Caught up!

Finally! I’m ahead in my word count (just slightly) but ahead. I passed 14000 today which means I met my husbands expectations anyway – very good of him to mind the baby ALL weekend.

So…the question is, have I built up enough momentum to manage 1500 odd words a day for the rest of November? The chances of another writing weekend are rather slim so I won’t be able to do a catch up.

Thoughts on my novel so far…I feel like I’m skimming the surface a lot and haven’t really got into the depth of emotion I need from my characters, however I am getting the basic narrative arc down. I hope to be able to go back and flesh out after that. I’ve hit one or two points where I’m not sure how I want the story to go and the characters are doing their own thing which is a thing I’m not sure I want them to do. I don’t know if I’m stomping down on potentially interesting developments or creating too neat reasons why x won’t do such and such. On the other hand I have had one or two moments of good dialogue (just one or two mind).  I don’t HATE my story but it’s not GOOD in any shape or form – it’s like the basic blocks of colour for a painting, there’s much to add before it’s even close to looking like a picture.

Day 7 continued…

Word count: 6971, written today: 5288. So if I do as well tomorrow I will meet my husband’s quota at least, although I had hoped to do more.

Doing a story outline and nutting out the scenes has been great and has lead to a change in focus for my nanoing this year. Normally I’d be trying to get as many words as possible in every scene. This year I’m focusing on getting as far as possible into the narrative. Hopefully this will mean that at the end I will have a completed draft, beginning to end instead of what I normally have which is 50 000 word third of a novel. So, I write what needs to be written to make a scene make sense (I’ve been finding that I’m combining scenes or including enough information to cut out a separate scene) and then moving on. And if I get to the end of the novel and still don’t have 50k, then I can go back and flesh out characters or descriptions.

That’s the plan.

Nanowrimo – writing weekend

My lovely husband is minding the baby ALL weekend so that I can get into my nano novel. Since I have no chance of not being interrupted at home I’ve scarpered for the day to the state library where there is free wireless internet, comfy lounges, power for laptops and decent coffee. *hearts*

So far I’ve written 1063 words today, an improvement in pace of 28% according to my trusy nanowrimo stats sheet.

Yesterday in preparation for a writing blitz this weekend I went through my snowflake document (such as it is) and broke most of it down into scenes and put those into my document as chapter headings. At first I found the planning a little stifling when it came down to writing since I felt as if I had to ‘get through’ the first scene, but I’ve revisited my snowflake plan and this step has been helpful in that now it gives me a helpful idea of what to write when I get to each chapter.

Back to it, husband has given me a quota of at least 10 000 words to fulfil this weekend. I’m hoping for more actually – one of the people on the nano forums I read got 50k in 16 hours. I have 16 hours this weekend working 2 8 hour days, so maybe I can do it too!

(just have to stop blogging and checking facebook *shakes fist at tempting free wireless access*)

Days 3 & 4

I’m taking this weekend as a writing weekend, which means that my husband will be looking after the bambino 100%. nice! However last night he threatened to impose a word quota before I was allowed to have my weekend! (I won’t tell him that that might actually spur me on…)

1611 words…am hoping to write a few more tonight.

Nanowrimo day 1 & 2

er…901 words so far… no writing today as yet…

ok onwards and upwards

Halloween

(or what I’ve been doing instead of planning my nano novel)

In honour of having a reason to decorate this year I ‘did’ Halloween – not a really Australian thing but hey, I’ve always wanted to carve a pumpkin.

Here he is, Mr Jack O’Lantern

And in situ with the candelabras we inherited from my in-laws

And the view from outside, suitably spooky

 

I made a little wizard’s costume for my bubba for playgroup this week. Unfortunately we were both to sick to go, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t dress up in costume for a visit from Sailor Moon this afternoon.

   

I had wanted a simple costume that a toddler could without getting tangled up that didn’t cost too much. Since I had  piece of black cardboard and star shaped rubber stamp in my craft box and a piece of dark blue fabric, elastic and ribbon in my sewing box all it cost was about twenty minutes of my time.

