NaNoWriMo Weeks Three and Four: Stress and Success

       

As you can see, my NaNoWriMo 2013 story had a happy ending! Yay!

But it came close(ish) to not happening. It's easy to be optimistic about finishing 50 000 words when you're bucketing along merrily at 2000 words a day and things look rosy. Not so much when you've just moved house, you can't find an extension lead to plug your laptop in, you're trying to process year-end marks for 200 kids and you haven't written a stitch in three days...

Especially when you're at a sticky patch in your plot and don't have that much more by way of detail to include before the final reveal!

Yeah, but with some encouragement from my wonderful husband, a special effort to get home earlyish from school one day and just one last 3600 word push: yippee, we have a winner!

Seriously, though, I am pretty pleased with my effort this year. I'm definitely getting into the swing of things, and my preNano prep helped a lot.

So, next year? For sure!

yours triumphantly,

jjr

NaNoWriMo Week Two: That Awkward Middle Bit

One...key...in...front...of...the...next...

One...word...after...the...next....

This is Week Two of NaNoWriMo. And I'm bang in the middle of That Awkward Middle Bit.  This is the part of the month where things get really tough. Especially when billions of exam papers and planning meetings and all kinds of other stresses attack perfectly innocent novelists!

The good news is, although I am not really alive and full of energy, I am still on track with the word count.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1) Plot Outline(ish)

So I didn't actually plan my novel in that much detail in the end. I tried hard, but I just ran out of time before NaNo began. So I have a hand-wavy excel spreadsheet which I have mostly ignored and certainly changed an awful lot.

But what I do have is a dead body, a good isolation mechanism (island in a summer storm!), a reasonable murder method and A LOT of people with subtle and complicated motives which are taking chapters and chapters to elucidate. 

So when I finish explaining one bit of motive/dark secret, I can usually just open up the next can of worms and serve. As long as I keep remembering to add little hints ahead of the time! 

Having a pretty good idea of all this detail before the time (though I'm STILL not sure whodunnit) has made a big difference to my experience of the difficult middle patch this year!

2) Conversations

"...

Almost all of my big drama takes place in conversations. I like writing conversations. They go fast. They gallop through words. They don't usually require a lot of background information. They tend to be more emotionally believable. I can write a thousand words of reasonably believable conversation in just over an hour. 

..." she said ironically.

Win-win. Seriously. Particularly when above-mentioned characters and motives can be merrily elucidated (mostly) via multiple little conversations!

Having more than three main characters to converse with each other (unlike last year) has also helped a lot. There is only so much three characters can say to each other. Eight characters? So much more possibility.

3) Sprints

Late in the evening, when I'm really tired and sick of the whole damn thing, doing word sprints with my mum or sister via Whatsapp or even with myself via well, real life has really helped!

The idea is that you write like mad...for a very short defined period of time. Fifteen minutes works well for me. If I'm racing and already in the middle of a scene, I can sometimes get close to 500 words done in 15 minutes. And not that poor quality words either.

Oddly enough, once the sprint is done I often have more motivation to keep going for longer. Yay for self-inflicted mind tricks! 

4) Um...Not spending too much time writing blog posts...

Okay, so I'm out of here. See you next week!

Just kidding. Seriously, keep wishing me luck. Two weeks to go :-) Do you have any survival hints for "that awkward middle bit" of a large project or piece of writing?

yours perseveringly

jjr

NaNoWriMo Week One: Fitting Writing into Life

(Or, Fitting Life into Writing)

Writing 2000 words a day is manageable... if you're on holiday. Trying to fit the relentless W/C into a demanding work schedule (in terms of hours and headspace) is... interesting, to say the least. At this time of year it is essential not only that I am at work, but also that I am fully engaged and focused at work.

These are the strategies I have adopted this week - so far so good:

Plan ahead

The reason I'm attempting 2000 words per day instead of 1667 is that I will be moving house at the end of November. So I know that at least five days will be lost. By planning on a 'spare' five days from the beginning of the month, I have (hopefully) minimised the impact of this.

