words that stay

NaNo, 東京 Style

2009-11-08T20:46:00.000-08:00

Know what's difficult? NaNoing on my own when I have gotten very used to NaNoing with a lovely group of support and competition for the past few years. There have been a couple meet-ups here in Tokyo, but I've been unable to make it to them, and it's really difficult to find the motivation without the goal of showing up at a couple meetings a week and having the most words.

Other things that have made it difficult:
- Starting the month off with a holiday in Kansai, making it difficult to start writing immediately.
- Coming back from my holiday and being super tired and, therefore, not wanting to get up in the mornings before work to get some writing done.
- Being busy at work and, therefore, being too tired to stay up late writing when I get home from work.
- Having plans, like, every weekend in November.

But I'm trying my best. I may be way behind, but I think I know where I want to go with it, which does help in inspiring me to make more time for writing.

overdue

2009-01-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

So I didn't end up posting at all about NaNo here while I was actually doing it. Oops. Better late than never, I guess?

It was definitely a challenge this year. For the first time in some years, it took me the entire month to finish. There were a lot of days where the words did not want to come. I really thought there was a possibility I might not finish. And my laptop was having problems, which certainly did not help. Luckily it waited until after I was done before it completely died (really just a couple hours after I finished the novel).

But I ended up liking this year's novel much more than I liked the crap I wrote last year. And don't get me wrong - this year's was crap as well. But it was crap that is not really painful to reread. It was about vampires. It was completely stupid, but in an I-am-writing-just-the-sort-of-lame-thing-I-secretly-like-to-read-but-would-never-admit-to-writing way.

I shouldn't have been ML again though. It had its moments of fun, but I really just didn't have the time to do a good job at it, and I pretty much fell apart at the end. Not the best way to end my last year of ML-ing (definitely last, as I'm going to be living in Japan when it's time for NaNo again and am not sure I'll even have time/energy/motivation to participate at all, let alone be in charge of anything).

So, a belated hurray for my 7th straight win. I'm glad I made it and, even with all the problems I had this year, I am glad that I decided to participate again.

Complications!

2008-10-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Of course, now that I'm all super excited about NaNo this year, things are springing up to make things more difficult. My important getting-prepared-to-ML time has been interrupted with emergency wisdom teeth extraction and recovery. And I've just found out that the next few months are going to be super crazy as I'm going to be moving early next year. To another continent.

Still, I will do the best I can!

I really have no clue what I'm going to write though. But no worries! It'll all work out!

I hope.

NaNo Addiction

2008-09-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

So despite going on all year about how I definitely was not going to ML again this year and how I quite possibly wasn't going to do NaNo at all, I'm totally doing both (at least as long as no one tried to usurp my ML-ing power before I had a chance to respond; I wasn't able to do so by the you-are-guaranteed-your-spot response date).

I hope this isn't a huge mistake. I'm totally feeling better about NaNo in general this year than I was last year though, so I hope it'll be all right.

Have a big job interview later this month which, if successful, will mean that I'll need to be preparing for a huge move and huge changes, which might make November a bit crazier than usual, but I'll worry about that if it actually happens.

Am thinking about having another go at the first thing I attempted last November. After three days of writing it I decided it was unbelievably terrible and started over with something else (which was really unbelievably terrible). But I just came across the small bit I wrote of it, and it was totally interesting! What was I thinking?! I don't quite remember where I was going with it, so it'll need some thought, but the characters are pretty fantabulous which is the most important thing for me when I'm writing. The plot can generally figure itself out.

So, yeah. Apparently even more addicted to NaNo than I suspected. I tried to give it up, really! But the excitement of it being less than two months away was just too much for me.

Super excited that it starts on a Saturday this year. Yay for a big weekend chunk of writing to start off the festivities!

some months later

2008-07-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

So I did finish. And finish early. Apparently I just didn't want to talk about it.

Probably because it was the worst thing I ever wrote. And I know that sometimes I say that (especially about NaNo), but when I go back a while later and reread it, things don't seem quite so bad. But not this time! I really never intended to look at the novel again, but a couple weeks ago I read the whole thing while I was battling insomnia. It managed to be even worse than I remembered.

I think that a lot of my problem was that the past couple years of ML-ing had been so fantastic, but last year ended up being really frustrating in that regard, and it was hard to get inspired to write a good novel while I was spending so much time worrying about running things and trying to get people to, you know, show up.

I don't know if I'm going to do NaNo this year. It might be time for a break. Or, if I do, it might be a good idea to step down from the ML-ing for now. It's been fun - even with the frustration last year, it was fun - but it's a lot of stress that maybe I just can't deal with right now.

I think I might try to do a bunch o' writing in September though. No word count goal, no real pressure, just making myself sit down and write as much as I can. And hopefully have it not be insanely sucky. Stay tuned.

vive la misère!

