NaNoWriMo

  • NaNoWriMo,  Weekend Warrior,  Writing

    On Scheduling . . .

    So, yeah.

    I’m not what you’d call great at scheduling and planning. I’m pretty god-awful at it, in fact. I go through my time and make nice little charts (I’m great at charts) showing my work time, commute time, sleep time, etc., and color-code for when I can write . . .

    And then, generally speaking, I waste that time on Facebook, YouTube, or listening to podcasts. And to be frank, I don’t consider those complete wastes of time, per-sé. They are entertainment, and entertainment is important to me. But I tend to let them take up time that I should be spending doing . . . more productive things. Like writing.

    In mid-August, I’d finally had enough of it. I’d had The Idea™ earlier that week. The one that made all the pieces in my novel fall together, and tie loose ends in a bow, and make my characters make sense and fit in the world . . . it was mind-blowin’, I tells ya. I’d come home from work every day planning that tonight, by gum, I’d get that down on ‘paper’!

    And then it would be midnight or 1 AM and I would have nothing to show for the evening. As usual. But hey, I’d get it tomorrow

    One of my problems is perseverance. I have firefly enthusiasm for a project for a few nights . . . and then a favorite creator on YouTube releases a new video, or there’s a new Steven Universe episode . . . And then, of course, I’ve broken the chain. So the next night, it’s easier to say, “Well, I’ll just start again fresh next week.”

    Only next week comes . . . and I don’t start.

    Another problem is lack of accountability. I may write anywhere from 250 to 5000 words in a session, but I don’t keep track. Nor do I keep track of how much time I spend writing. It would be nice to have that information. But no one was making me do that, and, sure, it’s information that’s nice to have, but is it really required? Nnnoooo . . .

    The only two things that have ever worked for me, in fact, are NaNoWriMo and Weekend Warrior.

    Why do those work? Analysis time! (Charts may be my favorite, but lists are easily #2!)

    NaNoWriMo

    • has a strict start and end time (November 1 – 30)
    • has a strict word-count (50,000+)
    • has a daily component (1666 words per day)
    • is self-reported until the final day
    • is uploaded for verification on the final day
    • is during the second worst month possible because of the holiday at the end (in the US)
    • requires extensive planning beforehand if there’s any hope of getting anything that resembles a coherent story at the end

    Weekend Warrior

    • has a strict start and end time (Friday 9 pm to midnight Sunday)
    • has a participation requirement of reading and flash-critiquing anywhere from a dozen to two-dozen 750-word stories each week for five weeks
    • stories are rated on a (totally subjective) 1-10 scale and there’s a ‘winner’ per team each week and for each team for the entire contest
    • has a strict word-count (750 words or less per weekend)
    • is anonymously uploaded for word-count verification and distribution to other participants
    • has prompts that are given on Friday night
    • stories “must” spring forth from one or more prompts, even if they’ve been edited out of the final version
    • stories should be a story — beginning, middle, end, character, conflict, resolution — in 750 words
    • stories are expected to be (very broadly) science fiction, fantasy, or horror

    And boy, can I do it when I get into that mindset. I’ve gotten anywhere from 53,000 to over 122,000 words written in November for NaNoWriMo. I’ve completed a story for almost every week of Weekend Warrior for four or five years running. I can do it. I just don’t

    In short, I need structure. Deadline. Planning. Mindset. Goal. Accountability. Statistics.


    There’s a Google Doc spreadsheet that Tony Pisculli created a few years ago, called the Magic Spreadsheet. He came up with many formulae to gamify writing. You write words each day, and you get extra points for longer chains and consistency. You level up based on those points, and each level requires that you write a higher base number of words per day in order to count it as part of the chain.

    I thought this was what I wanted: the game aspect. Competing against other people and myself.

    But I hated having to go to the site and find my lines and put the info in. And it was, frankly, disheartening to go there on a day when I’d written 250 words and struggled to get them out, only to see others with 6000, 7000, 8000 words for that same day.

    So I did what any Excel-groupie would do: I downloaded a copy of the sheet for my private use. I studied it in detail so I could figure out what he did. And I tweaked it and made it my own in a few ways that he either didn’t think of or didn’t want to do. I added a time component to it. I added calculations for average words per hour and such. I even had a couple of friends ask me for their very own copy of the spreadsheet, which I happily provided.

