NaNo Madness 2007

Maddest thought of the month

2007-11-19T00:11:00.000-06:00

I haven't written any more on my NaNo novel. But I'm currently considering trying to write it as a play instead of a novel. Is that weird or what?!

The problem is, I still want it to be a novel. It needs to be a novel. It's crying out to be a novel. But I keep picturing it as a play, and I kinda sorta want to try writing it as a play and seeing if that then helps me get the story down enough to adapt it as a novel. I wonder--can you sell a novel based on a play? Or are you infringing on your own copyright, or just cannibalizing yourself? Not that it probably matters, since I've never written a play and doubt I could do it now, either!

I haven't quit yet...

2007-11-17T22:23:00.000-06:00

I am seriously considering stopping NaNoWriMo this month for various reasons, but I did write a few thousand words today, after taking a few days off. I had some things in my head for the book that I just had to get written down. Because even if I do stop participating in NaNo, I'm not giving up on this novel. I just might put it aside for a while. I have other things I need to tend to. And I'm still not sure I won't continue, either!

20192 / 50000 words. 40% done!

A little momentum

2007-11-14T00:34:00.000-06:00

I finally wrote a scene I liked!

17385 / 50000 words. 35% done!

Voice void

2007-11-13T19:57:00.000-06:00

I'm about 6,000 words behind, but at least I did write a little today and yesterday, which I hadn't for a few days before that. I haven't given up yet, I'm just struggling to make the story work. I'm thinking there's a problem with the voice.

15998 / 50000 words. 32% done!

In college, when I took the one acting class UT allowed non-drama majors to take, I had to play Blanche in a duet from A Streetcar Named Desire. I kept practicing and it kept not working for me. For some reason, though, even though it's very southern and Blanche is very southern, having never seen the show before, it didn't occur to me to give her a southern accent. Finally, shortly before we were due to perform it for the teacher, it dawned on me to try a southern accent, and everything fell into place with a satisfying click. The teacher raved about our performance and gave us an A, so I knew I'd found what I needed.

Normally, my writing projects start with a voice, and that's what drives them. I mean literally, they often start with a character talking in my head, telling me what's going on in his or her life, and I just take dictation. I don't necessarily know where the ideas come from, they just appear.

My current NaNoWriMo novel, on the other hand, started with an idea, years ago, in the back of my mind. I let it gestate some, adding characters and ideas and a few plot developments along the way, but 16,000 words in, it still just seems like a random collection of words with a few fairly solid sections sprinkled in. I still don't think it has the right voice. I do think it has the right protagonist, but I haven't quite found her voice yet, the way I hadn't with Blanche. I am more convinced all the time, though, that this book cries out for unusual formatting--e-mails, lists, poems, lyrics, etc.--maybe to the exclusion of regular prose. Maybe the right format, when I find it, will prove to be the right voice. I'm not sure, I'm just wondering if, at this point, what I really need is more words like the ones I've already written, or if I need to pull a NaNo no-no and start tweaking structure first.

In any case, what I have now is nothing like what I want to have when I am done. And yet I see just enough promise there, under the surface, that I feel an intense need to find the true voice and tell the story.

1 tooth subtracted, 0 words added

2007-11-09T12:49:00.001-06:00

I didn't write a single word on my NaNo novel yesterday, because I had a wisdom tooth removed. And had to go somewhere at night, too. So I don't feel bad about it at all. (Do I feel bad from the oral surgery? Yes, some, but I'm on meds!)

I'm thinking I may end up including a lot of lists, poems, lyrics, and random other stuff like that in this novel, although I haven't started out writing it that way. It does have some lyrics in it now, but most of it is plain prose. But the prose isn't all that great so far, and the facts and emotions shared are the main thing... And my protagonist is definitely the type to think in snippets of poems and lyrics and lists, etc., so I may play around with that. I'm just not sure if I want to try that now, or to wait for revisions. I'm thinking I may just get the relevant data out now, and change the structure when I revise.

I'm also worried the list/journal/poem thing is overdone. On the other hand, overdone or not, I always like reading books like that, and they seem to do pretty well. (Plus if it doesn't work--I can always change it again!) But I'm not sure how to mix lists and poems with regular prose, and I think at least some regular prose is necessary in this case.

Embracing the rough draft

2007-11-07T21:53:00.001-06:00

Last night I went to a workshop on making independent films. Not that I'm trying to make one...but someone asked me to go, so I did, just in case it proved relevant sometime.

