a beautiful fiction

Let’s just pretend I’m not a little late with this blog post, shall we?

In Week 3 I both caught up and then fell behind again. I managed to catch up after falling a bit behind in Week 2, but then hit a scene that gave me three days of trouble. Three days! Three days of not meeting my word goal and struggling. Three days of feeling like this was the end, this was where I ran out of steam, this was there the novel died. Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but that’s what it felt like in my head for those three days. I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I would never be good enough.

Why do brains do this to us?

There are a number of authors I follow on various social media sites who have made an effort to show their followers not just the good days, but also the hard days. Days like the ones I had. It’s hard to remember it when I’m drowning beneath the bad thoughts, but those bad days are part of the process too. I think if I wasn’t in the middle of Camp NaNo I might have been able to remind myself of that, but with a deadline and a goal—self-imposed though that goal may be—I wasn’t able to break out of that spiral.

But I knew I needed to keep moving forward. I’ve said before that I have trouble putting tension between my protagonists (it’s something I’m working on) and this scene—a scene I knew was necessary, even if I didn’t know exactly how it needed to happen specifically—needed to have plenty of that. I just couldn’t find the tension. I added words and crossed words out, and I kept moving forward. But it was tiny movements, not the leaps forward I wanted. I’m not entirely sure that I found the tension, but I’ve at least given this scene some structure to work with when I start editing this manuscript.

In the meantime, I gave myself permission to write something else—not another project, but a scene that would follow the scene I was struggling with. It might not strictly be adhering to my plot, and it might get cut (or at least significantly shortened) should this novel go on to publication.

But that’s ok. Why? A few reasons: 1) It’s something fun, 2) it’s something I’m excited to write, and 3) it’s something that will still allow me to do some character development. The story continued on.

• Weekly Word Count: 16,259/16,947
• Current Word Count: 16,259/25,000
• Manuscript Total: 53,511/80,000

It’s at this point that I take a look at my goal and consider whether or not I’m going to make it. (Or, as Camp NaNo calls it, I do a Goal Check Gut Check.) I won’t make any decisions yet—there are three days in “Week 5” that I can still adjust if needed—so for now I’ll concentrate on writing as much as I can. I think I can catch up again before the end of Week 4, so I’m going to give that a try.

Camp NaNo continues on, and I continue to write. And, mostly, to have a good time with it!

Somehow week 2 is always the hill I have to get over. I’ve written before about my week 2 struggles, and this month basically remained true to that. My word counts this past week weren’t as high as week 1—although they remained higher than the bare minimum. It doesn’t feel like I’ve slowed down, but the numbers don’t lie.

Like the previous week, I budgeted my words for one day off and still managed to stay ahead. What I forgot to take into account were the plans I’d made with friends that took up an entire day. Instead of one planned day off, I ended up taking two days, one planned and one unplanned, off. As of yesterday, I’m officially behind on my word count. On the other hand, because I was a bit ahead, I don’t need to write an astronomical number of words to make up the difference, and I expect that I’ll be able to do that and once again get head so that I can still find one day this week to give my brain a rest.

Right now the balance of writing and not writing feels almost as important to me as the actual writing. On the one hand, I want to participate in this fun event and I want to finish this manuscript. On the other hand, I love my husband and I love spending time with him. I don’t want to give up one for the other—that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Finding those ways to meet my goals and not give up all my social or family time has been an ongoing challenge, but I also think I might be getting better at it: writing during my lunch time so that all my time at home isn’t taken up trying to meet my goal, and taking time not to write have definitely made me a happier writer.

Speaking of writing during lunch: that continues to be one of my best ideas. I don’t always manage it, and sometimes I don’t bother at all (my writing group meets Thursday evenings, so I usually wait and do all my writing at the meet up) but when I do, I’m always glad that I did. There are writers out there who make time to write in the tiny cracks during their days: in the few minutes between when they wake up and when the kids wake up, during the commute (hopefully on public transportation, but I suppose a driver could also be using a voice-to-text or otherwise recording themselves speaking), while their kids are at various lessons, etc. But I’ve tried that, and I find it difficult to get back into the headspace when I don’t have a lot of time. That 30 minute lunch break is probably the shortest possible time that is really useful to me.

• Weekly Word Count: 10,929/11,298
• Current Word Count: 10,929/25,000
• Manuscript Total: 48,181/80,000

(Small note: I realized the other day that my manuscript total isn’t a wholly accurate number. There are sections that I’ve counted as words written that I’ve then crossed out so I could rewrite the scene. In fact, I’ll be doing that today during my lunch break because the last thing I wrote didn’t quite work. If I had to guess, I’d say there are somewhere around 1,000 to 1,500 words that probably shouldn’t be counted in that total—and certainly not more than 3,000—but since I count the words as written, I won’t get a more accurate total word count until I start typing this beast up.)

