chronicled & illustrated

And on the Seventh Day: YOU CAN’T REST!!!!!

I’ve only just begun today’s writing, but I wanted to post this NuancNanoTip because it’s one I believe in greatly and which I’ve already used this year to my advantage.

I went into this November with a setting, characters and a world in a mess. Several plot threads were obvious and necessary but each day when I tried writing about one of them, I would get stopped. It seemed boring to write and like it would be dull to read (those two things go together!) and one day I let it keep me from writing altogether. That’s a HUGE no-no! Some old tapes wound around in my head telling me that I had to write this as planned or I’d be somehow hurting my efforts. That not writing it was backing away from something hard—and therefore, necessary.

Luckily, I find it pretty easy to ignore those kinds of mental lectures from the past.

I remembered several things. I remembered that it’s just a first draft. I remembered that if it’s hard to write, it might be because I need to change what I thought I was going to write and write something more interesting! That I might need to let it simmer a bit, find out more about what’s happening with all the characters and that there might be a twist-in-the-action I hadn’t thought of yet, that would let it be more fun to write and read.

So, I left in the partial muddle of a scene and skipped ahead to other things.

Surprising things have been coming from my fingertips; things I hadn’t planned but which are anything but boring to write. And just this morning, I’ve been able to re-approach the dastardly scene from a different angle. I feel so much better about it.
I was ready.

I have to get my cool back so I can write today.

I’ve been searching through my computer looking for files that are lost.

I’ve never been a tidy person. Try as I do, my actual paper files are not organized perfectly. I’m always behind on filing things and even I cannot remember whether I filed car insurance papers under “I” for insurance, “C” for car or “H” for Honda. But for all that, I can usually find things.

This morning I was searching for business cards I made in August or early September. I have a folder for these things. It’s labelled: EPIC/logos, letterheads, business cards. But they aren’t there. Sheesh! I can find other things I made at that time. But these are simply not where they are supposed to be. It’s so completely frustrating!

If I can’t rely on my computer to keep the things that I’ve filed in the place I tell it to file them, what the hell can a slightly disorganized person do?! I would ordinarily assume that I’d just wasn’t paying attention and that they’d gone into an alternate graphic folder but, no. I can’t find them. And it seems even more mysterious because there are five files, one for each Board member! How could five separate files disappear?

Sigh.

Anyway, I have to give up because I’m using all my writing time to search for files that aren’t essential right now. I just kept thinking that I’d find them, because I know they have to be there! Writing time is dwindling as I have a dentist appointment this afternoon. No end to the fun today!

Yesterday went pretty well. I continue to feel that I’m setting everything up and am not sure where the plot threads are, much less where they are going. But I seem to remember that this is First Week stuff. You have to get everyone in place and the backstory related without simply plopping it on the page in one huge dollop and you have to introduce the main characters and give them a setting that the reader can visualize. It’s not the most compelling part of writing a novel. That’s the problem. But that’s also the beauty of doing so much writing in a month. Get this set up (mostly) out of the way in a week rather than a YEAR at which point, most sane people would say, “Chuck this! It’s never going to go anywhere!”

I’m still slightly behind on word count and it doesn’t look promising that I’ll catch up today, but you never know.

Sorry for the missing computer folder rant. I needed it.

UPDATE:
The word count is now on track (though God Knows if the writing I did today is worth a single dnaldo (currency of the country Dnemz in the novel I’m writing).

And, more importantly, the files were found. They were in a back-up folder in the backcountry of my computer. I don’t how that happened but I found them not through any of the dozens of Searches I did but in Recent Files—though it was at least two months since I did them. Anyway, computer, it seems I owe you and apology. You kept my files and for that I’m grateful. That I can’t find them is, I admit, my fault, not yours. I’m sorry.

[edit: just found out these "tips" weren't showing up properly on Internet Explorer. It didn't matter previously because I had no visitors but now, suddenly, I do. Must spruce up the place. (wonder where THAT expression originated!) Anyway, this is unreadable I realize, but I had to reduce its size to keep the blog from looking so weird on IE. If you want to know what it says, first of all, Thank You for your interest! and secondly, clicking it will take you to flickr to see the original version. Cheers!]

I don’t know what’s going to happen today. Yesterday was a bust. I have excuses, but as it says above: don’t look back. I have the ability to write a LOT when I get going so I’m not worried—yet.

Today’s tip is an important one: begin where you feel a glimmer of inspiration (or at least, interest).

I seem to be hung up on one part of my story that isn’t feeling interesting to me. I realized this morning that I’ve been making certain assumptions about what is going to happen. But when I’ve started to write that plot line, I have internal resistance. Perhaps, I thought this morning on waking, that’s something I should trust rather than try to obliterate. Perhaps my assumptions are wrong. Perhaps if I write what seems interesting to me, I will work my way back to those plot threads that aren’t of interest at the moment or—more likely, I think—I’ll find a way to tell it that isn’t in my head yet.

Trusting oneself is an important aspect of writing. Otherwise you’re constantly in doubt and that makes it impossible to get the story down. If there’s a barrier to getting it done, you must work around it, dig under it, jump over it, ignore it, transport through it, but do not let it stop you from writing the rest of the story.

No illustration today. Things aren’t going well. I don’t seem to have my concentration. No inspiration either, but I had no real expectation of that. Not sure what’s going on. I’m trying to sit here until something picks up the way it did yesterday and the day before but it’s SO FRUSTRATING!

Can I blame it on sleeping badly last night? On the end of Daylight Savings Time? On setting myself up for a fall after being so cocky about knowing what I’m doing because I have “experience?” Grrrr.

I will keep at it, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

It’s good to have experience. You can quote me on that.

I got caught up and slightly ahead on word count by metaphorically pasting myself to the chair and duct taping the chair to the computer. I wanted to stop every time I came up for air…but I knew from experience that this would be a very bad idea indeed.

Remembering that it only gets easier to write by using the process of writing is what helped me, yesterday.

If I stop writing because I’m displeased with the words coming out of me, then I only make the problem worse.

Bad writing is like heavy rain.
Stopping is like sitting in the middle of the deluge instead of driving out of it.
Achieving the daily word count is like driving out of the downpour into the sunshine.
Umm.
Yeah.
So Sayeth Nanth—who is, remember, in the Bad Writing phase of this process.

Onward, Warrior-Writers!

It’s been a long time since I’ve set off on a writing adventure with only a tiny glimmer about where the story is going. Yesterday I wrote 468 words. It would have been 469 but I couldn’t resist rearranging an awkward sentence and that cut out a precious word.

Is there a tongue-in-cheek icon?

What happened was this: I sat at my computer most of the day, wasting a lot of time. I wanted to keep writing, but I didn’t. I satisfied myself that I’d come up with what felt like a beginning. What I wrote was a surprise. It arose out of a character that I know well; a character who is young and therefore has lots of room for evolution and change. Perhaps that’s been the most fun about writing this YA series. The characters show change almost constantly without effort on my part.

So I have a beginning. Now it gets going in earnest. It’s coming back to me from other years that I just have to tough it out. I have to sit at my computer today until I get a full day’s quota. I have to write even if it seems bad and worthless and like it’s going nowhere productive. I have to write through every doubt that comes up. I have to find my way through the beginning this week so that I have a hope of a middle.

The image is a diagram of the (obviously) fantasy world these books are set in. A world that in the first two books has the three countries literally separated by colour. At the end of the previous novel, the world is re-unified. This, the last book, deals with the ramifications of that act on the populace and on the main characters, all young adults.

I’ll check in tomorrow.