In Where Matt Unloads About NaNo and Not Writing

So I finished NaNo. This was despite blowing out my hands (I have chronic hand/wrist problems) by week two and running out of steam. I crossed a joyless, difficult 50k that made me question my choice of artistic endeavor. It was the worst of times, it was the worster of times.

But I did finish, and this year saw a pretty impressively high failure rate. I'm frustrated that I was so far from my own goal, but my own goal was obviously well beyond my abilities. But at the same time, I suppose I have to put up with it and be happy that I actually succeeded in writing 50k in a month. That is, of course, no small feat.

So I have a novel that's half finished. And thanksgiving break thankfully allowed me the down time necessary to become physically capable of typing properly again.

One of the major themes of my novel is my main character dealing with the mortality of her father. Which just came as a natural extension of the story, not due to me being particularly enamored by that particular aspect.

On Sunday, either through twisted serendipity or karmic irony, my father had what appears (at this time) to be a mini-stroke. He's mostly okay, it seems, though he sometimes have trouble speaking. I'm not quite sure the extent of the damage yet. We'll find out later this week.

So ... I don't know. It hit rather close to home, and sapped all of my enthusiasm for the project. I'm dealing with similar things in real life, and they're taking up most of my time and energy with concern and trying to coordinate everything. When my creative life and my real life overlap so strongly, I just can't muster the energy to throw myself at the problem at an entertaining way.

So I'm not writing. And right now I have no intentions of writing. Not on my novel, anyway. And maybe not on much of anything. I'm mentally stretched very thin, and by the time I get everything squared away each day all I'm concerned with is sitting there until I get sleepy with a minimum of fuss.

That said, I'll try to focus on the blog. I have two-ish weeks of Movie Roundup to do, a few features I have to write, a short story I promised Sarah for her birthday (which was a few weeks ago) and the one year anniversary of the blog to celebrate (don't get excited, it passed last week without notice).

So we'll see. I'll try, but no promises. Which is the best I can do until everything settles down a bit. Unfortunately, the real victim here is ITMeat, which might end up being shelved for a few months until it doesn't make me more than a little unsettled to even think about it.

First things first, though. Lunch!

And now I bring you--NaNo 2008!

So we're days away from the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2008. If you haven't signed up, do so now! I think anyone would benefit from the exercise, even if you don't succeed. I have another post about NaNo, which you can read HERE and feel free to go ahead and sign up. Trust me, it's awesome.

A few days out, and my idea is mostly ready to go. So I feel compelled to share it now. So, stay with me, and we'll reveal the first bits of my newest novel (and if you talk to me, you probably know all this already)!

The Inevitable Tragedy of Being Meat

Amanda (that's Mandy to her friends and business associates) is a doctor. Though, not the usual sawbones. In fact, it might or might not be true that she never made it all the way through medical school. She's coy on the subject. But it doesn't matter, because she's found a way to make big bucks in the medical field--off the books procedures. Discreet heart surgery for politicians, pulling bullets out of mobsters, and performing the odd back alley abortion or two.

But to her, it's just the family business. Her father was in the same kind of work, the official doctor of the mob back when the mob still had power. But now he's retired and she's taken up the family practice, motoring around the country to wherever she's called to do her work and help heal those who can't help themselves. Noble work, really.

Great on the bank account.

But now she's called back home to Colston City. Her father is dying. One more job, the remnants of the mobs begged. One more job. Yet the shabby remnants of once-proud organizations couldn't keep a lid on things like they used to. One police raid later, and he's holed up in his home suffering massive organ failure from injuries sustained. And while he might be safe in his sanctuary, he's a wanted man in three countries and there's no way he's going to check into a hospital.

Now little Mandy is left to scour the streets of Colston City for the parts her father needs. But the police are determined to find her father and are hot on her trail. The mob is ready to cover the whole thing up with bullets and cement.

And Colston City already has a resident back street doctor--a madman who doesn't take too kindly to Mandy's efforts to strike out into the city with an open door and a quick scalpel. Without options and with dwindling time, Mandy has to find someone who matches her father.

The hippocratic oath might say to Do No Harm, but blood runs thicker than bactine and the clock is ticking.

NaNoWriMo Victory!

I'm a NaNo winner for 2007. I know it's a pretty big accomplishment, and I do feel pretty good about it, but I wanted to take today (the last day of NaNo) to talk about what it means to have been a part of NaNo and what it's accomplished in my life.

I found NaNo completely by accident. Here it is, mid-October, and I'm perusing Wikipedia at work. MS is my focus right now, I have maybe 20000 words left to go on it (it's hard to recall). I end up reading something about a writing contest in November. Writing contest? What? I, foolishly, follow the link to the main website.

NaNoWriMo (found, ironically enough, at ) stands for National Novel Writing Month. For anyone who doesn't know, NaNo is a free contest where users sign up and then attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. You have to start on or after Nov 1, and you have to submit your final word count by midnight November 30.

The goal of NaNo is to get people writing. Now, I'm a big believer in 'if you're a writer you need to write' ever since I first read it when Stephen King's On Writing came out and I decided to try to give it a shot. I haven't always done it, but I've always held that to be what I should be aspiring to. And after angsty on and off periods with my first novel, I had already committed myself to at least attempting MS every day. I didn't always succeed. But the first draft didn't take any longer than four months, which is a signifiant difference compared to 4 years. If I could up my speed by that much, surely I could up my speed again and not only do 50000 words in a month, but finish the first draft completely!

