10k, Olay!

Hit my first NaNo '09 milestone last night. At ten thousand words, here's where I am:

• Almost at the end of Chapter III (the novel template in Movie Magic Screenwriter 6 uses Roman numerals as the default).
• Almost at the end of an awesome space battle involving spacecraft, space weapons, and a black hole (in space).
• Pleasantly surprised that it's going as smoothly as it is (taps forehead with knuckle). Knock on wood.

My next personal milestone will be 25k so I'll give you an update on all things NaNo then. Oh, and as you can see, the super fancy word count widget is now working.

In Place

NaNo starts on Sunday 11/1 and I feel like I'm in a really good place to hit the ground running. Got my premise, my characters, and my outline (5 pages/20 chapters) -- and even an anti bad writing gargoyle in my garden (<--see pic). Maybe I should place him closer to my desktop as I'm not quite sure about his range. This year's book is a genre shift from the first two -- going from fantasy to sci fi. It's still middle grade. I feel comfortable working in mg and like the idea of writing books that entertain kids of that age -- probably because that's when the whole "hardcore reader" thing kicked in for me. I still recall my first mind expanding sci fi read, "Time of the Great Freeze" by Robert Silverberg (humans emerge from underground sanctuaries at the end of a future ice age). It was back in the 5th grade and got me hooked on the genre. To this day 99% of my pleasure reading is either sci fi or fantasy. But I digress.
My goal for November is 2k+ words a day which will put me at 50k on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving -- thus allowing me to gorge without guilt. My author page at NaNo is sillyroger. Check it out when you get a chance and feel free to add me as a buddy. I'll report back as I hit the significant milestones (every 10k or so). The NaNo word count widget on this blog should start functioning on Sunday.
I know this is all very book geeky but what can I say? I'm a book geek who really enjoys the challenge of cranking out a manuscript every November. Who knows, someday I might even sell one!

Gentlemen (and ladies), start your word processors!

A Productive Week

Been a busy little robot this week.

Got my Script Frenzy screenplay over to the agent on Thursday. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Hope he likes it. I changed the name from "Timer" to "Nick of Time" for reasons stated earlier. Here's how I pitched it:

"Aimed at a youth audience this is a "flexible" script -- existing comfortably, imo, in a number of niches ranging from a big budget live action/cgi extravaganza through a Nick or D.C. original movie (personally, I'd love to see it as an anime style flick in the vein of Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle", but we can talk about that)."

Agents always ask which niche you see the script falling into -- I'm guessing it helps them decide how they're going to position it. You'll note that I'm not going public with any of the script's content as I'm a little superstitious/paranoid about describing that kind of thing until the agent's had a chance to look at it and it's out on the market.

Got a significant chunk of my outline done for "Caden Brave", my 2009 NaNo effort. All of the main characters are laid out. They're archetypal, but that's how I roll.

Twenty more days until the National Novel Writing Month kicks off. If you're still thinking about joining in, now's the time to sign up and start working on your outline. If you decide to go for it, look me up under the author name of "sillyroger". We can be "buddies" and motivate/annoy each other into action during November.

And finally, got my second Scooby script approved. These are a hoot to write and I hope the kids enjoy watching the show as much as I do writing it.

30 Days and Counting

The craziness that is National Novel Writing Month starts at midnight on November 1st, 2009. If you've ever flapped your lips about "someday writing a novel", then I'm putting you on notice that someday is almost here. Sign up and write the damned thing! Seriously though, it's a lot of fun and a great kick in the pants for those who (like me) thrive on a deadline. I've enjoyed and benefited from it enough that this will be my third year of cranking out middle grade November prose. Check out their site and then ask yourself, "Other than the fact that I'm a lazy mook, why wouldn't I do this?"

In other news --

• Finished my second draft of "Magic Man" my 2008 NaNo project and have sent it off to trusty beta reader JZ. On balance, I'm quite pleased with it but I sure he'll find plenty of wtf things for me to fix.

• I should be finished with my 2009 Script Frenzy effort "Timer" by the end of this weekend. I've got to finesse the final scene (to make sure that all the main characters get their due) and will probably change the title as 1) there was a recent indie film by the same name and 2) the original reasons for giving my main character that nickname never really made it into the script. Then it's off to the agent.

That's it for now. Get busy on that novel outline!

Gearing Up for November in July

Just to give you all a heads up...

The National Novel Writing Month challenge starts in a little over 90 days so if you're interested in giving it a try, now might be a good time to start noodling around some ideas of what you want to write.

My method of being ready to rock on Nov. 1st is crude, but effective:

1. Go to the site (linked above) and sign up. It's free and there are no obligations of any sort -- even to participate in November.
   
2. Come up with an idea or two or three. Pick the one that interests/excites you the most.
3. Describe that idea in a sentence or two.
4. Expand those sentences into short paragraphs.
5. Expand those paragraphs into a two or three page synopsis. This is all "what might happen" kind of stuff.
   
