AnNoWriMo and Life

Sometimes, basic life activities are good for creative projects. The mind relaxes, new concepts connect with older concepts, and enthusiasm is restored.

Other times, activities like cleaning, cooking, and completing paperwork for money simply distract from the project.

This is Thanksgiving week here in the U.S.A. A few guests will be staying in my house, which wasn’t designed for sleepovers. I’m trying to compensate in the cleaning. On Wednesday and Thursday, the required cooking and entertaining will certainly keep me from writing much, unless I forfeit sleep.

Regardless of the holiday, I still need to apply to jobs. The good news: More jobs are opening up in my area. Though not as many as I’d expected for this time of year, last week’s postings were enough to keep me busy. I’d like to apply to several more jobs this week. The not-so-good news is that already sparse amount of writing time.

For that reason, I needed a high word count by the end of AnNoWriMo Week Three. Instead, I’m more behind than at the start of the previous two weeks. At the time of this post’s publication, my count was about 18,600 words.

As you could probably guess, Week Three wasn’t as much fun as Week Two.

Last week, I allowed a concern for details to slow my progress. In addition to reading through everything I’ve already written and making line edits (both of which are time wasters during AnNoWriMo), I also blocked the writing flow for short periods by focusing on what I don’t know (for example, military procedures). My current draft is scattered with filler terms and vague descriptions of unwritten scenes.

The filler terms I’ll have to live with until late December or January. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore the scene fillers. To catch up my word count, I need to write those scenes using imagination and the little knowledge I currently possess.

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Do you ever wish you could disconnect from daily life–as in, travel to a secluded place outside of normal space-time? What would you work on if you could?

For writers who celebrate Thanksgiving Day, do you expect the holiday to affect your current project(s)?

Review of AnNoWriMo: Week Two

Ideally, the count of my AnNoWriMo draft would be over 18,000 words at the time of this post. That means I’m about 5,000 words short, though I wrote every day last week.

This isn’t surprising. Last year for NaNoWriMo, I was ridiculously below each day’s word count until the last few days.

What does surprise me is how much fun I had in Week Two.

Before AnNoWriMo started, I was disgruntled about my writing. When friends tried to talk to me about writing standards or my stories, I might have scared them off the subject with a stream of bitter comments… That’s not how I felt last week. Instead of bitter, I felt hopeful, pleased, and excited in turns.

The scenes woven beneath my fingertips are more entertaining than I’d expected, and I’m learning about aspects of the setting and characters that I hadn’t known.

Here’s to a good third week!

Review of AnNoWriMo: Week One

Out of necessity, I wrote for AnNoWriMo on Saturday and Sunday, originally scheduled as days off. The roughly 3,000 words I wrote over the weekend weren’t enough to catch me up. On this Monday morning, I should be at 10,000 words, twice my current word count.

I’m not worried, though. There are 12 buffer days–Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays (Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving)–remaining in AnNoWriMo.

By Monday, November 16, I would like to be on-target with 20,000 words. My goal for each “work day” would be 2,000 words if I were on-target with the first week’s 10,000 words. To accomplish the second week’s goal, I’ll need to average 3,000 words (roughly equivalent to 12 pages!) each work day or a little over 2,000 words (8.5 pages) each calendar day.

According to my outline, this week will cover scenes already familiar to me. I’ve written a version of some of these scenes before. The others I’ve envisioned enough times that I expect I can write them with little thought. That’s another reason not to worry about being behind on my word count, I guess. The scenes I’ll be writing while catching up won’t be overly difficult.

Of course, I’m fighting the habit to edit as I write. I deleted entire paragraphs before remembering the NaNoWriMo technique of striking out intolerable text to preserve a word count. There are other NaNoWriMo cheats techniques I’m not entirely comfortable using:

• avoiding contractions (e.g., typing “do not” instead of “don’t”)
• writing in a wordier style (e.g., “took without first gaining permission that which he would have purchased if he had previously come to possess the money” instead of “he stole”)
• unnecessarily repeating information (e.g., “She told him not to go. Really, she insisted. ’Don’t go,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want you to go.’ He heard that she didn’t want him to go.”)

A high word count simply isn’t worth the risk of developing bad habits. Could you imagine the cleanup this winter if I consistently used the above techniques in AnNoWriMo?

Notebooks are Lovely, but…

My computer is back from the PC repair shop! More than two weeks ago, it caught several viruses. The library limits the use of their internet-connected computers to an hour a day, so I feel like I’ve fallen behind on social networking and job searching.

Talking of falling behind, I’m about 6,000 words behind on AnNoWriMo. I’m guessing at the count, because the story draft is currently all on paper and manually counting each word is annoying. I’ll type the existing pages into Word for an accurate count. Then maybe, I can catch up. Typing is easier than writing by hand when you don’t need to see corrections.

AnNoWriMo

A feverish insanity strikes the world of writers this time of year. Despite my efforts to strengthen my mind against this recurring outbreak, I’m not immune.

That’s right. I’ve caught the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) bug.

However, I’m not precisely following the NaNoWriMo rules this year. So that I can work on DeCo (a somewhat existing novel), I’m modifying the challenge.

Between November 2 and December 15, my goal is to write 60,000 words of new story draft for DeCo. I intend to work from a new outline.

This is AnNoWriMo (Ann’s Novel Writing Month), which sounds better to me than MoNoWriMo (Modified Novel Writing Month) and shouldn’t mislead anyone.

I’ll post on my status during this period. Good luck to anyone participating in the official NaNoWriMo!