Or maybe it’s just frozen over. It was a whopping 8ºF at my house this morning about 6 o’clock.
But the point is, I haven’t been able to think of anything to say here for days. Maybe November and NaNoWriMo just drained me, but even during NaNo I was blogging and it almost seemed like I had more to say than usual. Perhaps the lesson here is the more I write, the more I can write. So to try to get the ball rolling again, I decided to fall back on that time-tested method of drawing a Tarot card and see if that sparks something. Sitting at my desk at work it was hard to shuffle my deck surreptitiously so I had to settle for a few hand over hand passes, when out fell
the Page of Swords. Pages are young people, usually messengers of some kind or another. As he grips his sword in two hands, is he in a defensive stance, or is he offering a challenge? I think I’m feeling challenged here. I think this little bugger, whoever he is, thinks he has a better idea and is defying me to prove him wrong. Well, we’ll just have to see about that then, won’t we?
It’s not as if I don’t have enough stories going on. I’ve also been looking around for markets to submit to, so I’ve dredged up a couple that I want to submit short stories to for anthologies that are coming up. I’m at a point where I feel I need to actually write and submit something, or all I’m doing is writing these stories that are never going to go anywhere and what’s the point of that? I keep thinking about an interview I saw with Ray Bradbury talking about how many stories he submitted that were rejected when he was young, and how awful he finally realized those stories were although he couldn’t see it at the time. I want to start that process of sending stuff out, even if it gets rejected, because somehow that feels like an integral part of the process. It’s not so much the concept of ‘paying my dues’ (as they say in show biz) but that with time and the more I write, the better (hopefully) I will get.
I found this on Biddy Tarot and I think it sums up nicely the vibe I’m getting from this card today:
The Page of Swords asks you to embrace a difficult situation and meet its challenge. You could think of these as trials designed to test your mettle. If you accept and prevail, you will become stronger and more resilient. In meeting these challenges, you are encouraged to use the tools of the Swords suit – honesty, reason, integrity, and fortitude.
All righty then. Back to it!
I’m celebrating this morning, I hit the 50,000 word mark at 9:06 a.m. PST. I marked the time, kind of like giving birth (ok, not really. Having done both, I can say the experiences are distinctly different). The 50,oooth word was “being.” Seems poetic somehow. After last year’s aborted attempt to tackle NaNo, I feel incredibly pleased by this, and finishing with days to spare. I amazed even myself by being able to crank out something like 2000 words yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, between cooking the turkey and everything else. We don’t have large family gatherings so that made it possible. Frankly I’m glad I had this to do to fill in the empty spaces during the day.
At the start of the second week I felt the elation and excitement of the first few days leaking away, like air out of a balloon. That’s when the real slog started for me. I was missing the characters in my vampire story that I was working on before November, and hadn’t really gotten to know my new characters. I’m one of those people who writes with no outline, and I had only the vaguest idea of what the NaNo novel was going to be. It took awhile before they really started to talk to me, and show me some glimmers of personality and gumption. Now at the 50k mark, they’re just beginning to become really interesting, which I guess means a lot of the preliminary stuff will be going away when I finish the first draft and start revising. And I intend to finish this, but I think first I need to finish the vampire story. Even with all this going on, it’s never been far from my mind as if those characters are haunting me, but it’s a welcome haunting. There’s much work to be done on that as well, and I’m still not sure where it will end up but I have to get it out of my system I think before I can do anything else justice.
Evil Son #1 asked me yesterday what do I get if I win. Well, I had to explain there are no tangible prizes to be had, it’s simply the satisfaction of getting it done. As trite as this will sound, I learned a lot about myself, and my priorities in life. As many of you know, I don’t subscribe to tv cable and haven’t for years (full disclaimer: Evil Son #2 just signed up for it, so it’s in the house again, but good GAWD, I am more astonished than ever that people pay to watch this crap), so I haven’t had that distraction. Nor do I miss it. My co-workers think I’m a freak because I read and don’t have tv. Maybe being a freak isn’t so bad.
To those of you still wandering around in your personal NaNo-Land, keep on truckin’!
