NaNoWriMo, Day 20: The Fork In The Road

Hitting what I suspect is the most challenging part of writing a NaNoWriMo novel. It's not about whether or not the finished product will be any good, or if I'm going to run out of ideas and narrative steam (although all those things are a constant concern). It's simply that, after several days in which I've only produced a couple of thousand words - I'm now about 9,000 words behind schedule - that nobody cares about this book. Nobody really gives a damn if I don't finish it. This in itself is not a fear or a concern. It's actually a highly attractive, alluring siren. I could, simply, stop writing the book. No great loss. The stuff that I've written so far is OK - not brilliant, OK - and there's the beginning of some kind of narrative skeleton there. Despite it being in a style that I've never written in before (and, indeed, rarely read) I have a suspicion that there's not an original thought in its head. 

But, it's somewhat fun, and I'm beginning to like the main characters, even if I still can't quite work out their actions (the central villian's motives might be a little too far fetched, I haven't decided yet). The whole plot is still overwhelming me, and I haven't been able to get my head around it all. 

Pretty much every writing manual you'll ever read will have a riff on the line 'the only way to write is to keep writing'. It gets repeated so often, it's like a mantra, and therefore become part of the background, like wallpaper. You forget what it actually means. Certainly, during this project, I've been re-discovering exactly what it means: if at all possible, don't stop writing. Whenever I've been away from the laptop, the book has felt too much like a chore, too much like hard work. The characters aren't working, and I have no idea what to do next. 

However, when I force myself to fire up the laptop, I find myself presented with a narrative problem that I simply have to write my way out of. No planning, no character profiles - just reaction, and action. The rules of NaNoWriMo itself dictate that - just write, no matter what. Those rules, on a bad day, become not a shackle, but a release: for instance, the opening scene of my book ('Set Up, Punch', just in case you haven't been paying attention) has never really worked all that well for me. It sets up three of the main characters well enough, and it manages to smuggle a digestible amount of exposition in a engaging enough fashion, but nothing actually seemed to be ... happening. It was almost literally people standing still, talking. Added to this, I still haven't really decided if my main character is thrown into events blindly, if she's in control of events from the top of the story, or even, somehow, a combination of both (there are advantages and disadvantages in all three).

However, as a writer - and as a actor, and a director, come to that - I've become a passionate believer that if something in your narrative simply isn't working, if it's causing you a problem, then it's very likely that you've already written the solution to it. There are probably more intelligent and experienced writers out there who can explain the dynamics, logic, or just plain alchemy of it all, but I've long ago decided to simply surrender to it, and trust that things will work themselves out. It has, so far, without exception, always worked. I'm fully aware that by typing the words 'it has always worked' mean that, if it is alchemy, I've just cursed myself to never being able to solve a narrative problem ever again. 

It's not alchemy, of course, even though it feels that way. I still have to work hard at solving the problem, even if I'm not always certain what work it is that I have to do to unlock the doors. Occasionally, I will have to write out a full character profile, but just as often, I find myself simply transcribing what I've already written by hand, altering a word or paragraph her or there, switching around the order of scenes, until something clicks. Artistically, it's no more profound than wriggling the top of your tongue at a wobbly tooth until it finally drops out. and often, just as satisfying. 

Curiously, I'm still not all that worried about falling behind on the word count, even though the NaNoWriMo website is currently warning me that at my current rate, I'll be finishing seven days late.  But I'm fully aware that the main reason I'm not concerned about being behind is the dangerous one - the one I mentioned at the top of this blog. Nobody cares. Nobody's waiting. I just have to remind myself that this is the literal cut off point, the fork in the road. Leave it now, and I'll have 100 pages or so of somewhat incoherent plotting. But if I can come up with just 25,000 words in the next (gulp) ten days .. Well, then. That has the potential to be a real, actual book. 

Not Making The Wordcount

This has been a bit of a below par week when it comes to keeping up with the NaNoWriMo novel. In the past six or so days, I've produced a little under two thousand words. And one thousand, five hundred of those were yesterday, at an official write-in. Apart from emphasising just how useful those things are, it indicates how very little I've been working on the book this week. I'm now about four thousand words behind schedule.

I'm being slightly unfair on myself. It's not like I've done nothing at all on the book in the past week. I've come back to it, adjusting things, shifting scenes around, differing the order on events. I had to print out a copy of the work in progress, just so I had a physical copy that I could scrawl all over, annotate, and jot down ideas. I find that for my muddled mind, this works very well. You're not really  supposed to start editing and re-writing until after Novembet 30th (or completing 50,000 words, whichever comes first), but I found that I was slamming into a lot of narrative walls, because I simply didn't know what my characters were doing, or why. To be fair, that's still the case, but at least the events themselves have some kind of narrative logic to them now, and are beginning to suggest whole new scenarios all by themselves. I don't know when I'll catch up with the target word count, but it's still an education. I'm realising just how difficult it is to write even one of the most terrible books I read on the kindle.

