Back from the Brink

Oh, boy, folks, have I had a crazy few weeks. Grab a cuppa coffee/tea/wine/beverage of your choice and let me tell you all about it.

So I needed a mini break of blogging because I hadn't quite figured out how to manage my writing, my "new" job, family, life, and blogging all at the same time. I think I've figured it out now, so we're gonna try a trial of me blogging on Tuesdays and Saturdays for a while, and see how it works. Please bear with me as I reintegrate myself into the blogosphere.

This is your brain on editing.
Any questions?

Then there was the writing. In late October not only was I trying to manage some pretty intense revision on my novel (currently listed on my WIPs page as FIGHTING FATE, though I plan to change the title to IN FLAMES). I wanted to get a full round of revision finished before NaNoWriMo started, while also juggling my NaNo prep. That took a LOT out of me, and I edited until my brains turned into liquid goo. Seriously. It was messy.

My own personal NaNo shield

On November first, having finished that round of editing, I was happy to accept my NaNo fate. I greeted it with a warm, strong handshake. And on the fateful afternoon of November 1st, I had an extra meeting with my boss, wherein he asked me to work overtime in preparation for our display at an upcoming conference (I work for a small, specialty academic publisher). And in my inner ear, I heard my NaNo plans go *squish*. My boss and I negotiated trading the days in early November for days around Thanksgiving, so not all was lost, but it put some stress on my NaNo plans nonetheless.

As of November 12th, one-third of the way through the month, I had only written about 14K over the course of 4 authentic writing days. Ouch.

On the morning on November 13th, as I'm leaving my house to pick up a friend, I grab my phone to let her know I'm coming, and see that I have a missed text message from my boss--who, I might add, never sends me text messages. It said, more or less, that he was in the hospital, post-surgery after having had a heart attack. Everything okay. Call to talk about conference prep. SERIOUSLY. My boss is in the intensive care unit on a Sunday morning and wants to talk about conference prep. Now, granted, the conference started on the 17th. My boss isn't really all that Type-A, but we did still have a lot of work to do, and that essentially took the editorial side of our house from 3 to 2 employees doing the bulk of the work (we have a few work-study students, but regular employees, we are three). So now add more overtime work to my schedule over the next three days, making the first day of the conference (Nov 17th) day 5 for writing. Not a good sign.

See how the Jell-O powder gets all goopy with a little water?

Not to mention that on the 17th and the 18th I was about as worthless a writer as an uncooked box of Jell-O, from working 10hour days three days in a row, and the emotional turmoil of talking to my boss on the phone while he was doped on morphine and falling asleep. Yup, powdery Jell-O.

Somehow, though, I managed to pull a few days writing between 5-6K. Don't ask me how. Perhaps some superhuman feats of strength that even kryptonite couldn't squelch. Who knows? But I have to attribute at least a little of my success to Hart Johnson and her stupendous idea for hour-long sprint-writing sessions. I think those were ultimately my saving grace. Coordinated over Facebook, I would periodically join Hart, among others, on these sprints, and both the time and the community support helped a ton.

And, imagine, through all of that, I actually won!

Granted, according to my word verification, I only have 50,002 words, but I don't care! I'm 2 words over what they need (although, according to my Scrivener file, I have 50,019), and that's what matters.

Anyway, now it's December. A little over two weeks until the holiday break comes, which will entail lots of time with family, friends, and fruitcake. I'm already celebrating by eating too many sweets and listening to Christmas music while I cook and bake. And, dangit all, I am MAKING these cookies if it kills me. I just have to find some sweet rice flour first...

Be seeing you around the blogosphere!

#NaNoWriMo KickOff and Update

You know what today is :) The first of November is a celebrated holiday in my house. Er, well, it is for me.

Especially since the month of October ate me up. Work's a little insane, meaning I've had to bring projects home over the weekend and work on things in the evenings, too. I work for a small, academic publisher, and we're gearing up for a conference that starts in about 2 weeks. So now's the last push to get these projects finished and printed before the conference. Which means overtime. Which means more money, sure, but it also means less writing time.