    That would work for about a week, maybe two . . . and then I noticed that I was writing at 1 AM or 2 AM, right before bed, as a “Oh, right, I need to write something before bed or I’ll break my chain!” thing.

    Not ideal.

    So I took a suggestion from . . . I think it must have been either Mur Lafferty or some other writer who podcasts: if my problem is podcasts, Facebook, and YouTube, the obvious answer is: those have to go.

    But I have zero self-control. I think this post proves that beyond any shadow of a doubt. :)

    I needed a third party to impose that self-control. Short of deleting my account off Facebook, unsubscribing from every channel I subscribe to on YouTube, and forsaking all my podcasts, I didn’t see a way through.

    And again, words of wisdom from someone on some podcast, probably again with Mur Lafferty because she’s awesome: there are apps that cut off your Internet. Or limit your use of it in very specific ways.

    I located browser extensions for all my computers (Windows 10 work, Windows 10 home, Macbook Pro) for each browser (I know me: if there’s a browser that has the extension and one that doesn’t, I’ll use the one that doesn’t) that turns off my access to certain sites during a range of time. And for my phone (iPhone 7 Plus), it conveniently just updated to iOS 12 with Screen Time, which permits me to shut off apps during a time span. Now, at 10 pm, if I’m still watching YouTube, using Facebook, or listening to podcasts, it abruptly kicks me off and says, “Shouldn’t you be working?” (I had to tell it my workday starts at 10 pm and runs until 7 AM in order to get this to work.)

    WasteNoTime
    WasteNoTime

    I’m happy to report that this has actually worked. Quite well, in fact. I’m typing this slightly before 10 PM, in fact. In the next week or two, I might edge that time from 10 PM down to 9 PM, or even 8 PM. I’ve unsubscribed from some YouTube channels that I deemed to actually be a waste of my time and not very entertaining.

    Since August 18th, when I randomly decided to start this, I’ve written nearly 50,000 (48,633, not counting this post) words. Most of these have been for the novel I’ve been trying to find my way through for a long time. I plowed through almost two weeks of world-building, just typing away as fast as I could think. Ignoring spelling and grammar errors. What I wrote is an atrocious mess of stream of consciousness, but it forced me to confront the issues that I kept avoiding before. My characters’ flaws. Their backgrounds. Their motivations. How magic actually works in my universe. What the antagonist is up to and why. Side characters. Societal implications of the sudden appearance of magic.

    And then, after all that, I wrote an 11,000(ish)-word outline for the novel. From cover to cover, mostly in order. Took me seven days.

    And I don’t hate it. I can’t emphasize this enough. I have written things out before, but I hated them, because I couldn’t figure out some stuff, and I’d give up in frustration. But without the shiny-shiny lure of Facebook and YouTube and podcasts . . . I basically had to write or go to bed, and who wants to do that at 10 PM? (The last time I went to bed at 10 PM regularly I was in grade school and being forced to do so by my parents.) Have I mentioned I’m a creature of the night?

    As soon as the outline was done, I took a two-night break to write a flash piece, then jumped right into the book and started fleshing out the outline. I use Scrivener, so this was fairly easy.

    I’m deep in Chapter 2 of my novel, and paused again to write a short story that popped into my head one night after I went up to bed, because it was knocking on the inside of my skull wanting out.

    Tonight, this blog post is my words. You’ll see the edited version, but the unedited version will probably be something around 2,400 words, and that definitely puts me over my Level 2 limit of 300 required words for the day on the Magic Spreadsheet.

    For the first time in a long, long while, I feel like I’m enjoying writing. It doesn’t hurt that I got The Idea™ just before deciding to embark on this little adventure. It also doesn’t hurt that a friend of mine gave me an awesome idea at dinner the other night which I will unabashedly incorporate into my world and make it my own. (Thanks, Steve!)

    I’m also using an app on my phone to track my writing time. It’s for freelancers / contractors, so I defined a job called “Writing” and set the pay to minimum wage for the US. The final step of this was to actually set up a bank account and transfer money from my main checking account into it for any time I spend writing. Thirty minutes? Sure. Three hours? Better. My eventual goal for this is to use this money and only this money to attend writing-related events, such as WorldCon or Paradise Lost or anything else that comes up. If I haven’t written enough to “afford” it, then I have no business doing it.

