Seasonal Plume

It’s that time of the year again — it’s National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know what it is… where are you been, seriously?

It’s also that time of the month where I always set myself up to fail, apparently. I’ve joined almost every year, but after writing about a few couple thousand I slack off rather horribly. This year isn’t different, as I have signed up again for the 50,000 word challenge.

However, what I’m going to do will be slightly different. Starting November 1, I’ll be working on a memoir chronicling a certain time in my life. There are three things that I’m hoping to “hit” with this:

1. do some internal processing of the events and emotions that are related to the subject matter,
2. for memory’s sake, so I have something to look back on that will hopefully be a little more coherent than my journal entries, and
3. if my journal entries on the subject are any indication, I should be able to win NaNo this year!

It should be good as both a writing exercise and a way to process the events. I probably won’t be posting much snippets from the novel, as it’s obviously something that’s highly personal in nature, but I do hope to be blogging about the experience of writing the memoir itself.

Yes, real life happened, plus some other things mixed in between. Hence, no, I did not finish NanoWriMo (for the umpteenth time… that’s like my standard spiel for the end of November!) and I feel somewhat sad for this, although that sadness is something closer to a “token” sort of sadness — like, I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo so I should feel sad! although I’m not very upset or depressed about it. Real life happens, and real life must go on.

That said, I’m not giving up on my story. I’ve been wanting to revamp the whole thing, after all, so the story isn’t going to the Recycle Bin like my previous NaNo attempts. Hee!

I congratulate everyone who’s finished Nano, however! *pompoms!*

There is a super typhoon hitting my country today, and I think where I live (and where I will be going home tonight) it must be raining already. Meep! Let’s hope power lines don’t get cut — the last time, we were electricity-less for almost two weeks. :p

I’m convinced real life is the worst enemy of writing. ;)

Alright, of course I’m kidding, but I had not been able to get much writing done at all! I don’t think I should keep posting my weekend plans for writing my Nano novel — I pretty much failed and was only able to write a little over a thousand words.

nanowrimo 2006

words: 6,819 / 50,000 (14%)

Six thousand eight hundred nineteen words, by mid-November. Although I think I have fared a little better this year than in the last years, that’s pathetic, really. Let’s see now. I was out the whole weekend — I was out with friends Saturday and I was out with family Sunday. I was too tired both nights to write. The same happened with Monday night, and last night I was out having prolonged coffee with Ana.

When I was younger I had bouts of staying up all night writing my stories. I’d like to be able to do that again (and I’m in a rather interesting part of the novel, even if it’s still only started!) but the thought of needing to travel 4 hours and work the next day is enough to make me decide that I need a good night’s rest.

I should really come up with a better plan than finish this many words over the weekend! Any ideas?

Yes, it’s finally the weekend. I will write this weekend, I will see to it that I will write! My goal for this weekend is to reach 18,000 words. I should have reached 20,000 words by Sunday (according to my NaNo calendar!) but I will try to be realistic — 12,000 words in two days could be a bit of a challenge, although if the muse hits it could also definitely be easy ;)

Plan of action: write offline. Stay up late to write while the rest of the house is quiet. Somehow, that’s always been rather conducive to my writing. I also found that I like the fact that only the lamp is lit when I’m writing in my room (yes, disconnected from teh intarwebz). Write snippets of scenes if need be, but write, write, write! Dream of my characters. It doesn’t matter if I know the content will be cut when I edit the story a few months down the line, the point is that I have to get the writing out and I have to let my characters show me who they are!

Ahem. Now I shall go on up and try to do as I said. ;) Let’s hope I actually write and not end up procrastinating and doing the 1847612387428 things I also need to do. :P

I was able to write a bit yesterday, and although I’m still quite behind, I feel a bit of optimism, still. I’m now at 5,716 words, and I only had to stop writing yesterday not because I was all out of words or anything but because of external factors like I need to go, etc. Yay!

nanowrimo 2006

words: 5,716 / 50,000 (11%)

Obviously I have high hopes for the next few days, or the weekend. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully catch up with my word count, but who knows? If my schedule cooperates I just might be able to make the needed word count or even over. ;)

One thing that dampers me, however, is that I need a language. I was able to skim some language-creation articles, but haven’t been able to actually sit down and work it through. I need the language for the story, obviously! Since I’m writing a fantasy, it’s pretty much needed. So far I’ve been able to keep them from saying anything in the other language — or at least nothing that I have to write (I plan to only write in the other language if I mean it to be indistinguishable to the reader or the character whose head I’m currently in; so for example we’re in Alexander’s point of view, we’d see the native language of the island in English).

I still don’t have a final name for the island, or for the queen, or for the inhabitants. For now I’m rehashing the old names — Chimerage, Lilymirth, and faeries. I don’t want to say faeries because they’re so damn used everywhere already. Eww.

I haven’t talked about my Nano story at length yet, have I? I should talk first about the older short story it’s coming from, but I’ll do that some other time. :)