My hope is to make it through to about the 15th or so, then attempt to reenter the blogging community. I think it's possible.

In the meantime, I'll be NaNo-ing again. Starting at about the time this blog post goes up. If you'd like to add me as your buddy on the NaNo site, my user ID is Rosie-C.

Good luck with NaNo this year, everyone. I'll see you soon :)

Clean (#atozchallenge)

Welcome to my 3rd post on the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. My challenge, as I have chosen to accept it, is thus: I have asked on my Facebook and Twitter accounts for people to contribute random words beginning with today's letter. From Random.org, I have selected one of these words, and will below challenge myself to connect said word to writing.



For the letter C, I received 68 suggestions. Random.org selected number 8: clean.

PS--My Mondays and Wednesdays have me running around without good internet access all day until 9pm EST (US). I'll get back to you, but it might be late tonight.


Clean

So, I thought about taking the easy route with this, talking about cleaning up and polishing your work, making sure you've got a good editor, etc., etc., but we've heard that all before, haven't we? And, well, we need something to help us get over the Monday blues, right? Who wants to talk about cleaning up after yourself when you've spent a weekend Spring cleaning (or Fall cleaning, maybe, for our dear friends south of the Equator), or cleaning up after kids, or after dinner, or cleaning up the yard...

You get the idea.

Instead, I want to talk about you. Now, before I do, please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way. I am in NO WAY implying that any of my readers (or myself) are unclean. But if you have one of those skin conditions that comes from not bathing, I'm not judging. I just don't need to know about it :)

Thus, exhibit A:

Image courtesy of Wiki Commons

Poor Pig-Pen. All he wants is to have fun with his friends, but he always ends up dirty and smelly. Why is that?

Enthusiasm!

Pig-Pen loves everything he does. He gets deep down in the dirty while he's playing, and loves every minute of it. The boy's not afraid to get a little messy.

When it comes to writing, we need to get messy before we can dust off our hands and call the creation "done". That's one reason, in my opinion, events like NaNoWriMo are so successful. It's like an entire month of rolling around in the mud and never taking a shower. By the end, you stink, and BOY OH BOY do you want a good, long, hot shower or bath, but look at the prize that's waiting for you. The diamond of your enthusiasm awaits. Yeah, maybe you got muckier than you wanted, and you can't stand to look at that gem again for a while. I haven't looked at my 2010 NaNo yet, that's for sure, and I have no intention of doing so before June. BUT, I know it's decent... deep, deep, Deep, DEEP down. I just need to clean it up.

My bottom line is: Clean isn't always good, nor is it always what's best for us. Let the words flow, get the ides down. Later you can find your diamond in the rough. It's there, no matter what. Sometimes the mud just makes it a little easier to see.

How do you write? Do you polish as you go? Or do you spew words and tidy up after yourself later? 

Have you tried challenges like NaNo? What others have you participated in?

Want to play along with my A-to-Z Challenge? Today I'm taking suggestions for the letter G. I'll take as many or as few as you'd like to contribute. :)

The Art of the Outline

I used to fancy myself as a pantser. I truly did. Or at least about here:

I always had some kind of plan for the stories: a beginning, a couple crucial middle points, and a vague idea of the end. But after leaving point A, I could have gone through both Nova Scotia and Dubai before getting to point B. Editing then involved reducing the Trans-Siberian railroad trip to a transcontinental flight (no snacks included; please pay $25 per checked luggage item), and maybe my characters didn't really NEED to go to Dubai. I'll clip that and keep it for a later WIP.

This lasted until NaNo, I think. I was so excited to start on that new piece, I spent days outlining, character sketching, etc. I'm glad I did, because I don't think I would have finished NaNo otherwise. I needed that outline to remind me of where else I needed to go, and which overpriced-with-hidden-fees transcontinental flight could more easily get me there.

Then I started working on this latest project of mine. Can I just say for the record that my brain won't let it go ANYWHERE without an outline? So, what have I been doing this week? Well, besides avoiding my WIP since I don't know where it's going, I've started outlining (and then because I was excited about the outline taking shape, apparently now I'm blogging. Productive, huh?).

