Just midnight, and I broke the 110k barrier, writing exactly 1000 words today. Happy now 
As if that wasn’t enough I just a great idea for an event a little later on in the book, which is slightly out of character for my MC, but now it’s… slightly more in character. Slightly or completely, it depends on how I write it.
Now 120k is the next goal. Hopefully I’ll get there sometime next week!
It’s typical that in the year where my number one promise to myself, a promise that was very easy to keep before Christmas, was to write for fifteen minutes per day, I hardly write anything at all. In fact I haven’t written anything up until now in 2012. Wow. That is, until now. Today, or tonight as I guess it is, I have written 1398 words. I was worried that I had forgotten too much of the story, that I wasn’t into it anymore, but my fears were unfounded. It was easy, and I had not forgotten a thing.
What keeps amazing me is how I keep writing things that don’t really belong in the story, at least they weren’t planned, and then it just goes “click” in my head and another piece falls into place. Not always plot related, but very often character related. For example Almin, who is a healer. She is easily the fiercest woman in the entire tribe, and she regularly out-yells the chief and the shaman, taking control. So why is she a healer, and not for example the leader of the warriors? Well, today she had a conversation with Ceredi, one of my main characters, and it turns out that she actually has an old wound that causes her to limp. It explains why she doesn’t do what she really wants to do, why she became a healer and exactly why people actually listen to her. Well, that and the fact that they need her if they ever get ill.
That’s not the only incident like that. In fact my story would have been considerably more dull without them. I love Write or Die, there’s just something about knowing that I really have to write now and cannot pause to think that boosts your creativity. I used to think that I just shut down in situations like that, but the opposite is in fact the case, and I have learnt that if I just keep writing, I will most likely stumble across an idea. After all the subconsciousness is working like mad.
My goal now is to finish the story in January. Two weeks, plus a few days, and… I’m not sure how many words. Something between 10 and 30 000 words left, I think. But it might be as much as 50 000. I have after all not reached the ending yet. Character A needs to get to character B, and certain events need to happen before that can happen. Character C must come to the city where character D is, and before THAT the damn ball needs to be over with so that character D has the information she is supposed to have. Some angsting has to be done, and quite a few discussions and/or arguments, then Trap X must be set, and certain characters need to figure out that it might, just might, be an idea to actually work together, since they have a common cause and all. But that can’t be too easy. And then they actually have to do the thing that resolves the plot, which in itself should take at least 10 000 words, probably more. And they have to find the place/situation where it happens too.
Yep, I think I’m definitely looking at another 50k. Which is great, since I have something to work with. And… oooh, I just got another idea. The incident before MC1 and MC2 split up might in fact have been planned for quite a while. If some hints are dropped it might add some sorely needed tension to that section.
Anyway, if I get my quota done tomorrow as well I’ll have broken the 110k barrier, which is awesome (I’ve spent more time writing the last 20k than I did the 90k before though…). Things are always harder before you actually get started, so I think that it will be easier to get writing again tomorrow.
When it comes to other things, I have been doing lots of things I perhaps don’t have the time for, and have not been doing a lot of the things I should. For example I should have written the project plan for my PhD application, but I haven’t even started. I have thought about it, but no more than that. I should also have finished cleaning the apartment, which I stopped doing half-way through, and I should have started exercising, since I’m not sick anymore.
Instead I have been doing things like learning Korean (I initially had a plan of going through 1 word list per day (since my software operates in lists), but today I just could not get anything through my head. I tried an infinite number of times to learn the word for “hungry” (paegopeun), but it just would not stick. The word for museum, however, is the one I think of no matter what I am really trying to remember (???, by the way).
It doesn’t help that I have used the same software, with the same flashcards with the same pictures and phrases, to learn Japanese. So whenever “hungry” comes up I immediately think of “kuufuku no,” and the phrase “I have a reservation” is simply impossible to learn, since I immediately jump to “yoyaku shiteiru hazu desu ga.” Though it IS nice to know that the Japanese translation sticks, since I spent what seemed like an eternity trying to learn it.
Anyway. I have also gotten a Flickr account and have uploaded photos there. I have also gotten quite a few new photos at my photoblog if anyone’s interested. It would be nice to get some feedback there. So anyway, photo editing has taken up a lot of my time. And then I’ve been calling here and there to get my prescription sorted out – it has apparently been sent in the mail, and should be here by now, so I just hope it gets here tomorrow.
Well, I should get to bed, I should have been asleep ages ago. I’m starting work again on monday and should really get used to getting up early again. See you! (Hopefully next time I write I’ll be well past 110k!)
