How puppeteers feel

So, NaNoWriMo finishes tomorrow at midnight

and I am very, very sick of writing.

Well, not writing, per se, but I'm more than exhausted about trying to keep all the ribbons of my story in my head - trying to think how to present information in such a way that I can keep interest without revealing too much, how to keep things realistic but still fast-moving to keep the plot going--

I'm tired! I need a vacation, or some sort of a reward or something to make it all worthwhile. Right now it's just... writing for the sake of making myself really tired. Besides, I've won thrice already - I'm almost exactly at the point of 150K.

Math-geekery ahead: faint-brained stay away

Disclaimer: I am not trying to offend anyone with the title of this post, I just found it amusing and everybody knows my sense of humour is appalling. Please don't throw anything harder than pillows at me.

I've just realised that my blog is a fuzzy mess of anything that might cross my mind every now and again. Ha, every time I look through blog listings or someone asking for advice in starting a blog, I find people saying that they should pick some theme for their blog and post only stuff related to that, since otherwise people from different interests groups might be hard to attract by saying "well, it's about me" (which makes a whole lot more sense than I would like to admit).

But, damnit, I do so many things out of the book and I see so many things out of the box, so why should I now begin giving a damn about what other people say? Besides, I only have a handful of people reading this blog (maybe because I don't advertise it correctly - maybe because of the reasons listed above, meh), and they seem to be happy with what I have to offer (thanks, you guys! I like brackets!).

After doing that fretting for the day, I'm going to announce that yesterday, I was as productive as ever. In this case, that means that I have breached the 100,000 word line, which also means that I have now won NaNoWriMo twice. In one single day, being yesterday, I wrote three chapters, and today would have to write the same amount of chapters to catch up with my goal of at-least-a-chapter-per-day.

Some statistics from the month up to this point:

Total number of words: 107,179

Total number of chapters: 16

Average number of words in one chapter: 6,657.25

Highest number of words per chapter: 14,360 (chapter 10, that killer)

Lowest number of words per chapter: 2,907 (chapter 15)

Average number of words written per day: 5,641

Highest number of words written per day: 16,422 (yesterday, according to the NaNo stats for my word count on the site)

Lowest number of words written per day: 383 (on the fifth of November)

I think those are stats enough to record my progress for now. Oh, but then again, I find myself, too, interested in the approximate estimation of the length of my novel and how much of it I have done now and how much of it will most likely be done at the end of November - and how long will it take me to finish it.

Well, seeing as my novel will have 44 chapters of which 16 are now done, and the average word count per chapter is 6,657.25, that means I have 106,516 words for sixteen chapters over 292,919 for 44 (shhhhit, that will take some serious editing to make readable-sized) done, as an estimation, which would make... a depressing 36.4% done.

Now, this is when my math head starts closing up (and I must tell you, with great satisfaction, that I received my math exam back with a shiny 80% labelled on it - a whole 10% better than my midyear, I seriously need to throw a party or something). What do I need to do to calculate how long would it take for me to write the remaining 63.6%? Oh, I guess I could do it that way (and math-nerds, please correct my calculations if they're incorrect):

If the estimation for the novel length is 292,919 words, and I have written 106,519 of that, which means I still have at least a remaining 185,672 words to write (which is, just as a quick check, 63.5% as referred back to the original estimation - close enough). If I continue to write at a rate of 5,641 words per day, it will take me a rounded 33 days more to finish this novel. In order to finish this novel for/during November 30th, I would have to write at a mind-boggling rate of 16,879 words (as rounded) a day - something that just will not happen!

I am interested and simultaneously annoyed about these statistics, sure, it's fun to know how you're doing, but somehow depressingly so, when the statistics tell you so directly and irrevocably that you're not even at the mid-point - not even close. And I've written so bloody much! Someone (my characters, most likely) will suffer for this!

