20,014! And Colds Suck!

I’m back at on target for NaNoWriMo!

Luckily, I’m not the one suffering from the stuffy head, sore throat and cough flavored nastiness that’s going around my house this week. Both kids began to run fevers this afternoon. High enough to keep them out of school tomorrow. Joy. DH also left for the EastCoast today armed with Tylenol Cold & Cough caplets. I hope he made the right decision.

BTW, somewhere floating around my house are: cough, flu, black death, and ebola. No, not the REAL ones… the PLUSH ones. DH couldn’t resist. *sigh* We may have to get this guy, he’s kinda cute.

Anyway, the writing the last couple of days has been easier than last reported. I find it interesting that the scenes where the heroine is with someone else but still reacting to the hero are easier than the ones where they’re there face to face. The worst ones have been the ones in his POV.

I was talking with MamaDivine this afternoon about it and she asked if his POV was necessary (it is) and what all I knew about his backstory (she’s probably sorry she asked *grin*). Thinking out loud like that helped some, and made one of the things that has to happen near the climax clearer in my mind. However, I’m still not looking forward to writing tomorrow when I have to start out in his head, especially with the monsters underfoot all day again.

I suspect one of the problems is how I always seem to shift into his head when the characters’ emotions come into conflict. I also realized I don’t have very many scenes where he’s the sole focus. That might be part of the difficulty too. I’ve allowed myself to explore how she reacts with her friend and parents, but, with one exception, he’s only on stage when she is. Definitely something to note down and think about.

I know, Bria, less thinking and more writing, right?

Woah. I may have just figured out what was missing a couple days ago. His contemplation. *headsmack* *sigh*

Anyway, my TLC is being demanded, but I wanted to post progress. Glad I did with that realization. Phew!

14212: Like Pulling Teeth!

Progress has been slow and painful the past couple of days. I’m at the beginning of Act II and I think I may be missing a scene or two. The problem is, I’m not sure which ones. The last couple of days I’ve been trying to fill in what I thought was missing.

I’m not explaining this very well. The scene I hit requires a lot of emotion. However when I first wrote it, I dashed it down. I didn’t want to face those emotions any more than the heroine did. The scene and the sequel had the barest minimum to carry the characters through it. In and out, cut and dry. So the first pass was to go back and add internalization around the dialogue. What were they thinking/feeling as they said these lines.

Better, but it still felt glossed over. Yes, there’s a lot of sexual tension in this part too… Or rather there should have been. Went back to add that in. Imagery? Oh yeah, that might be helpful too, they don’t exist in a vacuum or on an under-funded community college theatre stage.

It still feels like it’s missing something and that the pacing is off. According to my plan, I’m about 10 pages short of what I was thinking. Definitely missing a scene or two or at least a POV shift at this point.

The good news is that we’ve found a fantastic dentist here. DH has a bad history with dentists, including taking off his own braces. Anyway, he had to get a filling and a vertical fracture in another tooth repaired yesterday. After multiple shots of novocaine, he was still feeling pain when the dentist touched his gums. The dentist did what he could on the teeth themselves and said he’d reschedule and put him under general anesthesia to finish up the deep cleaning because he refused to hurt him.

Now, if I could only get this NaNo thing rescheduled…

No, I just need to jump back in and see if I can hit 2400 words or so today. I can do this! Forward progress is the key. Don’t look back… keep going.

Although, I bet some nitrous oxide would help with life beyond NaNo… Hmmm…

11757

Image 11757 from the U of Ky's aggregate.org exhibit at SC'06 No, not an obscure reference to Lindenhurst, NY‘s zipcode. Nor is it one to The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco in Project Gutenberg or even the model number of George Foreman’s Chrome Baby Grill on Amazon.co.uk.

11,757 is my total word count on the novel I’m working on for NaNoWriMo.

That’s right — 88 words ahead, baby!

I stopped early today because I was at a scene change and my head was beginning to hurt.

You see, before I could start writing this morning, I had to work on my notes so I’d know what I was supposed to write about. I didn’t have high hopes for staying on track today because of that. I knew I was staring down into the gullet of the beast — the dreaded second act — the middle.

I think it only took me about an hour to fill in the story notes for the 2nd and 3rd acts. One benefit of having tried to cram this story into 2400 words back in September is that I know how it ends. I suspect this gives me an advantage over nearly every other thing I have begun writing. Not just an outline, but one that I’ve already working through and know that it resonates with the beginning — or at least how it SHOULD resonate with the beginning now.

