Revisiting NaNoWriMo 2015

Welcome back to Cogitations of a Semi-Pro Wordsmith. As many of you may know, I participated in NaNoWriMo 2015 and was successfully able to get more than 58,000 words written in a science fiction novel. I am in the process now of revising that work, but I wanted to take a moment and look back at my NaNoWriMo experience.

Starting Out

I vacillated between about three project ideas in the two months beforehand, until I finally settled on Universo Responsoriis. One of them I’m pretty sure will be my NaNoWriMo 2016 attempt, and so I’ve been working on the plot and outline of that idea ever since. I am definitely a “plotter” for NaNoWriMo projects!

Leading up to the 1st of November, I continued to tweak and rearrange the plot here and there, and I also assembled a small collection of motivational doodads. I found an awesome printable calendar by David Seah at http://davidseah.com/node/nanowrimo-word-calendar/ (and I am looking forward to his 2016 version!), which I printed and put up on the wall in my office. I sat down with my calendar software, and set recurring events for my writing time (early morning and late evening, with occasional lunch-time endeavors), including alarms. I changed my wake-up alarm to make sure I had ample opportunity to start my Caffeine IV drip (kidding—it was a transdermal patch) and eat some breakfast before sitting down to write. I scheduled time for 27 of the 30 days, not including Thanksgiving nor two of the Sundays in November. For those days, I figured I’d be able to write a little more before and after, and still keep pace.

On Halloween, I stayed up late—as a night owl, this is not a problem for me—and started writing just after midnight. I stayed up through until pretty early, maybe 2 am MST (in Arizona, we don’t do DST*) and wrote a few words, and then did my two other scheduled writing times. First day’s total was 5,023 words. Yeah, that’s correct, more than 10% of the month’s scheduled output in the first day. Tip: this is easier at the beginning! Since I had a wide-open story, it was easy to pick a couple of critical scenes and go to town.

For NaNoWriMo 2016, I plan to do the same and get as much written after midnight on the 1st as I can. If you are an early riser, try it the other way and get up earlier. I found that writing that many words right out of the gate took the pressure off. While I did still get something like 2,500 words per day average for the next couple of weeks, it was still helpful to know that a big base was already present.

Also, I had a few Writing Buddies both on the site itself and on Twitter, and staying connected with them was a huge help. We communicated pretty much daily, cheering each other’s successes and helping alleviate any issues the others hit on the way. It was both inspiring to see other people crush their daily counts, as well as a challenge to keep up—especially since two of them had higher goals (75k was one? And 70k for another?), and both had to finish early due to other commitments. That posed a challenge, not to get too caught up in trying to keep up with writers who had more ambitious goals. It was still fun, though, and I recommend that anyone attempting this get some good Writing Buddies and communicate with them regularly (daily or more if possible).

Daily, Weekly Goals

I set higher goals for myself for daily and weekly writing compared to the NaNoWriMo recommendations. At first, I aimed for 1,750 words/day, and 13,500/week. I know they don’t equal each other added up, but I also knew that if I set a higher weekly goal, it would give me an incentive to keep writing when I wanted to give up. It worked. I think I’ll have the same goals next year.

For much of the first couple of weeks, I was keeping my average up around 2,500 words/day. That would be ideal for me, but I don’t know if I can keep up that kind of a pace for a whole month!

Struggles

There were some days where I struggled to get even a few words, most of them unplanned activities that took up long parts of the day. Because I knew that might happen, I wanted to make sure I was as far ahead as I could get, so I didn’t have to worry too much about missing time here and there.

More significantly, I found it a struggle once I got past about 52,000 words, for the opposite reason I found it so easy at first. I was surprised to find that once I got that far in, my hands were kind of tied about how I proceeded, and I found myself having to go back and forth to make sure that I was still being consistent with the story and timelines. Now that I know that, however, I think I’ll be better able to work around that for 2016’s edition.

Some Strategies for 2016

Much of the initial structuring worked well, so I intend to repeat it again: having a strong outline, with the Scrivener project all set up long before hand. Preplanning the days of the month, and setting high goals worked, so I will repeat that. I think my next story (for NaNoWriMo, anyway) will probably support about 62K words, so I’m going to plan around that. That works out to about 2,000 words/day so I’ll have to aim a little higher than I did in 2015.

