Zero Draft, or 5 Steps to Writing the Crappiest First Draft You Can

Z is for Zero Drafts.

This is a new term for me. I'd always called my first drafts "first drafts," but now that I've been introduced to "zero drafts," I like that much, much better.

Having a zero draft like having a hibernating squirrel. Okay, an unusual simile, I admit. But, as your zero draft slumbers like a cute little squirrel (see picture below), your mind gathers thoughts and ideas for it, even when you think you are ignoring it, your mind isn't.

Hibernating Arctic Ground Squirrel.
Photo from Kelly Drew, UAF

A zero draft is a pre-first draft. In other words, it's a draft that you allow to be so crappy that it's not even worth the dignity of being called a first draft. In still other words, it's kind of like that NaNoWriMo novel you have sitting somewhere on your word processor...

But what goes into writing a zero draft? Well, there are several things, and I've taken the liberty of breaking it down into a few steps below which I tend to follow. (These steps are, by no means, set in stone.)

When writing a piece of non-fiction, it's inherent that you'll have to do a lot of research. But what about a piece of fiction? It might come as a surprise, but there can be a lot of research done for a fiction novel as well. Not all authors "write what they know." And, even if they do, most likely, they'll come to a point where they're going to have to Google something or go to the library.

Working with the definition of "a zero draft is a draft an author writes before the first draft," I've outlined the following steps:

Photo Source

STEP 1. Choose your Subject.

STEP 2. Recognize your ignorance on said Subject.

STEP 3. Collect as much research as you care to on Subject.

STEP 4. Select what research will be included in your novel.

STEP 5. Write your zero draft, giving yourself permission to write crap, using everything you want to be included. And sometimes, everything and anything you can think of, just to get yourself through the draft.

What these steps do is allow you to focus your novel around the research you've made. In some ways, this is exactly what NaNoWriMo encourages: a crappy first draft. 

In all honesty, a NaNo draft is often so bad that you cannot consider it a first draft.

As today marks the end of both the A to Z challenge and Camp NaNoWriMo, I'm happy to say that I've "won" both. 

However, as a struggling perfectionist, my NaNo novel is less than pleasing to me. It's so far from what I expected and so far from something I would share with others, that it's reiterated to me just how much of a "zero draft" NaNo novels turn out to be. Some are better than others, and my NaNo 2012 novel was a more complete zero draft than this one has turned out to be. But every novel, like every child, is different. And some take more work than others. (I anticipate a lot of intensive counseling sessions for this Camp NaNo 2013 novel.)

After completing a zero draft, I like to induce hibernation in said draft—especially if I wrote it quickly. (Here is where we return to the squirrel simile/metaphor.)

While your squirrel hibernates, you are subconsciously gathering nuts and berries to feed your characters like some inept, subsistence hunter-gatherer. Most of them are poisonous to your plot, or your theme, or are something your character would never, ever eat. But you keep gathering, hopefully storing them away somewhere you remember to look so that you don't misplace them.

Photo of Spermophilus parryii enjoying a mushroom
 Wikipedia 

Eventually, after a significant hibernation, you return to fatten up your starved zero draft of a novel (see picture above), hoping it still has that cute new squirrel smell when you melt the snow and warm up that tiny squirrel body. 

Now, when you return to it, you see all the fresh opportunities you have, all the things you've stored up for it in your time hibernating. You could feed it a mushroom, a berry, a nut…a seed… 

Now, you have new appreciation for your characters (which you might very well have learned to hate during a NaNo marathon or two), and you have new ideas for fixing those plot holes which are suddenly so evident to you.

There is inherent value in your squirrel-esque hoarding of ideas. 99% of all zero drafts at least deserve for you to return to them and give them a cursory read through in order to see if there's something worth developing. 

A zero draft may be completely tossed out and reworked from the start, or it may be chopped into unrecognizable pieces, but I bet you anything that there is at least one sentence or thought or idea in your zero draft that is worth pursuing. If not for a novel, then a short story or a poem. 

How about you? How do you treat your zero drafts? Do you return to fatten them up? Do you never let them hibernate? Or do you leave them to starve a slow, slow death?

~I.E.

Additional Sources on Zero Drafts:
Write Livelihood
The Writing Wheel
Lisa Harjes
Moody Writing 
Justine Larbalestier

Winning at Writing

W is for Winning at Writing.

