I'm back! November's over, so I don't have my NaNo writing anymore as an excuse not to post here. (Not that I wasn't finding plenty of excuses before that---this place has been a ghost town over the past few months) I'm actually happy to be back to writing these entries: I started to miss writing as soon as I finished National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) this year, oddly enough.
Not that I wrote a story so amazing that it inspired me to have tons of confidence in my abilities, mind you. I finally got all of Songs from Town (my NaNo novel for this year) that I could think of squeezed out of my system, and it had its moments, but I really had to push myself some days. I ended up on surprisingly few rants, and there was only one major break from reality, so that's a good sign. Writing did come easier to me this year, I must admit. I even managed to get ahead of pace on Thanksgiving, which led to a rare lack of panic going into the home stretch. It certainly helped that my novel this year was disjointed by design, going off to join new groups of characters at will. I hardly found any characters that I wanted to stick with for more than a single chapter, though, which is unusual for me. Normally it's the characters that drive my writing, but here they were often just cocktail napkin sketches in comparison to what I'm used to. And many of them were horrible, horrible people. I did, surprisingly, manage to tie up quite a few hanging plot strands in the last few chapters, albeit not in very organic or satisfying ways. To expect that kind of result given how little I'd planned though, would be like betting on a miracle.
My wife was neck and neck with me all through this month, and for the first time I actually managed to validate ahead of her! I ended up having to write an extra thousand words though, since a whole bunch of the ones I did write were stolen away from me by the validator. I think it was my predilection for em-dashes that did me in---the words that they connected were counted as separate words in NeoOffice, as they should have been, but in the validator the fact that I didn't put spaces in there came back to bite me in the ass. Still, I cranked those extra words out without too much trouble. (I think I'll go back to Scrivener next year though: trying to find older scenes for reference in a ninety-some-page document was a major headache)
It's always a painful process for me to get back into writing after a long time away. I always vow that I'm going to not take as long before I start again each year, but each year I end up losing track of that vow in the same doldrums that eat up a whole bunch of New Year's resolutions. At least this past year I got a whole bunch of revising done (though I'm still only halfway through Suckers, the novel I was doing it for), and I started a promising new novel called Delta OUTSIDE of NaNo, which is unheard of for me. Songs from Town was actually supposed to be a prequel to Delta (which still only has a few chapters to it after I got hung up on where to go next), but it ended up becoming its own creature, with only a hasty, eye-rolling tie-in at the end. The bits of it that I had before November started were with me long before Delta came around though, so that makes sense.
Now I need to get back to revising. The holidays are going to distract me all over the place, but I've got a good story with real potential, and I'm not going to let it flounder just because there are so many new and exciting things I could be doing otherwise. The NaNo folks say that getting that Shitty First Draft (SFD) out of the way is the hardest part, and on some level it might be, but going back through that draft with a fine-toothed comb and taking out the shitty parts can be nearly as difficult, if not more so. When you actually have to look at your own work with a critical eye again it can be deflating, and I think that in many ways I'm my own worst critic. That's a good thing to be in the long run, I think, but there can be times of despairing, of thinking that I'll never be more than a talentless hack doomed to obscurity, can be hard to take sometimes. (Granted, I may at least be doomed to obscurity anyways, but I'm never going to get anywhere unless I at least make peace with that eventuality) Thank god I have such an amazing wife to get me through all this. Her confidence in me begins where my own confidence in myself ends, and I always strive to be just as supportive to her. And she's actually getting results! The anthology that accepted her short story is supposed to finally be coming out sometime this month, and I'm over the moon for her success. She's my inspiration and my rock, and together we'll at least get one or two of all our crazy dreams realized.
