NaNoWriMo: Slackery

Well, dang.

I fell off the NaNoWriMo wagon, but I thought, "OK, at least I'm on track for NaBloPoMo."

Then I didn't post yesterday.

Dang.

Guess I'd better get back on that wagon. Can I write nine thousand words today?

Cat Picture: By Aria Belli. Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Again the confusion

Day two and strategy three for NaNoWriMo: I went back to fiction. Whee!

3,566 words.

And, cat picture.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Starting

So, I started NaNoWriMo. Not a novel; I'm working on that unnamed nonfiction idea that I had a while ago. I got 1725 words in, or fifty-eight above quota. But it's not going to work. Not for NaNoWriMo, that is. The book is intended to be a series of essays, and I failed to consider the amount of mental fermentation they would require.

So I think that the goal of this year's NaNoWriMo is going to be: Write 1667 words, on a single topic,  one that isn't directly dependent on the context of my blog, every day. On whatever. An essay today. A really long perfume review tomorrow. That sort of thing.  Just use it to form a writing habit.

Maybe.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, cat picture!

Image: By nsleep6. Wikimedia Commons

Writing: A WriteOrDie NaNoWriMo?

I type 110 words per minute. Last time I tested.

That means that if you abandon things like, say, thought, I could do NaNoWriMo in 15.15 minutes per day.

Hmm.

There's a tool called WriteOrDie--application version and website version--that stimulates you to keep typing at top speed, and tortures you if you don't.

I could add a very, very small ration of thought and do NaNoWriMo in thirty minutes a day inside WriteOrDie.

It's essentially a stunt, but, somehow, I'm kind of liking the idea. I'm not sure if I have time for NaNoWriMo otherwise, and sometimes when I'm typing at full tilt, interesting things come out.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Of course, it's late. And I've had three caffeinated beverages and several pieces of early Halloween chocolate. Sanity may return tomorrow.

Writing: NaNoWriMo or no NaNoWriMo?

Can't decide.

I could work on the novel that just got darker. I've already started on it, but I'm usually a NaNoWriMo rebel anyway.

I could do the "NaNoBlogMo" thing where I try to blog fifty thousand words. Not fiction. Babbling.

I could just ignore the whole thing.

I could just set some other goal, like writing or blogging every day, but not the 1667 words that NaNoWriMo calls for.

It occurs to me that the purpose of NaNoWriMo--at least as I interpret it--is to encourage one to write willy-nilly, without worrying about any discipline other than pumping those words out. It's a goal that I approve of, for those who are inclined to perfectionism and won't call a piece of writing finished until it's polished to a high gloss.

That is not my problem.

So I could reverse the whole thing and try to force myself to write something coherent and somewhat polished, every day for a month. Not long and coherent and polished; there's a limit to the madness here. But something that isn't diary-like and isn't dependent on the context of the blog. My history with Girl Scout Thin Mints one day, thoughts about Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth the next, that kind of thing.

The odds of that happening are low. But I kind of like it.  It could be a plan for a very ambitious NaNoWriMo Rebel whatsit next year, if I pre-planned thirty topics. But I don't see it happening this year.

See, the above is only 240 words. Can I really write seven times that much every day for a month? It feels iffy.

I could just write free-association fiction:

Janet collapsed on the beanbag chair and stared up at the ceiling. Acoustic tiles. She started to count them, first across, then down, but lost track twice. How was that possible, after only two glasses of wine? Maybe they... ah. The doorbell. 

"Chinese food is here!" she shouted. " Can you get the door? I've fallen in the beanbag and I can't get up."

But, see, there I'm stalled. And it's just 61 words.

Can't decide.

Image: By Extraordinary. Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Again, type faster!

Hey! NaNoWriMo has started!

As previously mentioned, this year I'm being a NaNoWriMo rebel--my plan is to write and post fifty thousand words in November. That would mean a roughly 1700 word post every day. I rarely write a post that long; the initial Farm Diary post, which seemed endless, was only about nineteen hundred words.

