NaNoWriMo

So that happened:

Now I am a little brain dead, this week is somewhat bonkers and I still want to write 50,000 more words in November.

I am knitting a sweater for my husband and am really looking forward to the weekend where I have nothing planned at all.

I’ll be back here with a new update on Monday, see you then.

One of the reasons that I haven’t written much here lately – even though I made a commitment to myself to post something once a week at least – has been that I’m in the middle of doing Camp NaNoWriMo yet again. I had wanted to write the first draft of the third in the current trilogy, and so I thought that would be a good thing so that I could write that faster. I’m not quite sure why but NaNo works for me every time.

Of course right now I’m at that stage where I am completely convinced that the whole story is crap, that nobody ever would want to read it – me included – and that stopping it and starting something else would be a fabulous idea.

And of course there is only one thing one can do in a situation like this: finish writing it.

Because it’s always the same. I am a little more than halfway through the story right now, and that is always when I lose interest. Writing middles is hard for me, and now that I know where this is going, and what will happen it’s not all that exciting anymore. And I’ve been sitting down to write every day for three weeks now, okay, most days, and it’s starting to get old.

I also stopped revision on the second novel so that I could take advantage of Camp NaNoWriMo for the third one. I’m still not sure if that was a good thing but that’s what I did, and now I’m stuck with it.

I am hoping that I’ll be able to pick that revision up again at the beginning of May, and that my notes and my memory of what happened, and what I want this book to be are good enough that I can sit down and actually make the cut. And that I then will be disciplined enough to sit down and revise novel number three.

Discipline is kickking my ass, by the way. I still get up at five, and the benefits are big enough that I want to continue doing that but I’m still not going to bed early enough, and so my whole world consists of tiredness right now. It is somewhat alright in the mornings which is why I can write at all but as the day goes on ot becomes harder and harder. Until I lack the willpower to turn off the lights at night.

And this weekend things will be extra-interesting because we have rehearsal, and even a kind of dress rehearsal for the thing we’re going to play at the beginning of May, and that means not only will I have to be coherent and with people until my bedtime and beyond, I will also have to sing and play and focus on what I’m doing at a time where I usually just slump around reading.

And before that I will have to get beds ready for the musicians who stay overnight, and help my husband make food for them, and do dishes like crazy, and go to the grocery store, and help set up for rehearsal.

In fact, it’s not quite seven yet, and I feel like crawling back into bed already.

Still, I will have to find a way to write my 2,500 words today, and do everything I need to do, and be nice and polite and professional.

So yeah, that is why I haven’t posted here this week. I did write lots and lots of words, though, so I hope that’s alright with you.

It’s November already, the last resort of near-normalness before the madness that is Christmas season, and this year unlike last year I’m doing it again, NaNoWriMo. I’m attempting to write a novel (or rather most of a novel, 50,000 words) until the end of the month.

It’s already driving me crazy a bit, and it’s only the fourth day. This time I planned to plot ahead, to plan, to be sensible, and write my 2,000 words a day in the mornings, and yet  – I haven’t I did some plotting, and even got me another book on how to plot, Holly Lisle’s “Create a Plot Clinic”, the first ever book on plot that I’ve found really useful.

I think the chapter on “how to plot while writing” will get a lot of use this year.

Unlike other years the writing is already feeling slow and painful, right from the beginning, no starting euphoria for me this year. But that’s not a problem, I’ll just slog on, until I don’t, and then I’ll think about giving in and not finishing, and then I’ll get really cranky, and then I’ll buckle down, and write several thousand words in a day, and then again, and then again, and then I’ll probably finish early.

If this year is anything like the years before.

Everybody is asking me what I’m writing about, and I find it rather hard to say but I know that I’m attempting Urban Fantasy, only up until now it’s neither Urban nor Fantasy but then I’m only 5,000 words in, and there will be things happening soon. Or so I hope. And unlike other years I already have an idea of what will be happening. Which is kind of exciting.

My main character is a 30yo jazz pianist. I know where she lives because it’s my husband’s ex’s house. Fortunately for both of them my main character, Miriam (or maybe Sarah, I have a character sheet saying ‘Sarah’ as the title, and under name it says ‘Miriam’; maybe that’s my problem), is fictional so my husband’s ex won’t be disturbed by her living in the same space. Or by the grand piano that I plopped down in her living room.

So, I have this jazz pianist, a witch, vampires, and the odd musician. The witch is in danger, the pianist has to help her, she will find out something surprising about herself, and that’s all I know so far.