Not that I wrote a story so amazing that it inspired me to have tons of confidence in my abilities, mind you. I finally got all of Songs from Town (my NaNo novel for this year) that I could think of squeezed out of my system, and it had its moments, but I really had to push myself some days. I ended up on surprisingly few rants, and there was only one major break from reality, so that's a good sign. Writing did come easier to me this year, I must admit. I even managed to get ahead of pace on Thanksgiving, which led to a rare lack of panic going into the home stretch. It certainly helped that my novel this year was disjointed by design, going off to join new groups of characters at will. I hardly found any characters that I wanted to stick with for more than a single chapter, though, which is unusual for me. Normally it's the characters that drive my writing, but here they were often just cocktail napkin sketches in comparison to what I'm used to. And many of them were horrible, horrible people. I did, surprisingly, manage to tie up quite a few hanging plot strands in the last few chapters, albeit not in very organic or satisfying ways. To expect that kind of result given how little I'd planned though, would be like betting on a miracle.
My wife was neck and neck with me all through this month, and for the first time I actually managed to validate ahead of her! I ended up having to write an extra thousand words though, since a whole bunch of the ones I did write were stolen away from me by the validator. I think it was my predilection for em-dashes that did me in---the words that they connected were counted as separate words in NeoOffice, as they should have been, but in the validator the fact that I didn't put spaces in there came back to bite me in the ass. Still, I cranked those extra words out without too much trouble. (I think I'll go back to Scrivener next year though: trying to find older scenes for reference in a ninety-some-page document was a major headache)
It's always a painful process for me to get back into writing after a long time away. I always vow that I'm going to not take as long before I start again each year, but each year I end up losing track of that vow in the same doldrums that eat up a whole bunch of New Year's resolutions. At least this past year I got a whole bunch of revising done (though I'm still only halfway through Suckers, the novel I was doing it for), and I started a promising new novel called Delta OUTSIDE of NaNo, which is unheard of for me. Songs from Town was actually supposed to be a prequel to Delta (which still only has a few chapters to it after I got hung up on where to go next), but it ended up becoming its own creature, with only a hasty, eye-rolling tie-in at the end. The bits of it that I had before November started were with me long before Delta came around though, so that makes sense.
Now I need to get back to revising. The holidays are going to distract me all over the place, but I've got a good story with real potential, and I'm not going to let it flounder just because there are so many new and exciting things I could be doing otherwise. The NaNo folks say that getting that Shitty First Draft (SFD) out of the way is the hardest part, and on some level it might be, but going back through that draft with a fine-toothed comb and taking out the shitty parts can be nearly as difficult, if not more so. When you actually have to look at your own work with a critical eye again it can be deflating, and I think that in many ways I'm my own worst critic. That's a good thing to be in the long run, I think, but there can be times of despairing, of thinking that I'll never be more than a talentless hack doomed to obscurity, can be hard to take sometimes. (Granted, I may at least be doomed to obscurity anyways, but I'm never going to get anywhere unless I at least make peace with that eventuality) Thank god I have such an amazing wife to get me through all this. Her confidence in me begins where my own confidence in myself ends, and I always strive to be just as supportive to her. And she's actually getting results! The anthology that accepted her short story is supposed to finally be coming out sometime this month, and I'm over the moon for her success. She's my inspiration and my rock, and together we'll at least get one or two of all our crazy dreams realized.
3 comments:
(This is Ryan, Joanne's friend, in case it doesn't show up...)
I'm always amazed at you Nano-ers. Joanne calls me prolific but I haven't pulled off a Nano wordcount yet. The perpetual question is WHY, alas.
Great to hear you finished it, now just keep on going. :D!
Thanks for visiting, Ryan! From what I've heard, you don't seem to need NaNo as a motivational tool to get yourself writing, so that's an accomplishment in itself. I'm sure you could finish NaNo one of these years if you found the right bunch of people to go to write-ins with and whose positive energy you could feed off of. Like I mentioned in my post though, the revision process, and actually incorporating other people's constructive criticism, can be every bit as tough (but necessary) as those 50,000 words.
I keep forgetting to reply. XD
Yeah, I have never pulled off a Nano scale month yet, but hopefully I can manage it soon. I have too much writing to do to NOT write much much faster. :D
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