My goal for this week is to get this amorphous little outline into something resembling the outline I used for NaNo, so that by next week I will be less afraid of this new WIP.  I'm really happy with what few ideas have solidified in my mind regarding this WIP, but fumbling in the dark isn't my style anymore. I'm not sure if it's because I've changed as a writer—I did have that writing class last semester that could have also contributed to this change—or if it's particular to this WIP. Either way, I need this outline whipped into shape.

If you plan, how do you plan? What's your strategy for developing the sequence of events?


If you pants, how do you learn to trust your characters with each new WIP that they'll get you to the end in a decent fashion?

Review of Scrivener

For those of you who are writers, whether you are technologically savvy or not, I would like to recommend Scrivener, a program developed specifically with the novelist in mind. With all the hype surrounding different programs for NaNoWriMo, I decided to take a step away from my traditional Word and try something different, and Scrivener offered a NaNoWriMo trial version that lasted not 30 days, but until December 7. So I tried it. Now I will never go back.

Scrivener's design is user-friendly for the every-day operations. Each "page" is meant to be an individual scene. You can title it anything you want without it printing (though see below on my inability to make this work at first), which makes them easy to find. There's a list to the left of all of your scenes and chapters (in this list, folders are chapters, and when you Compile it, they are automatically numbered in chapters without your numbering them). You can see each "file" clearly, and drag them up and down to rearrange.

You can also rearrange your scenes easily on a "cork board".You simply drag the note card to where you'd rather it be. The entire "file" with all of your text automatically moves without the nastiness of cutting and pasting and hoping the clipboard's not too full already.

To the right, there are a number of helpful tools. The two I found most helpful were 1) the notes and 2) the links. You can leave yourself any amount of notes for the scene or chapter that will never be printed in your compile or counted in your word count. In Word, I would simply type these in for myself and highlight them or change the color of the text, but then I would get an inaccurate word count. This is ideal for those of you who are as forgetful as I am in terms of adding this action, or who want to give yourself ideals as you read through without heavily revising at any given moment. The links option is also great because it gives you direct access to your research from the same file.

Another great option in this program are the character and setting sketches. It's wonderful to have quick access to your characters without opening other files. You can even include a picture. None of the notes in these "files" are included in your word count (although you can have them included with a simple click of a check box), but are still right at your fingertips. You can even include pictures, which I LOVE.

For more detailed information on any of these features, Scrivener tutorial videos can be found here.

Bottom Line: If you write novels, this will spoil you to no end, and you won't be able to go back to Word ever again :)

Update

I have temporarily extracted myself from cyberspace, and will be AWOL for a few more days, but I wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive and kicking.

1) Got the awesome hair treatment done, and I LOVE it! If you have hair like mine, I highly recommend the Global Keratin treatment (as well as Erin at Rocstar Hair in Chicago).

2) Drove back from Chicago in nasty, horrible snow. I was a little traumatized from the drive, but arrived home safe and in one piece. I have no desire to do any driving for a while, though.

3) My husband, my mother, and I are flying to Phoenix today to visit my in-laws for the holidays. I'm really looking forward to the break and time to eat cookies and work on writing.

4) Future blog posts will include a review of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone (which I started in October and finally finished this week), and a review of Scrivener, which I got to use for NaNo. Preview: I loved both. Stay tuned.

5) Upcoming reading for me includes: No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo, Junction 2020 by Carol Riggs, The Hating Game by Talli Roland, and finishing On Writing by Stephen King. I'll post reviews of these, too, as I finish them.

What are you reading right now?

Happy Thursday, folks! :)

My Own Personal Challenges

I've been reading (among many other things at once) On Writing by Stephen King. I enjoyed reading his books when I was younger. After having read every Christopher Pike novel published to that point in my life at least three times, Stephen King was the next step, moving into the world of adult horror/suspense/thriller/what-have-you. And, honestly, even if you don't like Stephen King's style or his stories or are simply jealous, you have to admit—the man's got something.

So when a friend loaned me his writing memoir a few months ago I thought, "Okay, sure. Seems like a good idea."

