My secret life as a writer

2005-12-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Inspired by my crazy romp through literary land? (If anything, this month has made me wordy. Plain Talk watch out!) Then check out:

Janowrimo - January Novel Writing Month

&

NaNoWriYe - National Novel Writing Year (100,000 words!)

I myself will be doing:

NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month, but that's not until March. Phew, a break...But I am hoping to get this thing into readable shape soon. Edit out all the weird passages, like "She walked in through the yesterday and took a seat in the booth." I think I meant doorway.

If you do decide to embark on any of these, I'd like to share my NaNoWriMo lessons learned:

Do not take days off from writing, at least don't take off five days;
Write extra every day because inevitably you will want to take a day off, Thanksgiving maybe, and it's a bitch to catch up again;
Have a lot of coffee on hand;
Sucker someone into cleaning your house for you (I just thought of that now, way too late.)
A vanilla latte and a tootsie roll do not a breakfast make;
and finally have a good incentive, like sending a check to the GOP. Really kept me going, even when all my fingers hurt.

2005-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

And it's done!

Last line of the book:

She heard the soft spattering of the rain as it started to fall on her windshield, she turned the wipers on, took comfort in their familiar back and forth and drove off.

The End.

2005-11-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

Ever have one of those moments where you think, I need a break and I need some chocolate? I've had five of those today.

2005-11-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

Today's the day. The finish line is near. I've decided to think in terms of pages rather than words. I have 12 pages to go and then i'll be done. That sounds totally doable. Of course, I've got the little added challenge of being done by the time Lost comes on but then again, I guess there are always reruns.

2005-11-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

There are several things I'm looking forward to doing when the month ends and I can take a break from writing, things I thought I would never miss:

Cleaning the house (actually, being in a clean house)
Exercising
Watching sitcoms or reality tv or whatever other brain damaging things come on at 8pm

I am also looking forward to reading for enjoyment. Reading, just for the heck of it. It's just like end of the term in college, I can read for fun!

As expected, I have procrastinated so thoroughly that I am very sorely behind. I'm taking Wednesday off from work so I can finish this dang thing. If I haven't killed off all my characters by then.

Strangest thing I've written:
Cash looked at her, saw her clothes were covered with the product of mrs. potters tragic last minute.
A wordy way to say "blood".

Strangest plot twist I've taken:
Paul Cash gets conked in the head with a bible, which gives him some sort of serious concussion. He leaves the hospital early to get a drink and crack the case only to end up passed out on the bar room floor from an infection. Can you get an infection from being hit on the head with a bible? I'm not sure I care. It's fiction. Let's suspend some disbelief.

2005-11-21T21:07:00.000-08:00

20,000 more words to go. I've added several new twists and turns, one happens to be "ripped from the headlines." See, it's not only characters that I'm stealing from Law and Order. Dum-dum.

2005-11-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Worst thing I wrote today:

Jack had a notorious appetite for pizza and all things hot and cheesy.

(Yes, my characters are slowly taking the same names of the people on Lost, they're also showing characteristics of Law & Order characters. I may be officially out of creativity...)

My favorite thing I wrote:

He grew to think rodriguez was wedded to her work. If it wasn’t such a cliché, he’d think it now.

Best thing I've learned:

My desk is tremendously not ergonomic and needs to go.

Words to go before midnight:

6,000

2005-11-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

Want to know what it's like to be me at this very moment? bang your head on your keyboard a couple of times. If you come up with a couple of keys stuck to your head and only three additional words added to your wrimo book, you'll get the idea...

Actually, I added another 1000+ words. Which is fine but I've killed one of the main characters and pretty much can wrap up the whole book in maybe another two pages. Not good, not good. (I've been having rainman like bouts of word counting, i think it is also making me repetitive.)

so, i don't know. tomorrow, i think i need to add a new character, maybe a female cop, to investigate the killing. cash is looking like a suspect himself but i suppose he could still investigate it. good god or maybe i should add some more adjectives somewhere or something. aaghh, key on the head, key on the head.

