Tag: writing process

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 7

  • Writing Time: 01:55
  • Session Word Count: 1946
  • Total Word Count: 12814 (11667 par)

It’s the end of the first week. I happened to have the day off today, so I was able to sleep in and get my writing done early and without rushing. Much more relaxing than yesterday.

NaNoWriMo is a distilled, compressed writing experience, and you can think of it just like a novel. The first week to the beginning, the central two weeks to the middle, and the last week to the end. Whether or not you actually try to cover the entire plot of a novel in the month, the process still maps pretty well, in my experience.

In the classic emotional arc of novel writing, week one is the fun, creative time where you’re free to invent and discover. Everything is new and shiny. In week two and three, the experience begins to dull, as you have to build a functional story on the foundations of character, setting and plot. In the final week, the end is in sight, and even if all the components of the book aren’t exactly coming together, you can at least take solace in the fact that the pain will be over soon.

Most books have at least a few moments in the process of writing when doubt or frustration crop up. Sometimes a book feels like a disaster in progress. The general agreement seems to be that those moments usually come in the middle, not so much at the beginning or end. So the start of week two begins to usher in the part of the month where a lot of the struggle happens. I’ve certainly felt that in previous years. We’ll see how it goes this time around.

Following up my previous post, I wanted to mention that you can actually add updates for specific days and/or delete updates on the NaNoWriMo website. You just have to do it from the “stats” page. This is nice for someone like me, who writes late at night and occasionally goes over midnight. Now I can make sure my word count applies to the right day.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 6

  • Writing Time: 01:50
  • Session Word Count: 1676
  • Total Word Count: 10868 (10000 par)

Tonight was a rough one. I didn’t feel like writing, and it felt slow, even if it did end up being pretty on-pace compared to my previous sessions.

On the upside, I crossed 10,000 words. On the downside, I updated my count on the website one minute after midnight. Now I don’t think I’m going to get that “Daily Par Every Day” badge. And…sure, it’s just a stupid graphic on a website. It doesn’t really matter. But, assuming all goes well, I’m going to get to the end of the month and all those badges will light up like a Christmas tree. Except that one. Because I was one minute late. Oh well.

The actual book is going fine. Thanks to the 10,000 words I already had done before November, I’m approaching the end of Act I.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 5

  • Writing Time: 01:45
  • Session Word Count: 2117
  • Total Word Count: 9192 (8333 par)

My strategy so far has been to write a paragraph or two beyond my “par” word count each day. This doesn’t feel like much, but I’m now about 850 words ahead. At this rate, I’ll have a spare day of wiggle room around Day 9. I also have some vacation later in the month, and I may use that to pad my word count a little further. That way if something comes up or I just feel burned out, I can afford to take a day off, or write a little less.

I wrote in two sessions today. The first was a bit of a slog. It was a lot of physical action as one character pursues another in a crowded building. I had to figure out exactly what each of them was doing, as well as the layout of the building. The second session was about twice as productive, and was mostly dialogue after the chase.

If I have anything like a hack for getting your NaNoWriMo word count, it’s this: use lots of dialogue. Dialogue is such a fast way to write a lot, and it’s a great way to develop characters, especially if you’re still trying to figure those characters out as you’re writing.

In my experience, most of the difficulties with dialogue come with editing it, once you realize you have unnecessary bits or need to rearrange things. Since dialogue has a natural flow to it, changing one thing can have a lot of knock-on effects. Luckily, that’s not a concern during NaNoWriMo. That’s a problem for future me!

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 4

  • Writing Time: 01:40
  • Session Word Count: 1797
  • Total Word Count: 7075 (6667 par)

I’m going to say something that probably seems obvious to writers who call themselves “pantsers” or “gardeners”—those who don’t plan/outline/prep extensively before starting a big writing project like a novel.

Having a very loose outline for this project has been…fun? I have more flexibility to just discover new ideas or characters and immediately weave them in. I have a few plot points I want to hit, and I can meander between them as much as I want.

The other thing I’ve noticed, not slavishly following a detailed outline, is that I’m writing faster. My recent point of comparison, of course, is Razor Mountain.

I spent something like a year and a half writing the “first draft” of Razor Mountain. I put “first draft” in quotes, because I was working from the most detailed outline I’ve ever made, and each chapter went through at least one round of edits (and often several) before I posted it. I wanted the story to be coherent and relatively free of plot holes, because I knew people would be reading it while I was writing it.

