Erica Charlotte

The FINAL COUNTDOWN

2007-10-31T01:27:28Z

Day after tomorrow, and the madness begins - and when I say madness, I mean HOLY SHIT CRAZY madness. I have no business doing a challenge like this, honestly. I get virtually no sleep as it is, have piles and mountains of homework, get to enjoy finals and mid-terms throughout November, am celebrating my not-eighteenth birthday on the ninth, have a real-live guy-who-I-hang-out-with-and-smile-at-and-am-terribly-confused-by for the first time in my life, and am an incredibly lazy and untalented writer.

I have no real plot, two-dimensional characters, and basically no clue what I'm going to be rambling about for fifty-thousand words.

Hmm...

Looking forward to it.

I'll get by...

2007-10-25T05:46:11Z

I have a bit of spare time here and there. The occasional day that I don't have a few hours of homework to get done. I seem to be squidging by in Government without doing the textbook readings, so that's good.

I have a basic, crappy plot, and at this point it looks like that's all I'm going to have to work with. On November 1st I will sit down and see where it can take me, and on November 2nd I'll do it again.

I have so much going on... schoolwork, and reading - not only the fun reading but the Important reading, reading books like Mere Christianity and A Living Faith and Quaker Spirituality - and on top of all of that, social things. Friends, yes, and a boy. (dorky grin) A rather cute boy. Who I wouldn't mind devoting so, so much time to daydreaming about. And the rest of my time hanging out with. (Because we do that, friends, we hang out sometimes, this cute boy and I.)

So, it will be a challenge to drag myself out of the daydreams and type. Most likely my NaNo will end up being a really long, extended daydream. Super.

The Closer to November, the Busier I Am

2007-10-21T02:50:50Z

Things are getting a bit hectic in my real life.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this.

I'll try but I just don't know.

I'll Never Tell

2007-10-14T04:25:38Z

It's so frustrating when I'm bored, and sitting around in my room, staring at my computer, wishing I could be noveling, and it's NOT NOVEMBER YET. I just have that itch in my fingers, I want to type type type type type, and I can't because of the stupid month.

And then I'm like, "Well, I could just work on my plot a little bit..." But I know I shouldn't, because God forbid I get all my plotting done by October 17th, and then when November 1st rolls around, I've completely stopped caring about the whole damn thing.

So, I've limited myself only to jotting down sudden snatches of inspiration until October 15th, when I'll really start fleshing out characters, locations, etc.

I did come up with a sort of coherant plot idea last night. Essentially the novel will be revolving around two plot lines: The first one follows a girl who, in the spirit of a runaway joining a circus, takes up with an obscure, touring band and their entourage of fanatical groupies. The second is about a guy who lives in a sleepy little town, and has to step up when some vague unknown evil (which is hopefully only unknown for now) threatens the local music scene. The idea being that the climax will occur when Obscure Band A plays a show in Small Town B, at what is presumably going to be the Last Show Ever.

What will the climax be, you ask?

...

.....

Working Title

2007-10-13T03:08:27Z

Streetlights and Stickers

It's emo

Don't care

PS I have edited this nine times since I posted it originally, changing the title each time

Accumulation

2007-10-13T03:02:58Z

I once read about a little girl who would pick up any snippets of garbage she found - old reciepts, candy wrappers, business cards, scraps of post-it notes, &c. - and would stuff them all into little purses and carry them around with her.

This is essentially how I'm plotting my novel.

I've been taking scraps of conflicts, thoughts, impressions, dialogue, moods, characters, and scribbling them down into my writing notebook. Apparently the idea is that if I let them all stew in there together, they will emerge as a workable plot.

That's the idea, anyway.

NANO '07 - AMASSING IDEAS (Abridged version)

Band groupies, character drawn in, follow obscure band on tour to small-town shows

Washed-out colors

Record stores

Unwashed

Bizarre dedication/obsession

Errancy

Chapters = shows
titles: "6/21 - Crystal Ballroom" &c.

Seeking of a Great Perhaps

Stuff that I want to include in NaNo '07

Modern world

Catharsis

Multiple POVs

Change of seasons

ESP?

Exaggeration, melodrama

Band-Aids

Friendship

Quietness

Slightly fantastic verson of here/now

CHARACTERS

2 young male twins

Teenage girl - headstrong, serious and overbearing, officious

Boy - shy, quiet

Guy - large, wild, worldly, sanguine rocker

Girl - tiny, spacey, nervous

Cowboy - struggling with the confines of his life - affair

Mirror covered with a sheet

BRAINSTORM: Cool Shit I "might" like to include in my NaNo '07

Sexuality

Unrealism/surrealism

Flowery descriptions

Softness - fireflies and paper airplanes and Central Park

Fairy tale / bedtime story

Absurdness

Crickets

Crépes

Woad and rallying speeches

Frequent allusions to historical politics

Realizations of total (un)happiness

A Hebe statue

Hidden lilac and wisteria garden

Punk/D.I.Y. aesthetic

"Excuse me, but we discourage name-calling around here."

An angel who removed her own wings to be mortal.

