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Nano Reflections

06 Thursday Dec 2012

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Last year I posted about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you NaNoWirMo2who prefer their English unabbreviated. I talked about why I was not doing it and why that made me a heretic.

This year, in order to stay ahead of the curve and reveal my contrary nature, I opted to go ahead and do it. Because not doing it once and claiming you are doing so because it is cool not to is fine but there is no sense in repeating the pose for a second year. No sense in doing what people expect, always keep the audience guessing. 🙂

Actually, the main reason I opted to do it was to give myself a kick up the backside. Earlier in the year I had promised a publisher a complete anthology of short stories (well, one novella and some shorts) and had promised him delivery by a certain time. In the meantime, the deadline has whooshed past and I was still sat there with barely anything written and all of that painfully extracted over the course of several months. So, when November loomed I looked at my barely begun novella and decided that this would be my Nano project.

Of course, I still had the same problems as last year, which were my main reasons for not doing Nano. Work life balances getting all out of synch and all that. This time I even had a regular job to occupy me. I knew that 50K was unlikely to be a target I could aim for and still stay sane, married, healthy and employed. Instead, I opted for a lesser target. As things stood on my WIP I had just under 10K written already and I had predicted it to be about 30K when complete (various additional stories were planned to take the whole project to more than 50K, some of which had already been written and just needed tweaking). I therefore set myself two targets:

1) Write at least 20K words in order to get the total up to more than 30K

2) Complete the novella

By the end of NaNo I had written 20777 words which definitely achieved the first target and had put the novella to just under 30K words (close enough to be not worthwhile worrying about). However, I had not finished the novella…. the reason being that I realised that it is going to be a much longer story than I originally thought. I am almost at the end but there are at least another few thousand words to go and I am pondering additional scenes which may take it even higher than that.

So, I am counting my first NaNo experience as a win. I acheived one of my goals and only did not achieve the other because of changes in the goalposts. Not only that, but the process has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project which had been mired in the doldrums for far too long. In the course of writing I created a new character who I enjoy writing (he was intended to be an incidental local colour character, present for maybe a scene or two, but I ended up taking him further than that) and thought of some new plot ideas which I hope work. Of course, I have also produced something that is grammatically messy, likely filled with examples of bad writing and worse plot cliches but at least I have produced something and there is nothing that cannot be fixed in the edit.

Would I do it again in the future? Maybe. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances – am I working full time? Do I have a project that is languishing? I do think it was a good motivation tool and so worth doing on that basis alone. Not sure I would ever get to the point where I would ‘win’ NaNo but I am confident that it will be useful nontheless.

Secret Project and productivity update

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Musings, Productivity, Secret Project of Secretness

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This picture is here for no good reason. Nothing to do with the post at all, honest...

I just got an awesome bit of feedback about a piece I wrote for the secret project I am working on. Apparently they liked it 🙂 I suppose it is one of the advantages of a set up like Dropbox and shared folders. Everytime I update a file in the Dropbox folder, the person I am writing this for gets an instant notification that there is something there for him to read.

Of course, the disadvantage of this is that everytime I update a file, he gets a notification that there is something for him to read…

Anyway, the upshot of this is that the secret project is going wonderfully and at some point over the next month or so I may even be in a position to tell you all what exactly it is. Assuming I manage to make the deadlines, which is where the next bit of this post comes in. Productivity…

This photo is also here for no reason. Enjoy.

My productivity plan is going great with one exception. I have been useless at remembering to post the word counts to Twitter every day. I have been managing to write 200 words a day minimum, every day except weekends and ‘official holidays’ (defined as days where my wife has a day off or days that everyone else in the country considers a holiday such as Bank Holidays). On most days I have more than exceeded that target (today’s, for example, is well over a thousand and today is a Sunday so I was officially ‘off duty’). I am therefore still declaring this method as a success because it has got me writing every day, avoided the ‘no productivity doldrums’ and generally increased my output. Now, the flaw to this is that only doing 200 a day is not likely to see a novel completed in any short time scale but as I said, I only see this as a minimum target, not a maximum. On average I am between 200 and 1000 words a day with the 200s only really coming out on days I am working fulltime. This contrasts with previous efforts to improve productivity by setting a high target of 1000 – 2000 words a day when I soon gave up because there were days where this was not possible.

