NaNo OMG NaNo

[Matt]

day three in the big brother house - Matt rests his head against the desk, apparently relishing the weightlessness of his head, he has just reached 10,000 words and feels hollowed out by the fervour.

Now to organise it all and post it up on the scribbler.

[Quaddy]

Some of the writing has been fluid. Conversations between characters are always easy for me because I can imagine the inflection in their voice and how they would move when they speak. It's when I get to the other stuff that I get flighty. Because I can't just put down a word knowing I'm going to go back and change it later. I have to put down the *right* word for the moment even know I might go back and change it. And sometimes the *right* word is a little elusive...

[Mynt]

Writing is hard.

[Matt]

Seriously though. Respect to the Rankins of this world who have massive arching series and stuff.

[Mynt]

I kind of think that maybe I should type this out instead. This will probably be my theme for the month. @_@

[Quaddy]

No judgement if you decide to save your hand and type it up.

[Matt]

Writing it by hand is good for a story though - because it forces you into the revision stage when you go to type it up later. I love writing by hand, usually I plot and plan and write paragraphs repeatedly by hand until I have it the way I want it to go. NaNo is the exception where everything is done on the computer.

I think if you're comfortable writing by hand then do it, Mynt.

[Mynt]

I'm afraid it will be awful if I just type. Which is an old fear I had back in the day. I used to write my campfire additions by hand too, then type them up. This took me twice as long as it does now so... there's that. But then I got into the habit of only typing stuff, until like this summer when I switched back to writing by hand. I even hand wrote that addition for Fall the Gods before I typed it. So now I'm kind of afraid that it won't be as good if I type it.

[Aldersmaine]

I have quite hit 10k, I had a super long shift today so I could only write about 1000 words today. But I'm not too worried about it. After all none of use really want Nano to just be about the daily word counts.

I actually have had extremely little dialog between characters so far. Hael (my MC) had a dash of conversation with his mother, and with a woman at the bazaar but mostly has been alone and on the road or in his current circumstances, in an abandoned mine shaft. He does still talk though, having thought process dialogs from time to time.

He's going to meet a new character tomorrow though and they'll be together for a day or two (my time) at least.

[Quaddy]

I write very dialogue-heavy stories. It really is a mixture of dialogue and inner monologue. I tend to philosophize via my POV characters. So my character is either talking to someone or practically having a silent conversation with themselves. I am half way to being a great script writer.

[Mynt]

Nicely done, beast.

[Quaddy]

A word count update for the evening. I'm going to bed now at 10,115 words. I am SO on a roll!

[Mynt]

I have hit a wall and I totally feel like crying and quitting.

[Quaddy]

Need some help? What's got you stuck, hon? There is always time for a plot hash out meeting, damn it!

[Aldersmaine]

don't praise me, lol I typoed and meant to say I HAVEN'T quite hit 10k lol

What's wrong Mynt can we help?

[Matt]

I find it hilarious how I go to bed and wake up with Quad always just ahead by a few hundred but then I go to bed ahead only to wake up behind again ahhhh etc etc.

Also yeah - feel free to brainstorm off us Mynt.

BTW. I met Philip Pullman today. I am so so so excited by this.

[Quaddy]

I do most of my writing in the midnight to 2am range. I'm three hours ahead of the system, so it counts as the day before. So even though it'll technically be the 5th when I start writing, the servers think it's the 4th still. It's like the universe is on my side. It wants me to finish this book!

Woo!

Also, Woo! to Philip Pullman.

[Mynt]

Well I did the NaNo Prep this year. And then I realized that everything in it doesn't work and I have to start over. I have no idea what's going on, what's going to happen, or anything. Then I never went back and fixed all the wrongness in the first one so I'm not even sure how all the characters are supposed to act now. And everything is wrong and I don't even think that X is acting like X and that makes me think that I should write something else but it's already the fourth and if I start over now I will never catch up (not that I'm caught up anyway being that I can't really write 4000 words a day by hand). I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and maybe I'm starting to panic some cause I don't have my shit together and then German. On the other hand I can't start something else because I am equally unprepared for that too. I should just type instead of handwrite. At least typing I can do with my eyes closed and can bash out things without thinking at all. @_@

tl;dr: I feel like crap and my writing is crap.

[Quaddy]

1. You are not crap.

2. Your writing is not crap.

I understand both feelings. It hit me about day 2. But that's mostly because I am horrid at beginnings. That's irrelevant, of course. What isn't is the fact that we all go through it. A friend of mine said that writers might be the world's only tortured souls who actually like the torture they go through. Because the words let us down. Language is a febrile creature compared to what our minds conjure up. And sometimes it's like painting the light of God with watercolors. The Impressionists thought they could do it, but most of them died of syphilis.

No one wants to write crap. But, frankly, that's what NaNo is. NaNo is about writing utter and complete shit, all the while knowing that it's complete and utter shit. Just get the words out. For me, I feel like I wrote 4000 words all devoted to a Hermes that was acting nothing like my Hermes. I had to get a feel for him all over again after a year of really leaving him the hell alone.

If you want to write by hand, you're going to have to do it knowing that you'll have a far more intimate relationship with the words you choose and the story you are writing. Typing gives you a distance, a sort of protective filter between your psyche and the imperfect words spilling forth. Your fingers move so fast you don't have time to think about whether or not what you're writing is any damn good. Which, for the purposes of NaNo, might be what you want to do.

Just to let you know, I've had to change this novel so many times, I'm writing things now that reference earlier happenings that I haven't actually written yet. I decided that Lucifer wasn't part of the original Fall because he'd begged God to no longer be a Tempter as it had broken his heart to do it to Eve. Earlier, I wrote that he didn't fall because he wasn't evil and the others were. I decided that was stupid and I changed it, but someone reading the thing now will wonder..."Wtf is going on??!?!" All problems can be solved in editing. Write this novel based on what you WANT to change about the first. Or just write fifty thousands words of crap and see if you can't salvage something out of it.

Basically, do everything but give up.

tl;dr: Read the whole thing. It's bloody well inspirational and I managed to write it during the Cowboys game, which means I wasn't foaming at the mouth from anger.

[Mynt]

Thanks Quaddy. That was quite nice. I'm probably going to stick with the handwriting thing and just forget about word counts and stuff. I can't accurately count my words right now anyway. I'll try just getting it out and getting to where I want to be, or at least where I can feel comfortable with my characters again.

I'm having a really nice emotional breakdown right now. Too many sources of external stress.

[Quaddy]

Then I can only suggest that you cut away that which is least important, love. If it happens to be NaNo, it happens to be NaNo. Keep writing, but definitely don't let it stress you out.

[Mynt]

I think NaNo is my only outlet at the moment. Lol. I went to my first write-in ever on Saturday and it was pretty fun. I didn't actually get much writing done but it was nice to hang out with some fellow writers. And I won a neat honorary prize because they felt bad since I couldn't participate in word wars and stuff. xD Going to the write-in definitely made me want to start typing my story.

[Aldersmaine]

Never been to a write in, their always too far away like over 2 hour drives lol.

[Mynt]

Usually they are pretty far from me too, but this year they're having some that aren't ridiculously far from where I live. I'm pretty excited about that.

[Quaddy]

The benefits of living in a horrendously populated area. Pretty much every write-in is within 30-45 minutes of my location. I just don't like large crowds as they distract me from writing. Can't write in silence, either, but there you go. I make it so difficult for myself...