Archive for NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo ends today, but I finished my own draft yesterday afternoon, with time to spare. The total draft clocked in at 77,722 as counted by the NaNoWriMo word goblins, but Microsoft Word counts it as 78,707*. That’s about 10,000 more words than the original draft for After the Service, a NaNoWriMo product from 2006. My estimate for this book was 80K, so I’m fairly pleased with where it ended up. There’s lots of room for cutting if need be, once I rewrite it–and heaven knows it needs plenty of rewriting. This draft is puts the “rough” in “rough draft.” But hey, that’s what NaNoWriMo is for.
And now, I get to forget it entirely. December is devoted to rewriting David Kelter’s previous mystery, All That Death–I’ll be blogging bits and pieces of that process, as well. I will come back to this draft once that whole process is entirely finished, and AtD is published, hopefully sometime this spring.
“This draft,” by the way, has a new name–I’ve ditched The Murder School, and am currently calling it Degrees of Murder. Get it? Because, you see, he graduates.
Filed under: General Writing | Degrees of Murder, NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|No Comments
I’ve noticed a pattern in my writing output this month. The first 25,000 words, about a third of the book, came very quickly. It took about 8 days, over which I averaged 3,320 words. I wrote more than 1,000 words every day, and more than 2,000 all but one. The writing was coming easily–I knew what I wanted to happen, and how. Writing was generally fun, and so distractions were not much of an issue.
But once I hit 25,000, things got more difficult. The next 25,000 took 12 days to write, and I averaged 1,987 per day. Things were incredibly inconsistent–the median was 821 words, and days ranged from zero to 6,144. Things were not coming easy, and writing was hard work, meaning I was easily distracted.
Then, this weekend, I started in on my last 25,000, and I have hopes that we’ll see a blending of the two. The work has not gotten particularly easier, but I may have found a strategy that enables me to get get significant amounts of writing done anyway–specifically, an expectation that I will write 1,000 words each hour. Once I have finished those 1,000 words, whether it takes me the entire hour or only 30 minutes, I can indulge myself in one distraction or another. It worked very well yesterday, when I cranked out 5,395 words.
It seems like a silly thing, but I think this just might be the strategy that gets the book finished before December.
Filed under: General Writing | NaNoWriMo, writing tips|No Comments
After a miserable week of writing, yesterday was a Brazilian holiday, and I took the opportunity to crack 50K, two-thirds of the way into the month. This implies that I’m now behind my pace for 80,000, but that might be okay, because I’m no longer sure the book will even get that long. I would like it to–mainly because I want room to trim things down without making it too short. I will be content if it is just 75,000, but we’ll see where the plot takes me.
Filed under: General Writing | NaNoWriMo|No Comments
After fifteen days of writing, I’m 84% of the way to the goal of 50,000. But as gratifying as that is, 50K has never been my real goal here–my goal is to write a novel. As mentioned before, my previous David Kelter books have been about 70K and 75K respectively (though the latter is only a draft). I have been expecting this to be a bit longer, and so far it looks like that will be the case. My general estimate has been 80K.
That means that not only am I halfway through the month, but I’m probably also halfway through the novel itself, which is pretty good timing. And not only that, but I’m just about exactly halfway through those handwritten notes, too.
The best news of all, though, is that I think I’m over the wall I hit this past week. After four straight days of sub-1000 writing, I cranked out 4,736 yesterday.
(NOTE: Somehow, this post got lost somewhere in the ether last weekend. I think there was more to it when I first wrote it, but here’s what seems to have survived.
Filed under: General Writing | David Kelter, NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|No Comments
After a great Sunday (6,144 words), I’ve hit something of a wall this week–not breaking 2,000 since then, and not breaking 1,000 for the last three days. The problem is that I’ve hit something of a dull moment.
Specifically, David’sd graduation. It’s not really all that dull–it’s a very short portion of the book, so readers will whiz right through it. I have to slog through each and every word. Also, it’s an important piece of scenery for the book, and the event the entire story is organized around (aside from the murder). So it’s not like I can or should just skip it. I’m just going to have to muscle it out, I think.
My other problem is that I’m coming to the end of my typed outline. I’ve typed up a bit more, but I’m not sure if I should spend time typing & neatening the entire rough outline, or if I should just type from the chicken scratch on the notebook paper from here on out. Decisions, decisions.
Filed under: General Writing | NaNoWriMo, writer's block|No Comments
Overall, a pretty good week–quantity-wise, anyway. I’ve faced down more than a few “THIS IS CRAP!” moments, but have managed to remind myself that everything is crap until at least the first rewrite.
I’m averaging 3,357.4 words per day, which would come out to about 100,722 words if I keep it up. I’m not planning on having The Murder School be quite that long. After the Service is about 69,000, and the first draft of All That Death is just under 75,000. I expect The Murder School to be longer than either, but not by 25,000 words. If you throw out my single highest & lowest days, I’m averaging right around 2,900 a day–I’d end up with about 91,000 words, which is still longer than I’d like, but acceptable for a first draft. I’m shooting for about 80-85,000 words for this one.
So, not only should I be able to finish my 50K without much problem, I should also actually be able to finish the entire draft before November 30.
Filed under: General Writing | David Kelter, NaNoWriMo, word count|No Comments
Two pretty good days have put me 20% of the way to the NaNoWriMo goal. Now comes the hard part, when I have to juggle work with my writing, but that’s why I built up the cushion that I did this weekend.
