Tuesday, November 08, 2005

The week that ughed

I think that pretty much sums up the last few days. Sick relatives (in the plural) sick me (climbing out of it) stressed me (big stress stretch of days over, I have survived) and in some ways prospered.

I am 99% certain I am not going to make the 50K of NaNo, as I spent the last week stomping out fires that cut into writing time. I am, surprisingly, after a couple of days of stressing badly over that, okay with it. What I am shooting for now is to write on both OitS and Gallowsbait every day. If that's a sentence each, great, done. If it's page each, even better.

This week has also shown me that I am absolutely an outline gal. Rather than shove myself into spams of stress until I get a rash (not exaggerating here) it's a joy to settle into comfy chair with pretty legal pad (SoftScenes by Ampad makes some gorgeous alternatives to plain yellow -- I do not care for plain yellow) and writing what scene comes after what scene, which lets them flow into each other. Then I can happily follow along after my own breadcrumbs, and end up where I wanted to go in the first place. Since part of the reason for me doing NaNo this year was to increase my output, I'd say knowing for sure a certain method works for me is a success already. It's okay to say "hey, this method isn't working, so I'll do things this way over here" and move merrily along. Does this automatically mean I'm out of NaNo? I'll call that Dunno for now; maybe I'll make the magic number, but if not, I won't stress.

4 comments:

Marguerite Arotin said...

Good Philosophy Anna.I'm at just over 26,000 words in the big NANO race and crusing right along. I almost got stuck on my first big battle scene though since I've never had to write a big battle scene before but then I got the ole LOR: Two Towers DVD out, watched the Battle For Helm's deep and wrote a pretty decent battle for my first try. I posted the battle at http://www.thelastsorceressnano.blogspot.com so if you get a chance to drop by, please let me know what you think. I'm still having a lot of fun with though. Had I known how much fun fantasies were to write, I would have written one a long time ago :-)

Marguerite Arotin said...

P.S.- Keep writing. Even if you feel like your out of the NANO race keep on keeping on :-)

Anna Carrasco Bowling said...

Thanks, Marguerite. If I make the word count, that's a bonus, but I think that my real "win" from the NaNo experiment is learning better what methods suit me best. Which will, in turn help me write more books, faster, and that's my goal. :) Research is consuming a lot of my time working on this story, and the abovementioned scene listing technique is certainly something I will incorporate into other projects.

Sounds like you're doing great!

Anonymous said...

I give you a standing ovation for even trying the NaNo competition. You've learned what works for you and what doesn't, so that's a large part of the battle there. My hat's off to you, Puds.
Kat