NaNoWriMo: Time Is Running Out

Only a few days left - a few hours, really - until the deadline for NaNoWriMo hits, and I've still got nearly 17,000 words to complete. Time is running out. It feels like an episode of 24. If, you know, it was an episode of 24 that mainly concentrated on a man with scruffy hair and glasses hunched over a laptop. Now, I know that there are episodes that feature exactly that character, but they usually turn out to be one of the terrorists, and end up having all their fingers snapped backward by Kiefer Sutherland, and I don't want that happening before the end of the week. Of, indeed, ever.

I try and knock out a few hundred words while on my tea and lunch break at work. This morning, I fired up the PC, slotted in my memory card with the story on it .... and everywhere plunged into darkness. Now, that really was like an episode of 24. There had been some kind of major power cut in the town, but annoyingly, it wasn't major enough to facilitate everyone getting a day off. In fact, the power came back on roughly twenty minutes later. You know, at the end of my tea break. So I'd missed a chance that I really couldn't afford to miss to add a couple of hundred onto my word count, but I decided that I would appease the inspiration Gods by writing a power cut into my story. It'll actually work quite well, I think, and might even give me a couple of thousand extra words to slot into the climax. We shall see. At this point, every paragraph counts.

As I hurtle towards the finish line, mindful of the fact that most of my nights are going to be taken up with other activities (Ghostwalk tomorrow night, kids), what's interesting is the way a lot of people who know that I've taken on this ridiculous task have chosen to display their support. In the main, it involves them shrugging their shoulders, and beginning sentences with the words 'Well, of course, now, it's impossible ..', with the implication that no matter what happens now, there's no way that I'm going to be able to finish a 50k novel by the end of the week. The tone is pleasant enough (you know, 'nice try', and all), but I somewhat wish they'd at least wait until I actually came up short before telling me that it's ok that I've come up short.

Unless, of course, it's reverse psychology. Maybe they want me to take umbrage, to prove their expectation of my lethargy wrong. In which case, I resent being played so obviously. I've half a mind to simply stop writing, just to show everybody that I'm not so easily manipulated. Yes, that's the plan. Anyone can write a novel in a month. But it shows real strength of character to resist doing what everyone else on social networking sites is doing.

Oh, by the way, Facebook don't have any legal access to your status updates. Or something. Pass it on.

NaNoWriMo: What Happens Next? Cause I Don't Know ...

I suppose there's other stuff going on in my life that isn't NaNoWriMo related, but it's difficult to be sure. I had my first full day back at work today after a week away (I work in a school) so there was always a chance that my word count, on which I've been managing to keep slightly ahead of, would drop quite dramatically. Luckily, however, I managed to hack out a bit in my morning break,  and in the lunch break, and I'm still reasonably ahead. If I can serve up another 500 words by the time I fall asleep tonight, then I'll feel like I'm on the right track. 

Having said all that, the story's not quite working yet. I'm not too sure why all the major events are happening, why my main character is being thrust into the midst of it all. Obviously, I'm aware that I'm not going to be producing great literature here ('Bring Up The Bodies' this ain't), but I still want there to be a believable, logical narrative. I've got certain restrictions on my plot, such as the fact that my lead character can't leave the town, and somehow she's getting away with murder without the police getting involved. When I set out, these things weren't such a big deal, and maybe in a story that was done and dusted in, say, twenty thousand words, it wouldn't be a problem. You might not even question the logic until long after you've put the book down, by which time of course, it's too late - the job is done, the story has been told. But with an actual novel, you have time to get to know the characters, the opportunity to question their motives. Mostly, things can't simply 'happen' to them. Well, alright, that's not strictly true - in fact my 'in' on this story was just that, that things were happening to my main character, and she was surviving by simply reacting - think Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, Cary Grant in North By Northwest, Jodie Foster in ... uh, pretty much Amy Jodie Foster film. But, it made my main character slightly too passive, and that doesn't quite work for the plot. Which, as I've mentioned, has a contrivance meaning that she can't leave the town, and the police aren't getting involved in her clearly illegal activies. Obviously, I could just 'fix' those problems by not writing them in the first place - if it's awkward to have my main character restricted to one city, then seemingly the obvious thing would be to let her go wherever the hell she wants. But, that means an entirely different story, and risks spiralling  out to something a bit rambling. And .. well, here's the thing. Whenever I've worked on a story, and there's been some narrative problem I can't quite get my head around, I've always -emphasis on always - found that the problem is its own solution. Therefore, she can't leave town because she's following orders. And that in turn, begins to indicate why the police are turning a blind eye. But suddenly, my entirely innocent woman in jeopardy has to get all Liam Neeson on everyone's ass, and 'aquire a certain set of skills', indicating she's a professional .... something. I didn't know that when I started writing this. Hell, I didn't know that this morning. It's good, though, because it's beginning to give her a history and background which she didn't have previously. However, it might just mean I may have to start doing some research, which I had been intending to strenuously avoid. Damn. 