Depending on how things go, I’d like to be well beyond 50K by the time November 30 rolls around. The last two David Kelter books have both been around 70-75K, and this one may well end up longer than that. But I have plans for next month–namely, revising the second David Kelter book, All That Death, to have it ready for publication in the Spring. So, if I could finish the entirety of The Murder School during November, that would be ideal.
But doing the writing has reminded me of something very important–writing is hard work. Sometimes it comes easily, and those are great days. But usually, it’s hard work. When you haven’t sat down and written 10K words in a weekend for a while, you sometimes forget that little fact.
Filed under: General Writing | NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|No Comments
Whew! So far, I’m hitting all my goals, but only just.
Last night, I managed to scrape together outlines of my last few scenes. They aren’t great, but I’m expecting that, as I write, they will coalesce by the time I finish. Besides, I expect that by the time I get there, I’ll be well past 50K, and thus out from under the gun of November, so that I’ll be able to take my time.
However, I could not take my time today. I had set the goal for myself of hitting 7,500 words, without realizing how scanty the outlines for my first few scenes really were. My next few scenes are actually outlined fairly thoroughly, so it will be less work to put them together. Today, though, I took 17 handwritten lines of notes and turned them into 7,519 words. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
I also had to name some characters, which I put more effort into this time around than I have in the past. I’ll introduce those names in a later post. For the moment, I’ll leave you with the Lines Of The Day. I may not do this every day, but whenever I write something that strikes me as moderately worthwhile I’ll share it with you.
“Mr. Kelter, I realize this may be an unusual request, but hear me out. When Jenny first decided to come out here to visit Seattle Pacific, I did some research on the school. Part of that research was reading several editions of the Falcon, where I read some of articles about the unfortunate events of this past January—and your part in them. And I also read the article you wrote in regards to your investigation of the death that occurred in your church. If you don’t mind my saying so, those were both rather impressive accomplishments.”
David, as it happened, didn’t mind.
And with that, I’m going to bed. Tommorow, I’ll write something more sensible, like 1,667 words. Or so.
Filed under: General Writing | NaNoWriMo, outlining, The Murder School|No Comments
I’m hardly an expert at NaNoWriMo, having only completed it once (though I did finish up All That Death in less than a month this summer). But I keep finding myself offering advice to first time NaNoWriMoers this year, so I may as well post some of it here.
Though 50,000 words seems like a lot, I was able to get there with time to spare last time. Mainly, this came through a couple days where inspiration hit, and I was able to crank out 5,000+ words in one go. My goal for Day 1 on Saturday is 7,500–though that’s really only attainable because of my outline.
Avoid research, if you can, or do it in October (or make it up and come back to it later). It simply takes too long once you get into November. That was one of the nice things about After the Service—the two settings were a small Baptist church and a small Christian liberal arts school. Since I was already so familiar with those settings, all that was left was sticking my characters in there and making/watching them do things.
My most important piece of advice, though, is “don’t take it too seriously.” That’s really the beauty of NaNoWriMo—writing is such a personal thing, and we invest so much of ourselves into anything we spend large amounts of time on, so that it’s very easy to get too attached to our writing. This sometimes mean that we obsess over getting it perfect the first time, or (more frequently, in my case) it means that we resist needed changes once we are finished.
But the idea of cranking an entire novel out in a single month, while working and doing everything else, is so absurd that it forces you to take a step back, get some perspective, and allow yourself to write badly, just to get fill the pages with a beginning, middle and—most importantly—an end. You’re going to have to go back and rework it later anyway, so it may as well be something you realize right away isn’t actually God’s gift to the readers of the world.
So, be prepared for some long nights, try to avoid research, and above all, enjoy yourself. Just over 24 hours until the show begins!
Filed under: General Writing | advice, NaNoWriMo|No Comments
This year, I planned to do something different from my last NaNoWriMo—and, in fact, different from any fiction writing I’ve ever really done before. I planned to outline my entire book before I started.
And I may yet—I have three days after all, until the big opening Write-In here at Casa Goddard (CAH-zah, because it’s Portuguese). But it will take some doing. So, naturally, here I am blogging about it instead of actually doing it.
In previous books, I’ve sketched out the general events I knew I wanted to happen, broken them up into rough chapters, and then started writing, updating and adding to those general events as I got closer to them. This worked fairly well for me, for about 2/3 of the book. At about that mark, I found that I had caught up with my planning, and was left with an empty space that encompassed about 25% of the book. It lasted until the climax, fow which I usually had a pretty clear plan. And I knew the things that had to have happened by then, but not exactly how they were going to play out.
To avoid that this time—and also to deal with the fact that I actually have a full time job this time around—I planned to try out this outlining thing. So far, I think I like it—or at least, my own strange version of it.
My outline has turned into a kind of free-writing exercise, ranging wildly from incredibly detailed, line-by-line conversations and events, to incredibly vague “then, such and such happens.” Occasionally, I’ll write actual dialogue that I want to use. There are no scene breaks, no chapter breaks, nothing but lines and lines of pencil-written chickenscratch. Occasionally, I’ll throw in some indentation, when I’m feeling particularly organized.
The original plan was to take that pile of chaos (it currently stands at 19 pages of a spiral-bound notebook) and turn it into a real, honest-to-goodness outline using Liquid Story Binder, which has a pretty handy outlining tool. That part, I’m a little more skeptical about being able to complete—but for the moment, I’m going to get back to my outline, and try to make it happen anyway.
Do I recommend this kind of outlining? I have no idea. Ask me again in 33 days.
Filed under: Prewriting | NaNoWriMo, outlining|No Comments
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