(no subject)

[aslant]

snow! in november! this morning i had to shovel and scrape away three inches of snow from the car and the front stairs. it was much more than i expected. a layer of ice was on all the windows--i had to pry the door open with the scraper because it was frozen shut. oh my. i really hope this winter is not as long as the last one...didn't it snow on april 1st? oof.

i was very proud when i actually got to davis square. i wrote for two and half hours, and now i have +21k words. i'm hoping to get to 27k or 28k by the end of sunday. yes. it will happen.

Comments

[aslant.livejournal.com]

congratulations on 18k! keep going! it is totally possible! and yes, i have finished twice before, in 2003 & 2002.

in the other years, i was able to write easily over 1600/day while at work, whereas this year i'm mostly writing in big chunks during the weekend. i get up around 8:30 and get a good spot in a cafe and i mentally map out where i want to get in the story, someplace that's pretty far along in the plot compared to where i am and with lots of diversions along the way (i have an outline) and then i just keep going for two or three hours. it's been pretty effective for me, so far. it really takes some dedication, time-wise. just find how you work best and then make some space in your month for working with that method.

eh. lots of unsolicited advice! ignore me :)

[brickred.livejournal.com]

do you like the end product? I have a hard time planning more than just the basic things, and while in the past I've ended up hating my novel because it was too character-oriented and had bad plot, this year the opposite is true--plot driven but with static characters and places. I know that quality isn't the point but I'm totally terrified that I'm making too big of a deal about it and I'll finish and just be sad that it's totally unusable, the worst thing I've ever written. I don't even like speaking out loud about my novel, I think it's that bad.

and I don't mind unsolicited advice at all--I don't know anyone else who's actually ever finished.! in 2002 I wrote about 9500 words, and last year I only got through day two before calling it quits.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

well, i try not to think about the end product at all. in fact, i try not to think of it as a 'novel', but more as a writing exercise. it is a matter of forcing out dialogue and scenes and plot ideas and descriptions. i've done very little re-reading of my past two nanos, but i've always been slightly surprised at how not-totally-suckful they are. i mean, i'm not expecting to come out with anything other than a pile of vaguely-related crap, so to read just a single scene and feel that it is okay, that's a good feeling for me.

i think if i focussed on coming out with a usable product, i'd get a little bogged down. i mean, the average writer's first drafts are crap--otherwise there's no way to actually get them down on the paper. you can't work with a manuscript or a story until it's written, so that's the stage i consider myself at--creating raw materials. especially since it's wordcount-oriented, i can't stop and think about anything. i mean, i guess it's as big a deal as you make of it...but if you think of it more as an extensive writing exercise (or a writing 'project', that's what i call it to anyone who doesn't know what nanowrimo is, if they ask), that may help a little. if you just churn stuff out, you can fix it later and think of it as a novel then.