Word count - Day 26 (part 2)

50,233 words down, NO WORDS TO GO.

At 10:20pm Monday night I passed the magical 50K mark.

All in all its gone a lot easier this year than any other year I've done this. I have to admit I've left my poor characters in a bad state at the 50K mark and I'll probably have to go back and rescue them at some point. In the meantime I'm going to take a day off then maybe write out till Friday when nano officially ends. Printing the 77 pages I've got so far is going to be fun.

Word count - Day 26

48,081 words down, 1,919 words to go.

With 9900 words written over the course of Fri, Sat and Sun night the word count had a significant jump this weekend. I attribute a lot of this to a concept called 'word wars' started by a few other people working on nanowrimo. Simply put, people log into an IRC channel to talk about their writing, offer each other support etc. Normally this would just be a distraction against actual writing, however, the word wars run for 20mins every half hour.

In the 20mins allotted everyone writes as much as they can. At the end of the 20mins everyone compares their word count for that period of time. There are no accolades for getting the highest number or recriminations for the lowest, it’s just an extra incentive to write solidly for 20min blocks at a time. On average I was hitting between 600-800 words in a twenty minute 'war' so the numbers add up pretty quickly (there were people producing over 1000 words in the same timeframe which was impressive to see).

I've said a couple of times that the story I'm writing doesn't really work and will be no where near finished at 50K words. At the moment I’m working towards a cliff-hanger type ending somewhere around the 50K mark (though it will probably be closer to 60K) and I’ll keep writing for the rest of the week. I think there's a good story in amongst pages of inconsistencies and forced sentences but it may take a little time to weed it out. At the moment December is gong to be a rest month, though I have a couple of ideas (including one that I hope to turn into a comic script submission) so may spend the time working on plots.

Tonight's target is the magical 50K mark. Assuming no natural disasters and that I remain conscious long enough after getting home, this should be eminently doable.

Word count - Day 23

38,183 words down, 11,817 words to go.

It's officially week 4. Actually I think it was officially week 4 yesterday, but the time zone and dates are a little confusing to fatigued mind. Either way, its the home stretch, so to speak.
It's been a different experience writing this year as opposed to previous nano's. Life has changed, I haven't written for a while, work if far more intrusive than it ever used to be. All that said I think the effort put into writing this year has been far more consistent and steady (at least that's what my graph on the nanowrimo site shows).
Would I attempt to continue writing 1667 words per day? Not at all.. well, unless I wasn't working. But I am impressed at being able to do so for an extended period of time, and not having saved the last 10-15K for the final two days. I'll complain about it, the lack of sleep because I chose to write late (or the writing only chooses to be written late), less relaxing downtime, behind on TV and games.. but all in all I'm happy about doing it and have already found myself thinking 'what next?'

Target for tonight is still 40K, which is doable, but probably not an easy achievement with other commitments tonight. Still, it would set things up well for the weekend. I think the characters are cooperating enough to let me get to 40K, though what direction they want to go after that is still a point of debate. I'm hoping the downward slope of the last 10K will help add some weight to the discussion. At this point, the 50K mark may be a cliff-hanger ending and I'll go back to doing plot work for a while before continuing to write it again.

Word count - Day 22

35,757 words down, 14,233 words to go.

Another 10% down and now past the 70% mark.

As expected, the 30-40K section is proving to be the hardest to write (which is amusing as I said on Day 6 that 10-20K was hardest, which I now retract). It's that part of the story where the plot needs to keep moving and build to the next peak. It is tempting to just dump a pile of information and exposition in there just to make it interesting. And all the while the characters need to remain true to themselves but still develop in increments. Then there is a small problem of not knowing how the story ends. Our poor heroes, such as they are, really don't stand a chance. Fortunately (?) I'll hit 50K words long before having to deal with this minor issue.
Three weeks in and the fatigue is beginning to set in too. Daily writing does take it out of you and whilst there hasn't been too many instances of staring at a blinking cursor it does become easier and easier to procrastinate about writing the daily requirement. Of course nanowrimo is as much, if not more about the discipline as it is the about the writing, so no real surprise there.

The current plan is to aim for 40K by the end of the working week and 45k by the end of the weekend. That puts the target at 1K per day for the final five days beyond that.

Word count - Day 19

31,447 words down, 18,553 words to go.

