Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 376
November 9, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 9
My alarm went off at 5am and I struggled to get out of bed. Normally I wake up before the alarm, but Zach had a rough night last night and he ended up sleeping right up against me from about 1am on and I was forced into a small corner of the bed and slept fitfully. I was pretty out of it when I woke up and when I finally made it downstairs into the office, it still took me a few minutes before I was ready to get started writing. But I did get started and though things seemed to move slowly, I managed to get down 2,125 words before 7am rolled around, bringing my 9-day total to 21,539 words.
I passed the 20,000 word mark!
It turned out to be an interesting morning, story-wise. I wrote the second scene of Chapter 8 and the beginning of the first scene of Chapter 9 (the first time that I have not finished a scene cleanly at the end of a session). But Chapter 8 introduces one of the more significant subplots (and complications) that will plague the rest of the storyline, and I think I managed to make a good introduction of it. It is told from the point of view of someone who opposes what is happening in the story, and it is not a viewpoint that I personally hold. So it was fun to write the scenes from that point of view, trying to carefully maintain that viewpoint with reason and logic without making the antagonist seem like a bad guy. I think I got off to a pretty good start on that.
Chapters 8 and 9 also introduce a turning point in the pace of the first part of the novel. Up until this point, there was generally a single scene per chapter and they ran about 2,000 words or so. Now there are multiple scenes in each chapter, shorter and told from the different viewpoints of major characters. Going forward through Chapter 15, the scenes will be shorter, more rapid-fire, and shifting between critical viewpoints in such a way as to (I hope) have the effect of speeding up the pace into a wild ride toward a climactic event that concludes part 1 of the novel. The closer the reader gets to the event, the faster the pace, the more the shifting, and I'm hoping this will have the effect of something like a page-turner. I guess we'll see how successful I am when it's all done.
Tomorrow will be Day 10 and at the end of my writing tomorrow, it will be interesting to see what my 10-day average is. According to the NaNo site, I'm averaging a hair under 2,400 words/day. To maintain that through 10 days I'll need to hit about 2,400 words tomorrow, which, of course, would put me at 24,000 words. It's possible. Especially if I can get a better night's sleep tonight.
Here are the stats for today:
November 8, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 8
And so week 2 begins. Last year, I managed to go the first 12 days maintaing the same schedule. On the 13th day I didn't get up early to write because we had friends coming into town, but I still met my quote for the day. Day 21 was the first day that I skipped last year. I don't plan on skipping at all this year, but if I did, it wouldn't do too much damage. I added 2,408 words this morning, bringing my 8-day total to 19,414. NaNo pace for day 8 is 13,336 words. That puts me just over 6,000 words above pace. That's 3.5 days above NaNo pace and 3 days above my own pace of 2000 words/day. I could miss nearly four days and still finish on time. As it stands, given my average of about 2,400 words each day, I'm now scheduled to hit 50,000 words on November 21.
I wrote slightly out of order again this morning. Yesterday, I wrote scenes 1 and 3 of Chapter 7. Today I wrote the missing scene 2 and then wrote the first of 2 scenes for Chapter 8. I'm hoping that tomorrow I can get the rest of Chapter 8 and all of Chapter 9 completed. That gets me back onto my rough plan of a chapter each day.
As it turns out, Chapter 7 ended up 4,400 words long which is nearly twice as long as any of the other chapters. My solution to this is to break it into 2 chapters. More than likely, I will do something like this: Chapter 7 scene 1-2 will become the new Chapter 7. Chapter 8 scene 1 will become the new Chapter 8. Chapter 7 scene 3 will become Chapter 9. Chapter 8 scene 2 will become Chapter 10 and everything will follow on, as is after that with the current Chapter 9 becoming Chapter 11, the current Chapter 10 become Chapter 12, etc. It keeps the lengths more consistent and adds a bit of tension too.
It was a little tougher to get up this morning, but I blame that on the time change. Looking forward to getting back into the story tomorrow morning.
Same bat time, same bat channel.
November 7, 2010
New car search
We're on the hunt for a new car.
My Saturn passed it's 14th birthday last month and Kelly's car passed it's 13th birthday. My car, at least, is showing its age. It still runs just fine but little things are begin to fall apart. The lining to the ceiling, for instance. The engine probably needs some serious work, too. But given the age of the car, it's not worth investing more than just the minimum to keep it running. When I got my Saturn it was because my previous car died suddenly and the whole car-buying process was rushed. This time, we are being more proactive. We'd like to have a new car before anything major happens with my Saturn.
We did some research (you know, Consumer Reports, etc.) and narrowed our choices down to three cars: a Honda CRV, a Toyato RAV4, and Kia Sorento. We have friends or family with the former two. I drove the Sorento once when I rented a car.
