I quit.

So, I decided to quit NaNoWriMo today.

This is my third year seriously attempting it (after winning in 2008 and 2009 and making false starts in 2010 and 2011).  I planned for most of October to do it, but after trying to plan one idea I had and rereading everything I could find about outlining and plot structure and the like, I still started November with nothing but a vague handful of ideas about where I was going.

Due to the fact that I was starting off with a horrible disadvantage, I gave myself permission to include my plotting-words in the word count.  Which helped a lot.

So, good news: I now have 27,000 words, a fair portion of which is story, and most of the rest of which is plot plans for that same story.

For me, this is actually huge.  For a couple of years now my writing life has been stalling as I've tried to recover from burnout, and as I've held off committing to 'lesser' projects as I waited for the 'perfect' idea.  Hey, I'd even settle for the almost-perfect idea.  I considered myself pretty lax.  I didn't need to be Lord of the Rings Tolkien yet, I just needed to be The Hobbit Tolkien.  Deal, subconscious?

NaNoWriMo got me writing again.  It gave me the beginning of a story that I feel like I can commit to.  By forcing my writer-brain to come up with something, anything, my writer-brain discovered it could actually come up with something good.  Under pressure, no less.

But now, hopelessly behind as I am and with many, many questions about my story still unanswered (What does my main villain even want, anyway?), I think I've discovered the best way to invest in this story.

And getting to 50,000 words before midnight on November 30th seems like a pretty poor investment in comparison.

I'm definitely a planner when it comes to stories.  Sure, there are some things about my story that I like to discover as I write, but in the majority of cases I like to know where I'm headed.  I'm not good at making a story up on the fly.  Especially a novel-length story.  I've heard all the Wrimo rhetoric for years about how you can always fix it later, but sometimes, you just can't.  And sometimes the bad version of the story inadvertently gets stuck in your head, so that even if the problems can be fixed, you no longer care to try.  Call me a mystic if you will, worrying about losing the 'magic' of the story.  I don't think it's mysticism.  I think it's an honest assessment of the way my overly-impressionable mind frequently creates roadblocks for me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't expect my first drafts to be perfect.  But I expect them to have the soul of what I'm trying to say.  I'm not sure you can edit soul into a novel that never had it in the first place.

I want to breathe life into the story.  I don't want to settle for making as many mud pies as I can in the mud wallow of ideas.

Now, putting words on paper is useful, and reaching for a goal even when it's difficult is an admirable thing.  There is a significant part of me that wants to reach that magic number of 50,000, to say I won.  But I've burned myself out before.  Repeatedly, in fact -- refusing to listen to the warning signs until I'd drained myself of every last drop of motivation to write.   That ultimate burnout lasted for three years.  I'm just now coming out of that.  I'm a fool if I jeopardize this rediscovered creativity for a number.

Because if I stop here, I've won what's most important.

...

(And that, friends, is the slightly-melodramatic version of why I'm quitting NaNo.)

(Instead of feeling sorry for me, think how happy I am finally getting to read all these books I got from the library!)

Warning: Autobiographical Ramble, detailing (only without many details) what happened to the author since she abandoned her blog.

It has come to my attention that I have abandoned this blog. 

Of course, the fact that I have now made such a statement on this blog makes the above statement no longer valid.

At any rate, I apologize.

I declared in a previous post that I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo.  Then I went through a brief phase in the last week of October where I decided that I was going to do it via the pantser approach.  When November actually hit, I did one day's worth of writing.  The story was going nowhere.  I quit. 

Yay.

Since then, I've been off in La-la land (otherwise known as Trekkie land), enjoying myself in a sort of... well... insanely obsessed and preoccupied and completely unproductive way. 

Has it been good for me?  Probably not.  Sponging off of someone else's creativity is one of the best ways to make your creative mind start to rot.  

So right now, I am trying to drag my brain out of La-la land and find some nice, quiet place where it can learn to be creative again. 

A dear writing friend, when I told her I was in a rut, suggested that I try writing prompts.  I think that is an excellent idea, so if you feel so inclined, dear reader, please leave me a comment with a prompt off the top of your head.  It can be a one-word prompt, a random object, a situation... anything.  I only ask that it not be something inherently goofy, as I want to try writing something serious off of the prompts.  And thank you in advance.

On a final note, every Christian author should go read this post about the Christian imagination.  Powerful stuff, that. 

Why I'm Not Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

Sometimes I get jealous when I surf other people's blogs.  "Wow," I think.  "They have their very own place on the internet where they can post what they like!" 

Of course, the moment that I actually form the feeling into so many words is usually the same moment that I remember I have my own blog. 

