NaNo Day 8: 63,634 (mini rants and progress)

I am taking a quick break from NaNo at the start of week 2 to cover a few things that have come up.  Many of them are the same stuff we hear every year.  So here are three little mini-rants and then a short progress report.

Number 1:

It's no one's business how you spend your free time, in November or any other month.  If you want to write 50,000 words, go for it.  Have fun.  It certainly beats sitting around in bars or watching television just to have something to do.  If you are doing NaNo on work time, then you deserve whatever reprimand you get.  (Oh, and if the boss can't tell if you are 'number-crunching' or writing in November, then I'd say there's a lot more wrong with the business than NaNo. Just sayin' Economist person with the stupid article.)

 If you mess up your school work for NaNo, you're being immature.

Other than that,  this is no one's business but your own.

Number 2:

Only serious, professional writers should be allowed to attempt a book?  By that notion, no group should be allowed to play football in an empty field unless they intend to be professional football players, right?  No one can paint a picture unless they are sworn to the secret society of artists.  Put that camera down if you aren't a professional!  And never mind that no one is born a professional.

You are never going to see the writing these people do, so how can it possibly affect your life in anyway?  Yeah, some publishers will be hit with submissions, but most of us know better, and we keep spreading the word.  Some of the books might hit epublication long before they should.  Don't go read them.

There.  Easy answer.  You never have to deal with it.

Oh, and 'greater than thou' author?  I hate your website and all the ads and the stupid promo stuff.  What?  Then don't go look at it?  Yeah, that's the point.  If you don't like NaNo, then stay away.  But don't tell others they haven't the right to join in if they want to because they are defiling the art of writing.

Grow up.

Number 3:

This has to do with people doing NaNo.  Let's look at an analogy.

You've entered a marathon with so many other people running, you can't even count them all.  You have no idea where they came from and what kind of preparation they've done, but that doesn't matter.  You are ready.   You get the go ahead and off you go.  You work really hard and you reach the first marker, proud to have made it, knowing you had a hard time getting there.

But you look ahead and there are people way ahead of you on the path.

OMG, that's so horrible and unfair (never mind how hard they worked to get there), that you immediately decide to stop running.

 

Yeah, I think you see the point.

Stop with the silly 'it's so unfair, they're cheating, it's de-motivating to see people with high word counts' crap.  How do you accomplish anything with an attitude like that?  Come on -- what others are doing has nothing to do with you.  Just because someone is running ten miles instead of five doesn't make your work (or theirs) any less difficult or important.  And a few years from now, you may well find yourself running the harder marathon because you are better trained for it.

Okay, now to my NaNo Stuff:

Despite some problems, I am doing well.  My Edmond kitty was very ill, and that has slowed me up quite a bit.  He's better now, but still not fully recovered.  Today I fell and hurt my hand, which is bruised and sore, my shoulder, my back and my foot.  Yeah, not in a good mood over that one. It is making it hard to work.

But yes, I am way out ahead of most of the runners, and no I don't have to worry about the word count.  I am really enjoying the work of writing Beware the Wrath of Bunny Hopper.  I keep finding her voice in unexpected spots and she's a lot of fun to write.  The story is already over the word count I expected it to end by, and I still have about 15 to 20k to go.  So yeah, doing well there. 

I'm having fun.  I hope the rest of you are as well!

NaNo Day 1: 12,755

Just a quick post tonight before I crawl off to bed!  I did have a good first day despite several stops and starts.  Not the best first NaNo day I've ever had, but not bad at all.  So here is a bit from Beware the Wrath of Bunny Hopper.  Remember:  First draft.  Lots of mistakes, but still fun!

I rushed forward and in about five steps I had already spotted Brad with his back to a wall and a semi-circle of five people around him.  He had a sword in hand.  I didn't know he had any sword training, but he knew how to use it.  He couldn’t, however, hold off that many and there were others around as well. 

I didn't know what was going on here.  I didn't care.  Even if I could have called the police I still would have rushed in to help him.   

I didn't slow.  I leapt straight into the fray, startling Brad who started to swing and held back, though I had already ducked below the blow.  He made a sound of surprise, but I spun and kicked knocking one aside and then went for a second . . . and by the third my brain was starting to register that these things were not human. 

Beady eyes.  Mandibles.  Thick, dark covering that cracked when I hit it hard enough.  Bit mouth.  No neck.  Multiple legs. 

My brain kept cataloging what I saw while I helped Brad fight them back. 

Insects.  Huge, mutant insects.  It probably should have scared the hell out of me.  It probably would, later. 

Right now, I just kicked harder.  Good thing I'd been so well trained.  While part of my brain was screaming GIANT MUTANT INSECTS! that vicious inner bunny of mine had taken over the rest of it, including control of my body.  He didn't fear insects.  When they kept getting up, he just got annoyed and kicked harder.   

They backed off for a moment and I stepped closer to Brad.  He shook his head with worry, lowering the sword for a moment while he gasped for breath.  I spotted four dead insects here and a few more a ways off.  I thought he must have done very well so far.

Preparing for my NaNo Mini Vacation

This will be my 11th NaNo year.  I have won every year, and done multiple full novels all but the first year.  I love it.  I love the chance to fly.  However. . . .

A couple weeks ago, about the time I realized I could not get the outline for Water/Stone/Light done before November 1st, I began considering not doing NaNo this year. I started feeling as though there was just too much stuff piling up and I couldn't get enough done in time.  I started listing out all the stuff, and by the time I had eight things on the list I had already noticed something rather odd.

