Eres Tremulent

About two years ago I began creating an outline for a novel that I had planned on writing during November 2010's NaNoWriMo contest. I never finished the outline, but I did get a dozen or so chapters plotted down. And when the contest came, I managed to bang out 18,000+ words before I finally fell victim to work schedule, fatigue and videogames.

Last year I met and fell in love with my fiance Charlotte. I remember on our first date how I told her about my dreams of writing a series of books, and how I had fared the previous November during NaNoWriMo. My goal was to pick up where I left off during the 2011 NaNoWriMo contest, but I quit before the contest even began. Skyrim was coming out. My book would have to wait. We also were engaged that November, so there wasn't a whole lot of thought placed on writing 1667 words a day.

At the beginning of this year, I made a promise to Charlotte that I would finish my novel before we were married. To ensure I met that goal, I decided to write just enough words every day until our wedding day (November) to finish the book. My thought was that by writing 100 words a day, I wouldn't get overstressed coming home from work only to spend four hours writing. I could knock out 100 words in five minutes. Cake!

We also went and bought a cork board for me to use as a wall of encouragement.   I filled it up with index cards: one for every chapter, and one for every 5000 word milestone. As I was writing the book, I would put big check marks over completed index cards with the date they were completed.

This lasted for a few weeks, but ultimately I couldn't keep up with the endurance of writing 100 words a day. "Oh, I'm pretty tired today. I can make up those words tomorrow." Five months later, and I've barely written anything else.

The good news is that during the first few weeks, I managed to increase my word count from 18K to 25K, so that's something. Also, the extra words all came in chapters I had already written. I'd expanded the word count (and the quality) of the chapters I'd already completed during that NaNoWriMo two years ago, giving my story a boost and giving me a solid shot at hitting 80K+ words with the final novel.

Now, with July on the horizon, I've decided to cut the crap and just get this book written. My first order of business is to finish my outline using this application called Storybook. It helps me keep everything organized, from chapters and scenes to characters and locations. I'm going to work on this outline from now until the end of July, assuming I need that long. Then, come August, I will begin my own version of NaNoWriMo. Being that my goal is 80K words, and I'm already at 25K, I just need 55K more. Thats 5K more than NaNoWriMo, so I'll need to write 1700 something words a day for the entire month of August.

But you know what? I'm ready for it. I'm sick and tired of starting and quitting and wishing I had finished, then starting and quitting and doing the whole cycle over and over and over again. Its been this way since high school with this novel. Well, not this novel particularly, but the whole group of novels together. I've got so much coming at me in my life. Im getting married. I have huge projects at work to complete. My adult life is REALLY going to be kicking into overdrive pretty soon, so if I want to ever get at least one novel written, then this is my last real chance.

So much for Diablo 3. :(  Here we go!


Kaddisfly - Eres Tremulent

On the first day, there was...

Here I sit, four hours away from the start of NaNoWriMo, dawdling away the rest of my evening. Unfortunately, I will not be sharing in the midnight celebrations with other Wrimos around the world. Why, oh why, did November 1st have to fall on a Monday?

No matter. After work tomorrow, I plan on starting and finishing the prologue, and then diving into Chapter 1. I have bags and bags of sugar at my disposal. I have a sweet new Samsung netbook arriving this week. I have three-day weekends for the rest of the month. I have my ambient post-rock station ready to go.

1667 words per day? Cake. Let's do this.

The Great Nothing

...nothing to do until November. Well, that's not true at all, but the anticipation has been steadily growing to write the draft. I'm going bonkers.

I never finished my outline. There's a solid three or four chapters I still need to bang out, possibly more. I purposefully left them unwritten until I had gone back through the outline again. I think I may leave them that way until I'm halfway through the first draft.

Ive been going back to the earlier chapter outlines and fleshing them out, bit by bit. An added scene here, some extended dialogue ideas there. Having finally seen what my characters will grow into by the end, I've had to go back and make sure that the seeds are planted early on. Its all about initial conflicts and making sure the characters slowly resolve them (and the successive conflicts) over the course of the book. Otherwise the reader will be bored and unsatisfied.