The downside is that I am now finished with that “first draft,” and I still need to edit and revise. I’m still going to end up cutting some things out and adding new things, along with lots of smaller edits. A better first draft is still a first draft, and some of the effort that went into making it better will be thrown away when those sections are cut or modified.

My weekly output during Razor Mountain was about equal to my daily par for NaNoWriMo. I will be writing the equivalent of 45% of Razor Mountain in November. Call it half of a first draft. But it’s going to be a much messier first draft. How much more will need to be rewritten or thrown away to make it good? I don’t know. Is it better to blast through that first draft as quickly as possible, knowing that it means more editing later?

The other aspect that I’ve been thinking about is sustainability. I accepted my slow cadence of two chapters per month on Razor Mountain because I decided I could keep it up indefinitely. My past experience with NaNoWriMo is that I’m usually pretty worn out at the end of November.

On the other hand, at this pace I could finish the first draft of a novel in two or three months. Even if I had quite a bit of revising to do, I could spend a year doing that and still finish faster than my Razor Mountain pace.

As usual, I’m probably over-thinking everything. After all, it’s only Day 4.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 3

  • Writing Time: 01:05
  • Session Word Count: 1708
  • Total Word Count: 5278 (5000 par)

The words continue to come pretty quickly. Along with my main character, I’ve gotten to introduce a couple of interesting secondary characters. The second major character will enter the story in my Day 4 writing session. I initially thought that these two would be very buddy-buddy, but now I’m thinking that some tension between them would give me more opportunities to keep things interesting.

I am starting to enjoy and feel more comfortable with peeling back the layers of the world. I’m not terribly familiar with steampunk or its various punky offshoots, and I’m still figuring out what real world time period(s) and place(s) to draw from. I began with the default: Victorian England, but now I’m thinking about adding some more Eastern European elements into the mix. For now, I’m happy to pull in a mish-mash, even if they’re a bit anachronistic together, and see how it works out.

I’m also delighted to make it to Friday and catch up on some sleep.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 2

  • Writing Time: 01:20
  • Session Word Count: 1853
  • Total Word Count: 3570 (3333 par)

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo, and I’m still feeling pretty good. Despite having a lot going on during the day and writing fairly late at night, I’ve been cranking through the word count.

Maybe it helps that my brain is worn down and isn’t trying to do as much editing as I write. Maybe it’s the fact that this session had more dialogue. Whatever it is, I got through the day’s words a full 30 minutes faster than Day 1.

I am very tired and looking forward to the weekend.

NaNoWriMo 2023 — Day 1

  • Writing Time: 01:50
  • Session Word Count: 1717
  • Total Word Count: 1717 (1667 par)

As is pretty normal for me, I was not as prepared as I had hoped to be. Life has been busy lately. I went into November with something more like a story summary than a scene-by-scene outline. But that’s fine.

Unfortunately, November 1 was a Wednesday this year, which might just be the worst day to start NaNoWriMo. Much better when it lands on a weekend. Ideally, Halloween would fall on a Friday or Saturday, and I could stay up late and do a little bit of midnight writing to kick things off.

As it was, I had to work all day and save my writing for the evening. I didn’t actually start writing until kids were in bed. Still, I started this year with the advantage of jumping into a story 10,000 words in. I already have a main character that I know something about, and some pre-existing tone and setting to build from.

The last time I participated in NaNoWriMo was before I had started this blog, and before I had started Razor Mountain. Before that, I was…inconsistent. I can definitely feel the difference, now that I’m in the habit of writing on a regular basis. 6-7 pages in a day is still a lot for me, but by not worrying too much about quality, I was able to bang it out in less than two hours.

In short, Day 1 went well, and I’m already tired and looking forward to the weekend.

NaNoWriMo Prep-o-Rama

The days are getting colder and the leaves are changing. It’s fall, and we all know what that means for writers: NaNoWriMo is coming.

If you’re not aware, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, both an event and the organization that runs it. NaNoWriMo happens every year in November, and everyone is invited to try their hand at writing a 50,000-word novel in thirty days.

I’ve talked before about my mixed feelings toward NaNoWriMo. Years ago, I used to feel like missing a NaNoWriMo was a little bit of a shameful thing for an aspiring writer. These days, I’m juggling many writing projects (and the rest of my life), and I know that writing 1667 words per day isn’t always practical or even beneficial.

