NaNoWriMo Year 4 Win

And I thought I was delusional to think that I could write 50,000 words this past month with work, a new baby and little sleep. Once again, my goal-oriented self won out. I'm happy to report that I've won my 4th NaNoWriMo (I skipped last year's).

This year, I decided to write science fiction, a cousin to my usual genre, fantasy. I had no plot and only the vaguest sketch of characters. While I wrote 50,000 words (actually 57,656) I didn't finish my story. I did end up with an outline of scenes to sketch my way to the end of the story so I guess I can finish it up later. This was the first year that I started with no plan - 'pantsing' as it's termed on the NaNoWriMo forums, short for 'writing by the seat of one's pants.' It was a little intimidating and I think it made for a more roundabout first draft than my pre-planned ones. I also think I didn't manage to flesh out much more than caricatures out of my characters. If I did go back and edit, I'd like to know more about who they are and what the heck they think they're doing in my story. I also spent a lot of time having my characters expound on the technology of the story as I tried to figure it out for myself. I'm not sure I was that consistent and there were plenty of spots that I had to sort of hand-wave or else it would bog me down. Still, the story evolved as it went on, but there were size-able stretches where I plunked down words while I tried to figure out what happens next which makes for boring reading. On the flip side, I think I did a better job of switching between different points of view within the story without rehashing what happened in between scenes to the umpteenth degree. Refreshing. At any rate, here's my synopsis. Read more to get a very short excerpt. I'm still trying to think of a title for it.

Synopsis:
When the leading MMO game company hired neuroscientists, the world was thrilled to welcome the ability to control their games and computers with thoughts. But the picture behind the scenes tell a more sinister tale. Brilliant scientist Penelope Redding inadvertently opened the door to TsunamiCorp.’s new tech but she scrambles to undo its darker ramifications when people start disappearing, trapped in the machines they play. Will she be able to destroy TsunamiCorp’s secret labs before it's too late or will she become a victim of her own breakthrough research?


~~~~~~

Penelope was still poring over the data on the screen, "If they did it the way I would have, the only thing the consciousness that transfers would have is the knowledge that their body is breathing, their heart is beating, all of the autonomous stuff. You don't actually need to transfer the signals that actually carry out those processes. They wouldn't actually be controlling anything so they might mess up actual systems in the new consciousness housing but the consciousness would need to 'know' that these things are happening or else it would believe itself dead and actually die. The readings here have the correct profiles that would match that behavior."
"So the body left behind would retain enough autonomous function to keep the flesh alive?" Gabriel completed.
"Yes. If they did it right. That way you can reverse the process and download the consciousness back."
"Seems like there would be some loss somewhere. Epsilon radiation isn't the most precise of technologies," Gabriel said.
"Upload is theoretically easier than downloading. Thanks to Sally, we can communicate with the brain matter and impose new pathways, but the download after an upload of a consciousness isn't making any new pathways, just turning them on again."
"Sounds like that would be easier?"
"My theory is that epsilon radiation is far less efficient at that than creating new pathways. It's a more nuanced communication that I've just started to contemplate. There's no way they have that sort of nuance perfected."
Gabriel waved his hand around the bank of equipment, "They have a little more resources available to them than you do. Maybe they might have gotten ahead of you?"
"Obviously they have gotten ahead of me," Penelope said as a look of irritation crossed her face. She adjusted her glasses. "My point is that they can't have done it right. That level of nuance can't be done methodically. It's not a linear calculation that you can just canvas over. You tend to miss things. When has the human brain looked like a nice, neat grid you can methodically march through?"
"I don’t often get a look at the human brain, but the few times I have it looked pretty organically laid out."
"Exactly,” Penelope scratched her temple. "Somehow, they did upload a consciousness though. And it wasn’t an accident. This most recent pass was their most successful, but this isn't the first time they tried." She stabbed a finger at the display. "See these other files? Similar profile but they get simpler the farther back in time they go. It's trying to do the same thing. They just keep forgetting some bit of information that's key to a functioning consciousness."
"Do you mean to tell me that they've killed as many people as they've tried?"
Penelope’s lips narrowed to a line, "Not dead exactly, but comatose. Vegetables. Unless they perfect their download process, they'll stay that way."

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NaNoWriMo Year 3 Win

Belatedly reporting that I have my winner goodies from the NaNoWriMo website. Yay! I'm liking the fireworks theme this year. I'm glad to have crossed the finish line again this year, but I haven't finished my rewrites. Actually, I crossed the finish line on Tuesday, Nov. 17 and promptly dropped it in favor of Thanksgiving preparation, then later for Christmas preparation. (There's a lot to think about for a planaholic like me, but that'll be a different post). I only hope that I don't take this year's early win and challenge myself to win earlier and earlier. I have to admit that dropping the intensive writing mode was a bit of a relief, though.

