Archive for November, 2007

NaNoWriMo 2007

{ November 27, 2007 @ 10:28 pm } · { Music, NaNoWriMo }
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I feel obliged to somehow sum up this November, but I haven’t really found the time or the energy to do that before. As you may have noticed during the last couple of days, I’ve been a happy owner of a NaNo’07 Winner widget.

It took me 25 days to reach 50k. That’s one day more than last year, but I’m happy with that. My best day was 5,000 words but on the other hand my worst one was only 560-ish words. I think I never failed to write 1,300 words a day last year.

My story was called Imaginary as everything else in my life at the moment (or that’s the title I’m going to write to the Winner’s certificate). I’m of course secretly hoping to publish it one day, but that seems most unlikely, especially given that the novel is so not finished. I’d like to finish something once in my life, so I’m going to try and finish the story to the bitter end.

I managed to get my FMC married and seriously ill, my MMC in love with her and when I hit 50k they were on a strange bridge and they almost kissed. But then there was 50k BANG and I stopped right there. Now I’ve got to study for the whole week, but maybe I’ll have time for NaNoFiMo. The story went on pretty slowly, but I don’t know if it’ll be that slow to read. It’s almost depressing to know that I’d spend probably a few hours reading the story I’ve fought with two hours every day. I really can’t see the thing in a larger scale, it’s just a bunch of events that hopefully form a story, but I can’t see it from a reader’s point of view, if it’s too slow or too fast, not yet anyway. And I’m planning on dedicating the following year to Hamnet (NaNo’06), I’ll try to read it again and maybe edit. Finishing would be cooler, though.

Some very interesting stats:
Words per day average 2,000
Time use 48 hours 47 minutes
Words per hour 1025

Didn’t kill anyone (yet), and I introduced way less interesting supporting charachters than I intended. The whole thing was almost dareless – I used two dares from the Risingshadow forums (the other one was Vehka’s MCs-trying-to-make-each-other-laugh and the other one was to include a bridge in a place where no one in their right mind would build a bridge) and a couple of use-these-words -things (most of them were surprisingly from my maths teacher (such as tyriä, mainio & huikaisevan häikäisevän helmeilevän hieno (x2).) They’re kind of tone of voice things, so they don’t really work on paper, but I wanted them nevertheless. They lose some of their shining in translation, but tyriä basically means screw up, mainio is great, and the last one is just something that is dazzlingly and brilliantly wonderful.

But this time I found that I actually can write in a serious tone. Last year there was constant sarcasm and the whole thing owed a lot to Terry Pratchett. This time I had no particular idol, so the text must be different.

It was my second experience with NaNoWriMo and I’m so going to do it again next year.

(And a lovely song I’ve had on repeat during the writing of this entry: Loreena McKennitt’s Dante’s Prayer (with a Legolas-video o_O).)

Day 18 and the angels

{ November 18, 2007 @ 4:39 pm } · { NaNoWriMo }
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I’ve met – not the love of my life, but a thing which makes my life easier: Q10, a lovely program for NaNoing. It’s a full screen writing program, and there’s a timer system which allows me to word war myself all the time without staring at the clock. And it sounds like a typewriter!

With the help of q10 I’ve reached 35k today (that’s already over 5,000 words for this weekend!) and now I hear the angels humming the victory march.. (what do you mean by ‘you’ve apparently read the Breaking news box’?) I’ve felt all the time that I’m a little behind (though I wasn’t) but now that feeling is gone, and the remaining 15k should be an easy one.

So what have I written? In October, I walked outside with a bouquet of dead flowers (I was going to throw them away) and I had this picture of a dark wedding, where the flowers would be dead and everything would be dark. I wrote that scene yesterday, and that brought in an interesting turn of my plot. I’ll have to work hard if I want to tie it all together. The endings are my weak part, I can actually write 50k of a story and know little about how it’s going to end.  Maybe I’ll finally get to that murdering people point, but I want to get this one finished, I really do.

I feel I’ve neglected my MMC a bit, because my FMC has a more interesting life. I don’t want to listen to him complaining about the lack of electricity all the time, so the solution is obviously getting FMC Elizabeth married :D And someone in the picture is a jerk, but I don’t know who it is… probably me. I just feel being a little too close to the story, that I can remember only the current moment, not what’s been said or done a couple hundred words earlier. Realism gets thrown into the wind:

I was crying against his shoulder… [insert some random and confused thinking] … I laughed at him…

(Baaaad translation and as bad example, but you get my meaning.)

Day 16

{ November 16, 2007 @ 9:55 pm } · { NaNoWriMo }
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I haven’t yet written one single word today, and it’s almost 10pm. But I did buy some reward chocolate, and I’m still being realistic if I say I’ll pass the 30k line today. I ended up spending too long in the internet looking for a certain song or at least information about it. We’ll see.

Seems that I didn’t have anything to say.  29,068/50,000.