One traditional way to achieve one's word goal in NaNoWriMo is to add a whole lot of excessive and unnecessary and numerous words that one would not otherwise under normal regular everyday circumstances use while composing and planning and writing one's NaNoWriMo prose or fiction or other sorts of writing.

See what I mean? Yeah. I hope I'm not going to do that again. I'd prefer to actually have something to say, or, if not, at least sound relatively normal while saying nothing in particular.

Another, closer to universal, NaNoWriMo strategy is to refrain from editing. Some people recommend, in fact, not even watching the words appear on the screen; they cover the screen, or close their eyes (presumably only the touch typists; sheer gibberish is going a little too far), or set their font to white on a white background. I approve of this--too many writers seem to be afraid of letting an un-edited senence exist. However, if I'm going to post my words, there is going to be some editing. Probably.

Actually, the idea of editing only for typos is interesting. I pretty much never see my raw writing after it's cooled down, because I edit it while it's still warm. (Where is this analogy going? Is it about cookies?) Except...no, that's not true, because in previous NaNoWriMos I have done the "don't edit" thing, and I didn't make any exciting new discoveries about my writing.

So. Did I make it clear that the fifty thousand words won't necessarily be fiction? I'm hoping that some of them will, but vanilla nonfiction like, for example, this post, will count.

Wow. I just did the count, and this post up to this point is about three hundred words. That's slightly less than one-fifth the daily goal. This may be more of a challenge than I really thought. I suspect, now that I think about it, that rather than writing a 1700-word post every day, I'm more likely to write, oh, three 600-word posts. Or so. Because I just don't know how long I can rattle on about one topic.

Though--as I think back to why I had this crazy idea in the first place--I think that writing longer pieces was part of the point. Longer pieces, longer paragraphs, longer thoughts. Suppressing the fear of people staring at my writing with the horrified fascination usually directed at decaying roadkill, pointing at me, and shrieking, "She wants someone to take her writing seriously! That's hilarious!"

I think I've mentioned before that when I write forum posts in forum posts where I'm anonymous, I am much more likely to be serious and to rattle on at length. Probably because nobody knows me. They get to know me, as that serious long-posting entity, and sometimes they like me, and then I'm irritated at myself for concealing my identity, because I'd like to combine all the people I interact with online. But by then I've generally said a dozen or so embarassing things, on the theory that no one will ever trace them to me, so it feels like it's too late.

Hmm. Five hundred and fifty words.

Speaking of embarassing things, it'll be interesting to see if the need to fill the daily quota will inspire me to open up on a wider variety of personal issues. While I'm certainly not the kind of writer that tries to pose as a dry and formal professional, I'm also not all that big on personal confessions. Yes, yes, I haven't shown all that much discretion when it comes to my relationship with my mother, but that seems to be an exception.

So are my rules for this rebellion perfectly obvious? Let's list them, just in case they aren't. Not to get more words, no, no, I would never do that. At least not on the first day. OK, rules:

• Write fifty thousand words.
• Of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, whatever.
• They don't need to be one unified work, except in the sense that a blog is one unified work.
• Post them all to my blog. Or my other blog.
• In November.

Yeah, that's pretty simple.

By the way? Seven hundred and thirty-eight words. Your mileage may vary.

Let's circle back around to why I'm doing the Rebel thing instead of a novel. Partly because the last...er... was it three? novels that I wrote in NaNoWriMo failed to actually be novels. They ended up being a fairly random mishmsash of fictional scenes, and the third one wasn't all that more interesting than the second one. So it feels like time to do something different--for, yes, just the sake of being different--and see what I learn from it.

And then there's the posting part. It's my view that NaNoWriMo is all about poking perfectionism in the eye. (I occasionally consider what a T shirt to that effect would look like, but the graphic would be rather unpleasant, right?) But I have no appreciable perfectionist hangups about writing that I'm not going to show to anyone else. I want a new perfectionist front to attack, and writing that I am going to show to others, in the blog, seems like a good one.