6. Start breaking down the synopsis and converting it into an outline organized by chapters. You can be fairly arbitrary at this point. Write "Chapter One" and group all the info in your synopsis that you think might go in your first chapter. You don't have to be rigid, it'll change as you start writing. Do this for "Chapter Two" and so on until the end. My outlines tend to be anywhere from 25 to 40+ chapters and five to ten pages long.
   
7. As Nov. 1st approaches continue to go through your outline as often as you can, adding whatever you can think of in terms of story, setting, and character. Divide chapters that you suspect are too large, add new ones. Jot down character revealing snippets of possible dialogue, etc.
   

If you do this, I can guarantee that you'll be well-placed and eager to start writing when the bell sounds on the big day. Just to be clear, you are not writing your novel yet as that would be against the rules, you're getting ready to write.

Think about it. Yes, it's challenging but it's also very satisfying and well worth any effort you'll put into it.

Surprisingly Not Bad

I'm a little over fifty pages into the rewrite of my second middle grade novel "Magic Man". It took me this long to warm up to the task since by the end of last November, I was about as sick of my manuscript as an author could be. But I forced myself to finish the first draft, made a few feeble attempts to start the rewrite, then chucked the whole thing aside for seven months.

And you know what? It worked! As I'm going through the text of what I knew was an absolute piece of poo, I'm delighted to discover that it's actually pretty good. No really! The story pretty much makes sense, dialogue is fairly crisp, the funny parts are more or less funny, and the action sequences border on being exciting -- all the kinds of things I can fix during the editing part of the program. That's what rewriting is for, after all. Very cool.

I've often read that you should give yourself a bit of time before jumping into a rewrite -- to clear your head and let things settle down -- but who knew the suggestion actually worked?!

I'm a Weiner!

Well, I did it. Went over the 50k mark at around 3:00 this afternoon. Go me.

Going to continue adding to the word count over the two remaining days in the challenge. Then I'll let it sit (probably until early next year) before I start what I know is going to be a rough and tumble edit.

In general, I'm pleased with what I've got, but there are some interesting logic flaws in the story's time line that should be quite a challenge to solve. I also I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have one or two more main characters than I need. Anyway, I'll deal with all after I've had a chance to rest my critical eye.

Process This

Well, I reached 40k tonight -- a little behind on my personal goal based on 2k a day from Nov. 1, but still within my comfort zone. I've got between now and next Sunday to crank out 10k. Barring any wordless dead zones, I should make it with a little room to spare.

This year's NaNo effort is different than last year in many ways. Foremost is the fact that I finished a complete first draft of this year's novel this past Friday! It came in at around 38k so while I had a rough yet complete manuscript, I did not yet have a winning NaNo word count.

I mentioned that this draft was feeling a little sparse, so what I did was go back to page one and start looking for parts to flesh out. I found close to an additional 2k within the first thirty-three pages so I'm optimistic I'll find 10k in the remaining one hundred and eighty nine. After the end of the month I'll be pushing on, trying to beef it up to around 70k.

Last year, I reached 52k by the end of the month but felt nowhere near the actual end of the story. The finished manuscript for last year's effort came in at around 77k.

I know, lots of boring stats but I have to admit that part of the fun of this challenge is the process.

Time to Get Moving!

Got me some catching up to do. Hoped to reach 40k by the end of the day on Thurs. 11/20 but as of the end of writing on Wednesday night, I'm at 34k. Employment and rehearsals for a theatrical play I'm doing are conspiring to keep my daily word count lower than I had hoped. Oh well, at least I have good/fun reasons for being behind. Who knows, maybe I'll rip out a quick 6k tomorrow and get all caught up.

(cough) fat chance (cough)

Gasping for Breath

A little fried right now so this'll be a quickie. Had a very productive weekend. Finished a (hopefully) final polish draft on Leonard and sent it off to Agent S. This pass focused on the main character's motivation for continuing the quest through impossible obstacles. I'm happy with how it turned out.
Punched up my animation proposal and added sample story premises -- sent it off to the animation agency for notes.
Finally...reached 32k by Sunday night!

Grinding It Out

So far so good with NaNo. A week into it and I've got a little over 17k words. That puts me well on the way to my goal of 20k by this Monday and 30k by next Saturday. I love the little burst of nervous "I've got to write if I'm going to reach..." energy that this challenge provides.

Liking what I've written so far although it's feeling kind of sparse in terms of description and humor -- but that's what I'll focus on fixing in December. Right now my task is to get those bytes down on virtual paper and not worry about the fancy stuff.

On a semi-related note, I'm finding the little NaNo calendar thing to be kind of irritating. I'm sure it's because of my lack of understanding of the subtle interaction between statistics and percentages, but I'm not liking that the days keep changing colors even though the word count is already known. It makes my tiny brain pucker and reveals why I steered away from the sciences. I think next time I'll just go for a straight bar graph word count widget (try saying that three times fast).

