Tag: NaNoWriMo2017

1740 words in a little over 2 hours. 13053 words total. No poem. I started very late again. I’m anticipating starting earlier tomorrow. At least I hope so.

I used my netbook for the day’s writing. Linux Mint with the latest version of LibreOffice. The keyboard is smaller than the machines I mostly use these days, but I got through it with minimal problems. I kept somehow moving the cursor accidentally, but not so much that I got too frustrated. I’ll be using the netbook the next few days. The hard part may be loading these entries to my website and backing up my work into Evernote and Google Drive.

What helped today:

It was a cold rain all day today and I had a lot to do, so the rotini with sausage and vodka sauce helped. It capped off a challenging day. That, and the writing, obviously.

What I discovered today:

Probably that there’s never going to be a perfect time to get this writing work done, and that I need to stop anticipating any. I need to schedule my writing and then be open to what all happens and working around things, I guess. I’m not thrilled about that, but I am making progress. However, I would prefer a regular time, earlier in the day.

What else was good:

We got four-packs of yogurt for 50 cents apiece. And some of those squeezy fruit things. Not bad.

Another late night writing.  It’s a long story and work wasn’t even the issue.  But I took care of an issue that needed resolution.  It took much longer than I’d hoped and that bit deeply into my writing time.  I’m hoping I have more time tomorrow to get this work done.

1498 words.  11313 total.

What helped today:

Reading chapter 1 from Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins.  It felt like he’d sat down and talked to me before writing the book.

What I discovered today:

A lot, but I need time to process it all.  But, I will say that I very much need to examine how I look at a lot of things.  How I look at some aspects of life.

What else was good?

Sleep.

1037 words today.  9815 total.

I didn’t feel well all day.  I got the start for the day’s essay from my morning pages, but I couldn’t get it going, really.  I just felt bad.  Not at all what I planned, as I didn’t work on my play, either.  But, I feel better now, so tomorrow will hopefully be better.

What helped today:

Nothing.

What I discovered today:

Nothing.

What else was good?

I made a decent effort.  The best I could.

1371 words.  8778 total at this point.

I didn’t start until minutes before midnight.  The “what I have to do” that I mentioned yesterday ended up taking all day.  No complaints because I did enjoy myself, but it did also mean not settling in until long after I’d planned to.  But I did get writing done, which is the important thing.  I went for a couple of hours, taking a few breaks to try and keep my mind going.

The plan for tomorrow was to go see some of my folks, but as I said in my newsletter, I’ll probably sequester myself and write all day.

What helped today:

• Going in Micro Center.  I could have stayed all day.  I only got a screwdriver set to fix my Chromebook, but there were so many other things I wanted.  I liked the price on the Sandisk low-profile flash drives and next time I’m there, I’ll probably get one or two to use for my USB-based Linux installs.
• A pep talk about my writing.  Very much needed, very much appreciated.
• Talking about family history.  I take down as much of it as I can, but one of these days, I may need to stick recorders in front of my folks and just have them say everything they can remember.  We’ve lost a lot of people in my family over the years.

What I discovered today:

Nothing.

But I remembered that not journaling first thing in the morning leaves me feeling incomplete throughout the day until it’s done.

What else was good?

I didn’t get to go, but the City Knights vanquished the Poly Engineers in the 129th City-Poly Game.  That makes six straight wins over the parrots and the all-time series is close to being tied.  City Forever.

1290 words today.  Started late again.  Long day.  I was tired and I was writing about theatre and representation in other media and it’s probably too heavy a subject to be writing about on a Friday night after a long week.  I struggled to get to 1290 and after a couple of hours, I figured it wasn’t going to get any better.  I decided to be OK with today’s output, get some rest, do what I have to do tomorrow, and then come back strong again in the afternoon or evening.  In previous years, I might have decided I had to get past 2000 words, as I had the past couple of days, or at least to 1667.  But this time around, I let myself off the hook for the night.  NaNo isn’t a sprint and it’s perfectly fine to have leaner days behind the word processor.  I can make up for today down the line, should I need to.  Hey, I should be a writing coach.

I did not write the poem today.  I have to catch up on that later, for sure.

What helped today:

• Deciding when to pack it in.
• The walk I took earlier.  Helped me to decide what I wanted to write about.
• Finding my copies of several of my favorite books on writing and theatre.  I was also able to pile them in the living room near my other books and notebooks and it wasn’t an issue.

