NANOWRIMO Blog 2004
50K Word Goal Reached!!!
My title is: 32 Days of Esme
Main idea: a woman with a history of brief relationships with men tries to unravel and confront the secrets and heartaches of her past and become able to move ahead in her life.
Genre: Chick Lit
Here's how I'm doing:
Nov. Daily Words Running Total Running Goal Under/Over Daily Goal Percentage of 50k 3,714 3,714 1,667 over by 2,407 7.43% 1,644 5,358 3,334 under by 23 10.72% 1,798 7,156 5,001 over by 131 14.31% 2,549 9,705 6,668 over by 882 19.41% 1,363 11,068 8,335 under by 304 22.14% 1,832 12,900 10,002 over by 165 25.80% 2,699 15,599 11,669 over by 1,032 31.20% 2,172 17,771 13,336 over by 505 35.54% 3,359 21,130 15,003 over by 1,692 42.26% 3,709 24,839 16,670 over by 2,042 49.68% 8,871 33,710 18,337 over by 7,204 67.42% 5,731 39,441 20,004 over by 4,064 78.88% 3,869 43,310 21,671 over by 2,202 86.62% 4,916 48,226 23,338 over by 3,249 96.45% 1,829 50,055 25,005 over by 162 100.11% 0 (PC crash!) 50,055 26,672 N/A 100.11% 738 50,055 50,793 N/A 101.59% 1,219 52,012 30,006 N/A 104.02%
11/19/2004
So I slacked off a little due not so much to reaching the 50K goal but due to an unexpected major computer crash. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, to borrow a favorite catch phrase from my friend and fellow NaNoer Ealasaid. But my computer is back up, thanks to a reinstalled Windows XP operating system, and I'm ready to roll again, once I do some work on another project.
11/15/2004
I made it! I made it! Oh, wowee wow wow! I have actually reached the 50,000 word goal right in the middle of the month! I can't believe it, I've never written this fast in my life. And my story is only half finished so I'm going to press on. It should "peak" in a couple of chapters, when my M/C gets her heart broken. I'm liking it! It's a much stronger story than last year. And now I'm absolutely wiped out and have no more words left in me for the moment (my head will fill up again soon, I'm sure) so I'm going to bed early for a change.
11/13/2004
I can't stop writing! This is the first NaNo I've done where it flowed this well and this much, and I hardly dare say it but I think it's going to be good. I thought my NaNo novel last year was good while I was writing it too, and that's what scares me because later on, when objectivity set in sometime in December, I realized its plot was largely crap. And I really don't want that to happen this year. I want this novel to be really good, to have plausible plot and meaningful themes and dialogue like you'd hear people say in real life. And as long as ideas keep creeping into my head I think I can accomplish that. It's getting a bit harder in that the character-establishment and inital exposition is done now and the story is really moving ahead so each scene moves it forward a little and should be enlightening, so I feel the pressure to get each scene just right. But I can edit and rewrite whatever needs more work next month. It's a little easier now only because I have a pretty good idea what going to happen from here on out and when. But right now I'm going to bed because I'm exhausted and just can't write the father-daughter reuniting scene when I'm this sleepy, it just won't work. I'll have the father and daughter talking to Daffy Duck or giant mushrooms or something if I tried. My eyes are closing...
11/11/2004
Man, I got a lot of writing done today! It's amazing what having a day off (Veteran's Day holiday) during the week can do for a wordcount!
11/09/2004
Couldn't update my chart on this page last night because I accidentally left my diskette in my work computer (duh). I hate when that happens! So here's two days' worth of stats. Then today my Nanotracker spreadsheet I set up in Excel, that I pull the numbers from for my chart, somehow got corrupted. Maybe it's from carrying the diskette I've been saving my novel on back and forth to work, because a couple of times I had trouble getting my work computer to read/access the diskette. I've been writing during my lunch hour and breaks, as well as at home. Saving onto a diskette and carrying it back and forth is a lot easier than carrying my old laptop around. My work computer today, though, would not load the spreadsheet for love nor money (I didn't actually try offering it either), and I had to use Ctrl-Alt-Del on it just to End Task and make the drive stop trying. Talk about near heart failure! Not about the spreadsheet, I could and did rebuild that, but the novel! I sure did not want to have to rewrite most of a chapter! So when it claimed Drive A was not ready, or whatever, I took the diskette out and whacked it against my hand a couple of times and stuck it back in, and then it worked. Whew! When modern technology fails you, just whack it. Anyway, I wrote some more tonight and when I checked my word count I was astounded to see that not only had I broken 20,000 words, I broke 21,000! Go, me!
11/07/2004
I realize in days to come I will probably have to move the chart to a separate page, as it grows. But aside from that, this year's NaNoWriMo project is going well. I'm ahead on my word count by two whole days and have written the story up to my M/C's first date with her potential new boyfriend. She has had several warm, tough and tender scenes with her best friend, a post-band practice pizza and beer get together where she met her potential new boyfriend, a brief scene with the office tramp, has received a surprise phone call from the PNB (potential new boyfriend) and met and butted heads with someone who will become a part of her life in a way she can't yet imagine. Of the 32 days of my M/C, Esme, I have reached the evening of Day 2. There will be some days with less detail revealed than others, or else I'd not only have an epic the size of "War and Peace" but anyone trying to read it would pass out from sheer tedium. But these first few chapters established the characters and the plot action that will unfold, so I only hope it's less boring to read than some of it has been to type. I'm hoping - probably in the rewrite - that I can make every scene pop with various senses and plot movement and character revelation...maybe all three in some scenes. Ooh, that would be nice. So I'm off to update my main page of this site now.
11/05/2004
Well, I was thrown off by the bad result of the election but that's well documented on my main page so no real need to waste space on it here. This year NaNo is going really well, I'm happy to say, and I haven't hit any word-stopping snags yet. So far, so good! I'm ahead of schedule, as you can see by the chart above. Go, go, go, yeah! I hope my main character has some depth and isn't perceived as just a silly, committment-phobic woman.
11/02/2004
Made some more progress today but not as much as yesterday. I'm still ahead of the game though, so that's good. All these words and I haven't gotten past the first two scenes yet. Esme has accepted her friend's challenge to date a man for at least thirty-two days, and she has met a new man - one who has a curiously strong effect on her immediately. This should be interesting! Let's see if I can make it interesting.
11/01/2004, at night
I wrote a total of 3,714 words today! Woohoo! I have no idea how this happened but if I could do that much every day I've had it made. Also this morning I changed the names of the main character and her best friend. This resulted in a title change, to: 32 Days of Esme. Other, so far minor, character names are popping up everywhere like little plastic moles in a Wack a Mole game. Bad analogy, I'm tired! No excerpts yet, maybe tomorrow night. I'm wiped out... time for bed! Tomorrow is Election Day, yay!
11/01/2004
So it's November 1st, very early, or very late if you consider that's it's still technically Sunday night. I haven't started writing on this year's NANO novel yet because earlier we went to a play in Culver City (about 30 minutes from home) because an actor we know, Wilson Cruz, was in it - he was very good as were some of the other actors; the play itself...well, let's just say I like things that make some sort of sense and this didn't...but it had it's moments. Then we came home and watched our tape of the season finale of "Dead Like Me." Couldn't let that one go without seeing it. That show fucking rocks, I love it so much.
Anyway...I will write a few - very few - words tonight to kick off my NANO novel, "32 Days of Eva," and then I'll hit the bed.
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