I signed into my Nano page to take a look at things this morning, to see what’s changed, to see if there were any interesting articles to read that I hadn’t already perused last year. And no, nothing yet. Posting doesn’t really pick up until October, when the articles begin rolling in again. And November 1 is the first pep talk from Chris Baty, the founder of the very first National Novel Writing Month.

This marks my 8th year participating, and if I finish, will be my 7th year finishing. Which means I have seven drafts sitting on my computer waiting to be read or edited. This year, I feel a strange pressure on me to finish something good. Even though I know I advocate the same thing that Chris Baty advocates (don’t edit, don’t delete, just keep going, etc), lately I’ve been feeling like that strategy is no longer working for me anymore. The last three or four years, at least.

Is it that I’ve run out of good ideas? Possibly. Am I expecting too much out of myself? Also possibly, but I’d hate to think it is for this reason that I’ve stopped writing entirely. But I also know that all decent writers have one thing in common: they write. They write consistently and they write every day. They are disciplined in this habit, and it is for that reason that these kinds of writers succeed while sometimes-writers do not.

Then I think that I have set up a vicious loop for myself. At the end of November, I’m always spent. I tell myself that I’ll take a month break and then try to start writing small things again. That month inevitably ends up being eleven, especially as my own pace of life has accelerated. This is not discipline.

Discipline is writing every day, writing in my journal once a day, even if it is only a few lines. My discipline has faltered. I can say this about a lot of things in my life lately–my eating habits, gym habits, and now my writing habits.

I want to change this, though, and I’ve started to change my diet and exercise habits already.  The writing bit? I don’t know. Maybe with Nano this year, things will be different. Last night, an idea came to me, one that might hold enough possibilities to sustain me through this coming November. And, if executed right, could be a halfway-decent story.

After I had this thought, I realized that for the first time in four years, I actually have an idea for NaNoWriMo.

I think playing Fallout before I go to sleep gives me bad dreams. A few nights ago I woke after seeing my dream self run screaming hysterically out of a room, away from some perpetrator. Two nights ago I had a dream that just left me feeling bitter and resentful when I woke up, and last night I dreamed that my house was the only one–in the middle of a family dinner, no less–that was swept up by a series of tornados that came through the area. I lived in a wooden/corrugated metal shack, which was then destroyed against a brick building. The last part of the dream had my father gasping in the driver’s seat of a car, unable to breathe, while shouted for my cousin to take the wheel (we were in the back seat, petting his dog).

I didn’t think I’d have anything to really blog about, but it appears that I do.

A couple of books for the rest of November. I should finish over Thanksgiving, a much-needed four day break.

1. Diary – Chuck Palahniuk
2. The Borgia Bride – Jeanne Kalogridis
3. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
4. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana – Anne Rice
5. Until I Find You – John Irving

I finished The Borgia Bride on Saturday night, and it was an appropriately fluffy story with a decent mix of sex, violence, betrayal, jealousy, blah blah blah. Slightly less fun than a Philippa Gregory book, but interesting and quick.

I’m interested in The Road to Cana because it’s written by Anne Rice, who wrote the (beloved) Vampire Chronicles. I’d never thought that she was particularly religious, but I suppose in my mind I can see how vampirism and religion may go together. She received a lot of crap from people about her sudden switch from vampire novels into books on Jesus’ life, and so I’ll try one. Well, it’s the second in the series. I don’t think I’ll have missed too much (and it was the only one my library had).  Oh, and the other reason I want to read it is because it seems to coincide with the rekindling of my roommate’s faith, which I find highly ironic given his flagrant bigotry and intolerance of others different from himself. Actually he’s Catholic, so maybe that makes perfect sense. Either way, apparently I’m not allowed to proclaim my atheism or make fun of religion anymore in my house because it’s too offensive (I politely asked, then, if my roommates would stop making fun of gay people and my own ethnicity in front of me, at the very least, since I find that offensive, and was met with something akin to sarcastic disregard. Wonderful!).

Anyway, John Irving is always a favorite, and I happened to be wandering through that aisle when I suddenly remembered that I liked an author whose last name begins with i. So there. A good way to end the month, before I start reading Harry Potter again (agonizingly slow, I may add, as only three chapters a week or so, so I don’t get too far ahead of my friend, who is reading along).