What I discovered today:

I enjoy playing Destiny before a writing session.

I need to buy two or three new bookshelves at some point.

What was today’s listening?

Mostly 70’s and 80’s soul, 90’s Jazz fusion and Acid Jazz.

Day 2 did not go nearly as smoothly as Day 1 did, but I got a good chunk of writing done.

In the early evening, I struggled with staying focused.  I knew what I wanted to write about, but it was hard making the transition from working on things for my day job to the writing ahead.  Plus, I was expecting to have a call about some other projects I have going, but that was postponed until tomorrow.  This was the main struggle of the day, just getting myself out of one mode and into another.  Maybe I’ll dress up in khakis and a polo shirt while I do IT tomorrow and then change into sweats when it comes writing time.

I got the poem prompt in the early evening, but sat on that a couple of hours, writing the poem just before starting on a new essay.  I wasn’t thrilled with the first effort of the poem, but what are garbage drafts for anyway?  After I got started on the essay, I managed to crank out 3645 words in about an hour and a half.  Combined, that brings me to 6117 words in total.  Hey, if I can crank out 3900 words tomorrow, I’ll be at 10000.  I’ll just need to do that five more times to get to 50k.  As I said yesterday, just making it to 50000 words in the time frame is an accomplishment.  I reminded myself this morning that I didn’t need to get to 50k today or in fact to 1667 words today.  I just needed to get to the computer and start.  Hey, I should become a writing coach.

The writing today turned out to be not too bad.  Certainly needs some work, but I think I’ve given myself something to work with when I hit the editing table, with this particular piece.

What I discovered today:

I can work on my other, more immediately serious projects while working on this NaNo book.  And I can do this while working my day job.

What helped today:

• Starting another writing project.  I’m writing some thoughts about my Chromebook’s SSD dying.  That and journaling helped to get me into a writing groove.
• Listening to a lot of Jazz all evening.  Hard Bop, to be specific.  Listening to some Sonny Rollins as I write this.
• Receiving some good feedback from people reading my newsletter, the latest issue of which, I sent out yesterday.   I’m grateful for the support and kind words.

Am I beginning my annual baseball withdrawal?

I already have scoped out the 2018 O’s and Mets schedules for when they play each other and I’m anxious to put plans in place.  So, I guess I am.

I was not planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I got talked into it.  I’m working on a few plays right now, with more I want to work on once I get some drafts done of the ones I’m already working on, so writing a novel this month wasn’t in the plans.  But, since my writing outside of my drama has been suffering some lately, I let myself be persuaded to participate.

Technically.  I’m not writing a novel, I’m writing essays.  Writing one smaller piece per day or every couple of days should be easier than keeping together a longer work.  Plus, I don’t have to worry about editing a whole book, should I decide I want to publish.  I can edit and send out individual essays as I go, and eventually, get the whole thing edited.  Put some on the blog.  That’s probably more realistic and sustainable for me.  I don’t have any illusion that I’d have a publishable novel after speeding through for 30 days, but ending up with essays that can be shaped into something more?  Definitely a better goal for me.  Your own possible goals as a writer, obviously will vary.

Today went pretty smoothly.  I wrote 2472 words in a little over an hour.  I hope I can write at this clip throughout the whole month, especially since that would mean I only have to devote an hour or so each day on this project, when I have others going on.  I also wrote a poem today, as part of Poetic Asides’ November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge.  I took the prompt in, wrote my garbage draft by hand, then let it go and moved on to working on the day’s essay.  Total time investment: about 20-25 minutes or so.

I hope I can keep all this up.  I do want to complete these challenges.  The real gold for me will be finally establishing a much better writing practice than I’ve had heretofore, as much as the actual work that gets produced.  Some writers don’t like the idea of writing every day, but I need to work more than I have.  And work towards publication, which means once this all settles on November 30, working in more time to edit and send stuff out instead of it heading towards the drawer or staying in the journal forever.  As much as I know that writing can include fighting or inviting the muse, I do want to be more systematic in my approach.  The dearth of posts here are a testament to my need to improve in this area, even if I do have plays and other work going on.  And again, the time investment was just one hour;  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an hour a day to devote to this project.