Week 67 – The weird and the wonderful…

As my current story has a few supernatural elements in it, I’ve spent quite a bit of time this week thinking about strange experiences that move the story forward.

The important thing for the book is that nothing is really over the top – this isn’t some sort of house-built-on-an-old-graveyard idea; it’s more about someone looking for clues that may or may not be there.  Odd things happen, but are they really odd?  In other words, it’s about interpretation.

One of my characters is looking for signs they have still got a connection to a lost loved one.  The other character thinks signs are simply emotional needs.  So part of the storyline is this clash of wills and whoever comes out on top in this will dictate the way they both experience the future.

I’m enjoying the challenge of this.  Some things are straight forward, easily explained whereas some are far harder to explain (though never impossible) without relying on the otherworldly.  I’ve even got a few of my own experiences to add in if I like – a sat nav that turns itself on at will; lights that turned on and off on their own; the tv that once switched itself off so we didn’t have to get up…

I am having a lot of fun with this whole storyline, and am particularly happy that it ties into their planned futures, whichever side wins out.  I have a favourite at the moment, but who knows how I’ll feel at 75,000 words.  Maybe some sign will send me in a completely different direction…

In other news – I said I’d tell you about the tie-in of the random new story element today and it has worked, yippee!!  I have managed to connect the different elements so they are all interrelated, which has been a real joy. My word count this weekend however had not increased much; I hope to get to about 41,000 words tomorrow which still leaves me with 9,000 to do in 4 days – a big ask if anything else goes a little pear-shaped, but not impossible, and less than 2,500 more than if I’d been on target!

Happy writing – and good luck to fellow NaNoWriMoers (if that’s the word!) for these last few days.

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

Week 66.5 – Incorporating a new idea…

This evening I fell asleep instead of writing my blog post*. I think I’ve worn out my thinking cap! So this post will be short and I’ll write a longer one at the weekend.

*in fairness, it was 11pm!

Today, my characters found something that wasn’t in the plan.  It is a picture of the female character and her mother, with a message written on the back by her father.  To the character, it seems like a message from beyond the grave (a constant in the story), and it had introduced a degree of intrigue.

There are three important elements – 1. Setting up a scene that is already planned, as another signpost leading to a ‘date with destiny’; 2. A suggestion that her father did not die when she thought; 3. A suggestion she was not told the truth about the relationship between her parents.  Specifically, how close they were, and whether they stayed together after her birth.

I trust that there’s a reason for things popping into my head like this.  Call it inspiration, or a muse, or a lucky break; I try wherever possible to incorporate the idea – if it isn’t working, I can change it when I revise and edit sections, but if I don’t write it down, the idea will be lost, forgotten in the haziness of yesterday.

I have an inkling – not a fully formed idea yet – of why 2 and 3 are important, and that ties in with a later scene which is on the plan.  Maybe this is the way to get there.  The character is not in her home when she finds the picture, so there’s a sense that she’s meant to find this out now, it’s part of her destiny.

I’m layering the story more, which feels pretty good, but I have to bear in mind the NaNo limitations – in other words, if I want to explore this as I go, I might not get to 50,000 words.  On the other hand, if I don’t write chronologically, I am liable to get gaps and continuity issues which I don’t want.

So I’m going to stop writing for today, and see what happens when I pick up the threads in the morning.  It may all be clear tomorrow!

Happy writing

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

NaNoWriMo day 20 – Better than last year’s model…

I am catching up again – I’m now on just under 30,000 words so only 2 (and a half) days behind once more!  It’s hard controlling my internal editor, and I have found myself cropping paragraphs here and there where I feel they don’t work, even though that’s not really the point of the month!

I don’t make use of many of the facilities for people taking part in NaNo, and would be interested to know who uses what.  After looking at some of the forum entries about how many milestones people have passed, I have specifically retreated from my ‘region’ and am simply competing with myself.

I’m winning, of course; I have beaten 2011 me which was my first target.  I know that last year was a learning opportunity as much as anything, and this year has felt slicker, better and more achievable than last year, so that’s a good sign.

My secondary target was around 35,000 words so I’m sure I can surpass that too.

My plan is to get 3000 words done tomorrow – that is clearly achievable based on earlier days in the month – and more if possible.  The next section is about a past life memory and exposure to a devastating event so if I can introduce the location and trigger for the memory that will set everything up for the next chapter.

So I shall leave it there tonight and get some rest – my characters have a big day tomorrow!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

Week 66 – Days off and dancing lessons

No, I have not donned the dancing shoes myself!

After Thursday’s failure to reach my target word count, I had another two days when I didn’t get much done – I basically took a couple of days off.  As a result my NaNoWriMo word count has only gone up by about 1200 words so I thought it was a good time to go off tangent.  If I start to catch up, I’ll post about it tomorrow!

There’s a tv programme here in the UK (and I know it has various incarnations around the world too) called ‘Strictly Come Dancing’.  For those who have never seen it, it consists of celebrities (actors, musicians, tv presenters and sportspeople, mainly) learning to dance various competition-style dances with professional dancers.

Some viewers like to see great dancers, some like certain personalities, and some like ‘the journey.’

‘The journey’ is what we writers are all about: how does a character move from A to B in an engaging way?  But sometimes we get so caught up in our stories we forget about our own journeys.

I remember when I first took a break from work to study, and write.  I loved it, of course, but at first I could only write short scenes, little elements that had no bearing on each other.  I thought I’d forever have to write short stories even though I had so many ideas for novels, so many characters and elements waiting to be committed to paper.

