Re[3]: National Novel Writing Month posted by kza

By my count, that’s 393 words you wrote about not writing 100 words.

Well, please note that none of those words had anything to do with plot, character, atmosphere, all that jive. If writing novels (or at least, what I consider to be a novel) was no different than, say, talking on the phone, I’d be set. I’d be Nicholson Baker.

That’s why a difficult deadline helps — there’s no time to pay heed to that voice.

Don’t let your fingers slow down to it. Just write. Even if it sucks and you know it, just write. Even if you don’t know where the characters are going, just write.

I really wish it worked like that for me. But it doesn’t. Especially in this case, where I’ve set up much harder goals for myself. Luckily, I think I have figured out what’s going to work for me, but even though I may finish the novel, I’m not sure I’ll finish NaNo.

Anyway, based on what you’ve posted so far, you’ve got nothing to complain about. I’m already hooked. I think it rocks.

Thanks. That’s appreciated.

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Re[2]: National Novel Writing Month posted by Martin

By my count, that’s 393 words you wrote about not writing 100 words.

In my view, NaNoWriMo is about learning to turn off the voice that is letting those doubts in. There will always be doubts, but critiquing a piece of writing before you write it (or critiquing your abilities to write before you write it) is cart-before-horse territory. That’s why a difficult deadline helps — there’s no time to pay heed to that voice.

Don’t let your fingers slow down to it. Just write. Even if it sucks and you know it, just write. Even if you don’t know where the characters are going, just write.

If you’re not sure what to write, follow the advice of my brother-in-law who told me to always find the bass-line in avant jazz when you don’t know what’s happening. Find the bass-line in your protag and start writing about that for awhile.

Too bad you’re not writing a post-modern meta novel. Your 393 words here could count towards your daily total.

Anyway, based on what you’ve posted so far, you’ve got nothing to complain about. I’m already hooked. I think it rocks.

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Re: National Novel Writing Month posted by kza

Well, NaNoWriMo is a bitch this year. It’s only the second day, and I’m not going to make the 2000 word count — in fact, right now I’m just trying to put down enough words to bring my total to two standard days’ worth (3,334) and even though I’m only about a hundred words short, I’m not even sure I’m gonna make that.

Part of me is wondering if taking on Little Black Stray was such a good idea — part of the point of NaNoWriMo is to start a novel with absolutely no idea what it’s about or where it’s going to go, and clearly I’ve side-stepped that. I don’t know if I feel particularly weighted down by having some concepts worked-out (or at least pencilled-in) but this does create a kind of “fenced-in” mentality — here are the characters and concepts, and stray beyond them if you dare.

But still, that’s more a question of will and nerve than anything else. No, right now the big problem is realizing, once again, that I’m not a novelist. The canvas is just too big. It’s difficult to figure out just what I should be writing at any given moment — when you have the choice of describing what’s actually happening at that particular second in the story, or what happened five years ago, or what a character is thinking, or the shape and texture of a bed, or a million other different things… well, that’s too many choices for me.

If anything, I’m a dramatist, which is a completely different thing. I’m used to present tense and conflict. I’m used to imagining something happening now, something that I could witness right in front of me. I could use present tense in the novel, but it just feels wrong. And while conflict is the essence of drama, a novel can, for a good portion of its page count, get away without conflict altogether. In fact, I’d say that a lot of my favorite fiction is filled with pages of either mood or interesting information. Yes, I could go ahead and write the novel like I might write a screenplay or stageplay, but then I wonder, What would be the point? Isn’t the idea to write, you know, a novel?

Okay, ‘nuff ranting for now. I gotta try and get these last hundred words down.

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National Novel Writing Month posted by Martin

Both Shockah and I are knee deep in our favorite November activity: NaNoWriMo. Shockah’s writing a novelization of Little Black Stray, and I’m doing a non-Spitball! story that is also a novelization of one of our script ideas, titled Third Eye.

To keep us honest, you can view our progress right here on Spitball! in this very post. Here is the current live word count for Shockah (NaNoWriMo user name kza):

Here are his in-depth stats.

And mine (NaNoWriMo username Mr. Lowry (Anybody? Get it? Too obvious?)):

And my in-depth stats.

We’re both shooting for 2000 words a day, a bit more than the needed 1700 or so, but I want to get ahead this time.

Anybody else doing NaNoWriMo this year? And refresh the page already, we may have updated our word count!

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