It's their fault, anyway, for giving me such a long story to write. *grumbles*

Based on these statistics, any techno-handy kid want to build a cute little application to show me my progress on a flowchart, just to make me feel better? Anyone? Yoo-hoo? ... I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm sitting in an empty waiting room with a guard rolling his eyes at me for babbling loudly to myself. *snerk*

Annnyway, going to stop procrastinating and making love to my calculator in favour of toddling off to the kitchen and procrastinating by making myself a cup of coffee, taking some headache-meds (you know, I don't especially enjoy NUMBERS, I just like KNOWING) and chasing the numbers out from my brain with a rake (if needed).

Sorry for the wall of text~

Concerts, schmoncerts

So. Last night I was in a very unplanned Nickelback concert.

You know, I've been thinking of clever beginnings to this post for the whole day (during which, as a matter of fact, I did nothing at all on the account of being sick and giving myself a deserved day off, the lazy bitch I am), and I found out that there's just no clever way to state that you've been in a Nickelback concert - nor to express the fact that it was completely unpremeditated and that you happened to be there because a friend knew someone who worked somewhere and they had a ticket for you and your little sister who happens to adore Nickelback.

What could I do, I was stuck as a chaperone in a rock concert.

I feel very old for saying that.

It's not that I outright dislike Nickelback - no, in fact, most of their songs are quite catchy and pleasing to my ear. And that's all. They're pleasing, and I wouldn't cringe if they were on the radio on those few and select trips I do not hook my 'pod (product replacement, much) to the car speakers and play some of the stuff I actually DO like to listen to (somehow I just don't like the television or the radio - even if they play something you like, they will riddle it with the commercials you do not want to hear), but I wouldn't actually listen to them. Now, this is just my uninformed, very unmusical opinion (because I never studied music, shock-horror), but they get quite repetitive.

And somehow I just dislike a lead singer of a band telling me to go have a drink and smoke a joint and then proceed to scream songs at me about having sex. I am quite capable of keeping stuff like that in my own imagination, thank you very much for being so very OBVIOUS about it! ... Besides, I am here to watch you, and while you thank me, you proceed to tell me to stand up and rock out, even though I'm a patron and I shouldn't be making any effort to---

Oh dear, I do sound like I'm in my mid-somethings, doesn't it (I'm not having a go at middle-agers personally, they are a lovely bunch and can possibly/most likely have more fun than I). And I'm not even old enough to legally consume alcoholic beverages.

By the way, and as you may see from the style I'm writing in, I'm actually feeling a whole lot better than I've been for the past days/weeks. I guess I either stopped worrying or caring, or something. I'd put my money on the latter.

... So don't sound less depressed than before. Oh welll~

Gnrrrrlbghdays

Good morning, ladies and gents, and in an effort of trying to finally wake myself up at 14:07 on a sunday morning, I'm going to try to update my blog.

So, I did finish chapter 10, the one that was causing me so much heartache and annoyance and so on and so forth. I still think that it was a pointless waffle of a grand total of 13,000 words - all of which I could almost cut out of the novel, and have no less of a story. Oh well, it all counts for a wordcount, and after chapter 10, there is chapter 11, and further chapters. I did write chapter 11, too, in a stretch of will - and now am currently stuck at chapter 12. Seriously, is this going to be like this for the rest of the month? The beginning of the month was so easy, so painless - and now everything's just weighing me down. Like today, I have nothing else to do but to write and go to work at six, and I've been awake for some, mmm, maybe three hours, and I've written a grand total of some hundreds of words.

You see, on the best of days, I can write more than 2K in an hour. Right now, my head feels like... Well, you can read from this detached rambling what it feels like. I can't get a hold of my words, since they're somehow out of reach, as if someone amputated the writing part of my brain when I was sleeping. I hate being such a nocturnal creature - I function in the mornings, though only enough to eat breakfast and not kill everyone around me from tiredness, and after those first hours of being awake, I basically shut down until it's 20:00 pm.

[insert descriptive cursing and ripping out hair and destroying curtains or the like here]

Why does it seem like I only have things to complain about? Well, it's maybe because currently, I'm a grand total of 25,000 words away from the quota of reaching my goal at the end of the month, and I STILL have 43 chapters in the total novel and am struggling through number 12. So even if I somehow manage to finish 12 today, I'll have 31 to go.

And my cellphone is dying.

O IT IS FUTILE

... Here, have an excerpt.