    Yes, this is going to severely curtail fun things like WorldCon. But after a year in which I traveled to Texas, Massachusetts, and freakin’ Finland for writing-related events and had to fork out a lot for car issues . . . not going to WorldCon in San José this year, or Dublin next year, or New Zealand the year after that should leave me with a surplus for whatever comes up in 2021. And I’m (mostly) okay with that. (Mostly.) It’s time, as they say, to shit or get off the pot. And this includes submitting stuff. But I’ll get to that in another post. I have some more goal-setting to do.


    I’m fully aware that this post makes me sound like something of a Loony Toon, having to trick myself into doing a thing I supposedly like instead of other things I apparently like more, but maybe there are other people out there for whom this is also a problem. And maybe those people will see this and feel motivated by it. Weirder things have happened. The single most-visited page on my blog is the one where I reviewed a tiny little site called 750Words, which was another in a long line of attempts to find that magic something that worked to make me write daily.

    This blog post was written on my fortieth uninterrupted day of writing at least 250 (Level 1) or 300 (Level 2) words — new words — every single night. I do not think I have ever written consistently for forty days straight. I’ve even begun to start writing early and not waiting until I’m kicked off sites or have my phone’s apps go dark.

    They say that if you do anything for 21 days it becomes a habit. For me, that’s not true. It’s more like 60 days. :) So give me another month at this and maybe I’ll only use Facebook and YouTube after I get my words down for the day. Weirder things have happened!

    1. Weekend Warrior is an annual contest that takes place over five consecutive weekends beginning in January of each new year. I explain it a little in the text after this footnote. It’s on CodexWriters.com, but you have to be a member of Codex to get to it, and to get into Codex, there are requirements.
    2. It is called WasteNoTime.
    3. Right now, it’s set to Facebook and YouTube. I may include others if I start to notice myself hanging out on something else too much.
    4. Edited it — the most time-consuming part, thanks to formatting and links and dealing with WordPress’s new damned editor — and am finishing up at right around 12:15 AM.
    5. It’s called HoursTracker.
    6. Writers tend to think in terms of cents-per-word. A professional level market will pay $0.06/word and up for stories of Novelette length and below, often with a reduced rate or wordcount limit for novellas. Semi-pro and fanzines are below that. Novels will get — on average — around $2500 to $5000 for a beginner, and going up — or down, alas — from there. Expect to sell around 250 copies if you’re lucky; more if you’re a fantastic marketer. You don’t go into traditional publishing to get rich. You can do better selling independently if you write very fast, publish ebooks only, put out multiple novels per year, and have avid fans who like your writing and will buy whatever you put out and demand more. People are making hundreds of thousands per year doing this. More power to them. I’m not there, yet. :) Not sure I ever will be.
  • NaNoWriMo,  Writing

    NaNoWriMo 2015 Redux

    I-have-not-failed---Edison by Inspiyr, on Flickr
    Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License   by  Inspiyr 

    Let me start out by saying that, from the stated goal of NaNoWriMo, I failed. I wrote just over 20,000 words, which is my least successful NaNoWriMo run since 2007.

    HOWEVER.

    And it’s a big ‘however,’ as you can see by the font and bold and . . . SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

    Anyway . . . I wrote 20,000 words that I do not hate. This is something that I’m still having a problem believing. I haven’t liked anything I’ve written for a long time, aside from some flash pieces. So the fact that I have this foundation to work with is heartening, so I don’t really consider this a loss so much as a good start.

    Now, I just have to keep my momentum going. I have characters, a plot, clues I have to drop, lead-ins for the next two books to subtly hint at . . . and now I just need to put butt in chair, hands on keyboard, and follow through. Which is easier when you sit down and don’t hate what you’re writing. Hence the lack of posts on this blog over the last . . . long time.

    For added incentive, I sort of have to get this to a point I like before too long. I am going to Paradise Lost VI in San Antonio, TX, in April, 2016. In the critique track. So I have to have, you know . . . a thing to critique. I think it’s something like the first x chapters or the first x,000 words, plus a synopsis. I think I have enough that I could conceivably do the synopsis now, and maybe even use that as the outline for writing the rest of the novel.

    Me? Do an outline? I’d be practically unrecognizable!

