pegkerr | Thank you all

Thank you all

Thank you for your encouraging messages to me on my last post. I've taken your encouragement very much to heart. I haven't given up on the book, and I'm going to try to get back to it. Kij and I have talked about trying to do the National Novel Writing Month challenge. (by the way, Kij, I found a community:

nanowrimo. Anyone participate in this last year? What was your experience like?

bohemianspirit, I think you participated last year, didn't you?

One thing I know I must do is that I must contact the architect who is designing this year's palace. I know I'm being absurdly nervous about this. I imagine if I call him up and say, "I've had two novels published, and I'm writing a new book where the hero of the book is the architect who designs the St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace and I wondered if you would be willing to talk to me," it's not the sort of call he gets every day. But I imagine he can't help but find it an intriguing prospect. Anyway, I hope so. Sometime in the next week, I absolutely promise. Hold me to it, people.

Overheard in the backseat from Miss Delia this morning: I had given her a smidgen of my lemon scone (we were on our way back from karate): "I'm like a hobbit, because I like second breakfast, too."

We're off to return books to the library and to get new ones. Then we'll go shopping for outfits for them to wear on picture day on Tuesday. Then to Pat Wrede's open house for her new home (I feel smug: I found a bottle of wine at Surdyk's that's called "Novelist" that I'm going to bring). Then

minnehaha B & K's party tonight. I'll see some of you there.

Peg

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I did it last year and had a huge amount of fun (not to mention made a couple of new friends) - but after about a week I gave up on it because my schoolwork was suffering badly and I wasn't doing well, so I prioritized. This year I'm not doing it because I'm doing a lot more creative writing than before anyone, which was my main motivation for trying last year.

I did it last year, but had to quit after about 20,000 words because I did a marathon session on Veteran's Day, which I had off, and it made my wrists very painful for most of the rest of the month. I'm going to try again this year, though, and have already started the little bit of research that I'm going to get in before 11/1.

I did NaNo last year and had a great time- got to 48,000 some words and then my story ended, so I didn't 'technically' win, but I had a week left in the month if I had wanted to find a place to pack in a particularly detailed description of a tree, or something. It's a great way to keep a book and it's ideas foremost in one's mind, which is my main problem, but you do end up writing a LOT of junk, just because in the average normal life of a person there just isnt' enough time to write, re-read, plan, shape, change, re-write 1,667 words every day. Sometimes I wrote while simultaneously doing other things. I ended up writing EVERYWHERE, too- in movie theaters, in the ten minute breaks between my college courses, while the profs were handing out papers- it's amazing how much time you find you can MAKE carving out these tiny little spaces in the day. As a natural insomniac, I also got very efficient at using the time while I fell asleep to think of what I would write the next day.

My hands did not, in fact, develop carpal tunnel or anything like that, probably because my natural sense is to write about 1,500 words and then my imagination dies on me, so I never did marathon writing sessions that would blow my wrists. In addition, as I am very prone to repetitive stress injuries, I tried to split up the writing to do some here, some there, instead of my daily quota all at once, and of course I've got a pad for my mouse hand and wrist-rests and all those good things, too.

Also, for NaNo I did something I had never done before, and worked out my cast of characters and themes ahead of time, so I knew WHO was in the story and WHAT I wanted the story to be about already. I had post-it notes that I would write interesting ideas on spread all over- five months later I woke up and found one in my bed, eerily enough.

It's definitely a disciplined activity, but it is nice to know that at the end of the day you have accomplished something creative and met a goal, that one is actively building towards a completed structure. I enjoyed it, and have signed up for this year... though with two big papers due in November, we'll see if my hands or my mind don't just give out on me. But I already have an idea and I'm using a genere as a crutch, so it ought actually to be EASIER this year. I also plan to outline this year- last year I had no plot, and that was hard.

I'm so glad you feel a bit better today.

unanon has signed up for NaNoWriMo, and I am still debating. You will not be alone!

And there's at least one person who'll follow up to find out if you've called the architect. :)

I did it last year, though I failed miserably.

nanowrimo is full of starry-eyed 16-year-olds (not that there's anything wrong with that) and is probably best checked into once in a while rather than put on your friends list.

I'm doing it this year. Thesis, schmesis ...

I'm pretty sure

kalikanzeros did nanowrimo last year. He should be at B & K's party tonight.

I tried NaNo last year, and I've decribed it here. I'll try again this year, and hope that I make an entirely different set of mistakes!

I'm trying it again this year. Last year, I ended up with only 2k words, but I had a very busy month and didn't expect to make it.

This year, I'm trying again.

However, I did not participate in any online communities for it. I was afraid I'd spend too much time reading and not enough time writing.

Yes, I did NaNo last year. I just wrote about it in my self-introduction in this thread on the NaNoWriMo Forums, and I can't recommend it enough for getting unstuck. R.B Supervisor notwithstanding ;-) I still had a blast, both in the sense of enjoyment and in the sense of dynamiting the writer's block into rubble.

I think you should give it a go. The whole point is similar to the "morning pages" Julia Cameron advocates: to just get in motion and write, to get past the inner censor and get our words, any words, on the page. Go into it with a spirit of writing Total Crap, and come out of it amazed at how much good is mixed in with the word-count-boosting "crap."

I don't recommend working on your ice castle novel for this project. Just come up with some premise or plot line that'll get you started and the process of writing that novel will hopefully get you unstuck and looking with fresh eyes at your "real" novel come December, or January.

