Tag: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo, Almost Time-O

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

nanowrimo_2016_webbadge_participant-200It’s that time again, for large doses of caffeine and larger doses of keyboard time. Time for typist’s cramp and plot-related breakdowns. Time to push excuses aside to make room for all the words to come pouring out. Time for National Novel Writing Month!

I’ve done NaNoWriMo a few times, with varying degrees of commitment. This year’s participation was a last minute decision, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to get my write on for quite a while. Excuse accepted. (Not that the excuse to write should not be confused with the excuses not to write that were pushed aside in the opening paragraph.)

Here are the top 5 reasons I’m excited about NaNoWriMo 2016:

#5 –  It’s Nice to Have a Goal

It’s way too easy to just let things slide. Oh, I’ll write tomorrow…next week…next month…once midterms are over…in the summer…once we’ve moved…after the apocalypse. Well, a goal is stronger than excuses. Or it is if I let it be. Tough as it can be to reach my daily writing goal, the goal also gives me a place to stop writing for the day and feel accomplished. “This” is the bar for writing success for the day, week, month. That’s something I can work with.

#4 – New Support Structure

November marks one year that my girlfriend and I have been together. (One year. That status of “girlfriend”could probably use an upgrade soon. But I digress.) She is artistic and caring and fun and beautiful, and I’m eager to add “supportive of my writing” to the list of adjectives. She’s gung-ho about my NaNo participation this year and very much wants to see me writing again. Without dredging into the past, I’ll say I’ve never had genuine household support when I had writing goals. I can’t wait to see what it’s like. Living with a writer isn’t always easy, but I have faith in this one.

#3 – New City, New Writers to Meet

borotnLast year’s job change has me in a new city and I really don’t know many people here, especially writers. NaNo meet-ups and write-ins mean I get to change that. Maybe I’ll make new friends; maybe I’ll be inspired by their commitment; maybe I’ll want to finish just out of a spirit of competitiveness. Regardless, some good will come out of this new social discovery.

0609162128d-1-2#2 – It’s Time to Get This Story Written

I think I’ve blogged before about the middle grades novel that my daughter and dog inspired. It hasn’t gotten written yet. I have a couple false starts, but nothing serviceable. Yet the idea has been burning in my brain for too long to let it go unwritten. The time has come. And 50k is a pretty solid word count for a middle grades novel, so this could be the real thing.

#1 – Time to Write Again

If you’ve visited this blog in the past few years, you know that I haven’t done much writing. Ultimately it was the 2012 NaNo that marks my last significant keyboard time. Blame it on what you want (job, parenting, life changes, etc.), I’m not okay with not being a writer. So whatever gets me back into the habit is a good thing.

Check back here for updates on my NaNoWriMo endeavor. Brief updates, mind you, since blogging time isn’t noveling time.

NaNo – Day 30 part 2 – and the winner is…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

ME!NaNoWinner

Congratulations to me and thousands of others who successfully wrote 50,000 words this month.  My prize?  A lovely computer generated certificate and an icon for my website.

I am very happy and very proud of this accomplishment, but I wonder if there is a better word than “winner”.  Do people who finish a marathon call themselves “winner”?  Maybe “finisher” or “victor”.  (Victor means the same as winner but sounds different on the ear and requires clarification whereas “winner” sounds like you beat out other people to get a prize.)  Really, “I won NaNoWriMo” sounds almost identical to “I won Writers of the Future.”  Yes, I have wone both now, but one was a attle against myself and the other was a battle against hundreds (possibly thousands) of other writers.  Both are worthy accomplishments, but one definitely paid better.  Though a workable novel is priceless in itself and could end up worth a lot more money.

Anyway, I finished around 9:00 on the last day of November.  There were only 3 days this month during which I did not write, so I figure I could have finished 3 days earlier if I hadn’t been puking the day after Thanksgiving and just ill equipped to write that one weekend.  Looking at my stats, I’m surprised to see that Mondays were pretty good days for writing.  Mid-week was worse, surely due to work-related distractions.

I am glad I did this.  It shows me that  can write every day, even amid distraction.  I can outline.  I can follow an outline.  I can decide parts of the outline suck but keep writing anyway.  I can turn off the editor long enough to get some work done.  It’s been a long time since I wrote this much on a single project.  On the one novel I did complete, this amount of writing took about 4-6 months.