I had initially begun writing a rather large entry about coming back to Bergen after Christmas, being sick, and putting off my 15 minutes per day until I’m at least a little better and I’ve cleaned up this mess a little, but it would have been boring. And look, in one sentence you got all the information anyway. I continued writing about sorting through all my papers (massive cleanup, yay!) and finding old stories, and how I found some background info I presume is for NaNoWriMo 2009, the first year I won, except that I cannot remember that part of the story at all. It’s not really all that strange, since the story was BAD. But at least it’s out of the system now. (ETA: Apparently my memory is worse than I thought. Upon reading the thing more thoroughly I realised that it was actually my novel from NaNoWriMo 2010, which I thought I remembered well enough. Not only that, but he’s one of the main characters, and one of my favourites to boot. That’s how it is when you only use a character’s nickname when talking/thinking about the story, I guess…)
And then. And then I started writing about finding the first draft to the first novel I ever wrote. Sure, I had written small pieces earlier, mostly fan fiction long before I knew what fan fiction was, but this was my first real effort. I remember writing on it everywhere. Before or sometimes in class, at telephone duty in the main building (I went to a boarding school that year and two years after), in my room at night and sometimes in the mornings, everywhere.
I get very sentimental when it comes to this story. Particularly now. The novel I am writing at the moment is actually the same one. The content is very different, although the beginning is very similar. The main characters are the same. The plot is hopefully far better.
By the way, I love reading old stories. Mostly because I can point and laugh at myself. It sounds really bad, I know, but if I’m in one of those moods when I don’t believe in anything I do and believe that I can only write rubbish, nothing is better than reading something really old and really bad. I genuinely believed that these stories were good when I wrote them, so I firmly believe that being able to see how bad they are and seeing exactly what is bad, is proof that I have improved a great deal. So, in essence, it’s proof that I should have a little more faith in myself, backwards as it may seem.
When it comes to the first novel I do get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but it’s also… I don’t laugh as much of it as of other stories. It was the first. It’s something special. It’s handwritten on lined paper, inside a folder which still has the original label on it with my name and class. Inside is the actual notebook in which I wrote half of the draft, marked “First Draft”, my full name, and even “fantasy” (I had only just discovered the genre and was fangirling). It even had some flowers drawin on it. There is also some loose papers on which I wrote the rest. There’s inline notes and marks where I edited it as I went along, and tiny drawings in the margins whenever I got bored. Or whenever I had to stop to think.
Unfortunately that draft was not complete. In the middle of the story I finally got hold of a laptop (my father’s old work laptop, a huge, clunky thing that would dwarf most modern laptops) and wrote the rest of it there. The rest was saved on floppy disks, and while I think I do have the actual disks still, I tried opening them a few years ago when I had access to a floppy drive, and found that the disks had become corrupted over time. At least they were unopenable. A pity, as I would have liked to read the end, and it was never carried over onto my new computers. Since then I always transfer every single story, just because I like to keep everything, and I know I might want to look at them again.
I wanted to translate some of it to English and post it here, but the language is not easily translated (because of word choice and such), so I abandoned that idea. I will say that the beginning was not half bad, although I guess it was coloured by the reading curriculum at school at that time. The plot was absolutely horrible though, I will say that. But plots were never my strong side, I think.
Anyway. I think I’m rambling again. I’ll quit and go sort some more papers, if only because I dumped it all on my bed, and I need to finish if I want to go to sleep tonight… 
I suck at titles. It’s not my perfectionism speaking (honestly!), I just cannot for the life of me come up with good ones… or even any. The file names of my stories, which I have to come up with to save the things, are one of four things: 1. The name of the MC, 2. The place where the story occurs or at least starts, 3. The first words of the story, which incidentally is the file name that Word automatically suggests, or 4. The setting in which I started writing the story.
I’ve actually looked through my stories to see if this was based on actual fact or if I’m just guessing again. It happens, you see.
I have at least four stories entitled “NaNoWriMo <year>”. A great deal of stories named after the main character, so many that I can’t be bothered to count the actual number. I have some named after the first incident in the plot, namely “Dragon in a Wheat Field,” which started out with a farmer finding a dragon in his wheat field. Surprisingly enoough. I have “Border Forest” (in fact several stories with the same title, because they occur in the same forest). I have some named after the season and place – not titles like Indian Summer or Spring in Paris or some such, but “Winter valley” or just “winter.” I suppose I could rename that one “Winter in the Valley With No Name.” Then, of course, there’s all the “New novel” or “New story” or titles like that, which should tell me absolutely nothing. Somehow I still know which is which even if I wrote them years ago.
Some titles are actually okay, like “The day the world ended” (I cannot find another example right now), but the problem is that I only had the title and nothing else. Not much help in that.
My current story, promising as it may be, is currently named “NaNoWriMo 2011.” How eloquent. How deep. How… blah. If it hadn’t been NaNoWriMo it would probably have been called “Shanni story”. No, not even “Shanni’s story.”