The woman giving the talk mentioned how, especially in her case of making a documentary, she'd end up with tons of rough footage for each day of filming. And then she'd have to wade through it all, and find the good parts, and somehow stitch it all together in the end to make a cohesive story. I've experienced a little of the same thing just recently, having to interview people for some freelance articles and then distill it all into a coherent narrative, with the parts that serve the story emphasized and a lot of stuff squished down to hardly anything, or even jettisoned completely.

With all that in mind, I don't feel quite a bad as I could about the way my "novel" is coming out so far. Every other novel I've tried to write, including my NaNo novel from 2002, has come out in a logical, generally linear fashion. This one is a hodgepodge of words. The scenes are out of order and there's just a lot of blah, blah, blah that may fit anywhere or nowhere. There aren't enough scenes where anything happens. If I don't like where one part is going, I'll cut it off and skip to something else. So what I have now doesn't read like a novel, unlike the one I wrote in 2002, which still was coherent at this point in the process. But it's okay. I'll think of it like I'm a movie director. I'll gather my rough footage at the end, and play with it and rearrange it, and leave stuff on the cutting room floor, and try to find the main narrative within the rest. Better yet, I can fill in the gaps with new material whenever I want, much more easily than a film director can.

The prose also isn't as tight as I normally write. It's more like a placeholder for better words. But I actually think that will make revision easier, not harder, since it will be so obvious where to start...and once I get going, I tend to get on a roll. It's the getting going that kills me. And speaking of going, I met quota again!

12993 / 50000 words. 26% done!

21 percent?!

2007-11-07T00:39:00.000-06:00

10549 / 50000 words. 21% done!

10,549?! Really?! I know most of it is awful and sloppy and random, but still...I'm getting some of the bones of the story out there, some of the building blocks. And I'm really 1/5 of the way there? That actually makes it seem doable somehow. If I really only have to do this much 4 more times, and I know a couple of other big chunks I have to write, and I also want to put some lyrics and stuff in, then it does seem doable. Maybe. Sort of. I hope! But can I do justice to the story I really want to tell? Hmm. Maybe. I hope!

Progress!

2007-11-06T18:11:00.001-06:00

9724 / 50000 words. 19% done!

Characters

2007-11-06T10:39:00.000-06:00

I failed to meet quota last night, after saying I had to or else. And it's not that easy to get back on the horse, because the horse is nowhere to be found. Which is to say, I have no idea what I'm trying to write anymore. The characters have completely eluded me. So I spent some time last night trying to work on pics of them, but didn't get too far.

Here are some pictures that are similar to my main character, Jessie, and her best friend Mirielle, in different outfits.

Jessie

Mirielle
But those weren't the characters I was having trouble with... And I can't believe that avatar site doesn't have any skin but pale white! Mirielle is supposed to have an olive complexion, and one of the guys in the book, Emmett, has brown skin and dreadlocks, so that site wasn't much help.

Anyway...I need to get to know the characters better. Another thing I need to work on is structure. Maybe if I can come up with a better structure for the book, things will fall into place. Also, this is silly but I think I need to write it in Word instead of in a Google document. I liked the Google thing because I could write it anywhere with an Internet connection, but not having margins on the page is really starting to drive me nuts. I like to see margins when I write...weird, huh? And unfortunately, I don't have Word on my new computer yet since I have to find the disks. Still, with everything I have going on this week (meeting tonight, three separate meetings at my kids' school tomorrow, an oral surgery appointment, a church meeting, and a freelance article I have to start researching), if I don't get back on track today I don't know if this is going to happen.

Day of reckoning

2007-11-05T20:50:00.000-06:00

This is the point in my novel where I decide it's not working and it's too stupid and boring to continue with, and either I move on or I give up. I recognize this point. Last year I gave up with fewer words than I have now, and I'm trying not to give up my momentum this time.

But I'm still so unconvinced this is working. The mood is too monotone--how do you write about people feeling numb, without it sounding dull and numbing? Though I did come up with one possible helpful angle on this novel today. I meant it to be about a very close-knit group of friends in which one person dies, but I was having trouble understanding the main character Jessie's relationships to the other people in the group, if she's really known them so long and so well. They didn't seem to be interacting right. Finally, it occurred to me maybe she doesn't know all of them that well. Maybe she's only been on the outskirts of this group, and she's only pulled in further now because of her link to the guy who died. I hesitate to write it that way for various reasons, but I'm playing with that idea.

Anyway, I think this is the make it or break it point for me and this year's NaNoWriMo, especially since I'm very busy the rest of the week, and would have to go way out of my way to find time to write later this week. So here's hoping I can plow through and write at least 1,017 more words tonight (what I need to make my quota)...or else!

