More lessons from NaNoWriMo

As you can see by the progress bar at the top of the page, I've officially reached the halfway point in my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) goal of writing a 50,000 word novel. I've learned a few more things about writing during these first couple of weeks:

1. It really helps to have some quite "thinking" time before you get started writing. I've tried starting each day by taking my pretty journal book and making notes before I get started. It gets me set up for what I want to write, and gets me in the mood as well. It also invariably attracts the cat, since I sit in the front room which rarely gets used otherwise.
2. It is possible to write 2000 words a day and also work on assignments. It's a lot easier when the assignments are copyediting (ie fact-checking and review) instead of original writing, because it's two different types of thinking and it's a relief when I give up on the business articles and get back to my novel.
3. I'm loving my whole "encyclopedia article" structure, because I just make my list of words and write. Not having to think about plot (except during early morning thinking time) sure makes the writing a lot easier.
4. One can fit in writing while one is sitting outside watching kids practice the marching band show, or inside waiting for them to finally get ready for bed to turn lights out. It's not easy, but it is possible. One must avoid skipping ahead, though; although this is usually a great technique to avoid writer's block, if one is extremely busy one tends to forget to go back and fill in the holes.
5. One cannot fit in writing when one is sleep deprived. Actually, you might manage to fit it in, but you'll just end up staring at the screen as the cursor blinks hypnotically and your nose ends up typing "hjkjhkjhjkhjkhjkghjkhjkjhkh" when your head hits the keyboard.

I've gotten a bit behind my target of 2K a Day, but I'm close to the average of 1667 words a day, and hope to get further ahead as we get to the end of the month. I'm almost done with the "M" section (letter 13 of 26), but I figure "O" and "Q" will only be half-sections, so I'm still making progress. We'll see if I last with Thanksgiving coming up; I hear there are already pies to be eaten.

Photo of the Week--11/16/09

You know this look, don't you? The one that says, "I don't care how cool the ocean looks in the background, I'm tired of climbing stairs and just want to get it over with. No, I won't smile for the camera, because I know in ten years you'll post this photo on the internet, and everyone will think I was a Harry Potter wannabe, even though it the first book was barely out and I hadn't read it yet. I don't care about King Arthur and whether he really lived at this castle, just get on with it!"

Oh well. Maybe you guys will appreciate the Cornish scenery and the poetic ruins of Tintagel despite the grumpy looks.

Confessions of a Marching Band Mom

Marching Band has taken over my life! At least, it will for the next few days:

• Tuesday: make sure I have all the supplies I need for our Nationals trip. This means trips to the bank (Boy needs cash!), the store (Boy needs socks!), and the vet (cats need daycare!), although since the weather's nice I can make the trip by bicycle and get my daily exercise, killing two birds with one stone. Then I have to do laundry and collect all the things I need to pack, in case I missed something and have to go back to the store. This evening, I have to drop off the boys' bedrolls for the truck, and deliver craft fair signs to people who've agreed to help put them out this weekend. Somewhere in there I have to fit in balancing the checkbook, getting some copyediting done, and not getting behind on NaNoWriMo, before I head to flute choir practice.
• Wednesday: deliver Boy and his luggage to school by 6:30 am. Do my own packing, get in one last TKD training session, maybe some writing work, gas up and wash the car, and meet the boys at school before driving down to Indianapolis in the evening. Arrive by 11 pm and get the cabin ready for 22 girls to arrive around midnight.
• Thursday: Get the girls up before 7 am. (Gack, but at least I'm not on breakfast duty today.) Ride with the kids to the practice field, hang out, maybe get some writing done?, hang out some more, help cook dinner, go back to camp and supervise cabin full of teenage girls.
• Friday: Oh God, why did I volunteer to do this? Up before 5:30 to help cook breakfast, then accompany kids to rehearsal, back to camp, and then out to Lucas Oil Stadium for preliminary competition. Watch most excellent show, maybe a couple others, then accompany kids to mall for the evening. A break! At a mall! Where 98 high school bands will probably be! (Imagine my exclamation points wilting here.) Back to camp and lights out.
• Saturday: More chaperoning, plus more competition—hopefully both semi-finals and Finals. Accompany band back to camp at 11 pm for pizza celebration. Lights out by 1 am if I'm lucky.
• Sunday: Leave camp early (7:30 or 8) to get back home in time to prepare for flute choir concert in the afternoon. Get home and crash. Hopefully, I'll have enough volunteers to put out signs so I won't have to place any myself today.

If you don't hear much from me on the blog this week, you'll understand why. I'm not sure I'll have internet access, let alone time to post. I'm with the band! At least, whatever part of my brain still working is.

