Picked up at xkcd:



No further comment necessary, methinks.

Hey,

Some of you more astute people might have noticed the name change. Many of you already know why. Those who don't - no matter, just take note of the change, and I'll be happy ;-)

emwrites = Ellen May writes

...and I have to ask myself the following question:

am I completely nuts?

2 concerts, a mass, a trip to france and a solid week of rehearsals for a later show, plus regular work and a 50,000 word novel...

So, my brain is in writing mode. This is torture because 1) it's not actually time to write yet, and 2) I have a heavy-duty assignment to do and exam to pass before then and can't afford the distraction.

That notwithstanding...

I just re-read the "what I learned about writing" post I wrote sometime pretty soon after last year's nano. It's amusing to go back to that - and a bit of a handy prompter. One of the points was that it's nice to write a story you're not invested in... which explains why I'm looking at a sequel this year . Way to take your own advice kid.

Hell, I killed off the one character I was most invested in. Now to figure out ways to put the others through pain again.

Thanks to a heads up from reliantfc3, I decided to throw caution to the winds and wrote a 1500-word short last night.

Actually, I wrote a 2100 word short and edited it down to 1466 this morning. I am verbose. I like redundancy.

I got the idea from another story I wrote, called Chrysanthemum Cottage, about a troubled young man called Jon who has a big row with his family. A lot of what they are warring about has to do with Jon's brother Thomas. Back in that story, I never fully explained the Thomas angle, and that worked for me. But people wanted to know, and so I tried a variety of Thomas explanations, none of which I was particularly fond of.

One of these explanations has now become the short story I wrote last night. Or at least, it started that way and veered off along somewhat alternative lines which means the two stories are now incompatible. Ah well. Names may yet need changing to protect the innocent (stolen characters, ahem), but since CC was never published, it's not really a big deal.

I'm going to show the as yet untitled short to a friend of mine tonight and then edit it some more tomorrow or Friday. Too fresh in my mind right now.

Um, yeah. Family drama, anyone?

I wanted to come back to my LJ a few days after finishing nano and write just one final wrap-up post. This is it.

It has been a good nano year. The best I’ve ever had, in fact. Evidenced by the fact that I finished ahead of the 30th, and I actually finished the book as well as “just” hitting the 50k. After last year’s crappy performance, that’s almost a miracle. And I’m glad I decided to give nano other shot.

Things I’ve learned about me and my writing process:

1) It helps to have a story I’m not invested in. The idea for the story came to me relatively late. I wasn’t thinking about it for months at a time, and although I grew more and more invested in it as November progressed, I was detached enough from it at the start to be able to just write and not worry about whether my writing was good enough to do justice to my characters’ oh-so-important story.

2) It can be good to change genres. I tried a new one this year. In years previous, for whatever reason, I’ve gone for crime novels and family drama. What I usually actually *read* however, is thrillers. Crime is involved, sure, but it’s high-action crime. There are explosions, guns, death, against a dark and brooding background. I decided to do that. Well, I decided to try to do that. I ended up with a nano which is not quite as dark and brooding as I hoped (maybe that can be edited in later, lol), but which does have lots of action. Thankfully it doesn’t skimp any on the relationship angles I like to have in my books.

3) Just keeping plugging gets you there eventually. There were a few times when I stalled spectacularly for a couple of days. What got me back out of the flunk was one of two things each time: either going back and inserting an extra scene that needed writing, or just doing wordwars until my brain finally latched onto something and went wheeeee and took off at a run.

4) Plot ping-pong is a good thing. I’ve been lucky enough to ping-pong on a couple of occasions with niee87 and pretty much everyday with nanorelly. Some days we’d set out to actively help each other out, other days we’d just swap bits of our story and let each other know how it was going. Certainly in Rel’s case, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve both contributed to each other’s story, sometimes just by throwing out the most mundane comments. If you can get a writing bud like Rel, I recommend it highly ;-). Chatting in #nanowrimo works well too, but those one-on-ones? The best. (And now I come to think of it, I didn’t have that last year: I did the last time I won in 05, with someone else).

5) OK, this is going to be an odd one, but… Remember those dolls I posted way back in mid-October? Character dolls? It was great to have them. I’ve never been too good about knowing how my characters look, but thanks to those I had them in my mind the whole time. That was cool.

6) Pacing is good for the brain. At some point this November, I’m not sure exactly when, I realized that getting away from my computer screen actually helps me write. I agonized for days about commemorating my dead characters at the end of the novel, and how to do it appropriately. I was ping-ponging with Relly and for once it wasn’t helping. I finally decided to go to bed, got up and switched off the computer. Five minutes later I was having loads of ideas and had to grab pen and paper to jot them down. This happened more than once. So yeah…

7) Much as I like my technological tools, a pencil and paper by the laptop helps me out greatly. I didn’t buy a special "nano notebook" as I have in previous years, because I was broke. It was just a pile of printing paper, but it actually turned out to be just as if not more useful for two reasons: One, you don’t have to "open" it – there’s no left-hand page sticking up and colliding with my right typing hand. And two, you can punch holes in them and file them easily, coffee stains and all.

