Nobody Knows Anything

And don’t worry, this will undoubtedly be my last NaNo-related entry…until next year.

Doing NaNoWriMo this year was a blast. I mentioned it to a couple of friends on October 31, thinking, Maybe I could do some writing…but fifty thousand words? That’s a lot of pages. (Many people on the NaNo boards are in shock because they wrote 100 pages of text, and my first reaction is, You didn’t use manuscript format, did you? I had 240 pages.)

I don’t know when it became apparent to me that I was really going to go for the whole fifty thousand word kit and kaboodle. Sometime in the first ten thousand words I realized that I had to throw out the outline I was so carefully working on. Why? I don’t know. There have been many debates on Wordplay on the utility of outlines. Terry and Ted and other pros recommend them highly. I can totally understand why they are a crucial part of screenwriting. So why didn’t my outline work for me? A couple of reasons, I expect:

1. I wasn’t outlining the right way for me—I was doing it in too clinical and detached a fashion. Scene 1, scene 2, scene 3. Instead, if I wanted to do an outline, I think I’d have to start by telling myself a story (”Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted to steal a jewel, and the five Feds who wanted to stop her”) and flesh it out that way.
2. I also think outlines may work better for screenplays than for novels. Having a tight story is absolutely crucial in a screenplay: forget page count, you only have so much screen time, and everything has got to count. In a novel, though, you can meander a little more. Yes, I believe you’ve got to have structure in a novel. You just don’t have to get there right now or the audience is out buying popcorn.
3. I got very much caught up in the “get words out, any damn words” frenzy, which produced, as it is wont to do, some very weird words. I had a vague idea who the killer was going to be, but once I dreamt some of this stuff up I realized that having that person be the killer wasn’t going to work.

I haven’t gone back to read what I have at the moment—I think I’ll let it rest for a bit—but I know one thing: it’s given me text to work with, and a story to go after.

One of the most popular complaints of the writer is that the next idea seems so much more attractive than the one you’re working on now, and this is totally true: it always does. Of course, everyone always wants to drop the one they’re working on at this moment and go on to the next one, which is a bad idea. Why? Because the next one is going to have the same problems as this one does. The current one is real and extant and horribly flawed and little mutant, whereas the next one still exists in a state of perfection in your mind. Anyone can dream about the perfect next project. It’s getting the current project into good shape that’s important.

Rewriting doesn’t scare me the way it used to. I used to think, I got it out once, now I’ll just tweak it. Now I rev up the chainsaw and say, Where do we start? It’s just words. I can always produce more words.

One of the best things this NaNo exercise did for me was force me to write big and long. I have a tendency to write spare, which doesn’t happen to be a kind of fiction writing I particularly enjoy reading. I don’t want to be rushed through things, I want to find out what’s going on. It’s pretty clear where the spare writing comes from, of course: it’s helpful if you can write short and pithy in a screenplay. Not so much in fiction. I would rather write long and wordy and then cut down than figure out where to bulk up in later drafts.

I’m not at all surprised I came in “short” (at only 50,000 words!)—my first full-length screenplay came in short too. I’ve never had that problem again. Writing longer began to feel good during this past month.

Anyhow: doing this was an exercise I recommend highly. I am totally doing this again next year.

Yay me!

The NaNo Progress Meter site seems to have disappeared, so I will post totals here throughout the day.

9:45am: 47672 words, 2400 to go. This seems entirely possible. Even though I still don’t know whodunnit.

10:00am: 48001/1999.

11:15am: 49121/879+ to go. It would have been a while ago, except from 10 to 10:30 I played Spaceward Ho. (Why? Why do I do that? In the middle of writing, gotta go play a game. What’s up with that?) In other news: I now know whodunnit! Which requires me to put in a lot more stuff to set it up! Which should take care of those 879+ words no problem! The only down side is that I have to go pick up the kids soon and I won’t get a lot of writing done once that happens until Darin comes home tonight.

11:30am 49341/659+: Awk! I have no steam! Part of this is having already done 2500 words this morning, sure, but I could be done. But the end is in sight. What’s going on? The whole “And then they get run over by a truck” thing is looking more and more appealing by the second.

11:50am 49653/347+: A little over a page to go, but I have to run out and go get the kids. Maybe Simon will fall asleep on the ride home from school and Sophia can be talked into watching a show so I can finish up!