    A while back, I posted something about J. K. Rowling’s method for plotting the Harry Potter series. After I posted that, I played around with the format until I landed on something I could maintain. I have a spreadsheet with columns for all my plot lines and rows for days/chapters. It was surprisingly easy to lay out several linear plot lines. I’ve known what has to happen in my story for a long time. It’s all that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff where you have to smush them together into something coherent that was the issue. Because I kept trying to do that on the fly. I’ve been a pantser for as long as I’ve been writing. This whole ‘planning’ schtick is . . . hard.

    There are twenty-one work days in December (plus four weekends and a two-day work holiday). Of those twenty-one, I will be at the office for only eleven. This means that for roughly two thirds of December, I will be at home. With nothing to do. Except write. If, that is, I can avoid the time-sucks that are Facebook and Twitter. And Codex. And Goodreads. And Reddit. And YouTube. And podcasts.

    I may have a . . . slight problem.

    Maybe what I’m leading up to is to take a month off social media to work on actual things that matter to me, or so I keep telling myself.

    In other news, by the way, I have been submitting one story for publication. I’m currently waiting on a rejection from its fourth market so I can send it on to the fifth one. The waiting is the hardest part, because some markets have wait times measured in months. And this is a humorous, science fiction, flash piece. The number of markets is quite limited. :) I have other pieces I’m working on to get ready for submission, and will start those as soon as I think they’re done. And then have one or two people look them over to make sure there’s nothing else I can cut.

    I could set an actual goal for December, if I put my mind to it. Something like . . . let’s say, getting two — no, three — more stories (of any length) ready for submission before 31 December.

    There! I did it! I set a goal. An actual goal! And it’s a SMART goal, I think.

    Which, of course, gives me the perfect opportunity to put a progress meter up for the actual writing of my novel, and for the SMART goal.

    No, it’s not an elaborate form of procrastination. Really.


    1. This is not me being a pessimist. This is me being realistic. :) I’m not at the level in my writing where stories get accepted more than rejected, yet. Because I don’t write and submit as much as I should.
    2. Specific (3). Measurable (stories ready for submission). Achievable (it’s a stretch, but I can do it). Relevant (to my personal goals; duh). Time-bound (by December 31st, 2015).
  • NaNoWriMo,  Writing

    NaNoWriMo? Again? Already?

    NaNoWriMo 2015 Participant Banner
    NaNoWriMo 2015 Participant Banner

    Last year (2014), I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo because . . . frankly, I 1) had no new ideas, 2) wasn’t particularly enthused with the thought of doing it again, and 3) wasn’t sure NaNoWriMo had anything left to teach me.

    And this year, I was in pretty much the same mindset. Until.

    Three things occurred roughly simultaneously, then a fourth one happened that pushed me to the point where I am right now; i.e., considering doing NaNoWriMo again for 2015. I’m not 100% sure, mind you, but . . . there are processes that are . . . um, processing. In my brain.

    Thing the First. I went to WorldCon, thoroughly enjoyed myself (other than the trips to and from the con, that is), and decided pretty much on the spur of some moment or other to go ahead and register not only for the 74th WorldCon in Kansas City, MO in 2016, but the 75th WorldCon, as well. That one’s in Helsinki, Finland, in 2017. I’m quite excited about both of those, actually. I’ve already registered for 74 and paid my dues and all that. I’m applying for a passport in about a month for the trip to Helsinki. I already have flight alerts for both trips set up so I can get good prices. Alternatively, I check the price of driving to Kansas City, MO each Monday to see if it’s more than the price of the flight. If not, I may just drive.

    Thing the Second. A friend (Karl) happened to mention on Facebook that registration was open for Paradise Lost 6 Writers Workshop. Paradise Lost is only open to people who have participated in certain other workshops (Viable Paradise, Taos Toolbox), or who are a member of Codex Writers. I am both a graduate of Viable Paradise (in 2012) and a member of Codex Writers. So yay.

    Once again, on the spur of some moment I wasn’t aware of until it had passed, I registered for it. It’s in San Antonio, TX in April of 2016. I already have a flight alert for the trip set up so I can get a good price. Alternatively, I check the price of driving to San Antonio, TX each Monday to see if it’s more than the price of the flight. If not, I may just drive.

    Thing the Second-and-a-Halfth. When I registered, there was the option of registering for the workshop only or the critique track. For critique, you have to read some other people’s submissions and critique them, and submit something for critique yourself. The workshop is in April. On the spur of yet another moment, I threw caution to the wind and clicked on “critique track.”