Body switch; inappropriate in another person's body

Copper sulfide (green)

Small town lives

Witchy woman

Young teenager girl

Uncertain/"questioning" boy

Dying music scene

Bitter deformities

Cowboy boots

Smiles and softness

Long sentences

Back gardens

Extended metaphors

Hope like crocuses

"Get into the deep, beautiful melancholy of all this"

Two men with very different lives - they won't be different when they're dead

Bright, vivid colors

!Working overall impression! - exhilaration

*Hot air ballons*

"Can anybody find their home? Out of everyone, can anybody find their home?"

"Margaret and her husband Michael, both aged 34 years, were discovered to be suffering from folie a deux when they were both found to be sharing similar persecutory delusions. They believed that certain persons were entering their home, spreading dust and fluff and 'wearing down their shoes'."

"I always wanted to see a story where Mondays are officially declared illegal."

Running watch on a corpse

"I'll be right back - I've got to prove that I live here."

Take breaks from your plot to create a bad soap opera

Character who always overdecorated for holidays, then stops - believed dead? Break in to find body. Watch?

NaNoWriMo History

2007-10-06T17:37:10Z

2005 What to do when...
Word Count: ~6000
Opening Scene: Twin siblings play video games and hold a birthday-cupcake-eating contest. Surprisingly un-shitty. Unlike the rest of what I got written.

2006 Dear Diary, This Sucks
Word Count: 50,199
Opening Scene: Actual opening scene - young girl becomes frustrated when her parents go missing, walks through the fog to a neighbors house. (Discarded plot thread.) Opening scene relevant to rest of novel - girl encounters grandmother's ghost.

2007 Untitled
Word Count: ??
Opening Scene: God only knows

No Plot

2007-09-28T20:58:40Z

I have no plot prepared as of YET; I'm hoping for one to just come to me, a specific plot, but one hasn't yet. Hopefully once the forums are back up and it's officially October, aka National Novel Planning Month, I'll find inspiration from dares and adoptable plots and the ether. I mean, this isn't to say I don't get ideas for vague occurances or settings or characters--I have pages and pages of those. But I have yet to get that, "These are my people, this is where they are, this is what they're trying to do," idea.

Mainly my writing notebook is just one giant brainstorm, with snippets and snappets of this and that, bits and bats of ideas, if you will. Nothing particularly coherent or shareable, yet. I'll let you know when something more interesting happens.

I'm not entirely sure why I think I'm going to be able to do this this year. I thought Junior year was hard - HA! HA HA HA! This year I'm taking three Advanced Placement/College Credit classes: Calculus, English (which is actually Writing 101, 102, and 103 as well as English Literature - four courses in one hour a day!), and Government. In Calculus it's two straight hours of new concepts every day, followed by an hour of homework after school and studying left and right; it's the hardest class I've ever taken, material-wise. English is about an hour of reading outside of school every day, plus an essay a week and tests sprinkled in with gusto. Government is maybe forty-five minutes of reading and an essay here and there.

All in all this is what my after school life looks like on weekdays: I come home exhausted from Weight Training (my mandatory PE credit). I lay on my bed, maybe read a little of whatever book I'm reading for pleasure at the time, maybe call a friend and chat for a bit, maybe get online and putter around. I start homework GENERALLY around four or four-thirty, take a break at seven for a light dinner and to do a little housework, then continue homework, finishing at about eight. I turn on my TV and watch some of whatever documentary's on the History Channel or National Geographic (or maybe indulge in some guilty pleasure and watch something on Disney Channel - yes ha ha Disney Channel). Then I fall asleep at about ten.

When am I going to fit in writing in excess of 1,667 words a day?

Mystery!

(I do have one class which involves sitting at a computer - HI COMPUTER DRAFTING! - which is also the easiest course in history; I could easily get away with typing all class period a few times a week and saving it onto my jump drive. This may be the key to my not losing pathetically.)

*

IN A SIDE NOTE

This journal is historically STRICTLY NaNo, late September through November, planning and writing and celebrating at the end. But I might be posting little real-life non-NaNo-related postscripts because I'm self-centered and like having a place to talk about myself.

Today I'm going to let you all know that I'm fairly sure today is really the first day of fall. I know, I know, the twenty-third was the Autumnal Equinox for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, but we all know that sometimes equinoxes lie and it continues to be eighty degrees and in every way "summer" despite them having occurred.

So today was the first "real" day of fall, because when I woke up at 8:43 this morning, my room was all filled up with grey light and the sound of rainfall. I'm so happy.

Just letting you know

2007-09-26T04:02:31Z

I'm probably in this year

Are you ready?

I. AM. A WINNER!

2006-11-28T05:13:37Z

As of 9:09 p.m. on the 27th of November, in the year ano domini two-thousand and six, I, Erica C, of Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, am a NOVELIST!

I finished my 50,000 words today after a record setting 5,186 word session. The winning word? "Came".

My current word count clocks in at 50,199 words, and I'm still going. I think I really just have an epilogue to complete, about what happens to Bonnie T. and September once they get home and have to explain to their parents exactly what was going on, but other than that, my novel is basically done as well.

Besides that whole deal of it being terrible and missing a beginning and containing several conjoined fetal plot lines, you know.

But I have the beginning of what could be good, and what is most definitely a NOVEL, however mediocre, or less so.

CELEBRATE WITH ME!

I AM A NOVELIST!