The improv workshops (at the Iron Duke) continue to go well, although it'd be good to get a few more regulars. There's a few people who have been continually trying to get along, but life, plans and financial constraints keep getting in the way. We have about six more workshops (I think) before we take a break for Christmas.

And finally (for this blog, which is just me getting my groove on after not writing in it for a week), I have two ghost walks this week, on Friday and Saturday. The nights are getting colder now, and so the crowds are getting smaller (again, there's only about five weeks left before we close up for Christmas). But the crowds are getting more interesting. One night, I had two drunk couples who heckled me for the hour (I've never been heckled as a stand up before, it was surprising to be heckled as aguide on a Ghost Walk).

But, I'll leave this blog for now. The theory is that I'll write a bit more of the novel. And, in theory, so etching vaguely intelligent for tomorrow's blog.

NaNoWriMo, Day 11: Throw Away The Key

Still, somehow, slightly ahead of schedule for the NaNoWriMo book. This more impressive when I didn't manage to write a damn thing yesterday. What's also comforting g is the fact gang , while I seem to have spent most of today's session writing only to top up my word count, I don't think I've quite gotten into the region of waffling just yet. Yet. I'm not saying the story makes any sense yet, or is even worth reading, but it still - remarkably - looks like its got some potential. 

But here's the thing. While it might have some potential, it's still, and at the same time, quite terrible. It's logic judges all over the place, the main villain (and the main character, come to that) are horrifically underwritten, and I still - still - don't know the main engine of the piece, the macguffin, the actual reason why all these events are happening. Knowing that would solve a couple of other problems and unanswered questions, which, in turn, would begin to provide story threads all of their own (for instance, I'm entirely unable to work out if my main character is new to the town in which this story is set, or knows the streets well. Equally, I can't decide if she has history in some secret shadowy organisation - which would provide her with the skills she needs to survive the plot - or if she's simply managing not to die through a mixture of wit and dumb luck. 

However, in the last couple of days, I've come to the conclusion that none of it matters. Nobody has to read the damn thing anyway. Quite often, you're told to lock what you've written away in a bottom drawer before taking it out again a month or so later before attempting re-writes. Nobody, as far as I'm aware, has yet discussed the freedom inherent in choosing to leave the manuscript in the bottom drawer with absolutely no intention of reading it again. You might consider that hacking out 50,000 words with no intention of tailoring it into a finished, readable piece, might be a waste of time, particularly if the hack draft (that isn't even a first draft, not really) is already better than some things you've already downloaded onto your kindle. 

But actually, that approach gives you a remarkable amount of freedom. Nobody's expecting this finished novel, frankly, nobody cares. Getting those 50,000 words down is just boot camp, an education. It's well known that Stephen King has a couple of completed novels locked away somewhere, that he has no intention of publishing. These date back from before the publication of 'Carrie'. In many ways, those novels were a way of paying dues, of sharpening pencils, before the 'real' work of novel writing began. There's no real reason why the novels written all over the world this month can't serve the same purpose. It means that if you're half way through a book that is merely 'ok' - but probably will never be good enough for an actual book deal - can still be completed. This isn't about the novel, it's about the writing. 

And, well. If it is actually pretty good .... 

Well. That's a different story. 

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 22,237

NaNoWriMo, Day 9. This is when sensible people leave.

Oh, right now? It's painful. Last time, I was talking about how the expanded word count was actually a boon rather than an albatross around my neck. Even as I wrote those words, I knew I was placing a curse on myself. I knew that I was about to dive into literay quicksand, where I would suddenly come to a point where I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why my characters were doing the things that they were doing, or indeed what they would do next. I can't work out the logical transition between one set piece and the next. The motives of absolutely everybody involved are suddenly very weak at best, contrived at .. uh, second best. I haven't managed to write my lead character as well as I'd like (she's either a typical pulp fiction type 'dame', which is what I'd originally envisaged, which means that she gets quite violent with the long line of villains lining up to attack her - or she's an innocent, struggling to keep up with events as they threaten to overwhelm her. Both have their merits, but the second arguably makes her more likeable, albeit with a story that will be more difficult to write. The former option is much more dynamic, and more fun to write - and read - but I haven't yet worked out how not to put her across as a bit psychotic. All of this, of course, shouldn't detract that in this blog entry I've been using brackets much longer than is grammatically helpful. Hang on ... ). 

