Writing

27 days, 26 chapters, 63,750 words later – the novel tentatively titled Saving Emily is ready to pass off to my beta readers. The term complete is a long, long way away. There will no doubt be dozens of questions and comments from the betas and then will come the re-writes and the self-editing. Odds are this book won’t make it into the hands of an editor for close to three months – and that’s only if the betas think it’s worth a darn. Just because I think it’s good, doesn’t mean that it will pass the first round of critical reads.

So, how do I feel about the NaNoWriMo challenge? [Sorry – I still think NaNoWriMo sounds like something we should shoot as it’s charging across the Serengeti.] I’m pretty stoked to have accomplished it and have what I think may be a pretty decent first draft. I learned some important things by doing the NaNo.

Before the challenge:
1. A well-developed story plan is essential. Not that you’re going to follow it precisely, but it certainly helps to know where you’re going.
2. Know your characters and take the time to write a short biographical sketch. I had to keep referring back to certain things because I simply couldn’t remember everything. I kept forgetting the last name of one of my characters.
3. A chapter timeline is essential for me. I kept mine open and updated it constantly. Since my story timeline is very tight, I had to pay close attention to what was happening and when. This prevented me from having those annoying issues with “sequencing.” I once read a book in which the hero sat down to an evening meal where there were fireflies, while something bad was happening to a kid in school at recess. That’s the type of thing that make me insane as a reader.
During the challenge:
4. Don’t make the daily word count your nemesis. I figured out early that working on a weekly word count was less stressful for me. Some people like the idea of the small bite, but 1667 words a day can be their own little nightmare. I did have days where I couldn’t manage 800 words. But I didn’t panic because my weekly goal was always attainable.
5. Set the bar high. It’s been my experience that people live up to the expectations placed upon them. I made sure to proclaim my goals here on my website and also to all my friends. The continuous encouragement made a huge difference. Knowing that they were watching also made a difference.
6. Don’t waste a lot of your primary writing time self-editing. Make a note about what you need to fix and move on. I have a sheet of paper where I just jot down the stuff as I think of it. I do my primary writing in the morning and then in the evening I generally go back and read things over. This is frequently when I will take care of the notes I made during the day.
7. Write the scene that’s in your head. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of sequence – if you know what happens to your character at a certain point get it down on paper before you lose it.
After the challenge:
8. Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t make it. This year was not my first attempt. I’d tried several times in the past and did not even get close. In fact, I’d quit without even reaching 15,000 words the last two times that I tried.
9. Don’t throw away anything or delete it. Use it to put together a plan and set your new goals.
10. Remember above all else – this is just a challenge! You have to live in the real world and accomplish real things. Those are what matter!

Question: Would I do it again?
Answer: Yes!

It’s Day 25 of NaNo and something strange has happened. The first draft is on the page. No, it is not complete and ready for my beta readers yet, but I reached the end of the storyline right at 61,000 words. [Insert a happy dance here!]

I still have five days of NaNo left, but as I pointed out – I’m not finished. This is simply getting things down on the page and making it from point A to point B. And while much of it is written the way I’d like, there are many places that I will now need to go back and do some work. I can think of spots in the story where I knew what I wanted done, but was tired and didn’t say exactly what I wanted to say. Other times, I was racing ahead with the story, simply getting from here to there. Rather than lose the thought, I wrote something in shorthand and moved on.

An example of this would be when I was trying to get to a rather important emotional moment in the book. The image directly in front of that one is no less important than the coming scene; however, I had the other scene in my head and I needed to get it down before I lost it. What I wrote in haste, “Janice knew she was running out of steam, but kept moving.” What I really see in my head is, “Janice’s pace slowed as the exhaustion, loss of blood, and adrenalin drain, ate through the small reserves of strength she was operating on. She focused on placing one foot in front of the other, her eyes on the road ahead, knowing that if she stopped, she may not be able to start again.”

