I hit 52k in the novel today. Yay.
The last two chapters are skeletal, but at least I’ve hit the wordcount in the time frame. I’ll continue to flesh out those last chapters, at a slower pace, through Xmas.
I haven’t worked out at the gym in a month, due to this effort. I’ve consumed twice as much coffee as normal and slept much less. So it’s good to be done with the extreme phase of the project.
This ‘morning’ I am drinking very strong coffee and right now Fairytale of New York is playing. “It was Christmas Eve, babe / In the drunk tank” is one of the most brilliantly comical lyrics ever penned.
Last night I had drinks and great conversation with a friend, alternating from indoors to out. We ate pizza, played guitar hero (the brilliant PS2 rhythm game), then watched a super cheesy 80’s movie…a fantasy flick with the standard Euro synth pop. (Guess the movie, win a prize.)
Since my early twenties, I’ve had trouble sleeping past 8-9AM. This morning, after waking up earlier to feed the dogs, I slept until 1PM. No idea why, but I had the best sleep I’ve had in years. Strange, but amazing.
As a deliberate move on my part, I have no plans for Thanksgiving, other than whatever happens on-the-fly. If nothing happens, I’ll catch up on writing. I love that post apocalyptic feeling that cities and towns have on holidays, so I might ride my bike downtown later, just to soak up that vibe.
On the last day of work, I went to lunch with another friend (Ricardo) and we ate at Whole Foods. I had some tofu with seasonal glaze, stuffing, wild mushroom gravy and cranberry sauce. There’s something deeply psychological about holiday-oriented foods; that was a really satisfying (if super casual) meal. And, as an aside, whenever someone goes the extra mile and makes vegetarian gravy, I *drink* that shit…it’s one of those things the vegetarians really miss. Or at least Southern vegetarians. (Now if someone would just make vegetarian beef ribs…)
I finally finished writing an unholy difficult scene that I’ve been working on for days, consisting of a hunting trip. I kept wanting to rush through it, but managed to take it slow. (Not an easy thing for me…when I get impatient or excited, I want to move on to the next thing.) Several times, I jumped ahead and wrote bits of later chapters. But at last I’ve got a rough draft of the entire hunting incident, beginning to end.
As a bonus, here is another picture of Star, which is actually completely unrelated to hunting, except that sometimes she looks a bit like a deer and thus provides me with a decent subject line for this post.
I’ve been diligent lately and–over the last couple of nights–I’ve finally passed up the 50,000 word mark, having written just over 26,000 words of the new novel.
I’m managed to do this while clinging to my frayed social life and taking care of my dog. So some nights, I get home from work at 645pm, walk the dog, relax for a while, write like mad, then go out until 1am. (Sometimes I also write through lunch at work on the following day…a trick I highly recommend for making up your word count.)
It’s been well worth it to hang on to my social life, because periodically I meet someone really cool, or I have one of those classic nights out with a good friend. Both have happened from time to time lately. Yay, social life.
I haven’t been to the gym consistently in a few weeks, which is really unusual for me. So in some ways, I’ll be happy when the novel-in-30-days project is over. Thirteen days to go…and ~24,000 words.
This morning I stepped into the shower, like always, but ended up tumbling down on my ass, which is definitely not how I like to start my day. I put my foot down too close to the sloped part of the tub and went down hard, taking the shower curtain with me.
My dog Star sits in the bathroom with me while I shower. (I think she digs the steam…or maybe she just likes to see me naked.) So she freaked out (naturally) when all this chaos blew up around her, and, in a split second, she jumped to the only safe place…the bath tub.
So I was lying there, wrapped in the shower curtain, half in the tub and half out of it, with a dog practically on top of me. The water was raining down on the entire scene, lending it an absurd vibe.
I think I bruised my knee and hip. Ouch.
Eventually, I got up, restored the curtain and–since she was already wet–gave Star a quick bath. I don’t think she was very happy about the entire incident. What a strange way to start the morning. I’m sure Star felt the same way.
