November Stat Check

During the month of November, I wrote on all 30 days!  I'm at 86 days and counting.
I wrote 25,327 words (9 and a half chapters) for my novel
I made 0 submissions (which is bad, since two of my stories have been sitting with me since the end of October)
I received 0 rejections
I MADE ONE SALE!!!!!!!!!
I have 6 stories currently in slush pile circulation (well, four if you don't count the ones I've failed to get back out)
I made 7 blog posts
I took no days off

Analysis
NaNoWriMo was a bust, but I learned a lot about myself.  See my post from a few days ago for more thoughts on that.  I did reach the halfway point though.  A few days ago I realized that was doable as long as I hit just over 1,000 words every day for the last few, and decided it was a noble enough goal to work towards it.  Here's a picture of my word count chart:

(There are a few days that don't register me as having written anything, but that's just due to site discrepancies or me not realizing I had to change my own time zone after daylight savings ended.)  As you can see, my biggest trouble was that I hit a major 13-day plateau in the middle of the month.  I probably wouldn't have made it anyway, but the plateau really set me back.  I looked through my word counts and discovered that during my plateau I wrote an average of 333 words per day.  On all the other days, I wrote an average of 1,234 wpd, and my monthly average came to 844 wpd.  If that plateau had been shorter, or hadn't happened at all, I would probably have been closer to 40,000 words.

But, alas, these things happen.  Life gets in the way.  In this case, I received an offer to get a ton of free photos from one of the online photofinishers, and I spend much time and energy figuring out a year's worth of photos that I wanted prints of.  BUT, that isn't all that slowed me down.  I discovered that I was more than willing to get distracted because I was working on a chapter that really wasn't flowing for me.  In retrospect, I suppose I could have skipped it and come back later, but I didn't think about why I was willing to be distracted until the plateau was nearly over.

My novel, in total, is at nearly 69,000 words now, and I believe I have 11-13 more chapters to go.  My new goal, and it is a bit more ambitious than I've accomplished in the last two months, is to finish it before 2011.  I've done about 9 chapters in each of the last two months and I'll be contending with Christmas BUT I'm getting to the climax now, so things are more exciting and happening faster.  If I don't hit another major plateau, I think I can do this.

I would definitely like a break.  I've been working on this one-and-only project since late July, and I'm not used to focusing on one piece of work for so long.  I miss short stories, to be perfectly honest, and there are at least 7 that I'd like to work on:  2 that only need a little polishing before I submit them, 3 that need serious rewriting and critiquing, and at least 2 new ones I want to write first drafts of.  Now that I'm in the habit of writing daily I can probably do those quicker than I used to, but that's still probably a few months worth of work.

Anyway... I'm getting ahead of myself.  I believe I just mentioned a goal for December and perhaps through February.  Back to analysis.

I put submissions on hold for NaNoWriMo, so I really need to get my two rejected stories back out.  They don't make sales when no one's considering them, after all.  I also wasn't very present on the web this month, neither in posting nor keeping up with other people's blogs, but I guess something had to give.  I wasn't terribly behind schedule.

The bedtime goal I set myself for November didn't happen either.  I'm looking forward to getting out of the first trimester soon though, and I hope to see a return in energy then.

The one thing I'm over the moon about from this month is the fact that A Glitch in the Continuum accepted Pandora's Time for inclusion in the anthology!  I'm very excited to have made a second sale, and I'm hoping that more will follow, and perhaps closer together this time.

My goals for December are to finish my novel, get all currently-ready stories back out to markets, make about 10 blog posts, and get to bed on time.  At least three of these ought to be attainable.

NaNoWriMo ain't gonna happen

Nope, I'm nowhere near close enough to pull this off.  I'm just around 21,000 words now, and with only five days left, I'd need over 6,000 words per day in order to reach the coveted 50,000.  Not a chance.

But that's okay.  When I first heard of the program several years ago, my response was a resounding "why would I do that, when anything that rushed will come out as crap?"  Well, I decided I was going to do it back in May because in all my years of writing I haven't written a novel yet.  I figured this was a good way to give myself the necessary kick in the pants, plus there's the extensive support network online (though I'm not much into message boards.)  However, it turned out to be unnecessary since I've been working on my first novel since the end of July, and I've been writing daily since early September.  I didn't need the kick in the pants after all.

I have been writing daily all month, and I had a few really productive days.  2,200 words in a day is definitely my personal best--at least as far as I've kept track of (I never counted daily words while working on stories, or years ago when I was in school.)  I would venture to say that I am capable of writing that many words in a day, and that they aren't necessarily crap.  However, it's not a pace I can keep up regularly.  Like I frequently do, I hit a plateau where I only wrote 200-400 words each day, which lasted for more than 10 days.  I remained productive during this time, but only marginally so.

Mostly, NaNoWriMo has taught me about myself.  With a toddler, the exhaustion of pregnancy, and all the usual (and unusual) distractions that life throws at me, 1,700 words every day is just not realistic for me.  Most days I just can't spend that much time writing.  Some days I want to and get frustrated that there isn't enough time, and other days I just don't want to.  And that's okay too, because my best writing comes when I want to be doing it.  I also found that the pressure of trying to keep up a high word count detracted from my mood during the rest of the day as well.  I had some really frustrating days at the beginning of the month, and I decided that this wasn't worth the stress on me and my family life.

But as I said, the purpose it was supposed to serve became unnecessary before I even started.  My novel itself is now over 64,000 words, and I'd say I have at least another 20-30,000 more to go.  Possibly more, since the only "outline" is in my head.  I'm pleased with my progress, and with the book itself.  I don't need a competition to write it--just the desire to tell a good tale.

Who's Doing NaNoWriMo?

