writing
Hello, there. Remember me? You know, the one who attempts NaNoWriMo every couple years and quickly gives up every time? Yeah, I'm back again. Kind of.
I know myself far too well to think that I can write an entire novel in the month of November. I'm a high school English teacher and I'm currently taking college classes. And I've finally almost developed a semi-normal sleep schedule. There's just no way I personally can fit writing a whole novel in with that. But I am going to attempt to use this coming month to get more writing done. I don't know yet if I'll focus on one specific project or if my goal is to just write, but I'm going to attempt to write something every single day in November. Have I completely thought this through? No. Is it going to go well for me? Also no. Will I likely fail spectacularly? Most likely. Am I going to try anyway? For a few days at least. So, I guess wish me luck. Or talk me out of this. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
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This post is only about 28 days late. Oops. My bad.
Well, once again I have failed spectacularly at writing an entire novel in one month. I even tried to turn it into a competition with one of my friends in hopes that my competitive side would win out and give me the kick in the pants that I need. In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea, considering that he's a published author and I am not. (You can pick up his books Focused Insanity and Ghosts of Glory for pretty reasonable prices if you're interested. Or, check out my review of Ghosts of Glory if you're not sure urban fantasy is the genre for you.) Sorry for that brief moment of shameless self-promotion. Back to my original point! In an extremely unsurprising turn of events, he most definitely won the "who can write more words in a month" competition. Fortunately for me, he's an outrageously good person so he didn't make me do anything humiliating as acceptance of my defeat. (Had I won, I was going to make him wear a kilt and walk around the English department quoting Braveheart for a day. Bet you're all wishing I'd won now, aren't you?) However, the month wasn't a total bust. I managed to write 10,938 words, which ended up coming in at just under 50 pages. I also have a complete outline for the rest of the story, so I'm hoping to finish it before next year's attempt (and inevitable failure) at NaNoWriMo. I realize that I should have written this post eight days ago, but I hadn't decided at that point if I wanted to make this public. But, I guess now I'm going to. So pay attention, because I have a super important announcement that affects the lives of literally no one else.
I'm attempting NaNoWriMo again! Trust me; it's as exciting as it sounds. For those of you who followed my progress last year, I made it a whole five days before I abandoned the novel I was attempting. Well, so far I've held out for eight days this year, so I'd say I'm doing pretty well. My original plan for this year's attempt was to step completely out of my comfort zone. I learned that Hallmark's publishing company is open for novel submissions. The only downside? You have to write a happy ending. I've never written a happy ending. It might make me physically ill to write a happy ending. But I was determined to try! After an hour of hard work at my computer on November 1, I ended up with an impressive 200 words. For those of you who don't know, 200 words (double spaced, of course; I'm not an animal) isn't even a whole page. Writing happy characters who never face real hardships was proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. So I deleted that Word document and started over. On the second attempt, I decided to write a story I've been mentally outlining for over a year. It's dark and gritty and involves an insane number of jumps between various points of view. After about 20 minutes of typing on that story, I had over 500 words and I'd stabbed someone in the throat on page two. I found my stride, and I've been steadily working on that one ever since. I'll post an update at the end of the month to see if I actually manage to stick with it this year (don't hold your breath). And you can definitely expect a few more throat slashes before the final page. Sorry, Hallmark. Maybe next year. I've decided to continue posting about my progress on my failed NaNoWriMo attempt in the hopes that I will stay motivated if I pretend you guys are anxiously awaiting updates. So, here we go.
At this point, I'm straying pretty significantly from the original manuscript because I'm currently focusing on a character who didn't exist in the original. I'm also making a lot of changes in one of the old characters because I realize that she had absolutely no personality before. That's the danger of writing characters designed by your friends: you're filled with the constant worry that if you make the character do something bad, your friend will assume you think they would behave in that way. As my fellow writers know, however, that's not how fiction works. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy these miniature insights into my writing process. I'll attempt to post more often, but I make no promises. Today's Word Count: 974 Total Word Count: 7687 Today's Page Count: 6 Total Page Count: 41 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): She didn't think any of the kids would care that she was openly disobeying school policy by hiding medicine in her desk, but she'd prefer they didn't speculate as to why she was sporting a headache at eight in the morning. Well, as usual, I completely failed at NaNoWriMo. I only managed to write consistently for the first five days of the month, and the rest of November was filled with just a paragraph here and there. So, total, I wrote 6711 words and 35 pages. To those of you who succeeded, I congratulate you. And to those of you who are more like me, better luck next year.