Work Harder

When I'm at work, I'm at work. 120%. This is exam/reporting/planning month at school, and it is imperative that I'm totally accurate and quick. I must make good decisions. So I don't write at school. I don't plan NaNo chapters at school. I don't even think about my story at school (except when it just sneaks in there...). It's just too distracting.

In fact, if anything I am working harder this month. Mainly for my own peace of mind. I have to set my conscience at ease - my real job is not suffering because of my 'hobby'. I stay at work longer than most other staff members. I take very few 'breaks', and make sure that my marking is always up to date. I'm not leaving school earlier because of NaNoWriMo. I spend long afternoons working in the staffroom, even though school lets out earlier.

But on the flip side, when I leave school I'm really GONE. My marking is left in my locker. I'm in the NaNo zone, with no work distractions or worries or guilt - because I know that I'm doing my job properly.

Keep it Separate, Stupid (KISS 2.0)

This is a continuation of the previous one. A couple more handy tricks that I find helpful to keep my different activities clearly demarcated. I keep NaNo work on a separate device to my school work. I don't try to write before school, because I need to get my head around school concerns (even though I'm a morning person, and that would be prime writing time). As I said before, marking packs stay in my locker at school.

Important Things are Still Important

I am still cycling to and from work with Adam. I am still going to church and cell group and visiting my family. I still take long relaxing soaks in the bath. These things take time, but give energy. Time is relatively spacious, if you're really honest. What is often TRULY lacking when I say I have no time is a) energy and b) motivation. I'm actually amazing myself by how much I can achieve in a day when I put my mind to it.

A subsection to this might be: coffee doesn't help as much as you think it does. True story.

Get Support

Adam isn't attempting NaNoWriMo but he is super supportive and generously makes supper most nights (sometimes my school lunch too!). He also reads my efforts on a regular basis and laughs at my typos. I have coerced a lot of the rest of my family into attempting NaNoWriMo with me, and we message each other with encouragement and gentle nagging most days.  Many of my colleagues and friends know what I'm attempting and are wonderfully enthusiastic and encouraging either in person or over Facebook. All of these things contribute to the aforementioned energy and motivation.

Suck it up and do it

But ultimately, when I get home at half past five or six in the evening, I just have to sit down at the computer, no matter how little I feel like it... and JUST DO IT. 

And after the first half an hour... it starts feeling good. 

Two hours later it doesn't feel as good, but when I'm done for the day? BEST feeling ever!

Do you have any work/NaNo strategies?

yours encouragingly

jjr

Before the Story Madness Hits

Well, the time for planning is past. NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow people!

Sonja's flight is landing at Cape Town International. Callie is drinking a Vida coffee in arrivals, giving her brother Steve a dirty look. Annalise is hitting jug night in Claremont.

Ben is looking through a photo album in his room. Anton is drinking whiskey in his study. Jaco is reading an email from his partner in Cape Town. Dottie is making a shopping list.

AB is in the underground office, getting his accounts in order.

Murder is afoot...

yours in anticipation
jjr

NaNoWriMo Prep: World Creation I

I'm posting these fledgling maps - drawn on scrap paper in a coffee shop with my wonderfully creative parentals - so that one day when (hopefully) my beautifully murderous world is complete then we will all have something to compare it to...

Believe it or not I do actually have a pretty clear idea in my head of what my world looks like now. But of course I'm still planning on making delicately inked masterpieces that will make the frontispiece of my book quintessentially Victorian... But at least these guys make a start!

Reinvention of the unsuspecting Dyer Island as millionaire's playground.

And of course the three storey floor plan of the house of horrors! 

We shall have to see how the rapidly waning days of October pan out, but I hope to bring you part two of World Creation (complete with delicately inked maps) very soon.

Yours cartographically

jjr

NaNoWriMo Prep: Character Development II

This is what my character development 'forms' look like once they've had some life breathed into them. As you can see, although I love a good form I still tend to spill over the edges once I get going... And I'm certain that I will continue to spill even more over the edges as I go along! Writing is not a tidy process as far as I'm concerned.

