| Subject: November 27, 2007: NaNoWriMo |
Author:
Wes Boyd
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Date Posted: 14:28:43 11/28/07 Wed
I’m sure by now that most of my readers understand that the stories posted on SOL were written years ago. In general, I’m starting with older stuff since newer stuff involves spoilers by the ton – you can probably see that in “Busted Axle Road” where I’m dredging up Mark and Jackie from “Rocinante”. There’s another book in existence, “The West Turtle Lake Club” that explores the founding of the club, and the reactions of the community, along with introducing us to Mike and Kirsten; I should probably have posted it before “Busted Axle Road”, but it has some elements that I no longer consider canon, so I’m questioning whether I should post it at all. If I do, it’ll probably come after “Busted Axle Road” comes to an end in January.
If you get the impression that I write a lot, I do. Some years go by with nothing much produced; other years are busy. Going into November I had produced nothing but false starts and fragments for over two years, which is why I don’t post this stuff as I write it. Some of the fragments are good and I may return to them; others are unfinishable, or head off into areas where I don’t want to go, since I’ve already explored them more than I ever needed to. In other words, maybe someday I’ll get back to them,
The inability to finish anything was getting rather frustrating for me as this year got into the autumn months. In an effort to break the cycle of starting but not finishing, I decided to take on a challenge in November: National Novel Writing Month. I’ve shyed away from NaNoWriMo in the past, partly since it has an aura of “Amateur Night” to it. In case you’re not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo challenges people to write a 50,000 word (or more) novel in a month. Thousands of people attempt it, and a good percentage finish. I’d imagine that most of what gets written is unpublishable drivel, but at least it gets people writing, and sooner or later they may produce something worth reading.
To a lot of people, 50,000 words is a heck of a lot. There are a number of forums associated with NaNoWriMo, and most are filled with people crying about how impossible the challenge is, how they can never, ever manage to knock out 50,000 words, and so forth. There are, however, a new people that are pushing the other end of the envelope – as I write this, there are three gals that are making an all-out effort to crack half a million words for the month. One or more may make it. Just for proportion, “War and Peace” is 556,000 words. “Snowplow Extra”, my most recently completed novel on SOL, is 142,000 words. The longest novel I’ve written, not posted yet, is 343,000; and Frank Downey’s “Dance of A Lifetime,” in my opinion the best of the long books on SOL, is 409,000.
The point I’m making is that 50,000 words is a warmup. I usually don’t target books to come out much less that 100,000 words although a couple have done so. Also, I’m a fast writer – when I get the bit in my teeth I like to get done with things. That 343,000 word novel mentioned in the last paragraph was 384,000 words in the first draft, and I wrote it in about two months. I’ve got several in the 150,000 word range written in two to three weeks, and I once did a 250,000 word novel in less than a month. In other words, if I have something to write about, an average of 10,000 words a day is not out of line for me. Yet the agony of writing a mere 1,667 words per day on the lips of some of these people is heartrending, to say the least.
So, anyway, I took on NaNoWriMo. I did some planning on a book I’d been kicking around a little that had some potential. I’ve been wanting to try to write a “Young Adult” story and one that was totally clean – in other words, no violence, no drugs, no drinking, no swearing, no especially not THAT! It was harder than you might think – while I’m not known for writing sexy stories, having a couple teenagers doing nothing but some innocent kissing and not going farther was hard indeed. Keeping from using the occasional four-letter word wasn’t easy, especially in some stressy situations. The book came out all right even if it wasn’t one of my better efforts – the villan was weak and would have been better if I’d allowed a little sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to slip in. But it accomplished what I intended, which was to finish a Young Adult book. “Finish” is the operative word there, after two years of failures.
Incidently, I’m not planning on posting that book, entitled “My Little Pony” on SOL. I may put it on some other site, possibly even my own site sometime (I don’t have one yet but am considering it), but not until it’s had time to sit on the shelf for a while before I go through and edit it.
So there I was on November 16, with a completed 156,000 word novel in hand and half the month to go. What to do? Hey, when you’re on a roll . . .
Now, I’m not noted for posting erotica, on SOL or anywhere else. But I’ve read a fair share of it, and thought I might as well see if I could write a more “typical” SOL story – in other words, lots of sex and characterization, with only a relatively minor thread of plot tacking it together. Beyond that, I had virtually no plan. I had two likely characters, one reasonably good premise, and zero plot, outline or planning of any kind.
Let me tell you, folks, it’s harder to write sex scenes than it looks. The first one is easy, but about the sixth time the guy hops the girls bones it’s very tempting to copy a scene from earlier and change a few words to make it look new instead of actually coming up with something new. It gets dull for the reader, too – I find that if I’m reading a story on SOL, I sort of skim the sex scenes until the plot picks up again. Undoubtedly there are people reading SOL for the sex scenes but I’m not one of them.
All in all, it went pretty well. I had a couple crappy days where I only kicked out 5000 words or so due to having to work in the evenings, but I was up in the mid-teens other days which made up for it. The end result, 93,000 words in eight days. “Reunion With An Airhead” still does not have much of a plot, but it does have some interesting characters having lots of sex.
So, now I’ve got all of you anxious to read it, right? Well, sorry about that. Something unexpected happened – along toward the end of the book an unexpected plot development showed up as I was typing. Without getting into much detail, it opened a door to a story that I’ve long wanted to write but have not known how to tell. Rip out most of the sex and some of the filler, and it’s a launch pad into a serious novel involving rape, murder, and evil religious fundamentalists. It’s one that it’s going to take some time to get right. It will take a lot of work and much more plotting, research and contemplation. So, I’m only counting it as a finished novel for NaNoWriMo purposes, and will not post it unless I absolutely give up on the follow-up project. That might not happen for years.
So, NaNoWriMo was a success for me, although a quarter million words in less than a month means that my arms are about falling off. It did not help that I had some minor but irritating health problems during the month, too, an abcessed tooth leading the list. Now, I’m going to take a few days off, play with my model railroad, and make a first pass edit through the two books to fix a couple obvious problems, like in “Pony” the girl starts out as a seventh grader and becomes an eighth grader without my noticing, or where a boy I had originally figured to be fourteen works out better if he’s eighteen. In other words, nothing major but the kind of thing that would get e-mails if I were to post it on SOL like it sits.
Along in the next little bit, I also need to make up my mind whether the next book to be posted on SOL is “The West Turtle Lake Club”, or “Runner’s Moon”, which is the follow-up to “Busted Axle Road” focusing on Josh and Tiffany – there’s a problem in the first part of it that has long irritated me, and I want to take one last crack at fixing it before I post it. It shouldn’t take much time to fix it once I figure out how.
Also, in the next month or two, I think I want to get around to rigging a message board to replace this blog. The blog is all right, but I think it would be better with a public comment and reply. And, I want to think about putting up a website for my own work, but I have to figure out how I want to do it – just be a simple story site, or get more complex and maybe invite some other writers to participate.
And, oh yeah, I’ve identified five stories that I need to go back and finish . . .
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