I really, really wish I had some actual title for it. I have writing friends who come up with really cool titles, and here I am, not coming up with anything at all. Sometimes I wish I wrote crime or mystery so that I could have titles like “The mystery of the rogue sorcerer” or something.
…actually I kind of like the sound of that. Maybe there’s some hope after all.
I don’t know if it’s the massive amounts of books that I’ve read this year and the joy of finishing both the Goodreads reading challenge and NaNoWriMo at a time where I didn’t really have time for any of the two, but I don’t think I’ve ever had this amount of usable ideas at once before.
My NaNo novel for this year is progressing smoothly, although it keeps surprising me. And now I’ve gotten a brand new idea for my NaNo novel from 2010 which I at the moment think is perfect. As it happens it will cause 95% of the novel to be changed, but at this point I don’t care. The plot felt boring before, it felt forced, and I didn’t really connect with it. This one… this one will give me plenty to write about, and contrary to the first draft it feels… fresh, in a way. Completely different from what I usually write, but with all the elements that I wanted when I started writing the story.
Now I just have to finish the first draft of the novel I’m working on so that I can start working on this idea.
It seems like my subconsciousness is determined to make up for the lack of updates earlier this year, since I’ve posted a lot these last days. But I just reached a milestone of sorts in my writing. My NaNo-story for this year has finally reached 100k. It would have been about 110k if I hadn’t changed my mind over and over again over a certain part of the story. But then again there’s at least 10k of story that technically isn’t “part of the story” anymore as I changed my mind after writing them, but kept the parts in question.
I think I can definitely say that I’m looking at, at the very least, a 150k story at the moment, if not 200k. I’m nowhere near the end of the plot, and there’s a LOT of ground that has to be covered. I’m very excited about it, because with enough plot for that many words there is the potential that I can actually use it for something.
Today I read an article in Dagbladet (Norwegian newspaper) about a woman who had quit her day job to write, and who had recently landed a publishing deal for her first book with an American publisher. It’s an inspiring story, and while I won’t quit my day job being published abroad is my ultimate goal. (Apart from merely enjoying the writing, which is the real ultimate goal) The fantasy market in Norway isn’t that great, we’re a little behind the times I think, and… how often have you heard of Norwegian fantasy being translated into English?
…thought so.
Besides, with some notable exceptions there seems to be a prevalent attitude here that fantasy is for children. That’s what’s published, and that’s what people buy. Fantasy for adults… well, we buy foreign books.
Anyway. That’s a rant for another day, and I’ll step off my soapbox now. I do think it’s great that people write fantasy, even if it’s children’s books. Or perhaps especially so, because that’s when our love of reading is established. I think.
Speaking of reading, I also finished my Goodreads reading challenge today. It seems to be a day of achievements today, both 100k and 100 books. 100 books was my reading goal for 2011, and I am a very competitive person, so when I’m nearing the end of such a challenge I just can’t help stepping on the gas and giving it my all. As my NaNoWriMo stats for this year clearly showed (two 12k days in a row at the end). I had planned to wait until Christmas to finish the challenge, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head. And since I conveniently got sick today I decided to take the day completely off work, to try not to burn myself completely out.
There was something else I wanted to tell as well, but I’ve forgotten. It’ll come back to me if it was important, I guess…
When annotating Old Norse law texts for 10 hours per day, my rule of writing for at least 15 minutes per day has turned out to be very handy. There’s just nothing like being bored out of my mind because of routine work and then be allowed to be creative.
Because of this, things sometimes get out of hand.
Like yesterday. I had a scene where everything that was supposed to happen was that there was a certain nature phenomenon, and then character A reacted in a certain way. But no! Character B, my MC, stole the limelight. She turned out to be rather happy and giggly, something she isn’t every day, and of course I had to have a reason for it. Evidently she has been invited to a ball, she who hasn’t set foot in any kind of ballroom ever before, and she is having a fit thinking of how out of place it would be and how incredibly awkward the entire situation would be, imagining the faces of the nobles there as she made a complete fool out of herself.
She won’t be laughing anymore when she finds out that Character A and Character C, both friends of B but who don’t really know each other, conspire behind her back and force her to go.
Yep. They have an annoying sense of humour, those two, and I didn’t even think C had any kind of sense of humour.
I used to find it funny when writers talked about their characters living their own life – after all it’s all there in their heads – but this was so out of the blue that I don’t know what to think. I certainly hadn’t planned any of the sort, but it would be so perfect, and character A would definitely find it hilarious forcing her to go to that damn ball. B would be in a murderous mood.
The downside to this is of course that The Big Revelation that I had planned for this scene will have to wait. I’m not sure B would survive that many shocks at once.