2005-11-11T20:11:00.000-08:00

11K plus a few extra words. i was panicking a little because i'd done some math and realized the more i wrote, the further behind i got. it was similar to how the more money i sent to my student loans and credit cards, the greater my debt grew. luckily, i redid the math and i'm still behind but not getting more behind with every word i write. whew. i'm also still bad at math.

here is the formula (some nanos use a fancy spreadsheet to figure this out, i used my fingers and toes):

day 11 x 1667 words per day = where i should be or 18,337.

18,337 - what i've got 11036 = 7301. 7301/1667 = 4 days behind.

So, you could say, I'm catching up.

2005-11-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

8700 words as of this morning. 3000 more to go today. i think if i get in a couple of good hours, i can reach that easily. yippee, i may catch up after all...

2005-11-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

five days behind, five days!!! again, crap. i have a new motivational plan though (taken right from "No Plot, No Problem", the nano bible.) i'm going to make a check out to someone who i don't want to have my money, think gwb, and seal it up in an addressed envelope. i'm then giving it to a trusted friend with explicit instructions to mail it if i don't meet my 50k word goal. now how's that for motivation?

2005-11-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

Moving ahead soooo slowly. 6785 words as of today. Looked at my writer profile on the nano site and it seems i skipped a lot of days during the first week. Probably not the best idea, I'm thinking. So basically I need about 2000 words a day. I'm going to take a new tact, one I meant to today but slept right through, which is getting up early and writing in the morning. Gonna really try that out tomorrow, really, I really mean it. but for now i'm off to watch "The Office" (American v. since I have no cable.)

Missy will recognize this character:

“Cash” Johnny Demato filled his room. A 5’2 Italian man expatriated from Brooklyn, for many reasons cash didn’t have enough hands to count; New York had a long while ago told Demato in non-negotiable terms to leave... “I didn’t come for no conversation cash, I just want my god damned money.” Demato had regardless crossed the room, snatching the bottle in his small hands. “Whiskey” he grunted “in Fairbanks we drank it to keep from freezing alive. Did I ever tell you the story about my time in Alaska?” Demato had a lot of stories about a lot of places, the punch line always being him being asked to leave town.

2005-11-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

Crap, crap, crap. 5700 some odd words. I was hoping for more like 15, 000. I have much catching up to do...

2005-11-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

4469 words, hmm, not good. That leaves tomorrow to crank out 5500 words, I'm doubting that will happen. I think I will spend a good couple of hours though getting as close as I can. I've decided taking two nights off in a row was a poor choice.

The wrimo book said your characters will drive the plot and take you places you never expected they would. I had my plot fairly worked out in my mind, what has surprised me however is my characters have developed in ways I never expected. For instance:

I didn't know everyone in Olivia's life would think of her as weak and fragile. Brenda: "Are you ok?. It was a joke." Brenda sounded annoyed. "I'm sorry," she said. She wasn't. Olivia was too sensitive, she always told her that. Or grow up, she had to tell her that too. Brenda had to be hard on her. The world was hard and Olivia was often so weak.
The intro to the Mickey Spillane book says Mike Hammer,PI is driven by revenge not dames. Which made me think about Cash who seems to be driven by dames and also Johnny Demato (who's out to get him for some reason.) Cash has a complex relationship with women. He has a photo of Karen in his apartment: For a woman who wasn't dead to him, she seemed to have no effect on his current life. He never thought what if Karen could see him now as a motivator to meet any new years resolutions. He never thought her name at all. He imagined she'd see him in death the same way she saw him in life. And that gave him no impetus to change. He also had a very religious mother who was convinced the world was going to end at any time: God had ended his mother's world but cash still went on, her rosary beads and prayers buried with her.

So, it's interesting to me the way these characters have developed out of all of this stream of consiousness writing. I had an image of them that was more archetypal but they have taken on some life of their own as I've put words to computer. I think they would be developing differently if I was writing more thoughtfully, editing as I go or trying to craft the book rather than just dumping words on a page.

Regardless, I have a shitload of writing to do tomorrow...