Pondering plot

2007-11-04T12:59:00.000-06:00

A few years ago, I went to see novelist Sandra Scofeld speak, and she said one of the main problems she has found in manuscripts from new novelists is "very few events, floating on a sea of feeling." I worry that my NaNo novel will fall into that category, because it's basically about the aftermath of a death. So far, there are only a few events--mainly reactions, flashbacks, a funeral, etc. It's about coping and moving on, so yeah, there's a sea of feeling.

I'm trying to come up with more events for the rest of the novel. I remember reading that Jeanne duPrau, author of a great middle grade novel called The City of Ember, said the key to getting her book right in the final revisions was to make the protagonists active, always making choices and moving forward instead of just reacting to things. But it's tricky with this particular subject matter.

Notably, the novel I read yesterday, Beige, was rather light on plot. It didn't have a lot of events, it was more emotion--a girl getting to know her punk rocker father while wishing she were back home with her mother. Sure, things happened, but it wasn't a page-turner in terms of plot. It did keep me reading, though, because the characters were interesting enough, and I cared about the main character's life. So, I'm hoping I can come up with something that, even if not exactly suspenseful, still manages to keep people engaged with the story.

Day 3

2007-11-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

First, I couldn't write for most of the day because I was stuck under a sleeping baby, but I managed to use that time to read a whole novel, Beige by Cecil Castellucci, which turned out to be helpful for my NaNo novel, since it dealt with bands and musicians, and so does my novel.

Second, I finally got time to write at night, and wrote about 2,400 words, so I'm still ahead of my quota for this point in NaNo. Yay!

6825 / 50000 words. 14% done!

(I only wish my new computer didn't keep moving my cursor to random places while I'm typing!)

Day 2

2007-11-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

I had trouble getting started today, and thought I might have nothing left to say. I got past that, luckily, but I only managed to squeeze in some writing when I wasn't really planning on it (my original plan to write at the library was thwarted), and what came out seemed quite random! I haven't read over it, so who knows what came out?! It's hard to find time to do this with my baby. But I'm still over quota, at least.

4422 / 50000 words. 9% done!

End of day 1

2007-11-02T00:24:00.001-05:00

2194 / 50000 words. 4% done!

Yeah, I'm over quota, but not that excited because it's a jumble of words. I've described some of the same things more than once and introduced some characters more than once in different ways, and the timeline is already tangled. It will have to be tamed later! Still, it's something.

A new year!

2007-11-01T17:41:00.000-05:00

This was last year's NaNo blog, but since I stalled and stopped early last time, I'm taking it over for 2007's attempt. This time I'm starting again with one of the ideas I tried and gave up on last year on day 1, but I started from scratch with a new document. I didn't even refer to my old notes, files, or even character names until I'd already written 785 words.

This time I'm writing without a map. For my NaNo 2002 novel, I didn't outline or anything, but I had fairly clear characters in mind, and the basic plot and plot turns. It changed as I wrote it, but I knew a lot about where I was going, and I wrote it in a strictly linear fashion. For other novels I've tried to write, I have a basic plan and write them chapter by chapter. This time...I'm just writing scenes, just writing ideas, maybe skipping around, and maybe writing things just to try them out, even though they probably don't fit into the plan. I barely know the characters, and I'm not sure of all their relationships. I have maybe 2 major points of the plot, and...that's all. It's scary, but it's also so freeing not to worry about sticking to some plan or getting it wrong, that I think I really could get through 50,000 words this month, though they may not end up telling a whole story if you read them straight through!

I've never been as open to writing a crappy first draft as I am right now, and it's kind of exciting. I look forward to just playing with words. E.B. White once said, "I dive into a story the way I dive into the sea, prepared to splash about and make merry," and that's how I'm diving into NaNo this year. (Of course, he also said, "Writing is hard work and bad for the health," but I'm going to go with the first quote for now!)

Stalled

2006-11-09T18:06:00.000-06:00

So after my last post, cheering that I was past my daily quota for NaNoWriMo, I didn't write a thing for 5 days! Not good. The story was boring me, and more than that, I had a ton of other things on my mind. I've been dreaming about infant carseats and strollers for days... (talk about boring!). I've been stressing out completely because we have no income, and no car the baby I'm expecting can fit in, and no way to buy another. And with the short days this time of year and the lack of light, I was feeling depressed as it was.