One thing I didn’t do and hadn’t planned to do was meet ups or write-ins (virtual or otherwise). I think next year I will look at doing a couple of these, maybe one virtual and one live. I know there were a few events nearby, I just hadn’t planned to go to them and so I didn’t really pay much attention.

One other thing I will do more completely for 2016 is to have a bunch of character names already selected! I did run into an issue where I needed another minor character and had to stop to get a name. That sometimes ate into my writing time and disrupted my flow.

In Conclusion

I found NaNoWriMo 2015 an enlightening and exciting experience, and I am already looking forward to NaNoWriMo 2016. With the experience I gained from this one, I feel like I will be even more successful at the next.

What NaNoWriMo experiences have you had? If you have ever won, what do you think contributed to your success? If you tried but didn’t win for whatever reason, what things would you do differently? Leave comments below, so we can all benefit from your wisdom!

Reflections: Lectito.me interviews of 3 NaNoWriMo authors

The final interview of NaNoWriMo authors by Lectito.ME is now live. Three of the writers Lectitio.me followed during our journey toward 50,000 words in one month give their reflections, and offer a little advice and encouragement to others who are considering it for 2016.

5 NaNoWriMo Authors share their week 4 thoughts, on Lectitio.ME

Lectito.ME has the week 4 update from the 5 authors they've been following for NaNoWriMo 2015. Read all about it!

NaNoWriMo updates from the 5 Lectito.ME writers

Website Lectito.ME has posted their week 3 update on the 5 writers they're profiling for NaNoWriMo 2015, go have a look!

NaNoWriMo Week 3 thoughts

End of week 3 of NaNoWriMo, and I can say something I've never said before about this:

I won. :D

Indeed, I had a good plan, stuck to it for the most part, and was able to write every single day. Some days, many days, I was able to write a lot more than the minimum to keep up, some days not quite as much. The key thing I've learned so far is to keep at it. Maintain the daily focus to write, even just a few hundred words, and that makes all the difference between an idea for a story, and an actual story.

I'm not finished yet. This novel still has two scenes that I haven't yet written at all, so there's work there to do yet, and a couple of the scenes I have written still need additional fleshing out in order to work right. But the vast majority of the story is there. There are important characters who died, loved, and lost. But in the end, it is all for the best.

Now comes what will probably be the harder part: revising it! Editing, I suspect, will take twice as long as did the writing part, and frankly that's okay. It is absolutely an illusion that writing flows from an author's pen or fingertips as effortlessly as sunlight streams through windswept leaves. It sucks, first. Then after being reviewed and edited, it sucks less. Then after being reviewed and edited more, it sucks even less. Et cetera, ad infinitum. Well, not quite, eventually the story either starts to really shine, or it maybe is set aside for something else. In any case, it is hard work, contrary to the romantic illusion.

Stats for the week:

Weekly word count: 14,053

Weekly average/day: 2,008

Total for month: 51,436

(totals are slightly different on the graphic because of the way NaNoWriMo's counter counts words, vs. how Scrivener counts them.)

Last Week's Goal Updates:

I did kill two, in fact I killed four characters (two important ones, two minor ones). Space combat is dangerous, what can I tell ya? I also did write every single day last week.

This Week's Goal Updates:

This week, I want to maintain the momentum of writing daily. I may not write as much in this work, even though I still have work to do, but I also have a freelance gig writing for another blog (details when blogs are published) so I'll also be doing that. Daily writing, of some kind, that's the goal.

Editing I am still going to wait on; I want to get all of the entire work out first. December & January seem like ideal times for that!

I'm still on track to hit 60k for the month, which would be a nice round figure—as well as a great foundation, from which to cull the best story possible.

NaNoWriMo (Universo Responsoriis) teaser — Space Command Pilot Graduation Speech

I wasn't planning on posting any of the work I've been doing for NaNoWriMo, mostly because I was following the advice of one of my Mentors +Jamie Davis the @podmedic to just let it suck, and I'm pretty sure it does. Even if it does suck, though, I'm kinda fond of it, and thought I'd share it for feedback and just general information.

