On the forums, someone posted a method for sprinting towards the goal line and achieving nanowrimo glory.

1. Commit. (No really! Decide once again to finish.)

2. Write for 15 minutes. Ramble, coast, pad out scenes, whatever. Don’t stop and definitely don’t think about it. Just typey-type until your fingers get warm and numb.

3. Stop after 15 minutes and take a break of at least 15 minutes. The break is important. Go hang out with the cat or watch TV or both.

4. Repeat! Try for 200 words per session, and do it as often as you can.

So last night and today, I watched football games and wrote. My word count for each 15 minute session varied between 551 and 893 words. For some reason, it’s just easier at night, so last night I was storming through.

Anyway, I pushed my way into 43K, and now my progress page says “with 5 days left, expected to finish in 5 days.” This is much better than being expected to finish in, say 12 days with 5 days left. I saw that on Friday.

Thursday, we’re done!

I’m about to start playing really dirty with this writing game. I’ve had a few days off and in that time, I started to think about some different stories, (the usual: spaceships, pirates, monsters, minor prophets of the old testament.) Of course, it’s too late to start over and write one of these other ideas, isn’t it?

Well, not if you cheat. It seems that, in a library setting, you can have a character pick up any book you can imagine, and if you describe what they’re reading, well, before you know it, you’re writing that scifi action adventure you’ve been thinking about, or that tortured monster with a human soul story, or that one where the minor prophet teleports through time to convince modern-day scholars that he was really a major prophet. Okay, I made that last one up just now, but it’s probably the best idea.

So, there’s still a chance I could make 50K in 17 days, but this thing is going to be all over the place.

National Novel Writing Month is here to stay, at least for 23 more days. The past few days were like a trip down Cooke road, just west of High Street. (It’s hilly. Lots of ups and downs.) Sunday and Monday morning, I really didn’t know what to write, nor did I know where I was going with the story. I wrote a quick post to the nanowrimo forums which said my tagline was “Ghosts turn a library into a disco of fire and soulstealing.” What the crap is that?! That, my friends, is what happens when I make stuff up. I beg, borrow and steal from my surroundings, in this case “Danger! High Voltage” by Electric Six, and see if anything comes from it. I wasn’t really putting anything together, even from such an inspiring tagline.

Then the self-doubt crept in and I considered, albeit briefly, ceasing this silly activity.

But somewhere along the way yesterday as I haunted the halls of my office building, I got an idea that could build off of what I already wrote. Actually, it just gives some structure, a beginning, middle and ending. It also allows me to introduce some characters I was working on at this time last year, some little demonic heroes who are really easy to write.

So I’m back on track, and this morning while I was writing, I felt like I was there, watching something happen and just recording it. It was fun and there’s more fun to follow, I think.

(Sorry for the lack of detail regarding the story. More to come.)

Wake up, make some coffee, pet the cat. Enjoy the silence and the dark morning sky.

My participation in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is bringing me great happiness and an abundance of absurdity. Losing myself in the activity of writing for several hours each morning, while making me somewhat nutty, has triggered some spark of new thought. It’s neat.

The first day went slowly. I think I wrote 600 words, each one pulled kicking and screaming from my brain. On the second day of writing, I scrapped them and started over. When I understand why I did that, I’ll try to explain it. I’m glad I restarted, because it’s a lot easier now.

I’m about 1600 words off schedule, as of this post, which represents about three hours at the pace I’m going. I should be able to catch up this weekend.

The characters are taking shape. The three I’ve introduced so far are taken from folks I’ve known, along with the setting. The narrative spends a lot of time in the characters’ heads, which I know will have to change if I want to write some action-driven scenes of a more humor/horror genre.

“Enthusiasm commitee, what is your status,” asked the foreman.

A young woman wearing faded, torn jeans and a black t-shirt that read “Iron Maiden,” stood, rifling through her notepad. “Varying levels, as usual. A whimsical quote from the History department entered the Mind when we tested. Something from a summer camp experience. ‘Boy, are we enthusiastic.’ I believe it represents a forced, sarcastic response.”

