otter_nanowrimo: (I'm badass - Link)
As you can see, I didn't.

But I did win this year, for the first time ever! According to the NaNo website, I finished with 50,006 words. (According to Word, I finished with 50,113; I had to write the extra hundred words so the NaNo counter would validate me. So this year I got to win twice!) I hammered out the last five thousand words on the 29th, with my second-largest single-day output (compared to 7.5k on day 2). My smallest single-day outputs not counting zeros were 31, 990, and 1676. I wrote on 16 out of the possible 30 days, meaning my numbers were 0 on 14 days. This tells me that I could have written almost 100k words this month, if there had been that many words in my story!

No, I did not finish the story. I forced word after word from my brain into the document for two hours after I should have stopped for the day, because there were only 2.5k left... only 1500 left.... less than a thousand words left, I can DO that... only 150 left... and oh god, that last 150 took way longer than they should have. By the end, I hated my story, my characters, and my writing... but I'm putting it away for a few months, and when I come back, I'm sure I'll love them even more.

I think I may put Quinn into other stories, just as a guy; I am pretty much in love with him. I guess he's a bit of a hipster? ...Nope, according to the Wikipedia article, he's not a hipster. He wears T-shirts and vests, sometimes with jeans and sometimes with slacks, and when he wants to be formal he'll use a button-down and tie instead. But I always picture him in a black vest, whit T-shirt, jeans, and maybe Converse. In cooler weather he may layer a long sleeve shirt under his tee. He's pretty tall and skinny, cares too much (for his own good) about every social issue there has ever been and spreads himself too thin trying to save everyone. He sees as much good in people as he can (which doesn't mean he likes everybody, not by a long shot). He's, so far, a pretty flat character, but I think he needs to be a main character and then he'll blossom and develop. He doesn't have enough flaws. (I'll mention that a lot of the emotional vibe I get off this character is a feeling: several layers of clothes over a hard, skinny, flat chest, and how it would feel to run one's hands over it.)

Anyway, the point is, I win, and I love Quinn, and now I have other stories to write! I want to rework Zombie Boyfriend / NecRomance / whatever it's called, and I had a dream this morning in my 6:30-10am sleep (I get up at 5:50 to get the husband's lunch together, warm up the car, and drive him to work, and then I go back to sleep) about a ghost named Kendra, and that is developing with basically no effort from me into an awesome mystery story.

On that note, I think I'm going to lock down all of the posts on this journal that actually have story in them, for two reasons: no one reads me anyway (if you ask, I will certainly grant you access!), and publishers don't want anything that's been made public already--but locked is fine. I don't know if NecRomance or this months' NaNo (tentatively called Loved and Lost) will ever be good enough to publish, but I want to try anyway, and so I'm locking them down.

Anyway, thanks for a great month to [personal profile] ladyseishou, Drakey, Moony, and estallidos! Not to mention my cats, for sabotaging me at every possible turn; my non-Wrimo friends Juneloves, Pel, and Cousin, for eating my Thanksgiving weekend and my Thanksgiving food; and of course the husband, just for being my husband.
otter_nanowrimo: (Default)
Off to a good start! Beat the wordcount goal. Considering that I've never actually started on time, let alone ahead, I think I'm doing well! Of course, I'm seriously considering abandoning this "idea" in favor of rewriting Adventures.

So far I've learned that the fairy's name is Natalie, the main character is a thirty-five year old boy, his mother is 150 and his father is in his fifties or sixties--the math is in there somewhere. Dad does the cooking, while Mom teaches him how to use weapons behind Dad's back. Dad and the main character both have had their names mentioned, but since I basically strung together nonsense letters I don't remember them. Mother has a brother who is an adventurer named Uncle Arthur, and magic is done when elves and fairies work together. There was a war between humans and elves sometime before the main character was born but after his father was born. The main character's dearest ambition is currently to be a badass adventurer like Uncle Arthur, but mostly he does a lot of studying. Also helping out with whatever Dad does for a living, which is pretty menial. Mom is an enigma so far. I'm seeing some foreshadowing involving Uncle Arthur, but I can't decide what it's pointing towards. Five points for anyone who can point out an instance of deliberate wordcount padding! (The whole thing is wordcount padding, but still, there is some other padding going on too.)

But here's what I've got for today (2389 words):

Did you know? Magic is the opposite of entropy! )
otter_nanowrimo: (Damn)
Working Title: Zombie Boyfriend )

I should start thinking about this year's NaNo instead of obsessing about last year's! I'll gather up all my original ideas, I suppose, and see what I have worth making something out of.
otter_nanowrimo: (Damn)
-Escape from prison is not necessary
-Court battle (lawyer soliloquys)
-Contact lawyers from inside prison? Or escape, contact them outside?
-How to pay the lawyer?
-Guantanamo Bay
otter_nanowrimo: (I'm badass - Link)
Tomorrow is my self-imposed deadline and I haven't written any new words, leaving me at the end of my NaNo experience at just over 20,000 words.

This is okay with me.

I didn't think it would be, when I started. I was in a terrible writing slump, one that's lasted at least a year, and it was exacerbated by fests and challenges that I never finished. I firmly believed that I couldn't finish anything, hoped that finishing NaNo would convince me I could, and was convinced that failing to finish my NaNo would essentially kill any writer left in me--if there was any writer in me at all, which I was beginning to doubt.

There is a writer in me. I know because I took a premise I didn't like, characters I knew next to nothing about, and absolutely zero motivation, and turned it into 20,000 words. Twenty fucking thousand. And none of them are all that great and some of them are terrible, and admittedly they aren't worth reading. But they are worth finishing, and worth turning into something worth reading.

It has been so damn long since I felt this way about anything.

This is twenty thousand words I never would have written without NaNo. This is me digging through all my old folders, looking for new things to write and old things to finish. This is the end of that goddamned slump. This is hopefully the beginning of a new daily writing ritual. This is a good thing.

So I didn't finish. That's okay. I will. I'll finish Zombie Boyfriend and then I'll write something else, and then I'll keep writing.

One thing's for sure; I will be doing NaNo every year from here on out.

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The Lap Otter

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