I am a silly goose, no?

At the moment, my laptop is back in semi-working condition.  I don't know how long it will last -- I've learned not to take anything for granted -- but I am determined to not be disappointed, no matter what happens with it.  Disappointment, when you really look at it, can be such a waste of energy.  Treat everything like a gift, and with time everything feels like a delightful surprise.  It's a beautiful way to live.

I am thinking that I might not do NaNoWriMo after all.  This morning, I found myself thinking of November, and wishing that I didn't have to curtail all the writing-related things I want to do, simply because I think I should do NaNoWriMo.  It is true that at this stage in my life, I desperately need some time devoted solely to creativity.  But the more I reflect on the matter, the more I think that NaNoWriMo is not the creative activity that I need.  

The reason that the passion and creativity have left my writing is this: since I discovered I could write, I have tried my best to accomplish something with my writing because I wanted to prove that I could accomplish something, not because I loved writing itself.  Sure, I still loved it, but I took that passion for granted as a tool, a means to an end.  The continual pressure I put on myself to perform has driven so much of the joy from my writing.  I find myself longing for the days when I could start random stories in order to play with an idea, without feeling like I absolutely had to finish them.  I want to be able to "doodle" with my writing again.   

So, here is what I propose to do with my writing life: instead of devoting the month of November to writing 50,000 words of a novel, I will devote that time to creativity.  I will play with ideas, construct plots I may never use, scribble character sketches, start stories that I will never finish, draw characters, and care not if I make a mess.  I will do the things that the performance pressure has kept me from doing.  And hopefully, I will heal. 

A Failed Goal

September twenty-eighth, two-thousand and ten. 

I convert the date into letters because it seems so much more harmless when spelled out like that.  I can hear a young lady with a British accent speaking it aloud in my mind, and it sounds nice that way.  If I just blurt it out in numbers then the end of the month seems so much closer, and somewhere inside me a little writer cowers in terror. 

I told myself that I would have the rough draft of Evanescent Moonlight done by the end of September at the latest. 

And...

...it sits at 65,283 words, nowhere near done. 

So I am forced to re-evaluate my situation.  Very well, I don't have it done.  And I do know several reasons why it isn't done:

1. Procrastination.  (Might as well get that one out of the way first, no?)
2. My laptop still doesn't work, so I am sharing this desktop with two other people.
3. I have been reading a lot more.  (Yay!)
4. School.

But enough of making excuses to myself.  I have to face up to the fact that, little by little, I have become one of those 'writers' who talk and read and think about writing but never actually do it.  I know so much, but what have I done? 

I believe that if you truly love something, you will make time for it.  And I have made plenty of time for reading writing blogs, listening to writing podcasts, talking about writing, and writing blog posts about writing.  I have also spent much time thinking about writing, thinking about interesting character traits or story twists, stealing ideas straight from history, imagining how I could use fiction to convey the things I feel most passionate about. 

So I'm not sure I understand this stranglehold that apathy has on me. 

Is it just another form of my recurring struggle to get things out of my head and into the real world?  That I could very well believe.  The darn beasty came back.  It latches onto my human nature, trying to drown out the voice of reason that says that anything worth doing is bound to be hard. 

I have learned so much in the past six months.  So much!  I look back on the things I knew about writing a year ago, and the difference seems hard to comprehend.  But the gulf between what I know and what I can do has grown so vast that now I am afraid of trying. 

But I know that I can't stop here. 

So I extend my imaginary sword (you know, the one all writers carry, whether they know it or not), and cry that I will do hard things!  I will not stop!  I will remain fully aware of the difficulties facing me at all times, and I will not avoid them! 

And above all, I will not allow how little I have accomplished at this point to keep me from trying.  I am competing against my past self, and no one else.  Productiveness is not always measured by word count, and one cannot judge the success of a multifaceted life based on one single area. 

The Remarkable Profanity

I know the title sounds a little scary, but believe me, I won't subject you to anything profane.  Everything questionable in this post is represented by asterisks. 

I was scrolling through the Word document that is the compilation of everything I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2009 (since in my quest for 50k I didn't exactly stick with one novel).  I found this little tidbit that I had forgotten about, and upon rereading it I rather enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share. 

The Remarkable Profanity
by Cherise

“Corianna, where the ******************** is the next inn located?”

“I didn’t know you knew a cussword that long,” Corianna pointed out. “Twenty asterisks just to bleep it out.”

“I asked you a question,” Pippers said. “Now tell me, or by ******************* I’ll knock your head off!”

“I think you missed a letter,” Corianna mused, swirling the peppermint tea in her mug. “Or perhaps three.”

