Tag: nanowrimo

Writing–November Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Fall leaves in Vancouver

It’s NaNoWriMo time!

This year’s project is called Night of the Nothing Man. In addition to the challenges raised by not coming up with this novel idea until a week before the start, I’ve given myself some other guidelines that I’m going to try to follow as I write. I’ll reveal those at the end of the month.

If you recall, I wrote a novel manuscript this summer in a different fashion. I outlined a few chapters, wrote those chapters, and then revised those chapters before moving on. I’m going to be doing something similar with this NaNo project. I managed to get about six chapters outlined before the NaNo countdown clock wound down. This was partly by design. I do better during NaNo when I outline, but in the course of my writing, I end up changing or deviating from my outline that typically results in some frustrating revisions and rewrites. I liked the outlining and then writing of the summer novel experiment in that I stayed on track, but I could make changes. So I’m going to attempt to do NaNo in this fashion.

Dangerous business for me, but I like living on the edge.

Also during the month I’ll keep working on my Lucy and Jamie story. I’ve got a good idea where it’s going and I think it might be good for me to write a page or two of something else while working on NaNo. Kind of like a morning warm-up.

I may or may not start poking at The World (Saving) Series again. I’ve got an idea of some revisions I’d like to do and I’ve been kicking them around for the past couple of months. They wouldn’t be too taxing to do when I need an evening break from NaNo, but don’t want to be unproductive.

It should be a good month full of words.

Writing–Generating My NaNo Idea

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Notebook page

I wrote before how I was stuck on what to write for NaNo this year. I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and writing novellas instead, but even then I wasn’t too moved by the idea. I really wanted to stick to my November guns and go for my usual goal of 60,000 words before Thanksgiving. But I had nothing.

A NaNo buddy of mine whom I also follow on Twitter and also has a pretty rockin’ blog, Trinae Ross, told me that she was stuck for her NaNo idea, too, until she just started writing random words down on a piece of paper and then asking the usual questions of who, what, where, when, and why. It took her about four days for things to start to come together, but she ended up with something of substance that she could get to the point of outlining. She had a story.

At her suggestion, I decided to try it. Sitting and thinking wasn’t helping me any. The blank I was drawing was just getting blanker. So I grabbed one of my plentiful notebooks, flipped to a blank page, took pen in hand, and wrote down the first things that came to my mind.

“Guys like him aren’t very good at staying dead.”  The 70’s. Nighttime. A face in a window. A room full of newspaper articles. A missing girl. An attempted abduction. Two teenagers.

And from there I started asking questions. Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he stay dead? Why this decade? Who is this face? Who are these kids? What do the articles say?

The page filled up pretty quickly with my answers and other scribblings. More importantly, I was pretty happy with what I was jotting down. Just like what happened with Trinae, my story started to come together.

Even at the eleventh hour going into NaNo I still have some work to do (I’ll get into the details next week), but I’m feeling so much better about this project than I was a week ago when I didn’t even have a project to work with. At least I have a place to start when the clock strikes midnight.

I am horrible at networking and socializing. I don’t work very hard at including myself in the writing community because there’s a still a chunk of me that doesn’t think I belong because I don’t have enough credits to my name. But through NaNo and through Twitter, I’ve met some pretty cool fellow writers that don’t hold me to the same high standards that I hold myself to when it comes to inclusion and for that I am grateful.

Without Trinae, I’d still be spinning my wheels.

Writing–NaNo?

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NaNoWriMo Day 3

You may have noticed if you read my October Projects post that NaNoWriMo was left off of my To Do List. There’s a very good reason for that.

I have no idea what I’m going to do.

In past years I’ve gotten my NaNo idea in September, August, July. I once came up with my idea in March and held onto it until November.

But this year I’ve got nothing.

I’ve thought about going rogue this year. Instead of writing a 60K word novel like I usually do, I’d write two 25-30K word novellas. I’ve got a couple of ideas that I could use for it. They’re pretty good, but neither one I think would flesh out to be an entire novel. Doing them both as novellas would satisfy the word count even if it wasn’t exactly a novel.

I’m not completely sold on the idea though. I’m a bit of a traditionalist. Even though I’d really like to do those novellas (as they’d be part of the Outskirts Universe so they’d be useful to have done) and doing both would count, I’d still feel like I was cheating a little bit.

