Yesterday someone asked me how much time I’m spending on writing every day. Stupidly, I said “at least three hours”. Why is that stupid? Because when I actually thought about it later on, I realized that though I may be typing for at least three hours (if you count all the steady runs and take out the breaks), I’m spending a heck of a lot longer working on it. This is my focus for the month – three hours really isn’t enough to justify NaNo as my focus.
How do I spend my other time when I’m sitting at the computer, but not necessarily typing away at the storyline?
1) Research. Although I did as much research as I could before the month started, there are times when I need to know something in order to continue writing, and I can’t just make a note to myself in the manuscript that says *fix later*. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can’t. In those cases, I research until I have the answer. In fact, just the other day, I spent 10 minutes falling. Yes, that’s right, falling. I was trying to seriously injure my MC, but I wanted to find out the correct order of limbs hitting the ground, and how much force it would take to do the damage I needed. Thankfully, I also had the husband around to ask for input, seeing ask how he’s a karate expert (so says me) and works on falls in his training. This meant I didn’t have to resort to actually injuring myself in the process. Probably a good thing.
2) Trying to make sense of my outline. I outlined the general gist of things during October, but there are still moments/minutes/hours where I’m not entirely sure where things are going. Yes, I could just push through and write nonsense until I figure out where everyone should be – believe me, I’ve done this many times – but other times I’m just so unmotivated because I’m stuck, that I need to sit here and seriously think about how to get character so-and-so from Point A to Point C, with a side detour at Point B.
3) Making coffee. Hey, it takes time. Not a lot of time, but when you add all the coffees up…
4) Doing other work. Unfortunately, I still have some regular work to do. We’ve got a brand new website going up this week (last I heard, anyway), and I’m going to need to keep writing content for it so it can stay fresh, and there are a number of ongoing projects that need to be worked on in the meantime.
5) …reading? Actually, this hasn’t happened yet. I’ve hardly read a thing this month, but I have a plan: in order to edit this NaNo manuscript properly, I’m going to hold myself to a task of reading X number of YA books each week – this is so that I can re-familiarize myself with the genre, and ensure that I’m keeping the correct tone and pacing for the novel. Yes, I’ve read piles of YA books before, and at least 25 this year alone. However, now that I’m writing one… I need to stay in touch with the genre. So while I’m not spending time doing this right now, I’m actually going to have to schedule it in like work. This could be good or bad, depending on whether I can stick to the reading schedule or not (or just get caught up in reading and never get around to doing any work again…!).
And that’s that.
So, if someone were to ask me again how much time I actually spend writing each day, I’d answer: I’m at my desk all day, 9am until 4 or 5pm. I wake up at 7:30 so I can have time to drink my coffee, eat breakfast, and get all my emails & NaNoWriMo forum browsing out of the way before it’s time to buckle down and start writing.
See? That makes more sense. In other news: my caffeine intake has doubled/close to tripled in the last several days. If you’ve been following the Fuel Count, you’ll see what I mean. o_O It has been/continues to be “one of those weeks”.
NaNo Fuel Count
Cups of Black Coffee: 18
Lattes (cafe or home-made): 4
Mugs of Hot Chocolate: 2
Cups of Tea: 5
Cans of Bawls (energy drink): 2
Baked Goods: 7
Bowls of Ice Cream: 1
Mini Chocolate Bars: 17
It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!!!
NaNoWriMo starts today! And I have yet to put up a widget so you can watch my word count progress… however, it might be helpful if I actually made some words to count in the first place.
All in due time… in other words, as soon as I finish this blog post. Time to get writing!!!
Results are in for the WritersWeekly.com Fall 24-Hour Short Story Challenge! I didn’t win (I didn’t expect to), but I read the winning entries and now have a better idea of how to craft my story for next time.
The biggest bonus for me was reading over the list of common themes throughout the submissions… only to find that I didn’t fall into any of the categories, which means that I was original in my idea, or at least to some degree. I think my fatal flaw was straying a bit from the topic, which I can see after reading the winning stories.
Another challenge is being run in January 2009, and seeing as how the entry fee is only $5… I think I’ll have another go. 
Tags: writing, writing contests
So I have a dilemma: do I sell my soul, or attempt to keep my integrity in place and perhaps wither away in the process?
Let me elaborate.