“What the ******************* does it matter???” Pippers demanded. “Just answer the question!”

“But I have to hand it to you, that still is talent. Where did you pick it up?”

“Corianna, you ********************!!!!”

“Although perhaps if that’s the only colorful word you know….”

“I know more than that! Why, I bet you haven’t heard ***********************************************!!!”

Corianna sat, stunned into silence. “How on earth do you keep track of that many syllables?” she murmured, after the minute of reverent silence had passed.

“Easy,” Pippers said, leaning back in his chair. “You live with a people that use it at least three times in every sentence.”

“And who would that people be?”

“A particular race of dwarf.” Pippers grinned, beginning to take delight in his tale. “They speak an old dialect in which every word is five times as long as it ought to be. *********************************************** is the equivalent of a four-letter word in our language.”

“Like ‘scram.’”

Pippers frowned. “But don’t ‘scram’ have five letters?”

Corianna shook her head. “S – C – R – M. Scram.”

“Ah.” Pippers continued to look at her with a puzzled expression. “You sure?”

“Didn’t I just spell it for you?”

For a moment, Pippers’ face betrayed his cluelessness. But then his pride took over, and he nodded knowingly. “Right you did! Forgive my mistake!”

Corianna nodded, and then hid her face behind her mug of tea to hide her grin. Unfortunately, when the grin slid out it brought with it a laugh, and the laugh happened to immerge at the same moment that she was taking a gulp of tea, the result being that a moment later, Pippers was violently slamming his broad hand into her back to try to dislodge three ounces of tea from her windpipe. At last she had coughed it up, (spewing it, unfortunately, all over the wooden table), and looked up to find Pippers scowling at her.

“***********************************************! Don’t do that to me, Cory! This journey is plenty enough *********************************************** fun without you choking on everything you put in your mouth!”

“I do agree that it is becoming much more a frequent occurrence than I should like,” Corianna said, wiping her mouth and pulling a handkerchief – the only one she owned, which was red with a swirly design embroidered on it in black thread – to mop up the mess she had made.

“A *********************************************** frequent occurrence!” Pippers cried. “If you keep it up, I’ll have to ban you from commestabibles for at least a day, just to teach ya’ to behave!”

“I believe the correct word is comestibles,” Corianna remarked.

“Who cares??” Pippers stomped back to the other side of the table and resumed his seat. “You won’t get any of them, that’s what matters!”

Best Progress Bar Ever

This is the cutest progress meter ever.

I am so using it during NaNoWriMo.

Visit this page on Writertopia to find out how it works (and to snag it for yourself). 

*loves* 

(It's obvious which mood is my favorite, right?  The top one all the way.  *has Trekkie moment*) 

Phase Outlines

Yesterday as I flipped through my expanding folder of writing papers, I came across a collection of papers that went with my NaNoWriMo 2008 novel, Tears for the Silent Lands. In it, I found something I’d nearly forgotten about – the phase outline. A phase outline is an outline that details every scene (or part of a scene) in a novel. It can be as short or as long as the author wants, but the longer it is, the more effective it is. It’s designed specifically to include the little details that the author sees in a scene ahead of time, but would be out of place in any other kind of outline. Here is an example of part of a phase outline:

34. Katharine turns the corner and finds a flight of stairs leading up to a door at the top. She is angry, and is determined to no longer feel fear. She climbs the stairs. Boards creaking like moaning ghosts.

35. She opens the door. As soon as she does, a bullet whizzes past her head. She screams, runs back down the stairs, and does not stop until she is out of the building.

36. Katharine sits at the base of one of the building’s brick walls, knees to her chest, and tries to figure out what to do. Wishes she hadn’t lost her cell phone. Wonders who she would call even if she did have it.

This type of outline is particularly useful during NaNoWriMo, because you can look to the outline to see what you’re going to write next, and then just elaborate on what’s already there. It helps you get through the slow days when you have no inspiration whatsoever. And if you think of something better than what’s on the outline, great!

As it turns out, this is exactly what I needed for outlining Part III of Evanescent Moonlight. I know what things the third part needs to accomplish, but I wasn’t sure of the sequence of events and I was afraid to try to plan. Now with the phase outline, I can give the ending a test-run, telling the story in condensed form to see if it works. For example, I’m only a page into the phase outline, but I’ve already discovered that I need to include a battle I was not anticipating. Going through the story beforehand gives me a chance to work out all the little problems that arise when you have as many characters as I do.

The one downside to the phase outline is that it takes time. My outline for Tears for the Silent Lands ended up being about 10,000 words long. But it was worth it, because what I spent in planning beforehand, I didn’t spend in headaches during November.