My FIRST WEEK of NaNoWriMo

Friday October 31, 2008 3:30PM


HI Everyone. Here is my journal about my experience doing NaNoWriMo. This stands for National Novel Writing Month, a world-wide endeavor with folks as far away as Australia doing just that: writing a novel of 50,000 words during the month of November!


To prep for the experience, I have gotten a piece of software called StoryMill and I have actually spent the time over the last two days figuring out how to use it. This is very good for me, since I usually get a bit scared with new software and have a hard time sitting down to learn it. But the pressure of the deadline really helped. So far I like using it too.

The book by the founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, called “No Plot, No Problem” recommends that you stock pile chocolate and other intense snack foods to help you on your writing journey. I have a love/hate relationship with chocolate, but for my birthday my sweetie got me a pound of dark chocolate from an on-line company called “Dan’s”—so at least I am set with that! (That is not my only present, btw—she also bought me a package of 10 Kinesis classes, so I guess that will help counter the effects of the chocolate!)

Here is what I believe I will be writing about, although it may certainly change:
The title is “Nothing Comes to Mind” (which is exactly what it says)

The story deals with the murder of Sylvia Barnsley, a Weight Watcher’s lecturer and pro-life advocate.
Other characters are: Castalia Marsh (Cast)—epidemiologist with a cat named Pan, short for Pandemic; she is also (sometimes) clairvoyant and is able to find lost objects
Joy Anita Morales—Jams for short—WW member and newly pregnant
Rochelle Steinman—anorexic social worker who does intake at Planned Parenthood
Renee Sunshine—Volunteer at Right to Life Organization; bright red curly wig and paisley head scarf
Edwin “Georgie” Hernandez—Jams’ fiancée, and her baby-daddy

Not every character is what you think she/he is.

My plan is to get up early tomorrow morning and write until I reach 2,000 words and then go to a crafts fair.

We will see what happens!

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Saturday November 1, 2008
6:09 Am

Starting!

Progress: 6:46—853 words
15 minute break
7;00 back
7:25—hit 1667 words
An hour and 16 minutes.
At 7:38: 2000 words

It took me about an hour and a half to write 2000 words. Instead of taking over my life, this is an activity that is highly doable. The only problem I can see is that when something is too easy I lose interest. Gotta watch that. But also, if I can get up at 6AM and have 2000 words written by 7:38—why can’t I do that in my regular life???


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Sunday November 2, 2008

6:45 AM start
Stopped for breakfast at 7:30—697 words
Resumed at 8:25
At 9—1240 words
Break
Back at 9:10
9:30—1684
Harder today because: I did not start as early
It is my birthday
I haven’t got such a clearly defined scene in my head to write.

Finished at 9:48.

So—about 2 hours, if you factor in the breaks.

I am happy with my progress so far. Just decide on a scene and then write it. Similar to writing morning pages. Don’t read it over or change anything. Just read over the last paragraph written to figure out where to pick up again.

StoryMIll is working out very well.
What I like about it: Organizes scenes and lets you label them as to which chapters they will appear in. And the labels can be changed to easily move the scenes around.
- Has a progress meter that keeps track of your word count for each writing session and also for your project as a whole (although some bug in the software keeps the project goal at 100,000 words even though I keep trying to change it to 50,000. I figure the universe is telling me that I will be writing more after Nov.30!)
-- Has a place for research, so you can place info to be used and also you can paste website url’s
--provides a very organized place to put all kinds of notes, tasks, etc.

I always used notebooks for my notes, but this is really quite user friendly and definitely worth the time to figure out how to work it.


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Day #3: Monday November 3, 2008
6:53 AM. I have been up for an hour, but I am having a hard time settling down to write. … See? I just had to get up and change the page from October to November on my “Cat Lovers Against the Bomb” calendar. Now I am back. And I am thinking more about breakfast than about writing. Which scene/character should I work on?
Update my Netflix queue
Check out Salon.com
Be distracted by Obama e-mail
Oh! I didn’t download the material from my flash drive onto my desk top. Have to do that now—from yesterday’s write-in. I did some writing at the write-in. No one seemed up for any exercises, but we (5 women, including one mother-daughter pair) sat around and talked a bit about we were writing. Someone asked if “zombified” was a word and we decided it must be. Exchanged contact info. Had a chai latte. Special treat for my birthday instead of just regular old tea. Wrote about 300 words.

