nanowrimo, the home box version
Nov. 6th, 2006 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alenxa_classicSo I got a jump on NaNoWriMo and can't join officially without potentially getting my head busted. I can't lie about it, either--not only have I been telling people I've been writing again, but I have documented testimony from myself that I started my latest work on this stuff in October, and a file creation date for the latest draft from sometime in 2003. I'm so far out of bounds on this that I'm practically on another planet.
That said, I am in fact keeping track of my word count and have in fact set myself the goal of having a finished draft by 11:59 on 11/30. This one is looking like it'll be significantly longer than APK, which was just under 40k, so it probably will be a novel by NaNo standards. Just not eligible for the distinction of having been created entirely during November.
The story in question is #6 in the sequence that ends with APK and contains Prophecy. I started it in probably 10th grade (!) and the first draft (pencil, on notebook paper) illuminates that, painfully. I redid the very beginning and a random scene in fall 2003, picked up again with random scenes in the time before and after a class I took for work over a year later, and didn't touch it again until the latest burst of energy set in. Since then it's been a struggle not to bring my notebook everywhere. Like, to movies, dinners with family, weddings, etc. I actually did take it with me to the dentist and would have been clutching it like a purple-inked paper security blanket had I not foolishly set it under my purse in the corner. And yes, I am actually writing all this by hand, because I discovered by accident that my first draft goes faster and my second draft is better when I do it this way. Impatience at my atrocious, paper-embossing handwriting (and manual typos that occasionally make me cackle) is a major factor here, I'm sure, as is the ability to make notes in margins on paper that you just can't put in the white space of a text file.
Now back to my regularly-scheduled cursing at all the tables in the place for being the wrong height, and at my right wrist for being the squeaky wheel about it. Because if you can't bitch about the travails of writing, where's the fun in the actual process?
That said, I am in fact keeping track of my word count and have in fact set myself the goal of having a finished draft by 11:59 on 11/30. This one is looking like it'll be significantly longer than APK, which was just under 40k, so it probably will be a novel by NaNo standards. Just not eligible for the distinction of having been created entirely during November.
The story in question is #6 in the sequence that ends with APK and contains Prophecy. I started it in probably 10th grade (!) and the first draft (pencil, on notebook paper) illuminates that, painfully. I redid the very beginning and a random scene in fall 2003, picked up again with random scenes in the time before and after a class I took for work over a year later, and didn't touch it again until the latest burst of energy set in. Since then it's been a struggle not to bring my notebook everywhere. Like, to movies, dinners with family, weddings, etc. I actually did take it with me to the dentist and would have been clutching it like a purple-inked paper security blanket had I not foolishly set it under my purse in the corner. And yes, I am actually writing all this by hand, because I discovered by accident that my first draft goes faster and my second draft is better when I do it this way. Impatience at my atrocious, paper-embossing handwriting (and manual typos that occasionally make me cackle) is a major factor here, I'm sure, as is the ability to make notes in margins on paper that you just can't put in the white space of a text file.
Now back to my regularly-scheduled cursing at all the tables in the place for being the wrong height, and at my right wrist for being the squeaky wheel about it. Because if you can't bitch about the travails of writing, where's the fun in the actual process?