Now, here I am, a book down and about a third of the way through the second one.  Those disconnected ideas have fed into a picture, added to scenes and generally helped shape the novels.  I now write poetry again, and have rediscovered my pleasure in it.  All in all, I think that as journeys go, in my writing one I have come a long way.

I think it’s good for us all to reflect on how far we’ve come; not to rest on our laurels but to know we are not standing still, and to give ourselves the positive affirmation we need.  I don’t think I was conscious, until today, how much my writing has developed over the last couple of years, and how many of the ideas, characters and scenes I thought would be nothing more than a few lines on the computer are building the worlds I am creating.

I didn’t do much for my word count this weekend, but I did a lot for my self-awareness.  I think that’s a good trade!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

NaNoWriMo day 13 – One seventeenth of a marathon!

Today has been really quite successful, despite a very slow start: I wrote about 3000 words.  If NaNo is like a marathon, 3000 words in one day could be considered a 10,000 metre run.  Ok, the proportionality may be wrong – but it’s definitely more than a couple of laps!

If I could write this much every day, I could write another 51,000 words by the end of the month (I won’t!).  If I can at least get as much done tomorrow and Thursday, I’ll have made that 25,000 with words to spare…

A number of elements today were heavily dependent on my memories and experiences; from shops that sell crystals and incense sticks to the clairvoyant night.   I am extremely glad I chose to attend that clairvoyant night; I didn’t take notes at the time but when writing today I remembered a lot of details that have really enhanced the scene.

This familiarity certainly helped me pull some extra words out of the bag, which I needed today.

So if anyone else wants a word-count pick-me-up, use a scene you know really well – and can describe in detail!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

NaNoWriMo day 10 – U-turns and Dead Ends

I was only going to post about successes, but have veered off track today!

I’m on 13,700 words now – a little short of my target but with a new end date of 6 December, I’m feeling ok.  I only have to write 1729 words per day to finish by 30 November (although I’d still prefer to be halfway on 15th).

I had to stop this evening because I got myself into a scene cul-de-sac and have to do the writing version of a three-point turn to get out of it. Maybe a U-turn.  Basically, I’ve got into a scene where nothing is really developing, and I can see I am boxing my characters into a corner leading to either a dead-end, and a jump to a new scene, or unpicking the scene to change the outcome, or using a bit of give and take (from a character point of view) to manoeuvre out.  As I can’t decide, I’ll look again tomorrow.

Anyone else finding particular scenes knock the flow?

I have also noticed that each day I rewrite the last few words/sentences of the day before.  I am not aware of doing this on non NaNa work: it seems to have worked so far, and tomorrow when I revisit the scene it may iron out the deficiency.

I hope so; otherwise I’ll have either a gap or a mess and I don’t want either…

On the plus side, I posted my total before midnight so no maths for me today.  Phew!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

NaNoWriMo day 9 – When does a writing day end?

I managed to get up to 12,055 words today, so reached my target for day 9. However, because my writing day is not entirely in line with a calendar day, I can’t get an accurate new end date from their system.

I often write late at night – my writing day can finish as late as 4am, depending on what else is happening and how sleepy I feel (sleepiness does not lead to good writing in my experience), so I don’t normally think of midnight as a relevant marker.  Unfortunately NaNoWriMo does, and I’ll have to post my next word count before midnight to see my revised date.

Maths not being my first love, I am not entirely sure, but I think that my current word count gives me an end date of December 8th…

What I can say with confidence is that I am nearly 25% done.  If I can stick with about 2,200 words a day, by day 15 I’ll be halfway to the word count, which will work out nicely!

So for anyone logging their numbers, check that they’re on before midnight or you might have to do maths on your own…!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »

Week 64 – NaNo chance of catching up?

Now I’m into November, and the tight schedule for NaNoWriMo, I’m very aware of how many words a day I should be writing. I’m on day four so a reasonable amount at this point would be about 6-8,000 if I want to get 50,000 done by the end of the month.

I’m on about 700…

I’m not worried about this because I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the story since Thursday.  Still, I am hoping this week things will improve somewhat, and I’m also hoping to get another few hundred done today – but it’s got me thinking about the arbitrary nature of word counts.

I’ve always thought that word counts are a strange way of judging how far I’ve got with a story. This could be due to my style of writing, where I map out a scene in the first draft then fill in details as I revise the story. Or, it could be due to the fact that a book could be anything from 50,000 – 500,000 words long!

Having said that, they are one of many useful tools for a writer.  Knowing how many words you have got on paper does show that something is happening – just not the quality or relevance of that work.  So, I’ll carry on working to get towards the target number of words this month, but I know from experience that it’s only once the first draft is completed that I can really see how far I’ve got.

In other news – now Halloween is over, here in the UK we have Bonfire Night (or if you prefer, Guy Fawkes Night).  A few years ago I attended an event that involved people walking down a hill through an old town, down cobbled streets in the darkness, lit by flaming torches.  It really was a spectacle and one that deserves to be written into a book or a poem – I’m hoping to include a scene like this in my NaNo piece if I can fit it in.  It’s one of those events that is full of dramatic possibilities!

And finally for this week – I saw this gallery of books that are hard to finish, and it made me smile – the only one I’ve tried is Das Kapital (and not even the whole thing!) which was for an essay when I was a student.  How can a book be hard to read, and yet a prize-winning book?  Surely readers want to be able to finish the story…

At least this proves that a word count isn’t the only thing to think about!

Happy writing

EJ

🙂

Read Full Post »