***

General Dodson stood at the front of the assembled formation, standing at attention awaiting his command. Thirty-six applicants, all highly distinguished fighter pilots from the US Air Force, US Navy & Marine Corps, Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Israeli Air Force, Russian Air Force, and People’s Liberation Army Air Force, had completed the selection process—more than three hundred started it—and they were being acknowledged for their accomplishment today. They were also going to get bad news: there are only four fighters scheduled for completion in the next month, so the rest of them will have to just train in simulators for at least a half year while industrial capacity catches up to demand and testing requirements.
“At Ease, ladies and gentlemen. First, allow me to be the first to officially congratulate you all on completing the initial Earth Defense Space Command fighter training class. Each of you has proven to be an amazing warrior, ready to take the fight to our mostly unknown, highly advanced adversary. You have endured months of zero-gravity flight training, suit malfunctions, planet or orbiting body reentry procedures, and you have done it with the grace, determination, and sheer power of will the human species requires of the officers who will defend it.
“Your training, of course, is not completed here. This stage is the end of the beginning; starting Monday, you will be reporting to your new squadron commands for your next steps as the tip of the spear for Space Command, leading the fight against our mysterious enemy.
“There is much we know about them: they are highly advanced, and utilize technologies that have and will continue to awe us. For all their advanced technology, and the deference we afford them for it, they have weaknesses. Some we have already uncovered, more will be evident as this war progresses. We have incorporated some of our understanding of their weaknesses into future battle planning already, and as we gain experience from conflict with them, we will exploit more; you, will exploit more. You, the men and women of class 2033-01, will be the most important part of that battle plan. We can give you all the weapons we can muster, all the technology in the universe, and it all means nothing without deliberate, planned, focused application. Your efforts will have more say in the future of humanity than will any of our engineers, software developers, architects, or generals. They are important pieces, don’t get me wrong, but without the highly trained decision makers we graduate here today taking their technology and this training—and that to come—all the technology in the world is wasted.
“Standing here in front of you, I know that our efforts will not be wasted, will not be subjected to the demands of an as-yet faceless and nameless enemy. I see the best pilots in human history, and I know that our human approach to the delivery of war to them will be the deciding factor. Humanity will survive this crisis, as it has a multitude of crises in the past, by the one thing that makes us human: our compassion, our love, our drive to succeed and to do so by lifting each other up to higher ground.
“I am proud that the initial defense of humanity is led by you. You are the latest stage of millennia of human evolution, more highly trained and focused than any that have come before you. The hopes of humans everywhere, all people on Earth today and in all the tens of thousands of years gone by and yet to come, is in your capable hands, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
General Dodson then stood to attention, and called out “Class, attenTION!” The class responded immediately, all of them snapping to in unison. “Earth Defense Space Command Class Twenty Thirty-Three dash Zero One, I hereby declare you to be graduated, and to take on the missions that lie before all of humanity. You must succeed. You will succeed. CLASS DISMISSED, FALL OUT!”

***

NaNoWriMo updates from the 5 Lectito.ME writers

The updates for week #2, for the five writers featured on Lectito.me, are available! Head over there for the latest!

NaNoWriMo week 2 thoughts

So, it's Saturday November 14th. NaNoWriMo's "official" halfway point is tomorrow, and after two weeks of my first actual attempt to do this, here are my current thoughts.

Impressions

To start, I am really happy with my decision to do this. I've connected with some very cool people, and I've gotten so much better about "being a writer."

What does that mean, even? Well ... here's how I see it. An "author" is a person who publishes a book of some kind. There are lots of people who are authors, but are not really "writers." To my way of thinking, a "writer" is someone who writes because they have things to say. I have stories I'd like to tell, but if they sit in my head I'm not a writer. In fact, all I really am, at that point, is a creative dreamer or thinker.

When I sit at the computer to type the stories I have in my head down into a document, that's when I'm a "writer." That's the transition, and is the part I hadn't really quite figured out how to make work, at least not consistently.

