Making and unmaking

So, I am greatly saddened, kind of, to say that I probably will not be finishing my novel this year. (Again.) See, the deal I made with myself was that I would do NaNo IF I had no other pressing writing assignments. And when I had no other pressing writing assignments, it went pretty well. But then I got one--something I can't talk about yet, but be assured it'll be all over this space if things work out--and, well, 1,667 spent elsewhere each day start to add up. So I'm cooling it. Plus, my Novel Voice is, I'm sorry to say, kind of boring. Sorry, Self.

The good thing about dropping out of a crazy masochistic writing event is the amount of free time I suddenly find on my hands. It seems I'd been neglecting books, movies, actual food that requires actual cooking, a crafty project or two, and maybe some people. No more! This afternoon I made this much chili:

So if nuclear winter hits this week, I think I'm good to go (corn muffins optional).

I also knitted myself a cabled beanie, which ended up being more like a cabled yarmulke. Before:
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After:


This is the joy of small knitting projects: find that your beanie should actually have a propeller sticking out of the top? Rip back to the ribbing; you'll be fine. I think a couple of extra repeats of the cable pattern should make the poor thing at least reach my ears. Note to self: Things that stretch sideways shrink lengthwise. Words for the wise!

And now it's on to Christmas cards and Christmas music and probably a viewing of White Christmas or two. Not to mention The Noise. Are you ready? I...am not. But at least I have some time to think about how unprepared I am.

Status report

So I ended up not flaking out, and now here I am, seven days into NaNoWriMo. Things are going pretty well--I'm consistently about a half-day behind, which is nothing to my inner jaded old-fart cheerleader. You should have seen the great finishing flood of '05! Six thousand words a day! In the snow, uphill both ways! I will say, though, that NaNo is nothing if not an exercise in self-awareness, and not always in the good way.

First of all, my capacity for wasting time is, what's the word? Oh: "staggering." I can kill a potentially useful chunk of hours without breaking a sweat. I attempt to cast on warm winter garments with the yarn I bought recently, which seems not to want to be much of anything. I compose those long, newsy e-mails I've been meaning to get around to. I watch reruns of 30 Rock (Top-secret note to James: You're right. This season is funny. "I have twelve grand in checking." "...are you an immigrant?"). I spend time with Winner of the National Book Award, which is dark and hilarious and makes me not want to stop reading. I suspect that I joined Facebook (a new development; find me and friend me if you haven't already!) solely for the purpose of not working on my novel. I am, in a word, amazing...at not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm specially gifted.

Second, I have learned that it is possible for me to fall asleep while typing. You know how when you're reading in bed, and it's kind of dim and you're warm and suddenly it's 3 a.m. and your bedside light is still on? Apparently this happens to me when I'm sitting up and the lights are on and I'm, like, in the middle of a sentence. I'm writing along, sailing through my word count, and...suddenly the last three lines make absolutely no sense. I have novel narcolepsy. Somebody should hold a telethon for me.

I do kind of like my novel so far, though. Writing without a net means that my novel will probably have a total lack of narrative/symbolic structure, which will break my heart when I try to re-read it, but it also means that I can have a kind of zero-tolerance policy towards boredom. It's a road novel of sorts, so when I stop knowing or caring what happens in one scene, I can just take my characters somewhere else and say, "And then THIS happens ('Ghosts!' 'Bible salesmen!' 'Self-help books!')!" I see that this is how all those over-quirky, self-indulgent first novels get written: it's all about things that are funny and endearing in the moment, because all you really want to be is funny and endearing. I am hoping that this translates to some kind of consistent voice over the course of the 50,000 words, but...I'm not counting on it. That's what NaNoEdMo (which apparently some people actually do, though I frankly can't imagine who) is for.

Any field reports from my fellow-novelists out there?

37 down; 49,963 to go

Happy NaNoWriMo! I wasn't cool/dumb enough to stay up for the regional kick-off party in El Cerrito last night--midnight on a Wednesday? Bless my soul! Who am I, Paris Hilton with a laptop?--but I sat down this morning and wrote the first sentence of my novel to get things started. I didn't want to come home from work and face a blank white screen. And now I just have to type a few more words and it'll be done. NO SWEAT.

*girds up loins for massive writing effort*

Woooo! 30,000!

You'll note that today is the last day of November, and here I am writing here. People who are finishing their novels by midnight tonight aren't writing on their blogs today, I can assure you. So that's the deal: my novel is lovely and messy and possibly interesting, but it is not 50,000 words long, or even close to it.