Then it sat on the shelf until I reached 50K for NaNo.

I thought to myself, "What now?" as I'm sure many other NaNo's do. So I picked up King's On Writing to see what advice I could glean on how to dust off my work boots and get back into it.

The book is full of fabulous advice. Above and beyond the tips like "Read a lot. Write a lot", he suggests setting a daily goal. Don't do anything until you reach your goal. Don't give up and walk away. Write while eating your lunch if you must. Obviously great advice, and something I could stand to implement into my own life.

But the piece of advice that has resonated with me so soundly today is about description. I tend to be an under-describer in my writing, particularly in my first drafts. As I read, I thought about my NaNo creation (whatever it may be) and about the setting. What had I described well? Ne, what had I described at all? Oh, it hurts to admit that I may have let the description slide some. But now I know at least one thing to focus on when I go back for rewrites.

There are plenty of other gems in King's On Writing. This is just the one that inspired me today.

What's some great writing advice you've been given/come across?

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo

Okay, I've had a couple of days away from it, so I think I can write about it. Hurrah for Dec 3! :)

National Novel Writing Month was intense for me for many reasons, and many of those reasons were writing-related without being NaNo-related.

First, I learned that I'm not superwoman (even if I want to be). I can't do everything. I'm grateful I'm not taking more classes this semester, because nothing would have gotten accomplished if I were.

Second, I leaned a lot about writing. I have a much deeper appreciation for an outline now (which I might not have realized without seeing Lynda's post). I was so anxious to start writing for NaNo in October that I had to do something, so I outlined and character sketched. Amazing things about my story and about my characters came to light through that process. And without that outline, in my situation only superwoman (see #1 above) could have finished with 50K by Nov 30.

Third, I learned that it's okay to give up. I know. I did make it to 50K, but if you look at my NaNo stats, there was over a week of inactivity once I reached about 12K. I had other projects for school that took a lot of time (see my end-of-November posts on "Never Truly Gone"), and I had to tell myself it was okay not to finish the NaNo novel. In fact, it wasn't until I reached 40K that I honestly thought I would make it. If I hadn't given myself permission to not win I probably would have been so wrapped up in my own personal anxiety-hell that I wouldn't have reached 25K.

Fourth, I learned I'm not a writing multi-tasker. Oh, man. When I have to juggle three different traditional stories and one graphic-novel-like project, I can't think about more than one at a time. And that's okay. I don't see myself in this position again (too often) when I have to think about all of them on one day. Granted, I could work on story A on Monday and story B on Tuesday and that would probably be okay, but when I have drafts of three different stories open on my computer at once, it's probably too much. Hopefully I won't have to do that again.

Finally, I realized that I can do this. Maybe I won't be the next writing superstar, but I have something in my head that needs to reach wider audiences. And I WANT to write. And I love it, despite all the hard work. And while editing isn't exactly my idea of fun evening in, I like that, too. I'm ready to take on the challenge of the industry and move from being a writer to an author.

Never Truly Gone

Okay, yes, I have disappeared for weeks. I admit it. I've been writing like a madwoman for weeks. "Wait," you say. "Your NaNo Count is quite low, and you're more than a week behind schedule." To which I say, "Yes. That's true. Remember that writing class I'm taking?"

Ah, yes.

The end of the semester is approaching, and so the due date my writing portfolio is growing near. We have one critique TODAY and another the week after Thanksgiving break (Dec 1 and 3).

Since I have a critique today, though, what am I doing blogging? Should I be writing/editing up to the last minute?

Well, today's critique is a bit different, and now that it's more or less finished, I'm excited to share it with you. We've had to write three stories for this class: two traditional, and one not-so-traditional. In fact, not at all traditional. Our third story was:

• group written
• multimedia
• interactive
• with an installation component

I took it to Boxcar Books on Sunday at 2pm for the final installation. It will be there until Tuesday evening, when I will return to Boxcar for the NaNoWriMo write-in from 6-9pm. If you're in or around Bloomington, IN, consider this my invitation to check it out.

So, today I thought I would share some photos from my portion of the process. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll blog more about the story itself.