As it turns out, it's really—for me, at least—as simple as saying "sit down and write." Making the time, forcing myself to have a goal every single day, as I have for NaNoWriMo, has proven to me that the main factor in wanting to call myself a "writer" is to just write. Yes, I also need to read. Yes, I also need to research. Yes, I also need to edit and proofread (although, I am not doing those things to my NaNoWriMo project yet, that's what December & January are for, for me), and I need to market and network and give people a reason to want to try reading the stuff I have written. But most important of all these things, I have to write. Steven King is famous for saying (among other things) that the writer who doesn't read lacks the tools to write well, and yes I need to read to get better. But if all I do is read, I'm a reader, not a writer. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So what I've learned in two weeks of NaNoWriMo is that I am absolutely capable of being a writer, if that's what I intend to do, and the first "trick" is to just plan time every day to sit down and write. Without the overriding "goal" of NaNoWriMo, though, what are some motivations I can use instead? What I plan to do is to continue to set weekly word goals, and focus on one or maybe two projects at a time. They probably won't be as ambitious as current goals—11,669 words/week for NaNoWriMo is fine—but a 5k/week goal seems reasonable for new writing projects (that works out to just less than 715 words/day). I will also need to set aside time to edit and polish this novel, as well as other works I will finish, so I also intend to set aside time each day for that process, as well. Maybe write new stuff in the morning, and edit or proofread or whatever in the evening.

But what I have learned the most is that I can do it. If I actually want it, it's there for me.

Alright onto the nitty-gritty.

Words for the week: 18,003
Average/day: 2,572
Total for month: 36,013

Goal updates

Main goal of course remains to get at least 50K with a "wouldn't it be great if" of 60K and even 75K by the 30th, both of which are certainly within reach.

First resolution: kill two more characters (I promise, it actually fits!)

Second: Every single day, write at least once, and preferably twice. I set my Scrivener session word count to reset every time I close/open the project, so the word count is by writing session. I have it set to the NaNoWriMo daily goal of 1,667, and although I haven't gotten each session that high every day twice a day, I have used it as a motivator to not give up yet on a session ("you can't get up, you're still in the red! Write at least until you get to the orange!").

So, that's week two for me, let me know how you're doing in the comments!

Week 1 check in blog from Lectito.ME

As part of the NaNoWriMo festivities Lectito.ME is following five authors, and I am one of the five. Week 1 of NaNoWriMo is done, and all five of us have checked in to provide feedback and encouragement.

NaNoWriMo 2015, week 1 thoughts

It's been a week since I started my first National Novel Writing Month, and it's been an interesting experience so far.

First, I want to give props to a trio of inspiring fellow authors: Jamie Davis (the Podmedic), Sam Bradley (@SamBradley11), and B A Wilson (@BAWilsonWrites). Each of them has given a unique insight and inspiration to my efforts, and they deserve credit for reaching out to help a stranger reach his goals.

Second, I'd like to pass on a couple of things I've already learned, based on my experience and the advice of those authors above. Write! Write first. Write a lot. Write without too much concern for the polish, the flow, the "sound" of what you're writing. It can be edited later; in fact, you will almost certainly need to edit it later. It will be really rough. It may even suck. As Jamie told me: "let it suck." For those readers who, like me have a desire to constantly polish and fix things, please hear me echo his advice: don't. Seriously, let it suck, and write a lot of stuff that sucks. Michelangelo touched on this idea, noting "every block of stone has a statue inside it"; write a big block of stone, and only later, go back in and chisel out the story hidden inside. Said another way, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, "it seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove." I believe that I will find it easier to remove and polish a lot of sucking writing, and turn it into a finely crafted story, than to try to fix small pieces.

On to the stats:
Average daily words: 2,572.
Largest single day: 01 NOV, with 5,023 words
Total words: 18,010.
Words remaining: 31,990
Estimated finishing date: 20 NOV.

I am aiming to hit at least one more day (probably Monday) of 5k words.

To my fellow NaNoWriMo writers, keep up the good work, and even if you're not as far along as you'd like, you're still farther along than you were!

One of five featured NaNoWriMo authors on lectito.me

Lectito.me has graciously started a series of blog entries on NaNoWriMo, and I was one of five authors selected to discuss my experiences on their site.

NaNoWriMo 2015 day 1 thoughts

Just a brief note based on my first day's activities (3,593 words so far, and I might try to get in a third session before bed).

