NaNoWriMo Day #30

He likes to appear studious.

Every morning, I wake to a certain black cat (named Dante Alighieri) meowing at my bedroom door, acting like he's dying of hunger. When I can take the meows no longer, I climb out of bed, where two dogs are just as eager to get out as he is to get in.

So I take pity on the most pitiful of meowers and lead him downstairs where I feed him. He scarfs his food down like I've never, ever fed him before, and then shoves one of our other cats away from her bowl to steal her food because she's a slower eater and he thinks he's still hungry.

Well, this morning was no different. Except that for the first time ever, Dante ate so fast that he puked up his just-eaten breakfast back into his bowl.

But he was an adorable kitten.

With all the grace of a cat, he'd eaten it again before I could even move to clean it up. (Maybe I should have put a "disgusting" warning on this post.) He then polished off the last bites of his food and moved on to shove the other cat out of the way.

But I started thinking about this incident in light of today being the last day of NaNoWriMo 2012. And I suddenly realized--to my utter dismay--how my writing is so often like my cat's regurgitated breakfast.

I spend a week or a month thoroughly thinking through a project, hoarding all of my ideas and keeping them tight inside me, afraid to mention them even to myself. It's like I'm afraid to put things on paper and somehow commit myself to writing a novel that may be absolute swill.

Then, like my cat, when NaNo rolls around, I puke it all out in the space of 30 days and nights (it takes me a little longer to vomit, apparently).

If I were a cat, I'd be hiding under a box right now, too.
I'll just be hiding under my covers instead.

Like my cat, I immediately want to make it all disappear. But it's not because I find it appetizing, as I can only assume Dante did, but because it feels like some mistake I need to suck back inside me before I fully realize that I am, in fact, NOT a talented writer, and this novel IS rubbish.

So I got to thinking today (in the midst of trying to finish NaNo 2012 strong).

How often do I start a project with such exuberance that I puke up everything about it onto my computer and then immediately (sometimes before I've even finished) want to erase what I've written? How often do I think that 99% of what I've written is not worth the memory on my computer it takes to save it?

I've done this before. Began novels that started strong, and by halfway through the first draft, I realized that my plot was so full of holes, or I hadn't done enough research, that I abandoned it, certain I bit off more than I could chew. I rarely go back to those novels, embarrassed by their victory over me, and allowing my self-doubt to convince me that there was nothing there worth keeping anyways.

I like to call him my little panther...

Cringe-worthy writing, if written by me, I feel is never worth reading. And yet I know I should not feel that way. Because I know that when it comes down to it, there's always something in a piece of writing that could be worth keeping. Even if the grammar is unreadable, the plot full of holes and the characters cliche (case in point for at least two of those: NaNo novel 2011), there could be one sentence or one idea that is perfect. (Okay, maybe not perfect. Maybe just able to be perfected.)

So perhaps this coming year, 2013, I'll dust off one of those old manuscripts or half-manuscripts, and give it a second chance. Or at least a rejuvenated set of eyes.

NaNoWriMo Day #29

Dun dun dun!! 

No, that would not be machine-gun fire, but the sound of victory you hear.

For today, at about noon, I passed the 80K mark. 

That's right, I have completed my goal of pounding out 80,000 words, good or bad, this month. (Mostly bad.)

It's been a long, arduous war filled with at least twenty pots of coffee and probably around 66 hours of typing. The enemy came on strong with everything it could throw at me in November: Thanksgiving, migraines, house guests, sick dogs...

And it's for those reasons that I savor the joys of my victory. It's a powerful feeling to know that you've beaten the demons trying to keep you from your goals. To know that, despite the odds, you can do what you set your mind to. 

It's encouraging to know that I can meet goals which seem daunting. To know that when the tough days come along, I don't give up and surrender to my desire to just climb into bed and sleep until December first.

My NaNo novel may not be a polished draft, and it may never be worth publishing. But I do think there are paragraphs that have promise. Maybe there's just one sentence on one page that is a diamond in the rough. And I'll have to wade through three hundred pages just to find it.

I'm okay with that. Because I know that editing is where you really write a book. That's where threads get untangled, character arcs get properly aligned, gaping plot holes are filled, and sentences are polished.

So I'll be moving on soon from writing to editing. And we'll see if I still feel the same about my NaNo 2012 novel when I emerge from my editing foxhole in the spring.

NaNoWriMo Day #28: Seeking After Perfection

Today took me completely by surprise. So far, I've pumped out 8,570 words. 

Out of these 8,570 words, I'm sure that only about 5% of them will remain when I edit this NaNo novel. But that's not what NaNoWriMo is about. It's about getting the words out, getting them on the page, and not worrying about whether they are perfect, or even passable. 

Quantity, not quality. Definitely not the way I run the rest of my life.

This picture  should say "winner," but I have yet to validate my novel. I'm waiting until the last minute because I have an addiction to updating my word count and like to see it posted on the NaNo site.

