Phew! Done! Actually done a few days ago, but Thanksgiving was another phew, so I now have some time to look back. I don't know if I'll use December for editing.

Pros and Cons for December editing:
Pros: the story is still fresh in my mind, and it is probably better to get it over with. I may also lose the instinct and desire to finish the thing if I don't do this in December.
Cons: One can see the holes and what is missing better if a hiatus is allowed in between the writing time and the fixing time. On the other hand, December is a busy month.

In the meanwhile, I took a look at the novel because its beginning has been bugging me all along. I had started it with a prologue since I hadn't decided who the main character would be. Now I got rid of the prologue and incorporated it into the first two chapters. I'm glad I did that since I hate prologues in novels of this kind. Prologues may be okay when they introduce an alien world or something like that, but not in the kind of novel I wrote.

Did I say I wasn't sure about any editing in December? Well it seems the editing has already begun.

I will probably go over the sections that I have left with a question mark in my mind, like the one that reads like a travelogue of Mexico's west coast. This is somewhere close to the middle. I wrote that because my mind had stopped as to where to take the story, for which I am now glad because that section became a bridge to the rest of the story. It is very possible I'll cut out the travelogue, however.

Thanksgiving was great, especially the part where I saw my children -well, my adult children who have homes far away from where I live.

All in all, November 2009 has been an experience.







 

39,628 words. I am hurrying, and not only because I want to finish the novel, or the resemblance of a novel , before Thanksgiving. It is just that the story or the characters have taken over. Funny, how some things from my own life seeped in, plus the really weird stuff I came up with due to the quirky main character, even if she is a tragic one.

It always works to choose a primary character with a personality disorder. People with personality disorders or those having borderline personalities always act, get into things, and stir muck.

We went to BJ's yesterday. I bought a bunch of fine-point Sharpie pens. When we came home, I didn't like them. They make a sh-sh-sh- sh sound as I write and distract me. I am not writing the novel with pen and paper, but I write other things all the time or take notes on what I'll write later.

So the Sharpie pens are in hubby's possession now, and I'll have to get a new set. I should have stuck to Pilot-G or Uni-ball Signo to start with. My husband laughs at me because I'm so picky with pens, and I don't give a hoot about other things.

Last week sometime, a woman asked me what I was writing in the waiting room, while I waited for my husband. I first said grocery list, then noticing her looking at my paper, I said I was scribbling some notes for a letter to be written. I was actually writing some kind of a rough draft/outline for a newsletter. Since nosy people find me all the time, I write a few lines, then start reading a book, or if the waiting room is large enough, I go sit away from everyone.

I really like NaNo. I like the obsession and the intensified attention it forces the writer to give to the work. I could live like this forever, but I can't because of real life and because I do want to do other things, too; even if other things have suffered only a little at this time.


*Edited to add: I love the photo in Short Shots for November. I'd write for it, if it weren't for Nano. It would've been fun. *sigh*
 

I hope this wasn't a Friday the thirteen event, but I couldn't help myself. I went back and made the first chapter second, then added a first chapter as told by the main character. Yes, I know who my main character is now. The first chapter is not as attention grabbing as before, but this is the right way to do it. If I hadn't done this, I couldn't have gone ahead with the story. Now I have a main character and a story that is shaping up around her. Just keeping my fingers crossed.

After the 50,000 or the finish, I have to make the first chapter more exciting or interesting in some way to draw better reader-attention.

I finished reading Famous Writers School. Clever novel. Entertaining and about what we all like in this site.

Even so, I wrote my daily portion of NaNo. I'm also doing other things in real life that I am responsible for; except the house cleaning has suffered a bit, but then, it is the first thing that suffers under any other emergency. I have to write faster after this, since my kids changed their minds and are coming down for Thanksgiving. They had originally said they had too much to do, so they wouldn't be coming. Although I had dared NaNo partly because of that, I am really happy they're coming.

Then, I'm glad I doing the NaNo thing because, even if I will be busier after the 22nd, I will probably finish most of the novel. It is going faster than I gave me credit for. Just let's hope so!