Yaaaay

2006-11-27T01:01:25Z

I'm now officially 90% finished with my novel, clocking in at 45,011 words!

Wooooooooo...

Yayuh. At this rate I shall be an official NaNoWriMo winner by Tuesday.

I kick ass. I'm practically on kick-ass overload right now from how cool I am.

It's thrilling.

On a worser note, my climax scene SUCKS. But whatever. Just keep typing, fix it in the rewrite, that's what I keep telling myself.

The WHOLE novel will be REALLY good once I rewrite it... heh... Right.

For now, I'm content to have a novel that's at least written, even if it is absolutely terrible.

(So, so bad.)

(Seriously.)

My Method

2006-11-22T22:07:46Z

I have a very strange approach to NaNo, as evidenced by how I've done this year.

For the first three days I wrote at least 2K a day, sometimes more, leaving me with 6,676 words on Day 3. On Day 4, I wrote only 1,500 words. Then... A slump.

I went 5 days writing a grand total of 119 words.

By the end of Day 9 I was 6,655 words behind.

On Day 10, as I got myself ready for school in the morning, I as good as decided I was going to quit. My novel was stupid, the plot was stagnant, I was not enjoying myself... I wasn't going to waste any more of my time writing useless words that I hated.

That evening, I sat down to give it one last shot and wrote 3,182 words. I decided I was going to pull this off, I was going to keep going, haul ass and make my 50,000 words with time to spare. It was my second wind. No more zero output days for me, no siree!

Days 11 and 12 my output was... Zero.

On Day 13 I found a spare moment and looked at my NaNo Report Card... According to that little beauty, at the rate I had been writing, I would not finish until December 22nd.

Well, I decided, that won't do.

I had another 3K-day.

And since then, I've been tapping out words at surprising speeds. I've had only one day since the 13th that I wrote less than 2,000 words, and even then I was above my minimum goal for that day.

I finally caught up yesterday evening, when I surpassed 35,000 words... I was as surprised as you are, trust me.

I honestly did not think I was going to make 35K by the end of Week 3. But yesterday, as I was writing, I slowly tapped my way past my minimum goal and thought, "Well, it'd be nice to make 2K today." So I wrote to 2K and kept going, because I was close to the end of a chapter. By the time I got there, I looked at my word count, and suddenly realized that I was a mere 400 words away from catching up.

So I did. It's exciting.

On a plot-related note--as opposed to all the word count-related notes above--my plot was a really big problem basically up until two days ago. I had no idea what was going on, I had JUST gotten September and Bonnie T. out of town after 20,000 words (yes, that's 20,000 words of "getting ready" and dead-end plotlines), and now that they were on the road, I had no idea what was going to happen.

The first 2,000 words of them being on the road are basically me writing Death Cab for Cutie's "Passenger Seat" into prose form. Literally. I even quote the entire lyrics of the song (for "atmospheric purposes", shh, I'm justifying my shameless padding) and then quote certain lines again in the prose, essentially just having September act out the song.

The next day, I realized that, while charming in musical form, Death Cab music-made-prose would not make for a particularly interesting novel. You can only look out a window and smell the evergreen-scented air so many times before passing out from hyperventilation.

So I was sitting there, trying to think of what was going to happen to Bonnie T. and September while they were out on the road, and because this was such an important thing that I really needed to focus on, I immediately began thinking about something else. Bonnie T.'s shoes, specifically, and what color they would be. I decided on a well-loved pair of red Converse, just because my two pairs of Converse were in my room and I combined the well-lovedness of my green hightops with the redness of my red lowtops, and there were Bonnie T.'s shoes.

And while thinking about these red Converse, I randomly just connected them to ruby slippers.

And then I was thinking about Wizard of Oz, and how it's basically just another Road Trip story as well, a bit like mine, with Dorothy instead of Bonnie T. and Toto the dog instead of September, and Oz the Emerald City instead of a cemetery full of dead people, but hey, this is November, my brain is on crack and I can make whatever literary connections I want.

So I was like, "Hmm, on THEIR way Dorothy and Toto meet a scarecrow and a tin man and the lion, that's interesting. How can I rip that off and work it into my novel?" (Ah yes, the classic NaNo/brain-on-crack plotting method.)

So I made myself a little timeline (literally with approximations of time on it, because I realized that basically this whole part of my novel has to happen in one day because... it just does), and this is how it goes:

Morning - Pack

1:30 - Madison encounter [They almost get stopped from sneaking out of the house *gasp* by September's little sister at one point of the novel]

2 - Wall climb [Then they leave their maps in September's room, and they can't go back into the house because Mrs. Green would stop them, so September basically scales the side of his house, goes through his window, grabs the maps, and then on his way back down the window slams shut on his arm and he basically slides halfway down the wall and then ends up on the ground MOSTLY unhurt, aww he's so heroic/stupid]

3 - Get out of town

4 - Pit stop

5 - Lost

6 - Pick up Drew [They ended up in the middle of nowhere thanks to Bonnie T., in a town that apparently shuts down at 5 o'clock on weekdays, and picking up some random runaway who needs to get back to his dad's house in the same town Bonnie T. and September are going to... this person being named "Drew"]

7 - Road rage incident

8 - Rescue victim (Lion)

9 - Flat tire

10 - Sit w/ person talk it out

11 - Make mad dash into city
Chinese fire drill

12 - Cemetery scene

1 - Sprinklers

2 - Find a place to sleep

3 - Wake up, contemplate, etc.

