The Brain Dump

Holy crap! It's been a while since I've updated. Well the good news is that I've been keeping up with the writing so here are some numbers:

Day 9: 1,359, a hard day or mmmm, not hard just the way the writing was structured made for a less than spectacular day. It was a Thursday and I have class that day, so there's four plus hours of my evening taken up. I also finished a chapter after 1,359 words and the closure that that gave my brain made it difficult to start another chapter. However . . .

Day 10: 5,932--yeah-h-h-heeeeeeah! One whole chapter --> one day. It did take six hours so it wasn't some virtuosoic (virtuosoic?) display of awesomeness. I just had the time. So it was about 1,000 words an hour, 15-ish words a minute. Which sounds so slow . . . *shrug*

Day 11: 2,902, another solid day. Nothing great but hell's bells I'm happy with it.

Day 12: 2,253

Day 13: 2,123, these last few days were the last chapter of what I have dubbed "Part One" of my novel. But that made it really, really hard to write. Because I broke the rules. What is supposed to propel you through the NaNoWriMo experience is your ability to turn off your internal editor. I did not for this chapter because I built it up in my head that something meaningful had to happen in this chapter and that means I labored over it because it had to "be" something. It couldn't just be what was going to come out of my head. Sigh . . .

Day 14: 1,839, what was this . . . Monday? I don't know what happened. Some days are harder than others I guess.

Day 15: 1,790, and then I realized that sometimes writing is just hard. I also realized that the writing from here on out is going to be a different kind of writing from what I was doing up to now. Because before this I had a draft of something. In effect, I hadn't been writing up to now, but rewriting. I do have an outline and I've worked out what all the major events are going to be. But knowing that and realizing it in words are two totally different things. I'm wrestling more with my interior editor more because this is the first realization of these passages and nothing sounds as good as it does in my brain, where it can be perfect and wonderful and everyone is clapping just for me. C'est le processus.

Day 16: 1,725, I couldn't figure out what the hell I was trying to do in this chapter so it slowed things down as I tried to figure it out (something I'm not supposed to do). I also had class. Blah, excuses.

Day 17: 1,112, a horrible day. Just a bad day. I woke up late, I procrastinated. I finally finished the chapter that I didn't know what I was doing with. Having thought about it since then I think I know what I want to do--something I don't think I could have figured out till after I'd written it (which is, of course, the point).

Which brings us to today. Day 18. I haven't done any writing yet because I had class this morning even though it is Saturday. Sooooooo . . . I suppose I better get to that. Laters.

A solid showing on the first day of Week 2: 1,936 words. Not earth-shatteringly awesome (like Christina: 3,174!) but it keeps me a full two days ahead of the game. I had my first real glimpse of what a beast this thing that I am writing is the other day because the total number of words that I have written so far on this thing as a whole (not just in January) is: 48,539 words. Which is great. That's great. It's just that I'm approaching a third of the way done. So, assuming my projection is even remotely accurate, I'm looking at a 150,000 word monstrosity. Another way of looking at it is that I have 88 pages now, which (due to my format) is equal to about half that in paperback. So I could be looking at a 450 to 500 page novel here. Which means I'm gonna have to write like a bat out of hell or accept the fact that I ain't finishing this thing in thirty days (I'm certainly not doing it in 50,000 words). Sigh . . . the things I do for my art.

And to give my estimate some context, I projected that the first section would only be seven chapters long (roughly ten pages each) and there will actually be eleven, which makes me . . . about as accurate as all the polls going into the New Hampshire primary (<---ooooh, topical humor!). So who knows how long it'll go?

I'm gonna have a fun time revising this bitch.

Well, it's the end of Day Seven, which brings the first week (the easiest week) to a close. Let's see the numbers.

Day Seven Word Count: 2,332

Par for Week One: 11,669

My Total for Week One: 14,789, just 214 words shy of two full days ahead of schedule

Yippeeeeeeee!

On to Week Two, the hardest of the weeks. But with a two day head-start, I ain't sweatin' ;)

Today worked out quite nicely. But we'll get to that shortly.

The NaNoWriMo people understand that it can be hard to stay focused when you're barreling through 50,000 words in thirty days, so Chris Baty came up with some tools to help. Among them are the two Magna Cartas.

Magna Carta I is a list of "things" (a wonderfully nebulous term) that you love about writing and reading in books. It can be anything, this isn't supposed to be a hard list to make. My other NaNos and I met together on New Year's Day to pump each other up and one of the activities we did was make this list. Mine was as follows:

Magna Carta I: Things I Love in Novels

slapstick
dark humor
complex characters
other worlds
writers who play
possibilities
multiple endings
characters who change
writing that illustrates
irony
recurring themes
uncertainty
revelations (NOT the religious kind . . .)
strong women
stretching conventions
breaking conventions
mixing genres
visceral details

This list serves as a kind of well pool in case we get stuck. We can always glance at the list and double-check that we are including the things we love into our fiction. After all, no one wants to write 50,000 words and then realize they hate them.