Here's a picture of our project before I took it to be installed on Sunday.

Remember those tiles games you used to play as a kid? Move each square one at a time until the picture comes out correctly? Well, that's the inspiration for this, except there's no "solution". Eleven of the tiles can be moved in any order to change the arch of the story.

Here comes the mathy-side of my brain. How on earth did we do this? Well, first I made tiles:

Each of these tiles was comprised of 3 6x6in squares of foam board. The middle piece was glued 1/2in up and to the right of the other two pieces to create this simple "tongue and groove" system. You can see how they each fit together.

Admittedly, I shaved a little off of the edge of each tongue so the groove would be wider in case my measurements were off (and let's just say precision is not my specialty). I also squeezed the foam tongues so they would be slightly thinner than the grooves for easy sliding.

Then I had a problem. If they slide easily, and this is hung on a wall, if a middle or bottom slot is left open, won't the other pieces just slip down? Well, to prevent this, I got a 2x2ft piece of steel

and lined the back of each tile with magnets.

Each piece now stays where the reader leaves it.

I also had to make a tongue-and-groove system for the frame, which is hidden by the dark wood frame. Outside of the foam board "frame" are 3/4x3/4in pieces of wood through which we could nail the dark wood frame.

Yup, it took a while, to say the least, but it was kind of fun to use both halves of my brain for this project.

Don't forget to drop by later this week for pictures from the development of the action shots, the story, and discussion of the story itself.

Mooching from Summer

Okay, I just saw this on Summer's blog ...and this time concentrate! It was so awesome that I had to share.

Enjoy :)

Muses for NaNo

HAPPY NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH!

I've already reached my word count minimum for Nov. 1 (see my cool widget to the right?).  This is going to be a short post, seeing as my Mondays and Wednesdays were insane even before NaNo began, but I wanted to share my muses with you.

Muse 1: Mr. Kubuś (that ś is pronounced kind of like sh). Hobbies include sitting on and eating paper while sending good writing vibes to Rosie.  Also, when Rosie is cold, Mr. Kubuś will do everything in his power to warm her legs (even when she doesn't know that she's cold).

Muse 2: Ms. Kasia (pronounced Kasha; she's named the Polish form of Katie and not after breakfast cereal). Latest past time includes curling up on Rosie's chest so that she is only capable of typing one-handed.  Who needs two hands to type 1.667 words/day, anyway?

Where do you find your inspiration?

The Pantser Depantsed

So I think of myself as a pantser, but the idea of pantsing for NaNo makes my knees shake in my fashionable knee-high boots.  I like to discover the journey as the characters move along, but as far as I can tell, there are two problems with this for me:

1. Keeping up with the 2000 word/day target average.
2. Making sure I maintain the increase in tension from scene to scene.

Well, yesterday I downloaded Scrivener.  It inspired me to spend quite a bit of time last night outlining chapter ideas, writing character sketches, and generally trying to organize myself.  It all equals work I wouldn't have done otherwise (most likely) before Monday.  I've got names for characters that I hadn't considered before, notes for the first 7 chapters, and backstory that I hadn't worked out earlier.

I'm so excited about NaNo.  Can you tell?


How do you do your writing prep?  How do you keep track of all of your notes and ideas?

NaNo - Down and Dirty

I've signed up for email notifications from my local forums on NaNo's website.  In addition to the usual write-in organizing messages and tips on how to get your word count completed while drunk college students yell outside your humble abode (*cough* my humble abode), there has also been a discussion as to what writing programs/software people intend to use to reach their 50K.

So, I thought, what the hell?  Word only gets you so far, right?  Maybe I'll try something different.

First, I downloaded yWriter5.  Of course, I'm a dedicated Mac user, and this software is specifically designed for Windows.  BUT there's a work-around.  So I gave it a shot, downloaded the intermediary program to make it work, and tried it.  I imported a couple hundred words from something else and then tried to edit it.  DENIED!  Apparently there will be no editing to imported text.  Why? Don't know, but someone else on the forums had a similar issue.  So, I thought, back to Word.