The new scenes I wrote will make me change the ending. I have successfully avoided romantic scenes again this year. And I still have to integrate the new bits into the old bits. Over the Christmas holiday, I've transferred the first and second drafts into my new writing software on the PC. As I did so, I did some re-reading and I'm appalled at some of the scenes. Perhaps I should have deleted those outright. But as I'm still trying to figure out how to use Liquid Story Binder, I'll hang on to them for now. Maybe I'll be able to hone them into something better later. I'm glad I fleshed out some of the characters this year. They were only caricatures previously. I deliberately wrote in their points of view this time around so I could get to know them better, particularly my antagonist. There's still one main player I don't fully understand. But considering she inserted herself into the story the first year, I don't feel so bad waiting on knowing who she really is.

Overall, it was a satisfying, if shorter, Novel Writing Month. I'm sure I'll find a way to do it again next year.

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Novel Writing Nov. 12 Update

I was afraid that having to fill in scenes and flesh out details would slow me down this month because I'd have to think them through first and make sure it fits within what I've already written before I write.

I was wrong. I hit the halfway point on Nov. 8. If I keep up the pace, I'm looking to hit 50k sometime next week.

I'm having a lot of fun refining my magic system and the world. It feels a lot more solid and grounded to me instead of floating around vaguely while I hoped it worked. I've also decided to write scenes in other characters' points of view, particularly my villain so that I can get to know her better. I stuck pretty closely to my main character's point of view the first time. She didn't really know what was going on so it was easy to hand wave events. This time, I do have to know what actually happened to inhabit the other characters' points of view.

My other word count strength is dialogue. If I get several characters in conversation, I can chew through words pretty easily. I'll sit down to write, get a few people talking and there went 500 words, a quarter of my daily goal. I even remember to put in actions in between their conversation. A pair of my characters love to tease each other - they're a lot of fun to write.

I've hit a tricky part of the story so the next few days might be dicey. I think I'm going to have to ditch the location of the last half of my story and write in a completely new place. It should be interesting.

With that, I'll leave the rest of this post to an excerpt from my current story. I wrote this scene on Nov. 5. Hope you enjoy!

Excerpt:

It was well past dark when Evrhiel stepped into the Smith’s Buckler tavern by the docks. She had already sent Lysanna and Geoff in different directions to find other potential ears. “Drazehn only,” she had said. “They’re the best at this task and I don't want to risk having this fall into less trustworthy hands.” She paused a moment to allow her eyes to get used to the brighter interior before moving to corner table near the door that was unoccupied. The room was not particularly crowded. Several tables were shoved together on the left seating a group of blacksmith apprentices and a blacksmith or two. Another smaller group on the right looked like other locals. Several tables scattered here and there were singly or doubly occupied. She concentrated on the singly occupied tables for a few minutes before determining the one she was looking for. She made no pretense about sauntering over to her target’s table and claiming an empty seat.

The occupant of the table did not move to acknowledge her presence. He had chosen a seat that kept him mostly hidden in shadow. He wore dark clothes and wore his hat low on his forehead even indoors. He certainly acted like a good candidate for the Drazehn that she was expecting. Before saying a word, she laid a gold coin on the table and slid it across. That garnered some movement from the man. He picked it up and deliberately dropped it back on the table. Satisfied, he pocketed it.

“You have my attention,” he drawled a melodious baritone and Evrhiel knew she had the right man.

“I expect something in return for that coin,” she began.

“Well I wasn’t assuming that you handed me gold for my looks alone,” he said taking a sip from the glass in front of him.

“I want to know information around two subjects. One is if anyone is asking around about me. The other is if anyone is asking around about a noble lady’s recent death. In either case, I want to know who.”

The man inclined his head, “And how many more such coins are you willing to part with for that information? These questions seem somewhat indefinite and could take some time.”

“For delivery of the information, I’d be willing to part with 25 gold.”

“That’s a middling sum for information that may never appear,” he mused.

“So if you don’t hear anything, you don’t get paid. I don’t see that this is a problem.”

He shrugged, “And it doesn’t become a high priority for me to keep listening past, let’s say three days. I’m a busy man and I’ve many other potential jobs I could fulfill instead of waiting around for only the possibility of 25 gold.”

“You have that coin I already gave you,” Evrhiel dug around in the coin pouch at her waist and deposited another stack of gold coins. “And I’ll add this to it.”

