Real November Word Count/Real Writer

Bizarrely, I haven't updated since the end of October. I'm sure that's the opposite of what you're supposed to do for NaNo, but we've already discussed I'm a bit of a rebel in that department. I'd like to say that I have done nothing but write since then. This is true, I have written a lot. It is not, however, the only thing I've done. 

  I like this overall word count thing people keep doing. It's great. It makes it look like you accomplished something instead of 789 words the third day of the week. That makes it look like you have not accomplished something. I do not like this feeling. I don't like math either, so you should know that all my words are probably off by ten since I cannot for the life of me remember any order of any numbers. 

Overall count: 14,743 words.

Yeah, I don't know how that can be right for less than two weeks worth of writing, but that's what it's telling me. I think it's right. For some reason, it feels like I really haven't written at all. I keep saying again and again how writing this novel feels like re-teaching myself how to do this. My last novel took two months and it was done. I don't even remember writing it. This one has been the more traditional-chain-oneself-to-the-desk-scenario. 

Then again I did have my wisdom teeth taken out a few days ago and I'm still recovering from that. I'm also on narcotics which mean my life at the moment goes a bit like this; hmmm, I think I need to go to the bathroom. I'm going to get up and go to the bathroom right now. Whoa, the floor is moving. THE FLOOR IS MOVING! I must hang on to the wall. *forget what I'm doing on the way to do it* Remember suddenly I was supposed to be on my way to the bathroom. So, why am I in the kitchen... pouring myself orange juice... in a bowl? 

I am not kidding. That is pretty close to accurate. I cannot begin to fathom why in the world someone would be addicted to painkillers. Oh, and my cheeks swelled up so I looked like Alvin the Chipmunk's girl cousin. And the ice pack I have to wear makes me look like this:

It's a miracle what I've done anything writing wise. I had thought about saying, 'oh whatever, I look like that guy above and I can't think straight, I'm going to skip writing.' For whatever reason, every nerve ending in my body rejected this idea and I found myself writing while periodically spitting blood out. I like to think this makes me a REAL writer. But I'm tempted to make a sardonic joke about real writers being on narcotics all the time and ending up in treatment or shooting themselves. I'm not going to do that. Those people are not real writers. (Still, when you start thinking those 'real writers' it gets really disrupting. I don't like to think about it.)

So, since I'm a real writer, the blood sweat and tears type, and I kept writing, I have hit the spot where it gets really fun. The denouement, a French word that means 'we are close to the end, write like a manic.'

  I have five chapters left. I am currently 738 words into these last five chapters. I've been going at a pace, at least before oral surgery, of a chapter a day. We'll see if this keeps up. Truth be told, it's not too hard to do. But some small part of me wants to save this little bit until I can really appreciate it, i.e. stop walking into walls. 

I'm also going to post quick one sentence snippets of what I've written for the day. If only to make it really hit home for me that I'm almost done. Something I really can't believe is here already. 

  

Day Four and Ideas That Weren't Supposed to be Used

via

Ever since last December, I planned to adhere to the No Outline Rule. No preconceived ideas about who or where or what the story would be about would be allowed into my mind. I thought it would be a big help and stress reliever. Inevitably, a couple weeks ago I started toying with ideas for characters and a theme. That would be okay, I thought; vagueness means flexibility.

Come Tuesday, I was hesitant to start. Almost afraid. It had to happen though, so I wrote the first lines and knew they were a mistake. For the first one hundred words, nothing felt right. Nothing. I didn't have the patience to let it pass, so . . .

 . . . I ended up throwing caution to the wind and used the idea that's been in my head since last March. The novel I was supposed to outline and write over the summer but never did. The one that I thought was so cutting edge, until I learned about Estonia's relationship with communism and read the Hunger Games. It took me while, but I have accepted that new ideas really don't exist and it's good to reinvent stuff. Now that I'm willing to be flexible, not main stream, and reinventful, it's a mixed bag of historic eras and radical themes.

I'm only on page 24. Things are bound to change. I think I like it.

On a more desperate note, I hopehopehope that it turns out!

Tuesday: 1298 words
Wednesday: 2042 words
Thursday: 1191 words

Total: 4531

Woefully behind, but determined to let this happen.
 
My to do list:
~Stop comparing this year to last year
~Stay caught up in math class
~Do some word sprints this weekend
~Keep being flexible. Even though it's a preconceived idea.
~Improve my handwriting. (Ha - probably won't happen just yet.)

It's Friday night. And I'm off to repair that wordcount.

How are the rest of you doing?

How the Spontaneous Beauty of Writing Never Ceases to Amaze Me.

Writing to me is always changing. Every time I sit down to write, a different thing happens. And I'm never fully ready for it. However, I've found consistency in in this ever changing, inconsistency.

The last three times I've sat down to write, it's been different because I've approached it differently. First, I had lost the scene in my head I had to write. I had to create a new one when I couldn't recall the old one. Then, for the next time, I had the scene in my head and it came out in the most perfect way imaginable. When I've written today, it came out somewhere between those too. It wasn't particularly amazing and it wasn't frustrating either. It simply felt like a very creative chore.

What else never stops amazing me is how things suddenly connect while I'm writing. How a little something I added twenty seconds ago spirals and explodes to be this remarkably beautiful thing that I never had any clue I was creating. I tend to think of this as a skill. I like to think of it as talent or intuition. It feels more like magic than any of those things.

