For the WIN!

Doing my little winner touchdown dance at the NaNoWriMo finish line... 51,118 words! :D

It's been a crazy ride, as usual. Even after slogging through mid-month despair, things started to gel and the story moved along. It's exciting, and even though I'm not keen on my attempt at an ending, at least the pieces are there.

Editing will be fun. I'm afraid to see how many words I actually have after I eschew the fluff chapters, the filler, the experiments and random misplaced scenes. But hey, whatever... I made it!

So now... I'll probably return to my regular blog, but this will still be open for business as I edit. Next plan is to get some character pages, a synopsis, and some better organization going here, then document the painful editing process. In spite off all that's wrong with it, I really believe in the heart of this little story, and I'd like to have a semi-presentable manuscript by the time Nano rolls around next year.

Which will also need a good kick-in-the-pants kind of motivation. 2010 might be my first year participating in NaNoEdMo. :)

Off to celebrate victory... and bark at my sister to cross the line. She's at 40K and feverishly typing away in there!

Yay!

The Home Stretch!

Tonight, I broke 40K. Woot!

Suddenly, some of the pressure's relaxed. Loose ends are tying up. My poor little MC is having a bad day that's about to get worse. I'm writing toward a climax.

And the wonderful thing is, it really does get easier when you get closer to the end.

***

It's been a while since I had something that (I thought) was excerpt-worthy, but I do have one right here from last night's sessions. It's something adapted from the last draft of my short story, only filled out a little more, and re-reading it just got to me a little. So, figure that's one worth sharing.

The setup: Neil's been noticing some really weird behavior on his sister's part, so he's going to confront their dad on it and get some advice. It doesn't really go so well. In the original story, this scene happened at home, but didn't really have the right tension. For this version, Neil decides to skip a class (which leads to a really lame cliche filler scene where he gets beat up by some punks... but whatever. we won't talk about the lame cliche filler scenes. ;)) to have this conversation in his Dad's office. (Dad happens to teach English at Neil and Jon's high school)

Anyway. Putting the scene at school instead of home seems to change the mood and dynamic a bit. But this first excerpt was lifted straight from the original, with some reworking. I always liked this part... bittersweet, and contrasting with where the family is now.

(Side note: Renting NC cabins = the Floridian vacation of choice. Seriously. :))

***

"And just why were you in the faculty hall?"

Neil raised his eyes and peeked at his father. He was taking a sip from a chipped coffee mug from his college days, one with his alma mater's logo. He set it down with a heavy thump, then said, "Neil. Did you hear me?"

"I did..." He looked at the desk, focused on the back of a photo frame.

"Then why were you in the hall? I know you were supposed to be in geometry, so it appears you skipped class." Neil just fidgeted and said nothing. "Is something bothering you?"

He shrugged his skinny shoulders once, then reached over and picked up the frame. His dad made no move to protest. When he turned the wood frame over, he held his breath.

It was a family photo from some Christmas past. They were outside in the snow, standing in front of a cabin they rented one winter in North Carolina. There were tree limbs in the background, bent with snow. And they stood together, bundled in their thin-blooded Floridian winter finest.

And she was with them. Smiling in a green sweater, her wavy hair, the same coppery color as Neil's, flowing out from under a matching cap, a colorful scarf draped around her neck. It was long then and so beautiful... before the treatments had taken it all away from her. Her eyes sparkled with life, before the cancer ate the spark away. And they all looked younger, happier, more alive then. Dad had an awkward grin on his face as he posed with one arm tightly around his beautiful wife's shoulders. Neil and Jon were barely nine, and had glints in their eyes as if they would break out into a snowball fight any second, though Jon's grin was a lot more mischievous, while Neil smiled as shyly as ever. Shanna was a gangly twelve year old with freckles and stick straight auburn hair, standing between her brothers with her arms protectively around their shoulders.

Neil felt a lump in his throat. "This was taken... like six years ago, right?"

"It was. You remember that year?"