Last week, my compadre and I were discussing the merits of writing bad fiction for the sake of making money. Perhaps not in such blatant terms, but… that’s really what it was. She mentioned ‘pot-boilers’, the kind of writing certain famous women used to do in order to ‘keep the pot boiling’ and put food on the table, while they were working on the fiction they actually wanted to write.
I’ve thought about this. I’ve thought about writing crap in order to actually have an income worth noting, and doing my ‘real writing’ alongside. The thing is, if you’re spending all this time writing crap, would it perhaps be better spent honing the “real” stuff instead, possibly leading to a finished work and publication sooner?
All I know is that for the stories I really care about, it takes me forever (or what seems like it) to research, plan, and then finally get it down on paper. I have some other ideas that I consider more ‘trite’, which I don’t really care about and I have a feeling I could write fairly quickly. I know, getting anything published these days takes a significant amount of time and effort… but if you can write quickly, it means more submissions get out in the mail, which typically means less waiting before someone wants to pay you for your work.
To boil the pot or not, that is the question.
I found this interesting article that made me smile, which I find to be so very true. Now, I’m not saying that I could write anything worthy of a Newbery Medal, but I’ve read some of these, and let’s be honest… beyond the heart-wrenching death of a beloved pet/pathos character/MC’s parent, a number of them are, well… not really that well written. In my opinion. It’s like the Oscars – the critics like it because they think it’s ‘art’… but the public is just bored.
But, that’s another topic for another day. For now, it’s time for another cup of coffee and a few more hours of keeping my soul to myself.
For now.
Tags: pot boilers, W.C., writing
Today I was walking through the aisles upon aisles (upon aisles…) of Halloween costumes and supplies at our local Value Village, and found myself faced with a significant amount of “fairy” outfits. Among these were costumes for an ‘evil fairy’, a ‘demon fairy’, a ‘copper fairy’ (what the…?), a ‘goth fairy’…
Now, don’t get me wrong – at a basic level, I’m impressed that the majority of adult fairy costumes actually attempt to correctly represent original faerie nature, before the dumbing down that began in Victorian England and cemented itself in Disney lore.
How is this relevant to writing in ANY way? Well, I’m so glad you asked.
You see, this year’s NaNoWriMo topic falls into the realm of the fay in Ireland. Yes, I’m writing a fairy story… but with real faeries. I’ve noticed a number of authors taking this direction lately, and it’s heartening. However, I want to write my own. And so, we come to the point of convergence with Value Village costumes.
One of the threads on the NaNo forums is called ‘Let’s all dress up like our MCs on Nov.1st!!!’, to which I posted something along the lines of “fat chance, my MC is a 9-year-old boy”. However, the faerie queen will play a significant part within the story, something which just so happened to occur to me as I walked the aforementioned aisles…
No, I didn’t end up purchasing a costume. Yes, I did carry one around the store with me for about 40 minutes as I looked at other things, only putting it down at the last minute when I began to feel slightly doubtful that I would actually use it more than once.
But who I am kidding. A dress with wings? That’s got year-round written all over it.
I may go back tomorrow.
…but then again, when isn’t it? To be honest, I have no idea. Until this past weekend, I hadn’t entered a writing contest since… well, since grade 2. I won, mind you, but that was then (“this is now, this is Stouffer’s, ooh ooh”).
Old Maritime commercials aside, this weekend I entered the Writer’s Weekly Fall 2008 24-Hour Short Story Contest – sort of on a whim, sort of as a challenge to myself. I wanted to force myself to produce something creative under pressure, since I tend to have problems getting anything done without some kind of pre-arranged structure.
Now that it’s all said and done, it was a pretty good experience and I’m glad I tried it. The results (ie. who won) won’t be in until the end of the month, but this time around, it wasn’t really about winning. Next time, perhaps. This time I just wanted to see if I could do it. I managed to write the story fairly quickly once the topic was released, but I ended up spending hours and hours editing the thing, trying to cut it down to the 850 word limit. I started with 1200 words, and thought “that’s not bad, I can edit that down”… naturally, I didn’t realize how difficult it can be to remove 400 words of a very short story, since in short stories, every word needs to be crucial to begin with. I think I got 3 hours of sleep that night.
The next contest with Writer’s Weekly runs January 23rd.
In terms of the next contest that I’ll be entering for sure (hah) is probably one of the Writer’s Digest competitions. They run a number of variously themed contests throughout the year, and the genre fiction short story deadline is coming up fast. I’ll keep you posted on my progress…
Tags: writing, writing contests