I’ve written a lot about my plots lately, it seems. Mostly that I’ve found a good plot and all that. Well, it’s not always very cooperative. I got stuck at a certain point, and due to my agreement with myself to write at least 15 minutes per day I’ve been trying to get un-stuck (I have written over 800 words per day so far) but it just doesn’t feel right. I know that sometimes you just have to keep working through it, but it just didn’t make sense. I couldn’t find a wrap-up that I felt comfortable with.
Basically I think the problem was that I had the cause and effect of certain actions all wrong. There is a place in the book where character A helps character B with something, let’s call it X, due to some reason. After helping A tricks B into agreeing to something that is very important to A and C, let’s call it Z. BUT. Why would A help B in the first place when A wants nothing to do with B?
Then it dawned on me. A doesn’t want anything to do with B. That’s the entire thing! B needs A’s help, but A does not want to help. So in order to get A’s help B has to agree to Z, or A’ll just up and leave. Because not helping with X has almost exactly the same consequences as if B doesn’t agree to Z, so A will lose just as much.
Now I only have to figure out group D’s interests and reasons in the whole thing. But that, I think, is something I can just write through.
I realise that this sounds utterly confusing, with all the As and Bs and Xs and Zs, but it will make sense. I hope.
Technically I won on the 21st of November, when I got 53,167 words in total. In total I ended up at 90,575 words before November was over.
Last year I got well over 100k, and the year before that I finished in a week.
So why am I convinced that this NaNoWriMo is the best yet?
One of the reasons is that I shouldn’t have been able to finish at all. November has been really hectic, with three jobs and my very first conference. I won’t say that none of it suffered from NaNo neglect, but the fact remains that I had plenty of days with no time to write, and a great deal of non-NaNo stress. I reduced my initial goal of 150k (I wanted to increase my goal since last year’s more than 100k) first to 100k, then to a more realistic 50k, which made things much less stressful for me.
The second reason is all the great people I’ve met. Last year was the year I met the “original” members of my writing group, three awesome people. This year was the year we grew, and there were several NaNoers who regularly came to write-ins and who got along great with the rest of us. It’s just been such a blast. Everyone’s been really supportive of each other, regardless of how far we’d come, and that last write-in, when three of the others were ridiculously far behind and STILL managed to win, was simply epic.
But the main reason is my own achievements. I didn’t set any new record when it comes to word count or speed, but I’ve managed something better. First of all that I can create decent plots if I just silence my inner editor and start looking for “plots” instead of “epic plots”. I’ve found a good way to brainstorm plotting that works well for me. Second of all it is now two days after NaNo and I am still writing. Last year I lost most of my motivation after NaNo had finished, and that novel is still sitting on my harddrive, unfinished. I take it as a sign that I’m onto something good with regards to the story. I have a plan of writing at least 15 minutes each day, which is easily doable even when busy, but both yesterday and today I wrote far more than that. I’ve written over 2000 words today, and I’m finding it hard not to write.
Makes me believe that maybe I can be a writer after all, and that maybe I have held myself back a lot more than I thought.
Last year I proved to myself that I could write more than I thought. This year, I think, I’ve proven to myself that I can write well. My novel’s still very much a first draft, but there’s promise in it, and I can actually admit that to myself. That’s a first in many years, to put it that way, the perfectionist that I am. That realisation feels great.
Well, not quite the end just yet.
Yesterday I passed 60k. My goal this year (revised after actually reaching 50k early) is 75k. I also hoped that I would be able to actually finish my novel, but there’s just too much plot. Frankly I doubt I’ll even finish it in December. BUT I’ll keep writing until it’s done. Properly done, not the “list what is going to happen because you can’t be bothered to write everything out because you’re so tired of writing the novel” kind of done. I actually like this story. After 60k I still do. I think that has been my major achievement this year, apart from winning – being able to be happy with a story. The characters, the plot, things just seem to have come together neatly this year.
Part of it is because I have refined my characters a lot. Both of my MCs are somewhat more realistic than they were, and they interact better. Part of it is because I feel I have a good plot that is motivated by previous events and the characters themselves. I won’t say that I haven’t read (and written) my share of “epic quest”-books (“only YOU can save the world!”), but… I like the books where things happen because of other things better.
I still don’t understand how the heck I actually found the time to write, though.
Of non-writerly things, I came back from my very first conference two days ago. It was MONS 14 (meeting on the Norwegian language), in Tromsø, and I loved it. Of course I was nervous before giving my talk, but people seemed to like it even if they didn’t quite buy it, to put it that way. But I like critical questions better than no questions, by far, so I’m happy.
Now I’m extremely tired. The schedule at the conference was extremely hectic (I think I had one or two hours to myself every day), and while it was fun I am glad it is over. I’m not made for socializing this much. The downside of the conference, though, is that I really wish I was still studying. Or was studying again. But since I cannot get student loans anymore (I’m no longer able to apply since I’ve been studying for so long) I’ll have to wait until I can save up some money, or until I get accepted into a PhD program (hopefully).