"Yeah. That was fun."

He just nodded without answering. Neil could feel his hands trembling as he stared at the picture, falling into his mother's eyes. Into all of their smiling faces. He wanted so badly to see these people again... they seemed lost, frozen in time. He barely recognized them now.

"Are you thinking about her?"

"I..." He couldn't stand to look at the picture anymore. He handed it back. "I miss her."

***

Sadness. :(

Okay, so then... there's this whole scene where I really tried to play up the tension between them. Neil tells his dad everything he's observed in Shanna, but he doesn't seem too concerned. And then he basically says, "Yeah, I know, but she won't listen to me." Which ticks off the concerned, sensitive teenage son, but he tries to keep his cool and be respectful. Mostly.

One comment I got from the early version of this scene was that they acted like strangers, so I tried to play that up. The whole conversation is melodramatic purple prose I don't feel like sharing with the world, so nyah. :P But there was this one little bit I really liked... so world, you can have this:

***

“I keep trying, but I just can’t seem to reach her. So… so I’m letting her sort this one out on her own. You have to believe me. I’m not ignoring my own precious daughter.”

“But if she’s that broken, she can’t just fix herself,” Neil said without looking up.

“And I certainly can’t fix her either. The rest is up to her.”

Neil looked up and stared straight into his father’s eyes. They looked like a stranger’s eyes. He didn’t seem like himself. Neither of them did.

“So you’re giving up.” It was more of a statement than a question.

He said nothing in response.

***

Oh noes! To be continued. I'm liking this story again.

Woohoo and Nanolyser

So another few thousand and I'll be at 40K! Clocked in at 37,269 tonight. The story is finally moving along... I'd really like to keep going, but sleep is calling.

And! Here's a nifty little tool called Nanolyser, which figures out personal charts and stats and tells you what you need to write each day to get back on schedule. It fills me with nerdy fascination. Here's a link to my Nanolyser chart. Kind of handy for the visual learner in me.

That's it, really. I think what helped my spurt of productivity was
(1) I was off today (vacation from now til the end of NaNo... yay!)
(2) I got a jump start on the wordcount by immediately starting my computer and banging out a thousand words as soon as I woke up this morning
and (3) the deadline looms big and scary before me.

Okay. Right. Time to sleep.

30K = Woot!

I broke 30,000 words tonight!!! 30,898 to be exact. Victory feels good. :)

So now that I'm ahead of where I was last year, I feel a lot better. And the plot is (finally) starting to roll around, though it had more holes than a moth-eaten sweater. (You thought I'd say swiss cheese. Ha. I thought about it though.)

Right. So in this session... I found a new character, a new opening scene, and the plot I've been digging for all along. When I got back to the heart of the story -- namely, Shanna's mysterious behavior and what's going on with her -- the words came way easier.

But now it is late, and I really need to stop and get some sleep. Just when it's starting to turn into something. Boo. :(

I'm too tired to look for something excerpt worthy tonight. Sorry. But I'm feeling really good about finishing this thing again! Hoping for some good writing energy when I take a few days off next week. Yay long holiday weekends.

Angst and Despair! :(

So, here we are, 10 days from the end. I'm only at 20,000 words.

I'm also bored, frustrated, and ready to quit. Let's just be honest.

I am taking heart that as of 11/26 last year, I had only just crossed the 30K mark. So if I can pull off 10,000 words between now and Tuesday, at least I'll be in the same place. I still believe I can do it, though I'm woefully behind.

But honestly? Today I realized that my story, as it is, quite simply... sucks. If I'm taking anything away from NaNoWriMo this year, it's that there's a reason they say to start with a completely new story. I think basing my novel on something that previously existed has lifted my expectations way too high. "This is great!" I thought. "By the time I'm done, I'll have this beautiful touching story that will be ready for the world with a little revision."

Um. Nope. :) But it's pretty humbling actually.

