Sunday, September 30, 2007

one small victory

Time: 1:01 am
Daily word count: 1,897
Total word count: 1,897

I started writing at 12:01. By 12:54 I had almost 1,900 words. My daily goal is 1,613. I'm trying not to get a false sense of accomplishment, but, damn, that was easy. i hope things keep going this way, though i know they're probably not going to. maybe all of my worries were unfounded after all. I'm going to try not to get too excited about this initial victory and instead save this feeling for when i'm struggling down the line. but so far, so good. i'll probably still get up at 6 like i originally planned and write some more. i want to establish a pattern. but it feels great to have already met my first goal. one down, thirty to go.

yeah, take that, novel!

so it begins

it was a dark and stormy night...erm, or, rather, a rather cool and pleasant night. It's September 30 at 10:58 pm. I am an hour and two minutes from beginning my novel. I just wrote an e-mail to almost everyone i know telling them about the project. that was incredibly uncomfortable. i hate asking for anything, even moral support for a project like this. but i wrote the e-mail to kind of force myself to tell everyone about it so that now i'm not only expecting it of myself, but other people are expecting it, too. it was hard, though. i didn't want to do it. at all. the kit i got suggested that you tell your worst enemies about your plans so that they can humiliate you if you fail. i wasn't quite brave enough for that.

so, i'm an hour out and i'm nervous. a little scared. i know i'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to do this and do it well. which isn't really the point. the point is to write 1,613 words per day, whether it's good or not, and to just get it out on paper so you can fix it up and make it pretty later. but i'm a perfectionist, so...it's going to be really hard to let go and just write without judging what is coming out on the computer screen.

as far as the novel goes, i've got my beginning scene, and a rough plot outline. from the beginning scene, i'm going to flash back to the beginning of the story, carry through to the point in time that the beginning scene happens, work from there to the climax, and hopefully wrap things up nicely. i've got a main character and a couple of minor characters, but i don't have anyone fleshed out too much. i'm hoping to go with my gut on a lot of it. besides, overthinking everything was driving me crazy. so. i'm going to try to write on the blog every day, at least a little. i will put up my word counts (daily and total) and let you all know how i'm coming along, how i'm feeling, how the writing is going, etc. i may give you a little taste of the novel, but i haven't decided yet if i want to do that. i may not. letting everyone know i was doing this was scary enough, even though everyone i've told has been incredibly supportive, which i'm really thankful for.

alright, i gotta go get my notes together.

i am going to kick this novel's ass.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

and we haven't even started yet

I've got to be honest here. I'm freaking out a little. I'm worried about this project. I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being terrible. I'm afraid that I'm not really a writer after all. There have been days leading up to this project that i have been excited, confident, bubbling over with ideas. Today, my plot seems shaky, my characters seem uninteresting, and I'm wondering if the whole idea for my novel is boring, or just plain terrible. As you can see, I'm having a huge amount of self-doubt right about now. I just want to get started, so i can pour this energy into writing. And that's another thing: what if i start writing and run out of things to say?

I don't want to get discouraged before I start. I want to have a positive attitude, but I'm having trouble pulling myself out of all of this doubt.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

a novel in a month?

My friend Gwen got this kit for Christmas from her husband. It's called the "No Plot? No Problem!" novel writing kit, and honestly, it looks as cheesy as it sounds. It basically challenges the receiver (or buyer) of the kit to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. It comes with an affidavit that you sign, committing to the project, a progress chart (complete with gold stars, which, i have to admit, i got pretty excited about), coupons to have your friends/family/significant others fill out for you to promise to do nasty disgusting things if you don't meet your word count, inspirational read-one-a-day cards, and the like. And like i said, it looks cheesy. but here's the thing: it works. or, at least it did for Gwen. She wrote her first novel in a month, January of this year to be exact, and when i went to visit her and her husband in March, she handed me all 175 pages of it and said, "we're all going to do this."

And now we are.

Six writers. Six novels. 31 days. 50,000 words each. 300,000 words total.

We begin at 12:01 AM October 1. We end at midnight October 31. Our goal is to each have a completed or mostly completed novel that equals 50,000 words or more. It's daunting, to say the least. I haven't written more than a couple of poems in the last three years. but i'm up to the challenge. if nothing else, my pride will see to it that i finish.

anybody have any nasty disgusting things they want me to commit to do if i don't meet my word count?