“Oh, Logic help me!” he cried, his pen now motionless on the paper, his alarmed eyes now dropping toward this motionless pen, “I have stopped writing, I have stopped writing, oh, the words are not coming to me and life has no meaning, as the words— Oh, oh, I will have to kill myself, there is no reason to live, no reason at all, without words there is no meaning—” And so the ramble went on, the scholar’s eyes darting from his paper to his pen to each member of the fellowship, consecutively, to Logic’s realm’s archway (confirming Nicholas’ earlier assumptions), and back to his paper again. The fellowship, not having expected such an abrupt outrage over something that seemed so very little to them, was in a communal state of shock, not knowing what to do about this frozen-in-place though frantic scholar, now threatening to kill himself in ways that the fellowship’s poor ears should not be subjected to.

More complaining

I have to get a few things off my chest.

I hate my story, I hate most of my characters, I hate the fact that I can't write just one point of view but have to skip in between all of them, I feel like I'm grasping for most of the story anyway - I hate the fact that I've managed to write almost ten chapters without giving my fellowship a sense of direction. I hate my fellowship, too, because they're nothing like I told them to be, and I hate that I don't think I really have a story - what the hell is my story about, anyway? I hate that I can't write stories with clear plots, clear climaxes and clear-- I feel like I CAN write, but I'm a remarkably bad storyteller.

I currently also hate the fact that I don't have a life. I hate waking up in the morning, playing some DS or reading something or just going through those three pathetic sites I always go through on the internet, I hate that I don't really seem to even enjoy surfing the internet anymore, I can't even find anything there - I hate that I have one friend I could do things with, because I'm drifting away from the other one and the third one is in university and we don't really do things together anyway. I hate that, and then I hate the fact that regardless of my complaints, I'm not planning on going to the birthday party I magically got invited - because I'm too afraid I'd feel left out.

I just want to do something, be something, feel that there's something to hang on to - and I hate when even my story does that, goes on tangents that don't MEAN anything, because it just represents the total futility of life I feel half the time.

I hate that I have to be complaining about this, time after time after time after fucking time, because there's nothing wrong with my life.

But how can there be something wrong when there is NOTHING it can be WRONG WITH?

Day 8 and 50K

Ok, I am going to sleep in the next five minutes, but I needed to upload the fact that toward three fourths of chapter 9, I have hit 50,000 words. In eight days' time.

And I am behind on my schedule - still 34 and 1/4 chapters to write. Eek.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLEASE DO NOT LET ME BE CONTENT WITH MY WINNING OF NANO, BUT MAKE ME CONTINUE WRITING

ok, sleep now. Stupid exams. Math and English tomorrow. Meh, couldn't be bothered... NEVERTHELESS. SLEEP.

50K. WOO.

Six days, seven-and-half chapters down

So, huh, it seems that I did have a rather productive session noveling today, anyway. I have currently hit the wall of 40K (the exact wordcount is 40,045 words), and totally breached it. I... I don't have much to add to that, except that, well...

I'm still a little concerned, you know. I know that I'm aiming on finishing by the end of the month and all, but if you take into consideration that I'm in the middle of writing chapter 8, and according to my plot outline, I have 44 chapters in total, it's just... I don't know, it seems a pretty high demand, regardless of how great my wordcount looks. However, I really want to finish this novel in this month, because it's just something that drives me. Sure, it doesn't always feel good (like shown in the previous post), but at least I got something to push myself toward. If it goes over the limit of November, I'm afraid of that great monster called PROCRASTINATION.

Then there's the other thing I'm concerned of, and that's parental support. Today, when I got all happy about breaching the 40K wall, my father didn't even feel happy for me, the first thing he said was, "well, remember that next week you have your exams and you don't have to write so much then." Wait, what? Exams means more free time means more time to write! It's not like I really prepare for exams really well anyway - I've done my shit over the year, and now I don't have to worry so hard, as a result. Don't they understand that while it's hard, it's something I want to do and something that's more important than some year 11 exams that don't even COUNT on your final VCE score, but just for the fact that you SIT it and PASS it so that you can GET your VCE!

Ugh, parents.