Yesterday we went to our local Honda dealership to look at the CRV. We both test drove the car (separately because Zach, of course). We then headed over to the local Toyato dealer. We test drove a RAV4 there. I didn't expect to like it as much because I'd driven a RAV4 before as well. But as it turned out, I think I liked the RAV4 better than the CRV. I liked the dealership and salesman much better at Toyato than Honda, too.
Today, we headed to our local Kia dealer and we each test drove the Kia Sorento. We both liked it. The car that we drove had a very nice convenience package (including headed driver and passenger seats). I liked our salesman there, too.
We are in no rush to decide, but I think we are both leading toward the Kia Sorento. Not only was the car at least as good as the CRV and RAV4, but neither Honda nor Toyato could come close to the Kia warranty and maintenance: 10 years, 100,000 miles; 5 years, 50,000 miles power train. Add to that, free oil changes for life, free tires for the life of the car, 5 years of roadside assistance included. They also had the best incentives (up to $1500 cash back) and 0% or 1.9% financing option.
We're hoping to decide in the next week or so and maybe, just maybe, we'll drive a new car up to New York in 2 weeks, instead of a rental.
Stay tuned for breaking news.
NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 7
I had a plan to take advantage of the end of Daylight Saving time. I didn't change the clocks last night. I planned to be up at 7am and work until 10am, and then change the clocks back to 9am, stealing for myself an extra hour of writing this morning. It didn't quite work out that way, in part because Zach didn't cooperate with the plan. But nevertheless, Day 7 saw my most productive writing session to date. Between 6:50 and 8:40, I managed 2,879 words bringing my 7-day total to 17,006 words. For comparison, the 7-day NaNoWriMo pace is 11,669 words. My target 7-day pace is 14,000 words. And last year, after 7 days I'd reached 15,324 words. So 17,006 words is far better than I could have imagined doing in the first seven days of the event.
For once, however, I didn't finish a chapter. I started on Chapter 7 this morning with the intention of writing the whole thing, but it is a longer chapter than the previous ones, and made of up 3 scenes. I wrote the first scene and the last scene, but skipped over the middle scene. It is possible that I will go back nad write that scene later today, and I imagine that will add another 1,200 words or so and bring the chapter close to 4,000 words. Ultimately, I may break it into two separate chapters (there is at least one good cliff-hanger breakpoint after the first scene). But I'll worry about shifting stuff around in the second draft. I've added a note about it to the scene file in Scrivener so I don't forget.
Of the two scenes I wrote today, the second was a cannibalized version of a scene that I'd written a year ago when I tried to write this story. It's a lovely dream-sequence scene that fits well, and which I modified to fit even better in the context in which it take place. It is a perhaps the most poetically written part of the novel so far, and it makes the first scene I wrote today–mostly an action sequence–bland in comparison. Again, I made some notes on this, but I'll worry about evenness and consistency in the second draft.
If I can tackle the rest of Chapter 7 today, then I'll be back up at 5am tomorrow starting on Chapter 8 which really begins to accelerate the pace of the first part the novel, driving toward what I hope is an explosive climax around chapter 15. Otherwise, I'll try and get the rest of Chapter 7 and 8 done tomorrow morning.
I'm very happy I made it through 1 week and stuck to both my schedule and my daily goals. I'm hoping to do the same thing in the coming week. Maybe I'll wrap up 2 weeks somewhere in excess of 35,000 words?
Here are today's stats:
November 6, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 6
I got some sleep last night! I was pretty tired, went to bed before 9am and I was up at 7am to get started on Day 6 of NaNoWriMo. It's Saturday and my weekend schedule for NaNoWriMo is 7-9am and it was nice to get the extra sleep in.
Today was perhaps the slowest start of all six days so far. It wasn't until more than 1.5 hours into my writing that I passed the NaNo pace of 1,667 this morning. But I finished the morning with 2,338 words, which has been par for me over the last 6 days. It brings my 6-day total to 14,127 words which is 4,127 words ahead of NaNo pace and 2,127 above my personal pace. That's 2.5 days and 1 day ahead of schedule respectively. Even if I skip a day now, I'm still set to finish on time. In fact, according to some new stats provided by the NaNoWriMo website (see below) at my current pace I will hit 50,000 words on Monday, November 22. Ironic, since on that day I will be in NYC attending the annual SFWA reception and having lunch with an editor there.
Today's chapter was a fun one to write. It began with what I thought was an exciting action sequence that turned out to be something else completely. And then it moved into a bar, where four of the main characters sat around a booth drinking beer, and how can that be anything but fun at 7am on a Saturday morning. I was able to introduce some technical aspects of the novel in a way that didn't come across as too infodumpy, and I imagine that I'll be able to improve that further in a future draft.
