25,306! Week 3.

[lobelia321]

I just about made it into Week 3. The target for Day 15 is 25,006 and I'm a few hundred words above it, by sheer bloody-minded dint of sitting in pubs and graduate centre coffee areas and typing /handscribbling until my back hurt and leaving the family to fend for itself alone at home. What I've written is drivel; words get repeated; I got bored; then I had a little plot idea right at the end of today's session BUT I DID IT. I was 4,000 something words behind this morning but I pulled myself back into the loop by the skin of my bleeding fingernails.

Tonight I'm allowed to read Chris Baty's tips and tricks for Week 3.

We're off to Berlin on Sunday, and then Mannheim, so that's ten days (until almost to the end of my Month!) without my laptop. But the Determined Novelatrix will just have to scribble scribble scribble until her fingers fall off and then transfer something like 20,000 words (!!) all in one wodge onto the computer upon my return.

God. How do real novel writers do this?

Or, because t'family is totally infected with Jack Bauer and 24: 'Let's do this. Patch that intell through to me. I'm going have to shoot and torture you now.'

Also: Team America? What a fucking hoot. Matrix marionette style!

Comments

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Oh well done, you've beat my record of 20,500! I gave up when I realised I was typing cake recipes into the novel for no reason. Now, of course, I realise I should have damn well typed those recipes and kept going!

I'm well impressed with this, you know - in fact I think it's actually somewhat more impressive than sending 100 words to the BBC. ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Here is where my suckerdom for self-help books and internetses and my slavish desire to Follow An Authoritative Leader are coming in handy. FlyLady says shine your sink, and I go and shine my sink. Chris Baty writes write rubbish for one month, and I go and write rubbish for one month. I don't particularly love writing rubbish but I have actually done some of the amazingly absurd things he advises to get your word count up, e.g. delete all hyphens, expand names, repeat sentences. I'd go for the cake recipes! I can suddenly see their point.

He has a page in his book where he says 'if you touch this button you will release your innner editor into the nanowrimo editor kennel for one month'. So I sat on the loo and I touched the page and I had an inner editor disappearance epiphany.

It possibly also helps being in an existential career crisis. This is one way of avoiding thinking about it. Maybe the trick to stopping avoiding writing is to have so many other things that one needs to avoid that the writing becomes a means of avoidance. Um.

But thank you! Your kind words serve to inspire! I'm going to buy that nanowrimo writing kit for November for sure. Let's meet up for write moots! I also have a writing fetish (just like Chris Baty told me to) wot is a wrist sweatband, and I did chop up carrots and put them in water in the fridge, just as told to by CB. I am the ideal subject for a dictatorship, this much is clear.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I know how hard it can be to persevere -- be proud of yourself. *g*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am! Proud!!

So have you done nanowrimo, then??

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I have! Since '01 -- I bend the rules a litle every other year or so, though, and either work on something already in progress or do total word count instead of total word count on a specific project or do it a month early or whatever. *g*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aha. You keep very mum about it. Or maybe I just wasn't looking as up until 3 weeks ago my eyes glazed over at the acronym NaNoWriMo and I scrolled on down without ever clicking on those lj-cuts... Just goes to show. Now I'm hooked.

I am terrified of rule bending. I follow the rules to their last slavish t because I fear that if I don't then I'll fall back into my non-noveling ways again. The only little bending I've done is to write something I've actually been thinking and working a little on since last October...

What is the difference between a total word count and a total world count on a specific project??

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. doing it a month early is not rule bending. It says so in Chris Baty's book!! Any month can be nano month. It's just that November is the month where thousands all do it in parallel. I couldn't wait even one night to get started so certainly not in November.

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

yay!! so what is it about?? is it going to be a nano 50,000???

btw - the 30,000s are a drag.

b.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It is going to be a nano 50,000. I am totally following Chris Baty's 'No Plot? No Problem' book, in the dutiful slavish way whereto I am accustomed. And Chris Baty tells me I am not allowed to tell anyone what the novel is about so I'm afraid I can't breathe a word about that... *g* I'll just say one thing: it's orig.

Aha! The 30,000s are a drag? Interesting. CB claims it all gets better from here on in. Maybe I'd just better power on through the 30s to get to the 40s. But you've not done a nanowrimo, have you? Your novel was on your own agenda? How long was it, btw?

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

my novel was a nano - it just took five months rather than one, *g*. it was about 54,000 words.

i found the 30,000s very hard - so near, and yet so far.

b.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

How was it a nano if it took five months? Is there another criterion besides speed of completion in nano that I am unaware of??

I can see how 30,000 is going to be hard. At least for me as I will be in Germany without a computer and having to do it all by longhand! I am hoping that the stimulation of different climes will tide me over. Otoh, it means 24/7 exposure to t'family: no school, no work. We will see!!

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

hahaha. well, it *started* as a nanowrimo project...!!!

writing by longhand - eek!!

b.x :)