9 - Get ready for drive home, resolution

Basically the gist of the plan was that at some point they pick up three complete strangers; one who needed a ride, one who was some kind of crime victim (yeah I had no idea how that would work either), and one who helped them out and just wanted to go along for the ride.

I've written to the 8 o'clock incident, which surprised me because instead of being an actual crime victim they picked up a ghost girl who wouldn't get out of their car. Apparently she needs a ride to their destination town as well, although no one's sure why (including me, but hey, I didn't even know she'd be dead), seeing as how she can't talk.

Then I stalled having to go on by rewriting from 7 o'clock onward as if it had been a rogue pirate ship, rather than just some hick in a truck, but was trying to run them off the road. (Credit for this concept goes to the creator of the "Once More, With Pirates" dare, who dared someone to title a chapter just that, and have it be literally just a rewrite of the last chapter with pirates involved.) However, I did have a lot of fun writing that, so I guess it's all good-style.

This is great.

I have PLOT!

Caught Up

2006-11-22T05:04:11Z

I'm finally caught up... that's right. I'm almost 200 words AHEAD as of today.

Hello 35K.

Nice to meet you.

I broke THIRTY THOUSAND!

2006-11-20T00:42:42Z

Wooooooo!

That's right, I am now at 30,072 words. Meaning I am a mere 1,601 words behind, which I MAY make a good attempt at regaining later on today.

I'm just so excited at how close I am. I'm... I'm going to WIN THIS, you guys.

It's so awesome.

In a matter of days I will be caught up and tapping out my daily count like it was nothing. I just KNOW it.

As for story, well, it's actually MOVING now. At least one mildly interesting thing has been happening every day for the past few... days. They're practically to their destination now, although Bonnie T. got them miserably lost and they're currently in an off-the-map town, having just picked up a hitchhiker who's going to help them find their way.

Well, not so much a hitchhiker as a runaway, although September and Bonnie T. have no real idea who he is, besides that his name is Drew and they're pretty sure he's about their age (which he is). He's just trying to get back to his dad, who lives in Steelyville, and it's a bit of a symbiotic relationship--he gives them directions and they give him the ride.

I forsee them picking up more stragglers along the way, though. After all, it's only 8 o'clock, and they have until midnight to get to Steelyville (the town they're headed for). Or maybe losing someone, or something or other... I'm throwing CONFLICT at them, it's delicious. So much better than the 20K of exposition that's the beginning of this novel.

My only issue now is the understanding that I have to keep pushing this novel for another 20,000 words, meaning at least ten more major events, which will be tough. I'm kind of tempted just to say, "So they picked up straggler, and got to their destination, and THE END." But that would not be good, at all.

I have to figure out what happens AFTER they get there, where they're staying, what happens during that time, and potentially what happens on the way back.

I have a strange feeling that when I edit out all the dead-end storylines and useless words and whatnot this novel is going to be like, 10K. hahaha

It's OK. It's still a novel.

WOOT

2006-11-16T05:18:39Z

I broke 20K! I BROKE 20K!

I have officially completed 41% of my novel! I'm like SO CLOSE to breaking even with the required minimum, heh...

But really, right now I'm only having to write like 1900 words a day to finish on time, and considering it takes me like an hour to bust out 2.5K+ lately that's not even a big deal. I might even go OVER (gasp!) Now THAT's effing dedication!*

And to think that I was THIS CLOSE >< to giving up because I was so (so so so) far behind. I mean, people, there are five days this month that I wrote NOTHING, and a full week if you count the two days I wrote like... 18 words and called it a day.

But I'm catching up and doing good and have for some reason decided that I don't want to include Andy and Delilah anymore, I just can't utilize* their plotline and they bore me a little bit. Hah, I have mysteriously killed off two more main characters!

OH MAN--Word padding idea... actually just show them being killed by zombies instead of the Happy Days-style just not mentioning again, for added word count! I could also include deaths at some point for Penny and poor Clark who never got written in at all. Aww.

Perfect. I have to REMEMBER to incorporate as much as possible into the plot for added word count (GOSH I'm such a doofball*!).

I mean seriously: Do you want to be on the winner list of Team 2006?? Then LAY THE HOT NOVEL!*

I'm just... I can't believe that I am capable of pumping out two thousand words in an hour. That's just too kickass. (Mr. Kickass!) I just have too much skill. And I can't believe that I'm DOING THIS, I'm WRITING A NOVEL, you know? A crappy, ridiculous novel that has nothing to do with anything but it has a good heart, and it will end up being somewhat interesting, especially once the plot starts MOVING about, like a li'l critter in the forest.

I'm kind of excited to do editing/rewrite and just make this into something that's maybe half decent, ya know? Something that MIGHT get me into Guitar Magazine*, if you will.

P.S. I would like to apologize for any possible atrocious spelling errors, poor voice, and ridiculous grammar (and also some random capitalization that I may have missed, I caught a bit but there is possibly more)... my inner editor has completely deserted me, she quit like two days ago and now I'm conditioned to just ignore spelling mistakes and whatnot, it's kind of weird. So yeah, terribly sorry. This is just what NaNoWriMo does to ya.