On the ride home from work, I had a few plot epiphanies (mostly that... um... I still don't have a plot, but 20,000 words of aimless slush?) but at this point, I'm not sure how to make my ideas work without starting over. But hey, the Inner Editor just needs to shut up and let me plunge forward, right?

Sure.

So! Enough whining... I have a few goals for tonight's session:

1. Get to the halfway point, or at least as close as possible. 4,000 words is a lot to do in one night, but it's possible. It's a Friday. Who needs sleep? :)
2. Switch to third person. I'm finding that first person perspective just isn't my thing. It's so restrictive, my character has lost his quirky voice and just has a bad case of Bella Syndrome.* Perhaps if I just write outside his head, maybe the story and the whole cast can breathe.
3. Just take the new plot, jump in, and roll with it. I may write a separate post about the new story concept.
4. Have fun! Try to find the joy in the writing again. Lately, sitting down to write has felt like drudgery, and that's not what NaNoWriMo is about!

I can do this. Really. *deep breath* I start after dinner.

Also... a hearty congrats to my new NaNo friend Emily who has completed her first ever NaNo marathon! She finished her 50,000 words on the 15th. I hate her. :D (No, not really. Congrats! You're inspiring me.)

Onward!

------

* Bella Syndrome - when a story is told in first person by a character so self-centered, angsty, whiny, and needy (like the author of this blog?) that the protagonist one is supposed to love becomes a person one wants to punch in the face. I don't need to tell you who Bella is, right?

10K Happy Dance!

I just broke 10,000 words. Huzzah!

It was supposed to be 16,000+ today, but whatever. Who cares what the NaNoWriMo calendar on my desktop says. :P

I have no clue what I'm doing at this point. Wrote a chapter from Neil's perspective, a chapter from Shanna's. I don't know if I like this switching back and forth thing, but it was a chance to follow her around at work and see what's going on there. Still wrestling with first person perspective.

So yeah. I don't know what happens next. I hope my characters do. My abnormal work week has left me too exhausted to devote much brain energy to this.

One day... I'll learn how to plan and outline in October. :)

***

And now... an excerpt! Shanna is a cashier in a restaurant that's sorta-loosely based on the place my mom works. (Book Lady is kind of real. :)) And the Blink 182 reference? They were mentioned earlier in this chapter. A wonderful friend gave me a mix CD with a lot of their stuff last week, so I had them in my head when I started. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing Shanna's other kid brother would listen to. (and that Shann would secretly dig :P)

Yep. When in doubt, borrow from life. Um yeah. Here's the end of the chapter.

***

Book Lady finally came up with her ticket in hand. As I rung her up, we made the usual small talk:

“How are you?”

“Just fine. And you?”

“Oh, doing great!”

She paused for a second as I handed her change over. And she looked at me. Not the quick “thanks-have-a-nice-day” eye contact that comes and goes… but a probing sort of look. Like she tried to read me the way she read the pulp fiction paperback in her purse.

Then she smiled, and said, “Have a nice day, sweetie.”

“You too. See you tomorrow?”

“Of course!”

She left. I realized I really didn’t even know her name, even though she came every day. And she probably didn’t know mine.

But for a moment… for the briefest of moments, she looked at me as if she did. As if she knew something I didn’t. Something no one else knew.

Weird.

I leaned on the counter to wait for my next customer, twirling the ends of my ponytail in my fingers, and humming one of Jon’s stupid Blink 182 songs.

The gnawing in my stomach was pretty much gone by then.

Day 5

Death scenes are the worst thing to write. Ever. :( Especially when you like the character.

Today I sneaked out of the office on my lunch break, grabbed some coffee at Borders (not knowing it was the half price happy hour. Cheaper mocha for the win!), and picked up on a little scene that happens in between stuff I'd already written.

It was much easier for the short story, writing the death scene. Gloss over it -- oh yeah, she died, so sad -- and move on. Not so here, since I'd scribbled some backstory and gotten to know the mom character. And that's the problem.. a good problem. I've kind of grown to love Erin and hate to write her out so soon.