We also have a terrific group of people in the Twin Cities who get together periodically during NaNo, and occasionally during the rest of the year. I'd look forward to seeing you there!

Also, one comment on something you said your previous post:

So strange, those who assert that science fiction and fantasy are about imaginary things, when Lois shows it is actually about truths that cut right to the core, that are so unflinching, honest and pure that they take the breath away.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me know I am not alone. Fantasy, fairy tale, myth have always been, for me, about more clearly illuminating reality, not escaping from it. I've only articulated this via repeated run-ins with people for whom it is purely escape, and who don't enjoy my endless analysis of the Truths Being Mythologized.

There's also a NaNo homepage which you might like to visit if you haven't already. I'm signing up.

As for making that phone call -- yeah I hate talking to strangers on the phone even if all I'm doing is subscribing to the newspaper. I had less trouble doing it when I did it as part of my job on the reference desk at a public library. Perhaps you could look at it as a business call and see if that helps. I don't know why some of us find talking to strangers on the phone intimidating, but we do.

Oh, and make an actual written list of things you want to ask him.

MKK

I've done NaNo the past two years, although I failed miserably. It would help if I didn't become gloomily convinced that any idea is horrid once it's been in my head more than two days, but this year I'm going to firmly remind myself that they SAY the point is to write crap, so hey, a crap idea should help!

Call the architect!

I did NaNoWriMo last year. I had planned to do it all the way through October. And even though I spent the first weekend of Nov. 2002 at WFC (thus sacrificing three writing days) and the last long weekend doing our usual Thanksgiving travel circuit, I put the fingers to the keys, made myself write, and won. (I'm a winner! woo!)

The main reason I did NaNo was that I needed to find a way to short-circuit my Inner Editor. In the past, I would write a chapter and obsessively rewrite until the words were flat and I never finished anything. NaNo forced me to just pump out words, day by day, and because "no editing" is the watchword, I felt like I was suddenly freed from my editing destruction cycle. (And now, in rewrites, I feel like I don't have to stick so closely to what I'd previously written.)

I haven't participated in the LJ community, but the NaNo forums are nice. I wasn't a big forum hound (needed to spend my free hours writing my novel, not idling away on the Internet), but it was a great place to check in, because you'd definitely see you weren't alone: there were always some other authors having the same issues you are, experiencing the same exhiliration, struggling with the same blind stupor toward the end. ;)

Personally, despite NaNo's "official position" on quantity vs. quality, I was amazed at the quality of what I wrote. There was some clunky stuff, sure, and I'm now in the midst of a massive rewrite to tighten up the plot. But it's rewriting on a story that's solid and real, and that makes all the difference.

I'm doing it again this year. :) Come on, have fun with us... *wheedles*

I have two other LJ friends who did it once before and are planning to do it again this year. I would like to, but I'm still undecided. The pressure makes me nervous.

I did it last year, and I won, and loved it. It forced me to write - it forced me to write when i was so busy that I would have thought I had no time to write. It forced me to get my novel out, to get it written. I was insanely busy, running on very little sleep (it was also midterm season) and extremely happy. It was the best thing I did all year.

I'm hoping to do it again this year, though my schedule is even more insane and I'm even busier. But I will try!

I did it last year as well. Work threw me into a tailspin (much like it is this month) in November of last year, so I got halfway through goal and then just didn't have any time in the last three weeks of the month. I thought it was great--a good way to finally set aside some time for writing. (everyone else is doing it, why aren't I?)

And why I'm not this year---GREs. And I will next year.

I did Nano too. The upside was that I announced it to the family who cut me a little (ok, a *very* little) slack. I churned out about 75,000 words in about 3 weeks, in fact, which was beyond my wildest expectations but I really tried to get into the idea of just getting it down within the month.

The downside was my 'inner editor' as someone else said. Heck, I *am* an editor so I was all too aware of bits where the structure faltered, the characterisation was way off, or even that the plot threads were less than sound. The temptation to go back and re-work was huge, but I resisted. After getting the word count confirmed (I refuse to call it 'winning') and enjoying the euphoria that lasted for a few days, I went back and stuck in some notes and yellow highlighter all over the place, with the intention of working some more... and never did. Work is partly to blame, but so is a mixture of fear (that it's bad - I waver between thinking it has potential and thinking it's lousy) and frustration (I don't have the time, the resources and particularly the *drive* to get on with it).

And yes, the hordes of barely literate teenagers taking part was... surprising. I dipped into a few novels at random, and found myself being my scathing, bitchy, editor-type self most of the time. There were a few that seemed superb, and I was tempted to spend all my limited spare time reading and commenting - but again it was a question of making a choice to write and not give into the temptation to find more good stuff to admire and learn from.

All in all, though, a great experience, although I'm torn between doing a new rough novel, working on the first one, or abandoning ship. Good sense says work on the first one. Idealist me says 'let's go play again'. Pessimist me says I don't have time to do either.

Last year I did it and failed miserably. Did it the year before, and failed slightly less miserably. This year, I'm gonna finish, dammit! I have no uni, so no spending-the-first-half-of-the-month-writing-overdue-essays. I'm excited!

I was thinking about doing NaNoWriMo too. I keep going over to the website and reading the forums. I just don't know if I could do that many words in one month...

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Thank you all

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Do NaNo!

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