Monday, November 26, 2012

The Beauty Of NaNoWriMo

The Chamaeleon Chronicles are coming along at a fair clip, seeing as they're my NaNo-story. Yes, I know, I started them several months before November 1st, but the overall goal of NaNo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days, which is what I'm aiming to accomplish. Even during those years I started at the beginning of the story on November 1st, I never finished it in 50,000 words by the 30th - or ever. So this year I'm doing it the other way around: I'm hoping to have an almost finished first draft of what might be the makings of my second completed novel, with 50,000 words of it written during NaNoWriMo.

Does that still make me a legitimate NaNo-winner?

Of course, this draft will need a lot of rewrite-work. A LOT. But at least I'll have something to rewrite, which is the beauty of NaNo, and I'm learning to appreciate that more and more each day. It's making me go forward again, not just dither on the precipice of wanting to write. And even though my workload is full and I have other stuff going on, I'm managing to carve out an hour each evening for writing.

When November is over, I want to keep that up. My goal is an hour each day. When I let myself just write without editing (because that screws up the flow), I manage 1,000 words during that hour easily. At six days a week, that's approximately 300,000 words per year, or ca. three novels in my favorite genre. Pretty promising stats, don't you think? Time will tell if I can keep to this resolution.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Writers In Fiction

I make no secret about being a TV-series junkie. They are high up on my list of all-time favorite past-times, because you get to follow your beloved characters for years, not just ninety minutes like in a movie. At the moment I'm hooked on a new-to-me series called Castle. Not only does it star Nathan Fillion - Shiny! - as the main character Richard Castle, but Castle is also a successful writer of mystery novels. Add in a beautiful and savvy lady homicide detective, delicious, skin-crawling suspense and just the right amount of humor, and voilá - a mystery series that has held my interest all the way up to the current fifth season (impressive, since mystery usually isn't a favorite genre of mine).

But enough with the praise - promoting Castle isn't the purpose of this post. Rather, it got me thinking about how many movies, TV-series or books might be out there about writers (though not necessarily about them actually writing). There's no deeper meaning or purpose behind this query, just a curiosity to see how many I can think of.

Off the top of my head, I was able to come up with the following (that I've seen and enjoyed):

Castle (TV-series)
Stranger than Fiction (Movie)
The Answer Man (Movie)
Californication (TV-series)
Paperback Hero (Movie)
Shakesepeare in Love (Movie)
Music and Lyrics (Movie)
As Good As It Gets (Movie)
Becoming Jane (Movie)
Finding Forrester (Movie)
A Lovesong For Bobby Long (Movie)
Romancing The Stone (Movie)

I'm sure there are more I've seen or read, especially books, but I can't think of one. I'm probably missing something mind-bogglingly obvious... Let me know if you come up with any, so that I might smack myself on the forehead with a D'oh!, Homer-Simpson style.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

NaNoWriMo Status Update Day 20

Word count: 32,344 words.
996 words under target.
I'm slogging through at approximately 1,300 words per week day, racing to catch up to target word count on weekends. The writing is terrible, but I'm loving my characters and still coming up with ideas non-stop for what I might put them through. For the sake of the story, I hav vays of making you suffer! Mbwahahahah!
The draft is all over the place and I'm already jotting down ways to fix the somewhat disconnected chapters. Sometimes I'm so tired after a full day at work that I can't form a proper sentence. But I put down words on paper, regardless of the slaughter-house feel, because otherwise I wouldn't write anything, and that would be worse. To quote Nora Roberts, romance author extraordinaire: You can fix anything but a blank page.

How’s everybody else doing?

May the words be with you!