FuzzyCo

Another oops -- NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I'm going to take this year off -- I know I have too much to do this month.

If you're a musician, you might want to try NaSoAlMo.

Well, this will be a short entry: I didn't have a laptop to take on the flight to NZ. So, no last-minute-full-out attempts at nanowrimo this year. Just the bitter stink of failure. (Of course, I had a nice time in New Zealand, so there's that, then.)

Gah. It's embarrassing. I think it'd be better to be stuck at 0, that'd at least be just not-doing-the-nanowrimo-this-year. But I had an idea, put fingers to keyboard for a few minutes, and then... nothing. Well, plenty of other stuff, but nothing's getting written. I do have two sixteen-hour plane flights ahead of me, so there's the barest chance that I'll get a bit more done.

I did get my Nanowrimo shirt, though. I know what's important.

Another year, another Nanowrimo. I'm really debating whether to do it this year or not. I've failed to complete my novel both years I've tried. And this year I'll be out of town again over Thankgiving, which is traditional make-up-the-time-you've-lost for Nanowrimosters. I'd hate to just set myself up for failure.

Well, I've got a couple hundred words in my Hiptop that I haven't transfered to the main Word document, but really I haven't done anything since the 12th. So I'm going to come to the end of the month with about 3500 words done of a 50,000 word novel. Last year I at least made it 1/3 of the way there.

So today I'm thankful for... not stressing out about failing at a self-imposed artistic challenge.

There's no getting around it -- I've been ignoring my novel. I really don't know what I was thinnking when I signed up for Nanowrimo again this year. I mean, the actual writing went fine, when I had time for writing. But I'm in a show, and just started rehearsals for a show I'm directing, and I'm putting together a video montage and so on and so forth. I don't want to say I've given up, but we'll see...

It's not the end of the day yet, so I've got plenty of time tonight to write another 1461 words before I go to work at the club. I wrote those two hundred words on the bus this morning on my Hiptop. One Hiptop Note holds 1000 characters, which is about 180 words, it turns out. So it'll take about 280 Notes to hold my novel (I'll be working in Word when I'm not on the bus).

It seems my novel is a crime story. I think I've been playing too much Grand Theft Auto 3 lately.

I've signed up for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), again. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Last year I only made it to 16,663 words. This year I'm going all the way -- to a completed bad novel.

Well, New York was fun -- too fun for getting any work done on the novel. I wrote some in the airport and the plane on the way out, and I got a thousand words or so written on Saturday afternoon, and then a bit on the train into the city this morning (we got into Chicago at 7:30 this morning). I'm almost exactly 1/3 of the way through the novel and there's only a few days left and so.... I'm giving up. On the one hand, I found some bills I had neglected to pay and the dining room is a disaster and on the other, I've got some exciting things coming up in my usual artform (Improv), so I don't feel bad at all about stopping here. I don't think I've written 16,000 words on a single topic ever before in my life.

A friend of mine had a computer disaster and lost her first 10,000 words near the middle of the month and decided that her personal WriMo would be Nov. 15 - Dec. 15. She knew how slowly I was going and invited me to join her. I won't be. I was fine with the artificiality of the deadlines and doing the thing for the thing itself. My novel is really bad and I don't feel any need to keep working on it now that I've realized I won't make it to 50kw. Maybe next year.

P.S. For no particular reason, I've been listening to The Nortec Collective's The Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 over and over as I was writing. It's a great album! I'm listening to it right now as I write this wrap-up.

I know that many people are using this holiday long weekend to catch up. What am I doing? Flying to New York to do a show and party with all my friends there. We'll see how much I can write on the plane. (I won't update this until Monday, regardless of how much I do or don't write.)

I'm right on track to finish this 20,000 word story by the end of the month. What? FIFTY thousand words? Oops.

I went out swing dancing tonight, because it was "graduation night" from the class I just took. Got home late and I'm ready to collapse, but I had to type something so I don't hate myself in the morning. (as much -- so. far. behind.)

I finally broke the 10kw barrier (2/3 of the way through the month, but oh well) AND I'm finally done transcribing the stuff I taped a week ago. I think the dread of hearing my own voice on that tape is what has been slowing me down. We'll see if I can get back up to speed now.

I was really hoping to break 10kw tonight, but I'm soooo sleepy.

A little backup crisis at work and a friend in from Michigan meant that today I just got in about an hour more transcribing. There's plenty of tape left. I'm impatient to get through this stuff, because I feel done with it, I just need to do the mechanics of getting it typed in. I want to get back to making up new stuff. (Oh, it's just past midnight, so technically the 15th, so I should be half-way through, but I'm at 17%. Poop.)