The comforting thing about all of this hack writing, weak story telling, and unbelievable characters, is that I was warned about it. Everyone expects this in week 2. It's proudly claimed as a right of passage, a badge of honour. It merits a chapter all of its own in the official NaNoWriMo book, aptly called 'No Plot? No Problem!' So I've spent this evening hacking out a couple of thousand, forcing myself not to think about plot or coherence for longer than eight seconds. It's been writing that has felt more like a chore - this is the NaNoWriMo equalivent of eating your broccoli before you're allowed loose on the toffee cheesecake - and it's the only time working on this that my body has claimed the usual writer's complaint of a locked back. But, somewhere, vaguely, at the back of my mind, I'm aware of some good foundations being laid down. 

Even so, I'm having difficulties with my lead character. She's a beautiful, witty and dynamic woman - but I have to tread a very fine line between depicting a character who just happens to be all those things, and not just simply some hack male writers fantasy of what feminine strength is. Too many of us have suffered the clumsy scene in amateur writing when the heroine steps out of the shower and takes a moment to admire her perfect body in the steam tinged mirror, an event that has pretty much NEVER HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE, EVER. Depressingly, I've seen it in at least one book written by an author respected enough, and with a career that was long enough, that you'd have thought he'd have left that thing behind long ago. What makes the task slightly more challenging in my case, however, is that what I'm writing is, for all intents and purposes, a pulp novel, a dime paperback, where such tantalisation is pretty much part of the party. I'm just trying to find a balance of a character that's genuinely sexy, without all the tiresome gratuitousness. That's not even a real word, but frankly I don't care. That's what NaNoWriMo does to you. You complete an entire novel, but the trade is that you can no longer write in your native language. Or any language, for that matter. 

Pleasingly, however, I'm - just - ahead of the word count schedule. Once I've got past - say - thirty thousand, I feel that I might have a good sense of the surroundings, in the same way that you might feel on your first day in a new town. I've got the keys cut, and I staked out where the local coffee shop with free wi-fi is. Over the next few days, I've got to start going down some dark back streets. 

Look, I'm tired. I don't know if that last paragraph was real, or a metaphor, either. 

Word Count: 19,128

NaNoWriMo, Day 6

Day six of NaoWriMo, and the second day of trying to fit in the regular day job in around it as well, and, somewhat surprisingly, I'm still enjoying the whole experience, and still even being energised by it.  I'm very confident that I'll hit a wall sooner or later (my guess is towards the end of next week), and so I'm doing everything I can to keep ahead on my word count while I still can. This really is the main difference between writing at any other time, and writing in November. This month, you can't stall because you're waiting for inspiration to kick in, you just have to write regardless. Of course, that's what every how to write book tells you anyway, and it's been said by so many famous authors, you could re-tweet it fifty times over in fifty different easy to digest quotes. but it has to be said, the actually being forced to get down and do it is very instructive. 

Tonight, I'm discoveri g where my first 'seal' is. There's probably already a term for it that's better than seal, but sin I'm discovering this for the first time, since this is my blog, and since you and I are the only damn people who actually stop by this place, then 'seal' is what we'll go with. For me, it was around the 12,000 word mark. I imagine it can vary wildly in any direction for various writers, but for me it was 12,000. While working on my novel, it was getting to be a bit of a struggle to get past 10,000. There were still some major scenes I hadn't even started yet, but I knew this story couldn't possibly get up to 20,000, and I wasn't just going to fill it with waffle simply to get to the 50k mark. Plus, I still didn't really know why the things were happening, were happening. Getting past 12,000 .. Well, it wasn't exactly meandering, but it was certainly getting to be a hack job as I struggled to find out what was going on in my heroine's head. 

And then ... Well, she didn't tell me, not exactly (she's actually a frustratingly private indidvual, which, as it turns out, is becoming a major plot point), but I began to understand her more, and why she was reacting in a certain way in certain situations. And that expansive word count .. It suddenly became - not a burden, not a chore - but a boon. A blessing. Suddenly I have all this elbow room, which is vital. It's good to have it as a goal, because it forces the novice writer to have something to strive for that can't just be hacked out in one draft and sent off to a short story competition. But as well as a target, it becomes something that I absolutely wasn't expecting: a foundation, a bedrock, a support. That's taken me somewhat by surprise, although I still maintain I may not be able to get anywhere near the 50k target when it comes down to it. 

