NaNoWriMo 06

[Head Mutant]

Awesome!

[Head Mutant]

Oogie, I read your first chapter. Very interesting and well done, son!

[Head Mutant]

What's sickening is that there are some people ALREADY DONE. 50,000+ words. A nice handful of people.

[Head Mutant]

Question: do you guys have a hard time writing *just* for yourself? I mean, I try to do that, but there's always a lurking voice in my head that makes me want to write something to be published, for others to read, etc. And I think that's a wrong way of writing something this big.

Another realization: I'm a better writer than I was in college. At least, more disciplined. I may have wrote more fiction back then, but doing MRFH on a steady basis has kept my writing skills intact, and I don't feel like writing is such a brick wall as it used to be.

[Spiderdancer]

admin said:

Question: do you guys have a hard time writing *just* for yourself? I mean, I try to do that, but there's always a lurking voice in my head that makes me want to write something to be published, for others to read, etc. And I think that's a wrong way of writing something this big.
Another realization: I'm a better writer than I was in college. At least, more disciplined. I may have wrote more fiction back then, but doing MRFH on a steady basis has kept my writing skills intact, and I don't feel like writing is such a brick wall as it used to be.

I know I almost always write with some audience in mind, even if that's just Sib1 or Dad (my most loyal readers and editors of all).

I've actually gained a lot of writing skills from writing fanfic (which gets you a CRAZY amount of instant feedback) and just working with this site (I know, not that you can tell with my recent reviewing - sorry!). This is evidenced by my MCAT score. I got a 320 on my first take in college. O is not a great writing score (they're scored A-T with T being the highest).

This year I got a 27R. My science scores lost out to lack of practice, but my writing score climbed three grades.

And I have about nine offers to fill out secondary apps now, by the way. Thanks, MRFH.

[Head Mutant]

Nice job Shalen!

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

admin said:

Oogie, I read your first chapter. Very interesting and well done, son!

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Justin. It's not my first chapter, but it's the passage that I feel is going to best represent my novel when/if I finish it.

admin said:

Question: do you guys have a hard time writing *just* for yourself?

I've had a couple moments of "Why am I even doing this?" so far. I'm not particularly wedded to the premise I've cooked up, and the idea of writing everyday for the next three weeks is enough to freak me out, all for something that I'll most likely delete once the first of December rolls around.

But it is practice, so I can appreciate what I'm writing on that level. And thinking of it as practice (no to mention the deadline) helps motivate me, since I would like to one day do some professional writing; NaNoWriMo, so far, has let me seriously exercise my writing skills.

[pfrsue]

I read it too, Oogie. Excellent chapter! Can I reserve my copy of the finished product now, or do I have to wait until it's available on Amazon? (Actually it puts me to shame. I have to get a better excerpt uploaded.)

To answer Justin's question, oddly enough, the last time I wrote "just for myself", (in the cause of sheer catharsis actually) I ended up with a trophy, two scholarships to a writing camp and a published book. There's got to be a lesson there somewhere. I wish I wasn't such a slow learner.

Generally when I start a project, I don't do it with a specific audience in mind, but as the story develops, I do sometimes consider... maybe not marketability per se, but whether a reader would follow, understand and hopefully enjoy the story the way I'd like them to. (The danger zone for me is when I start to think of a plot in more cinematic than literary terms and overload the dialogue as a result. That's one of my weakest areas as a writer.)

I think the best compliment I ever received was when my night shift counterpart at work told me that I'd inadvertantly left a work-in-progress file open on the computer there and she'd taken the liberty of reading it. While it wasn't anything I would have expected her to like, or would have ever asked her to read, it had enough hook to it that she wants to read the rest of it whenever I get it written. That's what I try to aim for - something that I enjoy writing but that someone else would enjoy reading.

What I'm liking about NaNoWriMo is the same thing I like about MRFH. I have deadlines I have to meet. The accountability factor - especially on this level - is teaching me a lot about time management and pushing through the work when I'd ordinarily be staring blankly at the screen or skipping from project to project because I'm not comfortable with where the writing is going.

Also, it's really neat to be writing sort of alongside Justin and Oogie. We're all in this together and that's a nice feeling for what is usually a very solitary pursuit. You guys rock!