Over 60% and coming up on the two thirds mark.
Whilst I have a reasonably good idea of what the next few steps are, I'm not entirely sure where the story is headed any more. There is definitely enough plot to get to the 50k word mark, but there's almost certainly going to be more to tell past that word count. Part of the difficulty is I've merged two separate ideas for stories, each of which I had a reasonable idea for, and am now faced with trying to work out how an ending can be created.

In the long run, it's not a huge concern. This is a writing for the sake of writing exercise ultimately and I've already decided if I was to ever re-write the idea there would be some significant changes o be made. Of course, without having written it the first time there's a good chance i would never have discovered the problems, so I’m still happy with the outcome.

This week's pep talk email for nanwrimo was from Neil Gaiman. Even though it was sent from a false address I'll be keeping it in my mailbox. After all, how many people (other than nanowrimo'ers) can point at an email from Neil Gaiman himself.

Word count - Day 16

25,851 words down, 24,149 words to go

Past the magic halfway point which is certainly a notable point in this exercise. I've always thought the 20-40K mark to be the hardest to write, especially depending on how the story is flowing. I'm reasonably confident there's enough material to keep going though.

At the midway point the villains of the story have only just been introduced (well the grunt level bad guys; the bigger bad guys haven't even been mentioned yet). The first 'significant death' of the story is in progress. The evolution of the dying character has been a strange one. She was going to be a spoilt rich girl, then a potential love interest, then she became a warrior, then she became a love interest again, then she became dead. I'm hoping when I read over what I've just written her death (violent as it was) works in terms of the story and has at least a little shock value.. no one is safe.

I've also realised my Day numbering a little skewed between postings. The count for today is as of the morning of day 16, so there's an expectation that more writing will be done tonight. No major plans for the weekend socially so I'm hoping to get a couple of days ahead of schedule with the word count.

Word count - Day 13

No update today as yesterday wa a 'day off'' from writing.

Ostensibly this was a planned excuse to play computer games and watch TV all night and I was a little concerned it might break the writing momentum. It seems to have had an opposite effect though as now I can't wait to get back to the writing. The occasional break is good to give you alittle more perspective on where the story is headed, a subconcious check that I'm still (mostly) on the same path i think I'm supposed to be on.

Hopefully this means, when I actually get time to write today, the words will write themselves and all will be good with the world.

Word count - Day 12

20,274 words down - 29,726 words to go.

40% done, almost to the magical halfway point. So far still going well. The days when word count is down a little are easily made up the next day. For the most part the writing has been on a scene by scene basis. I have an idea of where things are headed ad even a vague clue as to how they might end, but the steps along the way are mostly writing themselves.

The initial intent was a darkly satirical story in a fantasy setting. The satire is still there occasionally but it's begun to get in the way of the story. As with most writing of any real length, the story has taken on a life of its own and wants to be written a certain way. Occasionally its just a whole lot easier to let it have its way and just go along for the ride.

I'm pretty happy with my characters so far, which makes a change. Normally I'm trying to force them to change by now, but they're remaining true to what they were created as and reacting in the ways I'd expect them to.

The only minor concern I have at this point is the story won't be finished in 50K words. This isn't entirely unexpected. i was either going to be struggling to find the last 20K or its was just going to keep going. Not too sure what I'll do once I hit the 50K. I'll see how much remains to be told after that. The writing itself is still far from what I'd normally be happy with, but I'm increasingly confident there's a few sparks of quality amongst the quantity, which is the aim of the exercise.

Word count - Day 6

11,684 words down, 38,316 words to go.

Past the first 10K words and over 20% in. From previous attempts its the next 10-20k words that tends to be the hardest. Once you get past the 30K hump its all downhill.

So far the writing has been of a less than stellar quality but that was never the aim of nanowrimo. The simple act of writing every day is more than enough effort for now. Somewhere in the 50K words of dubious standard there may be a few thousand words that can live again elsewhere.

Word count - Day 1

2130 words down, 47870 words to go

Mostly written at work, mostly narrative introduction, main character has been introduced.

And so it begins..

Today marks the begining of nanowrimo, 30 days of self-imposed deadlines and writing purely for the sake of forcing oneself to write. This year I'm trying something a little different and looking to write a black comdey fantasy epic. It's mostly an exercise in trying to write a different style with a different 'voice'. Two paragraphs in (whilst drinking that first cup of tea in the morning) and it feels ok so far.