2:07pm 49963/37+: And I have to get Sophia to her dance class! But I can clearly do 40 words before midnight tonight. Unless I fall into a coma from exhaustion the way I seem to be threatening to (didn’t I get sleep last night? what’s going on?).

I have about 3000 words to go now, and about one day to do them in. If you’d asked me on October 31 what I would think of writing 3500 words in a day, I would have said, Are you nuts? but pretty much my take on it now is Piece of cake. I guess I shouldn’t get too cocky. After all, I have 3500 words to go and I still don’t have a damn killer. None of the suspects I’ve set up feel right. I’m wondering if I have to write in a whole new character, which would definitely take care of those 3500 words easy.

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I feel kind of gypped. I haven’t had any of the flow experiences other NaNo’ers report. I haven’t dreamed about my story or my characters. (I did have an amazingly cool dream one night, but using standard dream interpretation techniques it’s clear the dream was about me, not about my book.) I haven’t had any days where the story just took off by itself and I could write and write and write and the well would stay primed.

And certainly no 10,000 word days. I know the most I’ve done in a day is 3500. The first time I did 3500 I came home and told Darin, I need to sleep now. After that it was like, Hey, not a bad writing day. No big deal.

2000 is a much easier number to contemplate on a daily basis, though.

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I have realized I need writing music. I had very few albums on iTunes. Our CDs never really got unpacked after the move—no central stereo system any more, the way we’d had it set up in our living room in LA. The CDs all got stashed in the dining room closet, which does have the wiring to set up a household-wide stereo system, just not the stereo. So as I’ve been sitting here at the dining room table, typing away, I’ve been taking stacks of CDs out of the closet and ripping them. Not all of them (we have a couple of hundred). Just a range of music and moods that might help me when writing. I don’t always want to listen to the conversations at the table next to me when I’m out at a cafe somewhere.

Well, technically, 5,420 to go, plus a little slop to make sure I get verified by the NaNo verifier.

So why am I playing Spaceward Ho! instead of writing? There are only 2 days and 4 hours left! And tomorrow I am with the kids all day, so i shouldn’t be expecting to get too much done during the day.

Part of the problem is I’m not quite adjusted to the Pacific Time Zone yet. We flew to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving, and I basically did two things: hung out quietly in the midst of chaos (let me tell you, when Darin’s extended family—and it extends a little more every year—gets together, there’s chaos to spare) and wrote. Twice I asked someone to take me to the local Borders for a few hours so I could write. I didn’t even look at any books. I just wrote.

I haven’t gone back to read what I’ve written (or, more exactly, I’ve read just pieces here and there, looking for new places to stick stuff in). I am sure of two things: the overwhelming majority of the 44,580 words I’ve produced so far are crap, and I’ve had a ton of fun producing them. One of the best features of NaNoWriMo is that you can’t stop to think or analyze or (worst of all) critique—there’s no damn time. Just vomit now. Think about it later.

I need 5,420 words (plus a few). Surely I can do an easy amount, like 1000 or 1500 tonight, yes?

In the comments to my last entry, Pooks asked, “What is a Moleskine?”

The quick answer is, “It’s a notebook.”

The longer answer is, “It’s a notebook with great paper and a envelope on the back cover and an oilskin cover and a sewn binding and the whole thing is kept tightly shut with an elastic band that makes a satisfying snap as you close your notebook for the day after a session of fantastic writing and it’s an object of adoration for quite a few people out there who would rather pay an outrageous sum for a beautiful, useful object like this than a dollar-ninety-seven for a cheap spiral-bound notebook at the drugstore (not that there’s anything wrong with dollar-ninety-seven cheap spiral-bound notebooks if that’s what you like).”

You can pick the style of notebook that’s best for you. First of all, there’s the large (13×21cm) and the small (9×14cm). Then you can choose whether you want blank, squared, ruled, or sketchbook paper. There are also the Moleskine diaries — week at a glance, or a page-per-day. And there are the new Moleskines: the music book and the storyboard book. There’s also something Moleskine sells that is three thin books in one package — there’s no oilskin cover, no elastic band, what’s the point?

The Moleskine notebook lies flat on the table, waiting for you to write or sketch something brilliant in it. The acid-free paper is fantastic for writing on. Cheap paper is rough, an impediment to the ballpoint. But Moleskine paper is smooth and lets your hand fly across the page. It has that pocket in back, so you can keep receipts, movie tickets, love notes on cocktail napkins, photos of loved ones. And no matter how much you jam in that pocket, that elastic band around the notebook is going to keep the whole kit-and-kaboodle together — you won’t lose anything.

