November 4th, 2006 by Rebecca
So far this year, I’ve done something I’ve never been able to do in past years: get ahead of the word total. By the end of Friday, I was supposed have 5001 words, but I’d hit 5004 by Thursday afternoon. I knew that yesterday would be a bust – I was going to a craft show – so I wanted to get ahead of the game. Which I did. Woo!
My experience has been that I can bang out the 1667 daily count in about an hour and a half, but I was really lucky that I had the morning of Day 1 off, and all of Day 2. Day 2 was the first write-in for the North Bay group, and I went out and got stuff accomplished there as well. Now I have to find out how well I can write at night – I like this feeling of being ahead or up-to-speed, and I don’t want to squander it.
The story itself is coming along nicely. There was an electrocution scene I’m not sure is entirely accurate or technically possible, but now is not the time to hunt down an expert to ask if it’s possible to run a live current through metal floor plating and only affect people who are wearing footgear with steel toes, or some such other nonsense. Not important. What’s important is that I got rid of the bad guys in one fell swoop. So there.
November 1st, 2006 by Rebecca
And so, let the insanity begin for another year.
The weeks leading up to this haven’t been all that productive. I wasn’t really sure where I was going with the story until this past weekend, when I finally broke down and read last year’s story, so at the very least I’d remember my character’s names. It turns out it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, which is the fear that had been holding me back. I’d forgotten about the running joke with the spanner. I’d forgotten about the crazy fortune-telling gypsie woman. I’d forgotten about the dares I accepted – one must have been to name a fruity drink after the blog Little Green Foosballs, because one of my characters is drinking a Little Green Foosball in a drag bar. (And I’d forgotten about the scene in the drag bar.)
The other reason it hasn’t been productive is that I haven’t felt much like writing. It’s not a lack of topics* – it’s a serious lack of… how do you call it? Energy. Ambition. Something like that. By the time November 1st rolled around last year, I had three single-spaced pages of notes and outline. This year, all I have is what I managed to scribble down between trick-or-treaters last night**.
Last night was also the kick-off party for the North Bay NaNo group (…represent!), which was a blast. There are over 20 of us, easily, including a mother-son team. Thursday afternoon there’s a write-in, and I’d really like to go, even though it’s on the campus of the university (and even though it’s not a big city, I’m not sure where it is.) When I got home, I could barely keep my eyes open, but managed to hang on until midnight, when I pounded out my first 400 words before giving into slumber. This morning, I got up and managed to write a little more while listening to my carefully selected playlist, until I hit Snow Patrol’s “Run”, which seemed to capture the feeling of the scene I was writing. I put it on continuous play, and 19 consecutive listens later*** I almost have the first scene, but even more importantly, I have some idea of where the story wants to go. It’s not about what I want to write, it’s about where the characters and the story and the ideas want to take me.
If you’ll excuse me, I need 200 more words to reach my daily quota.
* A brief overview: Hiro is adorable, I’m kitting a sock, I carved a pumpkin, I had a great weekend last weekend, people say the craziest things, and I like Leonard Cohen songs as done by other artists.
** My hands-down favourite trick-or-treater was the tiny dragon, who growled at me when his father asked him, “What do you say to the nice lady?”
*** I’m able to listen to a song or a CD repeatedly without getting terribly sick of it. It’s just a personality quirk.