He counted, then nodded slightly. “I’ll call that incentive enough. But I’ll need names, more specifically yours and your dearly departed.”

In answer to that, Evrhiel slid over a folded piece of paper. “The first is my name. The second is the departed. I will be in town for only a few more days, but I will still pay on the information should it take longer than that. The final name and inn is where you can find my associate after I leave town. It is also the same inn where I can be found now should you be so industrious as to find the knowledge I seek sooner rather than later.” She paused to let him read over the slip of paper. “You’ll be throwing that in the fire.”

He rose smoothly from his seat and paced towards the fire along the wall. In the firelight, she saw that he was clad in browns rather than black. The hat firmly upon his head did not allow the benefit of illumination. Once he was seated again, he said, “I think we have an agreement, Mistress.”

“Save for your name,” she replied.

He turned his head to regard her in silence. Then he finally came to a decision and intoned, “Bruvier.”

She stood at that, “Then our business here is concluded. Good eve.” As Evrhiel left the tavern, she knew there were eyes that followed her out the door, but none so curious as the man still in the shadows, twirling a gold coin across his knuckles.

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'Tis the Other Season

Against my better judgment, I'm in on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year, my third. I snuck up on it again. I told myself I'm not doing it, I have too many projects I haven't been getting to, I'm holding Thanksgiving dinner, family is visiting, blah, blah, blah. Then I decided I couldn't pass up the crazy productivity that is November writing and thought I could merely channel it into something I keep not doing - revising my 2007 NaNo. Strictly speaking, revising/editing doesn't fall under the purview of NaNoWriMo. It's new novels only.

But upon perusing the vibrant community forums at the NaNoWrimo website, I found others out of the 90,000 or so who had a similar plan to mine. And they called themselves Rebels.

So I'm declaring this a Rebel year. My goal is to write 50,000 new words for my old novel. Furthermore, I'd like to finish up by Thanksgiving. Which means I have 25 days to do it. Oh boy.

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NaNoWriMo 2008

I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner *dancedancedance*! It says so on this nifty certificate right here, all printed out and ready to hang on something prominent. As you can see, the certificate is even on a first name basis with me. We are new good friends and we just met!



With five days left in November, I'm declaring this novel writing month complete (except for the requisite celebrations) for me. I ended up with 51,585 words, written in approximately 60 hours this month. (That's it? 60 hours? It felt like at least 60 gazillion). I also have a complete story in those 51K words which is even better.

This year, I decided to write a mystery. In my youth, there were two sections of the library that I think I managed to read all the books in: the fantasy/sci-fi section and the mystery section. Since I wrote fantasy for NaNoWriMo last time, I thought I'd try my hand at mystery. My co-workers gave me the idea of setting the murder in the corporate world and the idea of a Dilbert-ized murder mystery intrigued me. I don't think I achieved quite the funny Scott Adams does regularly for Dilbert, but at least it was the inspiration. For my detective, I picked a happily married female to defy the loner, unhappily married or single stereotype I'd already encountered several times before. As a matter of fact, some of the easiest scenes for me to write was going home with her and just being part of their oh-so-normal familial routine, complete with cats Ka and Zaia. Ah, how life imitates art. It probably makes for utterly undramatic reading, but it did make the words go by faster.

And they didn't go by very quickly for me this year. In stark contrast to last year, I had no plot outline. I was busy just before November kicked off for some reason that had something to do with Muppets and didn't get to do more than brainstorm elements of the story and about the detective. I didn't even use all of the elements I jotted down and my detective sure didn't end up acting like I had originally intended. I did reinforce my learning from last year that goal-setting is key for me. I set my daily word count goal to the same goal as last year: 2000. And even though I would often sit down at the keyboard with no idea what was happening next, somehow by the time I went to bed sometimes quite late, I'd have those 2000 words. Once again, I lost track of my characters' names and it seemed like I went through a lot of incidental characters this year (red herring potential). I tried to make myself an index to reference, but apparently the characters were coming too fast and furious to keep up (or I got lazy). It will be very interesting to figure out later that I had actually meant Sophie to be the same person as Sarah and the person I called Jonas was initially Jacob. Ah well.

Surprisingly, I also spent less time delving into the community which was so exciting for me to participate in last year. The people are still way cool, of course, but I found myself just typing to the entertainment of my cats and some iTunes music. I 'sponsored' a couple of local write-ins once a week which served to prove to me how much faster I can get through words without the distraction of home stuff. And the commiserating at the write-ins let me know I hadn't completely lost my mind, which was comforting. I completely kicked my word warring habit from last year (*Word War: a friendly competition among NaNoWriMoers in which the person who writes the most words in an agreed upon time frame gets bragging rights). And apparently, I gained the annoying habit of using many parentheses.