And another thing, I hadn't blogged this loyally before.
 

26,099 words. Past midpoint. We'll see...

In one of the pep-talk e-mails to my addy, a NaNo moderator talks about freewriting or what I call free flow. Looking at the other available NaNo novels in progress, however, I find none of us is freewriting, but we are writing fast using an idea or an outline with the goal of finishing the stuff by the end of the month.

Actually, I am used to freewriting. Every day I write about ten minutes, longhand, with no idea or goal, but this won't do for a novel. Freeflow is only good opening up the passageways, like a nose spray when you have a cold. Then, you'll still have to breathe on your own. Fresher the air, the better.

I guess some writers start anything new with stupid dreams about it. When I started my NaNo novel, I put it in the general fiction type, but when the psychological twisting and turning took hold, I changed it to literary fiction. Now, the action has taken over again, and I am wondering if I should go back to general fiction. I never thought I'd end up confused about the type, genre or whatever.

On the plus side, I am even writing faster now, and truly with reckless abandon, since the story is following its own course. I may or may not like where it is going, but it is going. Albeit blindly. Then, I think, that is the idea behind NaNo. In any case, I started enjoying who the characters are as I am feeling their feelings.

One thing to keep in mind. I must not worry about the finish line. It looks like there'll be a finish line, but the story may collapse dead when it reaches there, like an untrained marathon runner. But then, what is revision for?

Chances are we writers will learn new ways while doing this, and we'll find out which ones will work best for us in different circumstances. So, I am taking this as an exercise in itself...even if it is taking so much of my time and mind-power. Not that my mind-power is in leaps and bounds either.
 

Remnants of Ida...tail winds and rain. Great! I love this wind. It cools the place and makes the AC obsolete.

It seems the tougher my life gets, the harder I push. I'm sure I'll turn into jelly, soon. Between hubby's tiny operation, the taking out of a mole gone bad on his back, and my own adjustment to a blood-thinning medicine, I still wrote quite a bit for NaNo. To be fair, last few chapters were exciting to write, and I didn't have to brood over them. At this time, I'm at 21,084 words, and the good thing is, today I'm home. I am hoping to near the midpoint mark. Crossing my fingers...

At this juncture, I discovered I have two novels in one. The real story is Rosie's, the mother. But Maya's, the daughter's, voice is so fresh and loud. I am thinking...thinking...although I'll leave things as they are and continue on. I hate to say, maybe later, because I know later will never come. Maybe I can rearrange the chapter order...That I'll do for sure, but I haven't figured out how to make Rosie rise over Maya... Btw, I don't like Rosie as a person all that much, but I really like Maya. Maybe I'll dream about this or something.

While wrestling with NaNo and my real life, I wrote my next newsletter, which makes me happy. I also read Famous Writers School by Steven Carter to the halfway point while in the doctor's waiting room. A really good novel most of us may find close to our hearts. I'll probably finish it sometime by the end of the week, if I can steal time from NaNo.

Before I write some more, I'll go bake a bread and a cake. It's amazing how uplifting food is.
 

It looks as if we may get a whiff of Ida, hurricane cat.2 in the gulf now. Still, its early winds have cooled us up, thank God! We're in the seventies daytime, a bit cooler at night, and the wind feels really great. Only if it wouldn't act so negatively where my allergies are concerned...

Well, you can't win them all. I still have the windows open. Hubby says we should have the AC on before asthma starts acting up on me, but I am really enjoying the cool, fresh air. So the windows are open, AC's off, and I am crossing my fingers for the rest.

As to Nano, after starting each day with a thousand plus words every morning, then adding to it in smaller increments through the course of the day, this morning I felt I needed a break. So, after my usual Sunday morning routine in real life, I did some sewing/mending, some FB games, and baked bread. Still, my entrails didn't let me, and I wrote about 700 some words.

I think I'll take a break in the late afternoon and write my next newsletter, since I have been dying to write something else.