There are many bits like that one in the book that will require some attention. There are also more than a few spots where I wrote something like, “Mac knew she wouldn’t like that.” Now I have to say how or why Mac knew she wouldn’t like whatever the hell it was. Otherwise, it will sound as though Mac is omniscient. I will also have to look at all those big words and make sure I’ve used them correctly. Of course, I’ll have to look at all the little words while I’m at it. Sometimes, my fingers are so used to typing “know” that they go there even though I’m trying to say “knob.” The worst is not hitting the “t” in “the.” Spell check is fine with the word “he” even out of context.

Over the next five days, the manuscript will probably grow a little and I expect it will finish between 63,000 and 65,000 words. I’m find with that. [See – I wind up with find when I meant fine] When I finish, I’ll post the final chapter schedule so you can see how it came out compared to the original. I may also try to write a better description. I’m simply not good at those darn things.

Thanks for following along. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s just before midnight on the 21st day of NaNo and I am at 51,059 words. I’m simply too excited to sleep. This is a huge accomplishment for me. Even though I started out with some real confidence – that didn’t mean that I really believed I would meet the schedule that I was setting for myself. But here I am – I have met the NaNo Challenge of 50K in 30 days. Well, I actually kicked the crap out of the 30 days part of the program.

But for me it’s not over. I want to complete the novel and I would like to complete it this month, so I still have another 10-20 thousand words to write in the next 9 days. And I’m into the second hardest part of the novel to write. The opening is the toughest, but the ending is no easier for me.

Wrapping up a novel is tough. I have to find a way to resolve the primary conflicts and make sure that I don’t have any nagging loose ends. Nagging is a qualifier. I don’t have a problem at the end of the book if you wonder what happens next to the characters. I’ve done my job if after 70,000 words you still want to know more about the people you’ve been living with on the pages of my book. However, I don’t want to leave you wondering if someone lived or died. There’s nothing more annoying than a cliffhanger. I want an ending to the episode. Anything else is just a ripoff. I won’t do that to you, because I don’t like it when it’s done to me.

The other thing I have to do is make sure that there is a satisfactory explanation of events. It shouldn’t all be done in two paragraphs with a bunch of “and then” this happened. We’ve spent all this time together as participants in the novel – we don’t want to be told what happened after the fact. Often the revelations will come over the last two to four chapters. The bad guy and his motivations must be revealed. All the open questions about how something was accomplished must be answered, and we must know what happens to the protagonists.

Crap! I have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it in. So, let me begin by setting my goals for Week Four:
NaNo Goal – 50,000 words. Completed. Sorry – I just wanted to say it again.
Low End Goal – 62,500 which is the same 12.5 K I’ve been setting all along.
High Bar – 67,500. It could be tough to get there. I’m not sure of the number I need to write the final chapters and the book could end at 65K.

Cross your fingers for me – I’ll keep you posted.

As Inigo Montoya says in The Princess Bride, “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.” Monday of this week was day fourteen—halfway through the four-week schedule that I’m working on. I was looking for at least 25,000 words by midnight Monday to stay on track with the NaNo website suggested pace. There was no problem with that. I kicked that goal in the butt two and a half days ahead of schedule!

My personal goal was 30,000 and my “setting the bar too high” goal was 35,000 words. The reason for those numbers is that my novel is planned for between 60,000 and 70,000 words and this would put me halfway through. I ended the second week with 34,463 words and I have no complaints. I only missed the high bar by 537 words! I’d written to the end of the chapter, was at a good stopping place, and it was after 11 p.m. My eyes were bleeding and my brain had fallen out through my ear and crawled off to bed an hour before.

I think the second week in some ways was harder than the first. The reality of the goal was settling in and I had a lot of things on my plate for last week, but the chapter outline that I reworked helped to keep me on track and focused. I did go back and add in the chapters for the “possible bad guy.” I’m going to leave it worded that way because I don’t want to ruin the story for you.

