After a day of doing everything but writing, I finally sat down around 8 p.m. and managed to crank (think more of a hand-crank here) out 1,745 words, putting me safely if not excessively above the 1,667 word minimum to keep on track.
I’m not terribly enthused by what I’ve written and the story itself is not really exciting me. We’ll see how things evolve. Or devolve. If I can get myself back into the habit of writing fiction on a daily basis, it will be a win regardless of whether or not I end up wanting to bury this particular effort in a shallow grave (which would be ironic as it features a shallow grave).
With a whole two hours before National Novel Writing Month 2015 officially begins here on the west coast, I have finally settled on an idea for my novel. Woo!
I have decided to revive and modify an unfinished play I wrote back in November 1991, Yes, 24 years ago. A note at that top of the document reads “Reformatted to Word for Windows 2.0: June 11, 1993.” I think the original version was written on papyrus scrolls.
I’ve elected to not bring over any of the actual writing and just start from scratch, taking the broad strokes of the plot and going with that. I may also jettison some of the main characters in favor of new ones. I haven’t decided yet but I’ll find out tomorrow as I begin this latest 30 day excursion into writing madness.
Oh, the novel is called Weirdsmith. The blurb on the NaNo site is as follows:
William Smith is a writer and a musician with a unique talent. He keeps a personal journal–a lifelong project–but there’s something weird about it. The things he writes about tend to come true. Bad things.
When a couple finds him bleeding and hurt in the woods, they save him from certain death–and open their lives to a mystery they can’t afford to leave unsolved.
It sounds more serious that it will likely play out. While the plot is sinister and mysterious, the tone will be more reminiscent of last year’s effort, Road Closed. I’m a shallow person and keeping it light–even as horrible things happen to characters–is what seems to work best for me.
By tomorrow evening I should either have at least 1667 words written or be curled up on the floor, quietly weeping. Stay tuned!
Last year I used WriteMonkey for NaNoWriMo and it worked well enough–I hit 50,000+ words with it and encountered no issues along the way. It’s a text editor with full markdown support, perfect for people who want a writing tool without a lot of distractions.
The one thing it lacked was a tablet version, specifically one for iOS. I do have iAWriter on my iPad, which can read WriteMonkey files (they’re just text, after all) but I’ve never been comfortable with swapping between different programs for a single project. That ultimately led me back to Word, as I can use it on my desktop PC, my Surface and now on my iPad (where it will primarily serve as a place to fix typos and such, not for any serious writing). I can even use a version of Word online if I happen to have Internet access but don’t have my own device handy.
I had briefly considered using Scrivener again. I used it in 2013 and while I suffered a huge data loss with it, it was my own fault for switching which copy of my story would be backed up on the cloud (in this case Dropbox) and which would be my local copy partway through the month. Even without that bit of bungling, I was never entirely comfortable with the way it spreads your project among a variety of files, and the lack of an iOS version hurts (it is in development but not due until 2016). I will miss a few of Scrivener’s features, like the progress/goal indicator and the way it easily lets you move scenes around. I have to admit I’ve never actually moved scenes around, though. I’d probably accidentally delete half of them with my luck. Also, Scrivener is such a massive toolbox I sometimes find myself spending more time tinkering with the various tools instead of just writing. While Word also has a ton of features, very few of them are directly applicable to writing straight-up fiction, so it ends up being less distracting.
None of this is to take away from Scrivener, which is a fine program. I’m just a weird and easily distracted kind of person.
For notes and other miscellany I am using OneNote. My story and notes will live on OneDrive and be backed up on my desktop and Surface, as well as a USB stick.
The only thing I need now is an idea. I have one more day to grab one. Plenty of time!
…I am still in search of an idea, like Leonard Nimoy in search of the Loch Ness monster, except with less traveling to Scotland, prehistoric aquatic dinosaurs and Leonard Nimoy.