Now, a better front would be breaking through my perfectionism about plotting. My NaNoWriMo novels are a series of random scenes because I hesitate to actually keep going with a sustained plot, because my plots look silly to me. That is without a doubt an example of perfectionism, one that gets right in the way of my goal to do more fiction writing, and I should be poking that one in the eye this year. But I'm not going to. So there.

Just about one thousand words. Seven hundred left to go for the day. Goodness me.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: This year's plan

So this year I'm going to be a NaNoWriMo Rebel. Instead of writing fifty thousand words of a novel, I plan to write and post fifty thousand words to this blog.

Yes, it's madness. I rather doubt that I'll actually get there. But it seems to fit my current writing goals more than the traditional NaNoWriMo. To me, NaNoWriMo is mainly an exercise in poking perfectionism in the eye. And my perfectionism problem isn't at all with what I write I private, but instead for what I write and post. So that's the place to attack it.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Random Thoughts, Mostly Sewing

NaNoWriMo is almost over. Unless I write thirty-four thousand words in the next forty-nine minutes, I'm not going to "win", but as already burbled, I'm content with my NaNoWriMo experience this year. (Oh. Yeah. Twenty-four hours and forty-nine minutes. But still.)

We didn't eat any turkey today. This is a bad thing, because there's a lot of turkey left. I think that we're approaching the point of frozen turkey Tetrazzini casseroles.

All the yams are gone. This is sad.

Himself is continuing to hide the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls because I asked him to hide them from me because the caffeine was making me crazy. Who knew he'd obey me so thoroughly? (Edited to give proper credit: He bought me the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls in the first place, because he knows I love them. He's a very nice Himself. I understand that I get them back during the relatively-low-stress (we hope) days of Christmas vacation.)

Sushi Imperiale is still beautiful. I wore it today to belatedly celebrate the fact that we got the tree set up in the stand yesterday. Yesterday I wore Serge Noire. It was also gorgeous.

We're taking two weeks off for Christmas. I'm under the delusion that I'm going to sew. I said it exactly that way at the fabric store and people laughed. I bought the Taylor Made Designs Sew Easy Pajama Pants and and the Sewing Workshop Mixit Shirt pattern. (I'll be making the variant with sleeves.) I also have my eye on a whole bunch of HotPatterns patterns, and I'm hoping to find the HotPatterns Miss MoneyPenny Trumpet Skirt that I already altered to near-perfection.

My theory is that I stop sewing because it's too much trouble to get a pattern fitted, and that I'll keep sewing if I can just hold on until I have a tiny wardrobe of patterns perfectly fitted and traced onto that pattern cloth stuff that's easy to work with and doesn't tear all the time. The Mixit Shirt, Trumpet Skirt, and either the Wong-Sing-Johes Kimono Wrap Dress or the Deco Vibe Delicious Dresses might do the job. Or I might look pregnant in the dresses. We'll see.

Why is it so hard to find Burda Patterns? It's even harder to find Burda Plus patterns. I want them because last time I sewed, Burda Plus blouses were almost exactly right for me, without a bunch of fitting. It's almost inconceivable for shoulders, chest, and sleeves in a fitted blouse to all work right out of the envelope; with Burda Plus, they did.

My head hurts. I blame lack of caffeine.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Maybe it wasn't a joke

On the sixth I said:

"Or, see, I could go on a blogging frenzy and write forty-four-thousand-and-change words of blog posts. "

I think I was joking, ha-ha, very funny. But now? Hmm. Now, I wish that I'd had that idea around Halloween, and that I'd made that my NaNoWriMo Rebel challenge: Blog fifty thousand words in the month of November. 1,667 words of blog posts every day for a month? I could do that. It sounds like fun, in a complete-madness sort of way.

But now it's November 12 and I've only blogged around 4,500 words this month, though I've written a bit more than 16,000 for NaNoWriMo. So to get to fifty thousand blogged words by November 30, I'd need to post a bit more than 2,500 words a day for the next eighteen days.

Hmmm.

Am I that crazy?

