Quibbles With Quality and How to Ignore Them: Camp NaNoWriMo

Is there anything more satisfying than writing unfathomable quantities of words in a very short period of time? Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t complain if those unfathomable quantities actually translated into good writing. But that’s what revision is for!

                That’s right, boys and girls. It’s that time of year again. Kind of. While NaNoWriMo usually takes place in November, this year they’ve begun another venture: Camp NaNoWriMo. Two sessions, in July and August, for those who can’t find the time to write a novel in November, or for those of us who just can’t get enough of the event.

                Perhaps you’ve heard of National Novel Writing Month in the past. Perhaps it’s something you only vaguely understand, or perhaps it’s something that you’d like to do someday but haven’t yet. Perhaps you’re a veteran Wrimo, like myself. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with this grand tradition, one simple sentence sums up the lovely insanity of it all.

                Write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

                Yup. Pretty cool. I’ve actually blogged about NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy in the past, back in the posts where I had no idea what I was doing with a blog, but this is a new era of Pro(b)logue, and a new branch of NaNoWriMo, so I figured I’d post about it once more.

                A lot of people have trouble getting started with their novel. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Getting started isn’t the problem. The problem is the middle doldrums that strip you of your imagination and send you running for work, chores, TV… Anything to keep you from writing, because you just know that whatever you write will be awful and dumb and not worth seeing the light of day.

                That’s where NaNoWriMo and programs like it come into play. For one month out of the year (or two, or three, depending on how many events you choose to participate in) you have permission to write horribly.

                You sit down, open a new word document, and start writing. Very, very quickly. Your first paragraph sucks? Don’t worry. There’s sure to be worse. Your main character is flat? You can fix it later. Or spend three pages info-dumping his backstory, to be more smoothly incorporated at a later date. You have no plot? No problem! Insert ninjas and watch the fun ensue as the pages stack up.

                NaNoWriMo is for people who can’t bring themselves to keep going with a project. People who get bogged down with getting everything perfect. People whose inner editors hold them captive and stop an idea long before it gets anywhere exciting.

                With NaNoWriMo, you can write without worrying, and get something down on paper. Your rough draft will be awful anyway, so you may as well get it out of the way now.

                Take my Camp NaNo novel, for example. It’s the second book in a series I wrote the first book of almost a year ago. I have a rough (rough) plan for it, but not enough of a plan that I was looking forward to writing it. I was sure I was going to screw it up and lose my motivation for the rest of the series. I didn’t even have the first book revised to perfection, so how was I going to write a decent sequel? But a few days before Camp NaNoWriMo began, I thought about the two main characters and realized that they were so adorable, I had to get their story down on paper, soon.

                So, on July 1, I started writing Vermin #2: The Hidden War.

                Now, on July 2, my current word count is 5,206.

                Is it good? NO. Not even close. I have hardly any idea where I’m going with it, my description leaves a lot to be desired, and my narrative sucks. But I’m writing. And I’m writing a novel, which I haven’t actually done in quite a while – I’ve been so busy trying to revise old rough drafts and write short stories that I feel like I’ve gotten a little rusty with my novels. Another reason why I’m glad to be doing Camp NaNoWriMo this year. My hope is that, once I get further into it, I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things.

                Oh, and did I mention that I’m getting a lot of ideas that I want into the story? And I’m already discovering new things about this setting and plot and the aftermath of the first book? So, even if this novel is awful when I finish it (and trust me, it will be) I still think it’ll be salvageable. I’ll have a starting point to work off of, and for I think the first time (maybe second) I’ll have actually written the second book in a series I’ve planned.

                Which’ll be really cool, indeed.

                *sigh* I apologize for this rough blog post. I’m still in NaNo mode, so my thought process is a little jumpy right now, and I want to get back to my novel. Trust me, the whole thing is a lot cooler than I’m making it sound. Hopefully my next blog post will be a little more organized.

                Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo? Have you done the event in November? What about Script Frenzy, or any other events like this one?

Impending Script Frenzy, Story Revision, and So On...

[obligatory‘It’sbeentolongsinceIlastposted’section] I suck. [/obligatory‘It’sbeentolongsinceIlastposted’section]
Moving on.

Revision on my novel has…slowed. Not stopped, mind you, but it has slowed. I blame manga and anime. Somehow I convinced myself that the crisis in Japan meant I should honor them by reading/watching their lovely (addictive) comics. And… Yeah.

Time I’ve spent revising has dwindled.

I start Script Frenzy (www.scriptfrenzy.org) in April. Brought to us by the lovely people who put on National Novel Writing Month every year, the goal is to write a 100-page script in thirty days. Taking formatting and everything into account, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot. Supposedly a page is equal to a minute of screen time. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot. I think I can do it. I’ve always been able to visualize my stories really well, so… writing a movie? No prob! I’ve got my idea, I’ve downloaded CeltX scriptwriting software…

I’d like to say I’ll be able to write my script and continue to revise my novel at the same time. But this is something new for me, so I really don’t know.