First, the general advice that I got to 1) not edit, just write? Good advice, but oh so very tough for me! I edit as I think, mostly (I suspect a lot of other writers do, too), and I often will backspace or re-write a passage as I'm writing it. I'm trying to break that habit, though, in the interest of getting words on pages.

Second, the advice to just be okay with sucking, at first? GREAT advice (and, thanks to Jamie the Podmedic, +Jamie Davis). I am 100% okay with the first (very rough) draft being kinda icky to re-read later, because I'ma go in there and edit the heck out of it anyway.

Third, Scrivener. I love this tool anyway, but I changed the way I use the Project Tracker for now. It was set up, as was advised in many places, to track the overall project as well as per-session by using the deadline method. In short, if you open the Project Tracker on a Mac you can click "Options" and tell it when your writing deadline is, and how many words total, and it will calculate the daily word count accordingly. This is fine, but I found a better way for me: I did all that, then turned off the Automatically calculate from Draft Deadline checkbox. I set the session target for 1,667 words, and also changed the reset option to reset every time I close the project. That means that I have a session target of 1,667 every time I open it up. For me, it's just easier to close Scrivener when I'm finished, so I'm not tempted to edit right now (which I totally would!), and it also kinda kicks up my writing a notch. Next time I open it, I'll have a full day's worth of words as a goal, even if that happens later tonight. That certainly means I can blast through 3k+ words in a day several times, and have some leeway for things like Thanksgiving, etc.

Anyway, that's my first impression. Don't expect a blog entry every day, but I will endeavor to update again next Sunday.

NaNoWriMo 2015 plan

NaNoWriMo 2015 is nearly upon us! Here's my plan, including posting my progress.

First, I should point out that I changed my novel. I have had an idea in my head for a couple of years now, for a sci-fi novel about answering Enrico Fermi's famous "Where is everybody?" question. A while ago I created a pretty detailed outline for it, then set it aside. I tried to resurrect it as a short story a few months ago, and decided to wait, and now I'm glad I did.

With that in mind, I went ahead and switched. And the outline for it is quite detailed, although still somewhat incomplete (there are a couple of parts with just chapter names, for example), so that will definitely help. Daily, I plan to spend the first 2 hours of my day writing, setting those aside for me to be neck-deep in Scrivener in full-screen mode. That may not be long enough, so I also plan to spend an hour before bed. We'll see how that goes.

The plan is to aim for 1,750 words/day, with a daily minimum of 1,667. Sundays will be "makeup" days; if there are any days during a week I was short, I'll aim to make up for it on Sunday.

I have my calendar ready (for a really nice one, check out Dave Seah's excellent NaNoWriMo 2015 calendar), and posted near my desk.

I will post daily word count updates to my NaNoWriMo profile and probably Twitter, with weekly updates to all my social media accounts, probably on Sundays. (That may change, depending on the integrations available through the website!)

I am nervous, but as ready as I can be, I think!

NaNoWriMo 2015 prep details

Since there are really a lot of outstanding suggestions on how to prep for NaNoWriMo—including their own outstanding prep page—I thought I'd just share a quick note about my own personal prep work for this year (then, next year, I'll post a similar one in earlier October, and do a "lessons learned" followup).

First, is the software side: since I have my MacBook Air, I don't do a lot of writing on my iPad anymore—that will likely change when Scrivener for iPad is finally released—so I just set up Scrivener for all local editing (i.e., no Simplenote or External Folder Sync setup). I did create the Project file in a subfolder in my Dropbox folder. That way, all changes are synced up to Dropbox auto-magically, and if my MBA were to take a dump or get stolen I could still recover my files.

