Category Archives: Writing

Day 26

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in NaNo

≈ 1 Comment

So close to the end and nowhere near any of my word count goals!

Yesterday, I managed to shave my left index finger with the vegetable peeler. It was basically the first thing I did in the kitchen as I started to prep for Thanksgiving dinner, done while peeling an apple to include in a cranberry salsa for the appetizers no one truly needs. The salsa is pretty darn tasty, though, and is going to go great on turkey for people who like spicy salsa, so maybe it was worth it. But it hurts to type this morning, which presages bad things for my word count.

Also presaging bad things: R comes home today, today, today. It was my first thought when I woke up this morning — well, after, “why I am awake so darn early?” So my second thought of the morning. But I suspect today will include more getting ready for Thanksgiving (I’ll be making roasted squash for a salad and preparing the mashed potatoes ahead of time, plus setting the table and polishing the silverware if I can find some silver polish, and maybe baking some cookies, plus definitely doing a little cleaning) and a lot of anticipating of R’s arrival. Oh, yeah, and some wrapping of Christmas presents. Anticipated word count: eh. I’ll try to write a few sentences just to make sure that I stay in the goal of a daily word count existing, but I’m not going to worry about it too much.

Probably not a surprise, but I am not going to win NaNoWriMo. Except, I hope, for the blogging every day part and that wasn’t even a goal when I started. And I also hope — and maybe even believe — that the project I started will someday turn out to be something wonderful. But thinking about those things is for the future. Today… R is coming home! Yay, yay, yay!

Day 25

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in NaNo, WIP

≈ 2 Comments

Yesterday started out great, but somewhere along the way… yoga, actually… it took a wrong turn. A thousand words of outlining turning into a sentence or two of story by the end of the day.

The outlining was good, though. I have some solid ideas for where the story is headed. I may have made a major tactical mistake in my point-of-view characters, though, which could be a pain later. I had a choice between using Rose’s POV or Dillon’s and I chose to use Rose’s, but as the plot is currently shaking out, that was probably the wrong way to go. I don’t particularly want to change it, but I may have to decide to later. That’s a worry for another day, though. Today — grocery store, kitchen guy, starting prep for Thanksgiving, wrapping some R Christmas presents so he doesn’t see them when he gets home and somewhere along the way, squeezing in a bunch of words.

And staying off the internet. I need to get one of those blockers to keep me from getting derailed by every interesting train of thought that heads off in the wrong direction. Yesterday’s was whether people who acknowledge that they are not nice guys are potentially less “not nice” than people who pretend to be nice. It started from a football conversation about the guy who answered every question at a press conference with one word answers and went off in all sorts of interesting places, but it really wasn’t a good use of my time. I don’t think knowledge and curiosity are ever wasted, exactly, but it’s late November of the year I decided to take the business of writing more seriously and I have not exactly reached my ambitious goals. Ugh. Not going to think about that, because it’s not exactly making me more cheerful. Time to walk the dog and then after that, time for some words.

Day 24

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Good words yesterday. I’m not sure how many of them overall, because there was (alas) deleting of some old words that stopped working. But over a thousand, I’m sure of that. And better, I found the story again. The words were a little bit of a muddle — it was a lot of dialog, so there was a lot of ordering and re-ordering the conversation to try to find the way in which it flowed best — but I’m looking forward to working on them again today.

Favorite line(s) from yesterday:
“I’m going to kiss him,” Rose announced. Was that a flicker of his eyelashes, a look of surprise?
“Hey, what?” Dillon protested.
“You are?” Joe and Nadira said at the same moment, in very different tones.
“I am,” Rose repeated. She leaned in a little closer to Cam and said, in her most seductive, most southern voice, “A really good kiss. A kiss like only a southern girl can kiss, long and slow and sweet and…”

And looking that up made me realize that there were fewer words than I thought. But that’s okay, I’m still pleased with what I got done. Today — more words! Also some yoga, some grocery shopping, and maybe the start of some cooking. I thought of a nice Christmas present for my dad (involving cooking) so I have to decide if I want to do that before Thanksgiving. Maybe. It’d be nice for R, too, if I did, and he comes home on Wednesday, yay!