8) yWriter is the best writing program out there. Yes, I know I mention it every five minutes, but seriously, if one long document in Word freaks you out, go look at this. When I got to the point that I had to go back and insert an extra scene, I almost squeed looking at the yWriter front page. It was so damn easy. No long search process. And the scene summaries right there on the first page make it so damn easy to quickly recap and find your place. Simon just added notes, too, which will be great for keeping track of all the stuff which needs to be edited in later. And it keeps track of your word score. And it has auto-backup. Which brings me to:

9) Backing up is important. My desktop crashed the day before nano started. My laptop had the hiccoughs for the first week or so. I lost my USB stick at one point. Another time I mysteriously “lost” a scene in yWriter (it was right there in the auto-backup folder, thankfully). So, um, back up your novel! I backed everything I wrote up in duplicate. Even when my laptop crashed and I lost my USB, I never panicked because I knew I still had another copy of my nano.

10) Deadlines are a serious incentive. You’d think that should be obvious with nano, no? Well, if it’s that obvious, how come I’ve never finished a book during November before? Because I was always thinking I could write my 50k and then finish it later. This year, due to a coincidental set of personal circumstances, I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish this thing in December. About mid-November I realized that the last week of November was probably doomed for writing too. Since I’d sworn that this was the year I was going to reach “the end”, I really did have an incentive to get down and just finish the damn thing. And I knew I had to do it by Sunday the 25th. In the end I wound it up by writing about 12k on Saturday the 24th and not going to sleep til 4am. Because I knew if I didn’t do it then, no matter how crap it was, I wouldn’t do it at all. So, yes, in future years, I’m aiming for "The End".

*** Edited to add a huge great important point: it's okay to let a sidekick character take over the book. Wow, how could I forget that one? It just... happened. And I'm damn glad it did. Got to remember to stay flexible that way in the future. ***

Well, that’s it. There may not be anything to read here for a while, since Real Life is taking over. I do intend to edit and polish and workshop this one though. That’ll be a first for my nanovels. So more when I get to that, perhaps. Oh yes, deadlines. Right. So that’ll be nanoedmo in March at the latest, then.

73,137 words.

Actually I finished on 73,134 and then went back and added another three words so that it looked pretty (and to make Marius happy).

I tied it all up, I think. There are still a few gaping plot holes, but I just downloaded the new shiny yWriter4, which has lovely new shiny notes, so I can go and add notes now to the scenes that need revising later. That way I can remember my train of thought when I come back to them later.

You know, I've hit the 50k before. And even written "the end" before, in 05 - but in December and after skipping large chunks of potential scenes and basically just going " 'kay so this is what happened, right thx, 'k. The End." This is the first nano I've really wrapped up.

Hell, it's the first damn *novel* I've really wrapped up.

Logan fans can catch up with him in an flocked post.

But not quite there yet.

I went to bed this morning at 4am after I gave up on the idea of winding the novel up yesterday. Word count at that point about 71,500.

Wrapping this thing up is killing me. I killed off three major characters. One of them very major, and I'd like to have a fitting memorial. There's no bodies to bury though, so a regular funeral is out. I'm kind of wracking my brains for the best way to do it. That's about all I've got left to do though. Feeling much more upbeat about wrapping this whole thing up today.

At least I managed to wrap up the Teddy part of the book. And therefore start the government back down the slippery slope to more freedom. Yahoo!!

I solved the love triangle problem. It was brutal and sad and rather explosive, but it solved the problem. Well, almost. There's a small problem known as the Atlantic Ocean, and Marcus's dedication to a certain cause... so... we shall see.

I've been procrastinating on writing since late last night when I finally realised how I had to wrap things up. Sad.

Then I wrote like a beasty all day, and I'm now at 67,520. I think that's about 8k in 8 hours.

I still have some loose ends to tie up, but I reckon I'm almost done. I'm sad for the characters I lost, and for those left behind who will miss them terribly. And I'm sad cos I'm almost done with my nano, and I will wind it up tomorrow at the latest. Which is good timing, since I have other stuff raining down on me next week which I can't put off.

This will be the first nano (in four attempts) that I really finish during November, as in getting to "The End". So I really should be celebrating, but right now, meh.

If I make two LJ posts in quick succession, you can bet your life that means I'm stuck.

*Goes round in circles*

I've written myself into a corner. Logan went apeshit and yelled at Marcus in front of everyone, then disappeared. Marcus went off to work against Logan's better judgement. Minnie went bitch-from-hell-jealous-sibling on Anna when she expressed her concern that Logan's gone AWOL. And Logan's not on the roof. We checked.

Since Minne has effectively removed Anna from her circle of confidantes because Anna happens to give a shit about Minnie's little bro, she's not telling Anna where he might be (though Anna thinks she knows). Marcus is gone. Al and Anna have never really had a conversation. Besides, Al just things Logan is a strange gayboy and really couldn't give a rat's tit where he's off to.

Since I'm currently in Anna's head, I don't know how to find out where Mr Hotwire is. *headdesks*.

There's a reason I usually write in third person...