Aaaaand They're Off!

Seven of us made it to Col's Place in Madison Heights, gabbed up until midnight, then wrote! I got my opening scene out of the way.

• Davis Nucci owes $36,000 to the Philadelphia mob. But the enforcer sent to make him pay instead dies by accident. Now Davis hits the road west, but pretending to be Nicholas White, cold-blooded collector of bad loans and sweet protection money.

Well, sort of. I did my novel planning in September and then at 9 PM on October 31. Not the most methodical approach this year.

The night shift manager was very interested in what we were doing, and wondered if I was an English teacher. The waitress treated us very well, considering we camped out for two hours, didn't eat all that much, and all had separate checks. On the other hand, we were half of their customers over those two hours.

I misheard the youngest WriMo saying her name in the NaNo forum was "Winnemucca." Not even close, but now I know where Davis will be brought down low, far into his journey. At least, that's today's plan. After the write-in broke up, I plinked out a few more words and saw the time change back to Eastern Standard. All in all, the last 24 hours have been good, and I get to say:

Word count after 1/2 day: 778

At the Starting Line

Hmm, no posts since August... October has been a busy month. Detroit Co-ML Owen and I have figured out how to work together, and gotten our preparations made - we hope! - decently well for noveling month. This year we have more members but perhaps will wind up with one third fewer write-ins than last year's 14 regular dates.

Today was the kickoff party. Surprise! 50 people showed up, 40 of them WriMos. This year about one third of our regional WriMos are new, which was reflected at the party. Both these are high numbers. Got many compliments on the goodies, including two handouts written (adapted?) by me. I was pleased to see the new faces included a scattering of teens and some folks more my age.

They laughed at the right places in my speech, always a good sign.

On to the midnight write-in in a couple of hours.

Oh, preparation for this year's novel? Hah! At this point I'm winging it far more than I wanted to, though Interstate 70 is firmly in the picture.

Rules for NaNo Novel Writing

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

- Red Smith, Philadelphia and New York sportswriter

Well, that's one way of looking at writing. I think I first heard that on the old TV show Thirtysomething. We're here to look at the peculiar demands of NaNoWriMo, though. 50,000 words in one month! These rules have served me well, and ignoring them has cost me forward momentum.

• Write every day. Seriously. Taking a day off can and has led to two, three days, a whole week, and a word count hole that's impossible to fill. Even one sentence on an off day can help maintain momentum. Writing in the same time and place most days helps build up a good writing habit.
  
• Just write. Let the words flow. Indeed, seek out the state of "flow," where the writer is just taking dictation from his characters. It's an amazing feeling. Even short of that, turning off all internal writing filters yields higher word count and occasionally some surprisingly good prose.
• If it's scrolled off the screen, fix it in December. Sure, fixing that typo in the previous sentence is fine. Going back to fix some writing flaw, rethinking a scene that's already written, even changing a character's name with find-and-replace, all destroy forward motion and waste time.
• A little planning beats no planning at all. Chris Baty's book is No Plot, No Problem, but there's a difference between not plotting out the whole novel, and having no organization. A 100-word blurb, a list of planned chapters, a couple of paragraphs describing each major character. All these help keep the writing going, rather than stopping often to figure out the next plot turn or whether George and Lula need to drive north or south to reach the haunted cabin. At the end of a writing session, a few words about what to write next can help getting started quickly at the beginning of the next.
• Never write a sex scene on deadline. This requires a delicate touch. The writing can get too mechanical or too elliptical. In real life, sex is all sensation and no thinking. On the printed page, the author must evoke those sensations in the reader's mind while his intellect is fully engaged in the story. Writing about sex at breakneck speed just washes away all imagination in a torrent of words.

There's more I could add, but, gee, in previous years there were only three rules. So let's not get too complicated.

Annual (Re)Introduction

Here is the very first posting in Free Range Novelist, updated for 2009.

This is the National Novel Writing Month weblog of Wes the Bricoleur. Or, for short, NaNoWriMo and Brico. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. That's it! 1,667 words a day, every day, quality not even a consideration. Free Range Novelist chronicles my experiences during November, 2009, as it (sort of) has for five years running. It will center on day-by-day writing, life as a Municipal Liason, plus a few excerpts from my novel-in-progress. Maybe 10% of postings will ramble off into other topics.

Why a blog on top of daily pages of novel to write? This is a way to let some "I-ness" out in the midst of so much "they-ness" writing in the characters' voices. If my Inner Editor gets too restless pacing in its month-long cage, it can exercise on a very short leash here.

Here are my rules for November: this blog is a place for honest observation and reflection. Like, or don't like what you see here? Feel free to comment, all considered opinions are welcome. I'll write about other WriMos here, and in return expect to be fair game.

As for the noveling experience, well, other entries can wax philosophical or turn practical. See the "rules for writing" post, for instance.