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's chapter, which I expect to be one of the longer one's I've written so far. (The longest to this point, Chapter 1, tops 2,500 words.) Tomorrow's might hit 3,000 words if time permits.
Some of the recent friendly competition with other writers and friends has been fun, too. I'm generally ahead of most people on my buddy list, but one person in the Arlington Writers Group is sticking doggedly ahead of me (she's at somewhere around 15,000 words and hasn't yet written today.) So it's been fun to go back and forth and feed off each other's good-natured bragging and nagging.
Busy day today, but I hope to get some revisions in to the short story I completed the other day. I promised my first readers I'd get it out to them this weekend.
Here are the stats for today:
November 5, 2010
Why NaNoWriMo?
With the flurry of postings on NaNoWriMo, I've gotten two questions more than once from several people. First, what the heck is National Novel Writing Month? The second (and more common of the two) is why try to write a novel in one month anyway? (And it's sometimes followed by, And why November?)
To be clear from the outset, NaNoWriMo is not really a contest, despite the fact that you can "win"; it's more of an event. (Winning NaNoWriMo means successfully verifying that you wrote 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30. And yes, it is on the honor system.)
There are all kinds of reasons that people do NaNoWriMo. Some people argue that it's a waste of time. Others tell you to ignore the naysayers.
The reasons I do NaNoWriMo are as follows:
I want to write a novel. I have tried on a number of occasions, but never successfully completed even a first draft of a novel. I am a short story writer at heart, but I want to expand my skill set and writing novels is one obvious way to do that.
I want to establish good writing habits. Each time I do NaNoWriMo, I demonstrate to myself that I can get up every morning at 5am, write for 2 hours, and produce about 2,000 words. They may not be good words now but they help to establish a habit.
I want to become a better writer. Usually, Wrimos (as we are known in November) are told not to worry about quality. It's all about writing every day. This is true, and I think that to be successful at NaNoWriMo, you cannot rewrite during the event. (In this sense, it helps to teach some writers discipline.) However, the advice that new writers are always given is to keep writing. The only way you learn is by doing. Writing is an exercise that, like anything else, requires practice. I have seen this principle in action. My writing has improved in the last 2-3 years since I've been selling stories and it is in large part because I have been writing (read: practicing) more. NaNoWriMo provides a good excuse for practice.
I like the friendly competition. Writing is a lonely business and NaNoWriMo provides writers with a month where it is a little less lonely. You can compete with (and encourage) your friends. You can talk about your struggles. You are generally on the same pace and facing the same challenges. It is a unique social event for writers that builds camaraderie. My buddies on NaNoWriMo include friends, fellow writers, workshop members, writer group members. It's a good mix.
It's fun. I have a blast doing it. I look forward to being up at 5am to write the next chapter or scene. I look forward to seeing my word count climb and comparing it to my friends. Beyond that, what other reason do you need?
I learned from some mistakes I made last year. It is important to know what your goals are going into NaNoWriMo. Some people go in for the sake of the challenge itself. Others want to write a novel and leave it at that. I want to write a novel that will eventually sell to a major science fiction publisher. And I have structured my effort this year accordingly.
I worked much harder on the outline before NaNoWriMo began.
Whereas I jumped around in time last year, writing scenes in any order that excited me on a given day, this year, I am writing more or less chronologically. I found last year that what I ended up with was too disjointed, 40 loosely connected short stories as opposed to 40 chapters. Writing chronologically (combined with working from my outline) gives me a feeling of continuity from chapter-to-chapter that I lacked last year.
A 50,000 word science fiction novel is almost unheard of these days. 90,000-100,000 words is a what I have been told is a good target to aim for. And that is what I am aiming for. My outline covers what I expect will amount to 90,000 words in the first draft. My personal daily word goal (as opposed to NaNoWriMo's goal) is 2,000 words. Based on that plan, it should take me 45 days to write the first draft. Indeed, on my writing calendar, I have flagged December 15 as The Day I Finish My Novel. NaNoWriMo doesn't end for me on November 1. It ends 15 days later.
I have a plan to revise the novel in the first few months of 2011, run it through my first readers and critique groups, and put it into shape to the point where it is ready to send out to agencies.
So NaNoWriMo is serving a dual purpose for me: allowing me to write a novel; and giving me the motivation to do a good job so that maybe the novel will sell.
That's why I NaNoWriMo.
Off the wagon
My previous post has driven me to drink.