I got started transcribing the tape I made over the weekend, but I only typed a thousand words and got really sleepy. But I think I might have a bunch of words on that tape -- I wasn't even certain. Also, while the book is mostly autobiographical, to give myself a little bit of creative challenge I made the main character a bass player instead of an improvisor. So, today I took my friend Ben Taylor out to lunch and interviewed him about the Chicago music scene. I got a lot of good notes out of that. But ideas haven't been my problem -- as the transcribing the tape problem high-lights, it's just sitting at the computer (or the lack thereof) that's the real issue.

So... far... behind. I went to a wedding this past weekend and spent all last night working on a design project for a friend. In the 16 hours in the car, I tried dictating into a tape recorder, but I have yet to transcribe that material, so I have no idea how many words it is.

Hey, I made it to 10% of the words I need. Of course, 20% of the time is gone. So I'm right on track to finish this novel... by 2002. Today I tried two more experiments: writing in my Palm on the train (only 160 words - it would probably be effective for notes, but I'm really trying not to plan out where this is going) and staying late at work (this was pretty good - there were very few distracions. Unfortunately, I got hungry and the video capture I was waiting to be done, finished).

Today was a day of two experiments: typing on a laptop on the train on the way to work (the train came really fast, which is usually a good thing, and there were no seats - 26 words written) and writing at work during lunch (distractions, distractions - 50 words). And stuff kept happening at home. I'm so behind. And what happened yesterday? I can't even remember why I didn't write anything yesterday.

Well, only three days into it, and I'm already a day behind. I didn't write anything yesterday, and today seemed harder going than the first chapter -- my house seemed a lot more distracting. I think I'm going to need to find a novel buddy to force me go out to a coffee shop or something to really pound out a couple chapters. Anyway, Chapter 2 did just what I wanted, and I know where I want to go with Chapter 3. But now I'm hungry and I need to get ready for a show tonight.

Fellow Chicago Improvisor Steev has a Nanowrimo progress page with fancy animations and everything. (It's morning, so I haven't written anything yet today.)

Well, I didn't start writing at midnight last night. I was planning to either go out with some friends at 11 or write at midnight, realized I needed a nap either way, lay down on the couch at 9 and woke up at 7:30 AM. Oh, well.

At work, I came up with my title ("No Time for Words" :-) and wrote one paragraph (71 words). When I got home, I realized that paragraph was crap, deleted it, and started over. And now I have one chapter done. Yay! I have a narrator and a hint of another character, and I know how Chapter 2 is going to start, at least. So now I'm off to swing dance practice and get some groceries.

I signed up for the Nanowrimo Yahoo Club this morning, and by the time I got to work there were 30 or 40 messages from the mailing list in my inbox. I had to unsubscribe - I simply can't deal with that much more mail (I get a lot already).

I'm still looking for a good Halloween party for tonight - so I don't know if I'll start writing at midnight or not. I still very determined to do this thing, but I'm not going to stress about details.

OK, I had some time on the train ride home to think about what I've gotten myself into and plan for this task. Some working notes:

• 50,000 words. Let's divide that into twenty-five 2000 word chapters. This a) seems about right (I'm really not sure what a 50kw (kiloword) novel looks like), b) makes the math easy, c) at a chapter a day, this allows for either finishing early (yeah, right) or taking a day off from writing here and there. Taking days off is dangerous (I know myself too well) but I have a wedding, Thanksgiving, and at least one out-of-town improv show this month, so it's going to be inevitable.
  
• So, 2000 word chapters. I have the vague number of 50-words-a-minute in my memory from some long-ago temp job test (and it, too, makes the math easy) so if I can think as fast as I can type, it should take 40 minutes a day to write a really bad chapter.
  
• I'm not going to fool myself - this is going to be a bad novel. That doesn't mean I'm not going to give it my best, but it also means I'm not going to worry about the quality as I go - this will be as much endurance test as artistic endevour. (I create fiction all the time, but I'm an improvisor - I never write it down. I haven't written fiction since an Intro to Creative Writing Class many years ago.)
  
• Editing is bad. The right choice in editting is usually "fewer words," so I won't edit.
  
• I am an improvisor. So, I'm not going to plan this out ahead of time (i.e., I'm turning laziness into an artistic choice). I'll see what happens on paper starting November 1.
  
• I noticed on the NaNoWriMo website that a number of people from Chicago doing the nano are improvisors also. It'd be fun to do a Kick-Off or Ending party.
  

I just signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). At the last minute, and with a fair amount of "This is really stupid, and it's going to be just another thing I fail at." Away evil thoughts! I'm going to write a 50,000 novel. Over the course of a month. Starting Thursday. (If I keep using incomplete sentences, I'll never get to 50,000).