The biggest challenge is keeping up the word count. Fifty thousand words in a month means 1666 words per day (easier to round up to 1700 for the maths). From past experience, some days this is easy. On the days when you miss the target, or don't get any writing done at all, the prospect of 3400 words the following day to make up gets to become a very daunting target. Ultimately its as much an exercise in time management and self comittment than anything else.

One would hope that the more you write the better you get (unless you just keep repeating the same mistakes) so nanowrimo is all about the writing (with less focus on the quality). Of course, I don't know many people that write who are perfectionists about the craft to some extent, so there's generally some personal conflict involved in these sorts of undertakings.

My current intetnion is to update things here with a reasonable degree of frequency throughout the task, if only to serve as a mental pushing mechanism for myself. If nothing else a rolling word count update should be posted every few days.

An idea of an idea

With a week to go I think I finally have an idea of what to write for nanowrimo. Unfortunately its not much more than a concept at this point and doesn't really have a plot to go with it. With a Halloween party Saturday night my current plan is to be up for little more than sitting in a near comatose state on Sunday with a notepad and pen to sketch out chracters and plot. If this doesn't work, I'll be 'winging it' for 30 days (a terrifying thought).

If the concept pays off it will be a very different style of writing for me. Most of my normal ideas are dark/modern fantasy as a general rule (none of my sci fi ideas have survived very long so far) and this is a lighter (humorous?) fantasy in a more traditional setting. Of course, even as I write this I'm thinking that maybe there's a way to change it from being too formulaic in its setting and maybe more of a dark comedy than a Pratchett-esque clone.

It will be interesting to approach it as a challenge though, not just in terms of the number of words, but writing something that isn't necessarily in the same vein as other things I've written. Its not exactly as radical a change as writing a post modernistic romance or a western but these things need to be done in little steps (and I can't see myself ever writing the first of those options.. the second, with a liberal dash of aliens, fae and/or time travel, is always a possibility).

Writing of a different kind

Despite the best laid plans, the majority of my recent writing all seems to be work related. The number of process documents I've had to write or re-write recently is enough to dull the brain to mush. Unsurprisingly, having spent time recently focused on my personal writing, work related writing is a lot easier to contend with. Templated documents already have structure, whether its forms, tables or overviews, all you need to do is make the words fit in the section they need to be in and the document is done (of course then getting sign off is an entirely different matter).

It's interesting to note that the recent comic script writing I tried was fairly similar in its exectuion. A complete story broke down to a story in pages, then in panels and finally into specific speech bubbles. Everything in its place. I'm still undecided if this is too restrictive a writing style for me to be happy with, or whether the structure is a welcome relief. Whatever the answer, I'd much prefer to be writing fiction that technical process documents.

Two weeks to nanowrimo and I'm still without a comprehensive idea. I really need to come up with something this weekend, if only so I've got a week or so to work on planning it out. The alternative is writing something so loose it wil threaten to fall off the page.

Plans and growth

Years ago when I started writing I hated planning. For some reason I had a view of the ‘essence’ of writing being corrupted by over planning. I guess I still hold true to this a little. For me writing is a very organic process and letting the story tell itself is a large part of the satisfaction I get out of writing. That said, the obvious risk here is a disjointed story or writing yourself into a corner.

More recently I’ve changed tacts and now I let the story ‘grow’ in my head for a longer while then write down an overview and sketch out a plan. This is normally very high level and the plot is done in point form, with the points being easily swapped around if I change my mind mid-writing. Obviously for a larger piece, like nanowrimo, the plot overview is doubly important given the tight timeframe and the length of the piece. Unfortunately, with a little over three weeks to go before Nov 1st, there’s not too much ‘growing’. Hopefully I’ll get some time to work on that this week.

In other news, the comic writing contest I entered was cancelled at the last minute. Certainly frustrating and disappointing at the same time, probably more so given what I was going through whilst trying to get the script done. So I get to feel disappointed for a day before moving on to the next writing exercise.

Start the Countdown

Let the countdown begin..