As I said, there's gotta be other stuff going on that isn't NaNoWriMo. 

Uh. 

I'll get back to you. 

Nanowrimo: What Makes You Think You Know What You're Talking About?

Here's the other, really important thing about Nanowrimo, the international thing where thousands of people attempt to write a novel in the space of just a month: the simple fact that it's just about possible. The idea that I'm developing for my story, Set Up, Punch has been fluttering around my head for a couple of years now, but I've never gotten around to completing it, or indeed, even starting it. Too much effort for too little reward, I felt. Would it be any good? What if I didn't know what the hell I was writing? What if there was no real logical transition in between the scenes I was writing, and they clearly only followed each other in that order because that was the way that I, the writer, wanted them to be - but they didn't actually have any narrative coherence? What if my lead character was quite sketchily written, with no strong personality traits for the reader to latch onto?

Well. Two and a bit days in, roughly 5,000 words, and I'm guilty of all of the above. But, I'm two and a bit days in, and I've written 5,000 words of a story that simply did not exist on Wednesday. It's actually a giddily remarkable thing. This approach to just go blindly forward, telling the story in much the same way that you imagine 19th Century explorers to have gone hacking through jungle vines, is very freeing. I haven't even read back more than 100 words from wherever the last section I'd left off writing at any one time. I simply do a quick scan to remind myself of where I am in the plot, and then go forward. Always forward. 

Which brings us back to the opening line of this blog entry. If I wasn't doing this as part of a national event, my internal editor would have kicked in (and kicked me) ages ago. Probably within the first 100 words. More than that, whenever I'm not writing - when I'm not at the pad or laptop - the whole scale of the thing overwhelms me. It's a novel, for crying out loud. One that I have just 28 days to complete. And it's not even 28 days, not really, because life and work are going to get in the way. So I find, somewhat to my surprise, that I'm not actually thinking over plot problems when away from the computer. Usually, with other projects, I am. I will have written myself into a corner, and will spend a few days not writing, just mentally trying to untie the story knot. With this novel, I find myself incapable of doing that - my mind just shrinks away from the problem like a shell-shocked dormouse under a flashlight (no, I have no idea where that image came from either, just work with me here). So, as I say - if it wasn't for the fact that this is under the umbrella of nanowrimo, my panic and writer's block would have encouraged me to jump ship at the first hurdle. (ships? Hurdles? And you thought the shell shocked dormouse was a tortured metaphor). 

But I've found, forced with the idea that I have to hit a reasonable word count every day, that simply flexing the fingers and ... typing - actually provides the storylines that I haven't been able to think of when I've been away from the computer. At least, that's the way it's gone down so far. I very likely won't be quite as clear-headed in the middle of week three, when I find I've sunk 200 pages into my characters running on the spot. Perhaps literally, if I'm particularly stuck. 

It should be ok, though. In one of my other lives, I'm an improviser, and in improv, you learn to live in the present moment - just always moving forward, only reacting to whatever's going on at that precise moment. The theory is that you won't have to worry about coming up with a decent ending, because whatever story you're telling in the present will lead naturally to that ending. That's the theory, anyway. I mention the improvisation only by means of a tenuous link to the fact that to or row (Sunday), I'm holding the second of my improv drop ins at the DukeBox Theatre on Waterloo Street in Hove, which is as good a place as any to come up with a new story or idea. They're purely drop in, so newcomers are welcome at any time, regardless of what experience they do or don't have. There's all manner of different types of improv and skills that are looked at each week, so it's always worth coming along to see what we're doing. 

Now. As the more astute amongst you might have guessed, this entire blog entry was a delaying tactic, avoiding that fateful moment when I finally go back to the novel, and hack out the next couple of thousand. As ever, right now, I have no idea what happens next. Hopefully I will within the. Ext half hour .... 

NaNoWrimo : Day 1

Had a Ghostwalk tonight (well, last night, now) that was particularly well attended despite the appalling weather simply due to the fact that it was Halloween. I was a little nervous because a couple of friends were in the audience (friends always seem to rock up to the Ghostwalk exclusively on the nights that the weather is bad), but it all seemed to go pretty well, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and there were enough skull shaped lollipops to go around. 

It being Halloween, the Ghostwalk was later than I usually do it, and by the time I got home, it was already past the witching hour - in other words, November 1st. While this meant that there was no immediate need for me to start shaving (more about that another time), it meant that before I was going to go to sleep, I could already get started on my NaNoWriMo novel. To have any chance of completing 50,000 words by the end of November, I need to be logging about 1,700 words on a daily basis, which I'm already fairly confident that I'm going to fail miserably at. But it's only the start of NaNoWriMo right now, which should mean that I'm more able to hack out a few hundred words than I will be ale to in, say, two weeks time, even if those words make absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

While I have a rough idea of what's going to happen when in my story, I haven't really thought about it too much in advance, preferring to write it out almost as free form association. Tonight, that was the right thing to do, although obviously it may not work that easily for the rest of the project. I'm already aware that in the 2 or 3 pages I hacked out tonight, there are some terrible turns of phrase, and occasionally (on more than one occasion, in a piece of prose that lasts less than 4 pages), I'm jumping rather too suddenly from one subject to the next in order to make a point. 

