NaNoWriMo Day Fourteen (evening)

Wrote in three sessions today, one this morning, a brief one in the afternoon, and the last one this evening.

Today's word count: 1,963
Total word count: 27,010
Words remaining: 22,990
Complete: 54%
Average words per day: 1,929

At this rate, I should finish 50,000 words on November 26.

"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say." - Sharon O'Brien

NaNoWriMo Day Thirteen (evening)

Was feeling really disheartened after yesterday's lackluster performance.

Not feeling terribly great about today's writing either, but I did make my daily word goal again today. A lot of what I wrote today was my main character thinking. It was a lot of mostly pointless worrying. I can imagine someone reading the book and reaching this point, and thinking, "What went wrong here?" It's all garbage. It's the first true garbage I've written, and about that I'm not happy.

This is probably a good thing. I need to write garbage if I'm going to finish 50,000 words. And at the rate I'm going, I'm going to surpass that before the month is up. For all that garbage is words, and enough words that I feel like I did a good job today, much better than yesterday.

I just have to keep telling myself. Write, even if it's garbage. I keep worrying that what I'm writing is good or not. Mostly I'm happy with it, but I've got to have some bad parts. That's what December's for. And I'm starting to worry that I'm becoming attached to my novel, that I really want it to be good. But, first things first, I have to finish it, and then I can worry about making it good.

Words today: 1,904. Total word count: 25,047. I have officially passed the half-way mark.

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." - Jules Renard

NaNoWriMo Day Twelve (evening)

Not a good day. Didn't write this morning; got something ready for my students instead.

Didn't write at school either. I wasn't able to set aside time today. Spent a big chunk of the day reviewing geometry concepts for tomorrow's math test.

Couldn't even take a little break after work and write. I finally got to meet with my son's teacher, have our parent-teacher conference, and get his report card. (I think next time, for the spring parent-teacher conferences, I'm going to schedule a time for me to meet with my son's teacher, and the parents of my students are just going to have to work around my schedule. I'm feeling a little bitter, can you tell?) And then I had an IEP meeting to go to, which lasted until 4:30. Spent the next half hour trying to get things ready for tomorrow. Dashed out, was a little late picking up my younger son.

He, of course, decided to be difficult this evening. Had to give him a time-out. Was so frustrated with his defiant behavior, that I went out for the evening. Drove over to Barnes & Noble with my NEO, and only managed 1,196 words today. I'm at 23,143.

"I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension." - Norman Mailer

NaNoWriMo Day Eleven (evening)

I think that break really helped. Sat down with my boys and watched Up again. Have seen it three times now. The first time was at Pixar Studios; we have a friend who works there and she invited us to see it. We liked it so much I took the boys to see it again on the big screen. And we watched it again today at home on DVD. It's a great movie! If you haven't seen it yet, you owe yourself the pleasure.

Ended up writing 2,224 words today for a grand total of 21,947.

NaNoWriMo Day Eleven (afternoon)

It's almost 3 o'clock on Veterans Day. Except for lunch out with the boys, and picking up Pixar's Up on DVD, we've been home all day. Now they're getting squirrelly, running around the house and generally being obnoxious. I'm going to take a break now from my novel and try to write again after they're in bed.

Today's word count (so far): 1,643. Total (so far): 21,366.

"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read." - Oscar Wilde

NaNoWriMo Day Ten (evening)

Didn't write at all this morning, which is the first time since I started NaNoWriMo this year that I haven't written something in the morning.

I was playing with a NEO2 from Renaissance Learning. I'm lucky enough to be a teacher who was loaned a set of NEOs for use in the classroom. They arrived last Friday at our school, and though my fellow fifth-grade teacher and I were tempted to each take a NEO home over the weekend to acquaint ourselves with them, we resisted. We, of course, wrote large chunks of our novels instead.

But yesterday, Monday, after our staff meeting, we opened up the boxes and got a look at the NEOs. I used one immediately, typing up some notes from our history text, which I then transferred to my computer and printed out. Couldn't have been easier. I was taken with it pretty much immediately.

Took that one home last night. Didn't end up using it that night, because I was writing my novel on my laptop. But this morning, I used the NEO again to type up some summaries of history chapters that students had already drafted. I really like the eight different files feature. I was able to put summaries of the same chapter together in the same file, which transferred to the same document on my computer. Some students were assigned to summarize the same chapter, so it was convenient to group them together in the same document, which the NEO handles as the same file.

I never had to worry about the work I typed being saved. When I was done with those summaries, I just opened a new file and began work on summaries for the next chapter.

Once at school, I introduced students who had committed to writing to their NEOs. To say that they were excited would be an understatement. They couldn't wait to start using them. I set aside some instructional time this morning, and several of them wrote with me at the big table in the back of my classroom. A handful stayed in during recess; they wanted to keep writing rather than go out and play. An almost equal number of students decided to stay in during lunch recess as well to write; they did eat lunch, but again, they did not go out and play.

Overall, a very satisfactory day. I'm enjoying using the NEO and so are my students. It was definitely a motivator for them to write.

Oh, yeah...I managed 1,980 words today, bringing my total up to 19,723.

"I do not boast about the quality of my work, but I may be permitted to pride myself on the gift of steady application." - Anthony Burgess

NaNoWriMo Day Nine (evening)

Didn't write much this morning, only 334 words. I spent some time going back to a previous chapter. I wanted to make sure I had all the characters and details right to start this new chapter.

I realized I now need to start tracking some additional information on chapters I've written. I've created new minor characters, named others, etc. I need to keep notes of these somewhere, probably my plot document. I don't want to go back and read what I've written; I just want to keep writing.

It wasn't even that I was tempted to revise what I had written. Or that I had given my Inner Editor some power to try to escape from his prison. I just spent too much time reading, looking for the info that I needed to keep writing.