Everything except the newsletter turned out to be something I did for other people and without pay.

Hmmm.

So I rethought everything again.  I pushed forward on getting some things done, told a few people they would have to wait, and went to work on the Bunny Hopper outline, which I actually got done and early.  Then I threw myself into the rewrite of Devlin 1 as well, just because I'd been letting my own stuff go a bit.  I always finish my projects by January 1 and I realized I was running out of time with too many projects sitting there in my folder.

And I decided that I can take a few days just to leap in and do something fun.

I'm a happier person now.  I will be writing like mad for the first few days of NaNo.  I'll have a newsletter to do during that time, but I'm hoping it won't be too difficult.  I plan to have everything else that has to be done cleared away by then.  

The first week of NaNo really is my little vacation.  I love to write, but like everyone else in the world, real life and obligations take precedence over what I want to do too often.  Truthfully, I could not write all the time like I do at NaNo.  I wouldn't want to.  But I can take a few days to really live in the heart of a story and enjoy the magic that comes from it.

I have two of my three outlines printed off.  I'll do the last one today.   The first is Beware the Wrath of Bunny Hopper, a fun little urban fantasy. The other two are books 5 and 6 from my Devlin science fiction series.  I already had the outlines done last year, and I'm glad I hadn't written them yet.  They are perfect for a year when I don't have as much time to prepare as I would like.  I have a fourth outline I might use if I need it.  Or, if I still have time after these three, I might go for something without an outline at all.  Those have been fun for NaNo in the past.

Can you tell I'm getting fired up about it again?

I don't know how well I'll do this year.  There is stuff going on that may stop me entirely.  It would, of course, be easier to just say 'oh, things don't look good, I won't do it' and bow out.  What fun would that be?  No, I'm leaping in and enjoying myself.

Year 11, here I come!

Zette's Take: How Outlines Work

We are not all the same and neither we do not all work the same.  Nothing is as simple as 'this' or 'that' when it comes to writing and that includes working with outlines.  People approach them in different ways and create different types of outlines.  I don't expect people who dislike working with outlines to suddenly jump up and embrace them.  However, I do think outlines are often misunderstood. 

People who don't work with an outline seem to assume that creating one is the same as telling the story, all planned out and complete, and there's nothing more to it.  This isn't true: An outline is almost always little more than a series of plot points.  There might be a few notes and even something that says 'Tom is mad' at some point.  Creating one is just as much an act of discovery as writing a first draft without one.  Outlines also often include questions on the trouble areas which might be fuzzy -- you know something is going to happen, but until you get to that spot, you can't tell how the forces are going to come together.

The story itself only occurs when the characters interact with those plot points.  Until the characters come alive on the story page, it's little more than a set of stage directions.  In other words, an outline is all about tell; the story is about show. 

Having an outline does not mean I won't discover other interesting things along the way as I write the story.  For me, in fact, an outline means I am more open to discovery.  With an outline, I'm not focusing all my creativity on discovering what happens next in the big plot or what I have to change earlier based on a new direction -- or change back when the new direction doesn't work.  With an outline, I've experimented with those things already and (I hope) worked out the problems so the plot movement is set.  If something didn't work in the outline, I cut a couple hundred words instead of several thousand. My focus is now far wider than merely moving the plot along.  Knowing the direction I'm going means I get to look at all the odd little bits and pieces around the main events and create even more interesting links into the story plot. 

My stories are richer since I began outlining.  I also have far less revision to do later because I make certain the basic plot is going to work from start to finish before I begin writing.  This doesn't mean everything will always work perfectly, but I have stacked the deck in my favor.

Having worked both with and without outlines, I can tell you that for me there is no difference in the actual writing.  It's always exciting because the story starts to come alive once the real writing begins.  With an outline in hand, I can move in the flow of the story just by glancing at my little 'cue cards' to keep going.  I don't step back out of writing until I have hit the time constraints of real life.

And, of course, the story will change as the characters grow.  No outline should ever be 'this and nothing else' to an author.  You might drop whole sections, add new things, change a character's direction, and all without destroying the overall plot line.  By having worked out the outline, I know the story I want to tell.  I am not going to diverge too much from the basic storyline to tell a different story that suddenly comes to me.  That's what other books are for.

To be honest, if I wrote an outline and then wasn't interested enough to write the story, I'd think the story wasn't very good to begin with.  (It's like people telling me they hate to edit because they already know the story.  Ack.  If you're so uninterested in your story that you can't even look at it a second time to make it better, how can you expect the reader to like it at all?)  If the outline plot is so boring I don't want to make it into a real story, then it's just as well it never goes any farther.  I do have one outline that has been holding off for years because I know there is some basic 'magic' that is still missing from the storyline and I haven't happened on what it needs yet.  I'll get to it eventually.

In the meantime, I'm just finishing one outline and really looking forward to writing the story.  I can see the path I'm going to take, and I can't wait to find the adventures there.

New Release: Lucky

Lucky is a short story from the IWC Universe and was previously published by Yard Dog Press in my Star Bound collection.  The 'lucky' person is Misea, a woman released early from prison and given a job working construction on the new Shepherd Station.  She's determined to stay out of trouble.

That's not going to work, of course.  Especially since there's already been acts of sabotage at the site.  Misea is about to find herself right back in the center of trouble.

$0.99 at Smashwords!

I hope you enjoy it!