Day 8: Sunday is Supposed to be a Day of Rest, Right?

It was about 70 degrees today. Hmmm... sitting inside on the computer, or hiking on the Appalachian Trail?

It was such a difficult choice!

Day 7: An Amazing Surge Forward!

15,363 words! I'm two days ahead of schedule!

It's a Miracle!

Okay, maybe it's not really a miracle.

Maybe I cheated a little.

NaNoWriMo recommends that you use the month to write a new book, not finish one you've already been working on. So I took the story I started working on 4 years ago and started it over, in 1st person instead of 3rd, thinking maybe a fresh approach would work out better.

It was not working out better. In fact, I was feeling increasingly limited. And frustrated.

I took yesterday off completely. When I got back today, I heard the Inner Editor's muffled voice calling me from the Kennel.

It sounded something like, "The old draft was better!"

Or it could have been, "The bold giraffe will get her!"

Considering there are no giraffes in my story, bold or otherwise, I went with my initial hunch and uploaded my old 3rd person draft. Of course I.E. likes it; she's been doing nothing but editing those same 5 chapters for years now.

She's still not coming out of the Kennel. Even if she was right.

Again.

On the upside, my word count jumped from 6,715 to 15,363 in a split second. Also, now I can get back to moving my story forward instead of continuing to be mired in the beginning stuff. And now that I'm ahead instead of behind, I'm not feeling so miserable about the process.

This is much better.

Day 6: The Real Writer in the Family

Day 5: They're Consipiring Against Me!

Even the dog is trying to keep me from writing.

Day 4: The Serious Angst Sets In

Well, my count was supposed to be 6700 or so by the end of today, and I'm at a mere 4500 at 11:45 p.m. Now I'm going to be playing catch-up, which is not a game I like.

The scary thing is, I was not busy today. I had nothing to do today but write. My homeschoolers were even writing. I had to try really hard to avoid writing the way I did today.

I cleaned things that didn't need to be cleaned. Messed around on Facebook. Read a thousand old emails.

The only productive thing I did today was go to martial arts class, where at least I had a healthy outlet for my frustrations.

And I typed up my six-year-old's story, which was much better than mine. The Adventures of Old Papa Gator and Old Papa Residue will be appearing in book stores in the near future. Ethan read it out loud to him and we were all laughing so hard we were crying.

Maybe this was just a bad day and things will go better tomorrow. But if it still feels like this in a few days, I'm giving up.

At least the Yankees won. The Savage men will come home very happy.

Day 3: First Stumbles

Today I had the first "Oh, crap, now what?" moment. Seriously awkward silence. My characters have no idea what to say to each other. They've been frozen this way for almost 24 hours now and still haven't thought of anything to say. I need to go help them now.

They might be underage, but I think that if I have a beer, it might help break the ice a bit.

Day 2: Escape of the Inner Editor!

I can't believe it.

Sometime during the night, the dreaded Inner Editor must have become bored looking for typos in the newspaper and nitpicking the plot inconsistencies of TV shows in the Inner Editor Kennel, and she escaped!

Boy, was she pissed.

She was waiting for me when I woke up. I made some coffee, gathered my writing totems, sat down at the computer and there she was, arms folded, foot tapping.

I can see why my psychology students (and my homeschoolers) feared her so much. She immediately went to work on my draft, adding and deleting, putting little comments in brackets - things like [SLOW THIS DOWN - it's like a speeding train!!!!!] with capital letters and exclamation points, while I sat and pouted.

Now I can see why it is so important to keep these things locked up. I spent 2 hours working and increased my word count by a mere 251.

Sure, I listened to her - she's right, she's always right. And she did fix some serious suckiness.

But I sent her back to the Kennel with a stack of trashy novels and told her I didn't want to see her again until she was done with them.

She left, muttering something about how all of those trashy novels were Published and mine wasn't and probably never would be.

*!*

Day 1: 1797 Words

Not a bad start. It took about 2 hours to exceed my daily goal of 1,667 words. Granted, a lot of this was just introductory / background stuff, and fairly easy compared with dialogue and conflict and suspense, but it flowed and felt comfortable and fun, and was not at all frustrating.