I still worry about making a muddle of the middle, but I’ve found that the diagrams (mentioned in previous post) I combined from Dunne’s Emotional Structure have been invaluable in terms of dealing with pacing. I know it’s far from perfect, but I don’t feel as if I’m heading out on lengthy exploratory expeditions this time. With page numbers to aim for, I feel more comfortable in writing my scenes and sections. Thank you so much for pointing me this direction, Jodi!

So far, the characters haven’t argued or struck off on their own either. I’m taking this as a good sign — not one that means they’re weak and unfit for heroic roles.

My only real worry is that it will turn out to feel mechanical. I know the page numbers are only guidelines, so I’m trying not to obsess over them, but it feels comfortable and reassuring to hit those strides. I’m trusting you, Mr. Dunne… I know I have to make my own magic. I’m trying.

I also mentioned in the live chat on Romance Divas today that I felt like I sucked at details. MamaDivine wisely told me not to worry about them, they would come with revisions. Unfortunately, it’s not just the small details that seem to elude me. It’s often the keystones. I’ll know that something significant needs to be done or has been done by one of the main characters, but what exactly that might be… I have no clue.

This seems inherently more problemmatic than just what would be served at a typical dinner party during the Regency Era or what dances were fashionable at the time. I don’t know. I’m sticking to generics in the meantime and plowing ahead.

At this rate, I may even get to take a couple of days off, like I’d hoped!

Jump Start or Just Insane?

I don’t know if this NaNoWriMo thing was a good idea or not. I’ve managed to get 3855 words down on paper which is more than I wrote fiction-wise all last month. However, I’m not sure I can sustain that rate or if I’m prepared enough to carry this story for 50k words. I also feel like I’m behind already.

Stop psyching myself out, right? Think positive! I already write around 30k words every 30 days, right? What’s an extra 20k words? Hmmm. That doesn’t seem quite right. It’s more like an extra 50K if I want to keep up writing my daily journal entries. Even more if I want to do a blog entry every now and a again. I think I just have to leave those to the end of the day, after I’ve met my NaNoWriMo quota.

Maybe that’s what my blog posts can be. Something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday progress updates on my fledgling Romance novel — I’m expanding the story Revealed. I don’t think I’m going to do many Thursday Thirteens until December. I don’t know. I’m just going to play it by ear. I think I will do one for Thanksgiving regardless. Always good to remind yourself what you’re thankful for.

I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon working on a spreadsheet that lays out Dunne’s page by page analysis of where in the story and plot you should be on what page of your script. This combined the diagrams on page 63 and 112 of Emotional Structure. I made it so I can adjust the total word count and be used for any number of pages. I extended to a second set of pages that I can use to write notes about what I should be writing about at that point. Boy, did I have a lot of filling in to do on the 2500 words I’d already done.

It’s scary to realize that I tried to tell the whole story in that space and managed to get the basic sequence down, but there’s so much more to flesh out. What the hell was I thinking? I must be insane, either that, or just very naïve. I think the latter is much more plausible.

Off to see how far I can get before DD’s new mattress is delivered!

NaNo? NoWay!

National Novel Writing Month logo Ok, I have to admit that earlier this summer I briefly flirted with the idea of participating in NaNoWriMo and quickly discarded it when I realized it was in November. NOVEMBER?!? What the hell were they thinking? It seems like August through December is always crazy around my house. Things don’t seem to settle down until after New Year’s and the kids are back in school. I feel like I get a little break until March when the spring conference season starts for DH and he’s off traveling again. But No-freaking-vember?

The thought of committing to 1,667 words a day also gives me pause right now. It doesn’t matter that I write half that each day in my journal in a half hour. Real people are never going to read that! That’s 1,667 words strung together in a logical order and that need to make sense later. Although, I suspect it’s the part about 30 days in a row that’s really freaking me out. Back in August, I was regularly hitting the 2k-word mark on a WIP each day, but that wasn’t for 30 days in a row! You know, back before the characters ran away with the story and got wedged up against that wall?

This morning, I mentioned something one of the Divas said about NaNo and he asked if I was going to do it. I looked at him like he was crazy, he looked at me the same way and asked, “Why not? You could do it.” Hrmmm. He’s probably right, but that’s another commitment! I’m feeling smothered by them as it is. Even taking Sundays, Thanksgiving Day and two others on which I have prior commitments off, that still means 2,000 words a day. I dunno. I may play along, not do it officially and just see what happens.

Shhhhh!