Here’s a blurb about my novel:

This novel—working title “Nothing Comes to Mind--has to do with a murder--maybe more than one; Planned Parenthood; Right-to-Lifers; an anorexic social worker with a traumatic childhood employed by Planned Parenthood to counsel women having abortions; an epidemiologist with a cat named Pan (for Pandemic) who is also a Weight Watchers member and has a contract with Planned Parenthood to study women having abortions; a Weight Watchers leader who is also a member of “Focus on the Family” and counsels women against abortions; a pregnant Weight Watchers member with an abusive fiancée; two characters who are really the same character, and, perhaps, a swerving van whose driver is no longer alive. I know who the victim is, but as of right now I have a long list of possible murderers. Stay tuned.

7:05—Began writing
7:10—Stopped for breakfast
9:15---1826 words written
9:25—the software pinged with the sound of glass to let me know I had reached 2000 words. My total right now is 6569. I am doing well! Must go enter it on the website.

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Tuesday November 4, 2008

A different plan of attack today: ELECTION DAY
Got up early to go and vote. My district is minuscule, so there was no line to speak of, just 3 people in front of us. I was #96, which is a good turn out by 7:30. One woman in front of me was wearing a silk scarf imprinted with the American flag. Hmmm. Wonder what that signified.

Anyway, my plan was to vote and then to have the phone call, and then to write in the afternoon. I started to listen to the weekly radio broadcast on the NaNoWriMo site—and I was excited to find that they had used my voice! They had asked folks to record themselves saying why they were doing the writing, and I figured out how to use GarageBand to create an MP3 file and attach it to an e-mail. This is all so far-out for me. I am not used to cozying-up to technology, but I guess I need to re-think my self-image. I seem to be able to handle tech stuff pretty well and not be too intimidated to persevere and do what I want to do.

Anyway, after listening I got motivated to start writing. It is 9AM and I have written 179 of the 2273 words I plan to write today. I have increased my daily goal because if I do that amount I will finish before we go away for a week on 11/23. I can easily write while I am away, but wouldn’t it be nice to know that I am finished and don’t have to? Or that what I write is just adding to the first draft, which is what I expect to have at the end of all of this. It might need more than 50,000 words to complete, but we’ll see.

I will either continue writing now, or go to the Panera café and meet with another writer after lunch and do the writing then.

Have to stop this journaling—the word count here doesn’t count!!!!

1:40 PM Reached my 2273 word count for the day.
Total now: 9068


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Wednesday November 5, 2008

A new day in a new world.

At 1:40 PM yesterday I reached my 2273 word count for the day.
Total now: 9068

And at 11 PM the country reached its goal—I was watching Jon Stewart as he said, “It is 11 o’clock and-----Obama is the next President!” Guess that was when the polls on the West coast closed, giving him the 55 electoral college votes from CA, along with Oregon and (thank you Jen) Washington, putting him over the 270. And the rest is history. Really. By the way, I made phone calls over the last month to the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico—all of which went for Obama. So thank you, me, for doing my part!

And now: to the writing.

It is 10:10. Have to stop being a news junkie and get to work.
No, actually, I think I will read the NYTimes and our local paper The Journal News first, then get to work!

Is it really only day #5 of NaNoWriMo? I feel like I have been doing this for a very long time.

Biggest challenge for me today: I am soooo tired. Stayed up way too late. But I have to do this anyway. Let’s see what happens if I follow Nike’s phrase and JUST DO IT

(Later) I have finished 1202 of the 2273. I need a break. I can’t believe I can actually write when I am this tired. Amazing.

FINALLY FINISHED. HARD TODAY. BUT DID IT.

Grand total: 11,099.

Part of my problem is also that I need to plan some more scenes. Once I have a sense of the scene I can write it, but I have to think of some more scenes now!


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Thursday November 6, 2008

Every day is different. Profound. But seriously, I started the day by reading the NYT and got an idea for an essay that I had to write. The idea actually was related also to a post that I wrote on our message board in response to Karen, thinking about what this election brought up for me. And then Karen’s response to that response made me think more about it. So I spent about 2 and a half hours writing the essay this morning and sent it off to Divine Caroline. Haven’t heard back yet, but I will post a link when they publish it. BTW, I knew I had to write this essay because I got all tingly. My fingers tingled, like they wanted to write it. Like they were already writing it and I had to just go along.