In other news, NaNo is coming along fine. I hit the 38,000 word mark last night. Hopefully I can finish this weekend (as I should hit 44,000 words Friday night) and get it over and done with, to move on to other projects.

Actually, this is the first year that my story does not seem to be wrapping up very soon. Most of the stories I’ve written I’ve been able to wind down pretty quickly, or at least hit their halfway marks at around the same time as I hit 25,000. Am I just losing my touch? Do I suck so much that I’ve just drawn it out for thousands of words???

I guess we’ll see when I edit it (if I edit it).

Just 11 days left to NaNoWriMo, my seventh eighth year participating.

While I’m excited this year, I’m also a little concerned. The first few years I had lots of ideas of what to write about, but the last two or three, I haven’t. Last year’s novel was a complete and total disaster, and I say that while using ‘disaster’ in the NaNo sense. All NaNo novels are probably disasters, but this one was so utterly and completely horrid that I haven’t even bothered to reread it.

But last year’s was one of my first years attempting a more ’serious’ tone in my NaNos. Some people say you should just stick to your strengths in order to get the thing done, and sometimes I truly believe that I should just do that. 50,000 words takes forever to write if you’re just a plain, average writer like I am. It takes a whole month (haha), even steaming ahead at a steady 2,000-words-a-day pace, which is still a hell of a lot of words to write regularly. It’s even worse when your idea is crap, won’t go anywhere, and therefore forces you to resort to old tricks and themes you’ve written about before. What I did two years ago, after almost quitting from sheer boredom and annoyance, was reintroduce some sci-fi elements back into it. And what I got from doing that was a horrible, confusing mess.

That’s not to say I haven’t done that in years past. In my second or third NaNo novel, there were spots you could see where I completely murdered a main character so that I could introduce a new one and go in a different direction and still keep the 16,000 words I had accumulated. It’s not cheating, but it sure does make you feel like crap.

So this year, I’m stuck between two ideas. A friend mentioned that I should do this because it’s fun. Write to my strengths–and those would be generally sci-fi elements. Aliens, zombies, or monsters, with some sort of comedic or parody element attached.

But what if I want to do this to learn? Can I write a ’serious’ novel and maintain it for an entire month? Do I want to really buckle down this fall and get a move on writing my first literary novel (that doesn’t suck so completely that I would rather just pretend like I didn’t write for NaNo last year at all than talk about or reread it)?

I had also thought of splitting the project in two, but now my conscience is forbidding that. It has to be a novel, not a group of short stories that I am going to write. I don’t think I’m going to let myself almost cheat and do that instead of writting a fully fleshed out (albeit short, clocking in around 50k words, which is around 80 pages depending on the font used) novel. I’m putting my foot down.

As I write about this now, suddenly the idea I had for a ’serious’ novel is looking less and less likely. It plays out in my head more like a short story than a gripping novel.

So maybe the idea given to me about zombies and space travel will work after all.

Anyway, to lighten the mood a little, here are some behaviors I find myself succumbing to during the month of NaNo, behaviors that I wouldn’t normally indulge in except that for the last seven or so years, I have done NaNoWriMo.

To get through NaNoWriMo, I…
• stay up as long as it takes me to finish my 2,000 words for the night, yes, despite the fact that I always refuse other times to stay up any day of the week no matter what the reason… I think the record was 3:45 AM, on a work night
• turn down offers to be social, since after work and the gym it’s NaNo writing time!
• turn the porch light off on Halloween night early, so I can sit in front of my computer with a blank page open, ready to begin at exactly as midnight strikes
• secretly work on NaNo at the office, or during breaks, which explains the sudden consistent appearance of my flash drive in the computer
• indulge in super-caffeinated beverages on the weekends to help me write (although I haven’t had to resort to Red Bull or anything like that yet… Plain coffee and soda for me!)
• listen to Mozart’s Requiem on repeat, because it provides 80 minutes of structured music as a background to my writing. Other favorites are Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and most of what Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard produce (words or songs with lyrics tend to throw me off and distract me)
• get up around 6 AM to fit in writing
• catch up on weekends, or write more than I need to so that I can have a day off during the week but still stay on track (record is 4000 words extra over a weekend… two days off during the week!)
• fantasize about what my characters will do next, obsessively, the entire month
• become nasty and short-tempered to the outside world when my novel isn’t going well
• want to read long passages to who unfortunate callers on the phone when my novel is going well
• check my word count on everything I write, at work and elsewhere, during November
• play with font face and size on the novel to make more or less pages (depending on how accomplished I want to feel)
• choose names at random out of the phone book
• use you, your life, and anything you’ve ever said to me as inspiration for novel fodder, characters (villains, most certainly, if you’ve ever crossed me for any reason), and events
• write on Thanksgiving, even with family there, if I haven’t finished my novel yet (this probably won’t happen this month)
• am strapped with guilt the day after NaNo ends, because I’ve gotten in the habit of writing every day for so long that there is suddenly a void when I stop