Refreshingly, however, none of this seems to matter. All the prep and pep talks on twitter right now, which are mainly on USA time (where NaNoWriMo won't kick in for a couple more hours) cheerfully remind you that whatever you've written in a month's time, won't be ready in any way for publication. This month is just to get the damn thing (in this case, the damn thing being a very first draft) down on paper. I'm fairly confident that there will be at least 200 times in November where I'll really regret signing up for NaNoWriMo, and that anything I write is truly dreadful. What's comforting, though, is that by hacking out a thousand words tonight, I've already had that reaction twice already. Which means I've only got to go through it 198 times more. 

NaNoWriMo Wordcount: 1,177.  

NaNoWriMo - Before The Start

This week, then, I'm going to attempt something stupid and pointless. Well, more so than any other week, in any case. As November begins to kick in, and the nights get darker and colder, I find, for about the first time this year, less things to occupy my time than at any other point in the last twelve months. Of course, now that we all live in the future, and that, there are various things to conquer and destroy any feelings of boredom I may have been considering having. There is, of course, the whole growing a moustache thing for a month, which isn't so much a boredom-thrashing activity (you'd have to be pretty damn bored, wouldn't you?) but a charity awareness thing, which I'll be coming back to later in the week. 

I'm holding some improv workshops, the first of which is tonight (Sunday 28th). I'm a bit nervous that nobody's going to turn up, if I'm honest. Facebook has long ago ceased being a reliable indicator of how many people are actually going to turn up to your event. I have had a few people saying that they'll be there, and I think it will be the sort of thing that simply needs to be going for a few weeks before it catches fire. Not literally, I hope. 

But none of this is the stupid and pointless thing. Every November, thousands of people around the world attempt something called NaNoWriMo. In case you're not already familiar with the concept, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to do - to achieve - exactly what that name suggests: to hack out a novel in 30 days. The novel is a reasonably short one - the suggested aim for a word count is 50,000, which is - very roughly - the size of The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy, for instance, or Of Mice And Men. The real aim behind the whole enterprise is to get those people who are constantly telling themselves that one day they'll actually get around to writing a book .. to actually get around to writing a book. It doesn't even really matter about the quality, just getting the word count down. It averages out at about 1,500 words a day. This, I figure, should be just about manageable,even if we include the inevitable couple of days throughout the month where I only produce 500 words, or don't even get around to writing anything at all.

I'm deliberately only starting on November 1st, which is Thursday. Obviously, I could try and get a head start by starting now, but somehow it doesn't seem in the spirit of the whole adventure. I rather like the idea of starting this fool's errand at the same time as thousands of others all across the planet. I haven't even made any planning notes.

What I do have is a title and a vague plot line. A couple of years ago, a local publishing company was asking for submissions to an imprint they had, called Pulp Press. The stories they wanted were exactly that - pulp fiction, the sort of grimy 5 cent paperbacks you might have had in your back pocket in the 1940s or 50s. When men were bastards and women all wore Bettie Page bangs. Sex, violence and six inch heels. Needless to say, it's not exactly the sort of writing I normally do, but nonetheless, an idea did present itself. I was doing some stand up at the time (more than I do these days,anyway), and the stand up scene in Brighton, where I live, is sometimes quite insular. I began to have these ideas about various comics on the scene being bumped off in Brighton (it may have even been inspired by the old line about 'dying on stage'). However, as with many projects, I never actually got round to writing it, particularly as - even though I roughly knew who was going to die, and how (the last two deaths have been fairly fixed in my head now for the past two years), I've never really been able to work out why these deaths are occurring. Not being able to work out the reason for the catalyst has stopped me starting. Now, however: I'm going to put faith in the expectation that if I write enough of the story, a solution will eventually present itself. And even if it doesn't, it didn't stop other classic pulp writers. I think it was someone like Raymond Chandler - he'd finished The High Window, or maybe even The Maltease Falcon, which starts with a body being discovered. It's that death that's the catalyst for the entire story. But when the story ends, the murderer isn't revealed. It's the ultimate Macguffin. When asked by a fan what the deal was with the dead body, Chandler reportedly repiled: 'Oh, him. I forgot about him .. '

So, hopefully, as long as I can get a fairly entertaining story down, then logic can go hang. For the first draft, anyway. The story is going to be called Set Up, Punch by the way. I'll try to post a daily report on how it's all going, with a wordcount. Obviously, at the moment, the wordcount is exactly zero. I'm hoping it won't stay that way ..