NaNoWriMo - The Aftermath

So, it's now December. Not only does that mean we are now officially in the Christmas month (do I hear a collective cry of dismay from my fellow retail workers? Oh yes), it also means that NaNoWriMo has come to an end.
I remember saying at the start of November that I doubted I would get to 50,000 words but that I was sure I'd end up with at least a completed draft of my novella. As it turns out, I did get 50,000 words... but no finished draft. While some scenes seemed to flow through my mind like movies (to the point where I rambled on excessively for the sake of word count), there were other parts of my story that just did not want to be written yet.
Unlike some other writers I know who finished days early, I was a leave-it-til-the-last-minute type. I hit 50,000 words with only 20 minutes before the midnight deadline. And 25,000 or so of those words were written in the last three days of NaNoWriMo.
Because of academic commitments, I didn't really get to start working on NaNoWriMo until the middle of the month, which put me at an immediate disadvantage. And when I finally did get to start working on it, my inner editor just would not leave me alone.
Those of you who know me are aware that I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi, so you can imagine how I felt about allowing myself to write absolute rubbish. Every unedited word I left behind, every incoherent sentence I typed made me die a little inside. Through the early and middle parts of the month, I was still writing as I normally do; write a paragraph, check it, write a few more, check those, finish the chapter, check it, check it again, make people read it and provide feedback, rewrite. As a result, my progress was quite slow. On November 28, I realised that I wouldn't get anywhere near 50,000 if I kept going that way, so I shoved my inner editor into a cage and threw away the key (I threw it somewhere I could easily find it in December though hehe).
Most of what I wrote for NaNoWriMo was absolute garbage. Of my 50,000 words, only about 15,000 or so are worth keeping. But that is more than double what I had when I started, so it's still quite an achievement. I have about four chapters more or less complete now, plus fragments of most of the other thirteen chapters, so I have a more solid foundation to keep building on throughout December; since I didn't make it for November, I'm aiming to have a draft completed by New Year.
In closing, I'd like to congratulate all those NaNoWriMos who reached their 50,000 words. And to those who didn't, well done for trying; it was a huge challenge :)

Why Writers Should Not Be Allowed Out In Public

I started out tonight by trying to work on my novella, but a combination of too much sugar and too little sleep have resulted in nothing but pages of incoherent rambling. So I thought I'd share a little anecdote instead.

Most people who know me know that I work in the clothing section of a large retail store. Tonight I was running around the footwear department, madly trying to tidy it up, and while I was working, my brain was thinking about my novella, and about where a major confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist should take place. Half way through this train of thought, a customer ran up and hurriedly asked me a question before I had properly registered her presence. As a result, the conversation turned out as follows:

Customer: 'Scuse me, can you tell me where I can find the shoe polish?
Me: The Underworld?
Customer: ... What?
Me: *awkward, vacant pause* What? Oh. Um... Yeah, sorry, two aisles that way.

Luckily the customer had a sense of humour (after she got what she wanted, she came past again and said "Got my shoe polish, had to fight Hades for it though."), but it made me wonder if perhaps my preoccupation with Dark and Silent Waters had become a little unhealthy. Oh well... I'm sure it won't be the last time I make a fool of myself for the sake of my craft :D

Has anyone else out there had an experience where they had difficulty separating fiction from reality?

Hey, Doc, I Got A Bad Case Of Adjectivitis...

Just a quick post to share a blog post by Michael Pryor, author of (among other things) young adult fantasy series The Laws of Magic.

Writing Disease by Michael Pryor

To this list I would like to add Expositionitis: The tendency to dump dull/irrelevant information on the poor unsuspecting reader, resulting in hideous slabs of exposition lurking between otherwise reasonable paragraphs of prose.

I know that I have suffered from most of these on more than one occasion, and I'm sure most of my other fellow writers will empathise :) I think we need to get these recognised as official medical conditions. That way us writers can use them to take time off work/uni etc to work on our novels :D

Staring into Dark and Silent Waters...

I'm taking a short break from writing my novella (I just hit 6,000 words for NaNoWriMo :D), and I thought I'd post a link to the song that basically inspired the whole story:

Shallow Waters - Amberian Dawn

As I've mentioned (I think) in an earlier post, I was muddling away with my fantasy trilogy at the start of the year when I chanced upon this song on YouTube. In creative terms, listening to it was like being hit with a bomb. With the lyrics telling an engaging story and the music setting a dark and depressing mood, my brain filled with images and ideas the same way the Titanic filled with water after it crashed into that iceberg (although luckily my brain didn't sink into the Atlantic ocean, killing around 1,500 people). The world and characters came to life in my mind, growing and changing until it was like a movie playing in my head.

The song may not be to everyone's tastes, but I'm sure that those who have read bits of my novella so far will see how I made the connections (and yes, my novella's title was pilfered from the lyrics).

