A lot of my time lately has been eaten up by studying, particularly for my history exam (which is today, coincidentally). My math exam is tomorrow which, ironically, I think I’m better prepared for than I am for the history one.

And, truthfully, a lot of my time has been eaten up just doing things other than working on my novel. I’ve fallen victim, in a way, to Newton’s first law of motion:

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force . An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

I stopped writing for a few days due to being swamped with other things. Essentially, my novel writing stopped. Then I took another day off. Then I took another. And then, I let me being behind affect me in a dumb way: I put off my writing some more. And now, I find myself at close to the end of the month with 8,300 words instead of 35,000. I haven’t given up though – there are plenty of NaNoWriMo tales of people who were dreadfully behind catching up in the last few days. Maybe I’ll be one of those people. Maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

(Oh, and for those who are keen discerners of truth: yes, I know. I could have been writing some more of my novel instead of writing this blog post. Shhh…)

Yeah, I didn’t think so either…

* By saying that readers will need to be able to see the lay of the land on a map, I’m not implying that this terrible, horribly written piece of fiction, which is full of plot holes and stiff characters novel will ever come even close to seeing the light of day. In all likelihood it will be burned and then buried in an atomic waste facility.

** I use the term ‘story’ very loosely here. It’s probably more similar to taking fifteen dictionaries, cutting out all of the words, and then arranging them randomly. Yes, it’s that bad.

As a way to try and re-motivate myself, I checked out No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. It’s by Chris Baty, the mastermind (crazy mind?) behind the whole NaNoWriMo thing. After reading about 40 pages, I was ready to leap back into the novel. He stresses repeatedly: don’t analyze, just go go go! I particularly liked a quote from Ernest Hemingway that he used to get the point across:

The first draft of anything is shit.

That’s certainly comforting, because my first draft is pretty crappy! Oh well. After jumping back into it tonight, a new plot line opened up which I hadn’t really expected (at all). It’s kind of cool, really. Now that I’m actually trying to write a novel, a lot of my assumptions about novel-writing from the past have been shattered. In particular, I used to think that when novelists would say, “I didn’t expect that to happen at all with my characters, but it did!”, I’d think… bullshit. You’re a novelist. You knew the whole plot before you started writing! You all do! Novels don’t just “happen”; things don’t just “happen” without you planning it.

Nonsense. I’m finding that if you get in the groove of writing fiction, and just let go without worrying too much, things do happen on their own. You start clacking away on the keyboard, and before you know it, there’s a bunch of stuff staring back at you that you did not expect to happen at all. Things that hadn’t even crossed your mind before. It’s a pretty awesome feeling. I won’t say this is easy – as noted before, my analytical brain is trying to beat me senseless – but this is turning out to be a bucketload of fun, and also rather insightful.

Don’t hold me to that, though. By the end of the month, this could be me, along with many of my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers:

• Find some music you love, crank it up, and then start writing. (Thanks, Brendan)
• Don’t think about it too much. I really, really need to keep this one in mind. I am THE Mr. Over-Analyzer. (Thanks, Zeitlos)
• Repeat the phrase from Star Trek, “You must return Spock’s brain”, followed by “You must write more.” Rinse and repeat. Or, if you’re feeling feisty, drink some Jamesons. (Thanks, David)

A few that I’ve thought of whilst writing:

• Write late at night, or whenever you’re tired. The tiredness will make you not care much about how very awful your novel (mine, anyway) is turning out.
• In a similar vein as the one above… Laugh. A lot. Whenever you write a sentence or paragraph that you know is dreadful, laugh and move on. Remember: you don’t have time to make it any better. You’ve got a deadline to make. Quantity, not quality. Quantity, not quality. That should be your mantra for the next month!

That last one is really important, at least for me. If I didn’t laugh at the absolutely horrible prose I’m producing (and I’m producing quite a lot of it – I’m already up to 3500 words), I’d cry and give up on the whole thing. It goes against my very nature to not tweak, tweak, and retweak. This is harder than I thought it would be.

I know what’s happening, too. When I first started writing, I was in “full speed ahead!” mode. Now that I’ve written a bit, the analytical bit of my brain is trying to take over. It’s saying as I write: ehh, no, that’s not quite right. No, that could be better. What’s the backstory for that? Why would that character do that? These are all very good things to be experiencing while writing, but doing so and listening to this mental banter while writing for NaNoWriMo isn’t the time or place. I need to keep this bit from the NaNoWriMo About page in mind:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

My brain is definitely trying to kick in and make me start tweaking, editing, and ultimately, tearing down and rebuilding various passages. I can’t do this, or I’ll never make the deadline of 50,000 words by the end of the month. After a quick looksie at Windows Calculator, from this point forward, I need to be writing an average of 1850 words per day, every day. It’s time to tell my analytical brain to piss off, and start writing with wreckless abandon. Wish me luck!

I’ve found that by jumping in and starting to write, ideas come naturally – certainly easier and more naturally than when I’d sit down with a blank piece of paper and tell myself to “come up with a plot, and a background setting, and a cast of characters, and the life histories of all of the characters, and…” Instead of doing that, this time I just opened up Word (well, technically, Google Docs), thought of a simple scene, and went from there. Doing that for 1000 words, I’ve come up with a general plotline that I’d like to follow, as well as a few characters that will be major players in the story.

I decided against the weird concept of fantasy / sci-fi / comedy. While I’m sure it’s doable, I wanted to go with something a bit more mainstream, as well as something I’m comfortable with. So, the novel will be joining the vast (vast, vast….) ranks of the medieval fantasy genre. The major difference that I’m going to try and put in my novel is a heavy dosage of medieval grittiness. That’s probably one of my major gripes with most fantasy novels I’ve read in the past: they’re too clean. In a bizarre way, they’re too modern. The swords and sorcery are there, but the medieval edginess isn’t. The whole vibe that life was extremely rough during the medieval period and before often seems to be erased with perfect, shiny suits of armor and gem-encrusted swords. I think that in a way, the novel may end up being more historical-based fiction with light elements of fantasy, rather than an all-out fantasy. As regular readers can probably guess, quite a few characters (actually, a whole kingdom, really) is modelled on the Norse people. They’re certainly not copies with a different name (they aren’t highly capable seamen, for example), but I am going to try and get the Norse feel going with them.

More on this tomorrow most likely, after I’ve written (hopefully) a few more thousand words. If you’re taking part in NaNoWriMo this year, best of luck to you!

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

I signed up for a few reasons. One, it just sounds like fun. Two, I’ve always been one of those people who wanted to “write a novel”, but never got around to it. One of the main reasons I never got around to it is that I’m a perfectionist – I have to tinker with stuff constantly. I’m the guy that starts a drawing / story / whatever 400 times, and never completes the drawing / story / whatever even once. So, NaNoWriMo is a Good Thing (TM) for me. It’ll force me to ignore my perfectionist side and just write. The novel will be total crap, I’m sure, but at least it’ll be finished.

The writing begins November 1st, so I’ve got a couple of days to come up with some semblance of a plot. What genre will it be? Probably sci-fi or fantasy. Maybe a bit of both, with some historical fiction thrown in for good measure. Hmmm… Hobbit Vikings in Space?