All the Billion Other Moments

Yesterday I passed the 50,000 word goal necessary to succeed at NaNoWriMo. I didn’t do quite as good as last year, which probably stems from the state of the outline going into November. It still has some holes, but it’s in better shape now then when I started.

I don’t think I learned anything new from the process, but it was great to get back into serious a daily writing ritual (a process I started before November to be sure I was prepared). It’s also great to have 55% of a new novel down in first draft form. The trick will be keeping at it for the next 40,000 words. I can’t keep up this pace, but I plan to not drop below 1,000 words a day. I didn’t intend to take today off from writing, but life had other plans.

I want to thank the folks who cheered me on via twitter. It really was a great motivator (and one I hope to keep using now that NaNoWriMo is over). I’d also like to thank the folks behind The NanoMonkeys podcast, both for the daily advice, and for giving me a chance to try my hand at podcasting and risking the reputation of their Parsec Award nominated podcast in the process. I hope other writers who listened found my advice useful. And of course, thanks to my family for putting up with the hectic schedule that allowed me to succeed.

Congratulations to everyone else who reached their goal this month. I hope everyone who tried, whether they succeeded or not, came out of the experience with something positive.

I figured it was time for a bit of a writing update. I’m currently prepping for NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know what that is you can read about on their site. Short version: Write 50,000 words on a new novel during the month of November. I did it last year (and won) and I’m looking forward to trying again.

I’m currently doing some plot work in preparation. I’m using the same world as I used for Miracles, but none of the same characters (although I could easily play six degrees of separation I don’t think any of that will make it into the book). This will be the first novel I’ve written using Scrivener (the software that got me to buy a Mac mini, but that’s whole other post). I’m planning on the novel (not titled, I never seem to title my novels until the end) being about 90,000 words, which means I should finish my first draft sometime in January, although I’m aiming for the end of the year.

After this one is done I’ll go back and restart the stalled slog on Miracles, and possibly toss around some of my short stories back out into the market. I hope to have the Miracles revisions done by April, then I’ll hopefully start revising this new book. My first novel is pretty much dead in the water. I’m still waiting for feedback from two of my first readers (hmmm, time for an email). The feedback I’ve gotten to date has me thinking that there’s something worth saving there, but it needs a lot of work. If nothing else it was a great learning experience.

I’m also planning to try and post updates once a week in November, but it all depends on my word count progress (pretty much everything in November depends on my word count progress). If you miss hearing from me or just can’t get enough of me I recorded an episode of The NanoMonkeys Podcast (my podcast premiere, not counting voice mail or live chat) during the first few days of November. Besides, if you aren’t busy you should sign up for NaNoWrimo yourself (and leave a comment if you do).

Writing

All of the previously mentioned changes impacted my writing. I used to write from 3pm to 5pm. It was right after the work day. I didn’t have to leave my office, so no one could grab me and distract me and I never lost time in traffic. I had it down. None of that works now.

I fumbled around trying to squeeze writing in for a while. Then in November I participated in NaNoWriMo. I figured the only way I could possibly write a novel in a month was to get up earlier, so I started getting up at 5:30am to write. Mostly this worked, with occasional periods of too-much-other-stuff-to-do.

I did not get everything done I hoped this year. I did finish revisions on my first novel. I stopped work on another novel at the outline stage, but used the world from that and wrote the first draft of Miracles during NaNoWriMo. I produced a handful of short stories, some of which might even be pretty good. I made some progress revising Miracles, but when the new arrival came things stalled out. I don’t think I’d do the work justice if I dove back in now, but I’m not abandoning it. I’ve got my line-for-scene ready when I return.

I did a lot of world building after writing Miracles and before starting the revisions. I worked through Create A Language Clinic and Create A Culture Clinic, twice each. I have another story working to get out (in the same world as Miracles, but not with any of the same characters). I’m planning on turning that into my next novel, and then returning to the Miracles revision.

Now my morning routine is shot again so I can drive my oldest to school. I’m trying to find my rythym once more. I’ve actually found Twitter to be helpful in keeping me honest and pushing me on, and I’m not alone in this.

I did manage to write about 88,000 words this year since last September. It’s less than I hoped for, but it’s not that bad.

Made some good progress this AM on the manuscript slog. I polished off two chapters before everyone got up (and managed to take a walk in between). My first draft was all from a single characters POV. This was great during NaNo to keep going, but I never intended to keep it that way. Chapter two was the first to change POV, and it went pretty well, but I think it might be a bit short. We’ll see once I get to the type in. Two characters with one line each at either end of the book merged into an all new, and much more fun character with a bit more to do, which was nice. I hope to squeeze some more time in somewhere today, but I’m happy with what I got done if I don’t.

I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Life has been busy, and every spare moment I’ve had has been spend working on the line-for-scene cards for the Miracles revision. The line-for-scene technique is covered in Holly Lisle’s Create A Plot Clinic, it’s also covered briefly on Holly’s writing diary. I finished up this morning with 109 cards (16 green, 36 yellow, 31 orange, and 26 red).

I intend to start the read-through/write-in Friday. I still have a few post-its to stick onto the appropriate cards, and a few notes on some background things that need some shaping up. My goal was to have the type-in finished by July. I’m still hoping, but I’m not sure how exactly I would pull that off.

Parallel Shift changed into something I’m not quite ready to deal with, so I’ve started doing some background expansion for Miracles. I’m currently creating the language for race of creatures that live under the mountains using Holly Lisle’s Create A Language Clinic. It’s going well and I’m surprised by how much fun it is. The language itself won’t feature too heavily in the final product, but the way in which they speak factors in.

Current plan is to do the human language next, to help with using more reasonable names, and then I’ll move on to Holly Lisle’s Create A Culture Clinic. There’s going to be quite a bit of expansion going into the revision, so I want to solidify the background stuff as much as possible at this point.

I finished my first draft this morning. I’d been having a hard time writing the past few days and I wasn’t quite sure why. This morning I was able to turn my inner editor back off and just write, and to my surprise I had reached “The End”. My goal was to make sure I finished this draft by the end of the year, so I’m rather glad that I’ve gotten it out of the way now so I can enjoy the holidays more.

I don’t think I’m going to revise this draft using One Pass, but instead I’ll write an expanded second draft after this one has cooled for a bit. When I started I had some ideas for what to do with a short work, but since I wrote this book with very little description I want to add the missing detail in and see where that puts me. I also want to take some of the new ideas about the world and work them back into my other worldbuilding note before starting the next draft, so things seem a bit less nebulous.

Yesterday I was ready to stop writing for the day, so I calculated my word count and was a surprised to see I was within 300 words of the 50,000 word finish line. I decided to keep going and ten minutes later I checked again and I’d crossed the line (not by much, but that’s not the point).

So 50,000 words in 26 days. That beats anything I’ve ever done before. Is it any good? I think it is. Maybe not right now, but with a bit more work. Of course the novel isn’t finished. I’m guessing it’ll be about 60,000 by the end of this draft. It’s a very rough draft, but it’s nearly finished. My last novel had over 100,000 words in the first draft, but it took me about a year to write. At my current pace I’d have that done in two months.

So what have I learned? (more…)

Sorry about the lack of updates. If you’ve been wondering where I am, you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo, meaning I have until the end of the month to complete 50,000 words of a novel. I doubt I’ll be updating much during that time because if I have time to post then I should be working on the novel. Things should return to normal once I’m finished.

Didn’t get a lot of days in editing this week, but I think I made up for it today. The ever shrinking type-in pile is looking pretty short. I’m hoping next week is it.