    Which means one thing: I better get my butt in a chair and my hands on a keyboard.

    Thing the Third. I started reading — and very much enjoying — Debra Jess‘s wonderful book Blood Surfer: A Thunder City Novel. It’s an urban science fiction . . . fantasy . . . kind of a thing. Basically, super heroes plus romance. It’s very good, so far. I’m going slowly because I’m also reading another friend’s novel at the same time, this one for critique.

    Thing the Fourth. A lot of my blog posts contain this phrase, but it is, nonetheless, true: so, I was in the shower . . .

    So, I was in the shower and this . . . idea just popped into my head. Not quite fully formed, but my brain decided to dwell on it during my commute to work. And while I was at work. And on my drive home from work. And as I lay in bed that night waiting for sleep. And the next morning. And . . . well, you get the point. And then, this morning, after the spectre of NaNoWriMo had been broached by the Forum Writers (my standing Tuesday night critique group), my brain went into overdrive and I dictated many ideas into my little digital voice recorder on the way to work.

    I won’t go into great and glorious detail on what the idea was, but I will give you the first sentence that was what popped into my head in the shower that morning: “Hero Man often wished the press had given him a more . . . well, magnificent name.”

    That’s all you get. :)

    I will, however, add that all this comes just two short weeks until November 1st, which leaves me very little time to actually plan out anything, which is where my reluctance to commit comes in. Also, my Apple MacBook died. With Scrivener on it. I write everything in Scrivener. So I need to get a new laptop, regardless.


    1. I keep meaning to post a write-up of what happened at the con. And I have started the posts. But I keep having interruptions. (Stupid work. Stupid real life.) But I’ll get to them. Eventually. Probably.
    2. Debra was in Viable Paradise with me in 2012.
    3. I listen to podcasts on the way to and from work. The one I listened to this morning happened to be a back episode of The Round Table Podcast during which the guys brainstormed and workshopped a superhero novel. If I believed in such things, I’d think this was the Universe sending me a strong message. Good thing I don’t believe in that sort of thing. :)
  • NaNoWriMo,  Personal,  Writing

    NaNotWriMo 2014, Day 18: Organized Chaos

    ?Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, b by katerha, on Flickr
    Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License   by  katerha 

    A little past the halfway point of the month, I’m pleased with my progress. An embarrassing amount of stuff has been removed from the room. Some of it books that went into another room. Some of it trash that is still being dealt with. A lot of it needs shredding. And I do mean a lot; there’s no way I could do it with my small shredder at home, so I’m taking it with me to work in small batches and dropping it into the shredder bins at work.

    What remains in the room has been put into strategically placed themed piles.

    For instance, the computers, the printer, all the cables, keyboards, mice, and other assorted computer-related equipment are all in one corner. The read books are all stacked together. All the souvenirs from cons are together. The bags are all together. The notebooks are all together. The desk toys are all in the same box.

    And the Pisa-esque, somewhere-between-two-and-three-foot tower of past critiques perches precariously at the precipice of the portal.

    Mocking me.

    Perusing that will be the most time-consuming part, considering some of it is a novella I wrote, had critiqued, and then promptly lost off my hard drives. But once I transcribe whatever commentary I choose to keep from critiquers long past, the gods of recycling will receive them as my tribute.

    I still gotta find places for all this stuff, mind you. But the paper is a huge part of it. And I’m making major inroads on it.

    There are also an awful lot (most of a seven-foot shelf) of computer books that are now obsolete. Those probably need to either go away entirely or be donated or rehomed to someone who will use them. Anyone want a Visual Basic 5 book? SQL 6.5?

    It’s actually getting harder and harder to FIND things to disposition because at this point “disposition” means “find a permanent storage solution,” and I’m not quite to that point, yet.

    As for the other goal . . .

    It’s getting there, I think. Every time I run across a scribbled note for the novel (series), I transcribe it in one place and toss the original. I have quite a file of ideas I forgot, a good number of which are really great ideas that I’m going to work in as I write my outline and refine it.

    I know the endings of all three books. And the beginnings of two of them. I know a good deal of what’s going on in the world of my story, and realized that I’ve been ignoring a whole category of conflict that, in retrospect, I’ve been just stupid to ignore. I know the motivations of two of my bad guys.