If the post after this one is really, really long, that may mean that I am.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: NaNoWriMo, Perfume, and the Conversational Kevin Bacon Game

Y'know, I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to end up writing fifty thousand words about NaNoWriMo. OK, not fifty thousand, but, y'know, a lot. It does seem to bring up a lot of thoughts that I find easy to write.

Though that's nothing special about NaNoWriMo - almost any subject, when expanded and expanded and expanded again, seems to eventually support almost any amount of musing.

Look at perfume, for example, and all of our perfume blogs. The first discussion of perfume is, of course, about the scent itself. And that can lead to discussions of scent in general, and how scent is an aid to memory, and how scent seems to have a direct link to our emotions. And it seems that quite often, perfume lovers are also pretty strongly attached to food and flavors, which makes sense, since most of flavor is about scent.

Of course, that could lead to a discussion of the official four tastes -- sweet, sour, bitter, salty.  And that can lead to the controversy over the fifth taste, umami, the taste of savory/meaty flavors, and whether that taste actually exists. Umami has, I think, been recognized for a long time in Japan (and perhaps in other areas; I'm just aware of Japan because it's a Japanese word), and that can lead to a discussion of the points where absolute "it's a fact!" beliefs vary between cultures.

And that makes me think of Luca Turin and his theory of scent, and the scientific community's general attitude of "ppft" toward that theory, an attitude that seems to me to be distinctly unjustified. And that makes me think of other areas where the scientific community was recalcitrant about new ideas, like the bacterial cause for ulcers. Didn't someone actually deliberately infect himself with the bacteria in order to give himself an ulcer and prove his point, or is that a scientific urban legend? And even if they didn't, it reminds me of my psychology professor, who spoke admiringly of the man who injected himself with curare so that he couldn't move or even breathe, to prove that the behaviorists were wrong and that thought could exist without behavior.

And that reminds me of a story about Temple Grandin in A User's Guide to the Brain. As I recall it, in spite of the absolute assertion that certain mental circuits must be developed in childhood and that therefore certain skills absolutely cannot be learned in adulthood, she trained herself to deal with "personal space" by approaching supermarket automatic doors.

This is beginning to feel like the Kevin Bacon game - how many levels away from the original subject (perfume, in this case) are allowed before I can no longer claim that the topic is inspired by that original subject?

Ambling back to perfume, there is of course a huge branch that I've so far ignored, the branch that leads to perfume as a beauty product, and that leads to beauty and self-image and self-expression. And makeup -- a branch that I can't follow very far because I haven worn makeup since, roughly, age sixteen. The makeup discussion branch does lead me to my mother, as many things do. And to my mother's insistence on wearing the very same bright red lipstick day after day, the same lipstick that she's worn since at least a decade before I was born. And that makes me think of Max in 2 Broke Girls, who also wears rather retro-feeling bright red lipstick, and looks magnificent in it, and that makes me wonder if my mother, when she was Max's age, looked similarly magnificent.

And 2 Broke Girls, the rare show that acknowledges the existence of working poverty in the United States, could carry us through an far, far longer conversational path than this post could begin to support, or even outline.

Dropping back to makeup and beauty products, there's the fact that I'm starting to see distinct pillow-face lines in the mirror in the morning, lines that make me consider whether I ought to investigate whether all those skin potions actually make a bit of difference. And, going further, they're evidence that I am indeed aging, and that's another conversational path that can lead to infinity.

Beauty products lead to other self-image and beauty… stuff, like clothes. I've discussed clothes on this blog before, and my on-and-off consideration of the possibility of actually putting some thought and effort into them. I recently re-read An Episode of Sparrows, and I've always loved the bit where Lovejoy sells the new clothes bought for her by the children's home and buys some more to her taste, including "A little box coat like a reefer, not a real reefer, of course, but quite good cloth and good turnings; it was forty-three shillings, but you have to pay quite that." The delight in that description has always made me think that surely there must be more to clothes than I've ever seen before. But aside from silk scarves and the occasional neat little pair of shoes, I'm not seeing it yet.