Today, I decided it was now or never, and I've written 1,740 more words today. Which is great for one day's quota, but still leaves me 5 days behind. I have plans for the rest of the evening, so I doubt I'll get more written today. But at least it's something. What amazes me now isn't that I've gotten behind, or that I think this story lacks any reason to be written, but that my 2002 NaNo novel turned out halfway decent. It was actually going somewhere, and had some real emotions, and the writing itself wasn't bad. I still have hopes for it, 4 years later. This one is more what I would have expected: a bunch of random words put down in a document. Sure, there's a basic storyline and some characters, but at this point I know hardly anything about my protagonist, not even her last name, and I'm not sure I even want to. I wanted this story to be fast-paced and funny, and instead it's draggy and dull. The poor girl is stuck at a mini golf course waiting to be picked up. She has nothing to do and no one to talk to. I thought about throwing in another character she could run into by chance, but she's already run into her crush by chance, and you can only have so many coincidences. (Unless I decide to have her run into someone she knows every single place she goes, and make that part of the farce...) Anyway, it's not funny, it's putting me to sleep. And my ideas for the next thing that happens are already boring me! Hmm, wait, I may have an idea. Not a good one, but an idea... So, we'll see what happens tomorrow and if I really bother to make up the 7,970 words I'm behind!

4,889!

2006-11-02T22:32:00.000-06:00

I'm over quota! Yay!

Getting on track?

2006-11-02T17:02:00.000-06:00

For now, at least...I've switched back to the slushie novel. I started all over. I'm to 1071 words on that one now. I think if anyone picked up this chapter, they'd probably fall asleep reading it, but at least I'm getting something going. We shall see how it works. And I may just have to buy a Slurpee for research. ;-)

Ack

2006-11-02T12:09:00.000-06:00

The first day of NaNo didn't go well for me. I stayed up that first night past midnight & wrote 718 words, thinking that was a decent start and I'd write 1000 more words later in the day. Only it never happened. I never got back to it, and still haven't, and am kind of paralyzed with fear about it. Which is ridiculous! I mean, who really cares how great it is? The problem is that I really care about this story & don't want to screw it up, but I'm trying to remind myself it's a first draft. It may end up just being the basis for an outline of the story, for the second draft, and none of what I write has to stay in the final version, but I'm so bad at large-scale revisions, that really scares me! But I know if I don't push through and write some more soon, this whole thing may be a bust. And meanwhile, it's freaking me out to read how well other people are doing! Some people in my writing groups have written 3,000 or even 6,000 words already.

For that matter, I checked my 2002 NaNo blog & freaked myself out. At around this time on Nov. 2 that year, I already had over 6,000 words. Two hours later, I had 7,248, and by 4:20 in the afternoon, I was up to 10,446 words!!! On the second day of NaNo! This time, I'm not even sure I'll write one more word by 4:20 pm today. Sigh.

Also, I know someone who reads submissions for a small children's press, and she blogged today that she wished people would write more light, fun novels, instead of depressing ones. Note that I just changed from my silly "I want a slushie and maybe a boyfriend while I'm at it" idea to my "suicide and broken friendships" idea. Err...huh. And it is hard to write this, knowing that I don't even have a happy ending in mind for it. So I have to think a little more about what to write before I plunge back into it!

Hmmmm

2006-11-01T03:29:00.000-06:00

So, NaNo started. And I started. And all I can say about my progress so far is "hmmmm." My posted word count is 718 so far. But first, I wrote 186 words on my slushie novel idea--a 115-word false start followed by a 71-word false start. I hated both, and realized the narrator had no voice yet & I didn't care what she had to say. Not that I think it's a bad idea. I still want to write it, & I have some fun ideas for it. But it doesn't seem likely to get me off to a quick start now.

So I switched to idea #2, the sister story. The problem with this one is, I wrote a few pages on it several years ago. I was going to toss out the old pages and start from scratch for NaNo, but unfortunately I still like them. While I know I could fit them back in somehow in December, once NaNo is over, I had a hard time figuring out how to start without them. Or rather, I had trouble getting back into the narrator's voice without using any of those words. I decided to try my other idea before bothering to start that one over.

Finally, I tried idea #3, my suicide novel. This is the one I originally had in mind for NaNo anyway. I also have some old notes for that one, but they were random anyway and I started over. I wrote 718 words before stopping for the night. They aren't 718 good words. Some are good, but most seem like they're just placeholders for whatever I might want to say there later. Some probably need to go later in the book, not at the very beginning. I don't have a good sense of how the timeline of the book should work, and what should go where. But still, something seemed to be clicking, just a little, so for now I'm going with that one. Though I've already run into plot problems! I even had to do some online research, which just made the plot problems worse. And, I'm again going to have to figure out how or where to incorporate my old notes without using any old text. Not that I had that much.