2005-11-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

I've decided i need pulp fiction inspiration so I now have three Mickey Spillane books, a collection called "a century of noir" and another named "fresh blood 2: the cream of britain's new wave of crime writers." the last has a trainspotting look about it. i feel like i should stop working today and go home and read instead.

2005-11-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

So, today I've discovered I need Guinness and cheese and crackers in order to write. and a spattering of "fuck" in my dialogue. the girlie raspberry beer and coldplay was not cutting it. a good mix of yo-yo ma, the shins and the chemical brothers seemed much more inspiring tonight.

3400+ words and some new characters.

Brenda - olivia's best friend. she's a self absorbed bitch. her husband who has no muscle or fat on his "trick or treat frame" (proud of that one) says of his wife '"that woman's only love is herself and her ferragamos and her fucking fendi bags." They laughed although neither meant it and left the locker room for the course.'
Plus a mysterious stranger Cash gave something to at the bar.

I'm thinking Cash, private eye, left the police force because of a predilection for pills. Thought this up as I was feeding Mel her nightly meds and saying in a baby voice "you like your pills huh sweetie, mel mel likes pills." Anway, cash seems to have a thing for olivia, her voice stayed with him through a dreamless sleep (that's the kind of cliched sleep that will be edited out when we move to the "not shit" phase). he still loves his pills though.

2005-11-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

If you must know, here's my favorite thing I wrote today, Olivia's first trip to Rain City:

“hey, lady, you need some help?” the voice was gruff, stung of cigarette smoke and something chemical.

“yes, I, I’m looking for…”

“you looking for this baby, huh , you looking for this?” the man grabbed between his legs, shook whatever loose he had hanging there,

-----

Anyway, that's probably all the excerpts I should post. The wrimo book warns against it, in case you get constructive criticism...

2005-11-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

OK, it's much harder to write than I remember. I remember it coming much easier in college but then again i had a creative writing class to impress. and i probably wasn't drinking raspberry beer and listening to coldplay while trying to write. anway, i did my first 1691 words and named my characters:

Olivia - the femme fatale, an aging beauty, desperate and lonely in a large house.
Melanie - her daughter, I doubt she'll figure heavily in the story.
Paul Cash - cigarette smoking, brown liqueur on ice drinker, ex-cop PI. i'm fairly sure Olivia thinks he has a nice ass although she's too polite to say it.
Nick Evans - Olivia's evil lobbyist husband, will be offed at some point.

Anyway, it took me an hour to write my very first rough 1600+ words. So, that's not bad considering the nanowrimo book said a quick typist could do it in an hour and half (i think). If I keep it up, I can hit the 50k mark. I can see whatever I come up with will need lots of rewriting though...What did Hemingway say? every first draft is shit?

So, here is the excerpt I posted on the wrimo site, not the best bit from today, I was too paranoid to post anything particularly good, someone could steal it...

"Olivia saw herself in her daughter; everything time and nature took still lived boldly in the able body of her only child. She recognized nothing of nick in her, often wondering if he was really her father or if god had given Olivia one gift, one consolation for a life lived halfheartedly.

The phone buzzed, echoing monotonously through the soul of the house. Olivia watched the caller id hesitate then display. Wireless caller. That number again. If she answered, wireless caller hung up. Once wireless caller breathed softly before clicking the call off. Olivia had tried to trace it, called the number back, redialed, every time being told the number was blocked or the caller did not exist. Olivia's heart pounded heavily in her chest. She felt about to die."

2005-10-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Five days of freedom and then I'm starting to write. I see this blog as a delicious diversion. I know I'll be sidetracked (Lost will still be on, after all) and seeking any excuse not to do what I set out to (write a suspense novel in thirty days along with all the other brave Nanowrimo souls) so hence I'll have this blog - Where I can ramble aimlessly without adding a word to my novel's wordcount.

Anyway, november I'm setting off to write what I see as the first of many gritty noir novels, set in a rainy, crime filled city. It was, of course, a dark and stormy night.

So, wish me luck.