Fucking yes!

 

 

With great pride I can tell you that after a marathon 5 hour writing session, a litre of energy drink and twelve squares of chocolate, last night I managed to get the final 6K words written for NanoWrimo.

I've no idea how many days I spent writing. It may have been twenty or more but I'm not sure. It feels like it was a lot less. But one way or another I reached the 50K word target in under a month. Today I'm feeling good. I feel towards the end it was more about getting words down on the page and finishing the challenge rather then what was good for the story. Even with less then twelve hours having passed I've decided on a few changes and tweaks towards the end of the story. Once I've had a day or two to make the changes and check the grammar and more importantly recover from the experience I'll probably send it around to a few unfortunate souls who put themselves forward as willing readers. Hopefully the feedback will be positive but I've a feeling I'm about to learn about the other side of writing which is rejection. But whether my book is popular or not I just remind myself that this wasn't the reason I took part in this competition. The point was that I finally had to put pen to paper, so to speak, and write a story with a beginning middle and end. Is the story flawed? Yes. Do I think there is room for improvement? Certainly. Am I happy with the overall story, the world, the hero's and villains? I can say yes. Although as I've mentioned I can think of a few changes I want to make I'm happy with what I have. Overall I've enjoyed the experience and I look forward to meeting with my fellow NanoWrimo winners later for the autopsy of the event later on this evening.

For now dear readers I bid you well.

 

Number of competitors at outset: 7

Number of competitors to take part:3

Number of completed novels: 3 (preliminarily)

Number of chapters: 20

Number of words: 50,172

 

Later

Adam



One more day

Greetings,

Sorry for the lack of promised posts however as always real life got in the way.
In any case I'm in to the final week of NanoWrimo and my word count and story is slowly but surely coming up to it's conclusion. I set the task of getting 10K done over the weekend but I fell short on this target by about 4K tragically. With that in mind I sat down to get more done this evening and although I'm a thousand of the 45K target I had set myself I still feel I should hit the target later in the week.
The reason for the title of this post is down to the fact that I will be away from the computer tomorrow and Friday which will leave me Thursday evening to get the rest of the story done. Truth be told I'm reasonably confident that I can achieve this goal as I should have about six hours to get six thousand words done. Difficult, yes. Impossible no. Well I certainly hope not.
Its been fun as well to hear of the other people I've been doing this with are slowly coming towards the end of theirs and I look forward to reading over their attempts as well as sharing any war stories over the course of the month as well.

Word Count: 44,053

Later
Adam

So very very tired.

Greetings,

Well today was both good and bad. I started today with a blog post talking about how I hoped to hit the 45k mark this weekend. I had a nice long day ahead of me and in truth it shouldn't have proven that difficult. I had some things to take care of this afternoon but I had factored those in. I had some dinner and then I made the foolish mistake of having a one hour nap which turned in to five hours. Five hours of writing down the toilet. Such is life.
So I started a lot later and gave myself a lot less time. The fact that I wasn't tired however did allow me to get more done this evening then I possibly would have but we'll never know. In any case I managed to get over half way to my goal for the weekend. I'm also enjoying the fact that my book is reaching it's climax. Hopefully its as satisfying read as it has been to write. I'll get my final chance to hit my weekend target tomorrow evening however the window of time shall be much smaller. Hopefully I'll hit it.
In any case below are the details.

Word Count: 40,176
Target Count:45,000

Later
Adam

Other unachievable goals

Greetings all,

You may have noticed that I haven't gotten a blog post up in a few days. That's primarily to do with the fact that there was nothing to post. I've not had a great few days of writing as other more important and dare I say it fun things came up for me. Realising I was falling behind in my NanoWrimo I decided I would take today not just hit the word count I'm meant to be at but I've decided to kick it's ass in to next week. For me NanoWrimo will need to finish on the 29th as I'm heading out with a lot of friends on the 30th.
To this end I'm setting myself another ludicrous word count that I'm hoping to hit. That word count is 45K. Now I know it's going to be very difficult but I've freed up my entire day (bar a bit of protesting) which should give me a pretty good chance of hitting it. Even if I fall short of the 45K I'll be in a better position then when I start. I found last weekend that setting a high goal, while difficult is at least possible. This goal may be a bridge too far but I suppose if I don't try then I'll never know. So begins my start in to the final leg of the NanoWrimo experiment.