Photo of the Week--11/9/09

Ah, summer in Portugal: warm weather, blue skies, and lots and lots of pigeons to chase. We found these in Lisbon's Praça do Comércio (Commerce Plaza), a large plaza near the Tagus River waterfront that housed the Royal Palace until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. Talking about that earthquake was a highlight for Boy, who at the time loved anything to do with disasters. We also visited the ruins of a church destroyed that day. It must have put him in such a good mood that he was ready and eager to chase those fat Praça pigeons.

Lessons from NaNoWriMo

I don't have a lot of time to post, as I need to get cracking on my NaNoWriMo novel, but I'd thought I'd list some interesting strategies I've learned while trying to write 2000 words a day:

1. It is perfectly acceptable to plagiarize yourself. If you character wants to talk about something you've already written about in your blog, copy and paste it into the novel, rearrange the words a little bit, and voilà! 66 words!
2. It is perfectly acceptable to plagiarize quote someone else. Hey, maybe your character likes poetry, so quote the last stanza of a poem and lookee! Another 65 words!
3. It is perfectly acceptable to use horrible crutch words that you would otherwise search for with an eagle-eye and prune ruthlessly, like an overzealous topiary gardener. If you use words like "so" "just" or "little" ten times in one paragraph, who cares! That's ten extra words! (Besides, since my novel is told in first person, those words are my characters' crutches, not mine.)
4. It is perfectly acceptable to play with structural quirks to build word count. As I mentioned before, my character is telling her story in encyclopedia format. She gives a kind-of real definition, then writes a couple paragraphs explaining what the subject means to her. I'm prefacing each of these explanations with the phrase: "Editor's note." I may delete those if I decide to revise, as they may be unnecessary; but for now, I start each day by listing 6 to 8 words to define, each followed by the phrase "Editor's note." That's an extra 12 to 16 words, even before I've started engaging my brain.

After four days, I have over 8000 words, which is the kind of progress I'd hoped for. Even better, I'm having a lot of fun writing those 8000 words, which means I'm getting something out of the whole NaNoWriMo experience. We'll see if I feel the same way at the end of the month, after I've probably fallen behind and feel horribly pressured to reach 50,000 words by the 30th, but for now, the experiment is going well.

This is only a test...

... had this been an actual blog post, you would have been notified by your emergency broadcast system. Or something like that. I know my posts have been few and far between over the last month, but I've been very busy. This year I've invoiced ten times more assignments than last year, and there was another deadline last week, so I was busy focusing on that rather than the blog.

I'm currently between assignments (November's hasn't arrived yet, although I'm already booked for December, January, and half of February), but there's something else taking up my writing time: NaNoWriMo! For those of you unfamiliar with this weird acronym, it stands for "National Novel Writing Month." The idea is that for everyone who ever thought, "Gee, I should write a novel," to take the month of November and scribble down a 50,000 word novel. (Which is very short for novel, but not so much for the kids/YA genre, which is what I'm working in.)

Now, I'm not one of those who has never finished a novel—I have two finished (and revised at least once or twice), and a third that is three-quarters written and all the way plotted. But I have found it difficult to find time for writing fiction, among all the extra assignments I've taken this year, so I see NaNoWriMo as a chance to get back in the fiction habit, as it were. If I were to write every day in November, I would need to write around 1733 words a day; since I know I'll have days when I can't write (chaperoning band nationals next week, and during Thanksgiving), I'm aiming for at least 2000 on the days I do write. So far I've got 3750 for the first two days, which isn't on target but is better than I thought I'd do since I played a concert on the 1st and I spent half of yesterday working on sign lists for the marching band craft fair.

So you can see I may not have as much time this month to write in the blog; NaNoWriMo is blatant permission for me to write meaningless blather, which mitigates the need for the blog. But I'll pop in with some posts here and there; keep posting weeking travel photos; and maybe occasionally write an actual blog post, even when I'm writing about not blogging, as I've done today. I will be reviving Janespotting soon, having checked out Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (!) from the library, so look for that when I have a few spare minutes. But for now, I'm off to write a crappy novel! Wish me luck!

Photo of the Week--11/2/09

Ah, Ireland. For good reason it's called the "Emerald Isle," what with all the grass and moss and lovely natural things. Out in the countryside there weren't any pigeons for Boy to chase; instead he took this opportunity during our visit to Achill Island, off the west coast, to goof off for the camera. More likely he was just glad for a chance to get out of the little lime green car we drove all around the country ... for some reason, that car is one of the few things he remembers from our early travels. Maybe because it was a very, very ugly green ... unlike the beautiful green landscape here.