As the end of April nears, I am faced with two possible "wins" on the horizon. One is the A to Z blogger's challenge. I have yet to miss a day, a fact of which I am a bit proud, considering how sketchy my blogging past is. The second is NaNoWriMo. I am just over ten thousand words away from winning my third NaNo event in a row (my first Camp NaNo).

I am a competitive person, so when I can compete with a near-sure chance of winning, I am all over it. I mean, I like to be challenged, yes, but I mostly like to succeed. I don't like doing something that I know or think I will fail at. Therefore, NaNo and the A to Z challenge have been both rewarding and challenging. I feel confident in attaining both goals, a fact I can feel proud of considering how time intensive both have been.

But in thinking about my "wins" this month, I find myself naturally applying this to the writing life. What does a "win" look like in writing? Is it success? Is it publication? Is it the bestseller list?

I don't think there's any right answer. I think winning, like a lot of things in life, is what you make it. I've lost games to a lot of poor winners and some gracious winners. I've won over poor losers and gracious losers.

Writing is not a challenge I want to lose. Nor is it one that I think I can lose. Losing implies giving up, saying that I've reached the end of the game and someone else has bested me. But how can someone win over me when the opponent is me? For all I have to do in order to be a writing "winner" is to write.

What makes you a winner at writing? Publication? Attaining your goals?

~I.E.

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

Voice (or How NaNoWriMo Helped Me Find My Writing Voice)

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

V is for Voice. 

I've recently finished reading a book called "Finding Your Writing Voice" by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall. I have to admit, it's taken me several months to get through it. Part of that is because of the variety of prompts included in this book. The other part is because there are so many magnificent points that I have to constantly put the book down and stew over my incapabilities as a writer.

For example: "You can learn the concepts of craft by taking classes and reading books. But you won't know how to work with them and they won't have concrete meaning unless you discover them in the outpourings of your own voice. This is because the craft of fiction wasn't invented by critics and teachers. It comes from stories and the voices that create them." (Page 74, paperback version, published 1994.)

Wow. So true.

But what really struck me this month was how an "exercise" like NaNoWriMo serves to put everything I've learned into practice.

I don't know about you, but I get so caught up in editing my first drafts (sometimes to the nth degree) that I forget to actually write new material. NaNoWriMo helps me focus on simply being creative, no holds barred. No expectations, no agenda in mind, simply a word count goal and a date to finish by.

It's astoundingly liberating. It's the main reason I like participating in NaNoWriMo. By forcing myself to use all the things I've learned, and by doing it on a time crunch, what comes out becomes...natural. It's almost counter-intuitive, but you begin to speak in your character's voice--in your voice.

Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? Or have you been holding out on giving NaNoWriMo a shot? 

~I.E.

Time

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

T is for Time.

"More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina."

John Irving 

Everyone has a limited about of time in their life. Some of this goes to responsibilities, some to hobbies. Some to plain ol' fun. It all comes down to how we spend our time.

I don't know about you, but when I waste an entire day watching TV or running around doing errands, I don't feel productive in the slightest. It may have even been a fun day, but it wasn't productive unless I did something worth doing.

We can go through life and have a great deal of "fun," but not end up leaving something behind. As a writer, I want to accomplish something. I want to leave something of my writing behind every single day. So I was thinking about time, and how there's a limited supply of it, but also about what I do with the time I spend writing.

I can break my writing time into three parts: 
1. Planning
2. Writing the First Draft
3. Editing

But where does the majority of my writing time go? 

1. I'm not a huge outliner, so my planning stage tends to be brief, and usually mental (as in, unwritten). However, for the sake of argument, I'll include the mental outlining time in my calculations, because it is time on the novel. I'd say this is maybe 10% of my time.

2. I can type pretty fast, and NaNoWriMo helps me to put a first draft on the pages in about a month, month and a half. I spend from 1-3 hours a day on those days pounding out the first draft words.

3. Personally, like John Irving, I believe two-thirds of my time on a novel is spent editing. 

Allow me to rephrase: at least 66% of my time is spent in the editing phase. Perhaps this goes back to my perfectionism (see post here), and my desire to get every sentence perfect before sharing it with someone. That can be crippling. 

So it leaves me with a dilemma of when to stop. I could spend a lifetime editing and re-editing a novel (and, who knows?, maybe I will). But where's that moment in time when you stop doing good for the novel and start doing harm instead? I wish there were a timer on each of my novels. They would be just like those little plastic pop-up timers on the turkeys you cook every Thanksgiving. When the novel is prime and juicy, ready for consumption, the little red sphere pokes out and says, "Bing! I'm done. Send me on to a publisher, I'm not getting any better than this!" 

