a good dream into 500-1000 words, easily. Or just have him/her tell the dream to someone.

"I had the wierdest dream last night. I was singing on a street corner, and then it turned out..."

Oooh, I just woke up a bit and am having an energy burst. It should last 10 minutes. I think I can squeeze out another 200-300 words before shutting off this computer. I'm not officially only 1 days' worth of words behind.

...

I'm going to try to hit 5000 before I shut off the computer for the night, but I've already started doing that sleep typing thing. Tomorrow morning I'll have to see if there's anything worth posting from the sleep writing. Okay, look, even if it isn't all that good, I'll post anyway."

When I write in bed at night, I write the goofiest stuff, because I start falling asleep while typing. As in, eyes closed, head back, fingers writing things about renting dogs. It's all very strange and I love reading it in the morning. You think I'm going to revise the stuff I wrote about dog rental? No way!

No Plot No Problem indeed. Okay, I'm taking the computer up to bed with me, let's see if I can crank out a few hundred more words before I pass out.

Work really interferes with my efforts to get the novel written. I have to wait until after I get home to do any work on it, and that's after picking up my son, making dinner and getting him settled.

I have a notebook with me to scribble thoughts and ideas, but I can't just sit and write. Plus, it's never worked for me to go from writing on the computer to writing longhand. I did that last night - I think I'm at about 2800 right now, but when I DO get started tonight, I have to type up the longhand stuff first. And my problem is that historically, whenever I do that I edit myself. Which is going to eat up time AND possibly reduce my word count.

Remember kids, you have 11 months of the year to edit. November is for meeting word-count requirements.

p.s. Did I mention that I don't really like my novel so far? That can't be good.

Okay, enough fun for one day, right? The house is a mess (but I did take the time to do the dishes, if that counts) but for November, I get to ignore it!

Back to the novel...I've already reached the point where I don't know what to do next. That actually happens to me early on, so I'm not worried. I'm just going to write stream of consciousness stuff for the word count, and then I know I'll get back on track - or find a track period.

Well, if nothing else, the coffee seems to have fueled a big old family argument between the protagonist Trudy and her mother. Not what I expected for page 5 of the novel, but there you go. I'm just over 1450 words, behind where I should be by now, but I plan to do most of the writing tonight.

I think the Swiss Chocolate Almond coffee was a good fuel choice. Maybe it will even help me find a direction for the novel.

Wow, only two pages in and I've already gone off on the web looking up the nutritional information for McDonald's shakes, losing much time in browsing. I mean, is writing great or what!

So no, I didn't start until about 20 minutes ago. It's 3pm, it's 75 degrees out in Massachusetts in November, and I am NOT going to feel guilty about it one bit! 300 words down, 49,700 to go!