I’m not concerned about having something to write because ideas are cheap and plentiful, my worry is that if I just grab whatever in order to start writing, it won’t grab me and my effort will fizzle out. On the other hand, if that happened I could return to last year’s still in-progress novel, which I quite enjoyed working on.
But no! I will find a snazzy idea and I will write one corker of a 50,000 word novel by November 30. Or else!
With one week before NaNoWriMo begins and my idea still not quite pinned down I remain cool as a cucumber (which, as has been established, terrify cats for some reason). I’ve been here before and in my six previous attempts I never failed due to lack of idea.
I am starting to see vague outlines of something I might enjoy tackling in November. If nothing further materializes before next Sunday I will probably curl up in a ball, revive an old idea or in complete desperation use some sort of writing prompt, possibly even one of my own.
In the meantime, today I went to my first local NaNo event, a kick-off at Moose’s Pub in downtown Vancouver. After walking past it a thousand times I finally took the stairs down and went inside.
I came away with a snazzy Vancouver NaNo mug, a pin and four new writing buddies (the people sitting at the table with me). We chatted about writing, as one might expect, and it was interesting given the different genres we write in (horror, fantasy, science fiction and combinations thereof) and the age range, which probably spanned a good forty years. One guy, who said he writes non-fiction and who had not yet committed to NaNo–and who left early–may have accidentally stumbled upon the event, for all I know. Maybe he’s a Moose regular. It was slightly weird.
The rest of us enjoyed our food and drink and shared some of the usual frustrations and triumphs–the latter probably best highlighted by one of the participants actually having his 2009 NaNo novel published this year.
In all, it was an enjoyable outing and nice to meet others who share this zany hobby of mine. I plan on going to at least some of the write-ins during the month, too.
Now I just need to commit to that pesky and elusive idea.
I’m late with this update but that’s okay because all I have to report is the collection is being put on hold in anticipation of National Novel Writing Month 2015. Expect the next update (unless I feel wacky) to come sometime in December.
Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I’ve added back the word count widget to the main page of the blog in anticipation of my glory or shame.
Thirteen is the number of days before National Novel Writing Month 2015 begins. As has usually been the case since I started participating back in 2009, I have no idea what I am going to write about with less than two weeks to go.
As I have come up an idea every year I am not about to give in to panic.
My success rate of 3-3 might give someone of weaker constitution pause, but not me!
If the Conservatives win tomorrow’s election I am going to write about a post-apocalyptic Canada. EXCEPT IT WON’T BE FICTION. Dun dun dun!
But yeah, no idea yet, just a few vague notions dancing around the periphery of my brain, which is not a helpful place for them to be. Come on, notions, move out to where I can see you! Thanks.
Idea: A planet of talking cats. Novel name: Cat Fancy.
Pro: Would appeal to cats that enjoy reading novels
Con: Likely to get sued by owners of Cat Fancy magazine
Idea: A sequel to Moby Dick called Moby Duck. It features a duck.
Pro: Would appeal to giant white ducks and probably other ducks, too
Con: A bit niche without adding werewolves and/or vampires
Idea: Something intelligent and literary. You know, Booker Prize stuff.
Pro: A rich, nuanced story with lasting appeal that wins over critics and the book-buying public alike
Con: I could never write this
Idea: World of Warcraft fan fiction.
Pro: Even if only 1/10th of the WoW player base bought it, I’d be rich
Con: I could never finish writing this
Idea: Write something I know.
Pro: Material would have that ol’ ring of authenticity
Con: It would be WoW fan fiction. Or some schmuck trying to get a printer to work.
Idea: Something about parallel worlds.
Pro: I quite like the idea of parallel worlds/multiverse
Con: I tried this in 2013, lost a large chunk of my story and flamed out shortly after
This concludes my first force-myself-to-sit-down-and-brainstorm session. As brainstorms go, it was more of an intermittent drizzle but I still have sixteen days before the words need to start flowing so I’m at least several days from abject despair and/or panic.
