I Quit

Dear Friend,
I quit the Camp NaNoWriMo.  Sorry, but the motivation just wasn't there.  I still love the character I was writing about, and may someday try again to tell her early story.  Or I might just leave it in flashbacks or my own head as I write other stories with her.  Who knows, but there's still plenty of possibilities. 

This experience has left me thinking about quitting, and when it's OK or not OK to give up.  I don't like to quit.  I guess hearing the phrase "Winners never quit and quitters never win" so many times in my life actually set the idea firmly in my brain.  Even when I hate doing something I keep at it.  Most of the time, anyway. 

The biggest thing I ever quit was piano.  I started piano lessons around age eight, and continued steadily until almost eighteen.  I had a large range of teachers, from great to horrible.  The worst of my teachers would change the fingering of pieces, making them harder to play, so that my fingers would look pretty.  Even when she was telling me that I knew she was full of garbage, and I wasn't one of those kids who questioned my teachers. 
My last teacher was a great teacher, and I learned a great deal from her.  Most likely, if I hadn't moved while she was my teacher I would have kept learning from her for a long time.  However, I did move, and when I thought about looking for a new teacher, even working on an audition piece, I was less than enthusiastic.  I had learned a good deal from this teacher, but I hadn't had a lot of fun.  She entered me into a lot of competitions, so a good deal of my practice time was preparing for those, and I never actually liked the compositions she chose for me to compete with. 
That was when I realized, I had been playing songs I either didn't care about or outright didn't like for ten years!  I loved that I knew how to play piano.  I loved the sound of the instrument, I loved classical music.  I didn't love playing only classical music.  By the time I could play a song well I had analyzed and memorized and gone over the music so much that it didn't sound like music anymore.  It sounded like an exercise. Music wasn't fun.

So I quit. 

I've tried a few times in the ten years since to get back into piano, and am on a pretty good run right now.  I can play and enjoy it.  I've missed a lot of really important years of practice, and I've forgotten a lot of things that I should remember, but I like doing it now. 
Don't get me wrong, it's still work, hard work, but I'm able to go at the pace I want, and play what I like.  I'm considering going back to a teacher, but for now I'll enjoy making music.  Not perfect music, just music. 

Camp NaNo novel, chapter One

Dear Friend,
I've decided to share with you my (unedited and just written, right now) first chapter of the novel I'm writing this summer.

Writing by the seat of my pants (again)

Dear Friend,
The Office of Letters and Light is doing another writing event, like National Novel Writing Month, but instead of holding it in November they're doing it in the summer, for two months.  It's called Camp NaNoWriMo! For at least the month of July (the beta testing month) I will participate by writing another 50,000 word novel in the course of one month.  Depending on how that goes, I may decide to do it again in August.  That's right, two novels in two months, then a break for two months to do it again in November.  I could possibly write three books this year.  Wow.

The most interesting part of this is, I haven't planned very much this time.  I came up with my plot two days ago, and I haven't outlined any of it yet.  I have only three characters thought out, too.  What's weird is that I'm taking a character from my previous NaNovel (written last November) and going back in time and writing about her adolescence.  In all of my writing about this character I've "known" that she grew up with two particular friends, so naturally you would think that those two characters would feature prominently in the story of her childhood, right?  Wrong.  I also knew that every summer those two friends would be gone, visiting family, leaving the main character alone.  I'm setting this novel in the summer, so her friends are gone.  Am I crazy?  I've just made this much harder for me, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.  Besides, in 50,000 words I can probably get back to the point where her friends have come back home.  I've been able to think up two characters for my main character to interact with, though, and I think it will set up some interesting story telling ideas. 

So, tonight, midnight, I'll start my crazy method of writing stories.  I hope I last the whole month, for the third time. 

A little bit more?

Dear Friend,
I've got the weirdest desire to write a screenplay.  Not just any screenplay, either, no I have a desire to write a musical! Let's face it, if I'm going to write a screenplay, I may as well write something fun, ridiculous and altogether absurd.  If there is any sort of scripted program more fun, ridiculous and absurd than a musical then I don't know what it is.  The logic is sound!

I'm not the sort of writer who does "screenplays." I write stories, with description, proper (as far as I can get it) grammar, and I use quotation marks to denote speech.  I don't even have any desire to anyone to produce a screenplay that I write. Mostly I want to do it because I want to be able to say that I have.  I'd write it, never edit it and share it with friends. 

The same people who run National Novel Writing Month each November also run Script Frenzy each April.  While I have taken part in "NaNoWriMo" as they call it (won two years in a row, baby!) I haven't ever considered doing Script Frenzy before.  It's possible that I was not able to come up with a plot idea for Script Frenzy so "soon" after concentrating on a novel length plot in November, but it's also possible that I just didn't want to write a script. 

That all changed, however, when I realized that every song I love is pretty strongly associated with a story in my head.  My mental music videos could easily all be meshed into a single plot-line with some creative thinking on my part.  Combine this with my love for old movie musicals and an idea seed is planted in the fertile ground of my mind. 

So, will I abandon all inhibitions and settle down to write 100 pages of screenplay next month?  I can't decide yet.  I've been having a rough time of it emotionally this past week, and honestly I was going to try to do something in my life other than sit down with my laptop, making clacking noises with my fingers on the keyboard.  I just still don't really know how to do that.  Still, when meeting new people they inevitably ask you what you do, and rather than staring blankly at them, making them very uncomfortable I could instead tell them I'm writing a movie script, and then let it drop into the conversation that I've written two novels.  The sad thing is that the next question would be if I've had anything published, and the answer is decidedly no.  But hey, I'm working on it, right? That's got to count for something. 

