Sunday, October 31, 2010

It's Tomorrow!

So I'm going through everything, making sure my things are in order for tomorrow, and I remember I haven't blogged about it being so close. Not that people really need reminding about it on my blog, but why not?

Tomorrow I'll be getting up early, reading my Bible, putting my hair back, putting my writing hat on, pulling on hoodie and writing socks, fingerless gloves, blanket, starting music, and pounding out 2,000 words before anything else happens. Well, maybe herbal tea will happen. I dunno. After that I can fling myself into the morning of school work (physics focusing on Newton's Laws, Algebra focusing on imaginary numbers, John Milton focusing on Paradise Lost, possibly Latin focusing on who-knows-what. I haven't done any good Latin in a while), and after lunch it's off to a friend's for piano lessons and Italian lessons and more writing. Home will bring... eh, probably some lazing around or finishing up school, followed by perhaps another small burst of writing, followed by bed.

The idea is that between those two or three sessions of writing, I get 5,000 words written tomorrow, so I can have a good start. Right this second I'm all hyper from a halloween party, so it all sounds like piece of cake. We'll see what happens tomorrow when I'm sleepy. I may need tea of some sort. Or exercise, like a few sit-ups before working. Ew. But whatever it takes, right? Right?

At least my plot's definitely going to hold my attention this year. If it lasts 50,000 words, I'm golden. Or purple, as that's the color of the winner's bars. If I run out of story... well, there are plenty of hallucination scenes that can be stretched into infinity, if need be. Not to mention I'm writing more description this month. I'm not going to forget that. In fact, I'm going to write that on a sticky note or something and put it up where I can see it.

Off to NaNoPrep!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Less Than a Week Left O.o

My mom hates it when I remind her, but Monday next is November. That means writing like crazy. And hoping my room is clean. And, and... Stuff.

Right now I'm hoping that I can have 5k by this time next week. 2008 was my best NaNo so far I think, and I triumphantly started the month with a 5,000 word day. So technically by this time (11ish AM), I hope to have something more like 7,000 words.

Oh! This year I have goals! Goals are good, right? I...
A.) Want to finish my novel during the month, and
B.) Want to work majorly on description. As stated in my last post, that means I want all my locales and characters described in the manuscript, plus every scene (plot point thingy that I have on my timeline) must particularly contain some description. I can work on quality of the prose later, but for now I just want to put some in. I said that before, didn't I? Ok then.

All that's left for me to do is to really clean my room. And stop eating so much pre-Halloween candy. Oh, and finish making origami for that craft fair thing-a-ma-bob. Three more pieces and I'll call it good, I think.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

I Need to Write Better Description

So maybe November isn't a good time to be working on my writing skills, other than churning out high wordcounts (although I don't know that I need a lot of work on that), but if I don't work on this sometime I'll forget or get lazy. But in the spirit of NaNoWriMo and not editing first drafts, my goal is to just actually write some. No scene should go by without some description. I should actually know what my characters look like.

I'm a story driven person, and so I'll usually end up writing action or dialog or even internal monologue (why are dialog and monologue spelled so differently? Maybe my spellcheck is thinking of a computer dialog box or something), which I suppose is all fine and good, except that a little description helps keep things realistic. I suppose I don't have to be all that poetic or anything (I fail at poetry), but a person should be described, locales should be made more real with description, stuff like that. So my goal is to specifically insert description into my scenes and areas in this November's draft. I suppose that means I need to actually think about what all that looks like...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Prep Moves Forward!

Finally I have my plot finished up. Now I just need to chat with my characters, if I want, and get my room clean. And I need to get most of my origami made for the 12th of NaNo... and I think that actually is all of what's left on my to do list. I have my wordcount spreadsheet printed off, and a sheet for tracking word war scores. Um... I need to make sure I can stay caught up on school and stuff, but interestingly enough I seem to recall I work better when I write in the morning. Rationing my time helps me ration my time better, I guess. I figure I'll be all right. I get Thanksgiving week off, if I'm not at 50k by then already.

I'd like to finish the novel this month. I don't think it'll be an issue, though. It's a pretty short story. I can get it to 50k though. This has at least a little more meat on it than my weekend venture, so I think I can stretch it, if it comes to that.

I should go clean my room.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

I'm Lazy...

I've hardly started on my NaNoPrep... I did make a to do list, but now I need to actually work on the thing. I still have to clean my room thoroughly, and timeline my plot, and keep up with school, and make sure I have enough origami made for the thing... I have more, but now I've lost my to do list. I guess I should find that, huh?

I'm thinking about putting music stuff on my blog... I could probably upload little songs and compositions and stuff right to the blog. If Blogger doesn't have an easy way, it's only a Google away. But maybe that's a bad idea. Too many family members read this thing every once in a while. I'd be all embarrassed... not to mention the fact that anything I've managed to do something that doesn't sound like total and utter crud is at least prompted by a bit a friend of mine has already come up with. I need to get beyond theory, I guess. I always end up just doing boring stuff, and I can't get myself to do anything interesting. Or maybe I'm overly critical. Maybe a little bit of both. I have no problems with first drafts of novels, so why do I care about first drafts of songs? Fail.