And of course, there was the mid-month Write-a-Thon. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and even some strangers, I got to partake in a thrilling night of writing! It was set in the SoMa Arts Center in San Francisco with a Noir theme. How apropos was that? There were many fedoras and evening gowns to be seen around laptops. We had a tasty pasta dinner and many sweets and caffeine and even alcohol to keep us going. Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo's founder, gave us a humorous overview of the last 10 years of NaNoWriMo and I got to sit next to the attendant who had traveled the farthest to be there that night, Adrian from Sydney, Australia, who incidentally was also writing a mystery.

I understand that common wisdom of NaNoWriMo is that the sophomore year is tough, dragging people down in the depths of despair. I'm glad that I've survived intact, early, albeit less interested in this past story than the previous year's. And now on to gratitude and turkey!

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Impressions of a First-Time NaNoWriMo-er

Cheating a bit here. I wrote this the day after NaNoWriMo ended last year, Dec. 2, 2007. I hadn't quite gotten out of the habit of writing everyday yet (but it didn't take much longer) and I figured I might as well capture my first impressions while they were still fresh. As another November approaches, it's worth reminding myself what it was like that first time...


When I first heard of NaNoWriMo, I thought to myself that it was a crazy goal I’d never be able to achieve. “That’s for people who are more experienced/talented/serious in writing than I am,” I said to myself. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to take on that challenge.” I wish I could remember exactly when that first thought first popped into my head, but I think it was about July or August of 2007.

I should have known better than to apply ‘Maybe one day’ to a challenge like this appearing in my life. You see, I have these obsessive, stubborn tendencies. Sometimes, it’s a fleeting concept in my day where I suddenly remember than I haven’t had any Filipino food in quite a while only I don’t know any good places nearby to get Filipino food. And so I’m off to the wonders of technology that is Google and the next thing you know, I’m going slightly out of my way on the way home so I can have take out for dinner. Sometimes it lasts several weeks or months when I get hold of a new video game so that I have to come home every day and play the latest Final Fantasy installment so that I can find out what happens in the story. So if I get an idea in my head, no matter how nonchalant I pretend I can be about it, I’ll still fixate enough so that the only cure is to actually do something about it.

And that’s not even engaging my competitive nature. I’ve tried to scale back on the urgency of my response to the idea of competition - I’ve actually used that tendency for evil, to the detriment of personal relationships and my happiness in the past and I’ve learned to be leery of its power. But as soon as my inner competitor whispered, “I bet you can’t do it.”, my knee jerk reaction was “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

All I needed was someone I knew who had done it to tell me it’s not as bad and scary as it appeared to be. That came in the form of a friend in my writing group who, without my prompting, announced that she had just completed her own novel writing month in August ahead of the official November event. And that it wasn’t that bad. So I did what any rational, obsessive, competitive planner would do: I researched the project, bought the No Plot, No Problem book and researched what tools and resources I would need to have in place in order to succeed at it. I decided that I would need a laptop despite previously decrying their use for ergonomic reasons so that I would be able to transport myself and my creativity to various points of inspiration and interest aside from my home office. Once I gave myself permission to do research, I went on to research Mac laptops (which I’ve never previously owned) because they seemed to be more creative than the PC desktops I’ve owned in the past. I didn’t have the wherewithal to justify buying a brand new top of the line Mac laptop so off I went to Ebay, which I’ve never used, so I could get a better deal and still have an out. That if I didn’t actually do NaNoWriMo, I didn’t spend full price so it would be okay. Of course I still had to support my physical health so I had to research accessories that would enable me to move around with a laptop without killing my wrists and hands as I wrote my 1667 words a day for an entire month. And I did this all before October so that I would have time to teach myself how to use a Mac and the new novel-writing software (also researched) so it wouldn’t slow me down.

Yet in October, I was still telling people that I was only considering NaNoWriMo, but not really committed to it. Even as I tried to convince other friends with writing tendencies, I still sidled up to the idea, stating only that I was considering doing it. I finally gave up pretending on October 5th when I signed up on the official NaNoWriMo.org website and joined the community of largely younger and very enthusiastic writers from all around the world waiting for the commencement of November. I was and still am enamored of the concept that community can provide powerful momentum to accomplish more than the individual, even with such a typically solitary endeavor as writing. And as I found out more about the organization and founder that started NaNoWriMo, I was inspired by the example of one man starting a movement and event that essentially encouraged, challenged and supported anyone who had ever dreamed and wanted to follow that dream. And what an extra bonus that the birth of NaNoWriMo happened just down the road from my house! I took that to mean that I should go ahead and go for it.