Good luck to all who are writing this week! You can do it!

Day 23

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

I wrote yesterday. Not a ton of words, not enough words, but good words. I also did laundry, including the folding of my laundry, which is often where I fail, made a couple good meals with plenty of leftovers for later, ate healthy food, made my bed, bought tablecloths for my Thanksgiving dinner tables… and took a two hour long candlelit bath with a Nora Roberts that was on sale.

So it was a productive day and also a very pleasant day. For today, words, words, more words. I realized that posting the story as I wrote it on fictionpress was part of why I was getting stuck — the need for it to be good enough for other people to see is inhibiting, even though I’ve always found that a helpful way to backup my files, motivate myself, and keep my scenes focused. So for the next week, I’m not going to post on fp. Come December–or whenever–I’ll start revising and posting and then maybe those scenes will go fast.

I also realized yesterday that three days off and too much revision really was making life a lot more difficult. I kept having to refresh my memory about what had happened because I’d written bits that I’d then deleted and I’d changed stuff around. Had he talked about hope yet? Nope, that was gone, so good, I could put that in here. Had she found out about his past yet? Nope, decided to do that and then pushed it off to later. Oops, and wait, where did Rose go? Drat, losing track of a character is never any good. And all of that — well, both contributed to the not-very-many-words word count — but also was a direct result of not writing every day and not staying fresh in the story. It’s a good reminder to me of why writing every day is so useful.

All that said, this week is Thanksgiving. R will come home on Wednesday, yay, and the chance that I’ll get much writing done on Thursday is pretty small. I also am tempted to do some seriously crazy cooking over the next few days — some fun appetizer possibilities, maybe some baking for early Christmas presents — fun, but not conducive to the thousands of words I’d like to be writing. But I’m not going to worry about that now. For today — words, words, and more words.

Day 22

22 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Goal for today: ignore the fact that it’s the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and act like it’s the Monday of a brand-new project with a serious deadline.

Yesterday I managed 500 words and a lot of thinking. I made some connections between characters, realized that part of my plot wasn’t working for me, and let some description be as bad as it needed to be.

Today I have to manage a transition — not usually my strongest suit — ending one scene and moving on to the next and start a new scene that I’m not all that sure about. But it’s the only thing I need to do today. Apart from writing this, of course, and I getting this done before I’ve even had my morning cup of mint tea.

Good luck to everyone else writing today!

Day 21

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

I suck at NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday, I had a nice dinner with my dad and stepmom, and a lovely long chat with my brother. I spent hours upon hours trying to figure out my taxes and finances and come up with a plan for my kitchen repairs. And that was it. I don’t even understand where the day escaped from me. Okay, the dinner I cooked was sort of serious: apple & cranberry stuffed pork sirloin tip roast, with cranberry sauce, cinnamon baked sweet potato rounds, and a salad of mixed greens, roasted brussels sprouts and pecans topped with a warm cider vinaigrette. It was probably a solid hour of prep time, plus another hour of oven checking and flipping sweet potatoes. But still, how did I lose a whole day and finish with no words at all?

I’ve got about 10,000 words of story written and ten days left of NaNo. I’m probably not even going to reach my revised 30K goal. But that’s okay. Today’s a new day and I’ll write today.

Day 20

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in NaNo

≈ 2 Comments

Word count yesterday: 0.

That’s not quite, true, though. I actually opened up a fanfic that I’d started a while ago and wrote a couple hundred words on it. Then I reformatted A Lonely Magic with its lovely new cover and I wound up spending the day on that project, including editing the first chapter. I would swear that I edited and re-edited and edited some more that first chapter, but I couldn’t resist making more tweaks when I had the chance. Part of me thinks that’s terrible — move on, write the next thing, don’t get trapped into endless revisions — but the editor part of me was a lot stronger yesterday. No regrets.

Today I’m miserably allergic and having guests over for dinner, so it’s not likely to be the most productive day. Not to mention that most of my brain seems to be endlessly trapped in a loop of what to do about my kitchen. What to do, what to do… ugh. I’m sick of it and it hasn’t even gotten ripped apart yet. But maybe it’ll be like the floors and I’ll really love it when it’s finished.