In addition to the email pep-talks and video encouragement on the NaNoWriMo website, No Plot? No Problem! has a chapter for each of the four weeks of NaNoWriMo. In the Week 1 chapter, which I read immediately before starting, I was challenged to do something I knew would be very hard for me.

It actually says in the book, "I'll need to confiscate your Inner Editor."

The Inner Editor is described as "The doubting, self-critical voice that we all inherited around puberty as an unfortunate door prize for surviving childhood...happiest when it's tsk-tsking our shortcomings and weaving our past blunders into a rich tapestry of personal failure."

Mine is HUGE.

But I agreed to turn her over for a four week stay in the NaNoWriMo Inner Editor Kennel so that I might write my first draft "in a high-velocity, take-no-prisoners, anything-goes style that would absolutely horrify" her.

And that's exactly what I did, at least on my first day. I have not gone back to read over what I have written. I have not changed a word here and a sentence there. I have respected a strict No Tinker Zone throughout the evening.

And the first 1797 words were practically effortless.

Were they crap? Maybe. But that's for my I.E. to decide, once I let her out.

IF I let her out.

Sending her packing felt really good. It makes me wonder what other Inner Editors are lurking about in my psyche that I could purge.

Dangerous, dangerous stuff...

More Stretching - Out of the Comfort Zone

I had a whole two and a half hours to myself this afternoon. No kids, no responsibilities and two and a half hours to do the one thing I keep saying I'd do if I only had more time.

I immediately got to work - looking for ways to avoid writing.

The house was already clean due to my birthday weekend. Scraping up a load of laundry only killed about 5 minutes. I headed for the kitchen - always something to do there - but there were two pots of homemade soup already simmering on the stove. The anxiety began to build. I unpacked the new mixer I got for my birthday, made room for it on the counter and considered baking something, but with all the leftover birthday cake and pastries from the weekend, that really didn't make any sense.

Nothing to clean, nothing to cook. Now what?

I delivered two containers of soup to friends. Tried to think of more errands to run. None came to mind. I went home to face my anxiety and finally sat down at the computer for a small bit of pre-writing for NaNoWriMo. Then I took a power nap until the kids were due home.

Realizing that this is normal and to be expected, I tried to just be with it and not fight it too much (Be the water, not the rock... be the water, not the rock...), but it was harder than I thought. Making time for writing instead of just vowing to get to it when everything else is done is going to be an uncomfortable stretch for me.

Hubby has just assured me once again that he will be helpful and supportive next month, but I'm beginning to think I will need to be pushed to even take him up on it. While not particularly exciting or rewarding, doing laundry and cleaning up the kitchen is a lot more comfortable than the temporal and psychological investment inherent to a serious writing project.

I'm remembering why I failed at this before.

But hey, this is a time for pushing the boundaries, breaking out of the comfort zone, trying new things, being brave, being strong! I just turned 40. I'm testing for my first belt promotion in martial arts in December. I'm doing things I never thought I could do. This is just more of the same.

I can do this.

I can do this.

After I unload the dishwasher.



It may be a long, angsty November.

Turning 40

I guess it wasn't so bad.

Stretching the Writing Muscle

It's the middle of October. The weather is crummy, soccer is canceled, the house is (relatively) clean, and the kids are watching Saturday morning TV. Faced with a morning of no pressing matters or excuses to procrastinate further, I am at my laptop, surrounded by my writer's journal, my special pen, and my copies of No Plot? No Problem!, Creativity Rules, The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style and When Good People Write Bad Sentences. I just made a fresh pot of coffee.

And here I sit.

According to the countdown clock on the website, NaNoWriMo begins in 14 days, 16 hours, 21 minutes and 7 seconds. This time, I'm determined to win.

For those of you who have never heard of NaNoWriMo, it is essentially a writing marathon, with over 100,000 participants from all over the world sharing the goal of writing a 50,000 word novel (roughly the length of Brave New World) in 30 days. Quantity is encouraged over quality, which is why this is great for someone like me, whose crippling perfectionism keeps me writing the same chapter over and over, unable to move forward until every bit of suckiness has been fixed - which, of course, is never.