Out of curiosity, has anyone else ever had a moment where a song/TV show/whatever inspires them to write to the point where they can't step away from the keyboard?

Anyhoo, back to writing I go :)

NaNoWriMo 2010

Well, November is almost upon us, and as most of my fellow writerly folk out there will know, that means it's... NaNoWriMo! (or National Novel Writing Month for those who aren't familiar with it). Basically, writers spend all of November writing a novel, with their ultimate goal being to hit 50,000 words. To find out more about it, click here.

I remember a few months ago, I posted a schedule of completion for my novella, Dark and Silent Waters. It was meticulously planned out and I was determined to stick to it... And naturally, study and illness and a plethora (I know that word is cliched but I still like saying it) of other Crap Events got in my way, so I ended up failing miserably. In fact I don't think I've even touched my novella since I posted the outline.

This will be my first year doing NaNoWriMo. Last year I didn't do it because I was too busy/lazy, but this year I've decided that it might just be the push I need to make some real progress on my novella. Generally I tend to focus too much on 'making something perfect' before moving on to the next bit, and I know that this slows me down. NaNoWriMo will give me an excuse to write absolute rubbish and not feel bad about it, as long as I can bring my manuscript closer to completion (and I can always edit the crappy bits later). I'm also hoping that competing/talking with other writers will give me even more motivation and inspiration to write.

I don't think I'll actually get to 50,000 words - as Dark and Silent Waters is a novella, I can't see it being much more than 40,000 words unless I pad it out with meaningless junk, which I don't want to do - but if I do get a completed draft of my manuscript, I will still consider myself a winner of NaNoWriMo (and I shall brag about it accordingly).

If anyone else is doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as a buddy: RebeccaJFleming_DemonicDragon. We can nag/encourage each other on our respective paths to NaNoWriMo success :)

Illustration: Yarraine from Exile

Going through my illustrations for things to put into my IT folio, I came across this; one of the first illustrations I did of Yarraine, the Dragon General, protagonist of my fantasy trilogy, Exile.

This illustration wasn't drawn specifically for my novel; in first year graphics, we had to create a character for a computer game, so I took my novel character and modified it slightly to fit with the game story I'd created (basically, Yarraine became the Dragon Empress instead of the Dragon General). At the time I was prepared to run with it as a suitable illustration for Yarraine as the General, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised her Empress costume I'd given her wasn't appropriate. The long, flowing dress and the mystical sceptre are all very showy and mysterious looking - which Yarraine is, in a way - but no one in their right mind is going to go into battle wearing that little number. And the pose doesn't really suit a powerful warrior-mage (though it does perfectly suit another main character from the trilogy, so I may reuse it when I draw the other character).
In the near future, I'm hoping to draw another version of Yarraine, this time wearing more battle-appropriate armour, and with a more commanding posture. And I'm also going to try to fix her hair (not 100% happy with how it turned out). I've improved my drawing skills since I drew this one, so hopefully my next effort will be cover-worthy hehe

Narratives and Nocturnes

Earlier today, while working on my novella, I was flicking through my music collection, trying to decide what to listen to. I was getting more and more frustrated because I couldn't seem to find anything that would get the words flowing. And this made me wonder about some writerly advice I'd been given years ago. I can't remember who it was - I suspect it was one of my TAFE teachers from the Writing and Editing course, or perhaps another student - but whoever it was had said something along the lines of "Having any form of background noise while writing, whether it be television, music or life in general, distracts you from writing and has a negative impact on anything you do write."
To me, this is a bit like saying "Everyone must write with their left hand." or "Everyone should eat every meal with chopsticks." Something that helps one person might hinder another person. Likewise, if something is useful in one situation, that doesn't mean it will be suitable for other situations. I know some writers who able to write anywhere, whether they're in a busy cafe or on a crowded train. Others have to lock themselves in a cone of silence or they're unable to concentrate on anything.
And then there are some (like me) who need music to write.
Oddly enough, when I am writing non-fiction, such as articles or uni assignments, I prefer to work in silence. But when I'm writing fiction, I almost always have to have music. And the music has to create the same sort of atmosphere as the scene I'm trying to write.
When writing, I tend to listen to mostly gothic rock/symphonic metal bands, with a few exceptions. Mainly because I like the sound of it, but also because I feel that, in a way, it suits the genre I tend to write in (those of you who are familiar with my work will know that I write primarily dark fantasy). And quite often, when I'm stuck on a particular scene, listening to music can make the scene suddenly come to life in my mind, as if it's playing out before me as a movie. I actually have a set of songs for each 'type' of scene I write (anger/battle, sad/depressing or amusing etc).
I guess the notion of background music/noise as inpsiration or distraction can be applied to all creative endeavours, whether it be drawing, painting, sculpting and so on. Anyway, I thought I'd pose the question; what do all you other creative people out there do when you're trying to get those ideas flowing?
And, as an aside... Has anyone else ever been given really good - or really bad - advice on how they should work?