It's mildly upsetting to me, not finishing, but it's also a relief to not have to think about it any more. I never really settled into a rhythm--so necessary for high-volume writing--and, admittedly, there were times when I just plain blew my novel off to go to the movies or do something else. I spent a lot of my writing time on Cinema Hype, which is as it should be, but then I didn't always have the time or the brain power for 1,667 words of fiction. I feel a little like a wash-out from Top Gun, or something, but then I'm also just looking forward to the day when I can sit in front of the TV and knit or maybe write Christmas cards without experiencing novel guilt (i.e. tomorrow).

Haiku Friday and more

November has been rough on this blog; Cinema Hype and my novel (and, well, life) are keeping me plenty busy. I hate to neglect this blog, since I've grown kind of attached to it, but the rest of November may be a little sparse as well. I'll be back full-force in December.

But anyway, there's no skipping out on Haiku Friday! My Friday-night dilemma:

Housewarming party?
Or Paul Newman in The Sting
at the Paramount?

The answer: Both, maybe.

In other news, The Novel is coming along; I've fallen behind a fair bit in terms of volume, but I had a major revelation last night in the car that may well save my story and my word count. It's hard to write prolifically when your protagonist is boring, and when your plot seems so far away--there's nothing to say. I've decided that I need to use a non-linear structure, so I can cut to the chase more easily, and I also gave one of my characters a sudden sex change (my hotel maid is now a non-English-speaking handyman). I'm suddenly feeling much better about this, and planning to dig in and get some work done this weekend. 50,000 words shall be mine! I think. I hope.

Haiku Friday; Life Update

Quick, before I head off to Mount Hermon for the weekend:

It's Haiku Friday!

Days off are the bread
and butter of the writer/
procrastinator.

Also,

Current NaNo word count: 12,018, which places me a little behind, but I discovered this morning that I'm ahead of where I was on this day last year. Not bad. Week Two is the toughest week of the month--it's where most people drop out--but I think my novel is actually going to get exponentially more interesting (I hesitate to use the word "better") in the next few days. I'm still excited, though I need to find places to write that aren't on my couch, just for sanity's sake.

I had a long post about voting and Democracy planned, but I've been too busy with NaNo and Cinema Hype to actually type it out. I'd still ideally like to write it one of these days, but the gist is this: regardless of my political beliefs, I am so pleased to live in a nation where the right to change that nation is built into the infrastructure. Representative Democracy isn't the only system out there, and maybe it's not ideal for everyone, but I am proud to have cast my vote on Tuesday. More later, in my "free time." (That was a joke.)

So: Alive and kicking; just trying not to replace my brain with my laptop.

Nineteen down; 49,981 to go

Today is November 1, and I feel like writing a book. Good thing, too, since as of 12:01 this morning, it's National Novel-Writing Month, and I'm participating! By midnight on November 30, my mission is to have written a 50,000-word novel on the subject of my choice. It doesn't have to be good, and it doesn't have to really make much sense, and there can be plot-holes if I so desire, but: 50,000 words. November 30. Midnight.

I got up a few minutes early this morning and wrote a sentence, for ceremonial purposes. I couldn't handle the idea that we would be nearly a whole day into NaNoWriMo--I've seriously been looking forward to this since, like, January--and I would have a word count of zero. So I opened a new file on my laptop, typed 19 words, saved the file, and shut down. I feel so much better, though. Staring at my blank screen for an hour is not on my schedule for this evening. Also, only 1,648 words to go before I meet today's word quota!

I did this last year, and finished ("won," in NaNo terminology). Just so you all know, 50,000 words is a lot of words. It translates to a total of about 175 pages, or 1,667 words per day, if you try to cram them all into one month. It's one of those things that not only sounds crazy, it is crazy. But at the end, you have a novel, or a draft of a novel, or at least something you can say that you worked really hard on.

And anyway, it's fun, in its own mildly masochistic kind of way. I get to hang out in cafes with my laptop, get together with other NaNoers for write-ins, tell people I'm "working on my novel," and....well, I get to write. Because I really do love to write, and much of the time, the hardest part is just sitting down and doing it. Having a ridiculous, temporary challenge just lights a fire under me. I even have a few friends who are participating this year (including my office-mate, which means our cube is going to be a beacon of joy and philanthropy by the end of the month). It's exciting.

I'm sure this won't be my last post on this topic, either moaning about or doing the happy dance when I'm done. Anyway, I'm gonna go write now.