So if I don’t do the novellas, what do I do?

Logic tells me that I should do something in the Outskirts Universe. That’s my “thing”, after all. On the other hand, it might do me some good to break out and do something completely different.

I don’t know.

The good news is I’ve got about three weeks to figure something out and get it outlined. The bad news is I feel like right now, I’ll take all three of those weeks to come up with something and won’t start outlining anything until 10PM on October 31st.

No matter. I’m up for the challenge.

Writing–Breaking in a New Novel Method

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Red High Heel Pumps

I’ve spent the past couple of days breaking in a new pair of heels. I haven’t worn heels for quite a while. I’ve gained some weight and messed up my left knee since the last time I did. It’s taking some work to get used to them. If I’m going to be standing in them for several hours, comfort is important.

The same thing could be said for this new novel I’m writing. I’m taking this new approach of outlining a few chapters, writing them, then revising them. After doing it for several weeks (I started back in April), I can definitely say it’s taking some getting used to.

On the plus side, I’m able to go back and fix major story problems immediately. I don’t have to wait until I’m finished with the first draft and into revisions to fix something that’s nagging at me. For example, the first three chapters of this draft were terrible. They were a downright boring info dump. So before I went on, I had the opportunity to fix that and better mete out the information while keeping it all interesting. I don’t have that specter hanging over my head as I move on.

On the other hand, it’s definitely slow progress. If I were doing this in typical NaNoWriMo style, I’d either be done or at the very least, close to done by now. I’d have a shitty first draft as usual, but I would be done. And that shitty first draft would probably need a lot of work. As of right now, I haven’t gotten past the initial first story-fixing revision on any of my novel manuscripts.

So with this new approach, what I can guarantee that the draft I’m left with when I write the last sentence should be in better shape than a draft written the NaNo way. That’s the theory, anyway. It will still need revisions because what I write will always need revisions. But it shouldn’t need as much in the way of revisions. At the very least the story should be solid.

It’s too soon to tell if this will become my main way of writing novels. I doubt it. After all, I don’t plan on wearing my heels every day. But this will be a nice method to pull out in between NaNoWriMos when I’m feeling restless and tired of working on short stories and sick of working on novel revisions and I need to create something original or when I have an idea I just can’t shake.

For the those times when I need something a little different, I think this will work just fine.

Writing–NaNoWriMo 2011 Thoughts

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

This year’s Nano was interesting.

As you may remember, I went into the month with only half of my outline done. Despite this, I still managed to hit 50,000 words in 16 days, making this my 5th NaNo win in eight years.

It was when I was doing the last half of my outline that I realized that I was just going in circles. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the story for the sake of a word count. I figured that so long as I hit 50K, I was good.  60K was my goal, but if I fell short while wrapping up with story in a satisfactory way, it was worth it. I figured I’d hit about 55 or 56K.

I finished the first draft of American Vampires on November 20th at 62,000 words.

Yeah, I’m a real good judge of my story. Oops.

The story itself is okay. I can’t say that I’m in love with it, but that could also be that I’m kind of bored with Stanley. Remember, I wrote about him last year and I’ve done a few short stories with him. So it’s possible that my burnout is clouding the quality of draft I have to work with.

There’s also the possibility that pushing myself to finish as early as possible fried my brain.

The point is that I’m done, I have yet another novel-length draft to work with, and I can forget about it for a month.

Or more.

Ah, bless NaNoWriMo.

Writing–Writing Novels and Raking Leaves

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My friend DaLette got hold of me at the end of October to offer me some work. She needed help clearing a massive amount of leaves from a massive yard. It was just going to be the two of us working. Two women, two rakes, and a leaf blower. And we only had two days to do it. It was all her schedule would allow.

The goal for the first day was to clear half of the front yard, the biggest chunk of the whole project. The second day, we’d do the rest of the front yard, the backyard, and the side yard.

Starting out, it looked overwhelming. DaLette started on one side of the half of the front yard with the leaf blower and I took the other side with a rake. DaLette had already been by the week before and cleared out the gardens (which were full again when we started) and I started moving those piles down to the street. I’d pile the leaves on a piece of plastic sheeting and then drag them down to the street and dump them for the city to pick up.

