Halfway
Just passed 25,000 words, which is a pleasing milestone in itself, but more importantly means I'm on track for the first time since Day Two. Hooray!
I've been a little distracted today after waking up with a completely blocked ear. This happens to me once a year, and I hate it more than I despise the first guy who sat down and thought 'hmm, this tiny tree thing tastes gross, I shall market it as a vegetable and make millions'. Is so bloody annoying. I can't drive or get much sense of sound direction without doing lighthouse impressions, and it hurts if I don't soften it up with ear drops every few hours. On a couple of occasions I've been able to fix the problem with, um, unorthodox methods that hurt rather a lot, but it's always taken four to five days, plus Nod justifiably tells me off for messing about with my hearing 
Unfortunately I have dancing, a guitar lesson, a computer-related trip to Walsall and a job interview in the next five days, and would like to avoid cancelling them all. As ever, the doctors only have syringing sessions on Tuesdays, so I had to decide between sticking it out or paying for a private clinic. I finally decided to go for the latter, although it's bloody expensive at £65. They can do it tomorrow afternoon, however, and it's just about worth it. Just. I need to figure out how I'm going to get to Solihull and back, mind.
No late-night writing
Today's the first time for over a week that I've finished writing before midnight, and it's nice to have a relaxing evening. I've been flitting in and out of the famous Week Two blues, alternating between confidence that everything is going to be fine and the utter conviction that I wouldn't recognise a decent plot point if it came through the door with a gun. I also had the first 'it's midnight and I have 1000 words to go' moment, which I hate. Hopefully I can avoid any more of those for the next two weeks.
I heard Mur Lafferty's great interview with Cory Doctorow and he gave two nuggets of advice for aspiring writers, which could be paraphrased as:
- You don't need a routine - you can write wherever and whenever you like (I just listened to Mur on The NanoMonkeys where she elabourates on this advice)
- The world is the same today as it was yesterday - anything that seems different, whether on the page or out there, is all in your head.
I didn't understand what he meant by #2 at first, but it stuck with me throughout the evening and I'm beginning to see what he's saying. It's as much general life advice, I guess. Interesting. I've definitely been guilty of #1. I supposedly "can't" write unless the dishes are done and the room is vaguely tidy. Bah. If I have to not do the washing up to break that habit, so be it I've also developed the very stupid tick of checking my word count every paragraph. This is a bad idea in many ways, not least of which is that I don't get into any kind of rhythm and am always aware of what I'm doing and how much is remaining. I'm determined not to do it tomorrow.
18,000
Phew. 4000 words later and I'm over 18,000. Still 1872 words behind target, but that's manageable. Thank goodness for that - I woke up this morning with little clue what was going to happen next. I had a beginning and ending, but the middle act turned out to be made of smoke when I tried to get a grip on it. Happily a walk around town produced a few ideas. And if all else fails, there's always Raymond Chandler's indispensable advice from last year:
When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
Now to wash up, put the shower doors back on and ponder whether it's too late to watch the recorded Torchwood...Don't think it is
NaNo Catchup Day
Ben and I spent the entire of yesterday taking apart, re-sealing and reassembling my shower, which desperately needed doing. The previous job had been done so well that at one point Ben detached one corner and pulled a string of sealant free of two sides of the shower in one go. There was also a massive gaping hole leading straight through to the floorboards. I got to use the sealant gun, which was fun Many thanks to Ben for giving up his time! We didn't finish until very late, at which point it was a dash to the fish-and-chip shop before he had to drive back to Oxford.
As a result I didn't manage to write anything, but that's ok because today is officially designated NaNo Catchup Day. I'm at 14,000 words and should be at 20,000, so I don't care how bad it is, I'm going to get as much written as possible this afternoon. Back later, if I'm not too tired
Currys, Wordperfect and TomToms
I headed over to Walsall yesterday afternoon. I'd been asked to upgrade an ME machine to XP, and there were a few smaller problems on a different PC. I was planning to stop at PC World to buy an XP upgrade, but realised that I'd be passing a Currys that was far less out of my way. I walked in and was trying to find the software section when somebody senior-looking passed by:
He: Was there something you were looking for?
Me: Hi. Do you sell Windows XP?
He: We should have that, yes.
Me: Great, I need the upgrade version...?
He: An upgrade?
Me: Yeah, so I can go from Windows 98.
He: [beat] You've lost me, I'm afraid. They're two separate programs. You can't upgrade them.
Me: Ok, but I have Windows 98 already, and I just need to upgrade it to XP.
He: [looks at me like I am sprouting horns] You just want a copy of Windows XP, then?
Me: ...Yes.
He transferred me to another member of staff, who dug around in a cupboard and the first box he pulled out was an XP Home Upgrade. Lucky.
The motorway was remarkably clear and the journey didn't take as long as I'd feared. The various computer problems turned out to be fairly minor, happily. One had been described as 'I can't delete blocks of text in Word', so I typed some gibberish, highlighted it and pressed delete. Word promptly placed a message in the taskbar that said 'Delete Block? No (Yes)", with no obvious way to select either option. This was a new one on me, and after drawing a blank in the options a quick google revealed it to be the 'Help for Wordperfect Users" setting. Strange.
