What He and She Said...

Author John Scalzi scores again with his blog post in defense of NaNoWriMo putting published anti-NaNo snobs on notice to just chill. A quote:

"So if you’re a pro novelist or whomever wringing your hands over NaNoWriMo, remember that hands are for typing, not for wringing, and get back to your own work and let the kids have their fun. If you’re a NaNoWriMo participant and you’ve heard the grousing of the pros, ignore it and enjoy your experience of banging out words. In the end, no one cares how or why or under what circumstances a novel has been created, they care about the words on the page. Readers don’t read process. They read novels."

Go over to his site and read the post in its entirety, then visit published author Mary Robinette Kowal's blog to see the (also) excellent post which inspired Scalzi's spirited defense.  

In other news, I broke through the 25k barrier by cranking out a satisfying 2029 words today, ending up with a total of 26430 words on the 11th day of the challenge. That's over halfway to 50k! Go me.

Chugging Away Past 20k

Surprised myself by hitting this mile marker a little bit earlier than expected. Not complaining in the least, mind you, just surprised. Here are my personal stats thanks to a stat thingy they added to my Nano stats page:

Today's Stats:

Words Written Today 2476

Words to Write until 1667: 0

Suggested Daily Word Count 1667

Cumulative Word Count 20147

 

Total Stats

Current Day 8

Suggested Cumulative Word Count 13334

Average Words per Day 2519

At This Rate You Will Finish On Nov 20

Days Remaining 22

Total Words Remaining 29853

Words per Day to Finish on Time 1357

I find this kind of stuff to be interesting. Then again, as mentioned in a previous post, I'm a "geedork". I'd really like to keep up this pace and "finish" the challenge on the 20th. As always, we'll see.

Onward!

Some Get It, Some Don't

Here's a snarky anti-Nano article from a snob at Salon who doesn't get it, and here's a well-reasoned response from an editor at Orbit Books, who does.

Bottom line, while we all hope our NaNo project gets picked up by a major editing house and sells a bazillion copies, the main reasons we do NaNoWriMo are:

1. It's fun.
2. It helps improve your writing.
3. You meet some very nice people through the forums and elsewhere online. 
4. It forces you to get off your butt and give writing a novel a shot.
5. It helps you learn what it feels like to write on a regular basis. And,
6. It's fun.

That's good enough for me. What do you think?

Ten Thousand Words and Counting

Hit the 10k mark today, a full day ahead of my personal goal of reaching that number by Friday. I must say, I'm really enjoying this round of novelling craziness -- we'll see how I feel about it in week four.

This is my first time writing a sequel and I'm liking that, too. It's an interesting challenge to find the proper balance between reminding the reader of what happened in the first book and not laying those reminders on too thick. I think I'm doing okay with that. In the back of my mind I keep hearing the voices of my then grade school aged daughters as they read out loud the later books in a series about a certain boy wizard. When they'd reach such a "reminder passage" they'd invariably sigh and say, "But I already know that!" I'd explain the (brilliant) author wanted to make sure everyone remembered that important bit of information, but the memory of their impatience has stuck with me and guides me. I try my best to "remind" only when it is absolutely necessary.

I'm also having fun spending some time with my characters from the first book. I feel excited about sending them off on a new adventure and even though they're entirely fictional, I sense they're excited about that, too.

In other news...I got nuthin'.

Look for the next NaNo update when I hit 20k.

The New Widgets are Here!

Okay, so I'm a geek. And maybe a dork. A geedork? Anyway, it's just not NaNo until I can slap a word count widget onto the top of this page. There it is on the right in all of its minimalist glory. During the month of November I will update it daily through my NaNo homepage. As you can see, it keeps track of the cumulative word count, percentage toward completion, and the number of days left in the challenge. Feel free to stop by and mock me if I start to slack off.

Boy oh boy! Things are going to start happening to me now!

Moving Along Nicely...

...on the road to 2010 NaNo-dom. Just finished a rough outline for my next effort in the "month of writing dangerously." This year's novel is a sequel to my 2007 NaNo, Leonard the Great: Dragon Friend (still in editing hell). The working title is Leonard the Great: Boulderhead.

The outline itself is five full pages, divided into nineteen chapters. Most of the descriptions are two or three paragraphs long (per chapter). A few are five paragraphs long, others are only a sentence in length. The idea for this first draft is to get the very vaguest idea of what's going to happen in my manuscript. I have succeeded on that count and am pleased with the overall direction of the story.

I'll spend the rest of October going through this version, revising and expanding the notes I've made. Right now, the story mostly makes sense. Hopefully, it will completely make sense by the end of the month. No guarantees!

I'm not a rigid slave to my outlines, delighting in discovering plot and character elements along the way that I had no idea were coming, but a decent one really helps to get the ball rolling. Although some writers claim they can start writing without an outline, I can't imagine starting something as large and complex as a novel without having a pretty good idea of where I'm headed. Yay, outlining!

Tick Tock

In less than a month, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins. If you've ever fantasized about writing a novel, now's the time to get your rear in gear and finally do it. I started my outline today and hope to have something coherent enough by the end of October to propel me through the month of November.

The goal is to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. My daily goal is 2k a day which gives me a little pad in case I have to miss a day or two during the challenge.

This is my fourth year of doing NaNo and I've had a blast doing it each time. It's harder than it sounds and easier than it sounds at the same time -- and very satisfying once you reach Nov. 30th.

Come on, you know you want to do it.

Here's the link to my personal page.

Roger Eschbacher's NaNoWriMo Page

Stop by and say hi after you sign up.