2006-11-01, 11:55 AM — uh-oh spaghetti-o
It's November 1st. This is an important day for two reasons. First is that it's my mother's birthday. Happy birthday Mom!
Second is that it's the start of Nanowrimo for this year.
Bad news: I don't feel like writing.
I don't feel like it at all. There's nothing I feel less like, in fact. Well, except maybe doing my class this afternoon. I really don't feel like that either.
What I do feel like is crawling into bed with a book and alternating between reading and sleeping. Occasionally fishy will bring me something hot to drink. The snotty kleenexes will eventually begin to overflow the garbage pail and take over the room.
But nooooo. I have to be nice to children and sociable with teachers (even if, as I did this morning, I get the feeling they really don't think much of me.) I have to talk about the coolness of soil (which is cool but messy, and my fingers hurt from the cold.) And I have to write about 1500 words tonight to keep on pace.
The other major problem here is that the story I was going to work on just isn't grabbing me anymore. It was last week. It was two weeks ago. A couple of days ago I realized I was in trouble when I read the plot outline again and thought, "wow, that's how I planned to end it? what rot."
Indeed. Ah well. I have tomorrow off. Plenty of time for sleeping, reading, blowing my nose, and writing 3000 words.
2006-10-24, 09:13 AM — i read until i'm sick
One problem I have with reading and writing is that I tend to do both to exhaustion. Reading particularly. I'll pick up a book and read the entirety of it in one sitting, possibly getting up for pee breaks. It's even less likely that I'll eat.
This might be why I have little patience for dense books, that require examination and re-examination as you are reading it. I'm a big fan of Japanese manga, which can be read in one sitting but tends to yield secrets upon the second, third and fourth readings. The last book I read was called "Poison Study" by a new author, Maria V. Snyder and I'll confess I read it in one night (went to bed at 3am) and then re-read it again the next day.
Reading the book was fantastic. The hangover afterwards was not. I get dehydrated and exhausted and gritty-eyed, but I can't seem to put a book down without knowing what happens next. Once I've read it through once, the second time is much easier on me.
I'm about to attempt "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austin, just out of curiosity. I've not read anything by her but I did enjoy watching "Mansfield Park" so we'll see. I suspect it might be a little harder slogging than "Poison Study" was. But it's much shorter, so maybe it will balance out.
2006-10-05, 09:58 PM — Nano redux
Well, there. I've gone and done it. I've signed up for Nanowrimo again this year. It's my first year since 2002. I have two stories lined up; we'll see which one I decide to hold off writing until November. Either one of them is a good candidate for completely splurging on writing.
I was thinking about why Nanowrimo worked so well for me, and what seems to have gone wrong since. I mean, I did, technically, finish a novel between 2002 and now. It isn't a very good novel. But it's done, which is more than I've ever done before, including my nanonovel from 2002. It's still not done. It's pretty close. I could probably finish it before November of this year if I tried.
All of that said, when I'm not forced by something (inspiration being what forced me the one time it's happened) to sit and work on one piece, I tend to work on all of them. Whatever draws my attention at the moment, whatever keeps me in the mood. With Nanowrimo it was different. It didn't matter if I was in the mood or not, I just had to keep writing.
It worked surprisingly well, once I actually got around to it. And the rush of finishing that 50 000 words on November 30th was incredible. And very very cool. And a lot of what came out of that month was actually really inspired, even when I didn't think I was inspired. And a lot of the time the necessity of writing over 1000 words per day actually inspired me out of nowhere.
So I'm looking forward to it. I have rough outlines for both the stories, and a few ideas written down. Main characters are envisioned, but I'm not going to do character outlines because I'm kind of curious to see what happens to the characters as the plot unfolds. I think if I actually wrote character outlines I'd feel obligated to stick to them. I don't know that I'll feel that way with the plot outlines; the outlines have already changed shape in my head several times. I rather enjoy that part, too.