One observation: I must really like to write little poems. Because both my attempts at writing included rhymes. I expected to incorporate some previously written poems into my suicide book sometime (after NaNo is over), but didn't expect to write many new ones along the way. I didn't exactly write a poem, but did write an excerpt from a song the narrator supposedly wrote, and in my attempt to write the slushie book, I wrote part of a jingle from the slushie ad!

And one sign of my NaNo insanity: I still think that before I continue, I'll try to start a fresh version of idea #2. I want to make sure it doesn't flow out better before I commit to idea #3. Though one very crazy part of me is still whispering in my head, "Maybe I can write two novel drafts this month!" Yeah...that's about as likely as my not eating any leftover Halloween candy tomorrow. Ha!

My calendar must be wrong

2006-10-31T02:28:00.000-06:00

Less than 1 day until NaNo starts?! Say it ain't so! I don't even have a plot!!!!

The desire for a slushie--or at least a plot

2006-10-30T01:37:00.000-06:00

Sunday night was the Austin NaNoWriMo kick-off meeting. I'd wanted to go but hadn't intended to, because I haven't been feeling well all week, I was nervous about driving at night to a place pretty far away with very limited parking, and I knew our car was on the fritz. But, since our car died completely earlier in the day, I found myself with a reliable rental car, and when I also learned another business had offered their parking lot, I decided to brave it. I'm glad I went. 47 people showed up! We got fun goodie bags containing things like candy, a NaNo writer tattoo, an "Austin Penguins" pen and an "Ask Me About My Novel" pin, a "Warning: Crazed Novelist Working" sticker, a little notebook, a pen, etc. They also had nice door prizes, none of which I won, and snacks. Part of it was informal, but much was listening to information & announcements, introducing ourselves to the group, etc. I talked to a few people one-on-one, and found them enjoyable company (though I'm not sure they didn't think I was crazy! I think I was nervous & rambling. Or maybe I am just crazy...but writers are not exactly known for their normality, so, so be it!).

Meanwhile, as I keep blogging about, I've been debating all month between two serious YA novel ideas. Then Saturday night, I had this crazy, non-serious idea, which might be easier or more fun to write. Often in my writing, it isn't really clear what my characters want, and they sit around thinking or talking much more than they take action. My husband also mentioned at IHOP on Friday night, where I ordered a soda I didn't really want or drink, that most people don't share my fear of ever being without a soda.... And I'd also started reading E. Lockhart's YA novel The Boy Book on Friday, and had the narrator's fun, fairly fast-paced voice in mind. All of that helped me think of an idea about a girl who wants nothing more than a drink. A particular drink that isn't available just everywhere--I was thinking it would probably be a slushie. What she wants would be silly but very clear, and the whole novel would be about her trying her best to get the slushie but being distracted at every turn by wacky adventures involving friends, her crush, & who knows what or who else. I thought it might be fun to do something like that for NaNo, and it might not get bogged down as easily as something serious. But the other 2 ideas are for novels I've really wanted to write for a long time, so I don't know if it makes sense to put them both off again, and just end up with something that might feel like fluff.

So I've got to think about it some more, but meanwhile, I looked up slushies online and found this: http://www.tv.com/megas-xlr/all-i-wanted-was-a-slushie/episode/328901/summary.html . Someone has already made a TV show about the pursuit of a slushie and the wackiness that might ensue! Ack. I knew it wasn't an original starting point (and I'm also familiar with the Suicidal Tendencies song that inspired the title of that TV episode, except with a Pepsi), but still...I didn't know it had been done with a slushie, of all things. It was something I could relate to myself. After all, I drove all over town this summer looking for a Coke Slurpee, and in July my van was totaled while I was turning into a 7-11 parking lot, in pursuit of a Slurpee it turned out they didn't even have. But I have also driven 90 miles for a burrito, and often daydreamed about going all the way from Florida to Texas for a burrito, so I've considered making it a burrito, but I thought making it a food item might seem derivative of the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (which I haven't seen, because the specifics I read about it sounded stupid, but I obviously liked the idea suggested by the title). I've also considered making it some kind of offbeat soda (like Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray celery soda). But now I think the whole idea may be too unoriginal to pursue. Not to mention goofy!

So what'll I write? We'll see. I fear I'll end up writing 500+ words on all 3 stories before I can decide which one to pursue. Though my husband says that if I do that, I should leave in the parts from the other stories, as stories my characters are telling or writing! I doubt I really need to pad my word count, though, since I'm clearly wordy enough as it is.