Once again the holiday season is upon us, a time to gather with family and friends and gorge ourselves on way too much food and drink. But wait, there’s more! Thanks to a reminder from Dan Curtis, personal historian, it is also the National Day of Listening, so-designated by StoryCorps:
The National Day of Listening is November 27, 2009.
On the day after Thanksgiving, set aside one hour to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood.
You can preserve the interview using recording equipment readily available in most homes, such as cell phones, tape recorders, computers, or even pen and paper. Our free Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide is easy to use and will prepare you and your interview partner to record a memorable conversation, no matter which recording method you choose.
Make a yearly tradition of listening to and preserving a loved one’s story. The stories you collect will become treasured keepsakes that grow more valuable with each passing generation.
So maybe you have to do the day before if the relatives are only in town for the day? That’s ok, too. This could be your golden opportunity to record some of those precious stories that get told around the table when everyone starts reminiscing about “what life was like when I was a kid,” which nobody normally pays any attention to. They’re usually loaded with nuggets that if aren’t written down soon could be lost for good.
Head on over to StoryCorps’ Do-It-Yourself-Guide for lots of hints and tips and advice on how to get started. Carpe diem, and all that!
Here we are, halfway through Week Three now. I’m done counting by days, I’m thinking in terms of weeks now.
Was it just me, or did the first two weeks whizz by like they had better things to do? I didn’t make it this far in NaNo last year, so this is my first time taking the week three corner on two wheels, full speed ahead. Those first two weeks were not nearly the challenge they were last year, but this is new territory for me now. Can I sustain this pace for another two weeks? (ok, week and a half) This, as they say, is where the rubber meets the road. My word count is maintaining, despite a small setback over the weekend but I’m still ahead of the daily minimum. I know some people have already hit the 50K mark (rather anti-climactic, no?), I don’t know what they do after that. Keep going, I guess?
I’ll say this: writing at this pace sure produces piles of garbage. If I didn’t have a day job, and had nothing to do all day but write, 1667 words a day should be a piece of cake. But trying to squeeze it in to a couple of hours in the evening when I’m almost too tired to think is not producing the level of writing I would like. Frankly, it’s pretty craptastic. Ah well, there’ll be plenty of time to clean it up later. How’s everyone else holding up?
Let’s have a little levity for the day, courtesy of the late, great, Douglas Adams:
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
This will appeal most to the science fiction fans (what is the proper shorthand for that these days? Sci-Fi? Skiffy? SyFy? anyway…) but this week io9 will be doing a series they are calling the Book Vortex. Leading off with what appears to be an M.C. Escher-esque view of a library twisted appropriately into a vortex (click the image for a larger, more stomach-churning view), Annalee Newitz says:
Books are stealthy and portable and will outlast the data apocalypse. With a book, you can hide in the middle of a field with no electrical outlet and still escape to Barsoom or Downbelow Station or Dune. The written word implants a story in your brain, but lets you imagine all the details of how people look and move and speak. Even a comic book leaves room between panels for you to fill in an entire world of your own devising.
So after the Apocalypse when you can’t get any more batteries for your Kindle you’ll have to resort to the old skool way of reading: Turning pages. (Ok, sniping at Kindle done.)
They promise to bring us book lists, “agonizingly bad book covers” and I know we all love checking out the cover art, along with places to find free books online, essays, interviews, and more. io9 generally focuses on electronic media so I’m delighted to see them spotlighting where all those shows and movies come from: the written word.
You know, just in case you need a new excuse to put off doing something else.
So I just read today’s Week Two Pep Talk from Maureen Johnson, and I gotta tell ya, it really made me smile. (The tie-in here being we all know LoTR was filmed in New Zealand. Which is, you know, really close to Australia.)
I’m definitely wandering aimlessly through something, whether it’s the Bog of Eternal Stench (and I have a feeling it just might be, and yes I know that’s not in LoTR. It’s from The Labyrinth) or traipsing across the plains of Rohan chasing…something, although probably not Orcs, I’m in deep at this point. I loved Johnson’s imagery of stumbling across old campfires of those who have gone before. Surely there’s something in the ashes to indicate what’s edible out here in the wastelands, and later we can look for footprints to see which way they went and then go a different way. And here’s another very cool map of Middle Earth, somehow combined with GoogleMaps so it’s interactive.