There are no real spoilers here by the way, I'm still not a hundred percent sure whodunit (oh I do amuse myself sometimes!) but the images do give the victim away if you look carefully. Consider it fair warning.

                   

                   

I have 8 main characters, including the victim, plus one or two minor ones, and each main character has his or her own character development page in my NaNo file... The characters are slowly starting to round out, but it takes a staggering amount of thought to remain consistent-ish. Just reminds me how incredibly complicated real people are! Anyhow, real or not I hope that these 8 are enough to keep me going for 50000 words!

Yours characterfully
jjr

NaNoWriMo Prep: Character Development I

When my then-boyfriend-now-husband introduced me to the delights of old fashioned D&D style computer games, it was love at first sight (ha! spot the deliberate-ish ambiguity!). And while playing the games themselves is magical, for me the best part is usually ...dum dum dum... the character creation. 

How most of these games work is that there are a certain number of parameters (race, character class/type, abilities, appearance, skills etc...) which you get to adjust (using a limited number of points in each category) to "create" a relatively unique character. Certain parameters affect each other - for example, if you choose to create a elven mage then you are likely to put more points into intelligence than strength: mages need intelligence to cast spells rather than strength to fight. But once you've put more points into intelligence, then you can't put many points into shields, because your character is too weak to carry a shield. Instead, you have to give him points in unarmed combat, or healing. You get the idea.

The point is, I've always wondered how much this kind of thinking could translate a) to thinking about strengths and weaknesses of real human beings (in fact I once led a youth group session on understanding and accepting yourself through computer games...interesting!) and b) to creating characters for my writing. Well, my friends, the time has come. I have designed a form to do exactly that. It is based partly on the D&D notion of basic characteristics and skills, partly on the Enneagram - an interesting idea which I stumbled across on Wikipedia (bless you, Wikipedia!), and partly on things that I know I will need to know based on the specific needs of my story.

So without further ado...

The idea is that I will either fill it out manually (leaning that way, to be honest) or digitally for each of the characters/suspects in my NaNoWriMo attempt at detective fiction. Where are the details, you ask? Why isn't it filled in already? What about all the other important and relevant questions? As you saw, this is part ONE of my character development. I will get back to you with tweaks and changes to the form once I have started using it in earnest. But I was too excited to keep it to myself a minute longer. 

What categories would you include in a character development form? What parameters am I missing?

yours thoughtfully

jjr

Planning vs Pantsing - NaNoWriMo 2013

I know it's early, but as you know I am already chomping at the NaNoWriMo bit. For those who don't know what NaNoWriMo is...it is an epic challenge: write a novel in the month of November. 30 Days. 50 000 Words. Yes, that is the correct number of zeros.

I won NaNoWriMo last year (by that I don't mean "came first" or anything. EVERYONE who finishes 50 000 words is a NaNo winner) and am firmly addicted to the rush of hurtling through a story at 1 667 words per day. The feeling is kind of like caffeine on a high. So naturally I want to do it again. Duh.

Now according to the NaNo lore and prophets, there are two ways of writing your NaNo novel. Planning (self explanatory) and Pantsing (flying by the seat of your pants). Last year, having discovered the notion of NaNo in the 20s of October, I pantsed it. Largely, anyway. I had a more-or-less chapter plan scribbled somewhere on a piece of paper. I had a couple of characters developed a couple of days before starting...but that's about it. Perfect for my episodic, fantasy-ish romp of a story. Short of words for the day? Insert a new species of monster, and some flashy spells. 

source

But this year I'm thinking about emulating some of my favourite authors of all time and writing a golden age style detective story. Think Dame Agatha and her coven of cronies. Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers... *happy sigh* I do love a good murder mystery. If I had the creative energy to write Poirot or Lord Peter fanfiction I SO would.

source

But...one small problem... as we all know, a good detective story is built on timetables, and alibi charts and stuff. Turning clocks back, train schedules, tide tables, that sort of thing. Just the sort of thing which is impossible to make up on the fly. Not at 1000 words per hour, anyway. And in any case I may, possibly, skip over those pages in detective stories. I want to get to the good stuff, you know?