2007-11-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

Just a bit over 35k! This is my favorite number to reach (apart from the obvious 50k, of course). It feels so much better than 25k; in a truly glass-half-empty way, that milestone tends to make me think, "Ugh, I still have to write the same amount I just wrote? That's too much!" But just 10,000 more words, and it feels like an accomplishment. It feels really close to the end.

If I write 3,000 words a day from now on (which is approximately what I've been doing all week, although I did have one day with 4,000), I think I should finish on Tuesday which should be the earliest I've ever finished. Which would be awesomeness. I would not be adverse to finishing sooner, of course, but we'll just see what happens.

Last night at our meeting we were talking about how being depressed and miserable seems to make it easier to write, and I think that really says a lot about why my second week was so much more productive than my first. Week one was a pretty good week for the most part; week two was misery itself thanks to illness and a panic attack about life stuff and then an utterly crappy work week. Word count at the end of week one: about 8,500. Word count at the end of week two: about 32,000.

halfway there

2007-11-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

Characters wangsting about their attraction to other characters makes for good word count.

Got to a little over 25k easy as anything. Writing gets worse and worse, my spirits get better and better.

Huzzah, terrible writing! Huzzah, word count!

crazy writing frenzy

2007-11-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

This was a bad week for writing, by which I mean, I didn't do any. I was more than a day ahead on Monday, which turned out to be a crappy day, so I felt all right not getting any words in that day. Alas, then the week got crappier and I got sick, and before I knew it, it was Saturday afternoon and I only had 8500 something words.

As of now, Sunday evening, I have just a little over 22k.

My brain is so close to falling out.

I think this is how I have to do NaNo now. The first couple years it was a challenge enough to get through the month and get my word count. But I know I can do that now. I've done it five times before during November and once again last July. But without a challenge, I'm super unmotivated to finish. But writing a ton of words in one (or two) days? Still a challenge. Still exciting.

Anyway, I should get to the halfway point tomorrow with no problem. I'm more excited to get to 35k though. That always feels so very close to the finish line.

And I really want to be at the finish line really early this year.

My novel continues to get dumber and dumber. I've always gone on in previous years about how the novel o' the year is terrible and no one ever needs to see it, but there are always at least a couple people who end up reading parts (or all) of it. This year's? Seriously never going to be shown to anyone. I haven't even managed to write anything apart from the first three paragraphs of the first chapter that I'm willing to put up as an excerpt on my profile. Last year I was throwing whole chapters up there. This year it's all just too truly terrible. At least I'm having fun with it though. The first week was really hard, what with the starting over and all, and the second week obviously got off to a bad start. But things are looking up.

pirates

2007-11-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

Day four of NaNo and I've started over and am almost a day ahead of where I need to be to be on track and I don't hate writing or my novel or the world.

So, a good decision to start over. This year, at least.

Anyway, I'm writing about pirates now. Possibly gay pirates? I'm not sure yet. Also, there's a samurai. It's lame and ridiculous and, therefore, kind of fun.

New title: Captain O'Bollocks Strikes Again!

scratch that, start again?

2007-11-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

So, day two of NaNo and I hate my novel and want to start over.

Seriously, it's terrible, and not in an awful-but-still-fun-to-write way. Terrible in an I-want-to-kill-myself-for-producing-this-tripe-oh-it's-painful-to-think-of-writing-more-of-this way.

I seem to remember feeling the same way last year, but I stuck with it and the novel turned out cracktastic and was mostly pretty fun to write. So maybe I should just stick with it again this year and hope for the best?

I really, really hate it though.

I really, really want to ~~quit~~ start over.

almost time

2007-10-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, so NaNo starts (for me, at least) in about thirteen and a half hours.

The more I think about it, the less I know what I'm going to write. I mean, I seem to remember a couple weeks ago the beginnings of a clear idea, and now it's all gone. I have only the vaguest notion now of what I might write, and I wish I could just start; I worry that even that will vanish before tomorrow.

It'll be okay. I didn't know what I was writing last year, and that turned out all right (cracktastic, certainly, but all right). I'll figure it out as I go along.

It's just a bit annoying to know that I had an idea and somehow lost it. And it's not that I really forgot it (although I did a little) so much as it turned from something I would write into something I really wouldn't. Woe and sadness.

preparation

2007-10-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo preparation for me involves thinking about everything but my novel. Honestly, I've learned from experience that planning things out never works for me (for NaNo at least), and it's better to just start with a character or two (or a few) and perhaps a vague idea (optional).

I've been an ML for the past couple years, so preparing for that takes up some of my time (probably not as much as it should; I always put it off and then feel woefully unprepared when we start meeting).