I cleared out the bulk of the leaves in the gardens again and raked up many of my own piles to drag down to the street while DaLette made her own piles with the leaf blower. When her piles got big enough, we switched places. She made piles on my side and I moved her piles to the street. It took six and a half hours, but we got that half of the front yard done.

The next day, we started in the backyard, piling up the leaves and moving them out of the little fenced-in area and into the front yard. From there, it was all piling it up and moving it to the street. By the time we got to the sparsely covered side yard, we were both tired and hurting, but it was the easiest part of the yard and it felt the sweetest.

It was during this epic raking exercise that I gave a lot of thought to Nanowrimo, specifically the process of it. Going in on November 1st, it looks like that yard did at the very beginning of the first day. 50,000 words is a huge task and in the beginning, it looks overwhelming.

When I was raking, I kept looking back at what I’d done to remind myself that I was getting somewhere. Word count updates are like that. It reminds me how much I’ve accomplished just in case I forget. Looking ahead, at the rest of the yard that needed to be raked and at the words that need to be written, sometimes it’s hard to remember that I am moving in the right direction.

Like climbing up a hill, eventually it gets to a point where there’s more leaf-free yard than leaf-covered yard. There are more words written than words needing to be written. And that’s when the second wind really kicks in. Sure you’re tired. You’re sore. You outright hurt.  The ideas are drying up. Your brain begs for mercy. Your fingers scream for a break. But you can see the end! It’s just right there! And you’re not going to stop until you cross that line. You’re not going to leave one leaf on the grass and you’re not leaving one word unwritten, not stopping short of that 50,000.

At the end of those two days, I’d made enough money to pay my cell bill for the month. At the end of Nanowrimo, I’ll have another manuscript first draft I might be able to revise and rewrite into something that could pay off in the future.

But, it’s not about the money (actually, the raking IS about the money, but I’m trying not to spoil a point here). It’s about the thrill of victory. It’s about the sense of accomplishment.

It’s about standing at the finishing line, looking back at the beginning, and say, “Yeah. I did that.”

Try not to feel invincible after that.

Writing–NaNoWriMo 2011 Project

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This year for Nanowrimo, I’m once again journeying into The Outskirts and once again writing about Stanley Ivanov, ugly shirt wearing vampire.

The novel is called American Vampires and it revolves around the possible existence of three, well, American vampires and what should be done with them. Stanley, his girlfriend Neda Kovar, and arch rival Nathan Vacek are sent to Mesa, Arizona by elder vampire Andrei Carp to track them down and deal with them. Unfortunately, two “hunters”, brothers Zeb and Zeke Heller, have been sent to Mesa to deal with the vampires, too.

Hilarity, bickering, violence, and blood-drinking ensue.

My goal for this novel remains the same as in previous Nanos. I aim for at least 2,000 words a day, 2,000 words to a chapter, with a target of a 60,000 word finished product with 30 chapters (it makes the math so easy). I’ve already got about a 4,000 word cushion in just this first week. I’m hoping that by doing an extra chapter or two on the weekends, I’ll be done before Thanksgiving again this year.

One thing I’ve deviated from this year is my outline. In previous years, I’ve had the outline done and ready to go for Nano. This year, I only had it about half done. So at some point, I’m going to have to outline the last half of my novel. I’m thinking that since I tend to leave the outline a little bit during the actual writing of the story, it might help in later drafts if the second half of the novel goes off of what was written.

It was planned this way, it just kind of happened due to laziness and apathy. I spent plenty of days in October in “I don’t feel like it” mode and ended up working on other things instead. I hope it doesn’t end up costing me.

Some days have been easier than others. I think yesterday stands as an accurate prediction of what this novel is going to be like. My plan was to do at least 3,000 words to add on to my little cushion. It took me over three hours to milk 2,000 words out. It was like trying to get juice from a turnip, just painful and pointless. I went out to dinner with some friends, came home, made some hot chocolate, and then managed another 2,000 words in an hour with no pain at all.

I’m just hoping for more of the latter than the former.

Writing–November Projects

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I know what you’re thinking. It’s November. Why don’t you just call this post Nanowrimo 2011? Because while Nano will be a huge part of my existence for this month, I do have a few little things that I’d like to be doing on the side.