I have some ideas about how to do this without making myself miserable with tables and boring alibi charts, such as making characters like I would create computer game/dungeons and dragons characters. If and when I carry these ideas out, I will share them. Judiciously, of course, so as to save you all from the spoilers.

But basically, if I want this year's NaNo to be a win for me, and if I don't fall back on the interesting zombie apocalypse/teacher twist that is still a valid possibility... I need to start planning. Like, now.

So, er... bye! No time to talk. I'm planning...

yours prudently

jjr

November is coming...

Man, you know! I just blinked and August was gone. In fact, most of September is also gone. Yikes!

It's been busy and wet around here, as the entrance of my house one early school morning testifies...

But there have been unexpected moments of peace and sunshine...

And as usual, a liberal sprinkling of blessings...

So I can't complain on the whole! But it's definitely time for something seriously constructive...

NANOWRIMO!

Yes, I know that's only in November, but I have been mulling over my plans for a while now. Needless to say I am definitely attempting the challenge again and super keen for it. More details soon, but I am trying to choose between writing a golden age detective novel, or a zombie apocalypse...

Join me?

Yours productively,

jjr

Writing Space

I pushed open the door and was immediately embraced by an overwhelming superfluity of light. This light wasn't just there to work by – it contained the space in multi-faceted clarity of spirit, spilling from the north and east-facing windowed walls with all-encompassing generosity. After the cool dimness of the corridor, so much brightness was overwhelming, and for a moment I fought my eyes' instinct to close themselves against the brilliance.

After a period of adjustment though, I realised that the light was far from the harsh, uniform light of necessity. Instead, it was made up of shadows and shades, a patchwork quilt of colour exquisitely worked in the delicate lattice work of lead edging in the windows. Diamonds of blue and green interspersed with clear glass repeated their barely perceptible pattern infinitely over the warm wooden floors and up the smooth, unadorned walls. The only exception was in the north-east corner of the room – where a large wooden worktable stood sturdy and simple, unpatterned by diamond light or human handiwork, optimally placed for uninterrupted work. Beside it stood a straight-backed chair, pulled back invitingly, and before I knew it I had taken two eager steps into the room towards it.

Thank you to NaNoWriMo - Facebook for today's writing prompt!

2013? Really?

Hello everyone!

So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.

(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)

So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:

teaching english

Yes, this year I am teaching THREE English classes (grade 8, 9 and 10) and only TWO Maths classes (grade 9 and 10). While this is a good thing (I've been wanting to wriggle into English teaching, and yay! no grade 12s), it is also a VERY VERY stressful thing. I've been teaching Maths for almost three years. How much experience do I have teaching English?? Zip, zilch, nada...

Prep time!

teaching maths

So I'm still teaching a fair bit of Maths though, and will continue to lead the grade 9 Maths team at my school, which means a lot of resource creation and general admin. I'm pleased with the plans we've set in place to tweak the ordering of the syllabus, and this year I will be teaching a top-set grade 9 class - yay! Last year I had all mixed groups in terms of Mathematical ability - pretty demoralising when at least half my kids failed every exam. So although I enjoy teaching kids who struggle with Maths, it will make a nice change. 

As good as a holiday? We'll see. This past holiday will be pretty hard to beat.

family

...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!

My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...

"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.

creativity

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!

But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...

ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.

Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.

sjoe!

I think that's quite enough resolution-type things for me for one day...nap time?

NaNoWriMo Extract #6 (from ch6 - Undergrowth)

“Where've you been, Flynn? Spidey'll be on my doorstep demanding your head on a platter before the night's out. No need to put the word out.”

“That bad, huh? I really must have annoyed him. You planning on selling me out?” He asked the question casually, but watched Mick's face intently. Not that such an old-timer would give anything away.