Plus, April looks like it’s going to be extremely busy. I take the ACTs in a little over two weeks, and prom is the weekend after that. Yes, I’m going to prom. By myself. Possibly with my sister and friends. And I’ve got all of this stuff going on that might interfere with my care-fully laid out half-baked plans.

Even when I’m actively revising, it’s a little depressing. Those ‘big changes’ I had in mind for the rewrite? So far, not so big. I feel like it’s no better this time around. I’m not changing things so drastically, which could mean that either A) the first part of my rough draft is better than I’d thought while reading through it, or B) I’m as bad at revision as I am at posting blog updates regularly.

It’s a little discouraging. I have so much I want to write. Old ideas, new ideas… But I want to get something ready to try and publish, ASAP. A girl in my class is self-publishing a book of poems and had one poem published in a legit magazine. My mom’s started looking around briefly for potential agents to send query letters to regarding a childrens’ book she wrote a few years ago.

She’s discouraged because it’s hard to know where to start.

I’m discouraged because I’m not even ready to start.

The thing about novels is that they take time. I can write something in a month, but there’s no guarantee it’ll be decent. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed to suck. And then you have to read through hundreds of pages, over and over again, before rewriting them and rereading those hundreds of pages, dozens of times.

After I get one book ready to go, there’s still no guarantee that it will be the book that gets published.

Should I be working on this book, or is it a waste of time?

Should I be working on a different novel instead?

Or should I seriously be studying for the ACTs?

*sigh* For now, all I can do is keep writing (and rewriting, and revising).

But while I’m doing that, I’d also love to be entering writing contests, winning cash and books for doing what I love, maybe getting published in a magazine or something if I’m lucky.

I haven’t been lucky, looking online for places to enter. If anyone knows of some legit, free-to-enter contests open to US teenagers, could you shoot me a link?

For now, I think I might try my hand at writing some Keys for Kids devotional things. I mean, twenty-five bucks to write things I’ve been hearing once a day for my entire life?! Win!



Anybody else doing Script Frenzy? Anyone know of some good writing contests/opportunities?



- Silent Pages

Insanity Has Resulted In Success!

Note: This is a very random, thought-jumpy post. XD Because I needed a post and wanted to update people on how NaNo went.

Four days after NaNoWriMo, 2010 has ended… People thought it couldn’t – shouldn’t – be done. They were half right. I did it… But it probably wasn’t a smart thing to do.\

Novel number 1 is 50,283 words right now, and I just need to do some wrapping up… Okay, that’s an understatement. They’re just meeting the people from the Nation to the North. They still need to join up, help the people of the Tip to defeat the pirates, and then go home. But bottom line is, I’m definitely more than… eh… two-thirds of the way done with it?

Novel number 2 ended the month just a little more than 50,000 words long. It’s, in a word, awful. But it’s a NaNoWriMo novel. So that’s okay. Honestly, it’s so bad that I’m not sure I’ll ever dare to go back and salvage it… But who knows?

Altogether, I ended at 100,304 words. ^^ I don’t think I’ll ever write two NaNo novels at once again, though. XD It’s possible, but not really advisable.
Number 1 actually isn’t so bad. It’s definitely rough, but no worse than the novel that I’ll be attempting to revise just as soon as I finish Number 1’s ending. My “REVISE IT NAO! >8O” urges have dwindled a bit into a more manageable “Let’s get this done. >:)” kind of feeling. I’ve been making notes like crazy, and I feel like this time around I’m going to have a much better sense of what I’m doing and what my characters are thinking…

You know what amuses me? I was at the library today, and I saw a book where the premise was that two kids living in England find out they’re related to Sherlock Holmes and then they… I guess they solve mysteries or something?

But that’s impossible. Because Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. XD It’s probably a perfectly lovely book, but after I saw that I just kind of smiled and put it back on the shelf.

Which was good because I already had three other books I was checking out. Among them, Mockingjay! Finally going to read it. ^^

I was looking at the cover of Mockingjay and noticed something… While the other birds on the covers had been in circles, this one had little fragments around it, like it was breaking free. I took a closer look, and realized for the first time what epic covers they are (I wanted to find a pic of all three covers lined up next to each other, but my computer apparently doesn’t want to let me do that. T-T).

The cover of the first book shows the mockingjay pin. The second shows a bird kind of in shadow, with a sort of glow around it as things begin to heat up. For the first time I noticed that the circle it was in wasn’t just a cool design thing… It was like a scope of a gun. And then, in the third book, the bird’s come to life, and it’s breaking free…

Maybe I’m just the last person to notice these things, but I think it’s really cool. :)

I love sequential covers like that… It’s my hope that the cover art for my books is as good. ^^

And yeah. That’s about it for this entry.
I really do want another screen name. Comments, please! Do y’all think ‘Silent Pages’ would be fine – at least for now? *glares at that awful title – the writer.* It’s a good title, but not a good username. Advice, por favor!