Each Moleskine comes with a page of what is undoubtedly overblown (or outright made up) propaganda from the manufacturer about the great authors who have used Moleskine notebooks. Who cares? The notebook itself is all the inducement you need to keep using them.

I first read about Moleskine fanaticism on Metafilter. There is a fan site, not to mention a variety of fan groups on sites like Orkut. There are pages with tips on how to get the most out of your Moleskine. You can find them at Barnes and Noble and Borders now, or you can buy them in bulk.

I myself now prefer the large blank page edition, although if I ever start carrying my big handbag again, I may have to pick up a small notebook to tuck in there for special occasions. I am considering buying one of the new storyboard books, just to see what it’s like. I think that would be something I’d use when fleshing out a screenplay though — what’s the important visual here?

I love my Moleskine. It’s not just another notebook. It’s an inspiration.

Yes, I have continued writing. I finally updated the NaNo count—I’m up to 34,200 currently (I don’t have my NaNoWriMoProMe password with me or I’d update the counter over there)—and have high hopes that despite the Turkey Day get-togethers and general enforced conviviality (which is the natural enemy of writing, I think) that I will continue on to win NaNo.

§

I managed to write on the plane ride. Two pages in a Moleskine with relatively small handwriting equals approximately one manuscript page, for those of you trying to figure out the conversions. So you couldn’t write a whole novel in a Moleskine, but you could do a lot of it. I discovered that I like writing by hand—I haven’t written fiction by hand for so long.

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I used to fly places. Hey, in the first year of her life, Sophia was on something like 30 planes. But now: two kids, we live near family, yadda, yadda…not so much flying.

Which is why I am probably the last person to find out that Delta charges for food on planes now. And they’d still run out by the time the food cart got to the back of the plane. Which wasn’t bad, because I had packed food for the kids beforehand anyhow and I wasn’t hungry. But sheesh.

Bring your own! Especially if you have kids!

I spent the first part of today’s mega-writing session writing a summary of what had happened so far and then making a bullet list of what needs to happen. Transitions are currently non-existent (they’re talking to this new character because…?) but I continue apace.

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I didn’t make it clear the other night (well, I mentioned it in comments, but who reads those?) I didn’t actually make 4000 words the other night. I made 2000 for the day as a whole, most of which were down at Coffee Society (a few more at home, later). I still haven’t had one of those “bursts” that so many other NaNoWriMo participants talk about, where the fire gets lighted and suddenly the words are vomiting out of them, 4,000, 5,000, 10,000 at a time. (A few have reported 10000 word sessions. 10000 words is 40 pages. Even if it were 40 pages of crap, that’s forty pages. Your hands would be in traction. Well, mine would be, at any rate.

Still, wouldn’t mind trying it, just to see.

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I discovered Laurell K. Hamilton has a blog, which is mostly about what she has accomplished with her writing in that day (usually somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twenty pages a day—that “conk” you hear is my head hitting the table), along with a few rants on various topics.

One of the (unintentionally, I assume) hilarious bits in her blog is when she complains about her characters running away from her outline for another sex scene. If you haven’t read any of Hamilton’s books—any of the later Anita Blake books, or any of the Merry Gentry series—go read some of the one-star reviews on Amazon. Many of her fans are evidently pretty sick of the endless sex scenes as well. One of the reasons I gave up trying to read her books was that if you took out the sex scenes, you wouldn’t be left with a story. I have nothing against sex in books—in fact, I’ve been known to seek it out on occasion—but it has to be a)hot and b)have a point. The last Hamilton book I picked up I sped-read. “Yes, yes, slot A, tab B, now tab A, slot B, now bring in a few more people into the bed, is there a plot anywhere here?”

The other thing I’m left wondering after reading her blog is: are all of those misspellings and editing errors in her books (which you’ll also notice from Amazon are legendary) simply from her original manuscript and left in because there’s no copyediting at the publishing houses? Or is it just a case of an author getting so prominent the publishers don’t dare change a word for fear of irritating the author into another house’s arms?

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Oh Good God. I’m trying to write at Starbucks today (can’t stay at home—the kids wouldn’t let me have a minute to myself), and the guy at the table behind me is sucking his teeth. I mean, he is making the loudest sucking noises, loud enough to interrupt the music I’m listening to through headphones. Ssst. Ssst. Sssssst. I’ve already turned around and glared at him once. He’s an old man, I guess it’s a tic he can’t control. Damn, it sure is annoying though, and he’s determined to read the entire fucking paper while making that horrible noise.