A new year is coming, you know what that means?

Dear Friend,
2010 was not a year of blogging. I don't really know what happened, I just didn't feel like writing out what was going through my head most days. I've had ideas, but no motivation. I'm hoping to change that. I've got a few ideas for blog entries, even a few series, that I have to do a little research on. (Research, on a blog? Aren't blog entries supposed to be spontaneous? What?)

Just to let you know, the first series I want to write is about people who inspire me. I made a list of ten people who make me want to get up off my butt and do something, even if it isn't what that person does. Hopefully either next week or after the beginning of the year I'll get started on that.

I'm planning on editing my NaNo novel after the new year starts. I think that will be enough of a break from the story to let me look objectively at the story and change what needs to be changed. I'm not satisfied with the story as it stands, so I know that editing needs to be done.

Eliot comic strips are also in the planning stages. I'm out of practice drawing him, so I've been sketching him lately, before I try to combine the art with the plot lines.

Christmas baking is swiftly approaching. For once I have no plans to try any new recipes. I'm hoping for a quiet Christmas, since Thanksgiving was extremely busy.


What is it about the end of the year that makes me so ambitious?

Now that's terrifying

Dear Friend,
I don't celebrate Halloween. Beyond spiritual reasons, I personally find a holiday in which children disguise themselves and then proceed to beg for candy by threatening to harm someone if they are not rewarded to be absolutely disgusting.
However, that doesn't mean that I don't find October 31 scary in its own right. It's scary because the very next day is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month! Each year, October 31 is the last day that I have to wonder if I'm really crazy enough to write a novel in a month. If you've never done it before, you don't know how both exciting and terrifying it is.

I have decided this year that the task of writing a 50,000 word story isn't enough for the month of November. I also have chosen to add an art project to the mix. Every day of November I will attempt to draw the one thing in this world I hate drawing: People. I will attempt various degrees of realism (mostly leaning to the cartoony spectrum) but they will all be people.

Also, I'm not planning on telling anyone that I'm doing it. When I say "anyone" I mean my parents. The idea this year is to write and draw in addition to my normal life. I don't want to use these projects as an excuse to slack off on my work and chores. (This will be extra interesting since we're having Thanksgiving company this year!)

November is a month of adventure! What are you going to do in it?

Day 3 of NaNo

Dear Friend,
I've written 7,885 words in my novel as of today. Since in order to definitely finish 50,000 words in 30 days you need to do 1,667 words a day, I am ahead of schedule. Since I know I can't write every single day, especially when we visit my Mom's family at Thanksgiving, I wanted to do 3,000 words a day, and am therefore behind schedule. I didn't get to write as much during the day as I wanted to since I went out to vote and run errands today, and then after dinner the idea of writing more for a few hours was not appealing so I played Sims3.

As far as the storyline of the novel, it's kind of boring. I am enjoying it, but I can recognize that not much has happened. The strange thing is I've added two characters I had no intention of adding. I always thought that people who said that characters in their stories did things they didn't plan on them doing were strange. But now I know, they really do.
I came up with a character named Evan to simply fill in an empty "space" at a party, and so far not a day has gone by that I haven't written yet another scene with him. He's not even a nice character! He refuses to talk to my main character because he doesn't like her, but he keeps popping up. Weird.
On top of that, I added a character I had "edited out" during the planning phase. It complicates things because it now will end up seeming like three different men fall hopelessly for my main character and that's a little much even for me. It was supposed to be a love triangle, not a rectangle. Dang.

Saw one of my old students in the elementary school I voted in. He looks almost exactly the same, which is a little weird for a 5 or 6 year old I haven't seen since he was three. I guess he was a little taller, but that's it.

NaNo Day two word cloud

I've made it to 6,276 words! Yipee!!!
This is the second day word cloud. I don't know if I'll do one every day, but it's fun so far, so have another.

My first day of NaNo looks like this in a Word Cloud

My NaNoWriMo word cloud. This is just the text of Day 1. 3,227 words, condensed into a cloud.

And away we go

Dear Friend,
As I announced on my facebook profile about two weeks ago, I'm doing National Novel Writing Month. Now, what that is, thousands of (lunatic) people are challenging themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. You can start anytime after midnight November 1St and you need to finish before Midnight November 30Th. I can hear you thinking, "Do you win anything?" No, but you get a "novel" and a sense of accomplishment if you succeed. Again, you're asking, "Then why bother?" Because it's a challenge, that's why. And so many people have a goal to write a book that they're very likely to never get around to, and this is a way to just buckle down and do it! It's been going on for 10 years before now, and I'm joining in for year 11.
As I'm writing this, I have 45 minutes until midnight. I'm slightly concerned that as the clock strikes twelve I will feel all my ideas and plans rush out of my head, seemingly never to return. I have not outlined any of my plot. Frankly, all I have is a set of 4 characters (I need 6, so those other two better "show up" soon) and a few scenes that I'd like to write. I just need filler. I also need a title, but I suppose that will be easier to think up as the story goes along. At least, I hope it will.

If you want info, you can go to nanowrimo.org and check into all the madness.

Ha, last year I blogged about maybe joining in, but chickened out. This year I signed up before I could rethink it.