I expect this coming week to be somewhat difficult. In the next day or two I should enter a section the details of which I’m somewhat fuzzy on. I know where my characters need to end up, but connecting what I’ve already written to that next part is likely to give me a little trouble. This is the part of the story I basically skipped over in the last draft, so the next chunk will be completely new to the story. I might take the time to do some brainstorming, but I might also just write with some vague ideas and see where the story leads me.

And so we go ever onward!

As it turns out: I love Camp NaNoWriMo. Maybe not as much as I love NaNoWriMo in November, or maybe I love it differently, but I do love it. Camp NaNo reminds me of my early years on the internet, when I hung out on LiveJournal and communicated with my friends in the way we all loved best: through text. We blogged, sure, but we also shared stories there. Fanfiction and original fiction, it didn’t matter, because we were doing the thing we loved, we were writing. I’m still friends with some of those people, and I have the fondest memories of that time in my life.

My cabin for Camp NaNo is a bunch of friends I met through an online writers group. I haven’t met any of them IRL, we’ve only chatted through the group Discord server. But we’re all doing that same thing we love: writing. And we’re all cheering each other on. In that way, it feels a lot like those golden days of LiveJournal.

Unlike years past, when I’ve attempted to write new projects during Camp NaNo, this year I’ve used Camp NaNo to rewite a novel. This year is also the first time I ever won a Camp NaNo. Coincidence? Maybe, but it’s also possible that rewriting/editing during Camp NaNo is a more doable thing for me, and that’s now something I know and can investigate further, so not only did I write a bunch of words, I also learned something about my ever-evolving process. And there’s always NaNoWriMo in November to dump words into a new project.

So far my plan to write during my lunch breaks has worked wonderfully. The task of hitting my daily word count feels so much more manageable when I sit down after work and already have 200-300 words. Right now I’m in the middle of my plot, all kinds of things are happening and I’ve been able to get higher word counts than the bare minimum—which certainly helped when I didn’t write at all on the 4th. I’ll keep doing that as often as I can since I know that my momentum is likely to slow down later in the month, and a buffer will hopefully help me win and let me do it without undue stress.

• • Weekly Word Count: 6,248/5,649
  • Current Word Count: 6,248/25,000
  • Manuscript Total: 43,500/80,000

Looking at that last number right now, I’ve just realized that this draft is now longer than the entire first draft of this book, which was a little over 41k words. That draft had the main plot structure pretty well established—the bones were all there—but didn’t have a lot of descriptions or sub-plots. Or, well, any of those things, really. It was missing all the connective tissue and the organs and the… Ok, I probably don’t need to continue that metaphor; you get it. This manuscript is growing into something that resembles a real book, and I am so incredibly thrilled with my progress on this draft. Go me!

In this coming week, I’m going to continue my lunchtime writing. I’m going to continue to hit word counts as a high as I can to maintain that buffer. I need to update my day-by-day notes for this book (which is to say, I need to update the notes that tell me how many days have passed in this novel so I don’t do anything too weird with time). I also need to make some notes on the Big Things that are about to happen so that I have a better idea of how and when those things happen.

For now, I guess I’m just going to keep writing, writing, writing!

How’s your Camp NaNoWriMo going?

Summer camp. But with writing! Once again I’ll be plunging headfirst into the month-long writing frenzy that is Camp NaNoWriMo.

In April I was still looking for a job and had all the free time that wasn’t spent applying for jobs to write. But at the end of May I became a productive member of our capitalist society once more, and am now at a full-time job 5 days a week. This will obviously affect my writing time and output, so I’ve set July’s goal with that in mind at 25k words. It’s less than my original goal for April, but it’s a goal I managed to accomplish that month. Ideally I will exceed that wordcount, but at least I know it’s a target I can hit.

To get to 25k words, I’ll need to write about 807 words per day.

Right now my plan is to do some writing on my lunch breaks at work, as well as when I get home. Normally I read while I eat my lunch, but I also read before I go to sleep, so cutting out my afternoon reading won’t mean cutting out reading entirely. There isn’t a convenient cafe I can slip off to and write during those lunch breaks, but there is a park only a block away. Weather permitting, I may end up taking my food and my notebook there for some uninterrupted writing time.

One thing I have learned from my recent NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo wins is that sprints and the Pomodoro Technique is a great way for me to get out the words. My version of Pomodoro-ing is perhaps less rigid: I put on music, and tell myself I only have to write until the end of the song. Most songs are 3-4 minutes long, which is such a small amount of time that my brain almost automatically goes, “Yeah, we can do that.” But 9 times out of 10 I find that by the end of the first song, I’m on a roll and I end up writing for longer than 3-4 minutes. By the time I look up, it’s usually been about 20 minutes, and I can take a mini break! I’ll be applying this modified Pomodoro Technique a little more strictly to my writing routine in the coming month (which is to say: I’ll be keeping those mini breaks mini, possibly by using a timer). Hopefully that, plus my lunchtime writing, will make 807 words every day a breeze.