As instructed by the No Plot, No Problem book, I wasn’t supposed to start with a plot or work too extensively on my novel until a week prior to November 1st. Have I mentioned yet that I have a planner mindset? I think I managed to last until a week and a half before November. I had a pair of characters, a general conflict and sat down to write 59 phrases that was my plot outline. I vowed to set my daily goal to 2000 words, rounding up the 1667 so that I would have a buffer if I had some bad writing days.

I almost didn’t go to the pre-November kickoff party in San Francisco. But it was there that I made some key writing buddy friends that I would see through the month of November at write-ins or through NaNoMails, who kept me going. I also took the opportunity to thank Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo’s founder for creating and living such an inspiring vision. I’m sure he hears it every day, but I wanted to add my voice to the numerous others whose lives he has touched and made for the better.

To borrow from the NaNoWriMo Forums, Things I Learned from NaNoWrimo in November:

- I’m goal oriented. Actually, it’s not so much that I didn’t know I was goal oriented. It was that I had to negotiate my goals with myself ahead of time. For example, I gave myself 2000 words per day. On the first weekend, I hit 2000 and stopped even though I still had time during the day to get ahead of the schedule. The following weekend, I made sure to give myself notice that I would do double word count days on weekends so I could keep going.

- I can keep writing what happens next in the story even if I don’t actually know what happens next. This started kicking in about mid-way through the story when I started deviating significantly from my outline and I thought I would have to take a break and restructure the rest of the outline. Turns out, I still wrote 2000 words during those days. My goal-reaching fu is stronger than my path-finding fu.

- Fingerless gloves help keep my typing longer because my hands are nice and toasty. If they’re pirate fingerless gloves, my hands can go ’arrr!’ at the keyboard and intimidate the keys into submission.

- I will never win a word war in IM chats, but in four 15 minute wars with appropriate breaks, I can make my daily word count. Also, I can do self word wars, but it’s only slightly less effective because my in between breaks tend to go longer than the IM chat rooms.

- Figuring out plots and characters is a lot like puzzle solving, only I’m the one making the pieces and seeing where they fit. This is trickier than it sounds and is also a lot of fun.

- I like writing dialogue more than I like writing descriptions of people, places and things.

- I often wonder how little justice I’m doing to the dramatic scenes in my story when I’m writing for quantity.

- I don’t snack or drink nearly as much as I expected while writing.

- Singing along with my iPod is a great mini-writing break activity. This works better when I’m not out writing in public.

- 50,000 words is a stronger goal than finishing the story. My momentum went down as soon as I hit 50k even though I’d already negotiated with myself that I wanted to finish the actual story in November.

- I’m afraid of writing endings. This may be because I don’t want stories to end but if I attach a goal to it, I’ll probably end up doing it anyway.

- My inner editor likes to tell me how cliche my plot ideas, word choices, character quirks are. It’s liberating to write anyway, and let them yammer away in the corner. It does help that I let it correct spelling mistakes as I wrote. Kept ‘em happy.

- I need to put more dysfunctional traits in my characters. Otherwise, they’re boring.

- Backup my work. Back it up redundantly. Assigning my obsessive trait to the job of watching over the backing up process is good delegation.

It’s now December 2nd and I’m wandering around trying to find something to do, which is what led me to write this piece to begin with. I suppose with one of my favorite holidays coming up, I should get into the spirit. But before I let go, I’ve started making a list of changes I want to put into the editing when I pick up this year’s story again. And I already have something in mind for next year’s novel.
PS: I just noticed that I didn’t make minimum daily 1667 word count with this piece and that should be okay. Right? (1666, argh!)

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Bloggishness

Seems this blog thing is the new hotness (and no, I'm not an early adopter, why do you ask?). It's no coincidence whatsoever that I'm trying out blogging again roughly a month before I tackle my second year at National Novel Writing Month. Something about writing practice. I've tried blogging before and either let it languish or it was project specific and the project's done. So I'm trying again and seeing if this is a habit I can maintain. My previous failures at consistent blogging probably has more to do with my attention span with new shiny things (minimal) as well as my internet hermit tendencies (do I really have to post this?). So I gave myself a broader umbrella of topics that I could write about so that I can be as distracted as I want to be. I should also give myself a goal/schedule when I should post things if I really wanted this to work, but I'll have to think on that some more.

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