1,000 Words a Day: January Breakdown

After starting this 1,000 Words* a Day experiment, I thought I’d see how many words I’ve written since December 31st (I started a day early so I wouldn’t forget) – then break them down between the various stories I’ve worked on, to see where I’ve made the most progress.

TOTAL: 46,163 (?!?!? Was not expecting that number!)

NIHILISM: 11,689
EDGE: 4,450
SHADOW’S VOICE: 4,830
THE THIRTEENTH HOUR: 140
WAKING MAGIC: 2,545
SWITCH: 1,694
ICARUS BURNING: 7,141
GESTALT: 8,212
GEAS: 4,097

Summing up the stories doesn’t reflect the total, because there have been times when I counted words for a day only to erase them the next day and start over from scratch – and some of these are only the amount I wrote on the story in the past month, not the length of the stories overall.

Still…it’s pretty telling, don’t you think? It’s sure as hell indicative of what I need to fix in my writing workflow.

I have enough words written for half a novel, but I don’t have half a novel. I have fragments of several novels.

Which is what I expected out of the first month – and while it’s good to know I can write half a novel in a month (without the reckless lack of premeditation that characterizes NaNoWriMo), this demonstrates more than anything a need for consistency. But that’s why I’m doing this. This an exercise in building discipline, making a habit out of writing every day as a professional should; I may be a pantser, but even pantsers have to have discipline and dedication. That discipline comes in stages: first conditioning to write every day, then conditioning to write decently every day instead of page-vomiting to get to the word count, then conditioning to stay with one story and see it through rather than just waiting for one to strike inspiration and hold my attention long enough to finish. I’d say I’m fairly well along on the first two, and getting close to the third. I’ve told myself I’m going to finish NIHILISM, and that’s that.

So let’s see if I can get a good 30,000 words on NIHILISM in February, ne?

Tangent: Last night I finally saw Avatar. In 3D. Yes, I know I’m late. And while I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, I remembered why I don’t do 3D movies: my eyes hate me for a full 24 hours after. Last night I spent wandering around with my eyes terribly strained, struggling to restore depth perception in a truly three-dimensional world after two and a half hours spent viewing recorded images projected in multiple layered depths of field. I bumped into a lot of things. And this morning my eyes are just sleepy and sore, with a little difficulty focusing on things beyond a certain distance. I came away better than Hikaru, though. By the time we were even halfway through the film, he had a migraine so bad he could barely enjoy the movie.

As for the movie itself: it’s pretty much what I’d heard. Beautifully rendered visuals (slight disconnect between real and CGI, more obvious than people say it is), plot a mashup of about five or six other already-good movies, with your classic “white savior learns the old ways**/plight of the natives” storyline with some heavy-handed Earth Mother / environmentalist / corporate fatcat stuff thrown in.

It was still a damned fun film, with engaging characters and heartfelt emotion. And some damned awesome action. Just because I recognize it for what it is doesn’t mean I didn’t love the hell out of it. (And enjoyed that we ended up rooting for the aliens, not the humans, just like in District 9.) I’d like to see it again, actually.

…just…not in 3D.

Final note: I’m not saying much about the Amazon / MacMillan debacle. Others have already said it far better; just hit Google and you’ll see. But I will say that I was one paycheck away from buying a Kindle, and now I’ve started shopping for a Sony Reader because of this. And I’m not the only one. One consumer’s voice often makes no difference. But anger enough consumers, especially when those consumers are both writers and avid readers…and you’ve basically screwed yourself.

 

 

*I can’t type that without thinking of the “1,000 Words” song from FFX-2, and now it’s stuck in my bloody head.

**That’s the one thing I try not to think too hard about, as it would ruin my enjoyment of the movie since it’s a pet peeve. It wouldn’t make me as touchy as films like Last of the Mohicans and The Last Samurai, but that could be because oh, hey, I’m not part blue cat-person. But still. From the perspective of a non-white person, those movies can be a little insulting. And I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and saying LALALALA because dammit I LIKED Avatar and I want to keep liking it.

Make up a title for this. Be creative.