“Nah. Mac can't even deal with the bloody Fallows on his own. He suits me for now, but he ain't gonna fix my … little problem, is he now?”

“Maybe I won't either.”

“If you don't, then you won't get your precious safe-house, will you now? And it seems to me that for Flynn to be asking for a safe-house from old Mick … well, he must be pretty desperate, eh?”

“And how desperate does Mick have to be if he's asking a drifter like me for favours?”

Another laugh. “Touché, my boy, touché! Fact is, you're one of a kind, Flynn. If you'd only settle, we'd be a match made in heaven. None of Spidey's incompetence, or the Fallow Boys' … immaturity. I mean, they sent me a severed hand in a box, for Hedge's sake! I've never seen something so ridiculously childish in all my born days! Anyhow, drifter or not, you'll do the job. And the others, well... I have my doubts.”

“Thanks,” Flynn said doubtfully.

NaNoWriMo Extract #5 (from ch5 - Heartwood)

Sterling was a good teacher. She had known when to push him, and when to allow him to relieve his stress by working at a relatively easy task. She hadn't interfered except to prevent disaster, but instead had begun working some slender practice arrows, straightening the bundles of dried saplings and delicately fletching them with goose feathers. Both of them had watched Verity's apparently lifeless, Loaming form with varying degrees of anxiousness, and taken solace in the blissful concentration of physical labour.

Now, Flynn stood back from the tilling bar, and considered his work with pride. A weight of 80 pounds hung from the slackened string, and the arms bent uniformly to their full extension. No cracks marred the smooth curve of the wood.

“It's good work, Flynn,” said Sterling quietly. “It's your bow, through and through.”

He nodded, without false modesty. He had done a good job on this. “The wood feels alive after a while, you know. I'm glad I didn't break it.”

“It will break eventually,” Sterling warned. “Nothing lives forever.”

“But at least it has … come to life.” He had never felt like this over a knife. Knives were tools of necessity, crafted according to need and purpose. A bow came into life almost of its own volition, following the shape of the wood which formed it.

The hard work wasn't over, of course. But as they tautened the tightly woven string, Flynn could feel his heart rate racing. Soon he would draw the string in earnest, and loose his first arrow. 

NaNoWriMo Extract #4 (from ch4 - Leaf Mould)

Flynn waved impatiently. “You must have figured out I'm an ex-criminal. You said it yourself, remember: a crook or a saint.”

She bounced uneasily on the balls of her feet.

He narrowed his eyes. “And don't even thinkabout getting 'holier than thou', because you have no idea what...”

Sterling interrupted. “What kindof crook are we talking here?”

By this time the high level of ambient stress over the past few hours had put Flynn into a thoroughly foul mood. “Why do you want to know?” he snapped. “Deciding whether to hide the spoons?”

She raised her eyebrows, and he was ashamed of his burst of temper. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Apology accepted – but I really didn't mean to pry.”

He sighed. “It's...not the part of my life I most like to relive. But it's reasonable that you want to know. General all-purpose thief, if that's even a category. Family business, till dad got busted and I took off.”

NaNoWriMo Extract #3 (from ch3 - Branching Out)

“Flynn had to stay with me,” Verity replied unexpectedly. “And I had to stay because the Hedge is my responsibility.” She held out her wrists. “See?”

Sterling put out a callused finger, and gently traced the pattern tattooed into the skin. It was a stylised representation of tree branches, wound together to form a ring around both wrists. A similar pattern entwined her ankles, and the wrists and ankles of every hedger in the Circle.

“So you're...a gardener?”

“Hedger,” Flynn corrected her. “She awakens the spirit trees from the Loam, and teaches them where to grow. How to protect us.”

“They already know where to grow,” Verity said dreamily. “It's just...they don't understand how to exist here at first.”