So. Here we go... enjoy November! Yours Truly must surely enjoy it, since this is the sixth noveling November in a row for your enthusiastic Brico, and a chance for a third win.

I Makes An Appearance

Goodness, where did eight months go? It is now 83 days to the start of NaNoWriMo 2009, and things are different this year. Your humble blogger has agreed to be co-Municipal Leader for the Detroit region, along with Owen B.

So, first, let's drop the Yours Truly. This was a small conceit so I wouldn't be writing "I" in every other sentence. But I expect to see at least a few more readers drop by this year, so all the cutesy stuff has to get swept away in favor of clean, direct writing.

This blog started as a way to let the Inner Editor walk on a leash occasionally during the noveling month. It'll still be that way, except now, Mr. I.E. will be harnessed to the yoke of clear reporting of the amazing and the mundane during November, and in the lead-up to the NaNoWriMo contest.

There will be no changes to the archives, so anyone who cares can see what the old, "YT" style was like. From now on, though, I is here.

Batting .400

So, another November has come and gone with YT falling short of the mark. Trouble is, Sebastian Lock and Liz Macaulay started sniffing around the problem of cars stalling in the rush hour, always in the middle of the block, but they never took off. Couldn't figure out how to get them on the trail, and they didn't hit it off into some kind of recognizable partner relationship.

So, your Bricoleur has gone two wins in five tries. Perhaps having an artery opened in real life, twice in the two months preceding NaNoWriMo, trumps the old epigram:

Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.

Just as with his teleporting drunkards in Year Two, or the dot-commers on the make in Year Four, your humble author thinks there's a good plot to be fleshed out into a real book with Twenty Three Slow. Trouble is, doing so requires inspiration and real work. YT is obliged to point out that the current best-selling Sara Gruen novel, Water For Elephants, started life as a NaNo novel. No doubt Ms. Gruen would say that a) the first draft, done during NaNo, was something she had to write, and b) not anywhere near the level of construction and polish of the published version.

This has been YT's lucky year. No, really, heart attack and all, this year has stood head and shoulders above the run of mostly mediocre years stretching back to when YT didn't even think of himself as middle-aged. So, not winning the lottery, and relaxing into NaNo instead of charging full speed ahead, those aren't such bad things.

Resolution for 2009: remember the First Rule, write something every day. YT could have hit the goal, even with achingly pedestrian prose, had he followed this simple rule. Ah, well, onward.

Word count after 30 days: 26,811

Writer's Block, Block, Block

YT has truly lost momentum. There were a stretch of days where he did nothing except nurse his ear infection (not much of an excuse). Last night, though, nearly 3,000 words flowed in just a few hours. Trouble is, YT will need many more nights like that to hit the target.

And the main character is only just now at the point of meeting his sidekick...

Word count after 19 days: 12,227

Obligatory Political Post

Well, as if there were much doubt these last few days... As this is being written, Sen. McCain is giving a very gracious concession speech. American politics has turned a corner, moved forward to a new generation, the generation beyond mine. Our politics has turned away from the tired, old themes of the wrestling match of the last 16 years.

Oh, finally Republicans are winding up owning their mistakes.

No noveling today, but YT did crank out a scene list for more than half of the plot.

Annual (Re)Introduction

Here is the very first posting in Free Range Novelist, updated for 2008.

This is the National Novel Writing Month weblog of Wes the Bricoleur. Or, for short, NaNoWriMo and YT (yours truly). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. That's it! 1,667 words a day, every day, quality not even a consideration. Free Range Novelist chronicles my experiences during November, 2008. It will center on day-by-day writing plus a few excerpts from my novel-in-progress. Maybe 10% of postings will ramble off into other topics.

Why a blog on top of daily pages of novel to write? This is a way to let some "I-ness" out in the midst of so much "they-ness" writing in the characters' voices. If my Inner Editor gets too restless pacing in its month-long cage, it can exercise on a very short leash here.

Here are my rules for November: this blog is a place for honest observation and reflection. Like, or don't like what YT writes? Feel free to comment, all considered opinions are welcome. I'll write about other WriMos here, and in return expect to be fair game.

As for the noveling experience, well, other entries can wax philosophical or turn practical. See the "three rules" posts, for instance, where the three rules seem to change from year to year.

So. Here we go... enjoy November! Yours Truly must surely enjoy it, since this is the fifth noveling November in a row for your enthusiastic Brico.

NaNoWriMo Begins

Off to a slow start, YT spent some time today to get organized. Decamping to the write-in at the Troy Public Library helped. YT is still not sure how to really get this novel off the ground, but he has a few scenes sketched out. Maybe that will be enough.

NOVEL TITLE: Twenty Three Slow

SYNOPSIS: Many city dwellers have given up owning private cars. They hire electric vehicles by the hour. When these rental cars begin stopping at random during rush hours, an engineer on the fringe of the industry searches for the reason why.

Now, to get into the flow of words...

Word Count after most of 1 day: 1,089