I need to keep powering through this novel, but there is a project I’d like to turn to briefly, my ever-festering steampunk fairy tale project.  It is so close to being done and really close to being great.  I think it’s time to attack it for a few days before I hit The Realm Crystal again.  I need to finish the draft and I REALLY need to edit.  For instance, I want to turn one of my bad guys into an obnoxious good guy (you know, the one that gets killed in the zombie movies and everyone cheers) who slowly gives in to his nefarious impulses, then gets devoured by the true bad guy.  (It was written as fairly bad guy gets too big for his britches and gets devoured by true bad guy…not quite special enough.)  That’s the biggest change, but there will be many.  But first, get to the last page — still a long trek from where I am.

I hope everyone else found NaNo as rewarding as I did this year.  Keep writing and keep dropping by.

NaNo – Day 29 – So close I can taste it

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I love this character.  He’s a bad dude, but a sarcastic and insane bad dude that is nowhere near as big and bad as he thinks he is.  And he’s going to learn that soon when he dies.  But until then, he gets his mouth going and my wordcount skyrockets.  He goes on and on insulting people.  And he twists fun phrases, like “I don’t give a pile of kerplop”.  He can get away with it because of his insanity.

Anyway, I just finished riding him through a chapter and have closed to within 2500 words of my 50k goal for NaNoWriMo.  I need some sleep now, but I’m hoping to steal some time at work tomorrow and get 500-750 words in, then come home and pound out the final stretch.  I shall succeed.  Victory shall be mine!

NaNo – Day 28 – Grrrrr

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I am a hair away from 45000 words, yet I’m afraid I won’t make it to 50k by Friday.  I’m very tired right now and I need to get to bed, so I’ll have a little over 5k to write over the next 2 days.  I would love to take a day off work to get the time in, but the timing is really bad at work.  I’d love to duck out of parenting responsibilities for a night, but I’m solo on that front for the next couple days.  Basically, the odds are stacking against me and I’m just going to have to buckle down and battle through it.  But not right now; right now is sleep.

If I can do 3k tomorrow, I can do this.  Go team NaNo!

NaNo – Day 25 – Life’s a Happy Song

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Yeah right.  Life is still kicking me in the crotch from every angle it can think of.  I don’t have control of most of it.  What I can control (at least while I’m not bent over a toilet) is my NaNo novel.  I am a few hundred words short of being back on schedule.  Things flowed pretty well today.  Those missing words should come tonight as I describe the city of Spire on the distant horizon.

I will make the 50k by Friday.  I will be damned if I won’t.  I even have a title at last: The Realm Crystal.  It’s what starts the whole adventure rolling.  It says a lot.  I’m happy, and I’m happy with the book so far.  It’ll need work and it’ll need a lot more than 50k.  But it’s going to get finished.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get kicked in the balls again.

NaNo – Day 15 – halftime

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

And there goes life poking its obnoxious nose into my writing time.  For the last three days I’ve been falling short of even the basic 1667 target wordcount.  My personal goal was 2k per day.  I’m still a couple days ahead of the curve, but my head start is slipping away.  And tomorrow after school I get to make a 2-hour trip to drop my daughter off with Nana and Papa, then 2 hours back.  I’m happy she gets to visit, but that’s definitely a chunk of writing time that can’t be used to write.  And no, dictate and drive are not among my multitasking competencies.

I’m off to bed, again short on my count.  Thanksgiving break should afford me some time to catch up.  Or get ahead again, rather.

I just took a character in a direction I hadn’t expected.  It’s always fun when I can do that.  And things are about to get ugly in that scene, also good news.  I may well have to insert another chapter break once the ugly starts since that chapter is starting to drone on a bit.  Lots of chapters, lots of words.  Lots of editing decisions to make down the line.

I have a character death coming soon, for a character that had a lot of long term possibilities.  Maybe a short story about his origin will be in my future.  Let’s face it, it’s in there for the “no one is safe” factor, though nowhere near George RR Martin’s commitment to the cause.  There will be character deaths at the end, too.  They fit the story.  Will I change my mind later?  Only if the story demands it.  Some intense writing in the works for the days ahead, that’s for sure.  Wish me luck.

