50,000 and change

Did you miss me? I took a whole month off from blogging to write a novel. And I didn't actually write a a whole novel, but I wrote 50,000 words, divided into chapters, with characters and dialogue and scenes. Those 50,000 words might eventually whip themselves into shape and turn themselves into a novel. I'm going to leave them alone for a while, and see what happens. But you don't have to finish a novel to win NaNoWriMo; you just have to write 50,000 words, and I wrote 50,000 words. 

I also wrote this almost-daily NaNoWriMo diary. Soon I'll writing once again about absolutely nothing in particular. It's nice to be back. 

November 1: Time to get started. I had an idea for another novel, but that’s for next year. This year, it’s this book or bust. 

November 2: 3,800 words on day 1. I was hoping for 5,000 but almost 4,000 will do. That’s a lot of words in one day. 

November 3: I passed the 5,000-word mark, so I’m 10 percent there. Oh, and there was an election. 

November 4: You know, if I could write a novel made up of nothing but snappy dialogue, I’d be done in a week. Meanwhile, we have no idea who’s going to be President on January 20. 

November 5: Why can’t I write a novel made up of nothing but snappy dialogue? Who’s going to stop me? 

November 7: I forgot to write anything for yesterday, though I did get about 1,000 words in. And in unrelated news, we have a President-elect. 

November 8: I think I’d get more done if I stopped congratulating myself for my hilariously clever chapter titles. That’s about twenty words out of 50,000. Do the math, as they say. 

November 9: It’s Monday night. I should be writing and instead, I’m re-watching Chapelle’s monologue. 

November 10: 50,000 words in a month does not necessarily equate to a novel in a month. As long as I have the former then I can worry later about the latter. That was fun, wasn’t it? See what I did there? 

November 11: A Federal holiday. Trying to pile up the words to build a cushion. 

November 12: Yes, readers do need to know how a character makes meatballs. So I’m gonna tell ‘em. 

November 13: That meatball part was my favorite thing to write. Maybe someone will make some cookies or caulk a bathtub, and I’ll describe that, too. 1,000 words is 1,000 words. 

November 14: It’s Saturday and I want to try to get 5,000 words in. I have about 250 so far. So I only have to do that 19 more times. 

November 15: Season 4 of "The Crown" might interfere with my plans to get this thing past the halfway mark today. 

November 16: No it didn’t! I’m past 25,000 words now. The second half begins. 

November 17: I was very tempted to quit today, but then I snapped out of it and now I’m cooking with Crisco. 

November 18: You know what "cooking with Crisco" means, don’t you? That’s figurative language. Because I’m a novelist. 

November 19: Can I attend a virtual community association meeting, give a speech, and write a novel all at the same time? Only one way to find out. 

November 20: I kind of like writing fiction, but I can’t wait for this month to be over. 

November 21: I’d rather read than write. I can read 50,000 words in a day, easy. But if I’m going to get to 50,000 words written by November 30, then I have to put the book down and get going. 

November 22: I had an idea that I don’t particularly love, but it’s an idea and I’m going to write through it because 50,000 words is all I care about right now. I’ll sort out the details later. 

November 23: 14,500 or so to go. I will need to ramp up production if I want to get to 50,000 by next week. 

November 24: Sometimes you have to write on your phone, while you’re sitting in your parked car. 1,000 words. 

November 25: It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I feel a little sick, so of course I’m afraid I have the ‘rona. But I can still write. 

November 26: Turkey, wine, a nap, and almost 2,000 words. 

November 27: Today was not as productive a day as I had hoped. Day-after-Thanksgiving torpor is not compatible with productivity. 

November 28: 46,000 words seems like a lot but I have only three days, (well, two and two-thirds) to write 4,000 more, and I don’t know if I have that many left in me. 

November 29: 50,024. I made it with one day to spare. 

November 30: And now I’m not going to look at this thing for at least a month. Maybe longer. See you next year. 

Progress

It's November 2, and I'm behind schedule.  If I'm to finish writing a 50,000-word novel in the next 28 days, I'll need to step up my production considerably. I had the best intentions, of course.  I think I heard something once about good intentions paving a road that leads to somewhere; I just can't remember where.

Today was a day off from school, and my sons had friends over.  I did actually start to work, but when you hear someone say "Wait--don't start doing the whip and the nae-nae until you have the spacesuit on," how can you not stop what you're doing to investigate? And that wasn't even the most entertaining thing I overheard today.

The bad news is that I only wrote about 200 words (not counting these words.)  The good news is that I had a scathingly brilliant idea that might really pull the whole thing together.  200 down and 49,800 to go.  Onward.

Version control

There's this thing, see, called NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month.  It starts on November 1 each year; the idea is that you should commit to writing every day during the month of November, and by the end of the month, you should have a 50,000-word novel, give or take.

November, first of all, is just a hideous month in which to try to do anything major.  I suppose that writing a book would fall under the heading of "Something Major."  It also falls under the headings of "What the Hell Am I Thinking?" "I Need My Damn Head Examined," and "Bad Ideas: Part Ten Million"  Since, however, easily half of the things that I have done in my life also fall under all these last three headings, I won't be deterred.  What could go wrong?

Perhaps, if you're reading this, you have looked at a calendar and correctly observed that it's not November just yet.  In un-typical fashion, I'm thinking ahead.   I started this project last year, on November 1, and ended up with many pages of draft material that in no way form anything resembling a novel, but which contain quite a few salvageable bits and pieces that I can work into this  year's magnum opus.  Silver linings are everywhere, and while I'm almost entirely lacking in focus and concentration, I do possess better-than-average organizational skills and an excellent memory.  So I can find, pretty quickly, the pages of dialogue and the street scene descriptions from early novel chapters from last year, and part of a story that I wrote for my last class at UMUC, all in different folders, each with several individual versions, and copy, paste, and rework the parts that will be useful for this latest attempt. 

Meanwhile, a POV change from first-person to semi-omniscient third-person has revolutionized the whole thing, and so now, I might have not only snappy dialogue, but an actual story, in which things actually happen.  If not, then at least I'll get to re-read some funny things that I wrote last year.  I should be ashamed of this, but I laugh uproariously at my own jokes.  I might or might not have a novel by the end of next month, but at least I'll be entertained by my funny funny self.  I really might need my head examined. 

What was I Thinking? (Part 10 Million)

So I sat and stewed over a title for this post for at least 5 minutes, but that's no reason to think that I shouldn't be able to write a 50,000-word novel in a month, right? National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow, and I'm in.