Saturday, November 01, 2008

First-day-of-NaNoWriMo thoughts

Well, I'm doing it. Wasn't sure if I'd actually start or just bail for the year, right up until this morning. I had no characters, no settings, and about a micro-millimeter of plot. As I posted elsewhere, I knew this was going to be like driving at night. In a heavy fog. I could only see about ten words ahead of me.

Tonight, I still can't see more than ten words ahead, but I have three characters: two scientist dudes, who are partners in a memory research venture; and a gal, who has only been very vaguely hinted at, but who exists nonetheless. This seems potentially promising.

And of course, this being me, I'm already in love with one of the scientist dudes. *sigh* He needs to lighten up, but it's the gal's job to help with that a bit. Lucky gal.

I had a late start compared to some. I was *not* one of the ones who had a sentence (or first chapter!) all ready to go at midnight. I slept in until seven or so, got up, drank coffee, ate toast, paced around the house for a couple of hours, read a bit, checked every typewriter and fountain pen site a few dozen times each, and wrote three pages of a journal entry about how hard this was going to be and all the things that could go wrong.

Then about ten I finally sat down and started. I've repeated the above activity (substituting tea for coffee and other edibles for toast) about four or five times now, and I'm just about at the daily goal, I think...I'm just guesstimating word count for the time being. I've started off writing longhand with fountain pens, on paper that will be bound in my Circa notebook. Heresy for a member of the Typewriter Brigade, I realize...but it's still the most natural form of writing for me, and until I have a good flow of ideas to work from, it'll be easier. Since I can put whatever I want in the Circa notebook, I can switch back and forth between methods at will. I am totally digging the Circa thing.

Here's to twenty-nine more successful days!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Attagirl ! See you in the winner's circle!

Monda said...

I may have to try one of those notebooks. For now, though, I'm slamming it out on a laptop. It's just so much faster for me.

Just so you know, all I had was a character - no plot, no real story. but I can feel the story coming now.

Time to make that coffee and begin again. We can do this.

Elizabeth H. said...

Honestly, I think some of the years when I've planned the most, I've struggled the most. I discover the story as I write it, and it rarely matches any preconceived notions (or outlines or character/scene sketches) I had ahead of time. So maybe this will all be OK.

Whur's the coffee?

Anonymous said...

I wrote a few sentences during the morning, but didn't sit down and dedicate myself to writing until 9pm. ~1,600 words in two hours, with a couple of breaks to attend to more important family-type things.

I initially began on the Royal DeLuxe, but soon switched to the '46 S-C Silent. I can just type so much faster on it. Plus, it's elite, which means more words to the line and less time changing out sheets of paper. Also, that way I can switch out to the S-C Electric if need be without messing up my formatting.

For the last couple of months, my left arm has had this issue where it tingles like it's fallen asleep if I use it too much or lean on it the wrong way. When it kicks in, it take a bit more concentration to be able to type. Toward the end last night, it got really bad, and I was making tons of typos. Plugging forward, however.

I was tempted to actually disconnect the backspace linkage, but didn't when I realized that I needed it to make exclamation points. :-)

Elizabeth H. said...

Disconnecting the backspace linkage would be hardcore even for NaNoWriMo purposes. Eek!