Happy Dance

I did it. My novel is not finished, but I hit the goal post that I was aiming for. It's funny, but one of the key scenes in the novel is not yet written. In order to finish my word count and just get finished for the night in general, I summed it up in a couple of sentances. Something like: They drove around. They kissed. Yada yada.

BTW, NaNo's word count does not match Word's. So I had to add a few extra sentances as I was submitting my entry.

And I could not for the life of me find a working WiFi signal at the hospital. So, once again, I left my husband with no laptop to play games on while I came home early to sleep in a big comfy bed. Such is life.

Now the plan for next month: only write during naptime and after bedtime half of the time. The other half I really really really must do some exercise!

Concluding

There's nothing quite like finishing at the last minute. I have about 6000 words to go to hit the 50000, and 3 days (including today, as I never get to write until after the kids are in bed). Do-able, I think. I was always finishing the last problems on my homework just as class was starting, so why should this be any different?

I certainly have enough material floating around in my head. Assuming I keep going, I'll probably make it well beyond the 50k, hopefully closer to the 80-100k that would be considered a full-length novel. At the moment, I have two relatively major scenes that aren't written at all (what I keep callign the "big kiss scene", and any sort of conclusion). Either one of those could easily eat up most of that 6000 words, based on some of the other pieces of the book. There is a lot of connective material that's missing also. Even though I think I may have a "full-length novel", I'm still not actually making any plans for publishing. I realized recently that I may have to re-read my employment agreement before I could even submit it to a publisher, were I so inclined. I've got lots to do before I make that decision anwyay (like write it, and then read it to see if it might even make sense to anyone else).

Overall, I am not that stressed by the whole exercise, which is kind of a surprise to me. I've been able to write only about 1-2 hours a day (after bedtime, like I said, with some exceptions), and I've made pretty steady progress throughout. I was interrupted early on with Trystan being sick and not sleeping for like a week, and his doctor visit morphing into an ER visit for something that was unrelated to the cold (that was NOT fun). I am still expecting to take advantage of some of the wait time on the 29th and 30th while he's in surgery to at least finish my word count and earn my nifty icon. I'm kind of hoping to get a large chunk post-NaNo done over the next week while he's in the hospital--I'll probably be there with him most of that time too, and previous experience has shown that I may have long periods of time on my hands. I might also have an upset baby on my hands (literally on) for large chunks of that, so maybe I'll end up catching up on movie watching instead. Either way, the laptop's going to get a workout.

Maybe it helps that I don't have long in front of the keyboard, so I am typing pretty much the entire time--I have to do all the plotting ahead of time, or as I'm writing. The idea for this storyline has been stuck in my head for probably two years now, so I guess it's had time to digest into soemthing I could write down. I have to say, it's a major relief to be getting these people out of my brain.

Now I just have to decide which version of the ending I'm going with, and how exactly to get them together for that big kiss scene, without repeating what they've already done. Hmmm...

When you're busy burning the midnight oil, you have to be careful not to spill it. That stuff is flamable.

I posted the other day about genre titles, a topic that I got started thinking about by reading a friend's blog. I intended to disagree with some of the points that she had made in her original post, and I think mine was written poorly enough to give credit for opinions where it most certainly was not due. Sarahlynn did not, to my recollection, ever say that romance novels were about mindless sex. No, years of hearing the terms "bodice ripper", "sex book", "porn for women" have made that impression quite deeply on me. I got in the habit early on of keeping my paperbooks in a discreet fabric cover--simply keeping Fabio out of view helped stop a lot of those comments and looks.

Nor did she ever say that something that was not considered "literary fiction" could not be character-driven. What Sarahlynn did say was, "I would say, however, that literary fiction is generally character-driven, rather than structurally driven (that sounds more like experimental literature to me, though I'm no expert)".

Depending on what you consider to be the "structure" of a novel, however, that statement can certainly be interpreted a couple of ways (Is the structure the chronology of scenes? Is it the point of view of the narrator? Is it the choice of beginning and ending points? Is it the choices of what scenes are included or excluded? Some combination?) My mind took off on one direction, and my fingers followed along on the keyboard.

For the record, I do not know that I agree with literary fiction "generally" being character-driven. I have read a great deal that is. But there are quite a few examples where the characters are really an accessory to the story (anything by Michener comes to mind, as does 100 years of solitude, which Oprah seems to have made popular lately). I believe I've seen one of my favorite authors, Isabel Allende, frequently shelved under "literary fiction", when her stories have as much plot (and even more political commentary) as they do any sort of emotional transformation of the characters.

