Process - Finding a Groove

I decided to sit down and just write. First thing in the morning is pretty good for that - I don't stop too long to think about what I'm going to write. I just take whatever I've processed from the night before and dump it out.

Man, this is sure to be total crap! I'm still trying to decide how much I care about that. Part of me really gets that this is what this whole process is supposed to be about, not worrying about how bad it is. And part of me really does want for it to be good anyway.

Tough, I guess... show some spine & deal with it.

So - research in the afternoon/evening, sleep on it, wake up first thing and write, then do what I want or need to for the rest of the day. I can go for that.

Did I mention I love the boat-anchor laptop? Now that it's charged, the battery even still works. I can be anywhere now. And I can't be online with it. This is great. I still don't know yet how I'm going to get what I've written back to this computer (and hence, into the blog). Hopefully I can get myself motivated to work out that issue soon.

In the meantime, Scout (as I'm calling her temporarily) is busy hooking up with a bartender she met when she and a friend from work went out dancing after their shifts. Probably not love at first sight, but there's definitely something there and he seems decent enough so far anyway.

Yesterday, I started working on two different scenes - one about her starting a new job and the other a flashback of sorts to when she was younger, living with her sister and brother-in-law and he started making some moves on her while his wife was away. At just shy of 700 words, though, for both, I didn't get very far into either one.

I wonder if it's normal to be hopscotching around scenes like this? I'd love to be writing sequentially so that when I actually do start posting results here, it could read sort of like a serial novel. If I create a table of contents and link to the various posts in proper order (once I figure out what that order is), that might be good enough. Hey, this is an experiment.

And now that I've put in decent enough time on the experiment for today (and I might still do more later; I just don't feel the pressure any longer to figure out how I'm going to fit more in), I can now concentrate on spending some time with my mother on her birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Daily Total - 1343
Running Total - 3780
Average WPD - 1260

Process - Staying With It... Barely

I have discovered a new problem - research. Can't live without it and can't live with it, at least not with my personality type. Scout's budget figures prominently in this story and so does her lack of access to healthcare. And I know the life, so I am certain the figures work out to cause the situation in which she finds herself.

I am equally certain that life has not improved greatly over the years for restaurant workers - waitrons - so it stands to reason that what I found to be true twenty years ago is still largely the same. The trouble is, I know that some of the details have changed and to be credible with this story, it's important to take these changes into consideration. If I don't, then there's the risk that readers will throw out the entire premise because of some (relatively) small hole in the logic. I don't believe it has to be airtight; I do want it to be plausible though.

My solution, go trolling the internet for the facts. The trouble is, just as I cannot go into a library without sitting down to read every third book my hand touches (and that's exercising a huge amount of restraint), it is difficult for me to go out in search of information on the internet without getting caught up in so much of what I find there. It definitely happened to me yesterday.

I found myself totally fascinated with bitterwaitress and IDespiseMyJob - my experiences have never been quite so horrible as this... but they've come close. Very close. As a coach it's my basic function in life these days to think more optimistically about how I can choose my own experiences (and help others choose theirs) and yet as a former food service person myself, I can totally empathize. At least I know that I did not imagine the difficulties I faced when I was doing that work. And I can confirm that it's not really much better than it ever was.

So I spent a lot of time absorbing their stories. Today or tomorrow I'll probably get around to asking the questions that I need to have answered. It may have to wait though - I'm sure I can find scenes to write that don't entail getting lost in internet-land and then I can bring my word count back up.

While I managed to fritter away time during the day that I could have spent writing, I did manage to get some done in the evening. I'm liking the boat anchor laptop. Nothing to do with that thing but write. Having finished the extremely voluminous Strange & Norell, writing in bed seemed like a good habit to get into. I was able to crank out nearly 700 words in little more time than I usually take to get sleepy reading. And the laptop is easier to hold than that last book.

Daily Total - 689
Running Total - 2437

Process - Is It the Second Week Already?