Where I should be: 38,333
Where I am: 35,665
Where I want to be: 45,000

Later
Adam

The bare necessities

Greetings all,

This post won't tell you much about the writing I'm doing at the moment but it will tell you about some of the pitfalls I've had to deal with when it comes down to actually getting some words done. Namely food.
For years I was a big fan of energy drinks like redbull and coke. I mean a big fan. At one point I was drinking between six and ten cans a day of the stuff but that was mostly in the more dramatic cases. This year however I managed to switch form coke to Coke Zero (it's not nicer I don't care what anyone says) as well as giving up energy drink almost completely. But then along came NanoWrimo. Unlike most people I don't get much if any caffeine kick from Tea and I hate the taste of coffee so I primarily get my fix from these drinks. As such I've fallen back on the energy drink waggon although far less then I was drinking before. Usually I can go without it however I've realised this week in  particular that I usually need it after my meals. I generally enjoy hearty meals with decent sized portions. I've cut bread virtually out of my diet entirely however apparently I forgot that fact during the week and each day I've lost about two hours each evening that I could have spent writing trying to crawl out of the food coma I've foolishly put myself in. It's just a pet peeve to be honest. It wasn't an issue last two weeks (when I got the bulk of my writing done) but that was namely down to the fact that my diet consisted of a chocolate bar and water as I was just craving enough sustenance to get me from day to day. That obviously had to stop this week as it wasn't very healthy. After this evenings coma and losing three hours of writing to a coma I thought about doing it again next week just to ensure I reach the final deadline. We'll see. In any case I'll just keep trying to get the words out. I also wish to give a shout out to my boy D-Money who has been working his ass off this evening and also to my boy Mick for finally getting in on the action.

Word Count: 35665
Days remaining: 9

Chapter fourteen

Greetings one and all,

Once again I made the mistake of having too much to eat and entering a terrible food coma that made getting any work done this evening almost impossible. However after a power nap (Take that Mick) I was able to finally sit down and get cracking on some words for NanoWrimo. I didn't particularly enjoy writing this section as it was a bit of an information dump for the characters (and by extension any possible readers I may coerce in to reading the completed text) but I'm not entirely sure it was A) Necessary or B) well written. I've realised that there are particular bits of dialogue I really enjoy writing however there are other bits I don't. I'm a fan of narrating some smack talk between two groups about to go to war or else a long narration on past events that can be quite interesting. This evening I pretty much had to write the whole "You need to do this to survive" conversation for our protagonists. It felt a bit crap if I'm honest and I'm not sure I like a lot of the dialogue around it. But we'll see.
I did find that throughout this book I've used the protagonist to ask the questions I feel the reader might want to know the answer to. Like why the hell would this guy to X instead of the obvious Y? Its been fun and hopefully the explanations I give are solid and not just a means to an end but again that's not something I get to decide. In any case here are the details of the progress so far.

Chapters 14
Word Count: 32,413

Later
Adam

Beyond the point of no return

Hello everyone,

So as I said in an earlier post I had set myself the target of 30k this weekend to bring me back to the point I wanted to be as part of my NanoWriMo endeavour. I was worried that I wasn't going to hit it as I wasn't sure I'd have either the time or the energy at certain points in the evenings. I had managed to get to 28k which while still a great amount to get done coming in to the week ahead I still wanted to get myself some breathing room and so I had aimed for 30k. After a fun day of watching movies and having fun with my family I returned to the apartment not sure where I was going to go next. As I mentioned last night I had added something that should help piece a few parts of the story together however I needed to begin that process and was kind of at a loss when I sat down. Thankfully I managed to figure how what I wanted to happen and I started typing. In the end it turned out to be one of the more fun bits of writing I've gotten to do and I got to flesh out some more characters that I quite like. Once finished I checked the word count and I've hit the 30k mark. The fact that I've written more of the book then I have left to write means I can see the end in site and I now just need to keep this momentum up. I've also made a conscious decision to walk away from it at this point as psychologically once I hit 30k my brain started to switch off. Apparently my brain is all up for letting me achieve my goals however it's not a big fan of letting me exceed them. It must have made a deal with me that I wasn't aware of that it would let me hit my count but then it was going to bed. But regardless of what how my brain is feeling I'm happy with the end to this week's writing. The story is coming along well. There are some characters I quite like and have enjoyed fleshing out more and I now know where the story is going  and how I'd like it to end.