This NaNo novel got to me like I want to throw up over it. On the plus side, I am starting to identify and empathize with the characters, even with the villainous ones. I am curious how I'll wrap the ending up. My outline did not have any ending. Anyhow, I never know my endings while I write.

As I come close to midpoint, so many different ideas for other novels or stories are popping up in my mind. This must the result of some fear mechanism or the escapist attitude that sometimes ails me, which accounts for the many half-finished pieces of fiction I have left inside my computer, this present one and the other computers I have killed. No worries (or should I worry) since I probably have them backed up on CD's, though I don't think I have enough lifetime left to finish them all; plus, not that I mean to.
 

Nano: 11,893 words at this time.

Is this what happens when you cross the ten thousand line? I now want to write other things; things other than NaNo, an article, a poem, a book review, which I read several books in the last few months and meant to write reviews for them but did not. Anything but NaNo. What a paradox!

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." Niels Bohr
Hahahaha! Look who's talking! In his case, the progress was the atomic bomb. No more bombs, please. I have bombed enough.

We had lunch by the ocean today. The water was choppy and gorgeous. If there is such a thing, it was a hint of a storm but under the sun. The weatherman says it is like this today and tomorrow on the east coast from Jacksonville all the way to the FL tip. Now, I really want to write about the ocean.

Maybe I need to put an ocean scene, or a cruise, or something to do with the ocean in the NaNo story. I think that's what I'll do next. I don't know how I'll do it without messing up the storyline, but it'll come. Worse comes to worst, I'll write it now and take it out during the revision, if there'll be a revision.

The good thing is my characters are starting to get to me.

 

No offense, but I think, in WdC, we are all anal-retentive. On the other hand, I think we rock.

While we worry about good ideas, viewpoints, story sequence, character drawing and the like, the other writers are just filling up the 50,000. I came to this conclusion after reading some of the NaNoisms, a few from earlier years, others from 2009:

" As this thought came to him, he was violently attacked by an idea."

"Even though they were the only two people in the world who could probably understand each other as nearly to completely"

"I was quite happy with my happy."

"“I know,” Benjamin said as if Allen was stating an obvious fact, which he was."

"Finally recovering from his initial, stun the counselor stepped up to the man."

See what I mean? Now you can tell your inner critic to shut up.

After all this, my own Nanoisms aside, my word count at the moment is 7874. Maybe I'll finish the novel by the end of the month.

This time, as a NaNo newbie, I put me in a difficult place by choosing to write on something that needed some research and twisted characters.

I know now that I am going to enter NaNo again, but next time, I'll start without an idea and just wing it with all the Nanoisms I can muster. That will be more fun.
 

So far so good. I am writing something around 1000 words in the mornings and adding to it 400- 600 words, three or four times a day. So far I'm averaging about 2000 words a day, but this won't last long since, tomorrow and after, I'll have other things to do like assessing the 500-Words-a-Day group's books for October, and the stuff in my regular real life. As of this entry, my word count is 5,858 words. It is late morning, and I hope to add to it later.

I am writing the book as simply as it comes. Before I post in the WdC item, I look it over and substitute a better word or two if they come to me. I read the whole thing once a day just to remind myself not to mix up the names, dates, or places. Most of it, I'm winging. Yet, even while winging it, I try to not waver too much from the research material I have, which I put together in a haste in just a few days. Maybe it is better not to suffer from the too-much-research syndrome, but in the case of this novel, certain locations, actions, and historical dates are important.

As to diction, yesterday, I laughed out loud while writing, Instead of the word boyfriend, I used beau, which sounded so odd, but it fit the diction of the time in which the incident occurred. I don't know how that word came to me either.

I am so surprised at my husband and in the most positive sense possible. Usually, he's the kind who wants what he wants and when, but he seems to back me up with this. He even seems excited about it, asking me my word count and all. He isn't even a novel reader. He'll read books relating to his work or to real life. Nothing fictional. Just the same, it is nice to know that he is there for me and not messing, in a negative way, with my writing.

Gotta go and do my real life things now. Happy writing, NaNoer pals!