If this novel is ever published, the critics will refer to my main character as "unlikable." They won't use words like "assertive" or "motivated," but they won't hesitate to throw around the word "bitch." Why? Because my main character is a teenage girl who knows what she wants out of life and doesn't really care who she has to shove out of the way to achieve her goals. And for this, she will be deemed an unlikable character. But you know what? I like her. So I don't know that I particularly care if critics think she's the type of girl they'd avoid in a crowd. And I don't really think she would care either.
Today's Word Count: 1028 Total Word Count: 5291 Today's Page Count: 6 Total Page Count: 27 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Lennon rolled her eyes as Lyric disappeared down the hall, rethinking her decision to hate this blue-haired, self-proclaimed asshole. Today's update will be extremely short because I can't come up with any brilliant revelations that occurred during today's writing. I did learn that, no matter how detailed your outline, you can still be surprised by some of the things that come out of your character's mouths.
Today's Word Count: 1031 Total Word Count: 4257 Today's Page Count: 5 Total Page Count: 22 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Lennon told the kids to keep working as she crossed to open the door to admit a sulky teenage boy. He looked a little strung-out, was in desperate need of a haircut, and reeked of cigarette smoke. Today's writing went a little more slowly than the previous two days. I'm finally making major deviations from the original trilogy. In today's section, I introduced a completely new character. She didn't exist the first time around, but she's already one of my favorite characters. I haven't completely figured out how involved she'll be in the story as a whole, but she's definitely important in these first several chapters. Without her, the main character would lose about 40% of her motivation to succeed.
Sorry that today's update is so short. It's been a long day. Today's Word Count: 1140 Total Word Count: 3227 Today's Page Count: 6 Total Page Count: 17 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): The blonde brought her hand around to scratch the back of her head, though Lennon assumed she was actually directing a rude hand gesture at the girl behind her. I've discovered the most difficult aspect of my NaNoWriMo journey: editing. I usually write every story by hand, page one to the end, and then, when it's completely finished, I type it up. That way I can edit as I type. I always tend to edit as I'm writing because I'll have an idea in the shower for something I need to change back on page 15, when I'm actually on page 87. It's usually not a big deal, but with NaNoWriMo, I don't have the luxury of time. So instead of constantly going back and making changes, I just have to plow on, writing notes for myself to go back and fix things once December rolls around.
I'm also forgoing the notebook draft for this one. Transferring handwritten pages to type is incredibly time-consuming, and as I said before, time is not something I have in this situation. It's also easier to keep track of word count when I type everything from the beginning. What problems are the rest of you running into during this lovely month of writing? Today's Word Count: 971 Total Word Count: 2086 Today's Page Count: 5 Total Page Count: 11 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Under the bleachers wasn't the most ideal place to wait for someone, and if he was being honest with himself, he found it more than a little cliche, but he wanted the privacy they guaranteed. For the fifth time, I'm attempting NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know about this, it's National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a novel throughout the month of November. I've never succeeded at sticking out the whole month, though, so we'll see if I can manage to get back in the habit of writing every day.
First, a little background on the novel I'm writing this month. When I was a senior in high school, I wrote a trilogy filled with characters loosely based off of my group of friends. They named their own characters, gave me brief physical descriptions, and got to choose what deep, dark secret their characters were hiding. It took me a year to write all three books. At the time, I was immensely proud of the trilogy and was positive that publishers would be lining up to offer me a contract. Rereading these books seven years later, I recognize them for what they truly are. Utter rubbish. So, I'm going back through and rewriting them. And I don't mean a few tweaks here and there; I'm talking about a total overhaul. Some characters have been combined, some deleted completely, some are brand new, and all of them are now significantly darker emotionally. Anyone who read the trilogy the first time around will (hopefully) not even recognize this as the same story. I'm going to try to post updates every day, but there's always a chance I'll forget every once in awhile. Wish me luck on this journey. Today's Word Count: 1115 Total Word Count: 1115 Today's Page Count: 7 Total Page Count: 7 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): "No, I actually became a necrophilic lesbian over the summer," Lyric replied, glancing around October's locker door. "Didn't I tell you?" |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
December 2017
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