Shirt! And stress...

2006-10-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

I got my NaNo t-shirt in the mail today! I really like it. BUT...I'm 6 months pregnant, and it's a bit tight around the belly already! I have no idea if I can wear it through November. I should have gotten an XL, but then I probably wouldn't wear it again after pregnancy. So I got L, but it looks a bit odd in the belly area, and shows off the weird drawstring waist on my maternity jeans too well! I think I'll have to buy some different jeans before I'll brave wearing this outside my house.

Meanwhile, we haven't even been in this house, or town, a month, and we're still living out of boxes. I'm due to have a baby in 14 weeks, or maybe even 10 given my history, and now my husband's interviewing for a job 3 hours away! So...you think I might be a little distracted during NaNo?! I'm beginning to think that if I do it, it will be a miracle.

NaNoFiMo

2006-10-27T01:34:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me that what I really need is a National Novel Finishing Month. Because even though I finished my last NaNo novel and might also finish one this time around, I still have 2 other half-novels I really want to finish (okay, one 2/3-novel and one 1/3-novel, if you want to get picky). So I guess that would be NaNoFiMo, I thought. On a hunch, I googled it, and sure enough, NaNoFiMo exists! The only problem is...December? Not only may I be burnt out then, but it's the holidays, people. Shopping! Cards! Decorating! Planning! Three million (or so) end-of-semester and holiday projects & parties at my kids' school! So, I don't know if that'll work out for me, but it's still nice to know it exists, just in case.

Writers write, writers read

2006-10-26T20:42:00.000-05:00

I haven't thought about my novel ideas today. I've been too busy shopping for baby stuff, shopping for random stuff (printer ink, envelopes, Halloween candy, blah blah blah), and nearly coughing my head off.

But here's my observation/advice for the day. I've noticed lots of people in the young adult forum on the NaNo boards asking what's appropriate in YA novels. Like, is this plot appropriate? Is this too much? What language can I use? Etc. And I keep thinking...the way to know the answers to these questions is to read YA novels. I'm not sure why anyone would want to write in a genre they don't read. I would be terrified to even try writing something I didn't read. But I hear these questions all the time about YA, not just on NaNo but in many online authors' groups, at local writing meetings, etc. Sometimes, the concerns I hear expressed could be put to rest simply by reading 2 or 3 current YA books. (Or sometimes, even 2 or 3 very old YA books!) Newbery winner Linda Sue Park actually suggests reading 1,000 books in your genre before writing in it. I think I probably have read more than 1,000 children's & YA novels, but I've had a (longish!) lifetime to do it. I would suggest reading at least a few current titles in any genre before writing in it. And that's my lecture for the day.... (And by the way, almost anything goes in YA these days!)

Oh, and I'm sure he's not reading this, but Happy Birthday to my brother...that is, my "baby" brother who's already past 30 now! Eeek! (Given our combined maturity level, I sent him a Garbage Pail Kids e-card.)

Double the madness

2006-10-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've discovered that some people actually plan to write two novels in a month for NaNoWriMo, either by starting separate NaNo accounts to track the progress of each, or by simply finishing one early and then trying to write another, with the goal of getting their word count to 100K by the end of the month.

Please remind me that, just because I have 2 novel ideas, I do not need to do that! I am ever-so-slightly tempted to consider it, but I think it will be hard enough to write one with all my responsibilities right now. Though last time I did NaNo, I did finish early, and got so inspired by the actual writing that I ended up writing about 12,000 more words on two other projects during the month. So I certainly give myself permission to write more if I want to, but I don't want to give myself that expectation. And frankly, if I do finish one novel draft early, I'd probably rather finish my Purple Panic book than start another new novel. I've been thinking about Purple Panic a lot today, which was envisioned as an early chapter book and morphed into a midgrade. It got bogged down along the way, and I'm thinking of starting it all over as a chapter book again, or at the very least trying to pick up the pace.

Penguins

2006-10-23T22:03:00.000-05:00

The Austin NaNoWriMo participants call themselves the Austin Penguins, and they try to work penguins into their NaNo novels. So, I've come up with ways to work penguins into both of my ideas.

If I write the story about Jessie, her high school mascot would be the Pendleton Penguins. It would be a much-mocked mascot, partly because penguins just aren't fierce, and partly because of the school colors. The school colors might be purple & gold--all wrong for penguins--and they'd be the Purple Penguins, which would look a bit ludicrous. Or, the colors would be red & black. In that case, the mascot would be black & white like normal, but because of the red in the school colors, people would jokingly refer to them as the Bloody Penguins. Or if I write the story about Lainie, she would have a collection of penguin items. At some point, she'd feel embarrassed about them, like they were too childlike, and pack them away, but eventually she'd realize they were part of her and bring at least one or two back out.