Sadly we didn’t have an trick or treaters even though this year I was prepared. Oh well…my little man enjoyed the candle display so that’s all that matters.

A short post to say…

That even if our refrigerator is broken and I haven’t done all the housework I should, and I ought to be changing the sheets right now…I love a proper rainy day (especially when it hasn’t rained for a very long time).

Planning

I’m really enjoying following the steps of the snowflake method for this year’s nano novel.  It’s given me a way of getting the ideas down without having to actually write the story or worry about sentence structure or dialogue. It’s also at that point where, if I’m interrupted by my bubba, it’s ok, I can walk away and keep thinking about the story. In fact, when I reach the end of a step, I feel like taking a break and that I’ve achieved something.  I guess it’s really breaking novel writing down into manageable steps.

I’m up to step 5 now – writing a one page description of each major character. This will be interesting since I haven’t really even described the characters appearances yet. I think I’ll have to devote a bubba-nap to each of my main protagonists so I can focus on them individually.

epiphany

The one thing I miss about being a SAHM is the joy of a long weekend off - that thrill of having two or three days entirely free to fill as you like, guilt-free, a blank slate that’s yours to draw on. Now there is no job to escape from, and although I am ‘off’ work every day, there are duties and responsibilities that will be there on Saturday and Sunday and every day in between. And…a little person who needs, wants and who I love beyond words and therefore cannot forget about for even a little while.

sometimes I do get a morning off though…a small bit of time to do as I please

Snowflakes

I found out about the Snowflake method of planning a novel from Karen at the Unutterable Phrase after a post on one the Nanowrimo forums. I’ve never been a story planner – I like the seat of the pants, let’s see where this goes approach. However, I think I’ve mentioned that this year Is Going To Be Different – since ya know, I have limited time and don’t want to waste time pondering the story line too much.  So there I was throwing around this vague concept of planning my novel, not really knowing how I was going to do that, when I saw Karen’s post about the Snowflake method and so I’m giving that a go.  The Snowflake method is created by Randy Ingermanson which is based on the same planning concept used in designing software. I was telling my hubby about it and he likened it to how he plans out the jobs he does as an engineer. Anyhoo, basically you grow your story incrementally – start with one sentence, then develop that into a brief overview etc. It’s given me a great framework to begin and plus it has steps!

Using the snowflake method

So yesterday I sat down and started step 1 – that was easy since I’d pretty much thought of the one sentence description of my novel during the 2 hours driving I did the day before. Step 2  – expanding the sentence to a full paragraph – I found a little harder, not because I couldn’t think of what to write but because it ended up being five paragraphs and growing…because I didn’t know what would happen after the story set up (which took 3 sentences instead of 1) I kept writing, trying to think of what disasters and problems would befall our hero in the course of his quest. So in some ways I couldn’t have just written 5 sentences but now I can probably boil what I have written down to 5 parts, which will help me to develop a narrative arc and structure to the novel.  Essentially I jumped ahead to step 4, but I will re-do step one and clarify my structure more firmly. I’ve already started thinking about step 3 which involves developing the characters. 

I’ve found the process useful so far and I can see how it will be beneficial – normally I would be thinking all this stuff as I write and the plonking the background and characterisation in the middle of the novel, where it would have to sit until it was chopped out. Also I can see how it will be easier to change the story structure and plan now rather than two chapters in. As my husband says, you end up re-polishing the first third of the book and end up with five novels only a third written – he wasn’t actually talking about me but it’s a pretty accurate description of my writing process so far.  Yay for planning! My one fear – the fear that has thus far prevented me from planning – is that I’ll get bored, but we’ll see how we go, especially if I get this planning done and then move straight onto the first draft writing while I’m still inspired.

Now,  hopefully the bubba will sleep for another half hour at least so I can redo step 2!