Oh there's my NaNo post from earlier...
***ETA: Shaking my fists at LJ seemed to work. They had saved my draft! Even though it didn't work right after they ate it, it worked now. So yay for that!***
I may decide to start a NaNo filter, but overall, I'm not one to filter things unless they get too personal. I figure it's easy to scroll by, right? But I also don't want to annoy my friends.
More thoughts to come on that.
I am just having so much with NaNo honestly. I've never realized how much joy I get out of just freewriting, not editing as I go and not worrying rather or not this is written extremely well on my first draft. I just write. And I'm loving it.
I understand most of what I'm writing will be edited profusely. And chunks may get cut out entirely. I once read from a famous author that when you first start writing novels, you typically throw out and re-write 70% of your first draft. Many people freak out at that, but understand... There's 30% you wouldn't have had if you never wrote that 70%. And to get pieces that are just pure gold, you have to slush through some crap. You fix that later. The same writer says she typically has 7-9 drafts for a novel. Usually she has 6-7 before she sends to her editor even. And she's famous, writes best sellers, yada yada yada...
So me, as a beginning novelist, why should I expect my first draft to be perfect? Or even my second or third or fourth? 30% of a novel is more than I have now, or ever had before. It's a step in the right direction and perfection in a first draft is way overrated. You'll never finish a novel if you aim to make it perfect while writing it. There's always changes you can go back and make, stuff you can tweak and before long, you're writing less and less and editing the first half more and more... And then you edit yourself into oblivion. That would be me if I had attempted to straight up write a novel without the deadline. NaNo is teaching me to shut that editor up and write. Finish this draft, perfecting it comes later.
Considering I am on par to reach 10,000 words by the end of the day, I think this method is working. And while I know what I've written needs work, maybe more details to flesh things out, etc, I am actually LIKING where this is going. I had a general idea of the world, I know how the story is going to end and I had an inkling of an idea of how it would get there.
One argument I hear time and time again against NaNo is one I held myself. That it's all about quantity and not the quality of your writing. That's B.S actually. Why? Because for me, I am still focused on quality. I'm not hammering away and writing crappy just to meet the deadline. I am writing fast, yes, and writing a novel in a month may seem like you have to rush so much that quality must not be great. For those people (and my old self too), I have to ask, isn't a really rough draft of a novel better than no novel at all? How many people actually finish a novel once starting it? I don't know the actual statistics, but the numbers are pretty high. How many never start at all? Many more than that, I'm sure.
Regardless, I come out at the end with MUCH more than I had without NaNo. I am focusing on quality as well, though it's a little rough around the edges and will need cleaning up. That's okay because that's what first drafts are for.
Right now, my characters are surprising me. The male character totally surprised me just now, decided that he was a certain way and had a character attribute that I never had assigned to him. I like it. I'm world building as well. If most of this gets dumped, I still have a better idea of my world and the characters than I did before embarking on this journey. Again, that is more than I had before I started. I had general ideas, but their quirks? No clue. Their faults? Ehhh maybe a hint of them to make the story arc work, but nothing in depth. The bad guy? He's less bad than I thought and more of an arrogant jerk who also has a charming side. All of this? I never would have known had I not started.
And there's a good chance I never would have started. Because my favorite excuse in the world is, "There's always tomorrow". Not with NaNo. Your tomorrows are limited and you have a firm start and end date. I'm known for thinking, "I have plenty of time!" and NaNo takes that away from me. I don't have plenty of time. So I have to work now.
It's been easy so far honestly. Almost too easy. I expect that motivation will be harder to come by as I go along, that somewhere along the line my lack of confidence is going to make me hate every word I write. It's me after all. I've been fighting with several other projects and was hating everything I wrote and editing here and there and never finishing a damn thing. I hope when I come out of this, I can keep up the momentum. My goal after finishing this novel? Start on another while editing this one. And keep it up.
Okay, enough of my rambling. I always like to see what other writers listen to when they write. Typically, I don't listen to any music because my roommate and I have totally different musical tastes and I can't blame her for thinking mine is a bit... much. And I typically write in silence.
Today, however, I needed to get in the mindset of the world in which I'm working. Up until now, I have let it be somewhat lighter. It's supposed to be. It was more about introducing the two characters and showing their relationship, and since they were childhood friends, there was some lightness there. But it's going to start getting darker as I put them out into the world and make a few things happen to really shake things up.
My story involves murder, cannibalism, starvation, and lots of other dark themes that might make it too dark for YA (I dunno though, I've read dark YA). It has moments of horror and moments of fantasy. Depends on the scene. I'm actually combining two worlds I created in two different short stories, but the one won't show up much until the sequel (yes, I have a sequel planned already).
Oh, and in case you wanted to read the short I wrote for Idol that is the inspiration for all this, I will link it. It's all based on a dream I had years ago, a very detai
So on to the music I'm using to set the mood....
Behind a cut to save your pages.
Slipknot (of course, it's me.)
And another obvious one from me, and the first one that comes to mind for setting the tone... Tool.