Day 11, Minister

{ November 11, 2007 @ 8:35 pm } · { NaNoWriMo, TV }
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Yesterday was a wonderful day at least numerically, I wrote over 2,700 words. Today was also a good one, though a bit slow, I’ve spent 2,5 hours writing 2,230 words. But anyway I hit the 20k line today, and as a reward I watched my all-time favourite Yes Minister episode Skeleton in the Cupboard. I don’t know how they’ve managed to write that episode the way that 70% of my YM jokes come from it.

(“God moves in a mysterious way.” “Let me make this perfectly clear: Humphrey is not God, OK?” “Will you tell him or shall I?”)

I do love that episode. Humphrey freaking out in the end :’D

And what is happening in NaNo?  My MCs Will and Elizabeth went to Will’s house and sat there through the night (I guess about four hours) waiting for the pouring rain to end. I hope I was able to create a bit of tension between them. Some philosophical thoughts appeared at least. At last they fell asleep in their armchairs but they woke up at 5am to hear that Will’s little sister had disappeared during the night.

Really, how could I spend 2,200 words on that? NaNo amazes me constantly :)

I really should do my maths homework and play the piano a bit before I call it a night.

Day 9 (will adopt smart dialogue)

{ November 9, 2007 @ 9:00 pm } · { NaNoWriMo }
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Still a bit ahead (finally got to the Halloween party!), but today hasn’t really been a good day. I need to write dialogue between my MCs, but I suck at that. I know that practicing should fix it, but my dialogue doesn’t feel or seem or sound as good and witty as I’d like it to. I speak little in real life (though when I do, I’m too loud and say things before thinking), so I’m not trained in being funny or anything. So most of my writing is just description or thoughts, and now and then I realize my characters really should talk more to each other.

Maybe I should set my next story to a land of dumb and deaf people. Or write a play.

Anyway, the official word-count widgets have made a comeback, so I’m too excited to actually write. Though I have to admit that I don’t like them looking like this:

[There used to be a lovely word count widget with a bar for each day, green or red depending on whether I'd written "enough" that day, but apparently it had been reset and was showing the grey bars of '08 :D ]

I’m not that pathetic, you know, but I don’t always update my wordcount immediately. If I write a few hundred words at 11 pm I’m not returning downstairs with my laptop and connecting to Internet, I’ll wait for the next day. This thing says my worst day was 726 words, but actually the lowest wordcount yet has been 1,244.

And I feel guilty saying that I’m on schedule when others struggle at 5k or 7k or whatever. Why do I feel that?

(Oh yeah, 15,641 words and 19 pages. MMC & his family, FMC and a few random characters introduced. Murders 0, kisses 0, events 1, chapters 4)

Day 6

{ November 6, 2007 @ 8:13 pm } · { NaNoWriMo }
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I didn’t quite reach 10k yesterday (I had a terrible stomachache and my eyes were sore), but I did watch some Yes Minister. Anyhow, I’m feeling better today, and just hit 10k (911 words today, I’m aiming for another 1,000 tonight). Should probably try some word-warring or something. I realised I was about to write “And then we walked to our house”, for the like third time, and that that would make a pretty boring novel.

Well, there’ll be this walking scene, but once I make it to the evening, there’ll be some interesting events. Maybe I’ll even get to introduce my FMC ;) And I haven’t really described my MMC’s looks or anything, I only know that so far he’s dressed in a black sweater and black trousers, but that’s about it. But I really need another PoV to describe him, I don’t want to use that cliché of “I glanced into the mirror and saw a tall, pale boy…” And I already used that last year :D

So far, my characters have moved into their new home in a lonely, isolated village, spent their first day and first night there (mostly sleeping, btw ^^), visited the village twice and found a Halloween pumpkin on their doorstep, and met a couple of the weirdo people in the village. Now I’ll have to arrange some sort of activity for them for a few hours before a Halloween party. Maybe they could find something in the attic or there could be something like a burglary. Hmm…

That’s 10,027 words written in about 11 hours.

Day 5

{ November 5, 2007 @ 9:38 am } · { NaNoWriMo, Other writings }
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My attention should be drawn towards a video about WWII, but I’m again thinking about writing.

NaNo is at 7,872 words, so if I write another 2,150 words today, I’ll get to watch one episode of Yes Minister. That’s something worth waiting for.

But I’m having some problems as I’m in the writing team of our Christmas play, and my story should be finished today, but I’ve only written ten words or so. The problem is I was down with cold all weekend and pretty tired, and I just can’t remember what was decided in our last meeting.

I hate this. My head aches, my fingers hurt, my cheeks hurt and my nose is running. I wanna go to sleep.

Day 1

{ November 1, 2007 @ 9:24 am } · { NaNoWriMo }
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NaNoWriMo 2007 has started! I’ve written 279 words and already have doubts about my choice of PoV. I know it’s still so early I could change that, but I’m not sure if I want to do that either. Well, I’ll worry about that when I edit – if I edit. But I like the text this far, it’s much more fluent than SC.

I’ll go on writing now, updates will follow.