You see? I've barely begun.

Oh, and am I counting this post toward my NaNoWriMo word count? Of course I am.

1st Image: Wikimedia Commons.
2nd Image: By Ed Uthman. Wikimedia Commons.

3rd Image: Wikimedia Commons.

4th Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Changing direction. Again. Maybe a few times.

So, new thoughts on NaNoWriMo.

See, I like my plot. It's not just good enough, I actually like it. And the characters. And the several different ways that it could go. And I strongly suspect that it's a concept that won't benefit from the frantic "Hey! That could be a scene with a lot of words!" approach of NaNoWriMo. At least, that's my approach to NaNoWriMo.

So.

See.

It's a problem.

Now that I've found the plot that I wanted, I'm seriously considering doing something else. Something that would probably go in the NaNoWriMo Rebel category. I'd still count the 5,573 words I've written so far; that would be part of the rebel thing.

So, something else, like a nonfiction book about clutter and hoarding and, while I'm at it, why all the experts demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of compulsive hoarders.

Or a nonfiction book about gardening. Writing fifty thousand words (OK, 44,427 words) about gardening might finally break through my "Why can't I write about gardening?" block. Admittedly, I already know that much of the explanation of the block is "Because I can't write as well as Henry Mitchell, that's why." But all the same, the fact that I can't write as well as Calvin Trillin doesn't stop me from writing about food.

Or, see, I could go on a blogging frenzy and write forty-four-thousand-and-change words of blog posts. Would that just be sheer mad madness? Probably, because fifty thousand words doesn't really allow for, y'know, editing, and I like to edit before I post.

But it does mean that I could count this post. So it'd only be (frantic calculation) 44,159 words to go.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Empty Pages

So I've run into a big, big problem with NaNoWriMo. Bigger than I've ever had before.

The problem? I have a plot. Just like I wanted. I have a plot with characters, and motivations, and a beginning, and a middle, and an end. Really, several possible middles and ends, but one that's firm enough to actually write to.

Except I can't. Now that I know where I'm going, I can't seem to get on the road at all. I should be up to about seven thousand words by now; I'm at two thousand.

I can think of scenes. I can think of dialogue. The characters are talking to each other in my head. But I can't seem to write any of it.

Grumble.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Aaaaack!

Mals pointed out that NaNoWriMo has started! And I haven't written a word yet! I was all focused on Halloween and completely forgot NaNoWriMo. And I was up last night; I could have started writing.

And I still have no idea what I'm going to write about.

Aaaaaack!

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Writing: NaNoWriMo is coming, too.

So, NaNoWriMo is on its way. In case you're not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a month when a bunch of crazy people, including me, attempt to write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty days (starting November first), and spend a lot of time procrastinating and talking about it on the NaNoWriMo website. I've participated for three years, giving up early the first year and finishing my fifty thousand words last year and the year before.

Those last two years, I worked on the same novel twice -- Coriolis Effect, some scraps of which were blogged here. I got the idea halfway through November year before last, then started it again from scratch last year. NaNoWriMo rules don't let you do any writing on your novel before November 1, so I had to either start from scratch or do something else. Or, of course, be a NaNoWriMo Rebel and choose to break a rule.

I could start it from scratch again, but I think that if I continue to pursue the idea, I'll want to do it in a slower and more planned way. It's a complicated, messy thing, involving two time periods about fifty years apart, and I'm still not sure how the core problem's going to be solved. If I work on it again, I'll end up just writing fifty thousand words of banter between Emily and Henry. And I think those two are a little annoyed with me.

So what to do this year?

I've considered exploring the possibility that my writing career, if it ever comes into existence, will be about nonfiction rather than fiction. So I could do the NaNoWriMo rebel thing and write fifty thousand words of nonfiction about...er. See, that's the difficulty. Writing about something like perfume or food or gardening would require at least a little research, even if it's mostly uninformed opinionating, and it's too late to get enough research done to allow me to write full-speed. I could write something memoir-like, though that sounds dangerously likely to be fifty thousand words of self-absorbed whining.

