Epic YA fail

Every year I go into NaNo with this thought floating in the back of my head: Wouldn't it be fun to write something my kids could read? Every year, around the end of week one, I again come to the realization that I just suck at writing YA. Sorry kids, you'll have to wait until your order to read my stuff.

It turns out that everything I write sinks into dark or lust heavy moments. NaNo 06 considered being about a girl far from home for about an hour. Then she was abused by men and gods, slept with a man, then a woman, then both. NaNo 07 tried very hard to be kid friendly, until the evil uncle got too lusty and started smashing puppies against the wall. NaNo 08 began as a silly romp through fantasy tropes but Bruce, the very hairy knight, lusts after every woman in the book. NaNo 09 gave up on day three when simple minded Joshua started killing everyone by accident. I had high hopes for NaNo 10, but alas, both efforts didn't work out.

Tyler sets out on his bike, wanting to escape his crappy homelife and his depressed mother. Yes, you might remember this as my plan for this year's story, the abandoned bike by the side of the road. Well, ummm, yeah. I got it to the side of the road and everything was going along fairly well, but then... There was no and then. Everything I tried to come up with was too cliche or darn creepy. He's still sitting there in a park talking to a girl who might be dead. We may never know.

Tyler, a boy in the not so distant future, has come of age and is going to get his augmented pinky so he can access the datastreams flowing all around him. After he gets his finger hacked off, the doctors aren't so sure he's integrating sucessfully with the system. He's tagged for observation, and soon after, realizes that if he doesn't sync up with the data stream like a good little citizen, he's going to disappear. Scared out of his mind, he decides to run.

At that point, I'm enjoying this story. I think I've finally conquered my cliche or bordom issue with YA. And then it happens. Do I send poor Tyler to a mine, deep underground where all the miscreants of neat, orderly society are shuttled off to? He can join a revolution, help them rise up and expose the goverment for what it is. Happy ending!

Oh heck no, I want him and all the other misfortunates killed by the dark and evil AI who has taken over the goverment and turned all the augmented citizens into happy, compliant servants. Dark ending!

I tried the mine idea... and my enthusiasm waned. Poor Tyler. I tried. Really, I did.

There's always next year.

I'm back

I survived NaNoWriMo. I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days.

Instead of writing a novel, which I knew I could do, having done it four times already, I just concentrated on writing -- which was exactly what I needed.

Life has a way of creeping into my writing time, sucking up ten minutes here, half an hour there. Next thing I know, I'm staring at a blinking cursor for five minutes, not remembering where I was going with my WIP and knowing I have another obligation to get to, so I might as well go clear that off my schedule instead. NaNoWriMo helps me reset my writing clock every year. I relearn how to find that time I need again.

This year's effort yielded two short stories that I will feature in more length in upcoming posts as I am quite happy with them. I also brought two short story disasters into being. Ms. Wildstar and the gang are fighting them now. More on that in an upcoming post as well.

My biggest progress was getting 25,000 words into a major rewrite of Sahmara's Sunset. That was my first NaNo Novel that I wrote in 2006. I'd never written fantasy at the time, or romance. This one ended up being both.

Sahmara's Sunset surprised me many times (Did I just write that scene? That's pretty good!) and proved to myself that I could write something beyond the one novel I'd been plunking at away at for years. Better yet, It showed me that I could write a draft in thirty days (rather than a decade) AND I could finish it. Let's not mention the huge chunk of missing middle scenes. It had an ending, that was a big step for me.

I tried to get back to working on it pre-NaNo as you may recall, but that lack of time factor impeded any significant progress. Now I'm on a roll. Leaving off just over a quarter into the draft was a perfect place to end NaNo. Instead of being in the middle of figuring out where to go next or stuck in a rough draft wasteland of word count filling crap, I have 25k of pretty, revised, tightened and cleaned up novel (created from 2006's wasteland of crap) that I'm excited about continuing.

How was your NaNo experience?

Where does the time go?

I intended to do a post here this morning. It is now 9pm. What happened?

Well, there was a photo shoot with Commander Rippy McWeasel for today's regional email, which I also had to draft, edit and send out. When you're sending email to over 1,000 people, there's this pressure to not have too many typos. During NaNo season. Yeah, I know. Crazy double standard isn't it?