    Now I just need to come up with some more case characters and secondary characters to play in my world. The Magical Crimes Unit is a new division, after all, and has to share space with the other FBI agents, some of whom aren’t as friendly as others.

    Internal strife. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

    And lastly, I’ve cut severely back on my YouTube viewing. I don’t think I’ve watched a single video in about a week. I’ve read, I’ve listened to podcasts, and I’ve wasted time on the Internet in other ways, but I’m definitely scaling back on YouTube.

    Onward and upward!

  • NaNoWriMo,  Personal,  Writing

    NaNotWriMo 2014, Day 7: Treasure!

    Treasure!

    Last night, I was up fairly late catching up on a podcast and some YouTube channels. When I went up for bed, I kept my self-promise to disposition at least one thing in the office. Since I wasn’t leaving again until the morning, I decided to shuffle some things around that I knew would either be staying in the room or staying in the room until later. Call it “consolidation” of similar items.

    I moved all of my old computers into one corner. With the old printer and the old speakers, and stacked old keyboards and mice nearby. Shuffled a bunch of boxes of photos to one place. Stacked back editions of magazines together. Stacked books I’ve read together.

    Etc.

    Then I came to this box that I knew hadn’t been opened in quite a while, if ever. I think it has been in the room since I moved in, and has had stuff stacked on it since.

    Upon opening it, I immediately recognized every item inside. Stuff I haven’t seen since probably 1999 when I moved to Georgia from Alabama.

    Without even having to go through each of them laboriously, I knew I had found:

    • A spiral-bound notebook from 1983 containing a travelogue I wrote while on a trip to England and France (graduation gift from my parents). Pictures from that trip. Souvenirs from that trip.
    • A spiral-bound notebook I used to carry around in high school (ca. 1980-1983) and in which I hand-wrote stories in pencil. It has several in there that I had thought long lost. For the good of humanity, they shall remain so. I was amazingly, overwhelmingly, stupendously fond of utilizing really overly dramatic and annoyingly overabundant abverbs and adjectives back then.
    • A spiral-bound notebook containing story notes from a novel I have had in my head since I was about eleven years old, and which eventually became my (unfinished) NaNoWriMo novel for 2008, The Third Prophecy.

      As an aside, judging from the writing, I probably should have been writing the story as a screenplay. I did things very cinematically, starting the story with a wide, exterior establishing shot, then zooming in to a medium distance, and finally into a close-up of the character starting his action. That it took me five pages to get there is a testament to how far I’ve come since then.

    • World maps I drew of my sci-fi/fantasy world(s) from the larger universe surrounding The Third Prophecy. The alphabet I came up with for the language spoken by one of the races on one of those worlds. Notes I wrote for the sounds of that language and several more. A few rudimentary words in said languages. The numbering system used by the race that speaks one of those languages. (Have I mentioned I was a huge Tolkien fan?) Pseudocode for a computer program to create random words for said language. (Somewhere there exists a program I wrote that, given any number, generates the words to say it in this language. Have I mentioned I’m a huge geek?)

    But the pièce de résistance was another spiral-bound notebook in which I had done my “first sentence” exercise from 1995 until I got my first Franklin Planner. Archived in this notebook are probably hundreds of first lines of stories that were never intended to be written. Just looking through them reminded me how creative it felt to do that.

    But if I start that again, where to put it? My planner? Evernote? Dropbox? Google Docs? Scrivener? Somewhere else? Heh! The same notebook, nearly ten years later?

    Anyway, I look forward to going through these old treasures and finding a proper place to put them. Perhaps the recycle bin is best for some of it.

  • NaNoWriMo,  Writing

    NaNotWriMo 2014, Day 4

    NaNotWriMo seems a lot easier on the brainpan to try to decipher than my earlier choices for what to call this month.

    I’ve kept up with my plan. Every time I go upstairs in my house (where the master suite, including my office, is located), I disposition at least one thing in my office. It has even resulted in me bringing things in from outside the room, but it’s because the things I’m bringing in are part of a set of things that need to be in that room (e.g., writing books). It’s all about the ensemble, see.

    Anyway, I can now actually see the top of my desk. As it turns out, there is one under there! And it’s brown! And covered with glass! Hmm. Very dirty glass. I’ll clean it later. It’ll probably get worse again before it gets better (flat surface = a place to put things that are being ‘dispositioned’).