Therefore, in conclusion, I heartily recommend this method if you find the more traditional ones not to your taste.

Review: Deep Black Beyond

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Reviews, Secret Project of Secretness

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It’s review time again and this one is of a short story collection by Annie Bellet.

The review may be found here

In other news, you may remember me mentioning on Twitter as part of my regular word count updates that I was doing ‘audition pieces’. Well,  I have just had word that those auditions were successful and I will be starting on a ‘work for hire’ project next week. Details are currently secret but if it goes as planned the outcome should be rather cool and will allow me to achieve the unthinkable – make use of skills I have been developing for decades and actually get paid for using them.

Feel free to speculate wildly in the comments about what this project is if you wish.

Not really feeling it.

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Wierdness

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It may be the change in season – some form of SAD caused by it getting darker earlier after the change in the clocks – or possibly something to do with some other aspect of my lifestyle at the moment – diet, sleep patterns, something like that. It may simply be the cycle of the moon or some hormonal flip or even a low level flu or other bug. Whatever it is, I’ve not been feeling in the best of moods lately. Today seems to have been the deepest trough, however, and the major effect seems to have been on my own self esteem.

In short, I have spent the last few days in the absolute and inviolable belief that everything I have written, am writing and will ever write is utter rubbish. I came to realise this when I found this thread in the Absolute Write  forums – Convinced WIP is awful. I also realised on reading this that it is not so unusual for writers to feel this way on occasion. In the rational part of my brain, I know full well that this is a ludicrous thing and probably indicative of a mild depression – possibly triggered by not yet adapting my body clock to the new daylight times. My intellectual brain is citing various pieces of evidence at me such as:

1) There are lovely, wonderful people out there who have said that they like your writing.

2) You have actual publications and apparently some people who are not you, your family or your friends have bought and read them.

3) Lots of other writers have the same feelings and it is not indicative of you, your writing or anything like that but merely an expression of some deeper neurophysiological issue.

However, as anyone with an endocrine system knows only too well, in cases like these the intellectual part of the brain never gets a vote and the rampant craziness is given free rein on the mind.

As a result of this, I have actually done very little writing today. I did achieve my daily word count goal but rather than write something interesting and creative as part of a story I slogged out 700 words on a guest post I have promised to another writer. And I wasn’t 100% certain that I liked those words. I’m still not. I may delete the whole thing and forget all about it at which point I may as well have not bothered writing anything in the first place. I had intended to go through some stories and chapters I had got some beta reader notes on and make the changes but every time I tried to do that I just could not summon up the enthusiasm. I’d also intended to schedule a guest post someone had kindly done for me, which should have been a 5 minute job and therefore an easy win and I couldn’t even do that.

Instead my day involved sitting with the dog on the settee and watching DVDs and surfing the internet. I suppose you could call that research but I never really ever intended to write a story about sitting on the settee with a dog.

So, here is the question. How do you get over these slumps? What techniques do you use to overcome the feeling that everything is futile and worthless? I suppose in my case my technique is avoidance. I have removed myself from writing in the hope that my keen will return following the rest. Are there any other methods?

Tomorrow I intend to be more proactive and actually do something. But then I said that yesterday as well.

The traditions of my people

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in NaNo

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I’m all for traditions – customs, rituals, holidays, celebrations, whatever. I love them and like to see them maintained. Events which happens every year and does so because ‘it’s always been that way’ touch me in a special place in my heart. So, I thought I would dedicate this blog post to one of the solemnest and most important traditions of my people.

The coming month will see my people fasting and praying, working hard to appease their gods. They will go without sleep, without food and spend long hours in angst filled contemplation on the human spirit. When this time of trial is over, they will emerge from it as better people – stronger and more capable of dealing with the every day stresses and strains. It is a sacred time, a testing time, a time of enlightenment.

What am I talking about? Why, NaNoWriMo of course… 🙂 Possibly the most important celebration of geekdom and social mediadom ever, eclipsing even ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day‘ in it’s importance. I may be exaggerating here, of course. As you know, nothing could possibly eclipse Talk like a pirate day… Well, except maybe Talk Like a Dalek day….