Thanks to the wonder of Hettie the TomTom I didn't have to worry about finding my way, but the return journey was dreadful nevertheless. It was pouring with rain at rush hour on the M6, and my brain was a little frazzled after three hours of upgrading and reconfiguration, but didn't go too badly until I took the wrong exit off a roundabout. Hettie was calmly telling me to turn around, but somebody behind me decided that despite heavy rain, darkness and the speed limit, I should be going faster. It was too busy for him/her to overtake, too dark for me to see turnings / laybys far enough in advance to pull in, and too wet to have much time to look anyway. That lasted about ten minutes, during which time I got myself more and more worked up, until I finally ditched the guy when the road split into two lanes. Hettie then, as ever, cut across country using the smallest wombat trails she could find, but did bring me out onto a main road within a mile of Stratford, which was quite impressive. I arrived home at 2000, realised that the last thing I felt like was waiting half an hour for a pizza to cook, so went to Burger King. Not healthy, or even terribly warm, but sometimes it's just the Thing To Do.
I'd managed 700 words before leaving that morning, and another thousand seemed like a daunting prospect. It took me an hour to settle into a rhythm, but by one o'clock had reached 2300, my highest daily total so far. I'm still behind the recommended total, but slowly catching up. I find it easier to write when it's late, although I can tell while doing so that the quality isn't up to daytime standards. Ah well, I'll fix that in the edit
0 Words
Last year I managed to get something written every day, even if it wasn't the full 1667 words, but today it just never happened. Thankfully I was ahead, although not by a full day. Unfortunately I'm in London all this weekend, but am taking my notebook on the train so *hopefully* will be able to keep up. I'll have to properly catch up next week. I'd forgotten how much planning this needs!
Warning for NaNo-ers using Google Docs
Google Docs (nee Writely) says I've written 1709 words. The NaNo site says 1664. OpenOffice.org says 1670. I ran into this last year when I uploaded my (just) 50,000 word novel to be verified by the NaNo site and found it was 800 words short. Just something to bear in mind. This may well already be on the official forums, but they're down atm.
NaNoWriMo 2006
On Monday I found myself digging through old photos, contemplating large-scale scanning projects of old photographs and hey, while I'm at it, why not go through my grandmother's boxes of slides and have them sent away to a scanning company, and, and...I eventually realised what was happening. My brain was trying to get out of NaNoWriMo, because it's scary. My brain and I have had words, and I've made the task seem exciting with the aid of Really Big Pieces of Paper, which are on my wall and already covered in scrawl. Now that the day is finally here I'm quite enthusiastic It's a relief to be getting going.
This year I have two ambitions:
- Stop beating myself up over quality. I got to the end of last year's novel and thought it was irredeemably bad. This impression stuck, and every time I tried to edit I'd become disillusioned. Having written a fair bit since I've found that anything can be fixed, no matter how dreadful it seems at the start. Hemingway said "the first draft of anything is shit", which seems off-putting at first but is actually quite inspiring, I think.
- Edit it to the point that I let somebody else read it.
As with last year, I pledge to donate £500 to the Institute for Creation Research if I fail to complete 50,000 words by the end of November 30th. This could be fun, given that I (hopefully) have a job interview mid-month, and am away from any computers this weekend at least.
The widget in the sidebar should display my word-count at the end of each day, and links to a full progress report. The already impressive NaNoWriMo site has implemented some great features this year and does a good job of making the endeavour feel like a worthy project. Which it is.
Last year I bought myself an early Christmas present and had Lulu.com print up two bound copies of the novel. They're sitting on my bookshelf atm, looking forlorn and unread. Maybe I'll take another stab at it next year.
Jo was up and writing hours before me. I'd best get going. Best of luck to her and any other passing NaNo-ers!
Update: The widget stubbornly refused to show my updated word count, and I was about to remove it this morning. I then discovered I'd forgotten to change the settings so it referenced my own account rather than the default. Ahem. Fixed now.
It’s October 1st. This means…
wongaBlog is three years old today. Yay! Only 17 months until its light cone of causality reaches Alpha Centaurai, which will have undoubtedly have profound astrological implications.
It's 31 days until NaNoWriMo. *waves arms frantically while running in circles*
NaNoWriMo Accomplished
50,039 words. Woohoo!! I now have a NaNoWriMo Winner's Certificate on my desktop.
Also, the Institute for Creation Research is getting nothing.
The story is finished, too. It's called 'The Legacy of Tom Bassford', and is an adventure story. A blurb may go something like this:
When Tom Bassford killed himself, he left behind the first hints for solving the largest treasure hunt ever created. His friends dedicate themselves to solving the puzzle, aiming to dedicate the $1,000,000 prize fund to Tom's memory. But all is not as it seems, and when the man behind the competition is found brutally murdered events quickly spiral out of control. With an assassin hell bent on revenge and an MI5 team who will go to any lengths to crack the code first, the friends are in over their heads.
Or something Is it great literature? No. Am I proud of it? Definitely!
It needs a fair bit of work before it works as a proper novel. For example, the first ten chapters are in diary form. I got annoyed with that, so they'll need to be rewritten! Also, characters' personalities changed as I progressed, so I'll need to fix their earlier scenes. I'll try to do that this week. On Thursday 1st December I'm going to upload it to lulu.com and order myself a paperback copy. Yeah it's a little vain, but I really want one Lulu.com are actually offering free copies to NaNoWriMo winners, but only in the US, sadly.
I'm going to go rest, read the congratulatory chapter in the official NaNoWriMo book, and relax.
Phew.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