 My last novel I wrote (all 80,000 words of it mind you) in two months. I have very little memories of actually putting hard, backbreaking hours into writing it. Looking back, it simply feels like I breathed on a window pane and voila, I had a novel. The entire process was pure magic.

This novel is intricate to the point where I'm only aware of all the points I've created in the very back of my head. That part behind your cerebellum where you can't access your thoughts. I keep finding more and more things that connect. I'm not even aware of connecting them. They just seem to materialize from the tips of my fingers.


I guess what I'm trying to say here is writing is magic. Not a hocus pocus sort of magic that I'm-only-writing-this-for-halloween-magic. A sort of magic that you-can-see-every-day-and-still-be-amazed-by sort of magic. At least, I'm still amazed by it.


Friday
Two hours.
1,973 words.

Saturday
Three hours.
2, 512 words.

Sunday
Two hours.
1,718 words.



~Sarah

The Rogue Rebel Strikes Again

It's only six days till November 1st. Sadly, I thought it was actually seven, but then I found out that I'm counting till November 3rd, when Bones comes back on TV. That's all I'm counting too. I'd like to make a joke about how my priorities aren't in order right about now, but I actually perceive them to be completely in balance. Bones is very important.

Maybe the reason I'm not counting till November 1st is because I'm not having to wait to write. I actually have to write. It sounds very fun from what I've read. I've never made myself wait to write. I've never had to build excitement that way. It of course sounds very fun. I've always had to say to myself, 'Sarah, you are ready. Now WRITE.' Holding back and getting all giggly about my plot is something I've always done after I've written it. I may need to rethink that order.


Sadly, I did not write anything over the weekend. Yes, I know. Very pathetic. But the last three days, not counting today, I have written.

Monday
Fifteen minutes.
958 words

Tuesday
Three hours, fifteen minutes.
3,957 words

Wednesday
Two hours, thirty minutes.
1,642 words


Make what you will with those numbers.

From the Rogue Rebel

I am only calling myself that because everyone else is so excited about starting and I'm excited about crushing my character's hopes and dreams as I start the decent from my climax. It feels as if I am strangely older than everyone else because I am a few months ahead of them. I can't wait till people start writing with me. Then I won't be all alone.

I must admit, since I've been on a semester break, I've done little more than crochet, watch food shoes, and listen to the radio. I have accomplished very little on break, but I'm fine with that. It was a break after all.


Wednesday:
Two Hours.
1,380 words


Thursday:
Three Hours.
1,776 words


Friday:
Hour and Fifteen minutes.
1,559 words.


Saturday:
Nothing, I ate Indian food instead.


Sunday, hopefully something.

Plot wise, I had to go through all my notes just no to remember what I was thinking before. I had a huge scene in my head that was very pivotal before I even started writing. I have forgotten all but the just of it and have not recorded any of it what so ever. But it's okay, because the whole scene is more or less worked out in my head. I think.

I seem to keep forgetting, once I'm three quarters of the way through writing, how much I've shaped my plot to intersect in different areas. This novel is basically five different plots coming together to form one big plot. Inside that, I have subplots. Each one is, metaphorically, a loop. Each loop intertwines in every other loop. My book is a chain length fence. Or a necklace chain, if that's more elegant. Either way, it's all connected and I either forget it OR I do remember but it's in the back of my subconscious. At least I have it written down somewhere.

Sarah

Goals, Logs, and Reasons

Hmm, call me anti-establishment, but it's not accurate. I just don't like the 50,000 word necessary-ness. Can't stand it all. All my goal is for NaNo is a finished book.

Goal: Finished Book.

My book, which is already mercilessly long (I apologize in advance, printer) should be finished in roughly ten to twelve chapter. Tonight I wrote for an hour and a half.

Writing Log: Hour and a Half.
Tremendously unfocused, however.

Words: 1,162

It's not so bad. It's quite good actually. Tomorrow, I'm going to ruin my poor character's life. The worst part; I'm not even going to feel bad.

My plot for this novel is unlike anything I have written before. Usually, I am a very structured writer who keeps very detailed outlines and sketches out how many words I'm allowed to use for a conversation. Not this book. This book I'm just writing along then all of a sudden my brain goes, 'Hey, Sarah, what about a sub-plot.' Then I just throw a sub-plot in there. It's going to be a nightmare to edit. Then again, all editing is a nightmare. Not looking forward to that.


For tomorrow; ruin Harper's life, write without doing another twelve different things, start earlier, and go longer.


As Mia asked for, I've pondered my reasons for writing, or doing Nano, over the day. I'm doing Nano because it's fun to write with friends when you know you're writing with them. Writing's very solitary, and it's nice knowing you're not the only one who doesn't care about ruining your character's life. And I write because I go insane otherwise. If I don't write, my head implodes. If I don't write, I get intolerably crabby. I have to write just like I have to breathe. It's necessary to my DNA.

On another note, this book itself as felt more pressing than my other books to write. It actually feels like some divine being wants me to write this book very badly. I get these odd subliminal pushes to keep going when I get stuck.

On my author's page is a summer of my current writing project, and reading it will have this make a lot more sense. My novel is all about celebrities, and even more so about what happens when two of them mate, then spawn. It's a book about rock star offspring, and their difficulties in the world. It's also about prodigies. Over the course of writing this book, which I've been doing since late August, I have had SO MANY stories of married musicians, children of two very talented people, teenage prodigies, or on rare occasions, all of them combined into real, living, breathing people. They are constantly falling into my lap.


That to me is reason enough to powerful even the worst of writer's block.