Contemplating a restart

Now that "Touch" is finished, I am required by law (Bylaw BFF#1Promise-To-Tonia) to complete my novel "The Bog" before editing or beginning any other projects.

This is perfectly fine with me, as it is a project I believe in and hope to get published someday.

It's been four or five years since I started working on The Bog. Nowadays, I can usually pinpoint the exact day I first had the idea for a novel, thanks to my new habit of writing those ideas down in my Evernote account. For instance, the idea for Touch first came to me on August 28, 2010. In bed, I think. (Pretty amazing, when you consider the first draft was finished, three months less five days later!!)

But I have no idea when The Bog (the novel) first occurred to me. It was inspired by two supernatural erotic short stories I wrote in 1998, I know that for sure. They were called Foxfire I and Foxfire II. The events in the second story form one of the pivotal (albeit in backstory) events of the novel.

Anyway, now that Touch is done and I'm trying to inspire myself to return to The Bog, I'm finding it a little difficult, because, well...I've been trying to re-read what I've written so far to get myself back in the swing...and...I'm not really liking it much! At least, not the beginning. A bit too melodramatic. There are events and possibly even a character I don't think I even need anymore.

So, I'm seriously considering starting over again. I had so much success using the Snowflake method on Touch that I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to go back and follow the same process with The Bog. I won't have to rewrite EVERYTHING. But I suspect I'd probably cut a bunch of stuff. Rearrange some stuff. And, hopefully, tighten everything up and give it some direction. I think it's mostly the beginning two or three chapters that aren't turning me on. Plus, I need to solidify my characters more right off the bat. Oliver and Gabby, as the two main characters, both need work.

I should probably do it. If I don't, it will just keep bothering me and slowing me down as I move forward.

I wonder if it would even be worthwhile to do the mailing list thing again? Now I have about 22 people who might be interested in reading along. It sure is a huge incentive to write, and I'll probably have more time on my hands than usual for the next month or so. Hmmm.

Any feedback on that?

Success!! (NaNo-wise, anyway)

I did it!! I've written 50,000 words (so far) during the month of November...by November 23, in fact! This means I've "won" NaNoWriMo... along with the thousands of other busy writers who will start validating their word counts today. See the very cool winners' badge I get to display over to the right there. I also got a nice certificate that I'll hang on my bulletin board.

I really didn't know if I'd manage it. November was shaping up to be a very busy month, even without the added burden of trying to write a minimum of 1,700 words every single day. I've never done anything like that before. I find it quite astonishing that, there I was, with 50,000 words of a brand new novel under my belt after 23 straight days of writing, when I've only managed about 35,000 words on my other novel, "The Bog," that I've been working on for around four YEARs now! Incredible!

At the risk of sounding vain, I've gotta say I'm pretty pleased with myself. For me, this is a major accomplishment. Not only that, but I've learned a great deal about the craft of novel-writing...or at least about what works for me as a novel-writer.

I've learned about The Snowflake Method, which I worked with during the month of October to plan and plot my story and characters before I started to write. I've learned that Butt + Chair = Book really DOES work! I've learned that I can make the time to write every day if I really want to (or, at least, if I'm really scared to disappoint the almost two dozen people who've been reading along as I've been writing all month!).

And speaking of those people, my esteemed "First Readers" ... Thank you all so much for being part of this. I literally couldn't have done it without you. Or perhaps I should be honest and say "wouldn't" have done it without you. Knowing you're all out there expecting a new chapter every day (whether you read it or not) kept me from slacking off or procrastinating, which is a major weakness of mine when it comes to work that doesn't need to get done *right now*. My refusal to disappoint you was my main motivation in just sitting down and getting this done every day for the past month. You have my eternal gratitude... you will be the reason I finish my very first completed novel. As a small token of my gratitude, there will be a little surprise for you all in your inboxes soon after the final chapter of the first draft is finished :-)

One down, 29 to go

Yesterday was Day One of NaNoWriMo month. I've been looking forward to it since deciding to take the challenge on October 2. Spent the month of October planning and plotting, and yesterday was the first opportunity to actually do some writing!

And I am stoked, let me tell you! Chapter One is written and I'm anxious to get on to Chapter Two today. Day One was a busy day. Between doing the first draft of the bi-weekly newspaper I build, plus sundry other little jobs that came up during the day, I had started to worry that I'd be forcing myself to sit down and write chapter one late in the evening, pooped and drained (forgive the imagery) after having already spent too many hours in front of the computer.

But around 4:30 things quieted down and I figured it was as good a time as any to get started. I assumed I'd have to stop frequently to work on something else, but the email didn't beep at me and I was able to work for about four hours without interruption. Incidentally, the fact that it took me four hours to write 1,916 words is a bit troubling. I'd assumed 90 minutes to two hours for that kind of output. But I did read over it several times and clean it up a lot, which is what extended the output time. I'll have to get that under control. I simply won't be able to devote four hours a day to writing this month.