Then another message came through.  The woman said she had tried Schrivener, but was going to stick to yWriter5.  I thought, hmm, what is this Schrivener you speak of, and decided to check it out.  Bonus one: there's a Mac-friendly program already--meaning, no work-around programs. *happy dance*  Bonus two: it's a lot less DOS-like and a lot more user-friendly interface-y.  Bonus three: even though the software isn't free, it has a trial period that goes through Dec 7 so NaNo users can try it out.  Bonus four: if you don't win NaNo, you get a 20% discount at the end just for trying.  If you DO win NaNo, you get a 50% discount.  Bonus five:  How many bonuses do y'all need!?!

So, I've set up my NaNo template and I'm going to start cork-boarding this weekend (I'm a little late in the game, I know, but I've always been more of a pantser).  I'm also going to import the novel I've been working on (and just finished rewrites for last week *happy dance*), and get all of my info in one location, including my links and JPGs of characters, etc.  I think this program seems entirely awesome, and I can't wait to really give it a spin.

Thus endeth the advertisement.

How are you writing your NaNo novel?

NaNoWriMo Preparation

I decided to jump in feet first to my NaNoWriMo preparations, and threw together a synopsis.  So many blogs and people suggest doing that first to get the juices flowing, so why not? 

Interested?

The Demon Inside

When she wakes up in a morgue freezer, Alexis doesn’t know who she is or how she got there. Her friends rescue her the night before the autopsy, and then spend weeks helping her rediscover her past and herself, except no one else knows the details of the evening in which Alexis was brought to the morgue. Born a demon slayer, she relearns how to control her power and continues her training as if nothing ever happened.

When she runs into Ridge, the vampire responsible for killing her boyfriend, conflict tears at Alexis. As the slayer, she wants to kill him, but he offers her information about her new life and about that night when everything changed. As the days and nights of her new life multiply, Alexis finds herself sniffing people’s necks and identifying their blood types, or wondering how her sister’s flesh would taste, or dreaming of the savory entrails of live victims, and she realizes what no one else has—she is no longer only human.

At first she tells no one, ashamed of what she has become while fighting demons harder than before. But needing to confide in someone, Alexis tells her sister and asks her the unthinkable: if Alexis becomes too dangerous, her sister needs to be ready to kill her.

Thoughts? Critiques?

Now on to character development...

NaNoWriMo Hook Up?

Hey Everyone,

Who's signed up for NaNo? I'm really excited about it.  One of the features that thrills me the most is tracking my friends' progress and offering support with the buddy feature.  However, the one thing I've noticed about it is that it's not like FB, or even Blogger.  When you add someone to your list, that someone doesn't seem to get a notification. 

So, what's your NaNo username?  I want to follow you. If you don't want to list it in the comments, that's cool. You can always get me at rlconnolly01 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Oh, and I'm Rosie-C, if you'd like to follow back :)

Yea!  Happy planning!

Return to the Old Life?

My real job started again today.  Well, actually, it never technically stopped.  I just stopped.  That's the beauty of freelance work, right?  If you don't do, it just doesn't get done.  I've promised my boss it will, and it will, just not by the time classes start on, er, Monday.

I suspect, due to a rush job that needs to be completed in the next 6-7 weeks, I won't be here quite as much.  It makes me very sad to admit this because it also means I won't have as much time for my own writing.  And while I'm taking a creative writing class, I don't imagine it will affect my work for NaNoWriMo this year.

I've been saying it all summer, but I need to prioritize.  I have a job with a definite deadline, and another one with a loose deadline.  I'm training a new employee at the publisher today and tomorrow, and I'll be her go-to person when she has questions.  Plus classes.  Plus writing.  Plus husband.  Plus laundry and cleaning and cooking and, oh, I should probably start going to the gym again. 

But not necessarily in that order.

In addition to my entire life that needs order and structure, I think my writing life does, too.  At the moment, I'm trying to follow too many blogs (and I love most of them and don't want to give them up!), have my own blog which I have already let slip over the past couple of days, working on helping out the folks in my new online critique group, putting my work over there, and, oh yeah, keeping up with my editing and planning for NaNoWriMo.  *whew*  Again, not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, for the past couple of weeks, other tasks from this list have trumped my own writing, and I'm not thrilled about this.

