I didn’t write today, but I did hang out in the chat room and congratulate all the Wrimos passing the finish line as the deadline approached. In truth, it was more fun than ringing the cowbell at Steeps myself.
So in honour of all my YYCNaNoWriMos, I’d just like to say: I think what we really need here is more cowbell.
Well done, all of you, and thanks for sharing your November with me.
That’s it. One day in advance, according to plan, I completed my second NaNo challenge of 100,000 words.
Except that it’s so not over. Now, the real work begins. As Chuck Wendig so eloquently put it:
Writing is about more than that one month.
Writing is about more than the first draft.
Your work continues. Hell, the work just begins. You fought the first battle of a very long war.
Fuck winning. Hell with losing. This isn’t over by a long shot.
So: here’s what I’m asking you:
How’d it go?
And what’s next? Do you have more to write?
Then what? What’s your plan?
I have that plan. It won’t be as fun as having word wars with Wrimos, but I’m going to do it because I’ve fought that first battle.
Really? 95,000, on the button? Really?
Really.
I have a plan. I won’t be writing on Friday as the #epicstepson has his season opening basketball tournament, I have resos for dinner with a good friend, and various errands to run throughout the day. Tomorrow, an alarmingly large group of Wrimos will descend upon Steeps Tea and drive the other patrons batty by alternating 5 minutes of giddy shouting with 20 minute periods of complete silence other than the clickety-clacking of our keyboards.
In the company of those few friends, I will write 5,000 words. I will ring the cowbell I stole from the S.O.’s percussion collection, and cheer even more loudly when my buddies win their own personal word wars, whatever those numbers may be. I will sip organic yerba mate and feel great that I met two word goals, while acknowledging that really, I’ve just gotten started.
Really.
NaNoWriMo Day 27The hardest thing about NaNoWriMo has not been the writing. Sure, struggling through plot holes left gaping due to an incredible lack of planning skills on my part hasn’t been nirvana, but it’s nothing compared to writing 4k a day and then facing down 50 words in an #epicnanoblog post.
Once I’ve hit my 100k target on Nov. 30, I’ll still have another, say, 15k to write before I’ve gotten through my embarrassingly sketchy plot arc. I then have what I’m told will be a painful month or two just to read what is undoubtedly a cringe-worthy first draft. Then, more months of revising and polishing before I’ll let a real editor or a mentor have a gander. So the light at the end of the tunnel is not for the end of NaNo, as I’m just getting started writing the novel for all intents and purposes.
Nope, the light is beckoning me from the black creative abyss that swallowed up my #epicnanoblog posts weeks ago. After Nov. 30, I shall never tweet your hashtag again and for that, I will be extremely, extremely grateful.
NaNoWriMo Day 25To say that I get a little intense about my projects/interests/hobbies is a gross understatement, on par with saying “New York is a big city” and “gosh, that Apple company made a bit of money this year.” So my pre-NaNoWriMo research stint in October resulted in my RSS and Twitter feeds exploding with Wrimos, publishing houses, agents and, of course, writers.
I stumbled upon one group of writers who all seem to be of mutual acquiantance and have been gathered up into a formidable army of mentors for #PitchWars, hosted by an incredibly energetic and well-organized Brenda Drake. Today marked the lauch of the mentors’ bios and the start date for submissions to those mentors.
I truly felt like the too-young kid being kept inside by an overprotective parent, pressing her nose up against the window, watching all the cool older kids playing kick the can in the street. You see, I can’t participate in #PitchWars because I don’t have a finished manuscript.
I have been kicking myself for not starting my novel sooner since the day I heard about this contest. The format, the mentors (I’ve been stalking 4 or 5 for weeks now, is that creepy?), the whole idea of it is so appealing that I am dying inside that I have to sit this one out. Why didn’t I start writing this novel last year? Five years ago? When I was 15 years old and first came up with the idea?
I don’t know the answer to that, but I am absolutely certain that this is a sign. If finding a mentor who will volunteer to work his or her butt off with you and subsequently pitching an agent with a polished manuscript can be made into a wickedly fun competition, writing is clearly for me.
Let this be a warning to the mentors and agents who will be in PitchWars 2.0 – I’m coming, and I’m coming to win.
For those of you who could be participating, I only have this to say:
NaNoWriMo Day 25
Okay, not changing it so much. Just removing one altogether. Don’t panic: I’m going to do the deletions AFTER Nov. 30, but I won’t strain myself to insert this POV into the narrative flow of my remaining 18k words.
A YA writer that I follow on Twitter, Dahlia Adler (give her a follow as she’s massively clever and wears a tiara in her photo – nuff said), threw out a question on her feed about POV today. It tweaked a thought that I’d had last night as I was writing from an alternate POV to that of my MC. That thought was: this sucks.
That’s harsh. More extraneous, unnecessary and distracting. I actually posed my doubts to Dahlia and she heartily affirmed that especially in a YA, bringing in a second POV, even more especially when the character is a really old guy (even a lovable curmudgeon like him), is a bad idea.
So I spent some time today edumacating myself about POV in writing, and vowed to leave that alternate POV out of my remaining 6 days of NaNo writing. Fortunately, I’ve already thought of some effective ways to express this character’s story and internal world in the narrative without violating his curmudgeonly and succinct self.
Thanks to Dalia for her help.