Since February 14, 2004, I have gone without a drop a caffeine. That's more than 6-3/4 years, or 2,456 days. But this morning around 8:45 that came to an end. I'm just a little too worn out and I think I've proven to myself that I don't need caffeine every day. But on some days, like today for instance, it might come in handy. So I headed down to the McDonald's in the food court.
"May I take your order?" the cashier said.
"Yes, a number 2 with a large Coke, please."
The cashier paused, raised her eyebrow. "Not Sprite?" she said.
"Nope. Coke."
I brought it up to my office, sat down at my desk and without ceremony, took a big sip.
And thus the streak ends. I have fallen off the caffeine wagon.
Can you put me back together once again?
I am scrambling back through my memory to try can recall a period of time at work that has been as chaotic as this last week has been. I have made virtually no progress on the three projects on which I am on thanks in large part to this chaos. It turned out to be a perfect storm, timed perfectly to coincide with the first week of NaNoWriMo, and half a dozen other non-work-related things and I have been barely treading water. I feel like my writing career is on an upswing, so I have worked hard this week to not give into the temptation of cutting back on that. The day job hasn't slowed down at all. There's the time I want to spend with Zach and Kelly. Something has had to give, and it has been sleep.
Tuesday night, I got about 3.5 hours. I got another 3.5 Wednesday night. Last night I got 6. Thirteen hours over a span of the last four days. It's beginning to take its toll on me.
Things boiled over yesterday. It started with some server problems that stole my attention from some high priority metrics I was gathering. It took up most of my day. I dashed out of work at 5 because Kelly had called to tell me that she couldn't get the gas cap off her car. I got home and managed to get the gas cap off for her. She had made a delicious-looking vegetable pie for dinner. I say delicious-looking because all I could do was look. I didn't have time to eat. I hate to race over to the Woodrow Wilson Library for a meeting of our homeowners association. It was our annual board elections last night, and there was some other business being reported that I wanted to be there for.
That meeting started at 6pm and lasted until nearly 8pm. These meetings usually amusement because of their rigid adherence to parliamentary procedures. Watching the proceedings reminds me of a D&D game. When ever a call for a vote comes before the association, I always tempted to shout out "Nay" just because no one ever does. During the meeting, my phone started to ring and for nearly 2 hours it didn't stop. More chaos at work.
The meeting adjourned at 7:50. I had planned to gas up the car, head home, have some veggie pie and then sit downstairs with Kelly and watch sitcoms. Instead, I headed home, grabbed my badge for work, kissed Zach goodnight, and headed into the office where I did some forensics on the problems we were having. I finished at 10pm. I drove home, stopping for gas. I reported to Kelly the goings on at the HOA meeting and then we went to bed. It was sometime around 11 when I drifted off to sleep.
Zach managed to sleep in his crib most of the night, for a change. But at about 4:30 he woke up crying. I brought him into our room so he could sleep with Kelly and I headed downstairs. There was no point in going back to sleep if I had to be up in 30 minutes anyway. I did my NaNoWriMo writing for the day, showered and at 7:30, I was out the door.
On Friday's it typically takes me 10 minutes to drive the 5 miles into the office. This morning it took 40. Bilbo Baggins best described how I feel at the moment:
Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread.
NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 5
I had to go into work last night to deal with chaos that started earlier in the day. I didn't get back home until 10 and didn't get to sleep until around 11–and then I was up at 4:30am. So my question for a decent night's sleep remained unfulfilled. And yet, I was up at 4:30, and I got started on Chapter 5 at 5 am. I managed to write just over 2,200 words.
I read the outline for this chapter before going to be last night so I could think about it while drifting off to sleep. It didn't seem like it was going to be the most exciting chapter to write, but the viewpoint character in this chapter surprised me back on day 3, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, the writing started much more slowly this morning, but it picked up thanks to an idea proposed by a supporting character in the scene. He introduced an interesting and unplanned twist that resulted in a chapter that not only fits much better into the overarching plot, but one that ends in an exciting cliffhanger (to be revisited in Chapter 7).
Today's writing brings my 5-day total to 11,789 words. Pace for day 5 is 8,335 words, which puts me nearly 3,500 words ahead of pace: more than two days! This evening I'll be working on smoothing over the first draft of the short story I finished yesterday so I can send it to my first readers for the weekend. Tomorrow I'll be writing from 7-9am, since it's a weekend and I deserve to sleep in just a little. Right?
November 4, 2010
The ANALOG contract has arrived!
While working away at the concluding paragraphs of story #7 today, my contract for "Take One for the Road" arrived in my inbox. It's my first ANALOG contract and it makes the sale that much more real. Now I've got proof!
Just a little thing to add some more excitement to my day.