Okay, that's a bit unrealistic; let's get back to time. 

I think most of our time working on a novel should be spent in the editing phase. A first draft is crap.

For example, every NaNo month, the NaNo supporters and the NaNo haters pop up with their blogs, either encouraging or discouraging people to try their hand at writing a novel. Both have valid points. 

A first draft is crap. It's inedible swill, it's raw turkey. Maybe half-baked. And consuming it will give you food poisoning. Beginning writers must remember this. It's something that has taken me many years to learn. Looking back at my first novels, ones that I chose not to edit much, I know a first draft is not ready for a reader's eyes.

So the NaNo haters have a point: don't write a first draft and expect it to be awesome. Unless you're willing to do the work editing, you aren't going to make it as a writer. "Everyone has a novel in them," is an oft-quoted bit of encouragement for the wannabe writer. Yes, everyone may have a novel in them, but not everyone has the perseverance to make that novel the best they can make it.

A writer must accept that writing a novel is not just putting the words on the page. Writing a novel is rewriting. And that, my friends, takes times. And it's hard, sweaty work.

"There is no great writing, only great rewriting."Justice Brandeis 

NaNoWriMo

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

"N" is for NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month." Traditionally, this refers to November, where wannabe authors attempt to pound out 50,000 words in 30 days. It's a frantic attempt to write a novel in a month (well, more like a novella).

I've blogged about NaNoWriMo (NaNo for short) before, and "won" it twice now. This

month happens to be one of the Camp NaNoWriMo months. April and July are both Camp NaNo months, but this is my first year participating in the Camp version. The awesome thing about Camp NaNo is that it's a little less pressure. Or, it could be even more pressure! That's because you can adjust your goal word count for the Camp NaNo months.

The default word count for Camp NaNo is 50,000 like for the traditional November NaNoWriMo. This time, I've left my word count alone, as 50K is a reasonable goal. It averages out to 1667 words a day, and that's plenty ambitious, especially if you have other things going on.

I'm a fast typist, so it's not writing the words down which challenges me. (I can accomplish my goal in an hour if I'm properly motivated.) The problem is coming up with ideas for the next scene. The past few days have been challenging, and I ended up with only 764 words for the past three days (Yikes, that puts me behind!).

Since I scheduled my April to give myself the weekends off, I didn't feel too bad. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I started off trying to get some editing done on a different WIP, and that was a big mistake. Instead of getting very far with that, I ended up spending about two hours editing less than 2000 words. And the rest of the day got way too busy too quickly to even think about Camp NaNo. Ugh. Can you say "guilt?"

But in my experience with NaNo events, there will always be days where life gets in the way. There will be days where other things slip to the front of the line, whether or not they deserve to be there. And then you're left wondering where the day went and how to catch up on my word count that I haven't achieved. 

When low word count days occur, or even days where I'm not able to write at all, instead of getting discouraged and wanting to give up, I only need to readjust my goals. Whereas my daily goal for Monday through Friday was 2272, it's now slightly higher at 2584. If that becomes too much for one day, I know that I can take a Saturday or Sunday and punch out a few more words in order to catch up.

Another option is to focus on the weekly word goal (which works out to 12,500 words a week) instead getting overly concerned with the daily goal. If I can't reach my daily goal for one reason or another, I just look ahead to the weekly goal and work towards that. There are always days where I'm more productive than others, and often when I am up against seemingly insurmountable odds, I find a reserve of motivation and strength inside to continue.

Even if I don't "win" (as in reach the 50K word goal for the month), I have a significant chunk of a new novel started. And that's well worth the effort.


~I.E.

Dusting Off That Old Manuscript (Or Revising Your NaNoWriMo Novel)

It's been nearly three full months since NaNoWriMo 2012. 

Which means, it's past time for me to start editing this novel, which I'll dub "WIP 2012" for the moment.


So that brings me to a question:  When do YOU edit your NaNo Novel?

My NaNo (and writing) philosophy is to keep writing and edit little on the first pass during November. If I do have a hard time getting started one day, I will go edit the prior scene, or return to another scene which I wanted to change anyways. That way, my Muse gets awakened, and the editing acts as my warm-up.

However, now, my first draft is completed, and I've been ruminating on it since the beginning of December.

By my estimates, it's past time for me to get working on edits. 

My biggest challenge will be in using this first edit to attack the main storyline of this novel, and ignore the grammatical errors. I have a horrible propensity towards constant line-editing.