The problem? After coming up with these penguin ideas, I saw today that E. Lockhart's new YA novel The Boy Book is out, and it's got a penguin figurine on the cover. (The prequel, The Boyfriend List, had a frog figurine on the cover and they figured into the story.) So now penguin figurines may be considered derivative. Argh. I figure I'll still write it that way, if I go for that story, and then if it really ever gets close to being published (ha) and the penguins are a problem, I can change them to some other kind of figurine.

Oh, I also work beets into all my longer fiction, because the novel I started in 2000 (and have still never finished, despite having it all plotted out!) has a lot to do with beets. So, beets have got to make it in somewhere, though it's pretty easy to work a food in.

New inspiration

2006-10-23T01:51:00.000-05:00

I attended a writing conference this weekend, which was great timing as it gave me inspiration for NaNoWriMo! Different things the speakers said sparked several questions in my head about my plot ideas and characters, and near the end of the conference I ended up writing 3 pages of notes about my 2 ideas. Since I got home, the ideas have continued spinning around in my mind, so I know a lot more about each story now than I did before the conference. Yes!

Not that I'm any more sure what to write! One of the stories, tentatively titled This is the End, features Jessie, a high school junior who writes lyrics for a garage band. I started to question this because the novel I meant to write for NaNoWriMo in 2003 but never really started (Generic Girl 7309) was about a 7th grader who makes a name for herself when she performs an original song at her school talent show. I still want to write that book someday, and thought, "I can't have 2 books about songwriters, can I?" So I started thinking...maybe that is Jessie's back story. Maybe this new book is the sequel to that book that hasn't even been written. Maybe that experience was how she even got to know the people in the band... And then I realized I have yet another barely-started story in my files in which a girl writes a poem. I didn't really have much plot for that one, and I thought, hey, maybe the quirky friend character from that story could be Jessie's best friend in this one, and I could combine all 3 stories into one, blah blah blah. Well, it doesn't really work. If I combine the Generic Girl story into this one, I'll never get to write all the stuff I came up with for that one. But if I still want to write that one sometime, this shouldn't be its sequel, because that's meant to be a light story with an upbeat ending, and this one isn't. This one may be a downer. I expect it would have a hopeful, forward-looking ending, but meanwhile Jessie will be facing a death and difficult relationships, and no one would want to read the Generic Girl story and then found out this is what she had to go through in the future!

So then I have another story, which has no working title. I've only thought of it as Lainie and Jill, since it's about sisters named Lainie and Jill. I changed my title several times during the last NaNoWriMo I completed, but I'm still loath to start without a good working title. Yesterday I thought of the title The Year I Became My Sister, which I like but it's not exactly accurate. It's more like The Year I Tried to Become My Sister, but that's too wordy! Anyway, I had a lot of ideas for this story yesterday. Although the other story appeals to me more, this one seems more ready to start. Lainie has a strong voice in my head, and it's a fast one, so I honestly think the story would flow out faster. She also seems more active in my mind than Jessie at this point, quicker to act to pursue what she wants, so that would also help the plot flow. But I'm not sure she's someone readers would want to spend time with! I fear she'll come across as annoying, or too naive. Also, I had only a basic premise until Saturday, with no other characters besides the two sisters and their parents. Now, I at least have some ideas about where the story could go, and what sorts of things could be at stake. However, the story deals with teen pregnancy (on the surface, though the pregnancy isn't the underlying issue), and if this were to become a polished novel, I'm not sure I'd want my first published novel to be about teen pregnancy! It's not much like other things I'd write, and I'm not sure it's how I'd want to be pegged. But then, if I am going to write about pregnancy, might as well do it while I'm pregnant and remember what it's like! (I expect this to be my last child.)

So, we'll see what I actually do when November rolls around. One problem: you are supposed to start NaNoWriMo novels from scratch on November 1, with no pre-written prose whatsoever. You can have an outline, and notes, and character sketches, but no actual text from the story. But I already have first lines for both of these. Good ones that I don't want to change! My guess is, I'll just start from scratch with different opening lines and add the old ones back in during revisions, but they are such good starting points for me, I think I'll find it hard to start with any other lines.