Chapters: 13
Word count: 30592

Later
Adam

Today's sequel

Hello again,

This post is going to be relatively short as it's late and I'm tired. I had reached a difficult point earlier when the story had come to a stage where various groups were at the planning stage which would in turn lead them up to the final act of the book. I feel the story (not my writing) is going to kick up a notch shortly but I didn't want to hit that stage just yet as there was some tying together needed before that. As I mentioned in a previous post I know how the story is going to end but I needed a few pieces of plot to fall in to place for the different groups and I hadn't found a way to do it. I was also slightly worried that I wasn't going to hit the massive target I'd set of 30K over the weekend to leave me at a decent milestone as this hasn't been a great week for writing for me. Thankfully this evening I came up with a solution to both. I added something I hadn't considered to the world and it worked out well both in terms of the world and the story (in my opinion but what the hell do I know) which in turn led me to get back to my writing. Once done I realised I was far closer to the 30K mark then I thought I was going to get. So with a day remaining in the weekend I've tomorrow to get a reasonable word count to hit. This pleases me. In any case good night and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Word count: 28095

Later
Adam

Post one of two

Greetings one and all,

After a day of procrastinating I managed to get another big chunk of the story done. I started by getting a haircut and a shave. Then on to uploading  photo's to a social networking site showing the results of said haircut. However despite all this I still managed to accomplish a few things.
1) I managed to work out how the story is going to end. Obviously I had a number of ideas running around my head as the story unfolded but now, bar the details, I know how its going to end.
2) I also managed to get over the half way point. I was worried I was starting to fall to hard behind in the competition. I had planned to finish the story regardless however I was slightly disappointed by the fact that the deadline was closing in on me. However due to how much I got done and how much I hope to do later this evening I should be beyond the expected word count with enough change so I don't have to worry if I miss a day or two in the coming week. It also means I may in fact it the 30k mark which was something I'd hoped to accomplish over the weekend.

In any case as the title of the post suggests this is the first of two posts hopefully today but for now I shall leave you with the details.

Word count: 26554

Later
Adam

Breaking through to the other side

Greetings one and all,

Once again apologies for the delay but it's been that long since I last got the chance to do any writing. This evening I managed to catch up and while still not at the target expected (25k) for this date I'm close enough considering how far I was behind. Since my last post I've worked out what I'm going to call the book once it's done and I've also managed to break the 20k mark. I was quite certain I'd manage to break the 10k mark so I didn't really see the point in bragging but I'm pleased as hell that I've passed 20k.
Having spoken with one of the other writers in this little experiment with me it seems that for one reason or another I'm pretty good at getting big chunks of work done each time I sit down to do a bit, usually between 3 and 4 thousand. It's kept me in the running so far. I'm really glad it's the case as I was starting to worry that I was going to fall to far behind and succumb to justifying quitting.
I've also asked a friend of mine to use their mad graphic design skills to put together some semblance of a book cover for me which will also be a great thing to have if only for my vanity.Once she sends it on I'll post it up here for you all to look at.
I'm optimistically hoping to hit 30k over the course of the next three days. I know it's a big target but I figure aim for the stars and all that. Overall I'm still on track though.

I'd also like to give a big shout to my boy Dave for keeping me going by always being ahead of me with the word count and I'd like to give an honorary shout out to my boy Mick for finally starting.


Word Count:22130

Later
Adam

Chapter 8

Greetings,

So I spent today mostly playing catch up. Based on the rules of the day I should be on roughly 20k today but that isn't happening. Thankfully however I managed to complete a massive chunk and if tomorrow goes as well as today did I should surpass the target by tomorrow evening. He says optimistically.
Anyway, on to writing observations. Today I had an epiphany as to what the theme of my book is. At least I think it's a theme. I feel what I've written so far is about escape and redemption at least I think it is. It's possible there is a better word to describe it but as to what that word is I have no idea. It was nice to finally come across the theme as I hadn't tried to do it consciously. The characters motivations and back story along with how the story is progressing just naturally led to it.
My boy Dave has always advised that a story, be it in script format, comic, video game should have a theme so hopefully he can clarify this.
In any case I continue to kick up the word count and stumble towards the deadline.


