Whew, Well that's Done Then

I wrote 8000 words in two days. Two days that included driving from LA to San Francisco, and eight hours paying work. I finally made my weary way to the finish line to submit my total of 50,030 words and then bask in the glory of my victory.

Imagine my joy when I saw the NaNoWriMo word count verifier's verdict: 48,723 words. I looked at my watch. 11.10pm.

After the sprint-writing of the last day or so I actually made up the words in less than half an hour, so the end was less nail-biting than it might have been.

I have to read and annotate four chapters of other peoples' work for a workshop tomorrow, but I may give myself Wednesday off, before the revision begins.

Get NAIL YOUR NOVEL by Roz Morris for Free

Well it had to happen. Despite overconfidence earlier in the month, I'm now right up against the NaNoWriMo deadline with many thousands of words still to write. I blame it on an amazing Thanksgiving spent in LA with good company, many hours in the driver's seat, and, inevitably, too much to eat.

So that's why it's been quiet round here. It's not likely to pick up for a couple of days since all spare words will be diverted to my nano manuscript.

In the meantime, though, I thought I'd let you know that Roz Morris from Dirty White Candy has made the electronic version of her excellent book, Nail Your Novel, available for free. I'll be posting about the book next month, but why hang around?

Round Up from Behind

This week I've gone bad.  I rail against bad blog conventions, and then refute my own point with a link to an excellent post that breaks my rules. Go me. Then there are bad endings, bad TV and an argument for bad writing.

Meanwhile, prompted by Alexandra Sokoloff, I obsess about lists. Hilary Mantel finds her inspiration deep in her Daily. And Larry Brooks tears a movie apart to find the bones of story within its still warm flesh.

Oh. Almost forgot one bad thing. There's bad sex. And at least one throbbing organ. I promise.

The Ten Minute Writer Meets NaNoWriMo

A while back I described a practice for productivity. I write in timed ten minute sessions. This may have something to do with my childhood love of TV or possibly my idiot attention span. Look! Shiiny!

My first two NaNoWriMo experiences were as painful and exhilarating as they come. I gritted my teeth. I lost sleep. I locked myself away from my family. There were tears. I made it, but just barely. And then I returned to civilian life.

This time round I was keen to see if my Ten Minute Writer technique would make the experience any easier.

A Hostile Round Up

With half the writing community currently engaged in wordcount battles, there's an appropriately combative note to this week's round up. The structure war rumbles on. An overused word is singled out for extermination, and we learn that doing nothing very much as our doom approaches is actually an effective tactic. Meanwhile back at base, TV and childrens' books throw some light on the writing process

NaPoMoNoWriMo: Going Postmodern

Apparently there are some people out there are trying to write a novel in a month. Since they're engaged in a project called National Novel Writing Month, this is entirely commendable and to be expected.

Almost no-one will actually complete a novel, which is also to be expected. Even if the requisite beginning, middle, and end are in place, the work will have only just begun. As I've argued elsewhere we should have a National Novel Revision Month (NaNoReMo) to usher in the rewrites.

So if we're not going to wrap it all up on 30 November, should we be trying to create a rounded narrative at all? Might we rather turn the inevitability of our unfinished novel to our advantage?

Round Up Redux

This week NaNoWriMo just won't stop being a thing people talk about, so I join in and pimp my own NaNoRelated offering. Finishing stuff turns out to be important. But you might still suck. Characters should have their own voices, and keep out of each others brains. Unless that's a plot point. It turns out not buying books can be a creative act, cyclists are bad and getting your bits squeezed can improve your eyesight. Now read on.

NaNoCalc: A NaNoWriMo Words-per-day Calculator

Here is my NaNoWriMo words-per-day calculator. If you're reading this on my site (as opposed to RSS) and we're still in November 2009 you should see the calculator on the left hand side of the page. It's called nanocalc. It accepts your current wordcount, the number of non-writing days you would like to award yourself, and then it simply tells you how many words you'll have to write daily to make the magic 50k.