Happy Fun Time

The end of NaNoWriMo had me more than a bit nervous. Without the structure of having to write at a certain pace or face public humiliation, I was afraid I'd run out of steam and stop working on my novel. But that hasn't happened and the great part is that I'm now looking forward to writing time.

That sounded bad, like I don't enjoy writing. Of course I do. Even if no one was ever going to pay me to write, I'd keep writing. It's something I'm willing to do, just for the pure pleasure of creation. But novel writing is new to me. It's a much different style from script writing. Scripts are blueprints for movies and so they are focused on structure and movement. It's a very external form of storytelling. Novels are much more internal. They can move more leisurely. In other words, writing a novel means spending a lot of time on the stuff I can't make use of in screenwriting.

That difference was incredibly intimidating to me when I first took a stab at it last November. That's worn off. I'm getting comfortable with the form and starting to look at it more as fun time than work. The words seem to come easier. Hell, one night I managed to write 900 words while falling asleep on the keyboard. Yes, I had to edit out the occasional lines of a single letter but I kept fighting sleep to try and finish a scene while the thought was still fresh in my mind.

So, I'm going to update the blog regularly with progress reports just to keep the pressure on myself. The count is at 57,720 words, which gives me an average of a thousand words a day in December. Not bad when you consider I took two or three days off to celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo.

Winner

I am a man of my word. The last post warned that there would probably be no further updates until the month was over and I meant it.

NaNoWriMo is done and I am a winner for the second straight year. Actually, I finished two days ago but kept writing because while I hit the target of 50,000 words in a month, the actual novel is not done. And it's probably going to take me some time to get there. This was the case last year too. I made some noise about finishing that novel but the truth is, with a week to go in that campaign, I knew the novel was horribly broken. I was making big monstrous mistakes that took the book completely off the rails in true train wreck fashion. Worse, I knew it was happening and couldn't seem to stop myself.

The problem was that I had a concept for a novel when I started writing. What I didn't have was a story. Now normally that's not necessarily a problem for me. I've taken scripts from concept to polished draft before. But I wasn't writing them against a clock. With NaNoWriMo, I couldn't afford to stop and rethink what I was doing. To complete the challenge, I had to plow ahead and worry about the problems later. And that's what powered the train wreck.

I've tried to explain this to a lot of people and they all give me that little pep talk about not giving up and it can be fixed if you just try hard enough. Blah, blah, blah. They all meant well but they didn't understand that I did NaNoWriMo for the experience, not for a finished novel. I was well aware that most authors write many novels before being published. So I had no expectation that I would be brilliant on my first try. My first script was a turkey too. But both of them served as powerful learning experiences. Failure is fine with me. It's how I learn.

This year I was more prepared to start. I had a concept like the previous year (a different one mind you) but this time I laid some groundwork. Before the month even started, I was busily writing notes down. Characters, places, scene ideas, whatever. Anything that came to mind relating to that concept was thrown in the pot. This gave me the vaguest sense of a story, so I had some direction to go in. And then I never looked at those notes again. This is the same process I use on scripts. The notes are just a way to give my thoughts some substance. Outlines never work for me because I have to write to understand what I'm thinking. The notes serve as a proto-outline, not really directing my story in any manner but acting more like starter fluid for an engine. You just spray a little in to give the process a jolt forward.

Yeah, yeah you're saying now. Enough of your navel gazing about process. What's the novel about? First off, let me say that was a bit rude. Second, I'll say that it's a horror story called Locavore. It's about a farming community in which people start disappearing and the police can't figure out why or how. Right now, it's about 52,000 words and I suspect the finished first draft to come in around 90,000 words. That's if I keep plowing forward NaNo style. Along the way I keep thinking of things that I need to add, change or flesh out. That will inflate the size of the novel but how much will depend on if I allow myself to go back now and make changes (unlikely) or if I do it after hitting the end of the story.

Unlike last year, this novel did not train wreck. It's in reasonably good shape and I have a vague idea of where I'm going with it. My intention is to finish this one. How long that will take is an open question. This is the holiday season, which tends to bite chunks out of my free time and swallow them whole. Plus, I do have other projects that I want to work on. The rewrite of Joe Bob the Messiah is still waiting for me. My video a week project stalled due to NaNo. There's a short script I'm prepping to shoot in the spring. The script Hive needs polishing. And there's my Unholy script still unfinished. That's a lot of stuff. And with a full time job and kids to take care of, it's near impossible to move forward on all of them at once. This isn't me making excuses, just a frank assessment of time management problems.

There are worse problems to have. If having too many great things to work on is my biggest problem, life is pretty good.

NaNoWriMo, take 2

For the second straight year, I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. The point is to teach writers that disciplined regular writing habits can help anyone write an entire novel.

Last year I succeeded in writing the 50,000 words but I can't say that I walked away with a complete novel. Nor can I claim that what I wrote was any good. And I'm completely okay with that. What I wanted was to find out if I could do it or not. I knew the screenwriting process pretty well after five completed feature length scripts but novels are a much different beast. After that month of writing, I knew that I could do it. I also knew that this particular novel had run well off the rails.

Many people encouraged me to keep going, to try and salvage the novel. I let it go. It had been a great learning experience and it made me a better writer. At no point had I thought this would result in a commercial product. Knowing that and knowing full well how badly broken it was, it was easy to set aside.

This year I had higher aspirations. Not only was I going to come up with a completed story but one that people might actually want to read. I'm three weeks into the process and have 35,403 words of a horror novel on my hands. Barring disaster, I will again reach 50,000 on time. How many words are needed to finish the story, I don't know. Length and pacing in novels are much different from screenplays, so my instincts don't work here. I can tell you that at the same point last year, I was becoming aware that it was coming unglued. This year the story still feels solid. I'm surprising myself and taking it in unplanned directions that please me.

So don't be surprised if this is the last post until the end of the month. It's tough to spit out around 1700 words a day and be able to spare the time for a few hundred here.