The past few scenes of my NaNo novel have been what have pushed me over the "goal" edge towards "above the goal." The characters are continuing to come alive and the scenes are flowing naturally from my fingertips. This means my scenes have gone a lot longer than originally planned, and I have a dozen scenes left to write as I near the end of my 80K goal. (I've always been a long-winded writer, and this novel is no different.)

I can only thank God when my scenes are flowing like this, even if it means I have to cut out multiple scenes when I edit later. And I know that a lot of what I've written will be discarded as imperfect, unwanted material when I enter the editing process.

I've been struck today by just how much easier it is for me to write new scenes than to edit a novel I've already written. To me, the writing process is easy (at least, easier than editing). Just sit down, and type out the words--even if they aren't what you really want the pages to say, you can always fix it later.

It's the "fixing it later" part that I get hung up on. A dozen drafts later, and I still feel it's not perfect. 

Perfection. 

That's what I want. 

And yet, that's what I know I can never, ever obtain. 

No matter how many times I revise, no matter how long I stare at the page, I will always, always want to change something. I will always doubt, I will always correct. 

And there will always be someone else who thinks that my sentence, or metaphor, or entire plot, is less than perfect.

So why do I seek perfection when I know it is unattainable?

NaNoWriMo Days #26 & 27

I'm sad that the end of November is upon us. Well, sad and a little shocked to think of how quickly 2012 has flown by. This year has been a whirlwind of writing, distractions, injuries, broken-down cars and travel for me. I'm looking forward to a calmer 2013 (and hoping that it will, indeed, be calmer).

Anyways, yesterday was one of those hectic days of 2012 that I should be accustomed to by now, but still took me by surprise. I don't know where the day went, but I ended up home at 9:30 p.m., having only written a hurried 1539 words. This was less than half of what I needed to meet my goal for the remaining days of November. 

So I woke up this morning determined to redeem myself. And I did. My new goal was just over 4000 words in order to meet my 80K goal this month. So I cemented my butt in my favorite chair at Starbucks and ignored the headache that was constantly pulsing in my temples and upper neck.

I managed to tap out 4060 words before the pain got the best of me. It wasn't just any headache, but a villian of a headache, better known as a migraine. They always get me at the most inopportune days. (I suppose there aren't any good times to get a migraine, but mine always seem to attack when I need focus the most or are most determined to get things done.)

So I ended up returning home, taking much-needed medication and collapsing into bed for two hours with my cat, Dante Alighieri. Nothing like a cuddle with a cat and lying in bed with a jackhammer splitting open your skull on one of the final days of November to cause you to worry about meeting your NaNo goals.

Luckily, I did make today's goal. If I can write 12,000 more words over the next three days, I can meet my self-imposed NaNo goal. That's only 4000 words a day.

Let's hope I have no more migraines, and my 2013 luck is starting early...

Today's word count: 4,569
Total word count: 68,348

NaNoWriMo Day #25

We're really getting down to the wire now, and I've got a lot of words that did not get written today. Somehow, between a trip to the airport and recuperating after the holidays, I wrote less than a thousand words, while my goal was over three thousand. 

*sigh*

Unfortunately, tomorrow is looking to be a busy day as well, so I'll be trying to squeeze in writing between activities and appointments. 

When I know I have a busy day ahead, the day before is often one of my least productive days. A wide-open day I too often waste with little things that seem more like procrastinating than even relaxing. Today, for example, I've caught up on my blog readings and finished reading a book--instead of writing towards my NaNo goal.

Tomorrow's busy day then presents me with a mini-dilemma. I can take the day off from writing, and then need to write 4,440 words each day for four days in a row. Or, I can take my busy day and squeeze in writing time wherever I am and in the middle of whatever I'm doing, in the hopes of chipping away at that goal and attaining 3,552 words for each of the next five days.

Like a lot of people (and writers), I always find that I work better under a little bit of pressure. It forces me to get the words down on the page and gives me more of a deadline to work towards (as if five days hence is not deadline enough at this point to bust out another 17,760 words). 

So I think I choose the former option. I'll be chipping away at my word count tomorrow morning, diligently trying to reach my NaNo 2012 goal of 80K words in 30 days. And on November 30th, I'll validate my novel and be a winner for two years in a row and feel like I've accomplished a marathon.

Today's word count: 785
Total word count: 62,240

NaNoWriMo Day #24

Today was a much needed catchup day for me. After the holidays, where I enjoyed too much food and just the right amount of family and friends, my word count was suffering even more than my diet.

I'm glad to announce that today, my word count is back on track. However my diet is still in dire straits.

Today's word count: 4819
Total word count: 61455

NaNoWriMo Day#22

Happy Thanksgiving! This time of year it is a blessing to sit down with family and friends and enjoy a well-cooked meal. And this year, the turkey was finally as I like it: on the dry side (much to my hubby's chagrin).

Although I did not reach my word count today, I'm not stressed. I wrote just over 1000 words, and am at about 54K total. I've still got some work to do if I want to hit that 80K mark by the end of next week, but I think I can make it happen.

As long as I don't get caught in a tryptophan slumber from all my turkey leftovers....