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nanowhee + canon in orig
Nov. 5th, 2009 06:10 pmI'm having so much fun doing NaNoWriMo this year. It's the best evah. I'm so glad that I decided to sign on at the eleventh-and-a-halfth hour. I'm not bothering with daily 1667 wordcounts this year (although that magic number seems to be tattooed onto the inside of my forehead) because I learned at the Arvon creative workshop that writing a novel is as much about deleting words as it is about getting them down on paper/screen.
Instead, I'm just happy to be putting in the time at a café every day and to be in touch with other nanos. On Tuesday night, I was at my first write-in this year and I enjoyed it loads! It also helps to concentrate the mind and just push the noveling up the priorities list. It is astonishing how everything else that loomed so large before will slip into place meekly once the novel has bullied and pushed its way to the front of the queue.
I'm also not starting a new novel as has been my wont to date. I am powering and struggling on with the one I started at November's nano in 2007 and just really thinking my way into and around each scene. Well, so far just the opening scene!
And I have figured out that question that has long been bugging me, namely, what is the canon of orig? I have figured out that, for me, canon = the first draft. So now I am writing this first nano draft as a creating-canon-exercise. I'm following the structure in a linear fashion, i.e. I am starting with the scene I think will work best as chapter 1, but I'm not zooming ahead but allowing digressions and lists and descriptions and stylistic exercises and five versions of the same scene and pics and drawings all to be part of the 'first draft/canon creation'. Because in order to create the canon, I've got to know the canon so I've got to know more than will be in the final novel. After all, nobody sticks all of canon into any of their fics. This also, for me, makes the writing so much fun because everything is allowed! Just not focusing is not allowing. I'm making myself stick to this opening and these scenes and these characters. And every time a minor character pops his head in, I go and make a character sketch and draw them and figure out who their siblings are and whether they go to church.
It's still hard! But today it was fun! And yesterday it was super fun!
Instead, I'm just happy to be putting in the time at a café every day and to be in touch with other nanos. On Tuesday night, I was at my first write-in this year and I enjoyed it loads! It also helps to concentrate the mind and just push the noveling up the priorities list. It is astonishing how everything else that loomed so large before will slip into place meekly once the novel has bullied and pushed its way to the front of the queue.
I'm also not starting a new novel as has been my wont to date. I am powering and struggling on with the one I started at November's nano in 2007 and just really thinking my way into and around each scene. Well, so far just the opening scene!
And I have figured out that question that has long been bugging me, namely, what is the canon of orig? I have figured out that, for me, canon = the first draft. So now I am writing this first nano draft as a creating-canon-exercise. I'm following the structure in a linear fashion, i.e. I am starting with the scene I think will work best as chapter 1, but I'm not zooming ahead but allowing digressions and lists and descriptions and stylistic exercises and five versions of the same scene and pics and drawings all to be part of the 'first draft/canon creation'. Because in order to create the canon, I've got to know the canon so I've got to know more than will be in the final novel. After all, nobody sticks all of canon into any of their fics. This also, for me, makes the writing so much fun because everything is allowed! Just not focusing is not allowing. I'm making myself stick to this opening and these scenes and these characters. And every time a minor character pops his head in, I go and make a character sketch and draw them and figure out who their siblings are and whether they go to church.
It's still hard! But today it was fun! And yesterday it was super fun!