Goal for today: to do something productive. To write some words. To get back into Cam’s story. It’s a fun story, and if I weren’t feeling so miserable, I’d be a lot happier about being able to play in it, but the tissues are piling up and I’m starting to think chicken soup might be the menu for the evening.

Last night I had a revelation, though — sitting in front of a fire in a friend’s backyard and watching the flames, which is really the best possible way to have a revelation — that perfect is boring. Not only is my perfectionism getting in my way and slowing me down, it also doesn’t make for better writing. I’m not talking about avoiding typos, of course, but about being too obsessed with things like repetitions, grammatical accuracy, and following rules.

For example, one of those “rules” for good writing is to find the verb that avoids the preposition, so instead of “put up with” you should use “tolerate” and instead of “figure out” you should use “deduce.” Straightforward, right? And actually excellent advice for people writing non-fiction. But in fiction, the prepositional phrases feel natural. They flow. Searching for the “better” verbs slows me down, but also doesn’t always improve the language. It can turn the text into thesaurus-verbiage instead of a smooth, unnoticeable voice. Even more important, it doesn’t make the story better. The plot, the characters, the setting — none of them become more alive because I’ve avoided using a preposition.

I won’t jettison that rule entirely. Good verbs–ones like jettison–are great when you can find them. But I’m going to try to relax when it comes to rewording prepositional phrases and try to give myself permission to be less perfect — not with the idea that I’ll fix it later, but with the realization that perfect isn’t the most important quality of a story.

500 words written this morning and not one of them on my book. Oh, I am bad, bad, bad at NaNoWriMo!

Day 19

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Yesterday’s total: 0 words.

At least I wrote a blog post.

I have excuses — stuff, things, phone calls, stupid bureaucracies, paperwork, cover distractions, life. And honestly, they’re pretty good excuses. But also, I fundamentally just didn’t feel like writing yesterday.

Today, I’m going to turn the internet off for at least part of the day and try to write in focused sprints. I again have “stuff” — a book file that I hope to update, a meeting with another kitchen guy, the possibility of yoga, the need to fill out appeals forms and get things in the mail — but grabbing an hour or two for writing ought to be completely possible, if I keep the internet off and avoid mindless games and blog reading.

Someday — even someday soon, I hope — I should hit the point where the book really starts to coalesce and writing gets easier. Maybe today will even be the day.

Day 18

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

It’s 2PM and I haven’t written a word. I spent the morning struggling with the health care exchange, a subject about which I don’t even want to start because I am so, so, SO frustrated, and most of the afternoon trying to resolve my kitchen issues. I was just starting to open my file when I realized that I hadn’t even written a blog post and I need to leave the house in ninety minutes. My frustration level has not gone down as a result of those realizations.

I’m at a “I don’t know what I’m doing!” place in my story. They happen all the time and I’m sort of used to them, but they’re never much fun. I remind myself that if I just keep writing, stuff will happen, the plot will reveal itself, onward I’ll move. But it’s feeling like a rough week and it’s only Tuesday.

Goal for today: to write something. To be nice to myself. Possibly to fill out the ridiculous appeals paperwork to continue my ongoing struggle with the health care exchange. I… am not going to vent about that. But I had a period this summer where I thought I was incredibly stupid and it turns out that no, they LIED. LIED. And are still lying. Ugh, it pisses me off. But at least if I get it done today, I won’t have to waste another day this week being annoyed at them.

Onward!

Day 17

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

I woke up allergic this morning: congested, itchy eyes, the over-tired feeling of an immune system overreaction. It annoys me mightily. I left a write-in early yesterday because I was hungry and knew that if I stuck around, a gluten-free chocolate brownie would become too tempting to resist. If I’d known that I was going to be allergic anyway, I would have eaten it and enjoyed every bite.

Today, my accomplishment is going to be yoga. When I feel like this, there’s a real temptation to just crawl under the covers, but I’m not going to. Some words will be written–probably bad ones, but they’ll be written anyway–and I will go to yoga. Everything else is going to be an optional Monday decision.

Day 17 and I’m not even close to my revised goal, but at least I’ve written a blog post every day.