NaNoWriMo TGIF

So it is the Friday before NaNo.  I have read the forums, posted my book description and even sort of made a cover.  So with an idea and a goal, I guess I am considered a panster, ie someone that writes by the seat of their pants, which is not new for me.  That is just the way I roll. 

In NaNo there are two main types of writers,  the planners and the non planers.  If you are a planner you may have spent the last month outlining the book you are going to write, working on character development and world building, and even have a pretty decent outline of each chapter.  Part of me feels this goes against the idea of sitting down and writing a 50,000 word novel in one month.   I wonder how one determines which words will count towards the 50.000 goal and which words will not count.  If you have written an outline, introduction, plot, and synopsis  you have a good start on your novel but does this then tie you down, and stop you from taking creative flights of fancy, which is the heart of NaNo.  

The other type of writer, may come up with an idea.  Something like I am going to write about dogs in space.  Then on the 1st they sit down and start writing about dogs in space.  I am one of these writers, NaNo is all about the my flights of fancy.  Yes this may lead to bad plot decisions, like the one I made last NaNo, where I had the protagonists long lost Aunt swoon over her niece and how much she looked and acted  like her dead brother,  then in the next paragraph basically sentence her to death.  Yep a gapping, chasm of a plot hole.  But I still finished my 50,000 words in November.  It was not until I went back and was reading the story that I noticed what I had done. 

So after last years fiasco one would think I would change writing camps,  my response: Hells No.  So here is to jumping off the literary bridge,  and hoping the bounce is at least fun, if not exhilarating. 

While the planners have been planning, plotting and outlining I have been frantically trying to get other projects finished or at least to a good stopping point.  With just 24 hours to go even that goal is looking like a long shot.  It looks like NaNo might just be bumpier than I had planned for.  

Unfinished projects= 3
Word Count= 0
Edit count= 0   

NaNoWriMo the Count Down has Begun

National Novel Writing Month begins on November 1^st; this will be the second time I am going to be taking this adventure.  But before I can start a new project, I have to clear my desk of currently pending projects and that is no small feat.

Currently I have four active projects on my desk.  The first is fine-tuning the hard copy of my first novel “The One Percent.”http://www.amazon.com/One-Percent-BOOK-ONE  I thought I would easily finish this project this month, but after receiving my proof and having a couple of people read through the copy, I have realized that there were a number of changes that need to be made.  Some of them I have already made. Now I am waiting on receiving the proof back, to determine which if any of the proposed edits I want to keep.  So this project is waiting on me waiting.  If I do not finish it in October, it will not eat away too much time in November.

The next project is a re-write of my next novel, “Close Corp” this is the follow up to “One Percent,” orinally it was the second half of the first book but who wants to read a 700 page book.  So I cut it into two pieces.  Going into this re-write, I knew that major changes would be made.  I saw what I had as a rough outline of where I wanted the story to go, but what has happened is a change in course that moves the books in a very interesting direction down my original path but in a very different way.  This process is coming in bits and pieces. Currently, what I have seems to be a puzzle that is almost complete, I have one piece left but it just will not fit where it should.  As I read and re-read what I have, it just feels off.  So for the next week, I will spend a good amount of time beating my head against that wall.  I cannot wait to see what I get done, but maybe putting it away for a month will be a good idea.

The next project I am working on is a novel called “The Veil,” this novel is a delusion wrapped in a hallucinatory nightmare that questions what is reality and insanity.  It has been very fun to plan out the book, and how I am going to tell a story that takes place in three relative times simultaneously.  I have the outline done and have a number of ideas how I am going to tell the story. Now I need to spend a couple of days and flush it out completely.  Looking at my list, I can hear the clock ticking faster and faster. 

The final project that I am actively working on is a novel that I began last year during NaNoWriMo.  I have the first draft, I have revised the first draft, which I had a friend read and edit. N ow I am sitting on those edits and ideas on how to improve the novel.

So, as I sit here looking at this list of projects.  I ask myself why I am taking on a new project.  What purpose will it serve?  And do I have the time?  Looking back over the last 18 months of writing and re-writing and editing, one comment has stuck with me: I tend to write only beautiful people, and always from the perspective of what that character in the best light would be. Looking back on this I see this as a major flaw in my writing and harmful to character development.  Though it might take me away from my current work, if I am able to accomplish this challenge it will only improve my other projects. 

The challenge of this next project is not to write a novel that will be read by people, or even ever finished.  It is a writing project to see if I can write about people at their worst, ugliest, and pettiest.  If I am able to do this, then I will write better characters in all my work.  

So do I have the time to undertake a project that has no future but a writing exploration?  I feel that I have to make the time for these types of projects, if I want to  move beyond being an armature author, to something better.  Though writing is an art form, it is also a skill that can be honed and developed. I believe that an author does not take the time to work on: developing new writing skills,  work on subjects that might not come naturally to them, and push their limits, will become stagnate and worse irrelevant. 

With this in mind, I am using NaNoWriMo as a developmental tool, so for the next month I will focus on developing a different writing styles, and writing different types of characters.  Because this is the task I have set out, I will be stepping away from my normal genre of Sci-Fi dystopian novels with strong female leads, and write about real life.  In addition, I will be blogging about how this process is going, and what I am taking away from the process.  I will post excerpts of what I am working on, as well as updates on if I am making my word counts.  Hopefully people with tell me just how much it sucks,  so I can make improvements.

I am  also going to take  this NaNoWriMo one step further,  not only will I focus on writing the Red Book expose,  I will work on editing Cave City last year’s bounty from NaNoWriMo.  But first, let’s see if I can clear my desk of Project 1, 2, and 3.

Here I go; it is going to be a long, fast, and hard November.    

A month a writing madly NaNoWrimo Dreams and Nightmares

I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo once. So, you many are asking why I would do this again, 50,000 words in one month or 1667 words a day.  Well the answer to that is I like a challenge and this is a challenge.  But I feel it is more than that, NaNoWriMo is more than a Marathon for writers, it is a creative out pouring which you can then take and mold like clay into something more than what it was when you first put word to screen.  For me, writing is the act of editing to some extent. So writing 50,000 words is the process of making the medium in which I will later work. 

As for the clay I made last year, it is currently sitting on my desk. I have worked it over once and now I am sitting staring at it wondering what, it will become next.  That work was the first Draft of Cave City, part of a dystopian post-apocalypse story about one of the remaining colonies of human kind.  Even after that first rough draft, I knew it needed major work. In the months following NaNoWriMo at took the spade out and started to dig into the novel.  Now a year later it is still a work in progress. 

So what to do with it now, that I have come fully round to a new year of NaNoWriMo, which means a new project, new clay.  This year I am making a double down challenge for my self,  Not only will I write another 50,000 words,  but I will also edit 50,000 words of Cave City though the book is slightly longer than 50K,  this goal will get me 90% through the second edit. 

Over the Next Month, I will post my progress in this endeavor with the goal that maybe I can come up with a game plan to keep this momentum going into December, January and Beyond. 

So here is to a month and hopefully a life time of writing madly. 

Ten Days and Count tell November....