On the other hand, I haven’t participated in NaNoWriMo since 2019, and I spent over two years working on Razor Mountain, writing only 2-3 chapters per month. As November gets closer, I’ve been thinking that it might be fun to really jam on a different project and get a lot of words written in a short amount of time. I’m glad I spent the time and effort on Razor Mountain, but that’s a damn long time to be mostly working on one big thing. NaNoWriMo could be a nice palate cleanser.

The Prep

I’m a planner at heart, and I’ve found through brutal experience that if I want to succeed at NaNoWriMo and not burn myself out, I need to have a halfway decent outline ready before November. I want to be able to just write, without having to sit and work out plot points.

I don’t have any shortage of ideas for books, but some of them are much more fleshed out than others. I started Razor Mountain with an idea I had already thrown some words at, and I’m planning to do something similar with this year’s NaNoWriMo project. I don’t have a good title yet, so let’s just call it NaNo23.

I didn’t know NaNo23 was a novel at first, but then I went and wrote 10,000 words, and it wasn’t even close to being done. The upside is that I have a great beginning, with characters, setting and plot to extrapolate. The downside is that I’m not sure what exactly the middle or end will be. That’s what I’ll be working on in October.

Despite a good starting point and some time to plan, I expect to have much less of a detailed outline than I did with Razor Mountain. I’m actually looking forward to that. NaNoWriMo ought to be a little messy. I also don’t expect that I’ll actually finish the book in 50,000 words. That’s fine too. I’ll at least come out of November with a good chunk of something new.

The Project

My NaNo23 is an urban fantasy story in a Victorian England-esque setting. (I haven’t decided yet if this is actual England in some alternate history, or a fantasy homage.) The protagonist is Edward Argent, a man who has worked as both soldier and spy, and has seen a great many things he’d rather forget. He’s a little bit Sherlock and a little bit James Bond (or he would be if he wasn’t drugged up and miserable, haunted by his own past).

The magic of this world is very particular: anybody can do it, but it only works with physical objects. By using a particular object repeatedly, it becomes bonded to a person, and it gains power from use. A chef might use a magical spoon to enhance their cuisine. A soldier might imbue his sword with power. These objects are called “totems,” and a person can only have one. It takes time and effort to imbue a totem with power, and it’s a severe blow to anyone to have their totem broken.

There is another class of magic, however, and this is much more rare. Certain people find that they have the ability to create a totem that is not simply an object, but a living creature. These people are known as hexes, and they are so uncommon that the average person isn’t entirely sure they really exist. If they do exist, their power is far greater than ordinary people. They don’t just make a good soup or fence well. They do proper magic: fireballs and invisibility and  even changing people’s thoughts. Hexes understand that their power comes from their animal, their familiar, and two minds focusing on the same magic are far more effective than one.

Then there is Edward. Edward is a special kind of hex. As far as he knows, he’s unique. When he wants to use an item as a totem or an animal as his familiar, he thinks about it and it happens. No great effort, no weeks and months of hard work. He can pick up new skills and new animals whenever he has need. He doesn’t advertise this ability. There are dangerous, powerful people who want to use hexes for their own ends. How much more dangerous would the world be for a hex with special abilities?

The Plan

One thing I learned while blogging through Razor Mountain was that some introspection really helps me stay focused and learn from my writing experience. I’d like to do that here, as well. Unfortunately, NaNoWriMo word goals tends to be a slog for me, and I’m not sure how much I’ll want to be blogging on top of those 1667 daily words.

I’ll probably post at least one more time as I do my October prep, and then a few times about the process throughout November.

If you’re thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, let me know in the comments. It’s always more fun to do with others.

Razor Mountain Development Journal — Chapter 34

This is part of an ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain.

You can find my spoiler-free journals for each chapter, my spoiler-heavy pre-production journals, and the book itself over at the Razor Mountain landing page.

The End Is The Beginning Is The End

This final chapter comes full-circle in a lot of ways. First, it was an experiment where I wrote the first chapter and the last chapter before writing the rest of the book. To do that, I obviously had to know the ending I was aiming toward. Luckily I am a planner, and I outlined this story in more detail than I ever have before.

The benefit I saw, which I didn’t expect when I originally wrote the ending, was that it gave me an emotional and tonal target to aim for, along with an end to the plot. Because I had this ending chapter, I had a good idea of how the chapters leading up to it should feel.

I also assumed that I would have to make major revisions to this chapter when I actually reached the end of the book. When I arrived, I didn’t end up making very many changes at all.