In addition, since it's not often a good idea to keep all of your eggs in one CloudAge™ Basket (that is, what happens if Dropbox gets cracked? Or if their internal controls are a little lax and their CTO got fired and unleashed a WormOfDoom™ on their server farms? Or Aliens invade from Pentax V? What about the Aliens, man?! ... it will help if you hear Jeff Bridges' voice as Flynn from the original Tron, here), I also whipped up a short Automator application that will copy my NaNoWriMo project from my Dropbox to a backup folder in my Box account. What I did here was open Automator (in the Applications folder, usually), dragged the Files & Folders->Get Specified Finder Items action and clicked "Add" to put my NaNoWriMo file as the input, then dragged the Copy Finder Items action and selected the backup folder location (as noted, on my Box drive). You could substitute a local external drive, a burn folder, or a different service of course; in addition, it would be fairly straightforward to chain another action together, to make multiple backups every time. Since I have a pretty robust backup strategy already in place, I don't necessarily bother with the most paranoid parts of my mind. If you're not comfortable with just one backup, however, modifying this to back up to multiple locations should be pretty easy.

Now, the Scrivener project itself. First, I opted for a "Fiction->Novel (with Parts)" template. When I am writing a fiction piece, I usually choose this as the base because of how I organize—many of you won't do it this way, and that's okay, just know that my brain is weird and this is how I roll. This format makes it easy for me to organize initially.









To start with, I generally begin with a "LOCK" analysis (straight from Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell), and I put each of the major elements Lead, Objective (1), Confrontation (1), Obj(2), Confront(2) etc. in as a "Part" (a.k.a, Folder) at the main level underneath "Manuscript" on the corkboard. I then rename those folders to something more descriptive, and use the heck out of the corkboard's note feature to give a brief description of what should happen inside this folder. Inside them, I put "Chapters", which I also give descriptive names and notes (these example Chapters don't have descriptive names, this is just a sample image). From there I add scenes to get started, and write the scenes as I go. Sometimes, I find I need additional items—maybe there are multiple Confrontations—and I can just drop them right in, add chapters & scenes ad hoc, and keep on keeping on. As I go along, I modify the structure based on how the story develops, adding or deleting things as needed.

Second, the mental side: I found a free online Nov 2015 month I could fit on a page, and made a Word Count calendar and printed it out. It hangs up on the wall next to my work space in my office, and I have printed on it how many total words should be written by each day of the month. Every day, before I shut down my computer and get ready to sleep, I will write down the number of words written that day, as well as the overall word count, and can see at a glance every second I'm in the office how I'm doing. My closest friends and family are aware not to bother me while I'm writing, and in particular that I need to crank during November, so that will help as well. There are still a few days left, so I will probably tweak the structure of the novel and work on character and setting background, but I think at this point I'm doing alright for prep!

So, for NaNoWriMo 2015, I have pre-organized the basic plot outline for my novel with Parts, Chapters, and Scenes. Now, all I have to do is wake up sometime on 01 NOV 2015 and start writing the heck out of the Next Great American Thriller Novel™.

NaNoWriMo 2015

I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo 2015, and thought I'd share a few thoughts about my prep as it gets closer.

First, the book: I started with a couple of different ideas, but last night had one of the in-color, extremely vivid dreams that my sleep is heir to—many of my dreams are movie-quality, it's kinda cool!—and completely changed gears. Instead of the sci-fi world-building novel I originally envisioned (without much real background, to speak of), I'll be working on a thriller/suspense novel. I don't have a title for it yet, but here's the back-cover blurb I came up with:

Steven Johnson is a police detective, and has seen some pretty bizarre things in his time on the force. He never imagined the mesmerizing woman he met at Story's Restaurant and Bar would lead him to the strangest case of his life. Why are there jail cells in the walk-up apartment she seems to call "home"? Why is she so afraid of the other person who seems to live there?

Yeah, it needs work, but that's just the first brush of the plot! So anyway, it literally came to me in a dream, and we'll see how far it goes.

Second, the work: To write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days takes—let's see, drop the remainder, carry the one—an average of one thousand six hundred sixty-six and two-thirds words every day of the month. If that seems like a lot, it does seems a little much for every day writing; most writing advice I see tells a budding writer to aim for 250 or 500 words/day as a goal. Having said that, 500 words is really not that much, being able to sit down three times a day and write 500 words each time will get me very close to the daily goal, so that's my goal: 500 words per sitting session, sitting at least three times a day just to write.

Third (and finally), other goals: I am almost certainly not blogging my daily progress (I am not the world's best daily blogger in any event!), but I aim to post occasional updates, and a weekly progress report.

Scrivener has already been primed, the project is ready and project targets have been set. It's almost go-time!