Just to touch base on something Shalen said, I also spent several years neck-deep in fanfiction. She's absolutely right that you can get the instant gratification of tons of feedback, and I've certainly met some incredibly gifted writers through the club I was in. The downside is that you're playing in someone else's copyright so your audience will be limited and your work can't ever be entirely yours. My feeling about it now is that (while I still like to read it) if I'm going to invest my time and creative energy into a work of fiction - I want it to be exclusively my own.

Man, I must really be tired. Time to shut up and go get some sleep.

[Head Mutant]

Sue, there's no DOUBT in my mind that one day you will be a famously successful author and we'll all be pulled in for interviews going "We knew her! We knew her! And here's all the dirty details, heh heh..."

I feel like I write the best when I just throw off as many constraints as possible -- expectations and preconceptions as to how things should be written -- and just have fun with it. "No rules" is my rule.

I'm absolutely horrible with dialogue. I know it. It's even worse knowing that my characters all should sound different and be distinct in what they say, but I don't think I'm that skilled enough to pull it off. So for this book I'm just throwing out my preconceptions as to how I should be writing the dialogue, and just having fun with it. Many of my characters are kids age 10-12, and I'm stuffing their mouths full of verbose language and other things you'd never ever hear a kid say in real life. It feels freeing to do so.

I'm finding it endlessly amusing how the chapters are twisting in ways I didn't anticipate. I usually get a good start going, then ask myself what the big hook of the chapter will be -- what's going to keep the reader interested -- and then have to figure out how to get there. I just finished chapter 8 and was competely expecting all of the characters to hijack a boat to mount a rescue operation, when it ocurred to me that they probably wouldn't do that and it felt repetative to what happened two chapters previous. Then I realized that I had another plot thread I could intertwine with the story to create the solution, and the characters would think of that as a more devious plan. And they were right.

On the NaNoWriMo forums I was reading about how the second week is the toughest, period. You've blown past your initial enthusiasm for your book, and you're facing a huge wall of words to overcome. Lots of people said that it gets way better by week three, since you're getting there, the plot is hopefully clicking along, and the end is in sight.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

Thanks to both of you for the kind words about my writing (I forgot to thank Justin in my last post)! I don't exactly share the enthusiasm; reading all three of our excerpts, one after another, made my writing look much weaker than I anticipated. But thanks all the same. I really appreciate your comments. ;D

[Head Mutant]

16,725 as of this afternoon. Plowed through another semi-serious chapter which served as an act break, only to return to a chapter that's actually pulling together a few plot elements into something I'm excited to write.

There's a group of nanowrimo writers meeting in the area this sunday to do a write-in, but I can't attend for long as work calls.

[Head Mutant]

Woohoo! Crossed the 20k line today. 2/5ths of the way there, that feels good.

Only 2/5ths tho? C'mon!!!

[pfrsue]

I'm slightly past 20,000 too, as of tonight. It's been a slow and tedious slog for the past few days, but hopefully I can sleep in tomorrow and then get my second wind.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

I just reached 18,000 words. I didn't do any writing yesterday, so I had to work extra hard today to catch up, but it hasn't been easy, because I'm not particularly motivated at this point. Needless to say, I've taken a few breaks to have snacks, watch Futurama, and visit both homestarrunner.com and wikipedia.

[Head Mutant]

Don't give up oogie! We believe in the boogie man, oh yes we do.

Ack.

I'm so frustrated with today. I finished a chapter that revealed a major piece of a mystery surrounding the camp, and I'm so upset about it. It's a major chunk of exposition in the form of a letter, which is an iffy but acceptable alternate way of doing a butt-long conversation to reveal this thing, and it will start to connect all these loose plot threads I've left danging everywhere. It fits. Why am I upset then?

I feel like my novel is getting sucked into a being a mystery/fantasy/adventure piece. And I'm not prepared to write that. I don't mind doing elements of those things, but I really wanted to keep things lighter and funnier and... I don't know how to draw back now. I don't know how I can get my characters back to normal, interesting and funny camp activities while at the same time propelling this mystery forward. I don't know if this whole chapter just blows, or if it's interesting enough to keep a reader reading without rolling their eyes out of their sockets.

I hate feeling like I just tanked my book. Maybe I should go back and rewrite the whole chapter, and maybe I should just leave it. I don't have time to rewrite, but if I don't, I have to keep this element in the story and it will affect the rest of the novel.

Ack.