And just to lighten things up, have an excerpt of chapter 7:

“Prince Charming and Mr Right?” asked Dee, startled, “I am sure I have heard that somewhere before.”

“I wouldn’t be so surprised,” commented Nicholas dryly (and Sebastian eyed him oddly - that was his tone of voice, not Nicholas’ - was everything alright with him?), “There’s an article on ‘prince charming’ on even wikipedia - he’s a generic fairy tale character, I’ll have you know - and ‘mr right’ is just a term generally used in women’s magazines to describe every girl’s individual dream boy.”

“And you would know, since you read so many women's magazines,” quipped Sebastian, earning himself a sharp tug on the hair by Sophie, who seemed to be of the opinion that he had been enough of a bastard for a day.

Frantic claims

Right now it feels like my noveling attempts may have fallen over the fact that I am too tired and do not feel like and cannot and... suchlike.

And yes, this is pretty much all I have to say currently, no more words to be forced out.

EDIT: Well, maybe that was a little melodramatic, but fuck I'm tired and my head feels like lead (being pounded with a hammer) and I feel nauseous and generally want to die. Also, I think all of this is because of the little brain chemicals running around in circles in my head. This happens every damn month. I'm so fucking over it - why do I have to go through this shit all the time, ehhhh?

EDIT 2: Now there's coffee in the same room with me and I've considerably calmed down. Damn. Still don't feel particularly positive about the whole noveling thing...

Day four and counting

Well, technically day four finished four minutes ago (I have amazing timing, don't I), but what can I do, I just finished chapter 6 of my novel, and now thought that since I'm too hyped about breaking the 30K wall (and yes, I did that on day four, and I'm amazed, too) to go to sleep just yet - though it would be the good and sensible idea - I might as well write a blog entry.

Though, I don't really know what to write about. I broke the 30K wall and finished chapter six. *blinks* Oh, I said that already...

... Here, have excerpts.

“So, how will it be?” he asked. “A room for the night?”

“Bed over a tent, tough decision,” Sebastian said immediately, rolling his eyes. “Of course we’ll have the room. Now, do you sell that alcohol to maybe slightly minors?”

It turned out Nova did.

* * *

“Wait, what did you pay with?” he demanded to know, elbowing his way past Ada and Sebastian (who didn’t like this pushiness one bit, and shoved back, almost knocking Nicholas over - though the subject of the shove didn’t seem to care one bit, too intrigued by this new train of thought) to grab Sophie by her shoulders. “Coins? Paper money? Bits of gold?”

“Why would I pay him with bits of gold?” Sophie asked, rolling her eyes and huffing, as if that would be the most stupid thing she had ever heard. She opened her mouth to give a more intelligent answer, and then snapped it closed again. Open and closed, like a fish gaping on dry land, then a contemplative frown and a fist placed on a mouth in a thoughtful fashion.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered, looking helpless, “I seriously have no idea.”

Three's a crowd? No way!

On the third day of our noveling marathon, I am still on the roll. Finishing at an official total of 20,216 words today, I am feeling ecstatic. I can't actually believe I've written 20K words of a novel in as little as 3 days. It doesn't sound like something that is physically possible - and additionally to this, I have procrastinated, revised a little bit of chemistry and had a 5-and-a-half hour shift of work.

Wow.

But don't let that number get you carried away. It's essential to realise that I HAVE done my extensive planning, and all I'm doing right now is going along with the plan. It's easy, especially since I've always had a fondness of explaining myself and going on tangents and elaborating and so on and so forth. It's easy for me to write extensive amounts of words.

Then again, I don't know how I'll do once school steps into the picture, again. Today seemed a good indication that I CAN balance intensive noveling and something else (which was work) fairly well, but then again, work ain't school - especially since I work at a movie theatre and it is physically impossible to take work home. And school, as I see it, is all about trying to less subtly infiltrate our lives and take over all our free time with that beastly phenomenon called HOMEWORK.

However, I have my exams coming up, so it seems logical that they wouldn't do that too much, trying to keep us revising instead of trying to keep us cramming new knowledge into our heads.

But, well, let's see how it goes!