Nanowrimo starts in a month, which gives me that long to work on a plot for this year. The rules are simple enough, write 50K words in one month. There’s a ‘strong suggestion’ that it not be screenplays, poetry, fan-fiction etc but given the intent of the exercise is just to force you to write regularly and consistently on one topic, I imagine it works however you treat it. Plot planning beforehand is well within the rules so you don’t need to come up with the idea and do all the pre-work in the space of the same month.

I’d actually like to get another short piece (or two, though that might be overly enthusiastic given everything else going on at the moment) completed before November. That requires a little more work on my part. Last week was a ‘week off’ from writing after the comic script, so this week the plan is to get back into things. We’ll see how well that works.

Nothing back on the comic script submitted. I’m hoping to at least get some sort of warning if I’m expected to do a 10min pitch at Armageddon. If I don’t hear anything by the end of this week I’ll throw them another email.

Signed, sealed and delivered

Well the submission made it in to the comic contest on time and, as always, I spent the next two days thinking about what I should have changed. I’m sure its not an uncommon thing to feel like apiece of work is never entire complete and this was no exception. What probably made it worse is the page limits on getting an idea across, which in itself is probably a skill that needs sharpening.

The entry consisted of five pages of sequential script and a five-page treatment of concept. The sequential script was a challenge in that its something entirely different in terms of writing style. For each panel you describe the events for an artist to draw and then you put text/speech for each picture. Whilst some images came very easily (too much TV, movies and comics means I normally have a clear picture in my head when writing) panels need to exist for the words and not the pictures. In the end I just wrote the story (very crudely) then went trough and broke it down into panels. From there the story elements get split into what can be expressed graphically and what needs someone talking. I cringe at the ‘hand-holding’ of the writing in some places, but recognise that that’s how the comic medium works.

The treatment of concept was an entirely different exercise. A little Internet research on what a treatment is led me to the conclusion that its basically a sales pitch. Outline what you’re trying to achieve and the general story in a short enough format that someone can skim through it. Of course the challenge is getting enough of your idea into five pages in order for it to grab someone. I gave up writing five pages about halfway through and just wrote it all out. Once I had seven pages it was then an exercise in cutting the word count/page count down to try and make it all fit. There’s a lot left out and I feel that the events are covered but the reason for the events and the theme/purpose behind the whole story is missing. We’ll see what the judges have to say. If nothing more than this writing exercise comes of the whole thing, then its at least been an interesting experience.

Next up, back to editing The Time Traveller’s Teacher so that can be properly finished.

Progress

Well the script is done (the five pages needed for the contest anyhow) and it ended up being a little more involved than originally thought.

There's definitely a trick to being able to tell a story with only pictures (which you have to imagine) and people talking to each other. Just working out the order in which people should speak so speech bubbles can line up on the page is a challenge. It has been a learning experience though. From concept to plot details to structure (how to make a story fit on exactly 22 pages) and then to dialogue.. all the while retaining the original concept.

A five page concept document is all that's left to do before Friday night. I've got more than five pages of just notes so the next step will be as much and organizing activity as a writing exercise. Either way it still remains well within the realms of 'doable'.

A ticking clock

Five days to go, if not less, to get the comic contest submission in. In fact I could stretch it and still submit it Saturday morning AU time, given that will still be Friday in the US.. but I’d really rather not cut it that close.

It’s been a rocky road so far. Work has been hell, which just sucks the creative life out of me but hopefully is getting better. Unfortunately my father ended up in hospital Saturday morning, which has understandably made life that little more complex too (diagnosis is all good but its still a family scare). So whereas I was hoping to devote all weekend to writing, outside events conspired against me.

That said, some progress was still made. Starting with four concepts, I’m down to one concept with about fourteen pages of notes. I think it’s relatively solid now. Characters are sorted. The rules of the ‘universe’ it is set in are documented. A first issue plot is done. An overreaching plot is also sorted (ie. there’s an ending now) and the bad guys are locked in. Now the challenge is to take all the individual pieces and turn them into a single coherent pitch.

The hard part this time has definitely been the conceptual phase, working a lot quicker than I would probably do so normally. I’m hopeful at this point the actually writing (a 5 page concept and a 5 page script) will just be the ‘grunt’ work of the exercise. The concept document should be easy, the script will still be a challenge. So five nights (including the Friday) to write things up is still reasonable, assuming life doesn’t throw any more curveballs.