But the best thing is the sheer vastness of the territory to be covered. Seriously, how can you not get excited with all those possibilities just waiting for you? It’s so big that I could make this journey a thousand times and never go the same way twice. I’m not bogged down, I’m footloose and fancy free. I’m On the Road like Kerouac. And I don’t even like camping!
Down to a crawl. I got a little over 1100 words written yesterday, so about 500 short of the daily goal. I’ve been trying to get 2000 words a day. I’m still marginally ahead of where I’d be at a steady pace of 1667 words per day, so not too bad but I’m starting to fear falling into a repeat of last year’s outcome.
I knew eventually I was going to write this book as it’s intended to be the prequel to the novel I was working on before I started the vampire novel, but I had done almost no planning for it, had the barest idea of a couple of characters, the setting. Now I’m struggling to get acquainted with the characters and I have so much research I’m going to have to go back and do later when there’s time. Right now I’m just focusing on word count, and wow is this bad! I’m taking Chris Baty’s suggestion of putting anything I’m going to take out later in bold italics but not actually deleting it. I figure if he says it’s fair game, I’m good with it. I already know some scenes will be deleted in toto, the storyline may change, some conversations that are in there now will never see the light of day.
But that’s ok. I’m getting to know my characters, and it’s all part of the process. Although, I really need to have a chat with female MC ’cause sometimes I just want to smack her.
Things are progressing nicely, so far. I checked my word count on NaNoWriMo this morning, and was startled by the number (I’d forgotten overnight what I clocked in at last night). My first thought was, Oh my, look at this person’s word count, whose is this? Wait, this is my page… where did that number come from? Did someone leave me some words? Are these yours?
Nope. By cracky, I did 1797 words yesterday! At the start of Day 5 I’m opening with 8551 words, well better than a day up on schedule. Maybe rocking out to the latest AFI release, Crash Love, is more of an inspiration for a novel set in the Gilded Age than I thought. (Honestly, the boys outdid themselves on this one. Davey, Jade, Hunter, Adam, this is your best yet.)
Anyway…
And how about that Pep Talk this morning from Jasper Fforde? Inspired. For those who question why spend time cranking out 50K words of drivel, you know it’s going to be crap going in so why bother? Because it’s part of the process. The way I’ve always phrased it is, before I can write anything decent, I have to write through all the crap, literally, like clawing my way up out of a hole in the ground. If I keep scrabbling at the dirt, it will fall in and fill the hole and eventually I’ll be standing on top where the good topsoil is.
Shooting for the 10000 mark today. Who’s with me?!?
I am not making this up.
I’ve heard of Klingon weddings amongst Star Trek fanatics, but this is new. An Ohio couple had a unique Halloween wedding.
“Vampires” tie the knot in Columbia Township
Jack Holsinger, 61, of Lorain, married his vampiress, Connie Spitznagel, 44, also of Lorain, in a Halloween-themed wedding at the Rockin’-R-Ranch.
…
Holsinger arrived at the “altar” in a coffin via a hearse. His coffin was carried by six costumed pallbearers to the altar, where Spitznagel, dressed as a lady vampire, met him in front of a minister dressed as Jason from the “Friday the 13th” horror movies.
The groom’s son, dressed as Jack Sparrow, served as best man (best pirate?). Instead of kissing the bride, apparently the groom was told to bite his bride on the neck. Aren’t you supposed to save that stuff for the honeymoon? I’m just sayin’…
cross-posted to The Nano Project
I’m off to a rollicking start on word count. Thanks in large part to attending a write-in, I clocked in at 3,337 words yesterday! Wow, I’ve never gotten that much in one day before. Even with the chatting and socializing and inhaling a sandwich, the distraction of surfing the net via free WiFi (thanks for walking me through that, Wairoam!) it was fun and exciting listening to all those keys clicking around me. We had a great turnout, although I’m not sure exactly how many people showed up (somewhere around 12+, I think). If you haven’t attended a write-in, I highly recommend it. Now the question is, can I sustain that, or even half that? Must try… must… back to it…