* Oh No: $15.99
OK Go tee: $20
Suddenly realizing that you have referenced OK Go five times in one short journal entry: Priceless

YAY-UH

2006-11-15T05:18:23Z

I wrote almost 3K today: I'm at 17,698 words! WOOT

I mean, it's almost 18K of absolute crap, the plot is completely stagnant, but it's FINE. I'm gaving a GREAT time, and I'm getting closer and closer to meeting the deadline (only about 5K behind now!) and overall it's just a great experience. I think I've finally gotten past my Week Two blues (right on time, too: it's the first day of Week Three!).

It's fantastic. I'm so happy with my progress and whatnot.

This is great.

I'm totally gonna make it this year. I'm going to write 50,000 words (of absolute crap!) in November.

And the great thing is, even if what I'm writing is crap, it's got something behind it... I think once I beat out this crap rough draft, you know, there might be something there. Perhaps after a rewrite and quite a bit of editing and such... I might have something I can show to others here.

I'm excited.

Erm, I'm GONNA DO IT, DAMNIT!

2006-11-14T01:41:40Z

...Yeah, I definitely wrote about 0 words all weekend... but it wasn't my fault! I mean, Saturday, Brian, Chase, and Aaron just SHOWED UP at my house and picked me up an hour after I WOKE up, and they were here until like 1 a.m. Sunday... Then Sunday I got up at 9:30, and my mom's all like, "Oh, Erica, we're watching Star Wars, there's a marathon on repeating ALL the movies and you just walked in at episode 4, gee, you could basically watch the whole series in chronological order of when they were made!" (And that's exactly what I did... 13 hours solid of STAR WARS awesomeness... and frankly? It was worth it. It was SO worth it.)

So I have a BIT of catching up to do. And, by a bit I of course mean I am about 6,000 words behind. Ish.

BUT if I just write 2,075 words a day from here on out (and I CAN get out 3K on a reasonable day, so a little over 2K isn't hard at all) I'll make it right on schedule. And really, 6K words behind isn't THAT bad.

I wrote 3,195 words today to help catch up, and it was 3K of CRAP, utter pure CRAP, and it was great. I mean, I actually started breaking the fourth wall and yelling at the reader and went into this two paragraph analogy and had this RANDOM moment where everyone was afraid of Andy for some reason, and totally did NOT realize that professional reanimated corpse hunters were going to factor into this but they ARE, it's AMAZING. (Also, first use of the word "zombie":

Delilah repeated him, for good measure. “What the HELL’S going on out there?”

Shmi sighed deeply, then said, in a very business-like tone, “Your town is the current location of a Class 1 outbreak of a virus known as a virus called solanum... it’s a deadly infectious disease that leeads to... the reanimation of the victims of the infected.”

“...What?” Delilah asked, unsure if she had heard correctly.

“What you sw, the Petersons... they are both infected with a disease. They’re reanimated corpses, not actual people... it’s the virus.”

“So... zombies.” Andy stated matter-of-factly. All the adults flinched.

"That’s not... not exactly, no,” Shmi said. “They’re... they’re reanimated corpses, not zombies, per se, just...”

“Yeah, zombies,” Delilah said to Andy.

Not perfect, not by a longshot, but it can be polished.)

And September is so sad I want to hug him, the poor guy, he just wants his family not to be the LAMEST EVAR, he's all teenagery and angsty and his parents ignore him and I DON'T CARE IF IT'S LAME, I LIKE IT.

Plus I keep digging myself deeper holes. Why didn't September's parents just let him go over to his friend's house? Why is September SUCH a bad liar? And WHY do I get the feeling that Bonnie T. is going to have another vision of her grandmother and more problems are going to crop up? Because that's not cool. Everything was going according to plan. At this rate the kids are never going to meet up and the two stories will have NOTHING to do with each other!

NO! BAD PLOT BUNNY! GET AWAY! MY NOVEL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TROUBLES REANIMATION OF BODIES CAUSES FOR THE AFTERLIFE! BONNIE T.'S GRANDMOTHER DOES NOT WANT HER TO HELP STOP THE VIRUS BECAUSE IT'S SCREWING THINGS UP OUT THERE! NOOOOOOOOOO!

(Why are things getting so COMPLICATED? Also, why is it HALFWAY through the month and my novel is still in like, exposition stages? SUCK!)

Broke the 10K mark!

2006-11-11T00:08:32Z

Wooo!

Current word count: 11,530

Yes, I'm still about 5K behind, but according to my lil' report card I just have to write 1,923 words a day to finish by November 30th. And if you factor in that I'll be writing over that hopefully more than once in the next twenty days, I should finish in time.

I definitely had a REALLY bad case of the week two doubts the past couple days--I actually wrote nothing for the past FIVE days, and this morning I was 100% ready to completely give up. I didn't understand why I was doing it, what the point was, why should I bother when I was, at the time, over 8,000 words behind... and then I just sat down and decided to try to write SOMETHING.