But. November is the month of arbitrary deadlines not only for novel writers but also for knitters! And so I am once again also attempting to knit a whole adult sweater in November. This year I’m making something for my husband. I’m using the cable from one sweater, and the pattern from another, and it’s teal, and it looks rather nice so far. I’m only a bit afraid that it will come out a little too small because that’s what it looks like right now on the needle. But I washed my swatch, and it grew enormously so for now I’ll trust the swatch and knit on.

And since I don’t have a picture of the sweater I’ll leave you with the beginning of my story:

Usually I feel bad when I come back home and the sun us already up, but this time it actually felt kind of nice. The evening before I had played the semi-regular at the jazz club, and since I could use the piano there I had left my car sitting in the driveway and had taken the bike to work. So to speak.

It’s much easier not to have to find a parking spot in the city center, and I can have a beer because the police never checks on bikers anyway.

I opened the gate and pushed the bike through into the garden. I’m lucky to have a house all to myself in one of the nicer parts of town set back in a huge garden. Of course it’s more a shed than a house, and it and the garden around it belongs to my landlords but still. It used to be a pottery up until the day the potter fell in love with a woman who wasn’t his wife, and packed his belongings complete with kiln up and left. His former wife, his three children, and his mother-in-law still live in the big house that sits nearer to the street, but they didn’t have any use for the pottery any more. A friend of a friend told me about it, and I asked if I could move in.

 

It’s always hard to find a place to live in this city but it’s extra hard when you are a jazz musician. A jazz musician with a grand piano, and not much else. There aren’t all that many people who want to live next to someone who plays the piano for hours, and hours every day. And there aren’t all that many landlords who want to rent out to someone who never quite knows where the next gig will come from.

But the old lady has a weak spot for artists. Which is how she ended up with a potter. Who was the one who built the house and the shed on land that belonged to his family. And later he had an apprentice because none of his children wanted to become a potter, and the apprentice fell in love with his youngest daughter, and so when he became to sick to work his apprentice took over the business. Until he moved out.

 

My home is basically just one big room. There is a smaller room in the back that used to have the kiln in it, and I walled off another part for a bathroom but there are no rooms as such. I unlocked the wooden door, wheeled my bike inside, and put it on the hooks I have screwed into the wall. 

Interestingly this year I’m more behind on my NaNoWriMo word count than I have ever been. As far as I remember, at least. As every year I had wanted to do something about 2,500 words a day for the first week because it was fall break, and I thought I might be able to. True to me, though, what I did was barely meet the official 1,667 words a day goal for three days in a row, and then (bad move) skip a day because I was so tired, and there was so much going on. During a day where I didn’t have to teach, mind you. But then that was the day we took pictures for my husband’s new band, and we have been continuing the cleaning frenzy. At least my husband has, and I have helped him. On the bright side my son’s room is now both tidy and clean, all his stuffed animals have been washed, and the floor is completely empty. As in “just go in there and vacuum”-empty. We’re very pleased.

On Friday I got some news about a person I like very much that left me not much in the mood for anything. Since brooding doesn’t really help with anything, and there’s nothing I can do, I went out and met a few friends in the evening as planned but I only wrote 545 words. Saturday was about the same amount as crazy for the same reason but I did some writing. On Sunday I did meet my quota, well, daily quota despite spending the afternoon going to the pool with my son. So that was quite alright.

But then I found that going to the pool had been a very bad idea, especially with the sore throat I already had Sunday morning because then I got sick, and since yesterday I’ve been having a nasty cold. Nasty enough that I would stay home sick if I weren’t self-employed. My life being what it is I shuffle through the day barely able to think through all the snot. At least today is a light teaching day, and I intend to spend as much of it in bed as I can.

So, instead of having written 15,003 words so far as I should, or even more as I usually do, I have a meager 10,515 words so far. I’m also – nothing unusual about that – not happy with my story at all. I know from experience that only time can tell if it’s really that awful or not. I can worry about that later, once I have written it.

Since I’m feeling really bad, and am falling almost 5,000 words short, of course I thought about quitting. Nothing unusual about that as well, usually it happens somewhere in week two or three, and most often repeatedly thinking about giving up leads me to throw in a few monster writing sessions and finish early. But this year, of course again, I am so far behind, surely there will be no way to finish this without superhuman powers. Right?

Well, I just put my current number of words into my NaNoWriMo profile, and there’s a stats page telling me that if I manage to write 1,818 words a day until the end of November I will be able to finish anyway. 1,818! I know that’s a lot of words but that’s only about 150 more words per day than I would have to write if I weren’t behind.

You know what that means? That means, the thing that seems so overwhelming right now, that feels like I could never do it because I fell behind, that thing is no way near as big as I thought. Silly me.

And what do we learn from all this?

Do the math before succumbing to drama. Also, don’t throw the towel when you still have two thirds of the time before you.

Now I’m back to the keyboard for real writing. The day isn’t over yet.