Oh, and no where in there did I mention reading.  I'm currently reading a memoir—Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bordain—an MG—Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt—and Stephen King's On Writing is calling to me.  Oh, and a novel I won on GoodReads—No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo—and the novel I won from a FB contest—The Handbook for Lightening Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone.  And The Possessed by Elif Batuman, which I've been yearning to read for months and recently got my hands on.  Ack!

So, my attempt to organize and prioritize continues.  I think in addition to setting a minimum number of hours to work each day on the editing side, plus assuming I might do some school work here and there :) I'm going to set myself weekly goals for reading and writing.  Hopefully this will take the daily pressure off if I need to spend more time on my German, or the formatting on my editing job isn't working and takes twice as long as it should.  The writing will happen—it always does—but motivation to edit the text afterward tends to be elusive, and that's what needs to happen most right now.

Okay, ramble over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduling blogging.

How do you prioritize your life?  How do you fit writing into your (presumably) already hectic schedule?

PS—If you're doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as your buddy.  I'm Rosie-C over there :)

NaNoWriMo 2010 and the Plotter/Pantser Advantage

I signed up. 

Yup, I sure did.

And now I'm terrified.  Most of that fear stems from not knowing what my life is going to be like once fall classes resume.  And part of it, ladies and gents, is the sheer fact that 50,000 in 30 days is a whole lot of time and sweat and exhaustion waiting to happen.

I'm also pretty stoked. 

I bring this up because a) see above paragraph, and b) I've seen a number of posts in the past 24 hours discussing pantsing v. plotting (see Jessica's and Summer's posts, and, tangentially, iggi and gabi's).  They've made me consider NaNoWriMo, how it works, and who might be more successful—the pantser or the plotter.

Pros for the Plotter

These seem pretty obvious to me.  The outline is waiting for you on top of your keyboard on that fateful November morning when the race begins.  The story has been developing in your mind for some time.  Scenes already exist, though they are yet unwritten.  All you need is some time and some quiet.

Cons for the Plotter

While the outline is immaculate, you haven't plotted the exact path from point A to point B.  You get stuck.  When you resume, your story takes an unexpected turn... 

Actually, wait.  Can this happen to a plotter?  Or is each scene thoroughly outlined so no unknown plot twists can infiltrate the WiP?

Hmm... maybe it's better not to talk about the plotter, seeing as I don't conform to this category.

Pros for the Pantser

The whimsy and excitement of discovering your story drives you to go days without sleep.

Cons for the Pantser

Oh, shoot.  Wait.  What just happened?  How did the story get here?  No, no, no, this doesn't work.  It's headed for a dead end.  Go back, delete 20,000 words and start over.


I've oversimplified the categories, no doubt about it.  And such categories are never so well defined, anyway.  The continuum is vast, and most of us will fall somewhere in the middle.  I tend to lean toward the pantser side (and have found myself getting very little sleep when a story won't stop in my head), but I never start writing before my story has a solid beginning, a few key mid-way points, and a solid ending.  All of these are subject to change, of course, but a barebones outline is necessary for me to feel comfortable with the process.

I've had a story idea bouncing around in my head for close to six months now, and I've decided to hold onto it until November 1st.  I'll spend some time in the next couple of months writing a preliminary summary for it.  Before I discovered NaNoWriMo (or, I should admit, before I went to Google to figure out what all this nonsensical acronym means :) I had already written a couple of pages.  I know we're not supposed to start NaNoWriMo with anything but outlines, but I promise what I've got is nothing of consequence.  If you're interested, you can see the first 250 words here.  I wrote them because I wanted to toss them into the pool for Nathan Bransford's Monday Page Critique.  I'm still waiting, and may wait for another 279 weeks while he goes through everyone else's :)

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year?  Are you a plotter or a pantser or somewhere in between?  Which are you more like?  Which do you think would be better for an intensive writing competition like NaNoWriMo?  Why?