However, it was also an excellent week in many ways. My favorite college football team won and I managed to write through the distraction of chores, college football, and the second to the last race of the season for NASCAR.

What really got me through last week though was the tons of encouragement I received from my friends and family. When I mentioned that I was thinking about how to get my heroine out of the trunk she’d been confined in, many people chimed in with suggestions and comments. Some of those comments led me to make notes for a future book. My neighbor let me measure her trunk and even crawled inside to show me how a woman the size of my heroine would fit in the space.

I have some terrific friends!

I also rewarded myself with a chocolate malt for exceeding the NaNo goal.

The goals for 21 November, which will be the end of week three are:
NaNo Weekly goal: 37,500 – I passed that one on 15 November
My Minimum goal: 45,000 – I’m pretty close to that now
My High Bar goal: 52,500

Wish me luck – I’ll keep you posted.

I thought it might be fun to share some of the things that have happened already in this NaNo write for those who might be following along. It’s already been a learning experience for me and probably for a few other.

Day one – I started off with a bang and wrote for around six hours. Two chapters later, I felt like I had a solid start. I was sticking with my chapter outline.

Day two – I was slow to start. Distracted by everyone and everything – brain bounce is not a norm for me but it happens.

Then I got in trouble – I wrote a small bit about my heroine going to a local gym to fit in a workout. Not your usual LA Fitness kind of place. This is a place that doesn’t advertise. Janice was sent there by her teammate who happens to know the owner, a man named Oscar Islas. Oscar is an ex-SEAL and his gym is for the specialists – bodyguards, cage fighters, mercenaries, etc. Oscar is also someone that Janice finds herself so comfortable with that she tells him of her concerns about her future. I like Oscar – a lot.

This little meeting grew from what should have been a couple paragraphs of “color” to several pages and an interesting character who could seriously alter my plot. I’m not sure yet what Oscar means to the story arc. At the very least, Janice will be thinking about him at some point and possibly comparing him to Mac. Just how much of a conflict or what role he will play isn’t clear to me.

Now – if I was a man writing “manly” books. My hero would meet someone other than the woman that he’s supposed to be interested in and if he liked her, he’d simply have an “interlude” and then go on with his life. All the female readers would roll their eyes, while the male readers would beat their chests and nod enthusiastically. But if I let Janice enjoy an “interlude” with Oscar while she’s still interested in Mac – she’d be nothing more than the Whore of Babylon. Breaking that tradition might be honest, but it could also make Janice an unsympathetic character and hurt the book.

Day three – By eight p.m. I had not even opened my document. I realize that everyone thinks all I do is write, but I don’t get to do it 24-7. I have other things that require my attention such as appointments, cleaning, and grocery shopping, so no writing. That is until Heather Rae Scott fired off a Facebook post that she was going to do the 1K in 1 hour challenge, and wondered who would care to join her. That’s picking an hour out of the day and trying to get a thousand words down. I said what the heck and jumped on the bandwagon.

Chapter four began with a new character being laid off from his job. I don’t know if this is really my bad guy or if he’s related to my bad guy. I’m still not sure I can actually write from a psycho’s perspective. I’m not even sure if this chapter will stay in the story, but we’ll see – editing is for December. I didn’t make the thousand words in the hour – I came in at 850, but I kept working for another half hour to finish up the chapter and ended with over 1100 words.

Not bad for a day that I hadn’t planned on writing anything.

The one other thing that I wanted to share is that I’m not worrying about a daily word count. If you divide up the goal of 50,000 words for the month, it’s 1667 per day. That’s a doable goal, but what if you have a day like I had today? I have days where the words pour out and then I have days where I couldn’t choke out 500 if my life depended on it. I’ve decided to go with a weekly goal of 12,500 so I don’t worry about a day like today. We started on Tuesday, so I have until Monday to meet my goal. If I hit it before then, I’ll let you know. I’m confident that I will.

I hope you are all having some success with your writing – keep at it!!!