Maddest thought of the month

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...

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

I finally wrote a scene I liked!

17385 / 50000 words. 35% done!

Voice void

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

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

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?!

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!

9724 / 50000 words. 19% done!

Characters

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

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

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

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!)