What to write

2006-10-18T22:18:00.000-05:00

So I'm still trying to decide what to write for NaNo, which I hate because I didn't have this problem last time. Looking around the NaNo forums, I've noticed a lot of people are looking at this more as something to have fun with than as a way to write a serious novel. I am more doing the latter, but I realize that's making it harder for me. And I'm wondering why these are the ideas I'm considering in the first place! Both my ideas are YA (young adult) and both would be on the serious side. Or rather, the one about a death would be fairly serious, and the one about the sisters would be lighter in tone but it still wouldn't be humor. My last NaNo novel was angsty YA as well. It had some quirky humor, but most of the humor was sarcastic. However...these all seem like kind of odd choices for me.

The other night, we were watching Cheap Seats, a funny show on ESPN, and my husband and I both recognized the musical intros as the work of the guy who did the musical intros on the old MTV puppet comedy Sifl & Olly, which we loved. I started thinking about how odd my tastes are. I like some pretty weird stuff. Usually humor, and preferably absurd humor. Other TV shows I've loved have included The Adventures of Pete & Pete (my all-time favorite), Stella, Mr. Show, and The Office (both British & American). We own several of those on DVD, as well as some SCTV and Monty Python. For movies, some of my favorites include Raising Arizona, After Hours, Repo Man, Better Off Dead, This is Spinal Tap and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'm pretty fond of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and I'd pick Shaun of the Dead over any chick flick. (And can I admit we own Weird Al's movie UHF?! It's the first move my husband and I saw together!)

My favorite book is probably a goofy British (and religious) humor book called The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Aged 37-3/4, but I also love The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (especially love that it's a 5-book "trilogy"!) and I was rather fond of Slaughterhouse Five (certainly not humor, but quite bizarre). When I have ventured into contemporary adult fiction, I've been drawn to Anne Tyler, whose characters are always quirky. One of my favorite novels is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which isn't humor but is definitely not for everyone's taste. One of my favorite children's novels is Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson, and I also adore Louis Sachar's books, especially Holes and the very strange Wayside School series.

What I'm getting at is...I don't have normal tastes. So why do I write such "normal" novels for NaNoWriMo? I do write some weirder stuff. One of my YA novels in progress has a lot to do with beets. One of my midgrade novels is about a town battling over purple bubble gum, and another has a protagonist named Ferval. The short story I just had published was about a boy getting a bike with square wheels, and once I actually had a story published in which two people fall in love while arguing over a dancing duck. But when it comes to NaNo, I feel this pull to write more "serious" stuff. It's not just for NaNo. This is stuff I want to write anyway. And I guess, I pick it for NaNo partly because it's harder for me, so I put off writing this stuff when I first get the ideas...so these ideas are what I have in my idea bank when I have to start writing a novel I haven't started yet.

Now, I do like reading serious and/or angsty YA, and many of my favorite books growing up were exactly that. My favorite ever, A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle, deals with death and depression. One of my favorite midgrade novels as a kid was Beat the Turtle Drum by Constance C. Greene, in which the main character's sister dies, and I also liked The Language of Goldfish by Zibby Oneal, about a preteen facing mental illness. One of my favorite movies is Running on Empty, a fairly dramatic movie in which a teenager faces leaving his family forever, and on the less serious side, I loved Pretty in Pink, which is at least heavy on the teenage angst. So this stuff isn't out of my interest range, but being on the serious side, it doesn't generally flow out as quickly as the fun, quirky stuff. And I wonder if I should be truer to myself, and put more absurdity into even these. In some ways, I always will--I don't think I can avoid a few goofy asides, or references to strange things like the cat romances in my last NaNo novel, but I also wonder if I should make NaNo easier on myself and write someting wacky & fun! But I don't have any wacky, fun ideas right now that I haven't already started, and I think I'm getting too late to come up with something else when I already have 2 ideas. Plus, it's probably better to push myself to write something I might not get to otherwise, than to write something I'd find easier to start. But if it's too hard, I worry that I won't do it at all! In 2003, I did sign up, wrote 488 words on the first day, and promptly gave up because I hated my idea and had nowhere to go with it, anyway. I want to avoid that happening again!

(And sorry this post is so long, but I guess I'm falling into NaNo mode, where the more words you write, the better!)

Start the insanity

2006-10-18T19:48:00.000-05:00

2 weeks to NaNoWriMo. 2 weeks to stress out about a plot, or lack of one. So let the madness begin.

So far I have 2 very vague novel ideas, both of which I've been batting around in my head for a few years. But I don't have much plot for either one. I have protagonists, with names, and one has a pretty clear personality, and I have starting points. I even sort of, slightly have ending points. But not middles. Not even second steps, places to go right after starting them. Without that, I don't think I'm going to make it.