Two-thirds Done - NaNoWriMo 2010

Well, I feel ashamed. I thought about doing weekly updates during November, to keep all three of my followers (Love ya, guys!) up to date on my word count in my quest to reach 100,000 words in a month.


As you may have figured out, this did not happen.

Instead, I waited until Day 20, two-thirds of the way through to even begin writing a blog post.

I’m sure you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seats all this time (Unless you’re on some other site that I’m on and have seen me posting hourly excited updates) so here it is: 69,0479.

That’s right. I didn’t even post on this blog after I reached the magical 50,000 words on Day 14. *sigh* I fail.

Actually, I don’t, because I’m right on track for getting to my goal. After today, I’m even a few thousand words ahead in one novel. Which rocks.

But somehow, some way, I’ve been Week Two’d in Week Three. Maybe it has something to do with the sheer volume of words I’m writing – I don’t know – but basically I’m conscious that what I’m writing is pretty much complete and total crap. And I’m okay with that, to a certain extent, but only because I don’t plan on revising either NaNo novel anytime soon (if/when I do try to edit them, I will probably die a horrid, painful, typo-filled death).

Why don’t I plan on revising them any time soon? Because right in the middle (*cough* Two-thirds of the way through *cough*) of NaNo, I came up with the mother of all wonderfully complicated, convoluted ideas for a sci-fi novel.

It involves amnesia. On a global scale. Every. Single. Night.

Yeah.

And I really like this idea, and I think it’s worth trying to write sometime when NaNo isn’t ruling my life.

But…

I’ve also been whacked upside the head (AKA taken by surprise) by two rough drafts of novels that I wrote last year/last summer. Completely unrelated stories, both the first books in four-plus book series(es)…

One of them I wrote in two and a half months, essentially writing as if it were NaNoWriMo and winning two and a half times consecutively. As such, it is basically NaNo-worthy crap, which needs to be majorly re-written. But the characters in that story (one epic character in particular. She’s half spider-person! >.<) insist that this isn’t a big deal, and promise to behave if I start to make them better.

The other one I actually really like, thought it does need quite a bit of editing, and I actually have a pretty good idea of what needs to be cut, elaborated on, tightened up, etc. And the equally epic characters in that story are tempting me with their awesome-sauce-ness.

I am not often in a revising mood, people. And I feel as if I should take advantage of this feeling while its here.

But it’s NaNo. So right now I’m hoping that the desire to revise (Desise? Revire?) lasts until after November, at which time I will plunge into the depths of one or the other of the stories and work like a mad woman in the hopes that somehow I’ll come out with something that actually has the potential to be good enough to start querying around.

Because I like the idea of getting a book published. I like it a lot.

Also, I need a new name to be known by on this blog. The Writer not only seems unoriginal and blah, but also vaguely conceited. I am not the only writer on the internet, and I feel like a narcissist or something.

And I have too low self-esteem to be a narcissist.

So… Suggestions? Right now I’m thinking maybe just the username I have on Young Writers Society, which is silentpages. But that doesn’t really fit me either, because… I’m not silent.

Suggestions?

“I Don’t Suffer From Insanity...”

I enjoy every minute of it.
Except for about right now, when NaNoWriMo is (*goes to check timer on nanowrimo.org*) as I write this, four days, seven hours, three minutes away and I’m just starting to comprehend how utterly impossible it’s going to be for me to meet my goal.
Because a few months ago, I decided I wasn’t going to be satisfied with the usual 50,000 words in thirty days.
“I wrote 76,817 words last year!” I thought. “I got to 50,000 words in fifteen days… Why not try for 100,000 words?!”
Poor, poor, silly little girl.

To make matters worse, I’m not just writing a 100,000 word novel. That would be too easy. Oh, no… I’m writing TWO novels, 50,000 words each.
And I’m not just writing one 50,000 word novel and then the other one. That would be boring… I – being the egotistical young fool that I am – am going to write them simultaneously. 1,667 words in a novel one day, and then switching over to the other document and writing another 1,667 words.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
But now I’ve barely had time to breathe lately, balancing homework, play practice, family outings, etc. etc. etc. I don’t know how I’m going to survive in November. November 5 is my play, so that will be over soon, but mid-month Speech starts, and since I’m trying out for that this year… T-T

And even with all this going on… I’ve started working a little on a comic I may possibly upload online if I can find time to work on it. Yeah. That’ll probably die once NaNo starts.
I’m hoping that once National Novel Writing Month actually starts, I’ll be pleasantly surprised by the accumulation of scraps of free time I can scrounge up. But at this point, that’s just a hope.
What about you? Are you doing NaNo? Have you done it before? What are your goals for this year’s NaNoWriMo? Are you suffering from anxiety/insanity?