From having only a nebulous idea of what the opening chapter would be about, I wound up with a really solid alien civilization (which I promptly destroyed). Even as I wrote, I was thinking to myself "where is this coming from? Who are these characters I'd never even conceived of until this very moment?" I hadn't even planned to HAVE characters in this chapter, let alone ones with names and nictitating eyelids, who lived in a four-caste class system made up of religious, science, enforcement and common classes named after the four elements. Where did that COME from??

I almost hated killing them all off!

Oh, but it was spectacular! Having discarded the idea of a supernova destroying their planet, I settled on a "planet-killer" asteroid hitting Endemeron and destroying every trace of life. The asteroid idea worked better than a supernova because of the time frame involved. While a supernova might destroy a planet within eight minutes of occurring (according to my friend the space geek), it can actually take hundreds of thousands of years before the final event. A huge asteroid, on the other hand, can be seen coming, has no physical impact until its arrival (pardon the pun), and its arrival time can be calculated fairly accurately...within a space of months in this case ...leaving enough time for the locals to come up with a way to save themselves (or at least their genes) from complete annihilation.

So, now we have thousands of pods floating randomly through space for half a million years, each one loaded with a living soup of DNA-laden Endemen virus. Where one particular pod winds up and what it does when it gets there is the rest of the story!

The Secret to Making it Work

When I first I started developing my yet-to-be-written NaNoWriMo novel "Touch," I used the Snowflake method ( http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php ). It was an excellent boost and got me to the point where I had a really solid general outline.

I'd already had the idea for the story before I even thought about doing NaNoWriMo. It came to me after a series of different concepts kind of coalesced, like balls of mercury glomming together when rolled around on a flat surface. One came from another novel I had started reading - a Stephanie Meyer book called "The Host," in which alien beings physically take over the bodies of people just before the moment of death. Other parts of the concept came from other places which, at this moment, my memory cannot access. It was pretty much a bunch of "what ifs"...which, when you come right down to it, are probably the seeds of almost every novel out there. What if.... hmmmm....

After getting about three steps into the Snowflake Method, I kinda branched off in my own direction. I thought, "how the hell am I gonna write a cohesive novel in only thirty days?" Well, I needed a plan, I decided. I think that's the production manager in me coming out. If you look at a task as one big whole, it can be terrifying...terrifying enough to send you running in the other direction.

But I knew that lots of people have "won" NaNoWriMo, so  I knew it was do-able. I also knew I've tackled seemingly daunting tasks in the past and managed to accomplish them with aplomb. And here is how I did it:

Recipe for Tackling a Big Scary Task:

1. Break the Big Scary Task down into its component segments
2. Figure out (loosely) how long each of the segments should take
3. Know what your deadline is
4. Work backwards from the deadline to figure out your deadline for each segment
5. Write down your plan
6. Get to work, stick to your plan, adjust as needed, and finish the job.

So, following that recipe, here's my plan:

1. Component segments of a book are chapters, of course.
2. I have thirty days to write 50,000 words. That makes my daily output goal 1,666 words per day. I know from previous experience that it takes me, when on a roll, about 90 minutes to two hours to write that many words. Since this novel will be written without my customary obsessive editing-as-you-go method, I can assume one to two hours of writing time per day to reach my daily goal.
3. My deadline is November 30 at midnight
4. This step jives with #2 in this case. I need to finish one segment (chapter) of 1,666 words each day. 
5. My plan is to break the novel into 30 chapters of approximately 1,700 words each, in sequence, from start to finish. I have already outlined, chapter by chapter, exactly what will happen in the first three quarters of the book. I'm tending toward leaving the last quarter un-outlined, as I suspect things will come up in the first three quarters that will inspire a logical and satisfying conclusion. I may be taking chances here...but I guess it's okay to live dangerously just a little bit.
6. I've used the month of October to plan my novel out. On Monday, November 1, I'll begin writing, following my plan closely and trying not to deviate from it too much. That way, by the end of the month, I should have a finished, 50,000-word first-draft novel on my hands. (And if my best friend, Tonia, has anything to say about it, I will then immediately abandon "Touch" and return to my work on my first novel, "The Bog," which she is clamouring for more of.)

Now that I have my Plan in place, I'm feeling very confident about being able to do this. My biggest challenge will be to allot up to two hours every day during November to work on "Touch." As much as I love writing, I find it sooo easy to put it off in favour of other, usually far less fulfilling or worthwhile activities. That's where my readers come in. You (I know you're out there) who have signed up for my daily emails will be my conscience and my guiding light. Knowing at least nine people (at current count) are reading along will "keep me honest" so to speak...I won't be able to quit so easily without a huge amount of guilt. I hate guilt.

Read me!