So I opened up my file, looked at where I was and what I was supposed to be writing, and started by writing a bit of September's history (in very bad form, you aren't supposed to "tell" that stuff, but screw it, this is NaNo, if I want to introduce a character with two paragraphs of exposition then I'll damn well do it), and suddenly it just rocketed out and I wrote the most I have in one day so far, over 3,000 words. I definitely find that I LOVE writing from September's point of view... he's my favorite POV character, and character in general, by far. Delilah's totally damaged at the moment and not 100% coherant (who would be, after watching one of their neighbors brutally kill his wife with his TEETH), Andy's kind of incoherant as well and sort of... not all there. He's not totally 3D yet, he's not letting me really inside his head.

Bonnie Taylor (who is referred to as "Bonnie T." throughout the narrative, for some reason) is just so... she's very dramatic and emotional and sort of self-centered--not in a bad way, but she is. Plus so far all she's done is angst about her grandmother's death.

But September... I love him. He's this weird little kid whose parents turned from complete hippies to yuppies when they had their second child, and kind of doesn't fit in with his family. He's too shy to have many friends, so he sticks mostly with Bonnie T., who he's known since they were pretty young (I'm thinking 7 but I'm not sure yet). And basically she's just what he lives for, taking care of Bonnie T. and helping her and letting her do weird things to his hair because that's what she wants and he wants her to be happy. He's almost like her surrogate mother in a way. She's this crazy, angsty teenage girl who is loud and weird and constantly throwing herself into things that are sure to damage her emotionally, and September is this calm, quiet, introverted guy who is always there to pick Bonnie T. back up and make things better, so she can do it all over again.

I'm having a hard time really conveying that without making it sound like he's in love with her, though. Like, with Andy and Delilah it's not hard to convey their emotions about each other--they're wary and kind of don't like each other just because they don't know each other, but at the same time they're kind of fascinated by each other, Delilah in particular is interested in Andy's looks, as we'll find out once she's gotten past her post-traumatic stress. You know, usual teenage limerance stuff.

Whereas with September, he does love Bonnie T. She may actually be the only person he really does love, just because his family is so distant with him and he doesn't really have anyone else besides her. But he's not in love with her at all, and I get the feeling that during the rewrite I'm going to have a lot of trouble figuring out how to word things without making the reader believe that this is some kind of unrequited romance. It's more like... more like how a mother feels about her kind of unruly five year old who is always getting hurt on the playground.

But yeah, September is by far the most interesting character, at least to me. Hence probably why I had such an easy time getting 3K--I'm genuinely interested in how he reacts to the things that happen around him, what he thinks about it, and whatnot. Makes for an easy word count.

I am a BAD PERSON

2006-11-08T07:29:49Z

I have basically written nothing in the past couple of days... I know, I know! It's bad!

But I can't help it, really... I've been so busy, erm, obsessing about OK Go for several hours after school, then people keep inviting themselves over to my house and not taking no for an answer, and DAMN these parents and their irresponsible late curfews, so I've been staying up chilling until like 11:30 and then rushing to finish all my already late homework until like 12, and then it's SLEEP... I mean seriously, this month is like the most hectic I've ever had in my life, what the CRAP?

Uh, but, just super quick, if you love me or life or all that is good and holy, buy something from OK Go. An album would probably be your best choice, seeing as how they are a band and whatnot, but feel free to also just get a T shirt or possibly a $1 button. They deserve your money. They really do. They deserve mine, too, and I'm GIVIN' it to 'em!

But yeah, I'm GOING to work on my word count like all day tomorrow, and then probably I'll be screwed this whole weekend and become the world's biggest failure evar. (It's my birthday Thursday and Aaron's here Wednesday night through Saturday... yeeeah.)

Oh man, why is all this stuff happening in November!?

But even though it's hurting my wordcount, it's WORTH IT, this has been the best week ever of my life and it promises only to improve. I will see if I can work in word count around that.

BTW: I'm currently at 8,348 words, about 3,000 words behind... yeah.

I... Love this, so much

2006-11-04T04:26:18Z

I really do.

It's hard to convince myself to sit down and write the words, you know... I'd obvioulsy so much rather be doing something like surfing the internets aimlessly or watching some pointless show on TV... something mindless and simple.

But with NaNoWriMo, I actually have this force driving me to write, to get the words down and keep writing no matter what. And so I do... I spent a bit of time today procrastinating by writing down on index cards various scene/event ideas (I'm aiming to plan out around 15 events for each storyline, so I have some idea of what to write every day, although I'm going to keep things very vague so I can keep interest in "What's going to happen next?" up... I've got like 10 for Delilah/Andy and 3 for Bonnie T./September, who I need to know where they're starting from, where they're going, and how they're getting there, in order to actually know what's going on for them.)

But then I finally just sat down and wrote, and in 54 minutes I wrote 1,919 words, which is not incredibly prolific, I know, but it's above the minimum wordcount and I got it out fairly easily. Turning the monitor off is still the most efficient way for me to get the writing done.

Turns out Bonnie T. was a lot more emotionally attached to her Grandma than I expected... she lived with both her grandparents up until three years ago when her grandmother died, which devastated both her and her grandfather, who was hopelessly devoted to his wife. Both of them, Bonnie T. and her grandfather, now have to sort of fend for themselves... Grandma was the one who took care of them. Her grandfather in particular is becoming more and more irritable as time goes on, which means that Bonnie T. can add that to the list of stressors in her life, right below "My Grandma's dead" and "I can't pay for college".

