Lie On Floor

I’ve been meaning to do a blog about NaNoWriMo since December 1^st, but life keeps doing this hilarious thing were it carries on and then smacks me about with boughts of ‘can’t be bothered’ which I fill mainly with sleeping these days.

Anyway, I’ll summarize—I didn’t get to 50,000 words. I did finish the book, but it just didn’t want to be proper-sized, no matter how I tried to embellish or add scenes/characters to keep it going, it’s just not a novel-length story as yet, so although I’ve got a rough draft, it’s pathetically short. I tried to make up the rest of the word count, working on other projects, but it felt like cheating and I didn’t end up even logging my final word-count into the website (or even figuring it out) so… maybe next year will be better! If I won, I don’t know, and I kind of don’t want to know at this point, because either way, I don’t feel like I did my best.

I’m starting to notice a somewhat disturbing pattern. I don’t think it will constitute a real pattern unless it happens again next year—but last year, I had a bit of a disaster I lost about 8,000 words from my NaNo novel, which I was eventually forced to just rewrite, which was lame, since I’m still convinced that the first draft of that section was better than what I ended up with.

That’s didn’t derail me though, I still finished at well over 50,000 words and had a rough draft of a novel on my hands that I actually still don’t hate a year later. NaNoWriMo 2011 - Nailed it.

This year, my computer broke.

Seriously.

It’s still not fixed (anybody have a soldering iron?) and I eventually managed to rescue the files and start writing on a borrowed laptop, but I was struggling with this project to begin with, so that was kind of a slug to the gut.

So, NaNoWriMo 2012 – Fail.

Now, I’m getting paranoid though. I feel like I can anticipate a similar disaster for NaNoWriMo 2013.  Hopefully I’ll handle it more like 2011 than 2012.

In any case, I’m glad that I did it and now I’ve got another rough draft to work with.

I kind of hate it.

It’s a mess. Trying to write a novel based on someone else’s vision was very difficult for me. I think it was good practice though. I ought to be able to do good ‘working-writer’ type things like that. I used to be (understandably) ashamed that when I first started writing, all my stuff was exclusively fanfiction, but now that I’ve had plenty of time to consider all my options as a writer, there’s something to be said for trying to represent someone else’s stories/characters/themes in such a way that you can please another creator, or an established fan-base.  

Overall, writing this book was definitely a positive experience, even though I legit hate it right now. I think there’s a lot to work with, and maybe in a few years, when I’m not so resentful of it, I can come back to this story and rework it.

Now, I’m going back to the projects I abandoned in October.

The Knight of Redboat City– Which I predict will take longer than anticipated if only because I stopped dead at about 3/4ths of the way through and decided to completely change the tense/perspective. Twice. Also, I’ve rewritten the beginning five times and I still think it’s weak.

Untitled Space Opera – Every name I come up with for this one doesn’t manage to look any better on paper than “Untitled Space Opera”. It’s so close to being finished. I hate it when I finish a book and still don’t know what it’s called.

Salvages (2nd Draft) – Also close to completion. I’m hoping to come in below 150,000 words this time.

Boney Fae Ly – The sequel to Rosenrot. It’s about 2/3rds finished. I’m reluctant to work on it while I’m still reworking parts of the first book, but that’s probably a tiny bit of a lie since it’s what I’ve worked on the most lately.

Yay, writing!

Distractions (A list of everything that will prevent me from completing these projects in a timely manner)

Reading

Eating all the food

Work & Church (Barista-ing and teaching my classes, preparing for my classes)

Christmas (This includes parties, shopping for/making and wrapping presents, the traffic associated with Christmas that always seems to eat up more of my day than it should, Decorating & Baking, Preparing to sing in church, going to other wards to watch people sing in Church/Concerts, A General Feeling of Christmas Nostalgia that leaves one staring wistfully out the window for far longer than intended)

Weddings!

The Sundance Film Festival (which could conceivably fall under work)

“Oh look, a bird!”

Sleeping

My cat wants a cuddle

Pinterest

Movies

“I should probably do some yoga/body-rock/Kung Fu before I’m so tired I can’t see.”

Minecraft

“How long have I been lying on the floor ignoring my responsibilities?! Wasn’t I going to write today?”

So, there you have it. If I can just overcome all these distractions I predict I can have four newly completed books in just a few weeks.

…Don’t hold your breath or anything.