Meet my muse!
I went to the Orange County Downtown Disney Build-a-Muse write in. We go to the Build-a-Bear workshop in Downtown Disney and create a “muse”! It was fun and we all made many different things. We were having more fun than the little kids in there. You have a choice of many different animals and lots of different clothes to dress them up.
I got a Velociraptor and gave him a Batman outfit. This is Bruce Raptor!!!
http://img4.imageshack.us/i/bruceraptor.jpg/
I have to say, I am loving going to write-ins and meeting people who have similar interests. We talk and laugh and write. I hope everyone else’s journey is as fun as mine has been so far and looks to be for the rest of November!
A girl REALLY behind on word count
So, here we are…
One week is over and done with.
NaNoWriMo has sent us pep talks and we’ve been blogging about our experiences.
We’ve felt inspired that a thousand word flew out before we realized it.
We’ve written and its been akin to pulling teeth for every letter written.
And there have been entire days where we have not written a word.
In my case, I had not settled down to write since Wednesday. The keyboard had gone cold and my mood was just too foul to write. Considering my novel is a romance novel, it was just not the right mindset to hope that a couple could make calf eyes to one another and believe that they are two halves to a whole… to be part of a love that can last forever. Had I chosen to write then, they likely would not have reached their full potential. And while they say that this challenge is all about quantity and not quality, I knew that I would have to rewrite every last bit of it to return to my vision.
Yesterday I was feeling more like myself but I sat in front of my screen and could just not see where I had been intending to take my characters. I took the day to resume writing and panning out the story just in my head.
Therefore, today I knew that I had to seriously write or else it would be irreparable damage to my word count.
At this stage, we’re supposed to be at 13,336 words. Is anyone even close?
If I was feeling desperate before… thinking that I was perpetually behind even though I was keeping pace and writing everyday, its nothing compared to how I feel now. But nothing will be solved with allowing the sense of panic to overwhelm me. So, I turned on my tunes, closed my eyes and just started to write. I had been slightly stuck as to how to keep my writing flowing, as I seem to be writing it out in the order its meant to happen in my model. Surprisingly, it made sense when I opened my eyes a hundred or so words later.
With a few adjustments, it felt write although the first 500 words felt a little forced. After that, I decided that once I reached 9,000 I would stop and blog. (I’m also taking part in NaBloPoMo and I hadn’t done my daily post over @ my own bombshell blog.) That drove me to get past those final 500 words before my goal. Once I finish up here, I will return to writing and hope that I can safely be past 10,000 before I go to sleep tonight.
Its not where I’d hope to be by now but its better than where I was. I truly hope that everyone is giving this their all and making daily goals for themselves. It may seem silly to get caught up on the words and what it amounts to every hour or so, but a goal really does help. There has to be some sort of drive and focus.
The reason we wanted to do this challenge was because we love to write. We had an idea great enough to want to develop into a compelling story. We decided that we could reach that large number of 50,000 words by November 30th.
So, my fellow word-lacking NaNoWriMo writers, we will not surrender. We will not give up and we will charge through adversity.
Good luck and here’s to another week ahead!
bad writing is inspiring
i am not inspired by an aldous huxley. i am not inspired by a neil gaiman or a terry pratchett. or any literary wordsmith.
i am inspired by crap. i am inspired when i read a book and cringe with every sentence. because it gives me hope. because when it comes right down to it. people love crap.
it is no coincidence the toilet is often referred to as the “throne”.
it is no coincidence reality television is so popular.
and can you blame them? (yes i used the exclusive, i obviously do not consider myself people)
we, the smart ones (because everyone who disdains the genre of the reality show is smart, obviously) look down on the buffoons who whore themselves out to camera time and we feel better. because we are not so idiotic. they are a terrible reflection of the moral decadence of our society. they are nothing like us. and so we are inspired, give hope to continue our far superior lives. at least as long as there are no cameras around.
it is difficult to describe that soaring feeling of superiority one gets while reading a painfully weak-minded piece of drivel. thinking all the time with a half-grimace/half-smug smile, “I could do better than this.” And when i thankfully put the book down a rush to my writing corner and scribble a few sentences which are obviously of greater caliber than the drivel i just read, i go to sleep a vastly satisfied avant-garde artist.
but now with nanowrimo. i find my own writing inspiring.
that’s right.
it is crap.
A girl wondering about approach
OMG! I just got out the calculator and realized that if I wanted to do the 1,667 words per day, that I should be at 7,000 words by today. I’m just barely at 4,500. I’m feeling like I should not have done the math.
Or maybe I’m more masochistic than I’ll admit.
So, after 3 days of writing every night, I feel the story taking shape. Some of the things I hadn’t been so sure about when it came to my characters seem to be solidifying the more time I allow them to be on the page. And there was the infamous moment when I felt like the plot fairy bashed me over the head with the inspiration wand of writing. Its been a roller coaster ride of confidence, however.
What I am wondering, though, is how everyone is approaching this task… Are you all starting from the beginning of your novels and planning on writing straight through? Are you writing things into separate documents and hope to join them together with time? Are you more or less following a cohesive time line for your story? Or have you worked on the ending and middle scenes already and hope the beginning takes shape somewhere along the way?
Are you planning on working in chapters or go back to that later? How many words long should a chapter be?
Are you wishing that I’d stop asking these questions because you hadn’t really thought about them but now that I’ve said them they are ALL you can think about?