So I signed up for NaNo. I take two days a week off of writing, for my wrists' sake and because I have a social life and right now I can't juggle writing on my social days (transportation issues leave me with too long of a commute). That meant that I'd need to write at least 2800 words on each day I wrote to hit 50,000. Which was a significant amount more than I had been doing (some 1500 or so probably a day) but doable. I set myself a goal for 3000 words a day.
Of course, MS wasn't done. So with the remaining two weeks of October, I flew through the last bit of MS. MS was completed on the 30th of October. I took October 31st off of writing. And then, at mightnight on the 1st of November, I began WTC.

NaNo's been an interesting experience. I hit 50,000 words nine days ago. I was pretty good about sticking to my schedule, sometimes even getting more. The moment I hit 50,000 though, I became lazy. That was bad. Then again, I've also been tottering near burnout due to my frantic pace from one novel straight into another. So I guess I can be excused, but I'd rather not be. Since then, I've managed another 12 thousand leaving me with 62000 as of today and yesterday (I took yesterday off due to wrist and hand pain).

But I did it. And it wasn't that hard. Not that I expected it to be. I know that 50,000 is a drop in the bucket. My novel was half done at 50,000. I hadn't even gotten to the good stuff yet. It was all building up to it still. Frustrating. I hate the middle of novels. It helped to have the forums to commisserate with. They're a wonderful resource full of people struggling or succeeding, lost or sure, beginners and veterns alike.

It also helped to join the regional board and meet local writers. I think I'm about the craziest, publication-focused of the lot, but it's not that bad. They're a great group, and I appreciate them all. I've never met serious writers before. I've met One Day Writers, as in "one day I'll write a book" but never people who actually attempted it aside from myself. It was nice to see how many different people could do it, how many walks of life could be drawn to this one crazy thing. It's been so motivating to see that I wasn't the only one. Having a feeling of community is absolutely essential.

I'm already chomping at the bit for NaNo 2008. I'd highly suggest that anyone who wants to write but can't find the motivation should give it a shot. When you make the time, you'll find the time. That's just how it goes. If anybody complains about not having time, just read the posts by single mothers with young children and a job who still complete 50,000 words in November. Trust me, YOU CAN DO IT. Anybody could complete NaNo. It will teach you the crash course in rock star writing. No worries about whether it sucks. Just letting it all hang out and daring to suck and actually writing instead of talking about it.

I won't try to evangelize NaNo this year, since it's over today. But I will be pimping NaNo up and down next year. It's a wonderful thing. So here's a year warning. Anyone could do NaNo at least once. Only someone afraid of their own potential would refuse. Only someone who doesn't realize their own abilities lets it overwhelm them. ANYONE can do it. Everyone should. That's a wonderful thing.

Now I just have to finish this stupid draft. =D

And so it begins, I hope

Salutations and whatnot! This is my first post on this new blog. And this is my first blog, so I'll make all the 'new blogger' mistakes, whatever those are. I don't read blogs, so I don't know. But I assume, like everything, there are new mistakes. So I'll just start and say a bit about myself, and we'll call this our nice little intro.

I've written before. I mean, published online. I have a livejournal which I've had forever. Since paid accounts were the norm and free accounts didn't exist without special codes. But that's not the same thing. This is more official. This is the public face of an aspiring novelist, even if I want it to be personal and whimsical and all the other lovely things that it could be.

I am an aspiring novelist. A working novelist. No, I don't get paid yet. I haven't been published yet. I haven't even started looking for an agent yet. In fact, I haven't edited a single novel. That comes soon, but not right now.

I'm not your 'I want to be a writer but I haven't written anything' novelist, either. I've written two full novels, and working on my third (a project I have done for NaNoWriMo [http://nanowrimo.org] that I'm still wrapping up even if I won NaNo for 2007). I might as well let you know what they are, because I'll be referring to them by name or abbreviation probably ALL OF THE TIME.

My first novel, a four year affair that now stretches a very messy 200,000 words is The Margot's Quest for the Sun, usually shortened to Margot. Great epic fantasy sort of stuff.
My second novel, a svelte 100,000 words, is Marton Syan, usually called MS.
And this current one is my NaNo novel, currently at 62000 words, called Ways to Commit Suicide When You're Bored (or Ways to Commit or WTC depending on the day)

As soon as WTC is done, I will probably A) begin editing MS for a March 1st deadline to get it to my first readers and B) start a new manuscript.

The goal is to be looking for agents by fall of 2008. That's a good goal, very achievable if I don't screw around. This blog will help archive my efforts editing for the first time, though first I'll be ranting about my novel as I streak into the climax and the finish. Anybody who reads this, if I give myself a goal and don't finish it, feel free to blast me and tell me to get on with it. Encouragement makes me happy, and it makes me write when I don't want to.

That's enough for now. I am at work, more on that some other time, and while this helps pass the time I don't want my intro to be giant wall-o-text. There will be plenty of time for that later. Plenty, plenty of time. Bwahahah!