But... unlike other times, I can't change my mind on this one. No death = no story. :P

So my word count is up to 5,615. I'm tired, but might try to scribble some more before bed. I like the lunch break writing thing... helps a lot. (Yesterday, I sneaked to an empty office with a couch and wrote for my lunch hour. So nice.)

Oh yeah.. here's an excerpt. Just a few lines that I thought turned out rather okay for a first run through. There are some redundancy tweaks that must be made, but whatever. It was all about getting things quickly and capturing something so emotional and intense I can't begin to imagine it. I felt kind of sad after I finished writing it, so I guess I did something almost-right.

***

We all knew she was dying. We all knew the time was short, even though we didn’t really talk about it. Every day seemed like a breath. A sunrise. Inhale. A sunset. Exhale. God only knew how many more she would have.

When she came home, nothing about her suggested defeat. She didn’t limp, she didn’t moan, and if it weren’t for increasing thinness and frailty, the way she needed help with little things like opening bottles, and later, bigger little things, like getting up and walking across the room, we would’ve never thought of her as different.

She spent less and less time up and around the house, but never took less of an interest in our lives. Sometimes I’d walk by her room and see her propped up on pillows, tucked under her lacy white quilt with Shanna at her side, reviewing college brochures. Or helping Jon work out problems as he studied for a math test. Or with Dad, talking in hushed voices, holding hands. Sometimes I was the one with a chair nearby, recounting the events of the day.

...

Death is supposed to be something poetic, almost romantic. But for us, I think we all would have given anything to stop it.

I mean, how do you watch someone die? It’s the worst, most helpless feeling in the world. At least if someone’s hurt, you can try to help them. If someone’s crying, you can make them laugh.

But to watch a life end… to watch a heart stop beating… and know the person is someone you love and totally okay and peaceful even though you’re the one falling apart, and you can't do anything about it… has to be the hardest thing to face.

The sun rose. Another inhale. Another breath beginning.

And she exhaled for the last time. The rest of us didn’t. We were too busy holding our breath.

***

Note: This post dated Thursday because I wrote it on Thursday... but posted Sunday because I forgot to publish it. Makes sense, yes? Yes.

Week 1 recap to come soon. Carry on. :)

Day 3?

So I totally didn't write anything yesterday. Well, that's not true... I wrote. But I was working on the final edits for my next JFH review instead of working on my novel. (Flyleaf - Memento Mori if you care to know. :)) May I just say that having a regular writing gig is throwing an extra interesting dynamic into NaNoWriMo month? I find it hard to write multiple things at once and have to prioritize, y'know.

Today I took my little notebook out on a lunch break and tried to scribble some more. It um... didn't quite work. Apparently, the random direction I took the other day isn't lending itself to moving on. Day 3 and I already have writer's block? Say it isn't so!

So I'm about to settle in, fire up Scrivener and/or Write or Die, and figure out what to do next. I'm very tempted to insert some placeholder paragraphs for the scenes I don't know and just dive into the ones I do. Is that cheating? I'm kind of a non-linear, patchwork writer anyway... I figure it never hurts to jot random scenes and stitch them together later.

Later. After November. Inner Editor, go away!

Right. Onward to writing. :)

PS: I totally want to do the Big Scary Character Quiz, at least for Neil and maybe Shanna. But that would be procrastination too, wouldn't it?

PPS: Need a laugh? Check out The Christian Romance Novel Naughty List or: How to Get Instant Rejection Letters from Steeple Hill. Then be glad you're not writing a Christian romance novel for NaNoWriMo. Hysterical, dagnabbit. (oops. Already violated the list. *sigh*)

Day 1 - Word count and an Excerpt

And the final word count for Day 1 is... 2,431. Not bad! Surpassed the 1667 mark anyway. True it turned out to be a bunch of stream of consciousness rambling for the most part, but hey... it's progress. At least I got a prologue and the first chapter down.