I could argue that it was time well spent, that what I wrote because of it would not require any major revision. But that's kind of the point of NaNoWriMo: it's okay to write and have it not be okay. It can always be fixed in December. I have a deadline, and I can't afford to waste any time.

Anyway...

I did meet my daily goal. I added 1,804 words to my story. I am now up to 17,743 words, which means I'm 35.5% done. I passed the one-third mark.

"A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to do it." - Samuel Johnson

Do You Read What You've Written?

No, except for the last couple of paragraphs I may have written for a scene to get going again. I will stop writing if I get to the end of a scene that has a cliffhanger ending. It's easy to pick that up again, propelling myself into the next scene. Otherwise, I try to stop somewhere in the middle of a scene. I don't really want to face a blank page at the start of a new scene or chapter. Because of where I tend to end scenes I do read a little to get me started again.

I have no plans to read what I've written until the whole book is done. My wife keeps asking me to read it, but I have refused to show it to her until it's done. (She's a little annoyed with me.)

NaNoWriMo Day Eight (evening)

At 7:00 p.m., I was up to 15,939 words. I've written 2,107 words today. Overall, I've had a very productive weekend, totaling some 4,400 words. I'm now more than a full day ahead of schedule. And I'm 32% done.

It feels really good to have that buffer of excess words. So far, I'm not showing any signs of slowing down, but Chris Baty, in No Plot? No Problem!, says to anticipate week two being more difficult. I hope I can maintain this same level of progress. Because I've got enough plot notes in my outline, I should be able to get out at least 1,000 words on a bad day.

NaNoWriMo has $181,487 in donations so far this year. The collective word total is 591,689,307.

"A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head." - Ethel Wilson

NaNoWriMo Day Eight (afternoon)

I'm stopping now around 12:30. Time for a light lunch. I've managed 1,263 words so far today, putting my total word count at 15,095.

It hardly seems that I've already been writing for a whole week now and have started the second week. I think I'll take a break and read the next section of No Plot? No Problem!. I also need to catch up on the Daily Noveling Briefs that came with the No Plot? No Problem! Novel-Writing Kit. Those should inspire me and prepare me for the week ahead.

NaNoWriMo Day Seven (evening)

Around 9 p.m., I stopped for the day, with 2,351 words completed, bringing my total up to 13,832. Was having a rough time of it earlier in the afternoon. Around 7 p.m., when I put the boys down for bed, I had barely passed 1,400 words.

"All writers arrange objects around them in a way that means nothing to anyone except their owner. Then you feel safe and can set out on some sort of voyage of the mind knowing you're going to find your way back." - Redmond O'Hanlon

NaNoWriMo Day Seven (morning)

Have written 1,030 words so far today. Now I'm off to take the boys to their swim class, and then lunch. Plan to have at least two more writing sessions today, to reach at least 2,000 words today, or maybe even 2,500.

NaNoWriMo Day Six (evening)

This morning before I left for work I wrote another 656 words. After dinner, I managed another 562 words, bringing me up to a total of 10,901 words. However, I'm still about 400 words shy of today's goal of 1,667. Going to take a little break, maybe do a little reading, and then try to hammer out another short scene.

When I posted this NaNoWriMo was up to $172,962 in donations and a total word count of 442,507,400.

Wrote some more to finish that chapter. Was still a few words shy of today's goal, so I went back to an earlier chapter to add another scene that I decided belonged there. Finally, brought my total up to 11,481 words. I managed to break 10K this morning and 11K this evening, all in the same day.

"It's much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms." - Natalie Goldberg

NaNoWriMo Day Five (evening)

I'm up to 9,678 words. Every day but one so far I've written at least the average 1667 words that I need to manage to finish 50,000 in a month. I'm 19% done.

"Isadora's desk appeared a random mess, but like a novel in progress it had an inner logic apparent only to its begetter." - Erica Jong



So, I decided to feed two birds with one loaf of bread. I also signed up for National Blog Posting Month to blog about where I am in writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo Day Four (evening)

Broke 8K: up to 8004 now.

"One of the first things you learn as a writer is that you write what you can, not what you want." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

NaNoWriMo Day Four (morning)

Last night, I got my word count up to 6,228. Didn't write as much yesterday as I had the previous two days. I wanted to write more last night. I took a break, and then ended up falling asleep, so I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. I was all ready to write that next scene, but I guess sleep was more important.

Wrote another 624 words this morning. Current word count: 6,855.

NaNoWriMo Day Three (morning)

Wrote another 322 words this morning. I'm now up to 5,578. Got to keep going to keep up with those daily goals. Aidan interrupted me this morning, showing me Halloween pictures another parent at his school had taken. Very nice, but you can't write and watch a slide show of pictures on your computer at the same time.

"I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others." - Sherwood Anderson

NaNoWriMo Day Two (evening)

I am now up to 5,253 words in my novel.

"Only when men are connected to larger, universal goals are they really happy - and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity." - Joyce Carol Oates

NaNoWriMo Day Two (morning)

Worked a bit more this morning, adding another 692 words, bringing my total up to 4,262.

NaNoWriMo Day One

Today, I started my second attempt at National Novel Writing Month. We were in Santa Rosa for the weekend, so I brought my laptop with me. The boys woke me up too early, so I started on my novel early this morning. By 10 o'clock I was up to 2,296 words, well above the 1,667 required to finish 50,000 words in a month.

Around 5 o'clock, I was up to 2,846 words, and had to stop. Had a light dinner and then drove back to San Bruno. Wrote for another session before bed and got up to 3,567 words. A good first day. I hope I can write this many words every weekend day. If so, I should have no problem crossing the finish line this year.



"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page." - Stephen King