Tonight I caught up with the word count required for day 13 of the novel-in-a-month project. I basically sacrificed most of Saturday and the entire Sunday–except for walking my dog, Star–to get caught up. I blew off a bunch of errands. After that, I pressed on and wrote tomorrow’s word count as well. So now I’m ahead, finally. (Last year, I shot out ahead early and stayed way ahead of the count.)
One of the things I’ve learned is this: Writing the required word count (1,665 per day for 30 days) is not the hard part. Scene planning is the thing that makes this difficult. Once I actually have a plan for the scene I’m about to write, and I’m excited about that scene, it all goes very quickly. (Sometimes, all that’s required is a rough direction, like, “Goes to meet his brother in a parking lot.”) If I don’t have a plan for the scene I want to write, I am essentially dead in the water.
Now, tomorrow I have to go back to work, and I have a bunch of visitors in town from Chicago. Bah…I need another weekend.
Ho, ho…my friend Ricardo and I are both working on our 30-day-novels at the Green Muse, a coffee shop here in Austin (in the South First area). Despite living here since ‘93, I only recently discovered this place, after a friend turned me on to it.
The coffee shop is playing something by the White Stripes, off an album I don’t have. (Earlier, they were playing the Shins.)
In an hour and a half, I’ve written a thousand words. Not particularly fast, but looking back over last night’s scene, I really like it.
Not sure how long we’ll keep going, but hopefully for another couple of hours.
(Note: By the end of the night, I was at 15,500. Technically, I was supposed to be around 16,500. Some I should be able to catch up soon. Getting ahead of the word count is key, since that makes up for days when I can’t find the time to write or when some part of my life blows up.)
I’m still running behind, but at least I wrote tonight, instead of socializing and slacking. Currently, 9 days into this year’s novel-in-a-month project, I have 12,260 words written. (Supposed to have roughly 15,000 done.) I might be able to get fully back on track if I manage a boring weekend. (Unlikely.)
Tonight I cleaned up a scene in the present, where the protagonist arives back in his home town, and wrote an 8 page scene in the past, where a family pet dies a gruesome death.
Some of this is difficult shit. The modern version of the protagonist is like an imagined, twisted version of me, sans therapy. Much of what he does is just fantasy, delusion or paranoia. Everything that the childhood version remembers is something that I remember. That’s one of the challenges of this novel project for me, but that’s also what makes it cool and worthwhile.
This year’s novel-in-a-month is underway. I’m calling it His Black Wings. (Working title.)
By the end of the day, I’m supposed to have 11,655 words written. Currently I’m at 8,730…I’m already falling behind. (More coffee, less wine.)
Last year’s novel was easier to write; everything just flowed from beginning to end, for 52,000 words.
This year’s project is more ambitious: It alternates between the troubled main character’s present and past. Some of the scenes just spring to life, while other times I sit here wondering what the next major scene will involve. As soon as I figure that out, I’m rolling along, even if it’s something simple, like “goes to visit his brother.”
I need a few high impact days this week to stay on track.
There’s something magical about seeing an old picture of yourself, from a time so far back that you literally cannot remember being in that place, wearing those clothes or committing those acts. And yet it has to be you…the evidence is incontrovertible.
So much of my early life involved capes. Also, I remember this dart gun. When she told me to put it down once, I shot my great grandmother with both spring-loaded barrels. She won, by promptly whipping me. Daaaamn, Granny.
Ah, Freeport. This is the ditch I would sit in while my dad welded offscreen. Sometimes he’d send me to the bar across the street (seen here with these ‘vintage’ autos) for soft drinks or a burger basket. Good times!
Me and mom, on the see-saw. One of her many hair styles.
Doesn’t everyone love booth photos? I do.
A friend brought me this from his childhood collection. It’s him, his brother, me, my brother and a mutual cousin my friend and I share via marriage. Seeing this was surreal, since I didn’t meet my friend for another 6-7 years after this pic was taken. In other words, at some point, well before we hung out and knew each other, he and I were photographed at the same little kid birthday party.
Last one is my mom. She’s quite fetching here.
