(This entry will remain at the top of my weblog for the month of November.  If you’re interested in my progress during National Novel Writing Month, I’ll be posting my daily word count here.  If you’re not interested… scroll down for something that will--hopefully--be more entertaining.)

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 11:00 PM Permalink

I’d love to write a witty post filled with big, intellectual words.  However, I’m tired, my brain is mush and my vocabulary is extremely limited.  So, I’ll just say…

Woo hoo.  I wrote 50,000 words in 18 days. 

Somebody give me a cookie.

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 10:58 PM Permalink

It’s Sunday, not Wednesday, and I’m well past the half-way mark, but I’m over the hump with my NaNoWriMo book.  Today was a significant date in my month-long writing project.  Last year, I only made it until November 13th before I ran out of steam.  I also had about half the number of words written as I do now, which means I not only made it past last year’s quit date, but I’ve also been a lot more motivated to write this year.

Maybe the difficulty I’ve been having with my writing in the past couple of days was just the mid-book blues.  Or maybe it was a mental block I created for myself.  Last year, I gave up on November 14th because I didn’t have the time, energy or story to fight past it.  This year… I wrote my 2000+ words tonight and my story seems to be back on track.  I don’t hate it any more.  That may change again, but tonight I’m happy with what I’ve written.  It probably helps that I’m feeling much better than I did yesterday.

At almost 40,000 words, I know I’ll make the 50,000 word goal.  It’s a good feeling.  Even better is knowing that, despite the massive amounts of editing I need to do, I will have a solid first draft to work with.  Which is a comforting thought as I go into the second half of this book (and the last 20% of the NaNoWriMo challenge). 

Today I picked up Lani Diane Rich‘s Time Off For Good Behavior for a little inspiration.  Ms. Rich has the distinction of being one of the few participants to sell her NaNoWriMo book.  Time Off For Good Behavior was written during NaNoWriMo 2002 and was published last month by Warner Books.  It helps to have a little tangible evidence that I’m not wasting my time and I could very well sell the book I’m writing in a rush right now.

Speaking of inspiration, remember when I mentioned a few days ago that I could use a little motivation in the form of a writing sale?  Well, I got my wish today.  I arrived home from my trip to the bookstore to find out the lovely Tristan Taormino is buying a story from me for an anthology forthcoming in May 2005! 

I think my writing muse is trying to tell me something by bestowing this sale on me on this particular day.  And I think she’s saying, Don’t give up.

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 10:29 PM Permalink

I woke up very, very early this morning.  Not just early for me, but early for many normal people, too.  Like 6:30 a.m. early.  Granted, it’s not unusual for me to wake up early as a part of my usual sleep pattern. Asleep--awake--asleep--awake--asleep--awake… ahh, it’s wonderful to be an insomniac.  But no, this was a different kind of waking up, I was awake for two hours.  Two hours!  I might as well have gotten up for the day, except that I didn’t get to bed until after 2 a.m. and… well… I get grumpy when I try to function on so little sleep.  I’m not pretty when I’m grumpy.  Of course, I probably only got another solid hour of sleep after that, but it’s the effort that counts, right?  I’m competitive about trying to get my sleep in.

I digress.

So, anyway, I was awake for a long time this morning.  And after the usual thoughts: what I needed to do today; wondering what the cats were destroying that was causing such loud noises in some other part of the house (mysterious nosies as it turns out, since I couldn’t find anything that had been disturbed); trying to remember what I ate yesterday because I was really hungry for it to be so early in the morning; contemplating applying for Canadian citizenship, you know, the usual early morning thoughts-- I started thinking about my NaNoWriMo book.  And I started to get excited.

No, not that way. 

I have been waiting for the motivation to wear off.  I have been waiting for the story to fall apart.  I have been waiting for the inevitable moment when I hate what I’m writing.  One week into it, and it hasn’t happened.  And I didn’t even feel compelled to add “yet” to that sentence.  Go figure.

In fact, as I lay nestled among the quilts and flannel sheets and down pillows and cats (who had returned from their battles to nap), I started coming up with new scenes, new ideas for advancing the plot (did I mention, I have a plot?  I’m not just writing words!), new dialogue for characters.  It made me want to get up and start writing.  I didn’t, but I thought about it.  If you knew me, and how I am in the morning, you’d know what a big deal it was for me to just want to get up and write.  Wow.

This is the feeling I didn’t have last year when I signed up for NaNoWriMo.  I don’t know if it was because I didn’t really have a clear idea what I was writing or because of the hundred other things I had going on last November, but after the first three or four days, my momentum started slipping.  I tried to hang onto it, but by the middle of the month it was gone.  Once I took a couple of days off from writing, there was no getting back on track and I quit.

Of course, I’m only a week into this year’s novel and there is still time for it to fall apart.  I could very well finish this month the way I finished last November-- with several thousand words of drivel.  It could happen.  But for now, I am bouyed by a sense of accomplishment-- over 18,000 words and I’m pretty sure I’m good for another 10,000 just with the scenes I plotted out in my head this morning.  I would like to hit the mid-point by Wednesday, November 10.  I know I’m being overly ambitious in hoping to hit the 50,000 word mark by November 23 (Sheri’s arrival date), but right now I think I can do it.  I’m motivated, I have a story and I’m excited.

Okay, maybe a little bit that way.

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 10:53 AM Permalink

I made my word count early tonight, but I’m still up at 1:30.  Old habits die hard. 

Good news is, I broke 10,000 words-- or 20%-- in four days!  Bad news is, it’s all uphill from here.  I know it’s crazy to try to write a book in a month.  I know it smacks of a being a hack and that, having not only written several manuscripts, but actually having sold one book and dozens of other pieces of fiction and nonfiction-- I really shouldn’t need this kind of writing exercise to motivate me to write a novel.  Having admitted all of that, the truth is this is a good push-- the push I need-- to get back into writing daily.  I fall away from it so easily, yet when I do it and stay focused on it, I can turn out a respectable daily page count (or word count).  The question of my life is, why can’t I do this every day, without some gimmick to motivate me?  If anyone has the answer, I’ll give you a cookie.

I have written about my love/hate relationship with the writing process before.  I love having written, I hate the writing.  Maybe hate is too strong a word.  Mostly I don’t like the feeling of helplessness and stupidity when I’m trying to find the words I need and they won’t come.  This feeling of incompetency happens so often it makes me question whether I’m really a writer at all.  Yet, I have the writing credits to prove that I am a writer.  Not a famous one, not a wealthy one, not even an extremely well-published one, but I have written--and sold-- enough to prove this isn’t just a fluke.  I can write-- and I can write a variety of things.  I just wish I believed in myself every day that I write something rather than only on the days when I sell something.

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 12:29 AM Permalink