And now for something completely different…

Eight days to build a concept, write a five page treatment of said concept and five sequential pages of comic book script. Easy, right?

Top Cow are running a contest at Armageddon con in October and entries have to be in no later that Sept 21st. No small task to do all that in a compressed timeframe and a few other things are going to have to be moved around in order to just find the time. All that said, the challenge sounds like a lot of fun (and only a little terrifying at the same time). Not only does the work have to be good enough to get past the initial application stage, but if you’re one of the lucky few to get that far it leads to a 10min verbal presentation in front of David Wohl (Darkness and Witchblade creator) at the con. No pressure.

The real challenge is going to be coming up with something ‘new’ that can capture interest in a short amount of time and still be written with some sense of literary responsibility. Of course, it could be said that any short piece of writing should aspire to the same values.

I wonder how much electricity it takes to jump start the creative mind.

A sea of red

I hate editing. Actually, let me clarify that.. I hate editing my own work.

Editing other people’s work, whilst a skill some people prefer not to employ, can be a rewarding task. Obviously it needs to be done objectively, regardless of whether you know the person who’s work your are editing or not. Grammar editing is relatively easy, as long as you know the basics yourself and marking an entire paragraph as needing to be written can prompt a writer to re-look at the work from a different angle.

Unfortunately, doing the above is a laborious task when its your own work involved. Grammar editing is again, relatively easy. Changing a word or sentence structure on the fly is normally something that can be done in a short amount of time. Reading a paragraph, or two and thinking they just don’t make sense means you immediately try and think of how to re-write it. This then has the nasty habit of breaking your concentration on editing and switches your focus back to writing again. Do this a couple of times over the course of a longer piece and the editing task takes hours, or days.

So far the Time Traveller’s Teacher is eight pages of red pen marks and five pages of unread work still to be looked at again. Its something I really need to finish doing and the only way I can see to do that is to stop trying to fix it as I go. Of course, after that I’ll probably look at getting someone else to do the editing task again. I hope its not as stressful a task for them also.

One final note, don’t edit when you are stressed and distracted at work, it really doesn’t do anyone any good.

Down Memory Lane

In an effort to scrounge around for ideas for my next piece of writing I decided to wade through the six or seven ‘documents’ directories on my PC. Given it has been a few years since I was writing seriously, it shouldn’t have been surprising for find date stamps on files going back to 2000. Some files even had WPD extensions from Word Perfect, which hasn’t existed as an application in years. Reading through the things found there has resulted in a new practice I will be self-enforcing for all future writing projects.. make notes files.

Several files, saved with cryptic names, consist of a few pages of writing that must have had some point of destination in mind. Unfortunately I now have no idea what I was thinking when writing them. More recently, for each piece of work I am now creating a notes file to go with it. It’s a useful process which allows me to scribble-type ideas that may or may not be used, general outlines, character notes and anything else that might be relevant to the main piece of work. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to go back to any incomplete piece of work at a later date and pick up, with a relatively small amount of effort, where I left off.

In the meantime I’ve now gone from no ideas to about six. Task for the next couple of days is to shuffle those ideas about a bit and pick one (or maybe two) to start the writing process on. Weekend task will be to do a first edit run on ‘Time Traveller’s Teacher.’ I’m only a little concerned about how that will go.

It's a boy?

As of 12:21am this morning, ‘The Time Traveller’s Teacher’ became a completed piece of work. Checking in at a little over 8200 words it is a little weightier than I’d originally planned but it feels finished, well as a first draft at least. I have to say, I’m happy to have done it. Thinking back, it is probably the first completed piece of (non-work related) writing I’ve done in roughly fours years. Completed is a little bit of a misnomer, its still needs polishing, and probably quite a bit at that. Holding a printed copy of it makes it feel that little more real, and renews that feeling that this writing thing is something I do really want to do.

It was probably a little ambitious to go from a cold start to writing something this long, but I’m also looking at it as a learning exercise as much as a finished product. So on to the lessons learnt from this piece of work:

• writing around little children is extremely hard
• writing without the trappings of familiar surroundings and distractions works very well when you just want to write
• I really need to work on writing dialogue a bit more
• Writing at home, with all the usual distractions is going to require a lot more practice
• Sometimes writing the end of a story whilst you’re still half way through helps get the words out of your head and lets you go back to concentrating on the part you’re meant to be writing
• The last thousand words take as long as the first thousand.