On another note, I'm moved by how many people have been expressing interest in my rapidly expanding baby (haha, nice mental image there). Two co-workers of mine, another friend of mine... all these people. ,__,' It really makes me feel loved.

Okay, off to try to cram maybe one last thousand of words before sleeping!

Dreamy rambling

As I can see the second day of noveling coming to a close (well, not for hours yet, but metaphorically), I'm being forced to remember that there are other things going on in this world than just Following the Gay Umbrella. It's an extremely uncool feeling, I can tell you - I don't like remembering that I should be doing chemistry and math revision (I actually did do some of the former today, just because doing well in chemistry has become somewhat of a matter of pride for me), and not just sitting around and writing my novel. But I would like to just be sitting around, writing my novel - the past two days have felt SO delightfully surreal, as if there was nothing in the whole world to worry about except going past that next benchmark of another thousand words.

It's magically blissful. I know I talk of nothing but my novel, and I talk about it in a very obsessive and self-centered manner - but as Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo tells us, it is alright to have some me-time when creating. NaNoWriMo is supposed to be, paraphrasing his words, a crazy month-long vacation to me-and-creation land (and in my case, I guess, also Crazyland).

And it really feels like that! I haven't really felt this relaxed for a long time - there's nothing on my mind but getting to that next thousand, and what happens next and what my characters should say next and how they feel. I guess some of this relaxation and ease by which I'm writing also comes from the extensive preparation I've made - I still can't believe, looking at the three chapters I've written (at 13,294 words), that it has been that easy; and that that's actually the beginning of a NOVEL. Can it really be that easy?

The answer is most likely no - I know that there are many issues with it, and I will have to edit and revise it later, but that's for later. Right now, it's all about the joy of creation, and it really is joyous.

Ok, I know that I sound like I'm on drugs or high on something else, but the fact is that I am - I'm completely free of care as of now, completely at peace with not having to do anything else but write my novel. Tomorrow, I will have to go to work for five and a half hours, and that will most likely bring me crashing to reality - or, of course, alternatively, it might just serve to prove that what ever other obstacles I might have, I can still write.

Well, that's the concern of tomorrow. For now, I'm loving each minute of this wonderful, amazing month.

Second-day sunshine

Ugh, I have no idea as to why I'm up before 11 am, but here I am, without the power of coffee just yet. This might represent itself in the most non-wonderful of ways, but don't worry about my awkward wording and punctuation.

Since it's the only thing on my mind, I will be proud to announce that at the end of the night and at 8,178 words, chapter two has come to a finish (I know, I write very long chapters). On the other hand, I'm very not-proud of chapter two - last night when mother prohibited me of writing (damn it, I wanted to hit 10K before the end of the night, but what can you do - it was probably a smart move from her anyway, seeing that I was kind of reeling and missing punctuation and suchlike), I read the two of them over, and thought chapter 1 at least passable, and chapter 2 awful. Well, at least I wrote it, right, and can edit it after November, when I have all the time in the world... right?

So, once I get myself fully awake and everything, I should try to reach that 10K line, and most likely go past it. However, I should be at school today, technically - but I'm not, since it's Melbourne Cup Day tomorrow, and there were people who wondered if or not should they go to school, and most decided not to. Well, since we were going to do revision for the exams, anyway (the ones I'm so not concerned about), I figured that I could just not do revision at home instead of at school.

Anyway, here are a few more excerpts from chapter number two:

“Narrator, you say?” he asked, not quite as politely as Ada, but with enough courtesy not to sound rude - well, rude in a way that teenaged children would usually sound when unexpectedly arriving on an unknown island through a door that was supposed to lead into a mall, without recognising the surroundings and never having heard of an island with nothing but a giant door on it. Besides, and as he had said out loud, Narrator?

* * *

The wind blowing past and washing over the small ship was warm and humid from the presence of water, Dee noted absently, as she observed the patterns the sun shining high left on the water. Equally absently she remembered that she had never really gotten to ask if the body of water they were crossing was a lake or a sea. It would have made more sense if it were an immense lake rather than a very small sea, however, since she recalled that when standing on the island with the door, she had been able to see the shore everywhere across the body of water. Well, it wasn’t worth trying to draw an answer from Rina, anyway - if they were really interested, they could always taste the water once they got to the shore. Dee didn’t exactly trust herself to bend over the rail and try to taste it now - firstly, she wasn’t that impatient, just a little hasty sometimes, and secondly, she would most likely just tumble over the rail and she didn’t even have dry clothing packed.

