17 posts tagged “nanowrimo”
Now that I've had a couple of days to recoup (and not look at a computer screen, type on a keyboard, think, etc.) I have to say I'm pretty happy about how the whole Nanowrimo thing turned out for me. The last day was a bit of a crazy challenge to say the least. But I somehow knew it could be done.
I was at just over 40,000 words Friday. After work I joined about 20 other novellists-on-a-deadline at a final write-in event by the Edmonton Nanowrimo-ers. The event was held here at the Stanley A. Milner Library branch of Edmonton Public Library (the branch where I work). We had word wars, we had pizza, and I knocked off a big chunk of my remaining novel.
By the time 9 p.m. rolled around, and we had to leave, I still had 2,500 words to go. I drove home to Spruce Grove, had the Oilers game on TV, and wrote away. By this time, my wrists and forearms were getting really sore, and I was running out of time, but I just kept writing.
At 11:45 p.m., I crossed the magic 50,000 mark.
I filed the story with the Nanowrimo site, clicked "update", and waited. It seemed to take forever. In reality, it took about five seconds.
Then my word count bar turned purple, with "Winner!" across the top. I was so exhausted and so excited, I almost burst into tears.
I backed up my story file, took 20 minutes to calm down, and went to bed. I had just written a 50,000+ word novel in a month. I had just written 9,446 words in one day and finished with less than 15 minutes left to go. I now have a novel to call my own.
Yesterday I imported the story file into a Word doc (I wrote the thing using a free word processing program called Dark Room, which is a semi-successful Windows version of the better WriteRoom for Mac. The idea of using programs like these is they block out everything except your writing, so there's no distractions. But this means there's also no spell check, no formatting, etc). and I printed the sucker off. My first draft of "Nights of Ice - a Novel" weighs in at 230 pages (using 10 pt. Courier New font, double spaced and single sided). The final word count of Draft 1 is 50,206.
I plan to go back and read this living monster over the Christmas holidays, and I have a couple of friends who want to read it too. After that, if I feel it's worth the work, I'll dive in and do a Draft 2 rewrite in the new year.
If I do, I'll post my progress updates right here. Now that the "post an excerpt" function of my profile on the Nanowrimo site seems to be disabled now that Nanowrimo is over, I may post an excerpt on this blog soon, too.
Thanks to everyone who came to read about my progress here, and for everyone who encouraged me along the way! It was a short trip, but one I'll never forget.
I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I managed to write 9,446 words today, and I crossed the 50,000-word threshold tonight with 13 minutes to spare.
I'm going to bed now. I can't believe I made it!!!!!!
Tomorrow, Friday, November 30, is the last day of Nanowrimo.
In one day, I need to write about 9,000 words.
Holy frigging cow.
Two members of the Edmonton Nanowrimo group, Sarah (one of the group leaders, or ML) and Nikki, were interviewed on CBC Radio yesterday by Ron Wilson about the contest.
Very cool, and nice job Sarah and Nikki!
You can listen to the interview online here:
- "D.T." - AC/DC
- "Rag Doll" - Aerosmith
- "Love and Affection" - Def Leppard
- "Gypsy Road" - Cinderella
- "Crazy, Crazy Nights" - Kiss
- "Nothing but a Good Time" - Poison
- "Ride Cowboy Ride / Stick to your Guns" - Bon Jovi
- "Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N' Roses
- "Wild Side" - Motley Crue
- "Mony Mony" - Billy Idol
- "Pour Some Sugar On Me" - Def Leppard
- "Magic Touch" - Aerosmith
- "You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC
- "Finish What Ya Started" - Van Halen
There. If that isn't a nice slice of 1987-1988-smalltown-Alberta-walkman-and-truck-stereo-with-Dolby-B-noise-reduction goodness, I don't know what is. :-)
My word count is about 37,500. I hope I can get it somewhat close to the magical 40,000 mark by tonight (as I only have two and a half days left to hit 50,000) but I have a band practice tonight, so we'll see.
You know what stinks?
This stinks:
This is the electrical cord for our new dryer coming up a few inches short of reaching the power outlet. "Fiddle dee dee," I said. "Gosh that is rather unfortunate, AND humorous. Ha, ha, ha."
Yes last night my brother-in-law Ryan helped me pick up our new dryer from Sears, haul it into our basement, and haul the old '80s-dryer-with-shot-bearings out. We unpacked the new dryer, moved it into place, picked up the power cord to plug it in, and, well, "fiddledeedee!" I said.
Given all the chaos of the past three weekends of Nanowrimo month, this one was, until that very moment, totally fun. Saturday we took the kids with my sister and brother in law and their kids to the Christmas Light Up in Spruce Grove. We had pictures with Santa, we had a hayride, we had free hot dogs and hot chocolate - if there had been any snow on the ground, it would have been a perfect winter event. Then my parents came up to visit and babysit our kids so my wife and I could join the rest of the gang I went to Japan with in 2005 to see our friend Sam (part of the Japan gang) in his sketch comedy group's Christmas play on Whyte Ave, Edmonton. The play was good, and we all had a good visit at a nearby pub after. Sunday morning we had a good visit with my parents, took the kids to my wife's church, then I headed to Edmonton's far northeast side, to Edmonton Public Library's Londonderry branch.
The Edmonton Nanowrimo group has four writing events planned at EPL branches over the month of November. Sunday's event (the last before the "last day" event here at the Stanley Milner Library where I work) was at Londonderry.