So what next? nanowrimo is in November, so some of October will be spent planning for that. Before then I’d like to get another two or three shorter pieces finished off before than and take a closer look at the whole comic writing thing. At least it’s a plan… of sorts.

So Close

And now for the results of this weekends writing exercise..

I think I can give myself a comfortable 0.8 out of 3 for the weekend. The short story turned into something a bit longer and at roughly 6700 words so far it has about another hour’s worth of writing to be finished. That will only be the first draft of course, it will need polishing after that then I might even let someone else read it. As far as working on ideas or notes for anything else, well, the easiest excuse is when you’re away for a sociable weekend you can’t spend all your time staring at a computer screen. I also have to give a lot of credit to anyone who tries to write with small kids racing around, or trying to wrestle you at the same time.

Despite the fact the output of the weekend was a little lower than originally planned, I’m still going to mark it up as a successful venture. What I have so far I’m fairly happen with. The original plot and characters are much the same as what I had originally intended. The structure has changed a little and I’ve tried a few things with a change of perspective as the story progresses. Hopefully it works when the piece is read as a whole.

Now for the hard bit, finishing it. Act 1 and 2 are done, the ending/epilogue is down and Act 3 is halfway there. Finishing that final act has had a few problems and the challenge is going to be not getting distracted when sitting in familiar surroundings. Computer games and regular TV (the worst of procrastinating distractions) are out until the piece is done, but hopefully that will be tonight. Happily, the title of the piece still fits, even this close to completion, though I won’t be putting that here until at least the first draft is complete.

Writing Faster

I enjoy writing.

By that I mean the actually physical act of writing. A pen on paper, loops and lines of letters, knowing they form words, sentences and stories beyond that. It’s a therapeutic activity up until the point you feel your hand is going to fall off. Typing doesn’t elicit the same kind of feeling, or at least not the same strength of feeling, but is obviously the more efficient way of putting words to paper, digitally speaking.

Unfortunately the problem with both methods is neither of them are fast enough some days. I tend to find my brain is racing at at least four times faster than I can get the words down and the visual stimulus of computer screen feels like an intrusion into whatever story is being written (don’t have this problem when what I’m writing is work related). I can type at a reasonable rate these days (I think it was near the 60-70 words per minute last time I checked) but I never taught myself to touch type properly. Intellectually I know where all the keys are and I can look away from the keyboard for short stints, however, my eyes are probably still looking down at the keyboard as often as anywhere else. This just seems to get in the way.

So that leaves me two options if I want to change the way I physically write. Either invent some direct cortical interface that allows me to write by thinking (which would certainly have a ‘coolness’ value to it) or type with my eyes closed. Unfortunately the later is more likely to result in hours worth of using a spell checker at a later date to turn whatever I’ve written into some semblance of English. Maybe I’ll wait for someone else to invent the first option.

This weekend we’re off to the snow (what there is of it) and my only plans consist of sitting in a lodge and kick starting my writing again. So far I’ve got one short story plotted and ready to write, two larger scale book plot idea to perhaps flesh out and a new comic idea that is at the point of writing up notes. Hopefully the outputs of the weekend will be a completed short story, another short story idea developed and some notes (and perhaps sketches) for the comic idea. Perhaps an ambitious objective for the first real weekend of writing in years but its worth aiming for something I’d feel good about.

Beginnings

"There's no such thing as writers' block, writers just get stuck"
It's not word for word what Neil Gaimen said at Comicon (so probably shouldn't have quotation marks) but its the general gist of it. He did go on to comment on the irony of people writing blog entry after blog entry about how they're suffering from writer's block.. by writing about it.
So, with that in mind, this particular darkened corner of the internet will hopefully become a means by which I can consistently force myself to begin to, and more importantly continue to, write again.
It's a little odd to type this now, knowing no one else knows this exists.. so in effect I'm talking to myself, but all things must start somewhere. Hopefully this will become a place where interesting I can note interesting writing things (to myself or others), comment on random life, ramble on about writing in books, movies, TV and comics and generally just put digital words to digital paper.
There we go, a beginning, such as it is. Now onto the 'middle'.