NaNo – Day 11 – falling short

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Well it’s technically Monday and I am still several hundred words short of 25k.  I had a number of distractions today — church, a football game to watch, a Firefly marathon, The Walking Dead (the show, not the real thing), a persistent pigeon that wanted to drive a bus — and I just didn’t get the words in that I hoped to.  I’m still ahead and going strong(ish), so I’m not discouraged, just disappointed.

I plan to stay up and finish the current chapter, but that will still leave me a bit short.  In the long run, I’m more concerned with progressing through chapters than building word count.  The former requires the latter, so they go hand in hand.  My current calculations (via spreadsheet) have me finishing the draft less than a week into December.  These calculations are done my chapter count rather than word count.  Since I expect some of my middle chapters to be shorter (as much to build pace and suspense as anything), I think that calculation may have some accuracy.  Man, it would feel good to get the last word typed in November.  I’m looking to be child-free next weekend, a fact that could be a blessing or a curse to production.  We’ll see.

  • ETA- Perhaps I was wrong.  It is six after one in the morning and I should be asleep, but the chapter is done and I have completed word 25,004.  Now sleep, or tomorrow will really suck.

NaNo – Day 10.98 – Momentum

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

As the last minutes of day 10 tick away, I inch ever closer to the halfway point.  I hereby vow to hit it tomorrow!

I wrote on and off for a lot of hours today, all the time making very little headway.  It was the scene.  I’ll likely cut some of it to smooth things along since it kind of goes an odd direction with one character.  It was slow because I knew it wasn’t working.  Still, I refused to edit.  I powered through and hit the next chapter.  And wow did I pick up speed.  I think I wrote over 1000 words in my last 20 minutes at the local write-in.  It was actually a scene that was slated for an earlier chapter but just didn’t fit there, so I opened that PoV character’s next chapter with it (the one I was writing today) and the whole conversation just slid out like I was pushing the handle on my daughter’s Play-Doh Fun Factory.  I actually expected this character’s scenes to be more tedious due to less action.  I was wrong.

Truth be told, I don’t like writing action sequences.  Sometimes they come quickly, sometimes they don’t, but I get tired of the repetitive writing of who was doing what, who was standing where, whose hand was where when they grabbed for the sword.  Tedious detail that is either important or later cut.  With two-person dialog, character names thin out.  If I close person A’s quotes, the next quote starts person B.  Every few exchanges we need a beat or a tag to remind us we’re on track.  One thing leads to another and bap-bap-bap you’ve revealed a lot of information while developing characters.

Alas, a lot of action comes at the end of this chapter, the kind that is very unusual and cannot be glossed over.  While it’s nothing like it content wise, I always think of The Matrix when I write the kind of action that’s coming up.  The characters do things that are so other-worldly that you need to slow things down to make sure all the details are recognized.

Anyway, it’s day 11.02 now, so I’ll turn in for the night.  Good luck to all you wrimos.

NaNo – Day 10 – Hooray for 20k

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I hit 20,000 last night.  It’s amazing how fast the words flow when the scene itself has internal momentum.  I was writing a battle scene (three characters versus hundreds of carnivorous deer) and the words kept adding up.

As it turned out, I accidentally deviated from my outline’s PoV choice for that chapter and wrote it in someone else’s.  I realized this halfway through the chapter when my outline started going into the intended character’s thoughts. I was happy with the other character’s perspective and had to decide what to do.  As luck would have it, the chapter was already running way long, so I just cut the chapter there and started the new one in the intended PoV.

That puts the (planned) chapter count at 37 and a coda.  (S0 37.2)  That’s a lot of chapters, a lot of words.  Editing may well fix that; it’s not a concern on the front end.  And if the novel needs 37 chapters or 40 chapters, by gosh it’ll get them.  Remember (he told himself), I’m typically a sparse writer; there’s not a whole lot of extraneous words hitting the page here.  Cutting words would mean cutting scenes.  The scenes really need to exist before they’re cut.

I’m yet to get started today (save for a few words I typed after midnight and recorded to today’s count on the site), but I’m angling for a big score.  Halfway by the end of today would rock.  Definitely by tomorrow.  25k, here I come.