Progress Update 3

I was dreading this post a bit, thinking that my audience would scoff at my lack of progress, but honestly, wanting to check in every week has been good for me: it gets me thinking about what the problems are and how I might fix them. My day job is in IT, and the meetings where the development group discusses what each person did, what they’re going to do, and what’s blocking them are called stand-ups (presumably because they’re supposed to be no longer than fifteen minutes and everyone can stand that long–which in itself is a little presumptuous).

Anyway, this is my very own stand-up of one (although by all means, post in the comments if you want to give your stand-up status).

I’m at 3,330 words, which is 997 words further than I was at this time last week. I’m trying to be a little more disciplined about butt in chair at the desk, but as I said last week, when I stop, something is wrong.

I think it’s two things: the tone is not what I was expecting. I was thinking that I’d have a breezy, fun little story, and nope, the main character is sad and quiet. Nothing wrong with that, just unexpected. Second, I wrote a fair amount of backstory for the main characters and not a lot in the way of moving the plot forward, and I think I’m doing too much infodump of those backstories as a result.

I lied, three things. Third, I’m not excited about the story or the characters, and that might be a side effect of the infodumps. They’re out of context without real people and personalities in action. They don’t matter.

So I think I’m going to start again, tweaking tone, setting things in motion early, withholding a little more information. We’ll see if that fixes it. But unfortunately, that means word count: 0.

A Revision in Line with Reality

I’ve known this from past NaNoWriMos, but it takes me about two hours to get out 1,000 words, even if I’m writing steadily (and if I’m not doing word sprints). I have to ask myself, is it reasonable to expect two hours a day from myself for writing, assuming that the writing goes well? I’m not capable of doing two hours in a row on a normal working day (I’m in the States, and it’s Memorial Day today) even if all else is perfect and I’m practicing good self care. I’d have to break it up probably into two or four chunks of time.

So a revision in the plan: I’ll shoot for 500 words a day, and I’ll get this done in November. Hopefully the revision will go faster.

Progress Update 2

When I stop, I know that something is wrong. I haven’t picked up the thread of the novel since last weekend, so the word count remains at 2334.

So what happened? Two things: I’m doing a terrible job at being a good parent to my inner child running wild. It’s all ice cream for breakfast and staying up late and ponies and trampolines. That is, I’ve been lacking structure and the discipline to enforce it. I have lousy energy management and self-care skills right now, and while normally that’s result of a depressive fog, it’s currently due to having fun. Well, that’s clearly got to change. I write my best when it’s raining and cold and no one loves me. Right.

So that’s part one: I need to exercise better self-care so I can get back on my game. Part two is within the writing itself. I’m at a stage of writing that I love. It’s like automatic writing, where a medium starts writing notes from the ghosts in the room. I invent details in the moment, and it’s exhilirating. The problem is that I haven’t done enough research and I’m getting stuck a lot. I’m making decisions on the fly and I have none of the knowledge to back it up.

For instance, the premise of the novel is that a personal trainer who’s training for an ultrarunning race is working with a has-been pop star to get him in shape for a big comeback. I decided that the pop star really likes to dance, and the trainer decides that she’ll use it as a tool to get him in shape. Only I know dead nothing about dance, other than I admire people who are able to make it look effortless.

I thought eschewing research would keep me from procrastinating (I know I’m not the only writer who goes down Wikipedia rabbit holes), but no, it’s done the opposite, because I don’t have the energy to do the research and also get my words in.

So, to do: get sleep, get exercise, lay offnthe drinking, and do some research.

Progress Update 1

It’s Sunday, so it means a progress update on the novel. This is a little bit of a cheater post, because I just announced my intentions yesterday, and I’d already started the novel before coming up with the plan.

Nevertheless:

EXPECTED WORDS: 1000

TOTAL WORDS: 2328

Here’s the plan.

For years, I’ve struggled with finishing novels and stories. I’ve been sitting on one since 2012, writing drafts, writing outlines endlessly. I feel a little as though I’m perpetually on a diet, falling off, restarting. That doesn’t do wonders for anyone’s productivity.

I also had a pathological need to write a Great American Novel. I was an English major, an English Master, for Pete’s sake, and I needed to be Serious.

Then I started reading again, not comtemporary literary fiction, not classics, but stories that weren’t Serious. I read Emily Henry’s Beach Read, and I realized that it was exactly the kind of book I wanted to write. It’s women’s fiction, and I hadn’t read it before, exactly because I bought into the pejorative narrative around it: it’s about relationships and families and small stuff. It’s not small at all–they’re the events and wanderings and hopes and catastrophes of life. Beach Read showed me that I don’t have to write about tragic figures in elevated tones. Characters can feel real, flawed, and dealing with deeply personal shit, and they can feel to readers as though they’re more than the sum of their problems. I can tell my stories and be serious and upbeat and sometimes funny (hopefully intentionally) without being ponderously Serious.

And I never really wanted that to begin with. I want other people to immerse themselves in the worlds I tell them about and care about the characters who live there. I want them to feel a little sad that the book ends. That’s the pleasure for me of reading: that’s reason I wanted to write fiction from the very beginning, at eight years old. I wanted to pull off the most dazzling magic trick I’d ever experienced.

The unfortunate thing is that I carried that Serious baggage for years, and it kept me from writing. It didn’t keep me from telling the stories to myself, just from writing them down. The self-editor’s comments were so strongly worded that I could never finish. I know now that I was trying to write the story for the wrong audience, the wrong genre. It didn’t have the meaning of Woolf, or the language, and so I had a parade of failure in my head.

But as I’ve said, I have a plan. I have a shiny new writing desk at home that’s intended only for writing–no work, no play, no bill-paying, just writing. I have a story in mind, but it’s not strictly outlined. I know what happens roughly, but I’m not going to hem in invention yet. Three months is 90 days: 1,000 words a day gets me to a 90,000 word draft. Weekly (on Sundays), I’m going to post here on my progress, even if no one is paying attention.

That’s Draft 1, establishing characters and plot. Draft 2 is cleaning up structural issues. Draft 3 is reinforcing theme. Draft 4 is cleaning up, line edits and such. The plan is to be done within a year. This is the theory, anyway.

Here we go.