No, my NaNo preparation mostly involves thinking about music, drinks, and food (not necessarily in that order).

Thinking about drinks involves hunting down new and delicious teas to try, pondering whether I should purchase celebratory reaching-50k champagne now and chance being tempted to use it for writing fuel at around 15k instead of any other alcoholic delights I'll have on hand, and trying to find my favorite chai recipe.

Thinking about music involves making playlists. Lots and lots of playlists that I inevitably end up not even listening to while I'm writing because I get sucked into obsessively listening to just one artist instead. One artist who is inevitably named Nick Cave.

And food is what I have been thinking about this week. I bought a few not-too-unhealthy snacks a couple days ago and will get some more at Uwajimaya and Trader Joe's before noveling commences. What I really need to do is find recipes for things I can make big batches of on the weekends and eat for a week. I've half-heartedly tried to do this in the past and then given up before the month is out which tends to lead to me just not eating while I'm doing NaNo or getting a bunch of take-out. Not ideal! So this year I'm going to stick with it. And I think I'll do better. I've gotten much better at cooking in the past year (perhaps the acquisition of this apron helped, or perhaps I'm just not so lazy). So. Recipes. I must find them.

It's hard to believe we're halfway through October already.

concept, characters, crap

2007-10-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Concept
Last year for NaNo I wrote a completely ridiculous novel about people's dreams changing the world around them. It made absolutely no sense. It constantly referenced Neil Patrick Harris and Robert Goulet. It was, to put it eloquently, utter shit.

Anyway, there was a relatively minor character named Bastian who, I believe, appeared in the novel simply because a friend of mine said something like, "I really like the name Bastian. You should have a hot character named Bastian in your novel." So I did. He seemed fun. At the time I thought that maybe I could use him in something again someday.

And I think I'm going to do so this year. Of course, October isn't even half over, and I'm pretty sure I've never actually written anything for NaNo that I thought of this far before November, so things might change completely. But I like pretending that I know what I'm up to, so for the moment that's what I'll do.

The setting will probably be the same as last year's novel (Bastian lived in Seattle), although it might not be quite the same universe in general and shouldn't really be a sequel to that book. It might have something to do with fairy tales or folklore, stereotypes, and the acceptance of oneself as a character in one's own life instead of an observer of others' lives. I imagine it'll be some sort of adventure/urban fantasy/comedy/romance. A Frankenstory, if you will. At the moment it's titled Bastian Bobertsson and the Terribly Inconvenient Adventure.

Characters
As of now, the only characters I really know are nabbed from last year's novel. There's another who is vaguely showing up in my head, but I don't know enough about him yet to have anything to say.

Bastian is 20-something, conscientious, calculating, distant, and mildly psychic. He likes numbers, green tea, and not getting involved; he also likes feeling helpful which tends to make him get involved anyway. He has an open mind. His world, by both choice and circumstance, is very small.

Bobert is Bastian's father. He has no arms, although whether he was born without or lost them at some point is, as of now, unknown. He seems friendly, but his father insists that he is quite mean. He doesn't talk much.

Shirley is Bobert's father and Bastian's grandfather. He runs an import shop in Pike Place Market that is a front for a sort of supernatural charity.

Evelyn is Shirley's twin brother. He is a librarian and fancies himself a wizard.

Crap
Seriously, this will probably be utter crap.

on having no purpose

2007-10-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

I don't care about being published.

There. I said it.

It's a secret I have; I don't like mentioning it to people because doing so always makes me feel odd and like I have something to apologize for. "I'm sorry that I like to write but don't care about being a published author. Yes, of course there must be something wrong with me."

I just like writing for what it is. I liked making up stories when I was six; I liked writing stories using spelling words in fifth grade; I liked writing fanfic when I was sixteen; I liked writing terrible novels for the past five Novembers. But I've never been serious about it. Is it so wrong to write with no goal beyond enjoying myself? Must we always think that things are only worth doing if we get something out of it?

This isn't just about NaNoWriMo or writing, of course. I feel like I take life in general much less seriously than a lot of people around me. Of course, I do like having purpose in my life, but I hate when I'm made to feel guilty that my life isn't filled with meaning 24 hours a day.

I like taking long baths and reading trashy romance novels and spending the evening on the internets and, yes, writing just because it can be rather fun.

So there.

nanowrimo

2007-10-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

So this will be where I keep track of NaNoish things this year - not where I actually post any of my novel (that, as always, is a secret location few know about), but where I generally keep track of things and talk about whether the day sucked or not, etc. And maybe I'll post a bit of actual writing now and then.

Just thought it would be nice to have somewhere more public for this sort of thing this year, just in case anyone out there cares.

a beginning

2007-10-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

What's writing?

Words that stay.

(The Dark Crystal)