My goals for my first edit:

1. Are there any any inconsistencies? Including those in setting/description, story threads and characters from page one to "the end."


2. What is my overarching goal of telling this story? Determine what it is and make sure it's smooth from beginning to end.

3. Does every scene have conflict? Is it left unresolved until later? Or do I resolve it too soon?

4. Does every scene have a purpose? Does it advance the plot?

5. How is my story different from every other one out there?

NaNo Challenges:
Because this is a NaNoWriMo novel, and NaNoWriMo clearly has an emphasis on quantity over quality, WIP 2012 is in especially rough shape. There was little that I cut during the month of November in order to have the most words possible at the end of thirty days. However, this should make it even easier to recognize what is filler and what isn't.

Goals:
1. Cut all the filler. 
2. Focus the plot.
3. Make every word count.

I hope to, by the end of April 2013, have a second draft ready for consumption by some beta readers. 

Coping With the Effects of NaNoWrIMo (Or Life After NaNoWriMo)

Let's face it, NaNoWriMo is a stressful time of the year. 

For most people, 50,000 words in 30 days is a nearly unattainable goal. I'm lucky in that I'm a fast typist, and I have the time to sit down and write when I want/need to. Which resulted in me increasing my goal to a more challenging 80,000 words in 30 days this year.I think every stressful period in life needs to be followed by an opportunity to unwind.

Let's look at some of the symptoms (physical, emotional and behavioral) of stress:

• headaches
• muscle tension
• fatigue
• anxiety
• restlessness
• lack of motivation and/or focus
• procrastination (the art of putting things off until later and/or ignoring the issue)
• evasion (or what I like to call filling up your time with other things to avoid that which is stressing you out)
• overeating or not eating
• doing nothing (e.g. vegging out in front of the T.V.)
• drinking, smoking, other drugs
• withdrawing from activities
• blowing up at others over inconsequential issues

This are just some of the effects that stress can have on your life.

I'll be the first to admit it--I felt the stress. I felt the fear as November 30th closed in and I still had 12,000 words to write in three days. This November's word count was a big goal for me, a personal best. I had to bring my A-game and blow away my previous record.

Although I felt the fear, I also felt inspired. I am a goal-oriented person, and I enjoy setting new personal bests. (When I go running and get a new PR for a 10K, there's nothing more encouraging than that for me.) So when I realized I was going to set a new PR, I became obsessed with "stalking" other NaNo-ers' word counts. *ashamed* But I found a buddy of mine who had written just over 92,000 words, and I became determined to beat them.

Thus, I was awake this year when November turned into December, and the NaNoWriMo website cut off my ability to enter my word count at 12:00:00 a.m., December first. Darn it! 

Regardless, I ended the month with 93,464 words. (It should have been 93,511, NaNo!)

Anyways, back to the stress of NaNo. After I entered my final word count (and tried and failed to update it one final time), I promptly turned off my computer and went to bed. I was exhausted. 30 days of madness can (and does) exhaust you.

So December first, I woke about seven hours later (because I can never, ever sleep in), promptly fired up my computer and stared at my NaNo novel with a blank look.

The pressure was gone. I had no words to write. I had no need to write the words. Where was my reward? Where was the purpose?

I still have a few scenes left to write. I wrote 93,511 words and I'm not done. Granted, some of those scenes will be tossed out on their ear, probably entirely, and a solid novel is at least 80,000 words, but I have several thousand words left to write, and NO IDEA WHAT TO SAY.

Conclusions always get me. I've never been good at ending a story. I want it to continue and want to write more meaningless scenes. But what I have left here on my NaNo novel is my conclusion. My climactic scene of...I DON'T KNOW.

I honestly don't know where to end this novel. I have an idea of what's going to happen, the protagonist will reconcile with her inner demons and outer antagonists, but I've no idea how. And I've no idea how to get to that point.

***

But this post's purpose is getting away from me as I cope with my stress of not knowing what to write by, that's right, procrastinating.

1. My #1 drug of choice for stress is, most definitely, procrastination.

Thus, you could have found me yesterday driving forty-five minutes away to go Christmas shopping, and promptly abandoning that idea when I realized everyone else in the world was also doing their Christmas shopping on the first Sunday in December.

So I reevaluated how I would spend my day, and while completing the final scenes of my NaNo novel was certainly in the back of my mind, I went on to my next coping tactic: evasion.

2. My #2 drug of choice is evasion.

Yes, I returned home...to clean and rearrange my living room.