UPDATE: Decided to chuck the calendar altogether and go for a straight word progress chart. I'm more concerned about meeting word goals by date than by daily percentage. Fascinating, isn't it?!

In other news, I've come up with a bunch of fun story premises for the animation proposal. My animation agent offered some interesting insight when I told him of my plans to write a pilot script. He said pilot scripts are best written to help the creator figure out what his show is going to be about -- not necessarily to show to development execs, etc. He said that pilot scripts are more about setup and less about story so they really don't give a good feel about what the actual show is going to be like. His suggestion was that I make the script more "first episode" and less pilot. I think that makes a lot of sense so I'll probably write both -- the pilot for me and the first episode to show to others.

And...Begin

The NaNo site's super slow tonight -- not surprising considering all the folks that are logging in to update their accounts. If my little word count calendar thing ever clears up, you'll see that I had a very nice first day of 3765. Not half bad and especially gratifying considering that I was a little on edge when I sat down at the desk this morning. But, as I'd hoped, all it took was typing the first word and the rest seemed to follow. Phew! I know it's only day one, but I'm totally grooving on getting back to novel writing.

Sent off the most recent polish draft of Leonard to Agent S. late on Thursday. She's going to take a look at it and get back to me next week. I'm very happy with this draft. Didn't have to be lobbied too hard by Agent S. to add even more boy-centric humor. I don't think it's at the expense of quality either. Which is, you know, kind of a bonus. (insert smiley emoticon of your choice here)

Gettin' Close

Got the copy edit notes on Leonard back from Dustin (at last!). The notes are quite manageable so I'm incorporating them as I go through for a "final" polish/content edit. I'm about halfway through the manuscript and am quite happy with how everything's shaping up. The goal is to finish up by this Friday (10/31) then ship it off to Agent S for her perusal. She'll review the changes, then send our boy off to a number of publishing houses who've expressed interest. Keep your fingers crossed.

Nano's looming ever larger on the horizon. I'm simultaneously dreading and salivating over the prospect of starting on Saturday. I think I'm well prepared, but there's really no way to tell until my fingers hit the keys.

In political news, The Novel Project is officially tired of this endless campaign and is looking forward to it going away on Nov. 5th.

Coming Along Nicely

Finished the rough outline for Magic Man and will take the next few days to flesh it out. Ten days to NaNo! As of today, I've got twenty-five chapters. If it's anything like last time, I'm sure I'll discover things along the way and add a few more. The outline itself is a little over six pages.

In a surprising burst of creative energy, I also find myself with a nearly completed proposal for an animated show. The idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while and last week I decided to write a few things down. Amazingly, these "things" kept coming and soon I had enough good ones to organize into a pitch-worthy "mini bible" (5-6 pages). The idea itself is action based with a healthy dose of comedy. At my most delusional, I would hope to compare it to The Incredibles.

I like this idea so much that I've actually convinced myself that I can do both the NaNo challenge and write a spec pilot script for my animation proposal. How insane is that? Very. I still have to squeeze in the "final" polish edit for Leonard that Agent S expects by November. Good grief! That loud scream you'll hear at the end of November will be the sound of pressurized steam escaping out of my ears.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, this has been a very busy week. Commencing info dump in 3, 2, 1...

• Crack agent's assistant, Dustin, has been doing a copy edit on Leonard. He's going over the manuscript with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to weed out my numerous typos and punctuation errors. That's a lot of work and I'm very grateful he agreed to do it. He hopes to get it to me next week. At that point I'll do one more content edit (character stuff and humor, mostly) before shipping it off to Agent S.
• Finished a new picture book and sent it off to Editor Liz. I like it and think it will hit the sweet spot for early readers -- silly characters and age appropriate gross out humor.
• Finished a polish draft on another picture book. Took out every word that absolutely didn't need to be there. I'm very excited about it and, equally as important, so is Agent S.
• I'm about halfway through a very rough outline for my next NaNo novel. I'm doing brief, four or five sentence descriptions separated by chapter headings. After I'm finished, I'll keep going through it until the end of October -- fleshing it out and filling as many holes as I can find. I'm not a slave to the outline, but it helps calm my pre-Nano jitters to have some idea of where I'm going. I became an avid outliner through working in animation (where it's required) and through my own spec screenplays. I tried the "I'll just start writing and see where it goes" approach a few times only to discover that it usually goes to around p.30 and then stops cold. In my experience, some ideas have the juice to drive a full screenplay (or novel) others don't. Pushing an idea through the outline grinder helps me determine which kind I've got on my hands.

NaNo 2: Electric Boogaloo

I'm going to give NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) another shot this year. It was such a positive experience for me last time that there's no way I could justify not doing it again. I plan on spending the rest of October writing an outline for my next middle grade novel, Magic Man. Once Nov. 1st rolls around, feel free to visit my NaNo page http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/226809 to see how I'm doing with my goal of reaching 50,000 words by the end of the month. I'll be providing updates here, too.