There are two contests I want to enter (should I scrape up the entry fees). One is a short-short contest and I’ve already got a story finished and ready to revise that I’d like to submit. The other is a memoir/personal essay contest. I’ve never done anything like it before, but I’ve got a few ideas that I think will work and I’d like to give it a shot. I’ve been thinking about doing memoir stuff for a while now and I think this might be a good leaping off point.

Even if I’m not able to enter the contests, I’ll still have some valuable material at the ready for when another opportunity presents itself.

Of course, this is all dependent on how well Nano goes. I’ve done 2,000 words a day with a goal of 60,000 words total for the past couple of years. Let’s hope the trend continues.

And at the end of the day, I have a few words to spare.

Writing–The Nightmare of “At 3:36”

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Last week I wrote about how some stories seem to come to me as if by magic. That first draft comes so easily and requires very little revision to create a final project.

And then there are stories that are the bane of my very existence, the ones that I struggle with and can never seem to get them right no matter how much I mess with them.

All of my stories get revised. Whenever one of my short stories gets rejected, I always review it to see if there’s anything I can do to make it better. I admit that some stories get more than a little tweak after a rejection. Both “Erin Go Bragh” and “Elevator” (both published in my Rejection book) ended up getting significant rewrites more than once after being rejected. “Such a Pretty Face” required some serious work to get right.

But “At 3:36” is a story of a different beast.

It started off simply enough. I got an image of a scene in my  head, a woman looking out the window, watching as the world stops spinning for forty-five minutes at the same time over several days. I wrote it out, explored that scene, and came up with the first draft. The sticking point was that I didn’t want to explain why the world was stopping. It was just happening and the point of the story wasn’t that the world kept stopping and needed to be fixed (this isn’t a SyFy movie, after all), but how my main character reacted and dealt with this event.

But I couldn’t get it right.

No matter how I cut the story or rewrote it or change it (keeping two basic things intact: the world stopping its spin and the main character’s reaction to it), I couldn’t get the story to work. I couldn’t get it to feel right.

I go a lot by how a story feels. If I feel like I’ve told the story I want to tell and created the effect I wanted to create, then I’m satisfied and I can work on polishing and revising that story to make it the best it can be. I never got to that point with “At 3:36” and it was pretty disappointing.

The other day I was in the shower, letting my mind wonder over things I needed to work on, stories that needed to be told, money that needed to be made, the typical things that run rampant in my brain during my morning showers. It was during these mental gymnastics that the possible solution to my “At 3:36” story woes came to me. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this story once and for all.

I won’t know for sure until I actually do it, which won’t be until December due to Nanowrimo, but for the first time, I’m excited about this story.

Considering that I hated it as soon as I was done with the first draft, that’s a big improvement.

Writing–The Other Projects

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The World (Saving) Series isn’t my only novel project I’ve got in existence. Due to some successful go rounds at NaNoWriMo as well as a pretty productive period during a six month period one year, I’ve actually got a few in various stages.

When I wrote the first one, now titled Spirited in Spite, I didn’t realize that I was creating a universe. It wasn’t until I wrote (and then lost in the Great Crash) A Simple Matter of Mind Control that I was on to something. By the time I finished the first draft of A Tale of Two Lady Killers, the concept of this universe solidified itself. It wasn’t until The World (Saving) Series that I gave this universe a name, The ‘Skirts, and decided all of the pieces fit. All of the main characters are “on the outskirts of normal”, as one of the characters explains. They all have some sort of paranormal attribute. To me it makes sense and I hope I can make it work.

As I mentioned, they’re all in various stages. Spirited in Spite is waiting to be rewritten (I’ve already done a few chapters and made notes on the rest). A Simple Matter of Mind Control, first draft lost to the Great Crash, is outlined and waiting to be written again, the changes I was planning to make already incoporated into the new outline. A Tale of Two Lady Killers has already had one round of revisions/rewrites.

And we all know where The World (Saving) Series is.

I’m hoping…no, intending…to get back to all of these projects and make something readable out of them. I think they all hold the potential to be good stories and I want to see them through to the end.

Not only would I like to get these stories told, but they also provide me with the opportunity to get into the habit of finishing things.

But that’s another blog post for another day.