11 days!!!

So here we are, and the end of the second week of NaNoWriMo has arrived. I’m right on track with 28,000 words and today I’ll hit the 30,000 word mark. After that things get easier.  And with Thanksgiving right around the corner, no doubt I’ll be able to finish early so that I can start on my other story again, the one I’m writing for my friends.

The last few days here in Atlanta have been uncommonly beautiful. The temperature’s back up, and the sun shines in the morning as I drive to work. The trees have finally changed color. It’s much later than I’ve ever seen, but living up north was different than living down here in the south. The colors in the last two days alone have brightened from their dull maroons to the bright ochres, marigolds, and carillions like I haven’t seen in a long time. I regret not spending more time outside; being cooped up in an office building for nine hours of my life every day is not my ideal way to spend time, but I’m getting used to it.

Other good things… Payday is tomorrow. Thanksgiving is next week. My cousin is coming home, and I’m going to see him for the holiday. It is a two-and-a-half day week. My friends visit in 42 days. I am reading Stephen King, and I am currently content with the moments that are moving through me.

It’s the first week of National Novel Writing Month, and I’m starting to get that old feeling again.

I cheated and told everyone that I’d only been doing it for six years, when really it’s seven. I guess time passes more quickly than I assume it does. Or maybe I’m getting old. Who knows? Either way, when I discussed it with someone at work, I left out my novel from last year. Whoops. So this is officially my seventh year, and if all goes well, it will be my sixth completed short novel. With so much written you’d think I’d be on my way to becoming a professional writer…

But that’s not the case.

Instead of focusing on my thusly failed career aspirations, let’s focus on what I do like about NaNo.

- the steep goal that is set every November. 50,000 words is a lot. I’m not going to be modest about how much it is, because it’s really a lot. In fact, it’s kind of ridiculous. Thirty days to write that many words. Let me tell you… only the very determined, reckless, or disciplined make it even halfway. And even then, 25,000 words is a huge accomplishment for most people.
- that once you hit the halfway mark, 50,000 doesn’t seem so bad. It doesn’t. Just think of the first two weeks as a warm up.
- that even if your story is shit, if you keep writing, magical things will happen. I’m not talking literally, like your characters start casting spells on one another (but they could if you wanted), but that after twenty or thirty pages, you really find your groove.
- sticking with it causes a sort of obsession that lasts the whole month. After you’ve invested two or three hours of your life every day for over a week to crafting this…this thing, it becomes imperative to finish. At least for me. I start thinking… what’s going to happen tonight? Or where do the characters go next? In desperation, although this is rare after the first week, I often think, what the hell can happen that will make this next 2,000 words interesting? The writing process is fascinating, really.
- once you’re finished… it’s this enormous relief. And then the pride just wells up inside of you. You’ve really done something amazing.
- and… every year it gets easier. If you finish one and find it exhilarating, inevitably you look forward to it again the next year. And the next. And then you feel guilty for not wanting to do it, or suddenly forgetting. It becomes a part of you, writing these novels. And your second year, November comes, drags on, and then is done. You think, where did my month go? and hopefully marvel at your next finished (if not crappy) novel.

What a feeling.

I’m at 6,036 words, right on schedule. What about you?

I’ve been doing it for five years; this year will be my sixth.

Every year I do the same thing. I procrastinate until the very last minute. Instead of thinking up an idea, I sit on my ass, watch movies, and believe that some miracle will happen and I’ll have an idea by the time November comes.

Well, it’s the same story this year. It’s almost November. National Novel Writing Month is in four days.

And I have very few ideas that inspire me. Yikes.