Her friends are basically her safety net and in typical melodramatic fashion she sees them as the only true things in her life, as well as music, which is sort of her religion, really. (Although that hasn't made it into the narrative yet except that she has band stickers on her journal and posters all over her walls.)

So when her grandmother appeared to her, it hurt her emotionally a lot more than I expected it to... there was almost no happiness in it. She was so happy to see her grandmother and hear from her and such, but all along she was just so terribly sad, and when she left... she ended up curled on her bed, sobbing.

I feel so bad for her, but that's a good thing, right? That I'm feeling empathy for my characters? They say that if you aren't feeling what you're writing, your readers won't either. Not that I'm expecting a reader to feel anything when they read this, except possibly extreme mirth, but what I guess I'm saying is that it's good that as I'm writing this I'm getting an emotional response out of it.

Also, I'm getting better at leaving typos alone. Particularly because I'm learning that backspacing with the monitor off is not the smartest move ever. (I keep having to turn it back on which takes a few seconds and pisses me off... so I've just stopped backspacing for the most part.)

I'm sure this will make for an interesting read in December, of course.

As it stands, I'm not sure if I will finish the actual *novel* in November, although I should be finishing the 50,000 word goal by November 23, according to my NaNoWriMo Report Card.

Which by the way is a very handy motivation tool, also... particularly because in the daily "Number of Words Written Today" column, your word count for that day will be shown as red until you beat your word count from the day before, which bothers me and is actually bugging me right now... I will probably be typing in about 300 words of the next chapter some time tonight, just because I can't handle that I'm "in the red", even after beating the daily minimum by 300ish and the daily total minimum by over 1,200.

Which is really good, too... I'm glad that I'm over 1,000 words ahead of where I need to be (and ignoring the fact that several "people"¹ I know *coughJessiecough* are at over twice the total minimum, gaaah). I'm doing good this year! And I'm going to KEEP IT UP... If I don't, there are several people out there who will chop my head off for it. Including myself. In fact, if I give up this year--not so much if I write until November 30th and somehow don't make it, but if I just flat-out give up, I will commit seppuku. I just will, okay?

In summary of this post: I love NaNoWriMo. I love my story. I love my characters. I love my wordcount.

¹ I have suspicions that Jessie is actually just some kind of Australian typing machine, and not actually human.

NaNo Day 3

2006-11-03T23:15:14Z

I haven't started writing yet today, and I finished my writing session for yesterday at exactly 11:59:59... Impressive, no?

I'm at 4,337 words, exactly 1,000 above the minimum count. I'm trying for at least 2,000 a day for now, to give myself a bit of a head start for the month.

I'm already feeling somewhat sleep-deprived. Great!

The words last night were tough, but that may have been because it was very late at night, I was really tired, and for some reason NO action is happening in my story.

Also, I hate Penny. She is stupid, her storyline isn't interesting... oh well. If I decide I don't want to write her story, then, I don't have to. W/e. I'll just add way more stuff about everyone else.

I have no idea what to do with Clark, either... That's my major planning problem... I have *concepts*, but no actual *events*. Hence, I am stupid.

See, at least for my original plot I had *events* to write. I almost kinda-sorta want to go back to that, with some major changes. But AH, no plot changing allowed! Plus I really do like this plot that I've got, it's just, well, not two of the major sub-plots. I kind of like the idea of streamlining it down to just the Delilah/Andy and Bonnie T./September plots, and beefing up both of those into 25,000 word ideas.

I think I could do it.

Also, I think part of what Bonnie T. and September might be doing is actually just driving from someplace else in their state to Delilah & Andy's little town, to help them out. The only plot holes there would be A) why would Bonnie T.'s dead grandmother be telling them to help out some random kids from across the state? B) what could Bonnie T. and September do once they got there anyway? And so on.

Perhaps Bonnie T. and September were going on a road trip anyway, and get sidetracked into the whole dead grandmother/zombie thing along the way, maybe they're waylaid by the undead and have to deal with that before they can keep going to, I don't know, visit Bonnie T.'s grandmother's grave? That sounds kind of good.

Why do they have to visit her grave?

Mmm, plot holes. I'll worry about them later.

For now I'm just glad I have some semblance of a plot again.

Oh, and by the way, definitely the most productive way to type: With the monitor off. I waste way to much time thinking about what I type otherwise, and going back to fix little typos, and so on. If I can't see what I'm typing, I keep up a really fast pace so I don't forget what I just typed and get stuck. It's awesome. I tend to go at it in little sprints with the monitor off, not sure exactly what I'm typing but knowing that I am, in fact, typing SOMETHING, and that's all that matters in the end.

W00T.

WOOOOOO

2006-11-01T08:41:03Z

All right!!

I just wrote the first 1,273 words of my novel in 33 minutes. Only 19 hours of noveling at this rate left before I win NaNo altogether!!

Ha ha... This is great.

I'm way tired, so I'm going to bed now... I figure a 1,273 word head start for tomorrow should be good. Plus I have to get up in like, 5 hours. Greeeeat fun tomorrow at school, for sure.