I’ve written two posts and then deleted the drafts because they weren’t quite right, weren’t really things I felt like discussing here…or they seemed preachy without any real point. I haven’t been blogging much because really, there’s only so many times that you can hear “I’m working on X story, I had problems with X story, I fixed them / I moved on to Y story when I got stuck.” So I’ve only been blogging when I feel I have something worth saying, and for the past week most of what I’ve had to say about writing, querying, etc. has been things I prefer to keep to myself. So…I guess, just for the sake of posting once this week, I’ll just pop on a vague status update in listy-list form:

• Haven’t missed a day on the 1k a day challenge yet.
• Discovered this may not be the best for my writing process, as forcing it is a good way to kill a story. Live and learn. Hitting the goal of 1,000 words doesn’t make them stink any less when all those words are trash. Eau de Literary Roadkill.
• Revived NIHILISM in story form. Go ahead and groan, Sihaya and Indikaze. SHINJI THE ANGSTBUNNY LIVES.
• Started watching Sita Sings the Blues, which has amazing animation and music.
• Got a few more partial requests on SHADOW’S BREATH.
• Got a few rejections, too. Either nice personal notes saying it’s a good story, I’m a good writer, but it’s not for them…or the usual “dear author” form letters. Onward and upward.
• Told my doubts they can kiss my shiny metal ass, and figured I can try to write a better story while waiting to see if an agent will pick up SHADOW’S BREATH.
• …though I also finished chapter one of SHADOW’S VOICE. Not working on that seriously, though. Sell SB first, then worry about the sequel. Although Roman is now popping up in my dreams. In Cabo. With the Kingpin. Yes, from Marvel comics. You really don’t want to know.
• Got really sick of hearing a thousand contradictory, argumentative predictions on the future of publishing. Also, the Apple tablet. Sweet honking baby jesus.
• Made some shiny new writer friends on Twitter. The large majority of them are batshit insane. That’s okay. I fit right in.
• Got a few good nibbles on editorial jobs; response so far has been positive. Looking good. And behaving myself in public while I try to get a foot in the door. Which means I probably shouldn’t be calling people batshit insane.
• Took a stab at writing a classic romance novel.
• Failed spectacularly and hilariously. I’m a little rusty on what goes where when there’s a woman involved.
• Realized drab, blow-by-blow lists like this are dull as hell.
• Signed off.

Finding North.

Compasses exist for one purpose: finding magnetic north, so we know where we are and where we’re going in relation to the rest of the world.

The compass metaphor has always had easy parallels in life, love, a dozen other aspects of our existence. Someone wandering without direction in life, constantly changing paths, is said to be seeking north. When we meet someone we’re instantly attracted to, we hone in on them like a compass finding north. And let’s not forget radar, the compass 2.0 – annoyances don’t ping on my radar, he’s so setting off my gaydar.

So it’s not surprising that when I find the right direction on a story, I call it “finding north.” I can tell within less than a chapter if a story I’m writing is going in the wrong direction – but until I find where north is for that story I can’t tell what the right direction should be, and I can’t finish it. Not even outlines help; I could know every event that will happen on every page, but without my north writing it just won’t work. It would be a dull, pedantic, recounting of events, not a story. I’d be turning in a circle, aimless, seeking a dozen directions but never able to choose just one as the right one.

North could be a major plot point, a flow of events, a certain voice. North could just be a hook, an opening line that sets the stage just right to give me a jumping-off point and some solid footing. No matter what it is, my story’s north tells me where I am in relation to the rest of the story, and the direction I should be heading. Without that I could write ten chapters and it still wouldn’t be a story; it would just be pointless rambling.

When I find north, I just know – like people with more iron deposits in their blood and bones having a better sense of direction, and just knowing unerringly which way they should be going. Every time is different, but every time brings that click, that knowledge that I’m going the right way and I just have to follow the path to its end. When I find north, the story almost tells itself; I hurtle along in my writing, picking up one piece here, another there, fitting it all together as characters and plot and conflict come alive and twine together into something that’s as much their journey through the tale as it is my journey through writing it.

And I’ve found north on Shadow’s Voice. I’ve found Ken’s voice again, somewhat changed after her experiences in Shadow’s Breath; I’ve found my opening hook, and the chain of scenes that will continue to change Kensington Randall’s life in irrevocable ways – some minor and personal, some sweeping and catastrophic. Will I get lost along the way? Yes. I’ll veer off the path with the queasy feeling in my stomach that this is the wrong direction, and I should turn back around. But eventually I’ll find my way back, whether by retracing my steps or finding a way around whatever obstacle is keeping my story from going where it should.

Because once I find north, I know I’ll be able to find the end of the road.

Snozzberries taste like wha?

Life lesson:

If you’re too tired to do something right, all the sworn avowals in the world don’t matter a damn when you just have to redo it the next day after gaping in horror at the rotten fruits of your own labor.

Yesterday I had a whirlwind day. Two resumes, a ton of e-mails to catch up on, and yet somehow I managed to write 4,000+ words on Shadow’s Voice. I promised myself that hell or high water, before bed I’d rewrite my query for Shadow’s Breath from scratch, focusing on something punchier that captures the dry humor in Ken’s voice without getting as bogged down in adjectives as the old one. By 11:00p I was practically drunk on my own tiredness, but I sat down and wrote the query anyway. Last night I thought it was okay – in need of some minor editing, but okay.