But while I feel good for writing as much as I have, I feel this gnawing sensation like I’m behind. So maybe I’ve become a little obsessed with this but at least I’ve not been losing sleep. I can turn things on and off in my brain when I need to, which is good since I need to accomplish other things with my day.
Not today though… today I’ve set it aside for a lot of writing. With my blogging done, its time I turned my attention to my novel.
Happy writing, dearies!
Sci-fi according to CAcationu2
Hihi! A little slow to be posting yes, but as I have been sick, I haven’t been doing much writing at all. I signed up for NaNoWriMo after hearing about it from my dear friend Luskca and I really am terribly excitied about writing 50,000 words by the end of this month. On November 1st however, I woke up feeling horribly and it’s only gotten worse. I have managed to write a paltry 900 words and I think my idea is starting to take shape in my sleep steeped yet still deprived mind.
I am writing a sci-fi novel and it’s going to be about the sudden and somewhat violent beginning of psychic abilities in humans and the reprucussions that brings forth. It’s more or less set in modern times (meaning I haven’t decided that part yet) and I’m still enthusiastic about getting my ideas on paper in a form that is hopefully enjoyable to read.
I don’t recall creating excuses about not reaching 50,000 words just yet, though I do have a good reason for not being at the 5000 some odd words I should be at. I will be going to a write-in here in Costa Mesa tomorrow. It will be nice to meet some potential acquaintances that have at least one thing in common wit me. It should open some doors to meeting some people down here. I’m looking foward to this month, all in all.
Party weekend.. and now, to write
Already off to a bad start.
Well.. seeing as how nothing in my life both starts AND ends well, I figure that this is promising, right?
Armed with a notebook I jotted down some nonsensical stuff while away from my computer on the (now less than) momentous start of NaNoWriMo 2009. about two thousand words and I already find that I’m avoiding contractions to lessen my load.
Here is an excerpt for tonight. I hope you all are having lots or luck, are in love with your characters and are getting high on your word counts! If not, and if you are like me, I hope you also have great music, great wine and time to kill..
<3
People talk of sorrow as if it was soft, fluid and yielding, of drowning it its waters, being bathed by its tears. They talk about it as if it had a soft caress, comforting even. True sorrow isn’t soft. True sorrow is a thing of jagged rock surrounded by hungry, licking flames. It burns your heart, your motivations, your desires in such a blaze of white-hot heat that not even the ashes can tell the tale of what once was. It crushes your soul under the weight of mountains, squashing out every breath, immobilizing every limb so that your fingers can’t even twitch as you search for the air to scream. It steals your ability to fight, from the inside out. The person you were, dies. Gone. Everything solid, is ash. Gone. Everything real. Gone. Everything solid, real, tangible. Gone.
can i add this to my word count?
my eyes! they burn! after sifting through excel sheets all day it is a struggle to melt the ice on my river of creativity and write anything. i type and type, but the word count remains frozen. a pathetic three digit ice cube. i blame it on the weather.
Challenge
Every time you get stuck, slow down, or nothing but vagueness comes out, just write down the line “I want to write about…” and take it from there. Anytime you find yourself going in a direction completely off topic or you don’t want to go there, write the line “I don’t want to write about…” and take it from there. I found this tip (which I read in the Natalie Goldberg book Wild Mind) has been helpful keeping me writing instead of thinking so far. Your mileage may vary.
Word count on NaNoWriMo
I’m not seeing those word counts updated on NaNoWriMo. That is how everybody cheers each other on, or at least create the uh-oh I’m-behind-let-me-light-fire-under-my-ass kind of cheering on. Good Luck!!!!!!!!
a girl fixated on word count
So we are O-fficially underway with the NaNoWeiMo challenge! Woot woot!
Did everyone start writing?
I didn’t start at midnight on Nov. 1st. I was sleeping at that time. However, sometime around 2am I woke up and started writing. I wrote about 1,200 word in about an hour. The hitch? I actually began 2 stories at that time. Can you believe it?
And at 3am I was stumped. When I had decided to take part in this writing event I had thought of writing a regeancy romance novel that I had been slowly plotting and outlining in my head. But as the start date drew closer, I thought that maybe a BDSM erotic romance might be easier for me to write. However, when I actually got to starting on it, I didn’t feel it inspiring enough. I was bummed, to say the least. So I returned to my original story and felt so much better.
I didn’t make it to 1,667 words my first day. I fell short by about 300 words or so. What I realize is that I max out my focus about 700 words at a time. I am going to have to divide my writing time into thirds, perhaps an hour at a time. Maybe then I will get past this insecure block I feel I get when writing. I keep wanting to go back to edit and have the story perfect on my first try. Its frustrating when I know I have to reach a certain word count daily if I expect to make it.
What I did notice I did a lot was click ‘check wordcount’ every 10Min or so. It was heartening to see it grow. Still, ordinarily I don’t worry about that sort of thing. Usually I write until it feels right.
Is anyone else doing something similar? Are you checking your count periodically or do you wait until the end of your writing session to verify? Are you developing OCD habits centreed on specific numbers and counts?
What have you learned after day 1 and will it affect the strategy you will use for the oncoming writing days?
luskca
flukeairwalker
rain2rainbows
bombshellwithin
CAcationu2
illegalalien2000
gattapreta