    And as far as the other thing goes — the outline — I’ve been making copious notes (in longhand; there’s just something more . . . real, I guess? . . . about making notes by hand instead of typing them). Defining world events and potential conflicts, characters and their flaws, looking for conflicts between and among them. On the way to work this morning, a gaping hole in my world design opened up and let me peer into its abyss. So I have to come up with something to plug that.

    Or, alternatively, find a way to fold it into my world in a way that complements what I already have.

    But at least that’s progress. I’d rather see those holes now than when my alpha readers get hold of the book and say, “Dude, really? I could drive the Death Star through this hole.”

    The vast majority of clutter that’s in my office, by the way, is — get this — old critiques! It’s where I’ve handed out 1500-word segments of my stories to my Tuesday night group (The Forum Writers Group, a.k.a. The Fountain Pen 2.0) and have received back written comments. There are stacks of these going back . . . longer than I’m willing to admit, really.

    Although one bonus of that is that I now have the complete text of a novella I somehow managed to completely lose from all my electronic storage. As much as I would very much like to use this as an excuse in support of paper-hoarding, I know that it’s a bad thing.

    Really.

    The recycle people are not going to know what’s going on at my house for the next three weeks.

    I’ve also started looking at comfortable chairs for the room. Ideally, I’d like a nice, leather chair-and-a-half with a small end table and lamp so I can sit in there and read. There’s plenty of room if I get rid of the old computers (plural) and rearrange the room slightly.

    But I won’t be getting any of that until the room is done. And rearranged.

    And repainted?

    Whoa, Nellie! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. :) The current light sage color that was perfect in 2001 is too pastel for me, now. I think I’d like a dark mocha. Make it more of a man-cave. With, like, six windows. :-/

    What goes with dark, hunter green carpet? (Not my choice; the people who sold the house left me dark, hunter green carpet in that one room.)

  • NaNoWriMo,  Personal

    PeNoNotWriMo 2014

    Since I decided not to write (or edit, as one friend suggested) a novel for NaNoWriMo, I’m trying to figure out what to call November. PeNoNotWriMo sprang easily to mind (Personal Novel NOT Writing Month).

    But given my “goal” (for lack of a better word) of making my home office a place where sane people (such as myself) want to be, I might call it “MaMyOffLiMo,” or Make My Office Livable Month. :)

    It’s a working title. I’m sure I’ll come up with something far better the instant I press “publish.” :)

    Anyhoo . . . one way I’m going about this is that every time I have to go upstairs for whatever reason — laundry, bathroom, book, brushing my teeth, etc. — I go into my office and disposition one or more items of clutter. Disposition means that if I lay my hands on it, I have to decide — then and there — what to do with it: keep it, store it, toss it, donate it. “Keep” means it stays in that room. “Store” means it either goes into storage in that room or another room. “Toss” means it goes either in the trash or in the recycle bin. “Donate” means that I’ll either donate it to Good Will (or someone like that) or find a friend who might want it. Hey, Geoff or Phil, need any airplane propellers? (It’s an extremely inside joke.)

    Hint: It’s mostly going to be ‘toss it.’ Probably about 80% of it.

    So far, I’ve moved two stacks of read books out of my office and into the “library,” which is one of my guest rooms. Which currently has a whole separate issue with clutter which I can address at another time. One of which is insufficient shelf space for the books I have.

    There are old computers (plural) in my office that were last useful when Windows 95 was new. I have floppy disks. Actual floppy (5.25″) disks. I have manuals for electronics I last used when I lived in another state (15 years ago).

    It’s time. Oh, yes, it is very much time.

    I sincerely doubt I will be posting pictures, because the clutter is pretty horrible and I’m embarrassed by it. But one way or the other, I’ll post a picture at the end of November. There. I’ve said it in public. And now it’s a commitment.

    I might have some sub-goals once I’m able to picture the room as it will be instead of as it is.

  • NaNoWriMo,  Writing

    NaNoWriMo 2014?

    NaNoWriMo 2014 Participant
    NaNoWriMo 2014 Participant

    I haven’t talked about NaNoWriMo at all, this year. Each year, since 2008, I’ve participated religiously, writing anywhere from 50,000 to 122,000 words in the space of thirty days.