This morning I took one look at it and let out the mental equivalent of a shrill horror movie scream. It was horrible, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It got the basic ideas I wanted down, but the writing was so loose, clunky, and disjointed that the ideas got lost in a mess that was the literary version of teeth on unglazed porcelain. I’ve since rewritten it, fresh and bright after breakfast and a short work day, and the difference is amazing. Complete 180. I don’t think it’s the best query letter in the world, but it’s better than what I’ve been using and can’t even be compared to what I wrote last night. I should have just waited until this morning and saved myself the extra work.

Thankfully the pages of SV held up better under scrutiny, but those were written earlier in the day when I was still energetic and bushy-tailed. Chapter one’s almost done; just one short scene away, I think, though I want to work out how to end the chapter on some kind of tension. I also jotted down a few later scenes introducing a new character: Jordan, who already has both Anji and Amanda’s inner thirteen-year-olds all a-flutter. I think I like Jordan, though I’m still working out a few things about his base character and personality. Roman will most definitely hate him. Once I figure out those unresolved things on his personality, that’ll determine whether he hates Roman too, or if he’s just so charming he can’t even dislike that surly little monkey.

I’ve got this whole afternoon to write and am determined to stop wasting the time I have, so off I go. Before I do, though, this post is amazing. It actually made me cry, if only because it resonated so much with the frustrations I’ve been suppressing lately in an effort to stay cheerful and positive during the long, confidence-shredding road towards publishing. It’s just great to see a published author speaking so sympathetically and so frankly of (and to) her younger self’s doubts, mistakes, optimism, disappointment…everything every aspiring author goes through. It’s great inspiration to keep your head above water, keep trying, and keep a sensible head on your shoulders.

Dear technology: don’t be hatin’, yo.

Last night Hikaru got to deal with one of the fun perks of living with a writer: tolerating said writer’s late-night spaz-fits as he hops in and out of bed, running to the computer over and over again to jot down a few inspired lines of ‘genius’ only to retire to bed again.

And rinse and repeat for a few hours, each time with hasty apologies and promises that it’s the last time tonight.

Last night I finally hit that spark I needed for the beginning of Shadow’s Voice. I’ve been jotting down what I can here and there, but past history and experience with how I work have shown me that I need my introductory scene settled before I can make consistent progress on the story. It helps set the tone for what I’ll be writing later. I’ve been floundering on it, and while I had a basic idea of how I wanted it to start, what I’d come up with before was lackluster and missing a certain impact despite conveying what I’d intended.

So when the perfect opening line suddenly hit me last night, seeming to crack open my skull so a font of ideas and jumbled words could pour out, I couldn’t just go to sleep and let it wait until morning. By morning I’d have forgotten it, like a half-remembered dream where I know what happens but the electric clarity is gone (much like the original intro). Three or four times I ran out of bed to jot things down, add on to what I’d written before, and overall make sure I didn’t miss a thing. Even when I fell asleep my mind was still churning through things I wanted to add, but they were smaller things I felt safe saving until morning.

So this morning I dashed out of bed and, before even starting work, added a couple of pages of notes and dialogue outlines to what I’d started last night. Happy, energetic, I saved the work and moved on to start today’s client project.

Now lately my darling laptop, the apple of my eye, my main conduit to the outside world, my obedient little mechanical lapdog, has been misbehaving badly when I ask it to print certain things. By ‘misbehaving’ I mean ‘forcing me to hard reboot after all my programs hang, terminating processes helps nothing, and it won’t reboot through standard procedures.’ I’m thinking it may be time to backup my data and just do a wipe and clean install.

That won’t bring back what I lost this morning, though.

It crashed. It crashed, and it ate everything I’d done on Shadow’s Voice this morning, despite the fact that I know I saved as I wrote. In fact, I’m entirely neurotic about that. Every other sentence, Ctrl+S. Every day I even save new versions in case I delete stuff that I might want to reference later. What I wrote this morning should have been there when I rebooted, either in an auto-recover save or in my original file.

It wasn’t. And while I managed to mostly reconstruct what I’d written, I was still not happy.

~eyes his computer~ Why don’t you love me anymore? We cleaned out the giant ball of lint in your heat sink, I brushed out your keyboard, I got you a shiny new chill mat that keeps your processor nice and cool. Why you gotta hurt the ones who love you?

…okay, I’m done being a dork.