(the other thing that's taken me surprise is that the cafe where I'm writing this is playing obscure Gloria Estefan songs. I don't think I've thought about here in, like, fifteen years. Not outside of a joke by Chandler in Friends)

Terrifyingly, I'm still having ideas for short stories, which need at least some of them written down before the fade out of the memory, but frankly, as writing problems go, this is small beer. I've managed to write at least something on each day so far, so hopefully I've squirrelled away enough nuts (that's a saying, right?) for those inevitable days when I'm going to come up with absolutely nothing. 

In non-NaNoWriMo news, I've just had a haircut. I've had a bit more cut off than I intended, but that still means that I have longer hair than most other men I know. I just couldn't have neck-length hair in Movember. I looked disturbingly like Tony Ferrino, which is a look I really can't pull off. I have enough problems pulling off my own face. If you know what I mean. 

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, Day 4: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Whenever I'm not working on the Nanowrimo novel, it's defeating me. I can't see a way through it, the plotting seems simplistic, the characters badly sketched out, and, most crucially, I have no idea what I'm going to do to progress the story further. It's so easy to get a bit scared off, and run away. Gibbering. What tends to happen, however, is once I've managed to force myself in front of the computer, with the understanding that I really am going to write something, no matter about the fear that it could well be terrible. Writing without looking back is remarkably focussing to the narrative flow. 

However, I'm saying that on what's essentially my last day off before returning to work. It's not really, I was doing the youth theatre yesterday, and I had my improv class tonight, but that's not like a full day at the office. It'll be interesting to see what I come up with - if I can come up with anything - after 8 hours of an exhausting job. My parameters of what's acceptable about the fear of writing something that's terrible may well have to be widened. 

I've had a concern that while I know most of the events that occur in my novel, I don't really know why they're happening. There's not yet a logical catalyst to everything kicking off. Certain things have begun to slide into place today, but it's still doesn't quite make sense. I'm having to make. Y characters work against what they'd logially want to do in order to make the story work. That's not always a great way to work, but given the time constraints, I don't have much choice. Now, one of two things will happen: either my plot will simply snap, because it just doesn't want to go that way (which, despite what you might think, is actually a good thing, because it means that the characters are developing strong personalities), or that I will have forced myself to have thought of a good reason why my characters are doing things they don't want to do. In my downtime, I've been re-watching old episodes of 24, and quite often, Jack Bauer (or someone else) is acting under duress, being forced to act the the bad guy for a greater good. That's begun to stir things in my imagination as to why my main character is having to act the way she is. If nothing else, it's a good enough reason for me to claim that watching box sets comes under the banner of 'research'. 

I'm hoping to hit the 10k mark before the weekend, well, ends. In the very strictest sense, that's not going to happen, because at the time of writing this sentence, it's about three minutes from midnight, but I'm going to play the Christmas Eve defence, and say that it's not Monday until I've slept. I figure I've got about a hour before fatigue takes me like a six foot mugger in an alleyway. My main stumbling block this week is going to be finding my 'macguffin'. While it isn't - and shouldn't be - the actual motor to the narrative - the way all the characters act will inevitably be influenced by whatever it is. But, bottom line: in the past four days, I've produced nearly 10,000 words more than I would have done otherwise. By the end of the week, I'll have more words in this story than are currently in my entire short story collection. And for that, I can only be grateful. 

Nanowrimo Word Count: 9347

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 2: Heading For A Wall

All throughout today, I've felt exhausted. Like I just want to fall asleep. And it's not even as if I've had a long day at the office. I just met up with a friend who, incredibly, I hadn't seen since about Feburary. We chatted about that, about love lives, and about green eggs and ham (not because we were at a Dr Suess convention, but because it was on the menu, and neither one of us have had it before). And, of course, we talked about nanowrimo. It's inevitable, now. People are going to often ask me over the next 29 days how it's going, and if I've hit today's word count. This is what happens when you constantly put your word count up as your Facebook status update, or on your twitter feed. 

And that, of course, is the whole point. 