The other list is, not surprisingly, a list of things that we hate (or 'do not like' to the apologists) that are found in novels. Mine is:

Magna Carta II: Things I Hate in Novels

supposed "objectivity" (*maniacal chuckle*)
soapbox beating
simple answers
stereotypes
melodramatic characters
looooooong (we're talking pages here) descriptions
story "telling"
purple prose
cliches
attempts at merely being "hip"
just about anything written before 1930 (hyperbole? . . . mmmmmaybe not)
gender roles unchallenged
violence as the only answer
character cheats
authorial tricks that serve as justification for moral actions

Character cheats and authorial tricks go hand-in-hand. What I mean is whenever an author overtly manipulates the plot or whatever in order to get a contrived or simple answer. Examples: I see this a lot in movies, especially action flicks. Many times you'll get a big manly hero-type and he'll go on a genocidal murder-spree in order to save something (the world, his wife, Alyssa Milano, whatever) but then when he faces the big bad wolf, the villain says some variant of "You can't destroy my evil without becoming it!" and then the hero is all conflicted because he has to be a sympathetic genocidal maniac. Enter: the author, who contrives the action in a way that the hero turns away from killing the villain at the last second but then the villain (since he's SOOOOO evil) somehow ends up killing himself. That, to me, is dishonest. If you believe in non-violence, have the balls to accept the fact that you can't kill villains. Don't cheat. The deus-ex machina is the same thing. Here's the hero in a ridiculously dangerous situation with no logical way to get out. Enter: the author, swooping in like Tolkien's eagles (oh wait, there's one) or the cavalry or the clone army or whatever you want to call it to tie things up in a neat little bow. Yaaaaaay! Sci-fi and fantasy are notorious for the ol' deus-ex. Here's a ridiculously evil wizard or battle station or . . . clone army, alien race, etc. and it looks like there's no hope for the rebels . . . except that some peasant kid happens to find the one thing in the entire universe that can kill anyone who's ever been evil ever in their lives, ensuring a timely happily ever after.

"But, Chris," you say, "*insert movie or novel* uses *insert aspect from Magna Carta II* and I know for a fact that you like it. It says so on you facebook/myspace!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The list is just a general sense. It doesn't mean that an author can't effectively use one of those things for an authentic effect. It all depends on what they're trying to say. But 99 times out of 100, I'd like it better if they avoided them.

But enough of that.

My friends and I also had a fun challenge to describe our novel in one sentence. Here's my modifier-strewn one:

"My novel is a genre-bending, darkly ironic, convention flouting, woman empowering meditation on the narratives we create to explain our morals and the principles by which we live, as well as a deconstruction of the techniques by which we create them."

"But, Chris," you say, "that sentence tells me nothing about the plot of your book."

Weeeeell, that actually makes me happy. 'cause I've noticed that, in most of the books that I really, really like, the plot is just that, while the story is something else entirely. What's that mean? It means I can be really, really pretentious :) but it also means that I may just like what I happen to be writing.

Today's final word count: 3,075

It's getting easier.

And I'm back.

Well, Day Two was hard but Day Three saw me get back in that saddle, ending the day after 1,758 words. That at least made me feel better going into Day Four (Saturday). Alas, my blog entries do not count towards my final word count (only words in the manuscript) but, no worries, because something must have clicked in my brains. I wrote the crap out of that day, finishing with a heroic (that's right, heroic) 2,665 words!

Booyah.

Then, today, fueled by a magical mixture of coffee and cheddar cheese and pretzel Combos, I sat down with my girlfriend this morning and hammered out 1,864 words in a little under two hours (Shazam.).

And, perhaps it was the nutrients in the peanut butter granola bar Christina had but something sent her charging ahead to 1,883 words (only a cursed 19 words more!).

Who is super sexy?

We are Super Sexy.

Par Total after Day Five: 8,335

My Total after Day Five: 9,382

Of things about which I am talking, that is number one.

Blerrrrrrrrrg. Today was a harder day. I think mostly because I started class up again. But enough excuses. Final tally:

1371

Only 296 words short of my daily quota. Gotta keep going at it.

Hey hey there, crazy world. It has been a looooooong time since I've been on here but I figure now's time for a reappraisal of the ol' Brain Dump. So here I am.

*reappraising*

Let's see here, let's see here. What did you miss . . .? Well:

I turned 25.
I got the flu.
I survived the school quarter (B, B- (was just glad to be done)).
Spent Thanksgiving in Texas.
Hated on Christmas a little less this year.
Maxed out my credit card (grrrrrr, Christmas!).
Got some sweet presents.
So Jon to the Briz-ion on New Year's (rooooooooocked).
Aaaaaand loved all over my girlfriend.

Mmmmmm . . . yeah, that's about it. Oh, and I have a job as a part-time dog walker because, as my friend Nic, the ever-poet, put it, I'm "in seventh grade."

Whatevs. It's bills in the pocket.

But the real news is this:

My writing group and I have taken up a solemn challenge for the month of January. We have decided that no more shall we be "one day" authors, who are perpetually "working on" their novels--no! We will write a whole goddamn novel (each) in thirty goddamn days.

Booyah.

Today was Day One, as yesterday we were . . . recovering from hang-overs and what-not. But now we's down to bid-ness.

Basically, we got the idea from the National Novel Writing Month. They came up with a system to help just about anyone crank out 50k words in thirty days. That's the goal: 50,000 words. The idea is that the first draft is shit anyway . . . so get it out of the way already. It's pretty genius and a healthy way of getting ideas out of your head where they can fester and turn to brain crack.

Anywho, we've taken up the challenge and one of the suggestions the NaNoWriMo people tell us is to tell as many people as possible so that the stigma of public shame looms over us and (hopefully) inspires us to shit out what we can. So here I am: throwing myself upon the public altar, mocking the razor sharp knife of failure that will slowly descend upon me for the next thirty days . . . or not. We'll see :)

In order to be on schedule, I'll need to write 1,667 words a day. My word count thus far:

1,724.

Bring it on, January.