A couple of peculiar things happened in today's writing. First, between the two sections, I switched point of view. Ever since I decided to shoot for a YA angle, I've agonized over whether or not to keep the third person POV like the original story or try a first person approach, since that seems to be the thing in YA. I started off in first, wasn't feeling it, switched to third for the prologue... then switched back in Chapter 1. Guess I'll fix that in revision.

Second odd thing: my teen protaganist decided in Chapter one to go off on a rambling tangent about how his parents met. Odd, since he (obviously) wasn't there, but I think it might work.

*sigh* Will I ever learn to make an outline? :) Then again, if I outlined the thing to death I wouldn't get these surprises. Can't wait to see what happens when I write tomorrow.

So anyway, I close with a little excerpt from the prologue, when it was still third person. It's pretty close to the first scene of the Music Lessons short story, but a little more drawn out to up the word count (and, IMO, a lot sloppier!)

Enjoy or something. It's very painful posting this without editing, so cut me some slack, okay? :)

***

“Do you ever sleep?”

The music stopped, the last notes still vibrating the air as gently as they had drifted down the hall. Shanna looked up from her guitar and gave her brother a little smile. “Not much. Do you?”

Neil stood in the hallway watching her sit in her usual spot on our worn-out dark leather couch, and the way he was yawning, the way his long copper hair stuck up in the back he looked like he would much rather be in bed.

“Jon snores.” He put on his glasses, stepped into the living room, and flopped onto the couch beside her. “I can’t sleep anyway. Mind if I join you?”

“Sure! But only if you practice your scales.”

“At midnight?”

“Hey, I didn’t tell you to come in here and interrupt my private practice time, did I?”

“Yeah, but…”

“No buts, you.” She dropped the instrument onto his lap. “You walked into this.”

He sighed. She was right, as usual. He was up anyway, so there was no point in wasting time. He held the guitar close, taking time to feel the smooth, polished wooden body of the instrument against his skin, to feel the steel strings cutting into his fingers as he pressed on the frets. It was a miracle that this contraption could make beautiful music in capable hands. He strummed each one lightly, letting each pure note resonate in the air, low to high. Then he fumbled to position his fingers, and attempted to pluck out a clumsy basic scale, just as she had been teaching him.

His hands weren’t exactly the capable ones.

...

“Here,” he said with a discouraged frown, passing the instrument back to her. “I can’t concentrate.”

“Oh, good grief…”

“No, really.” He couldn’t get the sound of her laugh out of his mind. “Will you play something?”

“Sure.” She positioned her fingers over the strings, gave them one quick pass with her hand.

Then she began to play… chords, notes, a little arpeggio. Her fingers spun steel and air into a delicate melody she had composed herself. It swelled in the right places to feel sweeping, melancholy, but in some ways, hopeful and true.

If she were a song, this would be her sound. A sad song, one that didn’t resolve. But a beautiful song that made you want to sing, made you want to believe things were okay, even though everything around you — the world, the people around you, your own better judgment — said it wasn’t. A song to help a broken world come to terms with the pain.

That was Shanna.

Annnnnd we're off!

The writing frenzy began at midnight Nov 1st! My sister and I were off kittysitting this weekend, and ended up Internet-free, which pretty much makes for some really productive writing time.

Sorta.

Writing got off to a shaky start, clocking in at 1,489 words by the time I conked out at 1:30 am. Blame the cold I've been battling, blame unfamiliar territory disrupting my comfort levels (even though I kept telling myself it was like a little writer's retreat). I don't know.

The good news is that technically those 1,489 words are part of the first day's word count, leaving me until midnight to hit the 178 left for the first day goal. Cake. I still got time to get ahead.

Anyhoo. Final update, and possibly an excerpt once I'm done tonight. :)

By the way, Scrivener is pretty awesome. If you're a Mac user, check out the NaNo 2009 trial. I love it, and NaNo 2009 winners get 50% off the purchase price. (Everyone else can get 20% off anyway) Perfect incentive for me to hit the goal this year!