Now I am back to my much less tingle-producing novel.

Made a sort of diagram of the characters and how they are all connected. If the novel is really 50,000 words, than I am about 1/5 done. But this is the hard part now. Figuring out how to keep it going. Realizing that a novel is more than just a beginning and an end. There is this vast area in the middle, where you have to figure out how to go in a lot of different directions so as to not go straight to the ending. At least that is how it appears to me at the moment. I have to hold back all the info I know about who is who and what will happen and lead each character through a little maze where s/he can get lost in a unique way. Well, we shall see.

I have been spending a little “research” time on various sites. Have to get back to actually writing.

Later:
I have 1100 words written. Half of what I need for the day. But if you add that to the 1400 I wrote for my Divine Caroline essay. . . Hmm. I think I will try to get up to my original daily goal of 1667 and call it a day. Call it a GOOD day.

So, I got up to 1667.

My grand total is 12,723. WHEW!

I do need to spend time tomorrow with more outlining.

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Friday November 7, 2008

9:40

This is the hard part. Filling it all in. I have not really been able to outline more scenes as I had hoped to do.

What I did figure out was the ending—I want it to be one of those heart-in-the-throat sort of chapters, where the protagonist figures out who the murderer is, but not in enough time to prevent her/him from possibly committing another murder—so there is this amazing race to try and save the potential victim. The potential victim has part of the information, but does not connect the pieces of information, so that the murderer feels the need to do away with him before he puts it all together. Screeching tires, swerving vehicles in rush hour traffic on the Taconic Parkway. Only I know how it all ends—a surprise.

10:40---1176 words. Need a break.

11:30 Got up to 1750 words. I CAN”T WRITE ANYMORE TODAY.

14,473 TOTAL (it may be a bit more.)

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Saturday November 8, 2008

Planned to go to a write-in this afternoon, so I only wrote for about a half hour in the morning.

Although this is the oddest sort of writing that I have ever done—just writing and counting, not rereading or agonizing—I am finding the creative ideas are really flowing. I thought of 3 things I wanted to write about as I was showering—and I had to run to my office and write them down with the towel still around me!

The write-in was fun, but I now know why social interaction is the bane of a writer’s life. Lots of talk, lots of sharing….but only a few hundred words written. But I really enjoyed talking to the 2 women who showed up. Julian is 17 and this is her 4th time writing a novel like this. She is being home-schooled by her mom Robin, who looks like an old hippie and is doing NaNoWriMo for the second time. You just don’t usually meet out of the mainstream people like them in Westchester where I live. In Taos, maybe, but not in Yorktown Hts.

Anyway, I have a total right now of 1167. That is about 500 short of my absolute daily minimum. But it is 5:30 and I have a glass of red wine near me (not too near, I DO NOT DO LIQUIDS near my computer. It’s a long story, and a wet one….) Anyway, there’s the glass of wine. And here I am.

Maybe write just for another half hour. YES WE CAN.

And I did it. Did my 1667

Total Now: 16,140

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Sunday November 9, 2008

Because I have to write so much, I have discovered that I need to use everything that I notice in my life. For example, yesterday I went to the farmer’s market and picked up a recipe for a casserole of greens and potatoes. Reading over the ingredient list, I discovered: “2 cups sliced opinions.” What a great typo! I knew that I had to use this someplace in my writing, and I will. Because I HAVE to use everything or I will not meet my goal. And having to fit in that recipe ingredient is a fun exercise as well.

I plan to write in the morning today, because that is really my best time. There is another write-in this afternoon at a coffee house in Peekskill. But I am getting smart. I will go and hang out and talk and drink tea and whatever writing I get done will be gravy, since I will have already met my daily word goal!
Oh, and I decided that as soon as I get a chance, maybe later today or tomorrow, I will set up a new blog that is just related to my NaNoWriMo writing. It will basically be this journal that I have been writing in a document on my desk and posting each day to our message board. But I think it deserves its own blog as
well. Hope I can figure out how to do that!

Total before the write-in: 17,811

Skipped the write-in—since the weather was so nice we decided it was the right Sunday afternoon to take in the lawn and porch furniture. Glad I did the writing in the AM. Make hay when the sun shines--or word counts when you have the opportunity. Or something!