Okay, back to the writing. I hope everyone who's doing NaNo is having fun and enjoying the experience as much as I am. That's what it's all about after all :)
I may decide to start a NaNo filter, but overall, I'm not one to filter things unless they get too personal. I figure it's easy to scroll by, right? But I also don't want to annoy my friends.
More thoughts to come on that.
I am just having so much with NaNo honestly. I've never realized how much joy I get out of just freewriting, not editing as I go and not worrying rather or not this is written extremely well on my first draft. I just write. And I'm loving it.
I understand most of what I'm writing will be edited profusely. And chunks may get cut out entirely. I once read from a famous author that when you first start writing novels, you typically throw out and re-write 70% of your first draft. Many people freak out at that, but understand... There's 30% you wouldn't have had if you never wrote that 70%. And to get pieces that are just pure gold, you have to slush through some crap. You fix that later. The same writer says she typically has 7-9 drafts for a novel. Usually she has 6-7 before she sends to her editor even. And she's famous, writes best sellers, yada yada yada...
So me, as a beginning novelist, why should I expect my first draft to be perfect? Or even my second or third or fourth? 30% of a novel is more than I have now, or ever had before. It's a step in the right direction and perfection in a first draft is way overrated. You'll never finish a novel if you aim to make it perfect while writing it. There's always changes you can go back and make, stuff you can tweak and before long, you're writing less and less and editing the first half more and more... And then you edit yourself into oblivion. That would be me if I had attempted to straight up write a novel without the deadline. NaNo is teaching me to shut that editor up and write. Finish this draft, perfecting it comes later.
Considering I am on par to reach 10,000 words by the end of the day, I think this method is working. And while I know what I've written needs work, maybe more details to flesh things out, etc, I am actually LIKING where this is going. I had a general idea of the world, I know how the story is going to end and I had an inkling of an idea of how it would get there.
One argument I hear time and time again against NaNo is one I held myself. That it's all about quantity and not the quality of your writing. That's B.S actually. Why? Because for me, I am still focused on quality. I'm not hammering away and writing crappy just to meet the deadline. I am writing fast, yes, and writing a novel in a month may seem like you have to rush so much that quality must not be great. For those people (and my old self too), I have to ask, isn't a really rough draft of a novel better than no novel at all? How many people actually finish a novel once starting it? I don't know the actual statistics, but the numbers are pretty high. How many never start at all? Many more than that, I'm sure.
Regardless, I come out at the end with MUCH more than I had without NaNo. I am focusing on quality as well, though it's a little rough around the edges and will need cleaning up. That's okay because that's what first drafts are for.
Right now, my characters are surprising me. The male character totally surprised me just now, decided that he was a certain way and had a character attribute that I never had assigned to him. I like it. I'm world building as well. If most of this gets dumped, I still have a better idea of my world and the characters than I did before embarking on this journey. Again, that is more than I had before I started. I had general ideas, but their quirks? No clue. Their faults? Ehhh maybe a hint of them to make the story arc work, but nothing in depth. The bad guy? He's less bad than I thought and more of an arrogant jerk who also has a charming side. All of this? I never would have known had I not started.
And there's a good chance I never would have started. Because my favorite excuse in the world is, "There's always tomorrow". Not with NaNo. Your tomorrows are limited and you have a firm start and end date. I'm known for thinking, "I have plenty of time!" and NaNo takes that away from me. I don't have plenty of time. So I have to work now.
It's been easy so far honestly. Almost too easy. I expect that motivation will be harder to come by as I go along, that somewhere along the line my lack of confidence is going to make me hate every word I write. It's me after all. I've been fighting with several other projects and was hating everything I wrote and editing here and there and never finishing a damn thing. I hope when I come out of this, I can keep up the momentum. My goal after finishing this novel? Start on another while editing this one. And keep it up.
Okay, enough of my rambling. I always like to see what other writers listen to when they write. Typically, I don't listen to any music because my roommate and I have totally different musical tastes and I can't blame her for thinking mine is a bit... much. And I typically write in silence.
Today, however, I needed to get in the mindset of the world in which I'm working. Up until now, I have let it be somewhat lighter. It's supposed to be. It was more about introducing the two characters and showing their relationship, and since they were childhood friends, there was some lightness there. But it's going to start getting darker as I put them out into the world and make a few things happen to really shake things up.
My story involves murder, cannibalism, starvation, and lots of other dark themes that might make it too dark for YA (I dunno though, I've read dark YA). It has moments of horror and moments of fantasy. Depends on the scene. I'm actually combining two worlds I created in two different short stories, but the one won't show up much until the sequel (yes, I have a sequel planned already).
Oh, and in case you wanted to read the short I wrote for Idol that is the inspiration for all this, I will link it. It's all based on a dream I had years ago, a very detai
So on to the music I'm using to set the mood....
Behind a cut to save your pages.
Slipknot (of course, it's me.)
And another obvious one from me, and the first one that comes to mind for setting the tone... Tool.
Okay, back to the writing. I hope everyone who's doing NaNo is having fun and enjoying the experience as much as I am. That's what it's all about after all :)