There were about 30 of us squeezed into the branch's downstairs program room. It was a lot of fun - we had a bunch of 10 minute "word wars" that actually pumped up my word count quite nicely, and I met other writers crazy enough to do Nanowrimo. I had to leave early in order to pick up our excellent new dryer (it's not actually the dryer's fault, whoever wired up the 220-volt plug in the breaker box/washer and dryer room in our basement just didn't put the plug low enough to cover off any such situations that might occur with future dryers), I wish I could have stayed a bit longer. Here's a couple of pics from my cell:
And now, onto the last five days. I have 17,000 words to write in five days, and you know what? I can totally do it.
Knock on wood.
This is how cool I am. ;-)
I ride the bus, writing on a cheap and gigantic Dell laptop, and crankin' the tunes. I'm talking about cool tapes (but not, you know, Cool Tapes, more like Limozeen). That's right, on a bus full of iPods (seriously, if there's 30 people on the bus, 15 of them have iPods, and four others are using crappy little non-Apple flash MP3 players), I'm using my wife's vintage '80s "S-T-E-R-E-O" portable cassette player. You know, the kind that's so awesome, they didn't even NEED to add a "rewind" button?
It's part of getting into the spirit of writing the novel. Nanowrimo founder Chris Baty highly recommends writing to music, and as this month rolls along, I tend to agree.
My novel (have I mentioned this yet? I don't think so) is about a guy who plays Junior B hockey in the boondocks of rural Alberta. The book is set in around 1987, so to get me in the right frame of mind, I pulled out a box from my basement, dusted off my old junior high tapes, and pulled out some beauties to listen to this month. Def Leppard, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Kiss, Cinderella, Poison, Bon Jovi, they're all here. Another day, I'll actually list my official "(Whatever I Call My Novel) Soundtrack Mixtape/Playlist". Some of the music, to be honest, well, there's a reason why I haven't listened to it in 20 years, but some of it is absolutely perfect as the soundtrack to this novel.
Even if I get weird looks, standing at the bus stop going home, pulling out a walkman and flipping the cassette over.
BTW - my word count is just over 28,000, should be over 29,000 by the time I get home tonight and if I get a chance to do some more writing tonight, I could reach the 30,000-mark with one week to go.
Last night after work, supper and a rehearsal for my father-in-law's choir, I stopped by a gas station on the way home to fill up. When I came back from paying, and went to start my wife's '97 Cavalier, there was just a rapid-fire clicking sound from under the hood. Yes, the starter died at the pumps. I called Alberta Motor Association (my former employer, btw) and there was more than an hour's backlog due to the winter weather and the resulting batch of accidents on the highways out our way last night. So I stood, and waited, in the Husky station. What a boring place to be stuck, although at least I was warm.
About 45 minutes later, a tow truck pulls up. I walk outside to say hi, and the guy says hi but keeps walking by - but turns around and asks "Do you need help?" I told him I had called AMA, and he said "OK sure, no problem, I can help, just let me run inside for my smokes." He did, he came back out, radioed in to his dispatch, and came to see me. "Yup, not a problem, I'll hook you up right now."
And so he towed me away from the gas station. It was about 9:30 p.m. by this point but I was just happy to be on my way and have the car hauled off.
"Hey, you lucked out, your wait in the cue would have been a lot longer," said the tow truck driver, who was from Nova Scotia and new to the Spruce Grove area. "Good thing I needed these." He pointed to the two packs of Peter Jackson cigarettes in his bag.
"See, it's all thanks to smoking."
He was right. Weird.
Anyway, that ate up a good chunk of my evening last night. Not much writing my novel, just a bemused shrug between me and my wife: let's see, sink - check. Dryer - check. Camera flash - check. Christmas LED lights - check. Car - check. Yup, all the things that we were really hoping would die and cost us money this month have pretty much died. Now if only the furnace, the TV and my iPod would die too - I mean why stop the fun now? :-)
Getting back to the novel, on the bus this morning I passed the magic milestone of 25,000 words, the halfway mark. I have less than half of the book left to write. Cool!
And I thought I was getting off easy because it was just our dryer that died. Buy a new dryer this weekend, problem solved, that's that. Well...
- Saturday night, we ended up going to a surprise dinner party at our friends' house. When I say surprise, I mean they called us at 5:45 Saturday night. "Hi." "Hi" "How are you?" "Fine." "Are you guys still coming over?" Ah crap. Somehow we managed to not remember, and not even put it on our paper calendar on the fridge. So we threw the kids in the car and raced off to a big monthly dinner party with our friends! I love being a moron in front of my friends sometimes. So humbling.
- Sunday, after playing piano for my father-in-law's church choir (I do it to play piano for them, not because I'm Christian) and making lunch for a cousin from Calgary who was up for a visit, I decide (with much, much prodding from my wife) that it's the perfect afternoon to put up the Christmas lights on the house. Well, what normally takes me an hour or so ended up taking five intensely aggravating hours, the last hour of which I was working in the complete darkness of night. See, much to my pleasure, two of our relatively new strings of LED Christmas lights were dead. A third died when I was putting it on the house. The whole string, dead. And you know what you can do to fix a strand of dead LED lights? Dick all. The whole thing is garbage. But wait - that's not all - our local Canadian Tire is swarming with everyone else in town who decided Sunday was a great day to put up lights, and guess what -- there were no strings left in the store that matched the size and colours of the ones we had which were now dead. So my wife buys entirely new sets, and I have to yank all the ones I had put up to that point down, and start all over again! Yipee! I was spittin' out Christmas carols like you wouldn't believe, I tells ya. Best afternoon of Christmas cheer ever.
So there went an evening and an afternoon of "just relax and do some writing" time.
So I'm starting off this week with about 22,500 words. Hopefully I can keep churning out the words on the bus this week, as the bus seems to be the most productive writing spot for me so far.
Pic from my cellphone taken while writing at lunch today, on the second floor of my branch (Stanley A. Milner) of the Edmonton Public Library.
My word count should top 17,000 by the time I get home tonight.