I'm about to hit the the first bump in my story. I know what will happen in, say, twenty, thirty or maybe even fifty pages time. At least, vaguely. But I have no idea how to get there. I have no idea ow my character is going to get from where she is right now to the next set piece. Now, given today's exhaustion, this would be the point at which I'd normally decide to sleep on it, and get caught up on some box sets that I still haven't gotten around to watching yet. And that's where the whole insanity of nanowrimo really comes into its own. There's no hiding place. There are thousands of people all across the globe all hacking out their little novels right now. As you read this, there's probably someone within ten miles of you who should be finishing chapter 3. There's every chance that that someone should be you. Normally, if writer's block (which is sort of what I'm about to hit) trips you up, then that can be as good a reason as any to throw in the towel for a couple of days. But then a couple of days can very quickly become a week. After all, real life is very good at getting in the way. But with nanowrimo, if you tweeted that you'd delivered a 1,000 words on day 1, and 700 words on day 2, followed by a storming 3,000 words on day 3 .... Well, people are going to notice if your word count suddenly goes quiet for a day or so. It's sheer ego and embarrassment that can galvanise you to keep up your count. Let's face it, the whole producing a novel in thirty days is a plan of infinite stupidity in the first place, so it can be quite chastening if, once you've committed to it, you then bail out after only a couple of days. Everyone will know. And from now on, whenever you respond to the question 'so, what are you doing at the moment?' with the reply 'well, I'm working on that novel', you will have to accept that your companion is going to smile politely, nod, and change the subject to something else. Like how they're getting promoted. You know, like a grown-up. 

I've already hit a minor bump in the story already. Same problem - I didn't know what my character should do next. That time, it was an easier solve, since I simply wrote my inability to progress the story into the narrative: in other words, I had my character realising that she didn't know what to do next. That clicked something, because she went to ask advice from an old friend (who turned out to be a burlesque dancer, which, a, is so something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had a mild case of writers block, and, b, probably indicates something about where my mind wanders if it doesn't have something to occupy it). I don't want my character to be constantly not knowing what to do next, however - that makes her passive, and she's certainly not that - so I can't use that trick again. One of the major challenges is that I don't yet know why the major incidents of the novel have occurred (there's some Big Bad in the background, but I don't yet know why my characters are mixed in events), but I'm trusting that I'll work that out as the month / novel progresses. 

As to what happens to my main character right now - or what she makes happen - I still have absolutely no idea. I guess there's only one way to find out .. 

Word Count: I forget. But currently I'm ahead of schedule ..

Nanowrimo: Day One Is Done

A reasonably productive day, and a surprising amount of it wasn't actually concentrating on hitting today's Nanowrimo target. That being said, I'm slightly ahead of schedule, which is somewhat to be expected, as I'm currently in the relaxed mind set of a Person Who Has Had Some Time Off Work. I fully expect my ability to form coherent sentences to reduce quite dramatically from next week onwards, so the further ahead I can get on my word count now, the better. Speaking of which, there was a moment a few minutes ago when I thought I'd managed to reduce my word count quite dramatically by the simple expedient of just losing everything that I'd written today (over three thousand words), but it turned out that I'd saved it in the wrong folder. It's the sort of mistake that would make you consider pulling the plug on the whole affair right from day 1. 

But, as I say, I didn't spend as much time in front of the computer as perhaps I expected to on Day 1 of nanowrimo. This was mainly because I got to spend some time having coffee and conversation (well, hot chocolate, too) with some very dear friends. Which is not to say that the subject of writing didn't come up. In fact, I found myself at a writing group. I've been meaning to get along to this particular writing group for the best part of the year, but something had always fallen on the same day which meant that I couldn't get along to it. There was one week in the summer that I was finally able to get along, and I turned up half a hour early, armed with pens and paper. Nobody else was there. It took me almost a hour to realise that I'd arrived on the wrong date. You'd think that if I wanted to join a writers group, I would have at least learned the basics. Like reading. 

But finally, tonight, I was able to make a session, and was glad I did. The group, which meets every first Thursday of the month on the third floor of the Waterstones in Brighton are a friendly and supportive bunch, and it seems like an ideal place to kick start new ideas into life. Certainly, I came away with the first draft of a brand new short story that didn't exist in any form whatsoever before this evening. Because that's just what I need this month: yet another story to complete. 

Of course, this month it's all about nanowrimo, and 'Set Up, Punch'. As I've probably mentioned before, it's a lot more grimy pulp fiction than I would normally write, with a great deal more violence and swearing than usually finds its way into my writing (it's only day one, and already two of my characters have met rather nasty deaths). Still, the whole pulp fiction feel seems to suit the hack-it-out  atmosphere of nanowrimo. I figure I've got a couple more days where I can continue to write pretty much free form association. And then I'm going to slam quite hard into a narrative blank wall. But for now: I think I've done as well as I could have hoped. Oh, and got another short story that I wasn't expecting. Nanowrimo might be an unashamed hack job, more about the word count than the actual quality. But there are moments when you are writing, unguarded and unconcernedly for the best part of a hour, when you actually feel like a writer. 

And that, of course, is the whole point.