Since there were really no downsides and multiple upsides, the experiment was a clear success. I am planning to do this for every book going forward.

Tragedy or Comedy?

The classic definitions of tragedy and comedy hinge on whether the ending of the story is sad or happy, whether the protagonist gets what they ultimately want. If I had to pick, I am more drawn to tragedy. I don’t think anyone will accuse me of a happy ending here.

Like most dichotomies though, it’s a false one. I believe that the best stories have to incorporate both elements into their conclusion to feel satisfying. Life is never purely happy or sad, and going too far one way or the other makes a story feel artificial. Life is tragicomedy.

In Razor Mountain, the protagonist and the villain end up being the same person, and the tension comes from having multiple goals that are in conflict with one another. Christopher has all the power, but he still has to choose, and no matter what he chooses he will lose something significant. 

What Comes Next?

The story is finished! You can read it from cover to cover. But it’s not done yet.

I started this project of blogging through the process of writing an entire novel because I wanted to document everything. That process won’t be complete until we dive into editing.

I’m going to take a couple weeks away from Razor Mountain to give myself some editorial distance. I’ll to try to forget everything and come back in the mindset of a reader and editor. I’m also going to bring in other readers to get feedback and critique. I’ll build a list of things that need to be changed and improved, and then I’ll do the actual fixing and polishing.

Thank you to all of my regular readers, whether you followed Razor Mountain from the beginning or only found it partway through. I do recognize those names that pop up in the Likes every week. I hope you’ll stick around for this last part of the process, and whatever comes next.

Razor Mountain Development Journal — Chapter 33

This is part of an ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain.

You can find my spoiler-free journals for each chapter, my spoiler-heavy pre-production journals, and the book itself over at the Razor Mountain landing page.

No More Mysteries

There once was a show called LOST. This show was designed around a firehose of mysteries that were blasted at its rabid fanbase in a technique that its creator, J. J. Abrams, called the “mystery box.” Then he went off to become the king of the nerds by directing films in the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, irritating fans from both. Meanwhile, the remaining writers continued creating mysteries at breakneck pace until the entire show collapsed under the weight of them. The ending of LOST held the title for most unsatisfying finale of a popular TV show for several years, until Game of Thrones came along.

Which is all to say that when I first began this book, I knew I wanted to create a mystery box that started with nothing but questions and ended by fully resolving every last one. Here in the penultimate chapter, we’ve reached that point. Christopher’s childhood trauma and the nature of the oracles were the last two things on my checklist. Now all the cards are on the table.

I’m under no delusions. I know that it was dangerous to save the most science-fictiony elements of the story for the very end. I hope it feels right after everything that led up to this point. I hope they’re fun, and not irritating. The last thing I want to do is pull a LOST.

The Emotional Center

This chapter is also the final reckoning. Christopher has no more distractions. He’s dying (well, sort of) and he has to sit with that. All of the external conflicts have been resolved. Even when he does his best to pick a fight with Cain, he gets nowhere.

The tension that remains is internal. It’s not even between Christopher and God-Speaker. They share the same fear—the fear that most of us have, to some extent or another—the fear of death. This is the connecting thread throughout the book. God-Speaker is too far gone. He’s trapped by his fear in an endless cycle. Christopher might not be.

It’s Easy Again

A lot of writers seem to agree that the middle of a book is the hardest part to write. In the beginning, everything is new and exciting. It doesn’t matter if some things aren’t quite clear yet, because there’s the whole rest of the book to take care of them. Then the middle comes along, and all of those problems and plot holes and difficult connections between plot point A and Z become very apparent. Even with extensive outlining, I felt that in this book.

As I’ve approached the end though, those problems have slowly fallen away. I know what I have to do, and it’s just a matter of doing it to the best of my ability. I’ve got a clear mark to hit for the final chapter, and a wide-open path to get there.

Writing isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s a slog. In these final chapters, it’s been easy and it’s been fun. I’ll be done soon, and have something I can call a book with a straight face. Sure, there will be editing, but that’s a whole new adventure. I can’t wait to go back and read the whole thing, to see what worked and what didn’t quite work, and figure out how to smooth it out and polish it.

In the past, I haven’t always been very good at enjoying the writing when it came easy. This time, I’m making sure to appreciate it.

Next Time

It’s hard to believe it, but Chapter 34 is the end. Join me next week for the conclusion of Razor Mountain.