Her lesson on logic is a good one. A implies B does not mean that B implies A. Even when B is the opposite of A. Tautology. I'm not sure I'd head the exact term for it before, but am also quite familiar with the logic. The biggest problem with this is that A->B really says nothing about what B implies. It could imply A. It just doesn't have to. If you don't specify, then it's open to interpretation. This is a lesson that in computers you sometimes learn the hard way, when your computer crashes because of a bug because you forgot to fully specify your parameters. It is a lesson that I myself forgot as I quoted one inspiration for my train of thoughts, but forgot to mention that I was reacting to a lot morethan just what Sarahlynn had recently posted. It is natural to conclude that my entire statement was a reaction to her opinons, and it was not.

I realize today in re-reading my own post(s), that I actually left out a point of my own. One comment from Sarahlynn's blog post that totally blew my mind was "The Time Traveler's Wife taught me that people can fuck in contemporary literary fiction." I was shocked. Not that people fuck in contemporary literary fiction, but that her blog announced it like it was breaking news. I guess we've read different sets of books all this time. I was under the impression that many authors who were shelved under "literary fiction" relished their "edgy" voices and frolicked in explicit details of their characters lives. I've read a few who even let their characters make love. But that distinction is a completely different discussion topic.

I do enjoy debate, and I will attempt to ensure that my own commentary shows the proper credit and respect for anyone I am referencing. I will continue to read Sarahlynn's blog (and posting comments, unless she decides to block me...) because I find her opinions and topics to be very thought provoking. I do apologize if anything I wrote painted an incorrect picture of her opinions. That was never my intention. I will not apologize for disagreeing on various subjects. That would be a silly (and dishonest) thing for me to say. I look forward to reading any responses (positive, negative, and sincerely hope to be able to toast the publication of her novel at some point. From her little snippets, it sounds like one I would pick up to read even if I didn't know the author :)

Sunday afternoon

I'm catching up. Not quite there yet, but definitely on my way. My novel is shaping up. There are some large holes, but I have a general idea what is missing. The two biggest pieces that I haven't tackled are the conclusion of the thing, where my main characters finally get together for real, and the scene right at the climax (no pun intended--seriously, it's totally PG so far) of the action. There are several other places where I could probably use a little more connection between scenes, and there's one secondary character who ought to be a bit more important, but so far she is only really present in one scene.

I'm at not quite 40,000 words around 3:30PM. Everyone else in my house is down for a nap, so I've had about an hour of uninterrupted time. If I can get another hour in after the kids go to bed tonight, I might even be back on track to finish 50000 words by the 30th. Trystan goes into the hospital on Thursday, the 29th, to prep for surgery on the 30th. I'm not intending to sound insensitive by any means, but I believe I'll have a lot of time for writing those two days--at least on the 30th because he'll be pretty out of things post-op (he basically slept for a solid day after his last two surgeries). The 29th may be dicey depending on how fussy he is--he is on a "clear liquid diet" as of Wednesday, which does mean breastmilk. I don't know how much he will be allowed to nurse on Thursday, though. If he can't eat, he'll be very upset with me, and even if he can, he'll be upset to have to skip his cereal and baby mush. Fun, fun. If I do this again, I'm going to have to work in more plot or subplot about babies and hospital stays...I have such ripe research material with plenty of emotion to draw from. Crazy as it sounds, I actually have a story forming in my head including that....we'll see if I get past this one first!

Wednesday Progress

I broke 30k words this afternoon, and there's a slim possibility that I can give it another go before bed. I had a few extra hours off work, thanks to the holiday. I usually work 3 days a week, and then would get an extra 4 hours of pay for Thursday and Friday each...instead of extra pay, I opted for an afternoon off with pre-paid babysitting. I'm still "behind" the curve, but I am making progress. Last night I finished a section that had taken me 3 days to work on, and did a big NaNo NoNo and edited part of it in the process, so I "lost" words before adding more. But I had been stuck on how to get from point A to point B and ended up having to backtrack and remove an extra character from the scene earlier than I originally thought. The end result worked much better.

Anyway, I now have a small excerpt on my NaNo page (I'm britelord, in case anyone who doesn't already know cares) also. Very, very small. But it was a piece that could stand alone as a sort of teaser :)

I still haven't figured out what part of my blog template makes the progress bar look funny, but here's another one. I'm off to retrieve my munchkins from daycare, and start working on Thanksgiving pies!

30,268 / 50,000 (60.5%)

Signs, Signs Everywhere Signs

There has been quite an interesting thread or threads about various features of writing going on at Sarahlynn's blog. I've posted a few comments, but I keep feeling like I have way more to say than what I should put in a comment. By "feature" I mean something like a piece's structure, characters, plot, writing style, genre.