The foreman stroked the hairs of his gray moustache. “Did you cross-reference this with the Desire sub-team?”

The woman in the black t-shirt was about to reply when another young woman blurted, “desire’s good. Enthusiasm received a learned response, that’s all.”

The foreman arched an eyebrow and turned to the second woman. “So, he’s into it?”

“Yep. He’s just reacting to Stress,” she replied, sitting back comfortably in her chair. The woman with the torn jeans slowly sat, glaring at her interupter coldly.

The foreman looked at his watch. He knew his team was running out of time, but for some reason, a solution eluded them. Nothing to do but continue to eliminate possibilities. Maybe then they could find the brick wall that was preventing the Mind from creating.

“Folks, we must get this Mind to begin the brainstorming process immediately. Chop chop.”

This silly narrative contains approximately 207 words. It took me 15 minutes to write them. During this quarter-hour, I edited, googled words and stared off into space, “thinking”, my usual writing behaviors.

In order to complete the 50,000 word novel in the month of November, one strategy is to write 1600 words a day. If my little test is my benchmark, then it looks like a 1600 word session will take me around 2 hours. I seem slow.

My brain immediately jumps into scheduling-mode. Here’s November.

Monday - Friday
5 AM. Alarm goes off. Don’t hit snooze, it will drive everyone to madness. Get up. Dress in comfies. Make coffee and pet the cat. Sit and stare. Turn on computer. Do not

check email. Do not check blogs.
5:30 AM - Start writing. Just go. Don’t stop to criticize. Make it happen.
7:30 AM - Pencils down. Shower. Forget about the story. Don’t dwell on it all day.

Saturday
7 AM. Sleep in until now. Make coffee and brush the cat.
7:30 - Write and forget about the mistakes or the made-up peanut gallery that is critiquing your every word.
11:30 AM - Watch football. Play. Eat.

Sunday
Off!

Note to self: look into mental conditions that have over-scheduling as an indicator or symptom.

(Three months later… )
I pulled a fast one this week and moved my website. Previously on Lost, I was using a high-falootin’ Typepad account which was very easy and slick but rather expensive for that sort of blogging service. This past year I learned more about creating my own hosted websites with various php/mysql components, so I started to feel like I no longer needed Typepad. So, since my Typepad account was about to renew this month, I cancelled it.

I use Dreamhost for my webhosting and I set up this new blog using their one-click wordpress install. I have a couple of websites that use this format. One is a new gaming blog and the other will be a webcomic. This morning I thought of one more I’m going to make: a blog for my go at the National Novel Writing Month in November.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, if you’re interested in trying to write 50,000 words in November, sign up at the website and make it go! If you do, let me know. I’d love to be a part of a novel-writing support group, and I have plenty of friends who write well. You know who you are. In fact, I just threw down the gauntlet to one friend who could write a killer novel with one side of his brain tied behind his back.

Imagine Buffaloaf here dancing to the theme song to Benny Hill. It’s a really slow, bouncy dance, and his arms don’t drop the whole time. He just hops from foot to foot, really. Occasionally, he spins and shakes his tail back and forth. Kevin James comes to mind.

I want to try to make my drawings look like they have weight, like they take up space. If you have some feedback about this, lemme know.

In the room of project ideas in my head, the cartooning-bug, once dried-up and dead in the corner of the ceiling, has become juicy again, glowing, and has swooped down and bit me. SPACE started it, after meeting people like Matt Hawkins. He draws “Cowboy Clyde and the Pirates,” my favorite find at SPACE. He had me laughing out-loud a lot. I recommend it, especially if you find yourself working a job that you really don’t like but need to keep to pay the bills. Also described as a “G.O.O.D.” job, (get out of debt.)

I’m glad I finished my little Emet and Jhomm stories. I’ll probably come back to them. But the cartoony stories and characters are easier to think up right now. Guys like Buffaloaf, Figgle and Gweeb seem to really live and talk and over-eat and make uncertain noises. I hope to finish off a nice-sized graphic novel some day, and I think the first one will be made up of short stories featuring cartoon characters. (It’s important to make your goals specific. I also hope to travel somewhere someday, and to learn more about something.)