The five of them hardly even noticed that they had hit the shore, until Rhony and his heavy boots thumped down the stairs from where he had been steering the ship on its journey. He paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs, surprised, taking in the pile of two males and Sophie on the deck, and then glancing at his sister and Dee and Ada leaning onto the rail.

“You guys sure are quiet,” he commented, walking over to Sophie, Nicholas and Sebastian, prodding the latter with his boot to see if he were awake. Judging from the icy eyes flashing at him and Sophie mumbling in annoyance about Rhony obscuring her sun, the two of them were, indeed, conscious - but the third one, the boy with black hair, he was definitely sleeping. Rhony was delighted - he could deal with sleeping people.

First steps of a marathon

So, I started actually writing Following the Gay Umbrella last night - and it feels incredible! At 1,973 words, at the end of the night (somewhere around 1 am), I already knew that I was somewhat unhappy with the beginning of my story. It's not great, but it's not too bad, either. But that's the point, I thought to myself - the point is to not worry, but write. I will have lots of time after November to polish this to a point where I am happy - now the most important part is to keep on going.

And this morning, I did. I hit 3,000 pretty easily, and am getting over my fears from yesterday. Sure, sometimes it feels like I'm waffling and I have to pause to think of how to include all the information I want to (and sometimes I'm reminding myself that this will be a loooong novel, and I don't have to give all information in the beginning), but it's rolling pretty nicely. Currently I'm up to 3,194 words, and my kiddies are walking to wag school. That's the other thing I noticed, however, that having characters walk and talk at the same time can be a little difficult to write. This can prove a problem, seeing as my novel is somewhat fantasy-adventure, meaning that they walk and talk A LOT. And with A LOT, I REALLY mean hell-of-a-lot.

Oh, well, I will conquer!

Also, I'll be posting excerpts of the novel here, just to make any potential readers happy. *grin* Here are the ones I posted on my NaNoWriMo forum profile:

If Ada Isabella Fields had a diary, it would have begun with the following words:

“Dear diary,
I’m not a normal person. I’ve never been. You see, it’s my umbrella;
My umbrella’s gay.”

* * *

“Sometimes I really wish I had a dick, so I could more clearly express the admiration I have for certain people,” said a high, defined sort of female voice with a wistful quality to it. Ada startled, almost tripping over her own shoes. Was that… What?

“With ‘dick’, dear ladies and gentlemen,” began to clarify another voice, this one definitely male, speaking in a sarcastic, jester-like tone, “she refers to what even I have between my legs, and the bodily function of—”

“I mean,” continued the first voice, effectively cutting off the rest of the explanation (that certainly left nothing for imagination, thought Ada, pressing her back snugly against the wall and trying to seem as small as possible), “I’ve always wanted to pull off that ‘are you just happy to see me’-joke, but nobody ever seems to be that happy to see me. See, even Nic there is just sleeping away—”

“Shut up, you heretic, and allow honest people their sleep,” came the half-heartedly angry, sort of mumbled reply from a lanky frame of a male sprawled across the school corridor in the group’s feet.

“Mr Collier certainly seems not to be too happy to see you,” commented the sarcastic voice, incredibly helpfully, and Ada saw the first speaker, a slim, short-ish girl with short, red (probably dyed, since it was entirely too bright to be natural, Ada decided) hair proudly present her middle finger to the blonde-haired boy, the one with the self-righteous and egoistic tone of speech. She also saw the other girl at the scene, the girl with hair a lighter brown than Ada’s, and on a neat plait, eye this red-haired girl incredulously, and then shake her head chidingly, before going back to reading whatever book she was currently holding.

“Honestly?” asked the boy lying on the floor, in a defeated manner, slinging a long arm over his eyes, “I don’t mind seeing her, but the hearing part I could do without.”