According to the NaNoWriMo webpage and the companion book No Plot? No Problem! it is okay to write a lot of crap. A first draft is supposed to be crappy - the idea is to get it written and worry about the editing and polishing later. With the November 30th deadline, there is no time to tinker; you just write as much as you can, as fast as you can, with your obnoxious internal editor stuffed in a box, padlocked into a second box, and jammed under the basement stairs behind all the Christmas decorations, not to be let out until January.

This will be the hardest part for me. Stephen King says to write your first draft "with the door closed" - meaning without concern for who is going to read it and what the response will be. Plagued with insecurity as I am with regard to my writing, my door has never been completely closed. I would rather write nothing than write something people might consider sucky - which is why my blog has morphed into a picture album over the last few years. Blogging is the epitome of writing with the door open - wide open - which is why I have so much respect for the people who have the courage to do it, and who do it well, while I flounder at it and finally give up.

But I'm blogging now, right? And you're reading it, and maybe it sucks, but that's okay. I'm just stretching. Finding all those kinks and tight spots I'd forgotten about, waking them up and stimulating the blood flow to them. In my previous attempts at NaNoWriMo, I didn't bother stretching first. I jumped right into the event, unprepared, and proceeded to fall flat on my face.

This year is different. Starting now with the warm-up stretches. I also have 4 amazing characters I care deeply about and am eager to let loose, and a rudimentary plot for them to follow. With one child in school and two homeschoolers who like to sleep late in winter, I have the potential for 2 uninterrupted hours of writing time after the morning school send-off. My hubby has promised to be supportive and helpful to help me find some evening writing time.

I also have a writing buddy in the house for the first time. Ethan, who is turning 11 next month, has decided to join me by participating in the NaNoWriMo Young Writers' Program. He has a lower word count goal and a cool workbook to help him plan and organize his book, but otherwise it is much the same for kids. Like the adult website, the kids' page has a variety of forums where you can meet and share ideas and encouragement with other writers, a place to upload your work to be counted, and a graph to track your progress. Remembering my own passion for writing that began at around his age will no doubt spur me on, and hopefully loosen my inhibitions enough to make it to the finish line this time.

Okay. That felt good. It reminded me of running or taking martial arts class - the first few minutes are the hardest, but if I push myself past the painful stretching and the first few minutes of the workout, it gets much easier from there. I'll try to spend the next two weeks limbering up for the big event which now starts in 14 days, 14 hours, 31 minutes, and 24 seconds.

End of Summer 2009

Senators Baseball, Hershey Park, Martial Arts belt tests, the start of the homeschooling year, and a last hurrah Labor Day weekend at Boy Scout camp: It was a great end to a great summer!

(Click to enlarge the pictures.)

The Harrisburg Senators played the Yankees' farm team. Note the Yankees-wear on Ed and the kids...

We had a great day at Hershey Park with some great friends.

We watched as one of said friends won a skating medal. (She was awesome!)

Kyle tested for his Purple Belt in Jung Sim Do.

Ethan tested for his Yellow Belt the next day.

Here they are sporting their new belts. (Kyle far left, Ethan in the middle.)

Note the appearance of the newest Jung Sim Do student from our family.

After the beach vacation, school began for everyone.

My newest homeschooler working on his new laptop.

Thank goodness I have someone who understands Kyle's learning style...

We celebrated a successful first week of school with a family Labor Day weekend trip to Hidden Valley Boy Scout camp.

There was a bee in our cabin. It was no match for Michael.

As you can see, he is very fierce. There was also a very big black snake in our cabin, but Ed dealt with that one himself.

Breakfast.

Shooting instructors were available to show us the ropes and help the boys earn merit badges and certificates.

Even Kyle got to try.

Ethan is still a superior marksman.

Michael (a.k.a. "Fireboy") took care of all of the campfire duties.

Many hot dogs and marshmallows were roasted and consumed.

I tried a shotgun for the very first time and hit 4/5 of the clay pigeons!

Michael had hoped to show me up, but no such luck.

First time for Ed too.

All in all, it was a relaxing and fun weekend - the perfect end to a wonderful summer!