    But this year . . . I don’t know. I’ve already proven to myself six times over that I can do exactly that — write a bunch of words in one month. And that’s great. It is. It means that when I put my mind to it and have a road map to follow, I can produce like crazy. But more importantly, here is what I’ve shown myself.

    • During NaNoWriMo, I write a lot of words, and sometimes I like those words, but — well, take last year, for example. I wrote > 50,000 words during November, sure. But they were throw-away words. All of them. I’ve since re-structured the entire world of that novel and invalidated every single syllable I wrote last year. All the main characters are now different. The “plot” (such as it was) is different. The world is different.
    • Even while writing last year, my heart wasn’t in it. I wrote maybe two chapters worth of actual novel . . . and the other 48,000 words were about the murder victims and the murderer as children, and what led to the crimes. I abandoned my characters shortly after their introduction because, frankly, the story wasn’t at all exciting to me. It bored me so much, I couldn’t even interest myself. (Hence the restructure of the world I mentioned earlier.)
    • I have written almost nothing since last November. And in 2013, I wrote almost nothing after NaNoWriMo 2012. Aside from some flash pieces in January and February — for the Codex Weekend Warrior, another timed writing event — I have worked on some stories I already had in the works and half-heartedly pushed a pencil across paper a few times, making notes about my novel series, trying to excitify it to at least regain my own interest.
    • I’m afraid that what I’ve managed to do is train myself that only November is for writing (with a tiny bit in January and February), but I don’t have to do it any other time. At Viable Paradise in 2012, we were cautioned about that. To avoid tying writing to other habits. One instructor quit smoking and found that he could not write anymore because he had mentally tied writing with the ritual of smoking. Give up one, the other goes, too. He had to start smoking again in order to get back to writing. November, I’m afraid, has become that, for me.

    I haven’t even tried to come up with an idea for something to write. People keep asking me, “Hey, what are you working on for NaNoWriMo, this year?” and I’ve been vague and noncommittal about it. I’ve had several glimmers that forced themselves on me while I was driving or in the shower or just dropping off to sleep, but those are the desperation ideas that mean my brain is humoring me by coming up with ideas at times when I can’t do much about them.

    And as much as I’d like to blame how busy I am at work — and I am very busy — I can’t. I’ve made time in the past for NaNoWriMo, even if it meant getting up at 5:00 AM or taking long lunches to write. Even if it meant taking time at Thanksgiving away from my family to write. Even if it meant missing things because I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t make my word-count for the day.

    But only during November. Come December 1, I go back to my normal habits.

    So, the conclusion I’ve come to is that as much fun as I have had in the past doing NaNoWriMo, and as much as I’d love to have that enthusiasm right now, I just don’t. And therefore will be sitting out this year.

    I’m hoping that I’ll motivate myself to at least use the month to come up with something of an outline that will help me regain my enthusiasm for this project. I want to love it, again. I want to look forward to writing it.

    Also, I don’t really have a comfortable writing space. Work is out, my living room is hard because there’s usually other distractions. My home office is a place that no sane person would want to spend any time in. (Which, by the way, still leaves me out. I’m pretty sure I’m still sane. Probably.) Perhaps I’ll use November to rectify that and turn my home office into a writing retreat. (Anybody got a flame thrower and an industrial grade paper shredder they’d let me borrow?)

    You have no idea how much it actually pains me to sit this year out, but I think it’s the right decision. I stopped going to two of my critique groups because I just haven’t written anything, and the constant reminder of that whilst reading other people’s work was, frankly, depressing. I purposefully didn’t go to any conventions or writing seminars or anything of that sort this year, because if I’m not writing, then there’s no need to pretend otherwise. Why spend money needlessly?

    It was an attempt to light a fire under my butt to get me writing. Instead, all it did was de-habituate writing even further.

    So that banner up there is a lie. It says “NaNoWriMo 2014 Participant.” But I’m not a participant. I’m a spectator, this year.

    Good luck, everyone, on your NaNoWriMo endeavors. I hope you all fly past the goal and keep going into the future.

    To reiterate, my “goals” (such as they are) for NaNoWriMo are:

    • do some sort of outline for at least the first novel, if not the first few in the series
    • turn my office into a place where a sane person (such as myself) would actually want to spend time, and make it conducive to writing.