But even though I so far haven't found a topic, the idea of a nonfiction book is appealing. It might happen.

If it doesn't, I could try a novel with a very simple, to the point of simplistic, plot. It would be refreshing to actually know where my novel is  going to end up, so that I could focus on characters and situations and still drive the thing to an ending. I've been reading Charlotte MacLeod's books, which have plenty of plot but also have enjoyable characters and stylish-cozy writing, and I suspect that's the mood I'm going after this year.

Of course, simplistic or not I still need a plot. Some kind of plot. Preferably before November 1.  Help!

Image: NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo: I got there!

Woohoo! I got to fifty thousand! Details on the other blog.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Over There

Just a really quick post to note that while I've mentioned NaNoWriMo now and then over here, most of my NaNoWriMo ramblings are over there on the other blog.

Image: By Ziko-C. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. And NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo has begun.  Who has time for perfume? OK, yes, I do have time to wear perfume, but unless I make fiction about it, who has time to write about it?

I had forgotten what NaNoWriMo was like. Mainly, I'd forgotten just how pellmell the writing is, how fast it's necessary to write to get in the requisite 1667 words a day, on a work day. Yesterday, I achieved a little over 400 words; today I've already gone to Dr. Wicked as the only way to get those words coming out fast enough. I keep thinking that I'll spit out the 1667, and then I'll do some more leisurely writing, but so far, the daily goal is all I've managed to achieve.

Image: By Dake. Wikimedia Commons.

NaNoWriMo: Fifty Thousand!

Specifically, fifty thousand and eighty three. I completed NaNoWriMo!

The novel is, of course, Swiss cheese, with endless plot holes. But my initial goal was to write fifty thousand words of fiction, period.

And I've gotten at least a little more out of it than that. I wrote the fifty thousand words, killed my problem with writing dialog, wrote a male character that I understand from the inside out instead of painting from the outside in. And ended with a weird, surreal premise for a novel that I could imagine truly completing someday.

Woohoo!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

NaNoWriMo: Final Stretch!

When I buy a sandwich, I have a tendency to leave the last bite uneaten. For some reason, that last bite is supremely unappealing, no matter how good the rest of the sandwich was.

I'm getting some of that feeling as I stare at my word count for NaNoWriMo. I have just under six thousand words left, and they're looking like that last bite. A little bit of crust, a fragment of limp lettuce, and the bacon's all gone. No good reason not to finish up, but I just don't wanna.

I need to go set Write or Die to Kamikaze mode now. I'll be back after my fingers fall off.

Photo: By Oilylain. Wikimedia Commons

NaNoWriMo: Forty Thousand! (AKA Caught Up!)

Woohoo!

I'm where I'm supposed to be in NaNoWriMo! Heck, I'm a handful of words ahead!

I was behind. Way behind. You can understand how far behind I was when I tell you that I caught up by writing fifteen thousand words in two days. (And I would like to say that Write or Die is a fine, fine thing. It didn't actually take that long to pound out the words, with Write or Die sitting there nudging me at every momentary pause. Himself being sick, so that we stayed home, also got more words written.)

Now, while these fifteen thousand words are not lovingly crafted words that slip together into lovingly crafted paragraphs that form the structure of a lovingly crafted plot... they are fiction. Coherent sentences and paragraphs of fiction. Without any of the extra blatant cheats like, say, having characters sing a round of "Hundred bottles of beer on the wall" for seventeen pages. And I'm confident that I know my two main characters well now, so when I rewrite the whole thing from top to bottom sometime after November, I'll enjoy writing them a lot more than I did at the beginning of this process.

So as progress for this year's NaNoWriMo goal, I'm very pleased. This year's goal was to write fifty thousand words of fiction. Period. And it's looking like I may make it. And if the goal of NaNoWriMo is largely to silence your inner editor, I can assure you that the last two days has my editor hiding in a corner, whimpering.

Photo: By Nick McPhee. Wikimedia Commons