It’s only two days later and another update? Crazy! But I am cheating a little because this is an update to say I’m removing “Stop That Cow!” from the list of stories in the Pairs of Shorts collection. It primarily comes down to having to sort out several logical inconsistencies (the vehicles/cow escaping that were mentioned in the previous post being only two of them). I have some ideas but for now I want to keep moving forward and that means switching to another story that is closer to completion. If I don’t work “Stop That Cow!” back into the mix I’ll have to drop another story or add another story to keep the title of the collection intact. Or I could come up with a different title. So many decisions.
I will pick the next story to polish soon™ though for the next few weeks my main focus is going to be preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2015 and perhaps doing a few more writing prompts to get the ol’ creative juices flowing all over the place.
This week I spent a surprisingly long stretch of time working over just a few paragraphs in “Stop That Cow!” It’s right after the farm couple discover one of their cows is missing and based on feedback of a friend, I tried smoothing out what he felt were logical inconsistencies with the scene in terms of how the cow could have escaped and the number of vehicles readily available at a small family farm. In the original draft I had two vehicles–a truck and a tractor. The truck was in the shop for repair so the protagonist uses the tractor to slowly look for the missing cow.
The point was raised that they would have more vehicles, especially being on a farm. Because a large chunk of the story rests on the protagonist driving the tractor I had to first come up with other vehicles they might logically have and then devise reasons why they couldn’t use any of them except the tractor.
I added a station wagon that had its engine sabotaged, then decided that was too sinister, so I changed it to mysteriously not starting. That worked better but wouldn’t they still have another truck or something? Maybe. At that I was ready to run the story over with a combine.
I’m still pondering that.
I think I may shift over to National Novel Writing Month preparation instead.
I’ve been thinking about “Hello?”, the story I’ve dropped from my 10 Pairs of Shorts collection. It was described as “garbage” by someone who has offered feedback on other stories of mine and while I don’t think it’s that bad, it is a rather half-baked (if lengthy) writing exercise that would need multiple drafts and some major work to make it live up to the potential of its high concept. In the end I decided it would be more effort than it was worth vs. writing a new story from scratch.
But I like the high concept, enough to at least give some thought to how I would fix the story, if I decided to do so. The concept is something that’s been used many times in books and films: someone finds him or herself the last person on the planet (seemingly), and tries to learn what has happened to everyone else while simultaneously dealing with the inevitable crushing loneliness.
When I wrote the exercise I framed the plot in fairly simple terms: What would be the mental progression of someone who finds himself truly alone? I took a scattershot approach, with the protagonist having good days and bad days, spending some days in despair and others conducting methodical scouting expeditions looking for others. He made some efforts to survive but was clearly no doomsday prepper. I enjoyed exploring these things but in the end the result was unfocused and had some logical inconsistencies that were never addressed because I never did further drafts on the story (I had planned on finally doing this when preparing it for the collection).
What would I do if I decided to fix the story instead of scrapping it and starting over? A few things come to mind:
I’d switch from first to third person. You lose some intimacy going to third person but gain a certain frisson by making the outcome of the story less certain–does the protagonist make it? You’re no longer sure because he’s not directly recalling events to the reader.
I would make a flowchart outlining the protagonist’s mental and physical trajectory. This would be similar to a plot outline while also serving as a combination journal/itinerary of the character. The purpose would be to create a logical flow for his behavior, to pinpoint where he might switch from shock/inaction to initial searches to planning for long term survival and so on. This would eliminate the scattershot approach the story now has.
I would flesh out the protagonist before writing/rewriting. In the current version of the story he is a bland everyman, with no distinguishing characteristics or notable personality traits. He could be anyone or no one and as such isn’t that interesting to follow. I would also determine how capable he is at basic survival.
The opening scenes may be too short to properly serve as a foundation that gets undercut later when everyone else disappears. I’d probably expand on it.
It goes without saying that I would clean up logical inconsistencies.
Of these things, the flowchart intrigues me enough that I am tempted to give it a shot. It would be a lot of work and something I’d probably not do without committing to a full rewrite. But it’s tempting, like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.