Huh. Haven't done that in awhile. (So I could, legitimately, make an argument for its necessity...)

Essentially, it boils down to the fact that there was no NaNoing for me yesterday. (Well, I guess it's technically not NaNoing anymore, but simply writing.) I put aside my writing in order to clean house (actually, just one room).

And then, since I was that far into cleaning the house, I decided to catch up on the other tasks which had suffered in November due to NaNo, like the laundry and reading the mail...

***

Now these were just the two tactics I employed yesterday to avoid completing my NaNo novel. Throughout the month of November, the stress of NaNoWriMo attacked me in other ways. I was afflicted with two migraines, I had significant lack of motivation and/or focus (and spent way too much time on the Internet as a result), I procrastinated, I avoided NaNo by doing other things like walking the dogs or watching T.V., and I think I gained about three or four pounds this past month from obvious overeating and lack of exercise.

So now it's December.

And my NaNo novel is not completed, despite 93,464 words.

I think it's time for me to get in gear and apply some of the things I learned during NaNoWriMo 2012.

Namely, there is no time for writer's block.

So my point is this: stress can have its drawbacks, but stress like NaNoWriMo is a good type of stress. If you set a reasonable goal (for you, not for anyone else, keeping your own personal limitations in mind), then the pressure of having a deadline can be beneficial.

I'm at the point with my NaNo novel where I wish I'd set a higher goal for myself in November and pumped out those final scenes. At least then, I'd have something on the page. Now, I'm faced with combating my own inner demons and completing this novel on sheerly my own willpower.

I may have a lot of self-motivation when it comes to writing (because I love it), and I'll be darned if I let this novel get the best of me, but I also know myself. I know that if I leave this novel and start working on another, I'll get too distracted by that novel and think that I'll forget everything I want to do to that novel and put this novel aside for a looong time.

I don't want to place this novel to the side until it's ready to be rested in its entirety. And I can't do that until the final scenes are written, imperfect though they may be.

So no more procrastination. No more evasion.

NaNo 2012 taught me a few things, and it's time I apply those lessons to real life.

Final word count. That's right. Next year, 100,000 words in 30 days. Yikes.

12 Things I Learned During NaNoWriMo 2012

1. NaNo is not about quality, but quantity.

2. There's no time for writer's block.

3. Coffee only gets you so far.

4. Life WILL get in the way.

5. Setting reasonable goals makes progress seem attainable.

6. Turn off the Internet.

7. Do NOT delete a word. (Just strike thorough it, and it'll still be counted when you validate your novel on November 30th.)

8. Prepare ahead of time.

9. Write now, research later.

10. Do NOT allow yourself to go back and edit.

11. Take notes of changes or ideas that occur to you throughout the month. (You will forget them if you don't.)

12. Never, ever, give up. Even if you're 10,000 words behind on November 30th, a 10,000 day can happen!

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....

NaNoWriMo Day#21

I thought I wouldn't get my words written today amidst Thanksgiving prepping, but I managed to get most of them typed. All I needed was a couple of hours sitting down at my desk and focusing to pump them out.

Lesson learned today: take what time you can to focus solely in writing and you can accomplish more than you think.

Happy writing.

NaNoWriMo Day #20

Two years in a row now, my November has been controlled by NaNoWriMo. I sleep, eat and dream of NaNo. The novel I choose to write holds the reins to my life for the entire month.

Well, I've come to the point of the month where I have conquered my demons. I've won.

Today, I passed the 50K mark. 

*insert cheer here*

It's a strangely anti-climactic feeling, knowing that the novel I'm working on is far from complete. 

What really happens at the 50K mark for me is that I have the urge to go back and edit what I've written. There are things I've changed, locations and specific details, which I need to go back and edit. But I know if I begin doing that, I'll stop writing new scenes and will instead focus on making all the scenes I've written up until now as good as I possibly can. The problem with that scenario is that I know as I write new scenes, more things will need to change, and more edits will need to occur. It's a sick cycle, really. A cycle I must postpone starting until at least December first.

So this is the point where I bite my lip and continue typing new material, willfully ignoring the almost unconquerable desire to edit. Instead, I make a note of what needs to be changed, lest I forget somewhere between the caffeine-induced, novel-writing frenzy of November. 

On December first, I'm certain I won't be taking a day off. I'll either be finishing my NaNo novel (word count and deadlines ignored), or I'll be diligently beginning my editing process. 

I guess we'll see which it is in ten short days.

NaNoWriMo Day #19: Backup Your Files

I think this is a good day to remind NaNo novel writers to back up their files if they haven't already done so.