But I just had to stay up.

I actually wasn't planning on it, but I had to write up a Chem lab and that took me until 11:30 anyways... yep. Now it's 12:30!

Most of what I wrote seemed okay to me, too. No contractions is making my dialogue a little stiff, but really, QUANTITY, not quality!

(Repeat.)

More Prewriting

2006-10-29T23:16:01Z

(I'm currently "taking a break" from working on a book review essay I have to finish by tomorrow... eek.)

Last night I did some more prewriting, this being the very first step in any sort of outline-type-guy.

Basic Plot Threads
Class One Zombie Outbreak
Delilah + Andy

Unrequited Love

Fighting the undead

Dealing w/ death

Sent on Road Trip by Dead Grandma
Bonnie Taylor + September

Quest/Epic Journey

Overcoming obstacles

Bitten by Vampire
Clark

Changing into vampire

Fear, worry

Obtains superpower
Penny

Learning it, keeping it secret(ish)

Pride

*Come together to help either Clark or Del./Andy
Like Clark better, he needs help
How work in D/A??

So, as you can see, my current plot hole is: What are Bonnie T. and September supposed to be retrieving, and why? My idea is that they're going to use whatever it is to help one of the others, but I can't figure it out. If they try to help poor Clark, who is the most helpless, what happens with Delilah and Andy? Do they just continue to chill in wherever they've holed up to avoid the zombies? But I'm sure they have to help Clark. That's the story.

2D Character SketcheZZZZZ

2006-10-29T02:36:52Z

Stuck In Class 1 Zombie Outbreak
Delilah--("Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's) Kind of awkward, limerent person, shy
Andy--("Andy, You're a Star" by The Killers) Cute, limerent object

Bitten by Vampire
Clark--("Clark Gable" by The Postal Service) Not cool, dorky, into some lame fandom

On Road Trip for Quest Purposes
Bonnie Taylor--("Bonnie Taylor Shakedown" by hellogoodbye) "Indie", outgoing, outspoken, out-everything
September--("A Lonely September" by Plain White T's) "Emo", shy, introverted, tagalong

Gets Superpower (Possibly flight)
Penny--("Penny (Perfect for You)" by Plain White T's) Volleyball, um, cliché bitchy popular girl

----

Yes, all those names are from songs. What are you going to do about it?

And I am still working on fleshing them all out so they are more than 2D. But hey, that's what this was. I needed at least a 2D look at who these charries were, to start with. This is the BARE-BONES look at my cast list, my personae dramatis, if you will, for NaNo 2006.

New Plot? No Problem!

2006-10-28T21:47:12Z

OK, I've scrapped old plot, kept a few of the basic ideas, mostly tossed it all. Am keeping on Delilah and September because I like them. Am adding like 80 gillion new main characters to cast.

Basic plot outline: It's about teenagers getting into crazy, supernatural situations, and how they deal with them. I see it as being part "horror", part "YA", part "satire".

See, the satire comes in because, honestly thinking about it, how do I think that kids would deal with things like being trapped in their house during a Class 1 Living Dead Outbreak with their next-door-neighbor, being bitten by a vampire, discovering a strange power, or being sent on a Road Trip (the modern man's Quest) by a dead grandmother in search of something or other?

The same way they deal with everything else. They'd fall in "love" with the neighbor, write bad angsty poetry about how sucky their life is now that they're tempted to suck the blood out of everyone, show off to their friends and make them promise to keep it "secret" (yah right), and generally screw up and break the law and finally try to fix things the best they can. Because that's what teens do.

The whole deal will be jam packed with fact-style narrative (a la Babbit), journal entries and other primary source media, snippets of poetry, and tons of crazy action/comedy/romance/ANYTHING I CAN THINK OF.

Basically teens + supernatural leaves room for any Cool Shit I could possibly want to add in. Plus TONS of conflict. And angst.

These are the primary notes I scribbled on it yesterday when it all came to me:

SCRAP EVERYTHING
Except the most basic concept
Adolescence
It sucks
It's melodrama
It's bad poetry
It's wild adventure
It's awesome
Crazy
Romantic
Shitty
Bizarre
Funny
Stupid
Lame...

Adolescence through the eyes of a group of kids enduring crazy, supernatural things, and how it would still be pretty much the same.

Through diary entries, myspace blogs, factual-style narrative, poems, all media, basically (all written media)

*Kids under zombie seige
*Girl w. superpower
*Boy bitten by vampire
*Finds supernatural creature?

Some still going to school, some not
(obv. not zombie kids, haha)

They have these crazy supernatural-related problems, but are also, in true adolescent fashion, worried about stupid, facetious stuff too.

Not 100% serious, but not true parody at all

Romantic feeling [i.e. Romantic period], very nature-intuition related (e.g. storms when angry, etc.), human emotions, human nature

Cool Shit
Kids w/ powers

Zombies

High School

Diary-style writing

Comedy

Stupid romance

Angst taken lightly

Epic journeys

Bildungsromans

Foreshadowing

Interconnected storylines

So yeah. That's my idea. It came to me thanks to the notes we took on the Romantic Period in English yesterday, that new show Heroes, and also a fantastic plot bunny. Oh, and of course I have to credit The ZOMBIE Survival Guide. WOO