Chapters 8
Word Count:16,777

Later
Adam

Our story so far

Greetings one and all,

I had intended to be well ahead of target as of this evening however this has not happened. Due to a bout of procrastination as well as spending a few great days with the better half I finally back around to sitting down and playing the wonderful game of catch up. I made a fair bit of progress this evening so I'm quite happy with where I'm at and all though far behind where I should be I'm confident I should be back up where everyone else is in a night or two.
I did hit one of what seems to be a common enough hurdle for most people in the same situation which is that at a 10k words you feel that the story could reach it's logical conclusion quite quickly. However, in my case at least, this was as a result of me ignoring the fact that I hadn't put in much of what still needs to go in. I've introduced my villain and he's pretty good in my opinion. Coming up with who the "big bad" was fun because I had no idea what judgement calls I would make on him until I was writing. Now after writing his back story and his motivations up as part of the narrative I quite like him. Hopefully he fits. I also got to look up some information on criminal organisations as part of the research which was cool.
I'm now past the 10k mark and myself and my intrepid sidekick Dave continue on in to the unknown.

Chapters: 6
Word Count: 12,124

Later
Adam

4 chapters deep

Hey,

Its turned out that starting a contest that requires writing a fair bit while still getting your sleep pattern back in its regulation 9-5 workday pattern is a bit of a challenge. Who knew right? Since Monday getting any writing done due to how tired I've been on top of real life demands has been challenging. Yeah let's go with that. However while I'd usually come in from work and just watch TV shows, Movies or video games I have instead sat down and wrote. It hasn't been an easy transition but overall the experience has been fun.
What my initial idea had been is slowly warping into an actual story now and most of the main antagonists and protagonists have been set up. I do worry that I may not have fleshed out certain aspects of the back story but I feel that if I need to I can go back and write them up. At the same time it's still early enough for me to say that I can still pump more back story in before the full on adventure gets started. It's still in the early stages of the narrative and the adventure has not yet kicked off and probably won't for another few Chapters (or 10000 words) I'm OK with this I have to say as I think this will mean that the pacing isn't all over the place yet. I must stress the yet bit.
I just had a very brief conversation with one of the other writers that are taking part in this with me in relation to the topic of getting feedback at the earlier stages. I was of the opinion that my story had enough in it that I could send it around and see what people thought so far. Dave was of the opinion that this would result in one of two outcomes. Either A) The feedback is positive and I continue on writing as I have been doing or B) People tell me it's shit and I use it as an excuse to bail. As I've stated in earlier posts I really need to do anything I can to stack the deck in Positive Adam's favour otherwise I will duck out of this. As it stands from the initial group of 7 writers, 3 are definitely out, 2 are almost certainly out which just leaves myself and Dave. It maybe the benefit of living together that has meant we've been able to keep in other in check or the fact that it's fun to write together but as we're down to the last two I want to see this to completion.
I am really still enjoying it though.
Anyway the details
Chapters: 4
Word Count: 9255 (I'm slightly behind the proposed word count but I'm not really sticking to the daily limit anyway)

later
Adam

Onwards

First,apologies for not getting a post up yesterday. This was entirely down to tiredness and no good could come of anything I typed. I managed to sit down for about an hour and in total I managed to put together 500 words. They were terrible terrible words. Mostly gibberish but thankfully there were a few little nuggets of plot that were good.
It's been interesting that the story has changed so much from my initial idea but I'm still really enjoying writing it. Hopefully I can keep it up as I'd like to actually finish it and I feel that's dependent on how much I like what I'm writing.
I'm having difficulty keeping it light hearted but I keep reminding myself that comedy isn't the theme I'm going for here so it doesn't matter if it's funny all the time. Its more a concern that people find it humorous or tense and the parts I want them to feel that. But over all so far so good. I've decided at the 10k mark I'm going to send it around for feedback  from a few people. Hopefully it's good but more importantly I hope it's honest. I may also put a few excerpts up here if people fancy a read.
Anyway it's late and I'm quite tired but just wanted to keep you all updated

Word Count: 7002

Later
Adam

Chapters one and two

Today I finally sat down and typed up the beginings of what I hope will be a decent attempt at a novel. Due to a busy schedule I sat down and in two seperate 2-3 hour blocks. I found that once I started it was easy enough to keep writing and so I'm happy enough with my word count for today. I did have few observations.