I’d move, except a)I was here first, dammit and b)this is the big table with the power outlet.

§

Okay! He wins! I’m outta there. I have moved on to a local coffeehouse in town. Probably should have come here to begin with, given that I am so into supporting local businesses these days (and their coffee’s better), but I thought I’d take a walk on the wild side and visit Starbucks. Terrible idea! Much better class of person here. Also, a ridiculous quantity of the people here also have laptops and are typing away. I am one of a flock of weirdoes! (I wonder if any of these people are NaNoing.)

And none of them will be the ones I put in this entry.

7:20pm: 21,275 words

• Am I really back at Coffee Society, writing? I was one of the first customers here in 1989. I practically had my own table for years. This was where Darin first asked me out 12 years ago. It hasn’t changed much. Still the black and white stripes around the bar area.
• This is where the NaNoWriMo South Bay writing posse meets on Thursday nights. However, the overflow room (didn’t exist in 1989, came into existence a few years later) is packed to the gills.
• Also, all of their outlets are taken already, so I wouldn’t want to be in there anyhow.
• My current pace is supposed to be two thousand words today, except I missed Monday and haven’t kicked it up a notch to catch up.
• So, tonight’s assignment: four thousand words!
• Maybe I could do three thousand tonight, three thousand tomorrow?
• Must. Bank. Words. Ahead. Of. Holiday.
• I am sitting next to a table of De Anza students who are in a Children’s Literature class. They are watching the Mike Myers Cat in the Hat movie as an assignment.
• I am definitely getting the idea that this movie is not appropriate for children. And that’s just from their reactions.

7:45pm: 21,533 words

• Okay, on the one hand, I’d reached a dead end, I had nowhere to go with this scene. Now, I’ve come up with a plot complication completely out of the blue. Meaning I don’t know what it means either. This is part of the genius of NaNoWriMo. Also, how things completely spiral out of control. Which will it be?
• There are extremely cliched possibilities with this plot complication. I would like to avoid them all. Do I stop and make a list? Hope for divine intervention? Try to inculcate a dream tonight on the subject?
• I have to go to the bathroom, but not until 22,000!

8:13pm: 22,066 words

• 22,000! Must. Pee.
• Crap! Just remembered that I needed to stop at the store to buy bread for the kids’ sandwiches tomorrow! And now that reminds me that I’m a total suburban mom!

8:56pm: 22,895 words

• Whoo hoo! I have achieved a dead body, finally! Considering this is a mystery, that certainly took me long enough. I already know at least 5000 words I’d toss out of this right here, and right now, so maybe I’m not that far off stride for a 75,000 word mystery. But we’re not worrying about that! We’re worrying about word count!
• Once again I am struck by my continual suspicion that everyone else knows how to write a novel! Yes, I am well aware of Somerset Maugham’s 3 rules of the novel (”There are three rules to writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are”) but I know so many people who have written published fiction! What is my problem that I cannot get this process right?
• This is an unproductive line of thought. Must. Stop. Brooding.

9:11pm: 22,895 words

• Crap! Having achieved a dead body, I have apparently written myself into a corner! Why did I do this? More importantly, how do I get out of it? (Basically, the question is, why doesn’t my main character just up and leave town right now and leave the mess of the dead body—not caused by her—far, far behind her?)
• Damn, it is loud in here. Have I found such noise conducive to thought in the past? Wrong, wrong, wrong. I so do not. I want to be home, listening to music, in the warmth and comfort of my own home. I will think upon this plot problem as I drive.

Home:

Okay, on the drive home I realized what I need to do is go back and seed a few scenes that build pressure on the MC to stay, not run away. On the one hand, finding the dead body is supposed to be the end of Act 1, which means adding even more pages previously would push the end of Act 1 even farther away from where it should be. (300 page book, Act 1 comes somewhere near page 75.) On the other hand, this is just for NaNoWriMo, right? Fixing the Shitty First Draft (® Anne Lamott) is a job for NaNoEdMo…or at least, another time.

I’ve added a NaNoWriMo Progress Meter to the sidebar, so y’all can follow how close (or not so) I am to my goal of 50,000 words. Now I am not so tempted to log on to iChat, so I can just “happen” to run into friends and have to spend a minute or two (or more) chatting about my progress.