I did finally get around to making reservations for our regional TGIO party today. Yay for that.

An hour and half went to chatting with tech support about my two and half week old office printer that encountered a paper jam two days ago and now sounds like a car with snow chains going down a pothole-covered road on a sunny day. Surprise! They're sending me a replacement printer.

Then there was work, which most of you have, so that really doesn't count as a valid excuse for noveling sloth. Grocieries! Yes, I had to go get mine and the mother-in-laws, drop them off--ok so her's consisted of three twelve packs of coke and a half gallon of whiskey, but still--and put them all away.

Boy Scouts ate up two and half hours of my night. Does taking two hours worth of committee meeting notes count toward my NaNo word goal?

Did I mention my elementary YWP meeting at lunchtime? It's still going. Not strong, but going. I'm down to around fourteen regulars, which is totally workable. However, the early pile of kids thinning so drastically always leaves me depressed and feeling like I should have done something different. Three years of running the program like this and I still succumb to the same motivation slump. You'd think I'd be used to it, wouldn't you? Excuse me as I go stab my remaining optimistic brain cells.

Seriously though, two of my fourteen kids have already met their 5,000 word goal. Several others are nearing half way--which they have to get in order to earn an inviation to my pizza party. Not great winning odds, but I'll take them.

I'm considering tossing the program to the teachers next year and seeing how fast the ball drops. Students really need constant motivation and encouragement to spend those ten to fifteen minutes a day writing. They get two half hour sessions a week with me. It's just not enough. Asking them to write while their friends all go play at recess isn't exactly a great option either, but it's the one time during the day I have access to them.

It just figures that my daughter would finally be participating through school that year and she'll be really unhappy with me if I stop when it's her turn. Hmm, burn myself out or deal with an unhappy little girl. I've done four years of the program for her older brother. Unfair much?

Is there a good choice here?

To write and write again

Rewriting. I won't say I love it, but I do enjoy it.

I enjoy challenge of taking that mental vomit of a first draft, hauling out my cookbook and attempting to create a gourmet meal out of it. This meal, of course, usually ends up bland and undercooked, but after a few tries (or twenty) it becomes something I'd feed to guests. Whether or not they get food poisioning is always up in the air.

As part of my NaNo rebel effort this year, I'm devoting 25k of my writing goal to rewriting my original NaNo Novel from 2006. I love that story and I've always wanted to get back to it. Since part of NaNo is making time for that novel that you've always said you would do but never get around to, this seemed a perfect fit.

Now, when I say rewrite, I mean it. I have the file up there in front of me, but I retype every single word. Yep. Every one.

This might seem like a huge waste of time. The words are already there and surely they can't all suck. True. However, I'm trying to create a Thanksgiving feast from a stale Happy Meal. Not to mention I've learned how to set the table since then and seeing my wayward formatting drives me nuts.

My writing style has changed considerably since writing the original draft, and I'd like to think for the better. Retyping every word helps me to clear the way to rephrase, reword, tighten and embellish. I find it also makes for a smoother and more consistant voice throughout the story, especially when working with older projects. How about you? Do you rewrite rough drafts or do you simply edit what you already have, adding a bit here and there?

Why am I hungry, and where the heck did I leave the paprika?

NaNoWriMo Day 15

Saturday was our all day write-in. Though we had a lower turnout than I'd hoped for, we had a great time during our eleven hour writing frenzy. My writing was interupted by chatting, eating and prize distribution but I still managed to pump out almost 6k in my struggling YA story. As you see, there was a lot of candy involved to fill us all with sugary creative energy. The giant chocolate covered marshmellows helped too.

Commander Rippy McWeasel and I did appear in the newspaper. Though most of his details were miscontstrued, Rippy was happy to see his photo in print and help spread the the word about NaNoWriMo and our event.

After all my writing Saturday, I spent Sunday unpacking all my bags of write-in supplies and eating leftovers. I also started in on rewriting my original NaNo novel from four years ago, a project I've desperately wanted to get back to. I'm hoping that this will go faster than slogging my way through the YA story. I want to get back to the short story, as well, but at this point, I need to build some momentum and I'm jumping ship to where the excitement is. During NaNo, any writing progress is good progress!