1) He said, she said: I found that writing dialogue was fun but having to type he said or a variant there of was a bit of a pain in the arse and I'm worried that it may come across as repetitive. I'm guessing that will be one of the issues pointed out to me when some poor schmuck takes the time to actually read it.

2) The word count: I'm slightly concerned that I'll exceed the word count. I really don't want to end up with a tome at the end of this and so I may have to set it up as part one in some kind of series.I'm still aiming for it to be a self contained story but that may be difficult. It has stopped me adding what I feel is more depth to the world I've created.

3) Geography: Due to my completely unfounded hubris I'm convinced this is going to be not only a bestseller but a movie franchise as well. For this reason I've left out the name of the town and the even the country so my awesome writing skills (that will no doubt pay the bills) can be used in any country.

4) Tone: I'm finding sticking with one tone quite challenging. Depending on my mood it goes from lighthearted to depressing within a couple of paragraphs. I've found myself on multiple occasions having to go back and change things.

5) The title: I assumed this would be easy enough to come up with. Granted I haven't spent long thinking about it but I was expecting some kind of epiphany to come to me as far the title went. I'm sure I'll come up with it further down the line but I'd like to have it sooner rather than later
So far I've quite enjoyed this. It's been fun and as I said the story seems to be easy enough to tell. I've also quite liked how the story has changed from how I first imagined it when it was first conceived. While telling the story I've had to make certain decisions along the way as far as what makes the most sense (Pff, none of it) But I'm still quite happy with how my word count and the story as a whole is being fleshed out. I'm really not looking forward to the editing phase of this but I suppose I'll have to do it.
Anyway the details
Chapter one and two written
Word count: 4187

Later
Adam

The details

Hello,

The first difficulty I had when deciding to take part in this challenge was which story I'd go with. Years ago I wanted to be a script writer and a director only to give up on that dream and to exchange it for some love of cold hard capitalism. I think this mostly stemmed from getting a 9-5 being the easier option but my love of thinking of stories never ended. When the idea was proposed of taking part in this competition I was in the process of thinking of three different stories. One would be fun to write, one was probably more commercially viable and one was just the glimmer of an idea. 

I slept on it and I've decided to go with the one that would be fun to write as I feel it's one I know the best and it should keep my interest long enough so I can finish it. Knowing how quickly evil pessimist Adam has quit things in the past I felt it best to stack the deck in optimistic Adam's favour.

I'm hoping to stick to the daily count of 2000 words but I'm aware that won't always be possible. For that reason I've accepted that there will be days where I will fall short but I'll try make them up on other days.

I'm also going to try to keep a blog on my efforts. At the bottom of each will hopefully be a word count on how many words I've done. The blog will more then likely be used by myself as a way of voicing my anger and problems as well as the fun I'll have writing this.

With that, here goes.

Later

Adam

Foreword

Hello,

Every year thousands if not millions of people sit down and try to sit down and write a novel as part of this whole write a novel thing. The idea of it is to write 2000 words approximately every day in order to get as close to the word count of a novel that one can. I, like  many others I imagine, have always thought I had interesting stories to tell and that this will be a breeze. Myself and a few friends have talked shit about how ours was going to be better then the others and that nobody else should bother. I think this was in the vain hope that we could all quit before we even started.This has not occurred however and I'm three days in without a word written.
I met with two of the group on Thursday the 1st and I brought up the idea of doing a blog for the duration of the competition. We were of the opinion that it would be a good forum to put up the problems that we may encounter,  a way of keeping people up to date and gloating (although this may be the use that I saw in it).
Traditionally I've not been great at completing things like this. Usually I begin with a flourish but I'm usually more then happy to let "real" life stuff get in the way of it until I eventually have to give up. This may happen this time or it may in fact be the first thing I finish. Who can say?

Later
Adam