I'm pretty impressed with what I've come up with for the path my MC (that's "main character" for us Wrimos) has in front of him. Lots of great conflict, both on the inside and outside. The resolution of these conflicts wont be shared here (ie. positive or negative) but I'm happy with where he will be by the final page.

Man, is it November yet?

NaNoWriMo - A Writing Contest for Everyone!

In thirty short days, this year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins. Participants have 30 days (the month of November) to write a 175-page, 50,000-word novel. As you might imagine, this isnt a contest for the faint of heart. But for those of us who find enjoyment in creating written art, there is no other rush that can satisfy.

If you're interested in joining me this year, you can sign up at www.nanowrimo.org. Its free to join, and theres no penalty for "losing." Actually, theres no prize for "winning," either, except the novel you'll have in your hands. And THAT, my friends, is the whole point.

This will be my second attempt at NaNoWriMo, but only my first with preparation and determination. My outline is almost done. The novel has been tentatively titled "On the First Day." I cant wait.

Fear Through the Eyes of Madness

The past few weeks have been a bit rough. I havent stopped thinking about how the last few chapters will round out, but I havent been writing much down, either. Knowing that I'd finished the story in my mind kinda killed my motivation.

"What point is there in writing anything else down? Im just going to rewrite it all come November."

Well, thats the point. I need to write it down first to have something to rewrite. Admittedly, Im having trouble concentrating enough to get the logic down for the next chapter before the mindless action begins. However, I think I found a tool to help me out.

Its called Storybook, and it does a bunch of organizational things to help keep an outline in focus. You create scenes, which are linked to chapters. Scenes are also linked to characters and locations, which you can develop within the tool. Also, you can create "strands" or "plotlines." This way you can link scenes to a plotline, and when everything is loaded in the tool you'll be able to see if the plot needs some more detail or is too clustered. It shows how often characters are used, it plots out timelines, it does pretty much everything I need an outline to do so that I dont have to do it later.

My plan for now is to load everything into this new format, and then without finishing the last few chapters, I'm going to start editing the outline from the beginning. This will help reintroduce me to the characters and everything they go through that leads up to the end. Hopefully this will reignite in me the logic that I need to get down perfectly to finish everything off. I also expect the ending to change because of a rewrite, so it will be good to keep the ending loose for now.

The only bummer about this tool is that you cant track a word count. At this point I guess it doesnt really matter. Im over 15K and will likely hit 20K, which is almost half of the Nanowrimo goal. I dont think I'll have any problem generating 50K words. I just hope I can keep up with writing during November to get there.

What Heaven Allows

Its rock 'n' roll time, now. Having gotten past the tough part, everything has suddenly opened up and I see a clear path to the end of the novel. This is a huge breakthrough. Theres still going to be a few complicated things to work out, but I know where I'm going straight through to the end. This is phenomenal. Its the first time I can really step back and see the whole thing for what it is. I cant wait to go back through the outline once its complete to touch it up in preparation for November. The excitement train is really starting to pick up speed!

Chapters Outlined: 13
Rough Word Count: 14,726

Eastern Glow

It was an incredibly difficult decision, but I ended up having to rewind and throw out two chapters. It only set me back a couple thousand words, being that they were only outlines, but Ive spent over two weeks in this particular area of the story and just now finally managed to get through it.

In the end, I know this was all a good thing, but it was pretty tough to do. I was confused, myself, what it was I was trying to say. There was a lot to say in these two chapters, and I had to find the right way to explain it to the reader while at the same time having it make sense for the characters. It was tough, but I think I managed to pull it off, and the story is much better for it.

The story of the crazy/ridiculous chapter from last week got scrapped entirely. A character briefly summarizes the events in a new scene I developed, but the event no longer includes the over-the-top stuff I'd written out in the scrapped chapter. I was going for quantity, not quality, and at this point everything hinges on quality. I can do quantity much later after this first book sets the ground rules. No point in going all out just yet, although the climax of this book will certainly be intense.

So yeah... new numbers below... :(

Chapters Outlined: 12
Rough Word Count: 13,144