It's time to start gearing up for NaNoWriMo!  I actually have a smidgen of hope that I might hit 50,000 words in one month--yesterday I wrote 1,676 words, which is about what one needs to hit each day for the month of November.  I know it's at least possible for me to do it!  I had hopes of doing the same today, but then the kiddo woke from his nap early, and was constipated, and well... suffice it to say I had to stop at just under 1,000.  I could do more now, but today has been the worst pregnancy evening I've had so far so I'm about ready to go to bed.  I won't say it's the worst possible, because I haven't actually bowed to the porcelain god, but it's the worst I've had with either pregnancy.  With my son, I didn't get nauseous at all--with this one, I feel icky a lot.  I can only hope s/he will make up for it by being more cooperative in the turning-head-down-in-time-for-the-birth department!  (Unlike my son.)

ANYWAY...  I'm wondering if anybody else who occasionally graces my corner of the blogosphere will be doing NaNo?  If so, please leave a comment with your screen name.  I'm ScienceFictionMommy over there, and I'd like to grab a couple of writing buddies.  Brian, I know you are and you can expect a buddy request soon.  But anybody else?

Thanks all!

Novelistic Progress

I passed the 20,000 word mark on my novel last night!  After passing the 13,500 word mark, it became the longest thing I've ever written.  I don't know how long this is going to be, but I'm still working on a lot of setup.  50,000 is the number to shoot for during NaNoWriMo, but that's actually pretty short for a novel and I'm hoping this will be significantly longer.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, if I write 1,000 words per day on this novel, I'll get it over the 50,000 word mark before November.  That's probably doable on most days now that I'm in the groove, but even so, I'm not sure this novel will be done by November.  I want to do NaNo this year--I even signed up several months ago--but I'm not sure what to do if this novel isn't finished yet.  I certainly don't want to halt its progress to work on something else.  Originally I'd been hoping to spend October outlining and researching my next novel (I need to do a fair bit of research on plausible orbital space colonies and world-ending natural disasters) but I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have.  I suppose I could work on two at once like my husband does--he researches and outlines one screenplay during downtime at work, and writes a second in the evenings--but I'm concerned about getting them confused, or having trouble moving between them, or breaking the momentum of both.  I suppose one option would be to do some researching and outlining in October and then, come November, just keep writing this current novel until it's finished.  Then, once the first novel is finished I can immediately start the second one.  Yes, this isn't quite playing by their rules, but I'd  only count the words written during the month, and I'd still be trying for 50,000 total words of new prose in November.  And hey, the whole point of joining was to get myself to write a novel this year, which I've begun to do earlier than I anticipated.  Hopefully I'll write two novels this year!

I've finally gotten into a groove when it comes to the novel writing.  In fact, I've written for the last 22 days straight, and the word counts on those days have increased as time has gone on--making me hopeful that I can get to the 1670 necessary to complete NaNo.  This is definitely my longest streak.  The last record was 16.  (This is all since I started keeping track back in February, but I'm pretty sure this is the longest streak ever, since, even as a student, I took days off between projects--and it's very easy to take breaks between short stories.)  If I can get up to 30 without missing a day, I think I'll look for a ticker to put on the side of my blog labelled "Days Without Not Writing."  Even the pathetic days when I only write 150-300 words (which has happened a few times) I at least didn't break the streak.  Each day that increases this record makes me not want to break it even more.

NaNoWriMo this November

Okay, hands up.  How many of you have heard of NaNoWriMo?  It stands for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, and it refers to an absolutely insane event where writers and wannabe writers from all over the world sacrifice the entire month of November in the pursuit of writing a lucid, cohesive novel of 50,000 words or more.

50,000 words in 30 days.  That's 1,666.67 words per day.  (Or 69.44 words per hour, or just 1.16 words per minute, which doesn't seem too bad, until you remember that you still have to eat and sleep, and maybe take care of your toddler as well.)

My kneejerk reaction to NaNoWriMo, when I first heard of it five years ago, was a resounding "WHY???"  After all, I reasoned, anything I could write that was that long, written in such a short amount of time, would be absolute crap.  Why rush myself?

However, the answer is starting to dawn on me.  I've been writing for years.  Even before I decided it was What I Wanted To Do With My Life, I was writing a story here, jotting down an idea there, and making up an unending stream of fictional scenarios in my head (most of which nobody else would ever want to hear, but at least they keep me entertained.  Sometimes they even keep me from getting enough sleep, as they just keep growing in the middle of the night...)  I've also been writing seriously for about six years, and working hard and consistently for the last year.  I've got six stories that I'm currently trying to get published, one that is scheduled to be published, another half-dozen or so that just need a round (or two, or twenty) of critiquing and rewrites before I can try to get them published, and a children's book (technically story-length, for word count purposes) that also needs a bit of work before trying to get it published.

But in all this time I've never written, or even completed one chapter, of a novel.  I feel that it's time to take the plunge, especially since I've been working hard these last few months to write very consistently.  And what better way to take the plunge than by enforcing a crazy deadline?  I've already signed up on the website, with the username ScienceFictionMommy.  At the very least I'll be able to find out whether I will sink or swim (or swim with the literary fishes...)

My plan is to spend most of the month of October doing research and outlining, so I'll have a framework to build on come November.  In fact, the title I mentioned in a previous post, Smooches by Proxy, seems to have the potential to turn into this novel.  Maybe.  If I can just develop enough of a plot for it, hee hee.

Interestingly enough, the conclusions I outlined above mirror something NaNoWriMo has in their FAQs, which I will quote below for your enjoyment.  I'll blog more (probably a whole lot) about this venture come October and November, when you'll all get a firsthand account of how crazy this will make me.  :)



If I'm just writing 50,000 words of crap, why bother? Why not just write a real novel later, when I have more time?

There are three reasons.

1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.

2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.

3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.