What do you think would happen if DNA from an alien race suddenly began spreading throughout the human population of Planet Earth?

That's the question asked by "Touch," the NaNoWriMo novel I plan to write beginning November 1. NaNoWrimo is National Novel Writing Month, and the challenge is simply to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of thirty days. It doesn't have to be an award winner. It doesn't even have to be finished as of November 30. It just has to be 50,000 words long.

It's not hard to see that this is a huge challenge. And it comes at a time when I'll be very busy with work. I've taken on a very big contract which starts around November 8, plus, as it happens, November includes an extra production period for the newspaper I build, AND an issue of the quarterly magazine I do. 

Whew! What have I gotten myself into!? Suffice to say, I'm going to need all the motivation I can get in order to park myself for at least two to three hours every day and write about 1,700 words. 

That's where you come in. I figure if there's a bunch of people waiting to read my new output every day, I'll be motivated to get the job done and far less likely to give up half way through.

So, read the brief synopsis of the novel and, if you're interested, drop me a line and ask me to add you to my NaNo mailing list. Then, beginning November 1, you'll receive an email from me every day with that day's writing output. If I happen to miss a day here and there, you'll get more the next time (gotta keep up with the quota!)

Looking forward to hearing from you!

The Big Reveal...and an invitation

Believe it or not, in some cases, embarrassing yourself, or rather, the fear of embarrassing yourself, can be a force for good in your life. I've always believed that the number of people you tell that you're doing something difficult, like quitting smoking or going on a diet, is inversely proportional to the likelyhood that you'll give up on that difficult task.

I'm going to try and write a 50,000-word novel in November and I've decided to not only tell as many people as I can, but invite them to read along as I share my daily output. I figure this is the best way to scare myself into keeping it up to the bitter end.

So, you're invited to read along with my novel, Touch, which I shall briefly outline for you below, by sending me an email and asking me to put you on the mailing list. There's a nice easy email link over there on the right under the header "Subscribe to my daily NaNo Novel Updates." In return for the silent encouragement your interest will give me, I will email you the text I have managed to write that day. It should be approximately 1700-1800 words per installment.

Now, I warn you, this is go to be very rough text. It is a first draft, and in order to reach my goal of 50,000 words by the end of November, I will have to mostly resist the temptation to edit as I go along. It will probably be riddled with typos and bad sentence structure. It will most likely have gaping plot holes and a few wooden characters. But, I think I've come up with a passable story idea, so I hope it will be interesting enough to allow you to overlook (for now) its shortcomings.

So, as promised, here's the basic outline so you can decide if this is something that might interest you...and if it does, I hope you'll follow along as it's written!

Millions of years ago, in another galaxy, members of a dying race have devised a way to spread their DNA across the universe, hopefully to land on at least one planet with compatible life forms. Here on earth, in the present day, a pretty rock washes up on a riverside where it's found by a little boy. As soon as he touches it, it cracks open, and inside he finds an intriguing goo, to which of course, being a little boy, he is irrisistably drawn. He touches it. From that moment on, the alien DNA enters the body of anyone he touches, or anyone those people touch, spreading itself within weeks across almost the entire planet. The DNA causes very subtle, but discernible physical and psychological changes in those it touches. Many people welcome it. Many fear it. Some want to destroy it. 

And some very special people are profoundly changed by the DNA, becoming the centre of a storm that rages around one of mankind's greatest fears: the fear of change.

I'm using the Snowflake Method

A clever fellow named Randy Ingermansen devised a strategy for plotting and planning a novel that, so far, seems quite brilliant. He calls it the Snowflake method. It's based upon the notion of a fractal, a mathematical object which builds upon itself, layer by layer, becoming increasingly more complex with every iteration. A novel, he says, can be built up the same way a fractal is built up.

This evening, I tried putting Mr. Ingermansen's strategy to the test with the novel I'm planning for NaNoWriMo 2010, which I've tentatively named Touch. The Snowflake method is a ten-step procedure, which starts off with a single, brief sentence that describes the story. After Step One, you build up your novel plan by adding more and more detail in each subsequent step. Step Two takes that first sentence and turns it into a full paragraph.

In the space of about 2 hours this evening, I came up with a very satisfactory summary of the novel's plot in a single paragraph (it's harder than it sounds!). Where there had only been a few nebulous ideas and concepts before I sat down, I now have a concrete idea of what my novel will be about. I also started on Step Three: a detailed synopsis of my main character. Step Three includes one of those synopses for each of my other main characters as well. So I'll probably have to do about five all together.

I was quite excited by my results this evening! It's always a thrill when you start to see something you've conceived of actually begin to take form, when you first start to believe that "wow, this might just work!" Whether it's a short story, a novel, a drawing or a brochure layout, those first steps toward making an idea a reality can be quite invigorating. And the Snowflake method has taken the floundering out of what, for me, as a novice novelist, can be a real flounder-fest.