I am not a big fan of stereotypes. I have long fought against the labels that people like to assign to categorize the people around them. In many ways it makes it easier on us to deal with the world to be able to break it down into small but meaningful chunks. Most of my work as a software developer is doing just that--breaking large, hard problems down into small pieces of logic that is easily written, understood, combined, debugged, etc. To do that you have to make decisions about abstract problems ("I want to order a pizza online") and be able to break it up into meaningful components that can interact (a virtual storefront, an order slip, a pizza, a customer). I'm starting to sound like the intro to an object oriented programming book. This approach works well for code (and probably other complex things too--electronics, consumer goods of all types, etc). It is horrible for people. To apply a label to a person boxes them in, and tries to make them fit into a preformed package. I do not fit the stereotypes of many labels you could apply to me--what you think of if I say I'm blonde, catholic, a software engineer, etc, does not define who I am. I take great pride in shattering those tiny boxes that others would have me live in.

I feel much the same way about various "genres" of fiction. Romance, Sci-Fi, Mysteries, Westerns, Literary Fiction. Those labels do not define the boundaries of the writing that falls under them. To say that literary fiction focuses on character development seems to imply that characters are not developed in books with other labels. To assume that romance implies nothing but brainless sex trivializes the exploration of emotions, relationships, and yes, sexual experience of humanity. I do not feel that I move in "literary circles", because, as I've said many times before, I frequently feel that my opinions are not shared and are frequently denigrated by those who do. I have found worthwhile and thought-provoking material among every "genre" that I've read. There's also a whole lot of crap.

I loved the Time Traveler's Wife. Let's see, the primary topic is a love story, with plenty of sex. Is it shelved with the romances? Nope. Erotica? Nope. The main character does quite a bit of time travelling (duh), so is it a sci-fi? Nope. It has an unorthodox structure--not strictly chronological. It falls under a lot of labels, so it's given the default--literary fiction. Another book to ponder in the category of literary fiction (or maybe it's classical literature, who knows) is the classic Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. Where does that one fall? Let's see, we have a man gallavanting through time with a series of ghosts--SciFi/Fantasy? And yet, it's never shelved next to Robert Jordan or Stephen King.

In my (possibly unshared) opinion, the labels that you apply to writing are not more meaningful than the labels that you apply to people. You can either define yourself by them, adn box yourself inside someone's proscribed idea of what the label means, or you can treat it as another sticker or an easy way to shelve your work, and ignore that there's anything else to it.

Progress Report

So far, so fair. I'm behind on my word count "schedule" for NaNo--a few hundred words short of the 50% mark. To stay exactly on schedule I should hit 31,667 by tonight. I'm at 24,7xx. Actually, I seem to make pretty good progress, but there have been a good handful of days where I haven't gotten a chance to write.

Lets's see, like the good engineer that I'm paid to be, here's my newly revised schedule for completing on time:

19-Nov 26853.25
20-Nov 28957.5
21-Nov 31061.75
22-Nov 33166
23-Nov 35270.25
24-Nov 37374.5
25-Nov 39478.75
26-Nov 41583
27-Nov 43687.25
28-Nov 45791.5
29-Nov 47895.75
30-Nov 50000

That works out to 2104.25 words/day from now till the end. Can I do it? Who knows.

I don't know if my story will be complete by that point. I'm leaning towards not. I think at about 25k words, I might be 1/3 of the way through the plot. That's probably fair as 50000 is shorter than most books. I'll have to research a bit, but I think I should be hitting more like 80-100k for a (theoretically) publishable novel. We'll see.

Sunday night word count

Hmm...that last word meter doesn't look right on my laptop. I'll try to figure it out sometime soon. In the mean time, I'm making up time (slowly) from this week's baby illnesses. Ah well, here's another one just like it. The night is still young, though, so this may not be the final count for Sunday.

13,989 / 50,000 (28.0%)

Word meter

11,700 / 50,000 (23.4%)

Behind already

I think I'm approaching this book thing like I would a software design: top-down. Identify the major elements of the plot, and work those first. Start filling in less important scenes second. Last go in and fill in more of the details of the plot. Finally, do final revision (in software, that would be followed by peer review...we'll see what kind of shape we're in at hte end of this). I've got the opening scene written, and what's going to be right around the climax (of the novel....get your mind out of the gutter). I have some of the key wrap-up scenes floating around my head...one of them is definitely next. I also wrote a sort of intro-to-the-heroine scene, which also introduces the hero's fiance. I started on the hero's intro scene, but it's on hold.