NaNoWriMo Cover - draft 1

My incredible father (who is doing NaNoWriMo with me - can I hear a wow! from you all?) is designing me a front cover! I'm super excited, so I thought I would share the first draft up here with you:

NaNoWriMo Extract #2 (from ch2 - Uprooting)

He was interrupted by a terrible noise, half way between the trumpeting of a herd of elephants and the roar of thunder. He pushed himself up.

“Weave us a castle,” he ordered. “Make it impenetrable to the worst of predators. I'll  go see what we're looking at.”

When he got outside, the day was darker than he remembered, and the sight that met his eyes was worse than he imagined. The creature was galloping towards him, across the valley to his left. It was enormous, an indescribable hybrid of the worst variety, full of parts of animals he didn't recognise, fused together with sinews of fire and muscles of metal. He stood frozen in front of their suddenly puny shelter, oblivious to the branches and vines that were snaking out and grounding themselves firmly behind him.

This wasn't a character from the stories. This was far worse than that, and he could think of no power in the Circle to defeat it.

NaNoWriMo - Character Sketch #2 - Verity

 Verity started hedging when she was fifteen years old. Her abilities – uncontrollable, and downright weird – freaked her fashionable parents out, and they were more than happy to abdicate their responsibility to the Hedge Council. By the time the Council assigned her to her first carer, she had withdrawn almost entirely into the Loam, and lost most of her ability to function in society.

Her first carer was not a success. His strange theories of hedging psychology made a fragile situation worse for all the hedgers under his care. Verity's worsening mental condition caused havoc in the Hedge, and drew the reluctant attention of the Hedge Council once again. However, the prosecution of the carer left Verity to her own increasingly unstable devices. By the time she met Flynn, several years of patchy care and emotional flux had erased most traces of Verity's personality.

Now, at the age of nineteen, she is well on the road to recovery. Her precarious mental health is a unavoidable by-product of her abilities, but her elemental mood swings have stabilised to manageable proportions. Her spirit tree, once formless and chaotic, has taken shape as an Acacia thorn tree, spindly in appearance but with an underlying toughness, and an ability to withstand years of drought.

Like the acacia tree, Verity is a creature of many contradictions. She has sorrow in her soul, but also a wicked sense of humour, and often laughs at herself. She blossoms under praise, but is quick to catch out the insincere. She loves passionately and quickly; but lets go just as freely. She is forgetful and untidy, but extremely observant. She bores easily, but needs constancy.

NaNoWriMo - Character Sketch #1 - Flynn

Flynn grew up in the slums of District Central. His mum was a washerwoman and died of TB when Flynn was twelve. After that, Flynn quit school to keep his dad company at work– an extra pair of small hands comes in useful in the field of “acquisitions”, especially when it’s preferable to acquire other people’s possessions with as little fuss as possible. With a bit of training, Flynn soon became an expert…well, thief. His dad wound up in jail before long, leaving Flynn to run the family business. He moved out of District Central soon afterwards – their association was far too well known. He drifted around the Circle for a few years, picking pockets to earn his keep, and generally staying out of trouble.

Flynn is a survivor. He’ll do what he needs to do in order to get from today into tomorrow. He is ruthlessly unsentimental, but secretly wishes he wasn’t. When he was offered a chance to slip out of the criminal world, he grabbed it with both hands – telling himself it was simply because the long term prospects were better. Truthfully, he was getting tired of dodging the law.

At this point, Flynn has been a “civilian” for over two years. He is twenty six years old, and still harbours a deep suspicion of authority. In fact, he harbours deep suspicions of most people, and always sleeps with one eye open.

Few people get a chance to know Flynn as more than a casual, forgettable acquaintance. He would rather remain clear of emotional ties, and deceives himself into thinking that he has succeeded. Where he feels attachment, he is prone to sudden, extravagant gestures of affection, which he will afterwards downplay in significance – to save himself and the recipient from embarrassment.

Flynn's loyalty may be difficult to earn, but it is well worth having. He still carries a kernel of guilt over abandoning his father in prison, and once you've earned his respect he works overtime to try and make up for his previous shortcomings.