National Novel Writing Month has been around for quite a few years. In fact, it was first run in 1999 when it had only 21 participants. This makes it, in internet terms, an ancient tradition which harkens back to the days BF (Before Facebook). It has since grown in size to 200,000 recorded writers taking part in 2010. The goal is simple: write 50,000 words and report them on the NaNoWriMo website between the 1st and the 30th of November. It is possibly the largest (well, certainly the most well known) writer productivity challenge in the world. It is a great way to learn discipline – to try to dedicate yourself to writing every day not just when you feel like it. This is a good thing and should be encouraged, which is why I consider NaNoWriMo to be an important tradition in Geekdom.

However, I have a confession to make. I am a heretic. I do not follow the ancient tradition of NaNoWriMo as a true follower of the Path of Geek should. I spurn my geekish ancestors and bring shame upon those who follow the true path with my progressive and non-orthodox ways. I have never signed up for NaNo nor even made any effort to increase my writing output in November. It is shameful, I know, but I do have a very good reason and it is all to do with timing.

I’m a teacher. As such I tend to get some wonderful summer holidays to luxuriate in and get lots of writing done. Six whole weeks of it, in fact. Sheer bliss. However, once September comes, the school term starts and things get a lot busier. OK, at the moment I am what we call a ‘gentleman of leisure’ (which is another name for scrounging layabout) and so am not expected to be working in a school at the moment. However, past experience has taught me that November (which lands just after the first half term holiday of the school year) is often a busy time for supply jobs to start rolling in and that means I have no guarantee of free time between now and December. So, rather than commit to NaNo and risk failing because a big job comes in that sucks up all my free time, I prefer to keep writing as normal and be there in spirit for those who are suffering the months of privation ahead.

Of course, I am also supporting in other ways – including doing at least one guest post in the coming month so that someone doing NaNo can free up more time for writing…

So, to those who are about to write, I salute you. I’ll be here on the touchline with the half time oranges and the mixed metaphors…

Updates! Or finding the time pt2.

13 Thursday Oct 2011

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About two weeks ago, in this post https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/finding-the-time/, I talked about the pressures of modern life and how it is sometimes difficult to find the time to write when there are loads of other calls on an individual’s time. As a result of this post, I decided to test out a way of improving productivity. The rules were simple:

* 200 words a day minimum

* This included work on any writing project or submissions to guest blogs. It did not include any writing on forums, Facebook, Twitter, this blog or my own personal blog.

* Weekends were exempt from this and I was allowed to take an occasional holiday if there were special circumstances.

*Daily word counts had to be posted on Twitter under the #amwriting hashtag.

Well, today I am reporting that the experiment seems to have been a roaring success. I had two days off due to being in the Lake District without a laptop for the weekend (and so missed Friday and Monday’s counts due to travel) but other than that I have managed to exceed the minimum count on each day. Not only that, yesterday I completed a story that had been lurking on my hard drive for months with no progress and got it sent to a beta reader for assessment.

I think the key here is the low minimum word count. Now, every writer is different and therefore has different ideal working patterns. For some a high target word count may be beneficial – an impetus to strive for greater things. However, from what I have seen, it seems to be full time writers who follow that philosophy – those who not only have a pressing impetus already in the form of ‘do this or you don’t get paid’ but who also have more free time in which to achieve higher targets.* For part timers like myself, I am not so sure this approach is as useful. A too high a target in an environment with lots of other demands on your time might be off putting and lead to you not doing any writing at all in favour of the more important tasks. Psychologically, setting a low target has given me a series of easy wins, each one a boost to the ego and a spur to keep going. On days where the muse has struck or I have lots of free time, I have managed far more words than I even managed when I set higher targets and on my busiest recent days (including one where illness and an interview scuppered most of my free time) I still managed my 200 and therefore felt like I had achieved something.

I am therefore going to carry on with this method, starting with another project tomorrow and maybe some more guest blog entries. I am currently pondering what to write for a guest blog about horror. Succubi and aliens are currently clamouring at my brain’s door for attention.

*And, yes, I appreciate that even full time writers don’t have all the time they would like to spend writing because they also have editing, publicity, research and so on but many part timers have to do all that AND other things as well.