I'm only at about 11k words (one of these days I'll find some sort of widget to put on my blog). I thought I would have more time to write this week, but have been sidetracked by a trip to the ER with my youngest (his 3rd this year...we even got priority seating...luckily we were sent home with a fairly benign diagnosis). I should have had time last night before bed, but my husband sat down next to me to read. I have a hard time writing with an audience. I need to tell him what I'm up to sometime soon, but even then I don't really want people in the room. He's especially bad about interrupting--always commenting about his own books while I'm reading--it breaks my concentrating. Some days he's just as bad as the kids, wanting to be attached when I really need breathing room (not just from him...I just need some amount of time during the day with no one interrupting my thoughts or plastered to my side...time I get very little of lately).

Anyway, I digress. I might have a few more minutes of just me-and-baby time, so I should take advantage of it and start in on another chapter.

Sleep is not my friend

Actually, sleep would be my friend if I were allowed any. The baby has kept me up for 2 hours in the middle of both of the previous nights. I was so tired yesterday afternoon I could barely hold my head up at work. When both kids were in bed by 8:45, I should have pulled out the laptop and gotten to work. Instead I read for a little while and then slept. But after 2 hours of sleep, he was up and fussing, from midnight until almost 2am--my husband and I kept alternating walking/rocking/soothing him. The magic mommy milk didn't work. His daddy's patented super baby hold didn't work. Today is not fun.

Add that to the characters and plot lines, scenes and conversations, running through my head that will not be quiet. This is worse, much much worse than any song--even worse than my 3-year old's cd's that have nice, catchy tunes and easy-to-understand lyrics. I wonder if writing a book is this way for other people? I guess it ought to be my motivation to just get it written...that way I can have my daydreams back again.

I'm close to fessing up to my husband what I'm doing. I feel like a bit of a sneak--he must think I've got some sort of cyberlover or something with how much time I've been on the computer lately. But as soon as I admit it, then I will have to tell people how it's going. And there's no guarantee that he won't tell other people. And then they'll ask. And sooner or later someone will want to read my work. And that's where the paralyzing fear sets in. Much better (in theory) to do it on my own and not tell anyone until I'm successful and have something worth sharing. So I believe.

4 days down.

So far, I'm doing well. Something like 6800 words, which is 13.6% of the goal in 13.3% of the allotted time. Who knows if I'll be able to keep this up. Maybe if the kids adjust to an earlier bedtime with daylight savings time.

So far I've got a draft of the opening scene where my protagonists (or maybe I should call them victims) meet, and a good portion of the next chapter where you start learning some background on them. I have ideas for a couple of the secondary characters, including a friend/mentor of hte heroine, the current (soon to be ex-) fiance of the hero, and some other more tertiary ones. I have an idea for one of the wrap-up scenes, where the heroine finds out about her hero's breakup from the fiance. I haven't figured out how to tie the two together for the great finale yet though. I also haven't decided how far to go with the characters, or rather how far they will go with each other. I've written one kiss so far, but it's more tension-steamy and is interrupted rather quickly. I guess I'll have to wait and see how things develop. I've never tried to write a sex scene before...never tried to write much of this at all actually. In re-reading enough of each section to know how to continue, I don't think it's that bad. Could definitely use editing though (I know, December is for editing). I really hope I can finish this at this point--even if no one ever reads it, I want to get the whole thing down. And out of my head.

Hmmm...next procrastination tactic: find a word counting gadget for this page :)

The Beginning

Like my usual Starbucks order, I don't always make perfect sense. I have a career in software, and a family, and no time. And yet, here I am, attempting to write a novel. That's it. I said it outloud (sort of). I am finally going to start writing down some of these crazy stories that have been swirling around in my head for as long as I can remember.

People who know me will probably be surprised. After all, I was not an English major, and do not discuss writing or media with that self-righteous "intelligence" that many aspiring writers seem to. I don't take myself seriously. I always feel very out of my element when talking to other writers, or literature buffs. Lately, I've finally realized that I do not have to be able to write intelligent commentary on national politics, or be able to quote obscure twentieth century authors in order to be a writer myself. My voice is not theirs. I may admire the voices of many authors--fiction and nonfiction alike--and strive to learn from their writing styles. But my style is my own. My voice is my own. And, even if it's never published, or if no one even reads a word I write, that's OK.

At this point, I have nothing to lose but time. My career is not tied up in my ability to write prose. My livelihood is not tied to my plot. My self esteem is not based upon the believability of my characters. If something good comes of this, then it's a bonus. If not, then this hobby of mine is no worse than my sewing--I have a backlog of uncut fabric, and a portfolio of finished works. Some things turn out well, some go right from machine to trash can.

I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month. I am cheating, as I have about 1-2000 words already started from the last month or so. The goal is to write a 50k word novel by the 30th of November. We'll see how this goes!