Typically, I'm very punctual about backing up my computer. I'm paranoid about losing files, and schedule a backup at least once a week, more if I've put in a lot of work that week.


But as life gets busy, my fingers are busy typing my NaNo novel, and my mind dreaming up new conflicts for my MC, my computer backups have dwindled to almost zero. 

I own an external hard drive for the sole purpose of backing up my files. Over the years, I have lost too many files to risk losing them again. And when you lose a novel...it's like you've lost a part of your body, your soul. A part that there's no getting back again. Ever. 


I've been writing this novel for 19 days now. This is a novel I couldn't replicate if I tried. When you put a lot out on the page in a short amount of time, it all blurs together, and it's hard to remember the majority of it. Even if I could remember it verbatim, I've been typing this for 19 days. I'd like to not have to use another 19 days to re-accomplish what I've already done.

So don't learn the hard way. Get an external hard drive and back up your computer. It's well worth the investment (and they're affordable). And once you get the external hard drive, use it.

NaNoWriMo Days #17 & 18

Photo Source

My fingers are sore, my brain is tired, and I constantly feel on the edge of writer's block.

We're past the halfway point now, and my word count is just over 47K. It's hard to believe that there are still twelve days left of NaNo. It seems like it's been going on forever. 

I look back at page one of my NaNo novel, and it already feels so distant. I wrote that page just over two weeks ago, and I cannot remember what's on it without rereading it.

As I get further into my novel, I remain grateful to have chosen to write it in Scrivener. There I can make notes, "outline" via my index cards, and link a selection of text to a prior scene or character card in order to keep key points straight. 

So eighteen days complete now, and I'm reminded of a certain looming Thursday arriving this week. But I'm revitalized by the fact that I'm on track, and I only have to write an average of 2325 words every day until December 1st, and then I'll have completed my 80K goal. 

......

...

Huh. It sounded like a lot less in my head.

NaNoWriMo Day #16: Tips for Accomplishing those Daily Goals

Day Sixteen of NaNoWriMo, and thousands of novelists are still going strong. Some have even finished their 50K word goal.

I've had my good days and bad days, and days in between.

There are a couple of things that help me in attaining my goals.

1. Overall word count goal
Scrivener has a nifty tool called "Project Targets" which allows you to set a word goal for your project. I do this, and set the writing deadline option for November 30th. This year, I've set my goal for 80K words. 

You can also declare some days of the week as non-writing days, which I've done for my Saturdays and Sundays (even though I've done some writing on those days, I treat them as vacation-days, so I don't have to write if I can't or just need a thinking day). 

By setting my overall goal and determining my writing days, I know exactly how many words I need to write per day, and I can watch my word count increase until it fills up the bar and I've reached my daily quota.

2. Mini outlines
I've said before that I don't outline, and I don't. But Scrivener has another great tool, which looks a lot like an index card. This is just a section where you summarize the scene you've created in Scrivener. You find the summary spot in the Inspector under the "Notes" section. You can also view all the "index cards" in order, and drag and rearrange them as you like. 

So instead of outlining, I do this, and then I have a rough idea of where I'm writing to, even if it takes me several scenes to get there. In Scrivener, it's easy to add scenes, so I just continue adding and keep the next "outline point" for a later scene.

3. Scene-by-scene word goals
I'm a goal-oriented person, which is probably why NaNo works so well for me.

In Scrivener, there's a way to set a word goal per scene. At the bottom of the screen, there's a round little target icon, and if you click it, you're given the ability to set the word count for the scene. Then there appears next to the target icon a bar which fills up as you write towards your word goal, going from red, to yellow, to green as you reach your goal. I do this for most scenes after I have an idea of what's going to happen in them, so it serves as a *very* rough estimate of wordage.

I like this because I find it nice to have a goal per scene as it helps me know if I'm being too wordy on a section or if it's too short. (If I can only come with 400 words for a scene, I know it's skimpy and I need to add conflict or another character, or consider deleting it.) I also find that when I pay attention to my scene's word count, I subconsciously acknowledge the flow of reading for the audience. This comes more into play later in subsequent drafts and as I'm editing, often trying to be more concise.

4. Sit down and write
There's really nothing else to say but sit down and write. You'll never be a novelist if you don't do this.

NaNo is great for getting my butt in the chair. It creates motivation where there otherwise might be none, and pressure to get it done in a set time period.


So while this may be the way I work, there are endless ways to write a novel out there.