Hey - I have my computer! Yippee. Here is another recycled inspirational e-mail from 2007. Enjoy, and keep writing! Hoping to make it to Beverly tomorrow, Beth
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Ahh the sweet smell of November 21st... week three is finally rolling to an end.
*ties Week up with a very large ball of rope and stuffs it into the closet, ignoring the screams of invective when it lands on her Inner Editor*
I don't know about you, but Week Two/Three always seems to be the longest of my year. Not just Nano - my year in general. *laughs* And this year it's the Week That Will Not Die, apparently, overstaying its welcome... but we're into the home stretch - the last ten days...
Most of us will have broken that magical halfway mark by now. (I think I'm within hailing distance of 35k, which is pretty close to on track.) At this point, either your characters have decided to cooperate - or if you're one of those whose characters aren't quite as, um, animated as mine ("All of you, quiet in there for a minute, this is a pep talk... I'll get back to you later"), you've managed to flip through enough mental channels to find something to relate to the reader that's more interesting than the channel showing the special on the mating habits of the three toed sloth or the Bowflex infomercial...
It's really all downhill from here. Even if you've decided that your life won't let you hit 50k, you've still (ideally) been writing a little bit every day. Even if it's complete bat guano, you're building the habit of writing. As the pep talk from Neil Gainman suggests, what *makes* a writer is the fact that they write, not the fact that they say they're writers. Even when it's really bad prose. Even when they don't feel like it. Even if all they can get in that day is a hundred words because their children are sick or they have been laid off from work and are now spending all of their time surfing monster.com and wickedlocal.com. Are you giving it a fair shake? Are you allowing yourself to write whatever comes without trying to make it perfect? Are you giving yourself permission to break the story in whatever fashion seems appropriate to keep the words moving? Are you having fun with it? Then you're doing great, no matter what your word count is.
Sure, I'd love to see every one of you win. That's a huge ego boost and I'll admit to being human in that regard - and I also know that life is. If you're not at *checks calendar* 33340 or whatever it is, *DO NOT GIVE UP*.
Seriously.
I've discovered a few things about this last ten days.
First of all, the momentum you've built up to this point will begin to snowball. You'll have at least a few solid characters and a couple of relationships even if you don't have an 'ending' yet. It becomes an exponential rather than a logarithmic equation as everything starts falling together in strange and peculiar ways.
Secondly, strange and unrelated ideas will begin to glue themselves to your story. You'll overhear snippets of conversation that are perfect for your antagonist to yell from the top of the Evil Overlord tower. You'll see road signs that would be great to confuse your Main Character (MC). Keep a little notebook in your coat / purse along with a pen so you can capture this stuff. Treasure these limpets of mental lint; they're great for throwaway moments when you get stuck in your story. It's a synchronicity thing; once you open your mind to seeing the possibilities in life as literary cannon fodder, you start to see life in general differently. There's a Dares thread in the forums; if you see or hear something you think might make good compost for someone else's story, feel free to post dares and ideas there to share.
Thirdly, keep taking care of your physical and emotional needs (says the woman who shows up at a write-in on five hours of sleep after an spending fourteen hours with a two-year-old that won’t nap & without having eaten supper and has a meltdown(the two-year-old – not me) - oops) over the rest of the week. Have a hot soak with bubbles or salts or whatever appeals to you. Invite a friend over to watch a movie (Dead Poet's Society is always a great 'writer's movie' - maybe people could start a thread for other suggestions in the forum) or go out for dinner with your family. Get enough sleep. Stretch regularly while you're writing and remember that pretzels and M&Ms are not a balanced diet, nor is coffee an acceptable substitute for a food group. :)
Fourth, if you can make a write in (we have a few left), do... there's something about sitting WITH other people in public and writing together that does wonderful things to your word count. I encourage people who come to write-ins to post their thoughts on why they show up and what they get out of them.
** Even if you don't do a write-in, pack up your laptop, notebook or clay tablet, put on your misunderstood artist beret and beat-poet-issue black balmacaan, find a pair of dark glasses and go nurse coffee in your local java joint for a few hours and LOOK like a stereotypical writer. Sometimes it's fun to go out and play the part for a while, and people-watching makes great story filler. The people asking you what you're writing are also great incentive. After all, if you've gone to all this trouble to get out of the house, you feel a bit silly playing Solitaire or reading Facebook when you *should* be writing. :)
Last, if you're using any technology more advanced than dead trees, back up your novel. E-mail it to yourself, put it on another computer, dump it to a service like Google Docs, save it to a USB key and update it every couple of days. If there's a week three bogeyman, it seems to be computer hiccups, which really stinks when you've got 3/4 of your book written and your system decides to open your file in ASCII printer codes. :(
If you haven't yet posted an excerpt to the site, take a moment to do so. This way we can all get an idea of what other people are writing. Note: You are *NOT* allowed to compare yourself to others' writing and say you are not as good as they are. This is missing the point - it's just a way to pass a little time when you need to take a break from your own story. Just remember we're a PG-13 site, so try to find something clean to post to your profile. *laughing* For some of us, that may be difficult, but there's got to be at least a FEW paragraphs. ;)
*waves pom poms* Gooooo Teeeeeeeam!!!
*everyone throws Koosh balls at her* "Quiet, we're writing!"
=Beth=
Score: Three couples touring Australia with a tour company run by ex-patriate Americans and at least one half of each couple is trying to kill their other half off. One husband found dead, next to a shovel and an almost empty bottle of water, one husband threw the shovel on the ground and it hit him on the ear, one other…haven’t decided if using the shovel again is going to work or not. I do think he might ‘kick the bucket’ like at the beginning of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and maybe I’ll put a small shovel in the pail, maybe...
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4th Year Nano Veteran
2009 Novel - Irukandji Diving - (thinking I need a better title)
(Irukandji are extremely venomous jellyfish)