Overall, I’m excited! I didn’t get nearly as many words written in May or June as I wanted (“Best laid plans…” etc. etc.), but I’m hoping to start Camp NaNoWriMo with 40k words already written on this manuscript, which puts me at 65k—or more?!?—by the end of July. My current word count is just over 36k, which means I have some writing to do before the end of the month, but I think I can manage that.

To anyone else attending Camp this July: Good luck and happy writing!

P.S. There’s a book post coming soon too, for my second quarter reading.

I did it!

I pushed myself the last week and wrote 8,727 words in the last six days alone, and validated my count last night at 25,070 words written in the month of April. That’s 25k words on this rewrite, and I am so pleased to have gotten this far so quickly.

Of course, the work still isn’t done. As I texted a friend who was helping me stay on track: Now I get to… keep going… But I’m actually looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to continuing this story; there’s still tons of cool stuff that hasn’t happened yet! Things I’m looking forward to writing. And I’m looking forward to eventually finishing this draft. That’s the most exciting thing I still have to look forward to.

Things I learned this Camp NaNoWriMo:

1. I’m still struggling with descriptions. Sometimes I remember to go back and add those descriptions, but not always. I’ve already made a note to myself that this is something to watch for and add where needed when I’m doing edits on this draft later on.
2. I also struggle with putting my protagonists against each other. I struggle to write that sort of tension—between two of my protagonists who may not entirely get along for whatever reason—in a way I don’t struggle with when pitting my protagonists against my antagonists. I don’t feel like I’ve quite nailed it in this draft, so that’s also something that I’ll work on when I’m doing edits later.
3. Sometimes you have to give your brain a break. And that’s part of the writing process too. Look, brains make basically no sense. They’re our greatest tools, but sometimes tools break or get dull or otherwise need some repairs or need to spend some time not in use. What I’m saying is, don’t break your brain by forcing it to keep going when it needs a rest. You won’t be doing your brain or your novel any good. (Caveat: Yes, obviously sometimes you do have to push past mental blocks or other mental nonsense that keeps you from writing. Knowing when it’s just a block and when it’s really time to take a break is probably a skill we could all develop and hone.)

• Final Word Count: 25,070/25,000

I’m already planning on doing July Camp NaNoWriMo as well, and will set my goal at 25k words. (And yes, you can expect me to blog about it again, I hope you’re not getting tired of reading about NaNoWriMo and my experiences with it.) I expect that in May and June my writing will slow down a little bit, but I would really like to write 30k words in those two months combined (about 15k words per month). That would bring my novel to an even 80k words, which is my goal for this draft.

So now, onwards!

“Best best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Well, ain’t that the truth. If you’re keeping track of my word count (and I’m not sure why you would be, but I suppose you could be?), you’ll probably notice that I did not hit those high word counts this past week that I intended. I did spend some time beating myself up for this. I’m a failure, I thought. I’d been doing so well, I’ve been keeping up with my word count and my outline and writing (almost) every day. But now I’ve failed. I’ve failed this novel. This is where it all falls apart.

But then I remembered one important thing: brains are liars. That helped some.

Then Camp NaNoWriMo sent out an email that helped even more.

We’re just about halfway through the month, which means it’s officially time for a Goal Check Gut Check!

Never done it before? Here’s how to perform a Goal Check Gut Check:

1. Go to your Camp project and look at your target goal.
2. Ask yourself one question: “Does this goal still feel good? How’re you feeling about it, oh-gut-of-mine?”
3. Revise your goal if your gut is telling you that it needs an adjustment. Maybe this means raising your goal to push yourself to even greater heights! Maybe you need to lower your goal because this month has been stormier than anticipated. It’s all about making your creative goals work for you.

It reminded me that one of the best parts about Camp NaNoWriMo is being able to set your own goal, and being able to change it—up or down—when your plans don’t go the way you think they will. “The best laid plans” and all that jazz. This morning I adjusted my goal, setting my target at 25,000 for the month instead of 30,000. Rather than beating myself up about it, rather than being resigned to meeting a smaller goal than initially hoped for, rather than any number of harmful thoughts I might be having, instead I’m psyched. Once again I have a goal that I know I can meet, but that will still be challenging.

At my last check in I admitted that I had a day when my brain just refused to brain, and then a day where I recovered from being unable to brain. Those were two lost writing days. This past week I lost another two: On Friday I straight up forgot to write. I was getting in bed that night when I remembered that I hadn’t written that day. On Saturday I went to a wedding, which was an hour’s drive away, and spent most of the day before that getting ready for the event (both physically and mentally). I remembered as I was getting in the car for the drive that I hadn’t written yet for the day. I shrugged it off.

These things happen. And that’s ok.

What matters is that you keep going. Those days aren’t failures; they’re just a different part of the process. You keep going, keep putting words together into sentences, keep stringing sentences into paragraphs, and eventually those paragraphs become chapters. But you don’t get any of that unless you keep going.

So for now, I’m just going to keep on keeping on.

• Current Word Count: 14,650/25,000

(Full disclosure: There’s a last step in the Goal Check Gut Check process, which I omitted because it’s not particularly relevant to me personally. YMMV.)