Category: writing Page 4 of 11

Day 1

Started the day with excitement (“It’s Nanowrimo time!”), immediately followed by fretting and dithering about what to write—what title, what kind of story, what genre.

I needed a title to start from, so I tried pulling together something from my half-title lists, but I wasn’t coming up with anything that grabbed me. Then I tried a random title generator, flipped through that at least six times (that’s 36 different titles) and still nothing grabbed me. Ended up asking my husband for a title and he came back with four options, and ah ha! At last a title caught my eye.

Then I found a writing prompt. Progress! But both the title and the writing prompt were so vague that the story could be anything: Romance? Adventure? Steampunk? Science Fiction? Argh!

So I waited for an image to appear in my head, got one, and started to write. One sentence. But ZOMG this would set the tone, determine the genre, of the whole story. This was critical. I had to get this right! What if I screwed it up? What if I got it wrong?

Shoving those thoughts to the side*, I forged ahead and just kept putting words down longhand. Ever so slowly.

The day ended with 650 words and the beginning of a story that I have absolutely no idea where it is taking place (somewhere dusty and flat with a mountain in the background), no idea what the story is about, and no idea what genre it is. I’m not entirely excited about what I have (a guy in an old decrepit farmhouse, he’s disgusted about it), but I will Trust the Process. <sigh>

Onward!

20″ 375 words

20″ 275 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 40″ & 650 words

 

Day 2

Time to make the story more interesting to me, so I added a talking dog. He’s an intelligent and well-spoken dog, although he has picked up the cursing tic of our hero, but he’s giving our hero a raft of crap, so this is making the writing more fun.

I still have no idea where the story is taking place, why the hero is at the old farmhouse, what is up with the talking dog, who the woman is that the hero mentions, where the story is going, nor what genre this is—although with a talking dog, it’s probably not standard chick lit, so I can rule that genre out.

The one thing I do know is that our hero is going to Red Bluff. I have no idea why (or where that idea came from).

Chapter One is done. Speed is picking up, which is a good sign.

25″ 636 words

10″ 142 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 75″ & 1428 words

 

Day 3

Spent way too much time doing “research” on Red Bluff (it’s in California, south of Redding), and in the course of the research discovered some information about rumored Chinese tunnels under the town (for opium? cold storage? other nefarious purposes?).

This was after cleaning my writing room, because it’s terribly important that the place of creation be spotless. Now, while it was a good thing, and needed doing, let’s call it what it really was: procrastination.

Once I got my Butt in Chair (or couch, in my case), I started writing. My goal was 2000 words, and I ended up with nearly 3000. I’ll take that!

So now we have the hero, the talking dog, and a bitchy former classmate (and ex-girlfriend?) who a) is a US senator, and b) needs something from our hero (who happens to be a billionaire tech entrepreneur) for a device that can bring people back to life.

That may have been two chapters there.

The story is developing, and the speed picking up more as the story progresses.

20″ 147 words

40″ 692 words

40″ 981 words

40″ 1109 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 215″ & 4357 words

 

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*Those thoughts were like a cat that doesn’t want to be picked up: it becomes incredibly dense and suddenly weighs twice its bodyweight and you cannot move it. At all.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from folks, asking me, “So, it’s November! It’s Nanowrimo*, right? Are you writing a novel?”

And my answer unequivocally is, “YES!”

It’s a bit of a change from the short fiction I’ve been writing this year (15 short stories completed since May, and a couple of those a tad bit too long to call “short”). Another change is that this novel will be written completely PANTSED**.

What that means is that I will not plan, outline, or otherwise think ahead with this novel. This is in direct contrast to, oh, every other novel I have written.

Yes, I am scared witless.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be. I’ve been essentially pantsing since May. All of the short stories (and novellas, ahem) have been written, for the most part, from writing prompts or random titles. The only outlining, when there was any, came about after the midpoint of the story, usually when I was trying to figure out what the hell the story was. The process involved reading through the story and searching for Easter eggs***, and then somehow, by the grace of the universe, the story would start to make sense and I could finish it.

But those were stories in the 3,000-18,000 word range.

Not 50,000.

And not with a deadline.

<pause for dramatic effect>

So here I will document the process, if nothing else than as a record for myself. I think I can do this; after all, I have managed to complete Nanowrimo eight times. It’s just that the whole leaping-off-into-the-abyss feeling is rather daunting. For a planner like me, this is unsettling, to say the least.

Hang in there with me! Become my Nanowrimo Writing Buddy (my user name is “andipedia”), and/or cheer/jeer me on in the comments.

To infinity (or 50,000) and beyond!

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*Nanowrimo = National Novel Writing Month. When over 400,000 people around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. How long is 50,000 words? Think The Great Gatsby, Fight Club, The Red Badge of Courage.

**Pantsed = verb (past tense) of “Pants”: “to write by the seat of one’s pants” (i.e. to make the story up as one writes)

***Like the Easter eggs in movies or video games: some hidden detail. Also known as “Muse bombs,” where one’s Muse leaves little ‘bombs’ that can explode your creativity.