I thought we weren't supposed to experience a serious crash until the second week. I may have been misled because I experienced it right away on the second day. Between elections, a meeting for which I was trying to prepare and getting caught up on my novel planning, I didn't write a single word yesterday. And staying focused today could prove to be a challenge. I'm hopeful though, very hopeful.

One of the reasons I'm so hopeful is that I believe I may have found a better solution to the fact that I have not yet named my protagonist. On the first day of writing, I left her in entirely pronoun land, which occurs to me now as having been a pretty dumb move on my part. It means that I'll have to evaluate every single "she" in the 1700+ words I've written so far to determine whether it should be replaced with a name once I get it figured out.

On the other hand, if I name her something totally strange, like, say, "Spunky" or borrow something off the beaten path (such as "Scout" from To Kill a Mockingbird), then I'll have a decent placeholder name that can be easily run through a 'search and replace' function later.

In more good news, I feel like I've sorted out some more of the important background things - like why in the world this young woman would really have ended up in El Paso of all places and why she would want to go back. I still have some additional research to do in terms of work there - I have some concerns that the restaurant work there might not be exactly what I would hope for her - wouldn't be compelling enough. Certainly the tips are not likely to be as good there, which is probably part of her motivation for picking up sticks and making her way back to Seattle. Okay, I feel better. Yes, there's more to figure out and I think I'll find answers I can work with.

Next post, I'll see about offering more information about this novel in the way of a synopsis or something. For now, I'm thinking it would be better to sit down and write the thing instead of spending any more time writing about it.

Daily Total - 1748
Running Total - 1748

Process - I Did It

I am happy to say that I wrote something on the order of 1700 words today which is right about on target for daily output. Not only that, but my calculations that it would take about an hour and a half to write that much were about as accurate as I'd hope they'd be.

I also have an out for not immediately posting them that ought not to cause me any problems later. I did all the writing on a laptop so ancient that I have yet to figure out how I'm going to transfer it to the computer I normally use. I'm still working on that one. It may be a good thing that I still have a floppy disk drive on the server computer and some salvaged floppy disks.

The one thing I'll have to work out is that not knwoing where to start, I began the one place about which I was certain, which happens to be a good chunk of the ways into the book. I also don't have a name for my heroine yet, so I'll be doing a lot of search and replace later. Ah well, it's begun and I'll have something to share soon.

Daily Total - 1748
Running Total - 1748

Process - What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!

Now the fear really sets in. What in the world have I gotten myself into? I was feeling so good - I had a strong idea about my character. I understand her world and what she's up against. With the help of some other NaNoWriMo folks, I found some cool software that already is doing an awesome job organizing stuff. It's called Inspiration and is as fun to play with as it is useful; I'm thinking I'll use it for more than just writing when I'm done with this project.

After spending the day dividing my time between replacing a power supply so that I'll still be able to print this month and getting ready for Halloween, I didn't exactly finish up some of the prep work I thought I would for today. Serves me right, I suppose, for delaying so long in deciding to do this. AND I largely failed at the Halloween prep part; small person had a costume on just in time for dad to come home and take him out trick-or-treating while I managed to get one of the three pumpkins carved. That was about as good as I got.

At least I had bought candy the day before so that I didn't have to hide in a dark house pretending we were all gone. And I still have candy left over to fuel whatever creative writing I manage to get to today.

So now I'm getting ready to sit down and write and I'm wondering where in the heck to even begin. Does everyone else have this problem? Can I go back on my promise to blog this whole process and NOT put my very first (sure-to-be lame) attempts online right away? Maybe I start my drafts offline and then paste them in later when I'm feeling better about this.

Yeah, right - then I'll have found myself an out and it will be that much tougher to get myself to do this out in the open like I'd intended. I think I'll go procrastinate a bit & see how others are getting started and/or play with the Inspiration tool a bit more, filling in the various character, scene, plot, and setting scraps that I did work out yesterday on the scraps of Dilbert and Garfield day-to-day calendar pages.

Deep breaths; it's only a month...