NaNoNoMo....

For those of you that have been around awhile you know that I have done NaNoWriMo a few times. I've done it straight by the rules and I've done it Denise Style where I did 50K words in November but I mixed them all around. Either straight fiction, but short stories or fiction and nonfiction just as long as words hit the page it counted. 

It's a challenge each time. Fifty thousand words in a month is a lot of words. And the time I did it all toward one story was really really difficult because I don't tend to write long stories. But that's the point of it. Get the words on the paper (or screen). Edit later. You can't edit a blank document. Get in the habit of writing. Gamify it! And, for me, there is a screen with digital confetti and stars that shows up when you post your last chunk of words and reach 50K. Big YOU WIN! sign. Yes please. More winning. 

Now some of you are like, why are you talking about NaNoWriMo in September? Isn't it usually October that you convince yourself that it wasn't THAT hard. And you weren't THAT stressed about it. And wouldn't it be kind of fun to try it again? Even though you keep swearing that you will never do it again. That you've won it a few times and that's enough. No more and I mean it this time!

Well this time I do mean it. 

I went in this morning and deleted my NaNo account. 

For those of you not into crazy writing contests you probably have no idea why. 

See, NaNoWriMo (the organization) was asked about their stance on generative AI. They started out with a "it's not on us to determine how people write" sort of what the fuck statement then moved into an "and we think it's ableist and classist for you to even talk about it being wrong."

Oh fuck you.

So ableist would be if you were conflating programs like speech to text as being the same as ChatGPT or any of the other generative AI programs. And this is not that. 

And, as Brent said when I read the statement to him, classist? Having access to generative AI programs seems more classist than not. 

A friend of mine posted about NaNo's stance and what he thought and someone on his list came in to rail against him for his take. That it was gatekeeping. And all writing is writing. And how dare he accuse people who use generative AI of not actually writing. 

Well because he's right, it's not writing. It's just not. It's fancy plagiarism. 

Because they train the AI on work that is out there, and even that phrasing makes it seem innocuous. Training, like teaching someone to do something. And in reality that's how everyone who creates learns how to create. We read, watch, look at paintings, sketches, whatever things that are already done and the first few things we create are almost always copies of those things. Then we do it more and more until we find our own style. 

AI can't find it's own style because it's not a person. It's not creative. All it is, is cut and paste from someone else's works. You enter a prompt and it gives you the words or the art, but it's not created, it's copied. And I cannot express how big of a difference that is to people who have never created something on their own. 

The people who use AI to "create" pictures or "write" stories really think they are doing something. But, let me say this again, it's just fancy plagiarism. All AI can do is find things that have already been done and rearrange them slightly. It lifts whole passages, or turns of phrase, or descriptions. And if you are a writer you know that just one sentence in a story could have taken months to craft in just the right way. And it's distinctly yours. Or it should be. 

Once you've found your voice that is. 

And that takes time, but it happens. When you read a story I've written you recognize it as mine. Even if it's a different genre than I normal write, there are still things that make you "hear" my voice. My patterns, my rhythms, my themes, and yes, my twists. Those are all hallmarks of my work. 

And in my nonfiction it's the same thing. You can hear my voice. My writing matches my speech pattern. The odd punctuation and sentence structures match my odd cadence. It's all done by choice. I want you to read something and feel like I'm telling it to you over a cup of coffee. It's taken me a few years to master, and I am really good at it.

Good enough that years ago someone I knew wrote their own blog, using a phrase they had heard me say, and aped my style so much that it was like reading something I wrote but maybe when I was drunk. I sent it to Brent, taking their name and title off of it, and asked him what he thought. He wrote back that he was a little confused when I started talking about my kids. Plural. And asked if I was tired because it was just a little off. But he thought I'd written it because it was their first attempt at writing and they had used my blogs to train on. And they lifted a phrase they heard me say to start. Not plagiarism, because they actually wrote the blog, but clearly inspired by my style. 

Now if that had been ChatGPT it would have been the blogs I had already written just cut and pasted to make a new one. Not a single original idea at all. It would have been plagiarism. It would have sounded like me, but just off a little bit. Maybe a few corrections to my grammar. Which would have changed the cadence just a bit. But it still wouldn't have been an original piece. It wouldn't have been something that they created.

That's writing with generative AI. It's not creating. It's not writing. It's making a patchwork of words out of someone else's work. And it's not going to be good in the sense that it can never surprise you with something new. Because it doesn't create, it copies. 

And I already know there are people out there that think they're creating because it was their idea that they put into the prompt. Write me a story about a woman who finds a fish in her bathtub. See? The idea was theirs so it's totally their story. No, sorry, that's not it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. See how often I grab a story prompt off the web to inspire me when nothing I'm currently working on sounds like fun. The idea is just the starting point. It's not supposed to be the only thing you contribute. That's why often when I'm doing writing prompt stories I read through dozens before something grabs my attention to write. And even more often when I post what the prompt was it can be tricky to see how I got where I went from that one prompt. And most importantly, if you give me the prompt and someone else the prompt the stories are going to be completely different. Dana and I actually did that one year as an exchange. We each had the same prompt and only one time did we even come close to each other and close is a relative term. 

I know there are already self published (and probably even some big publisher) books that have used ChatGPT or something similar. That have passages lifted out of someone else's work and just "tweaked" or even not. I'm sure there are probably entire works out on Kindle that are nothing but ChatGPT reworks. That doesn't mean it's okay to do it. 

And it absolutely should not be the stance of a group that ostensibly is there to help teach people how to be writers to say this is a perfectly good way to write your book. 

So no more November writing challenges for me. 

Or at least not ones from them. 

Maybe I'll have ChatGPT create one for me....

Here we go...

Okay, so you all know I decided almost on a whim to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I guess every other year is going to be my thing? Anyway, since I decided to do it on a whim I had no work in progress that I was chomping at the bit to start. I sort of fooled myself in to thinking that if I left it to the back of my brain I would miraculously wake up on November 1 with an idea on what I wanted to do. Nope.

So I sat. And I stalled. And I thought about it.

The first time I did NaNo I worked on Practical Magic. Do you all remember that one? It was going to be this WONDERFUL novel about a mother and daughter and magic and people living with it and without it and there was a mystery and it was all based on a super weird dream I had with John Waters in it and...okay, so anyway...I did 50,000 words towards that. And then promptly ignored it for a couple of years.

Then the second NaNo bug bit and I decided to work on Practical Magic again. This time tidying up some weird threads and actually trying to corral it back in to a story, but also adding in some short stories just to keep motivated to write. All fiction words counted. So I did about 50/50 novel words and short story words but again, hit that 50,000 mark. Maybe not exactly in the spirit of writing a novel but it was partly toward a novel so it totally counted.

Now we have today. And I look at what I want my NaNo goal to be. Sure their built in goal of 50,000 words toward a novel is a good goal. But is it my goal? Not really. What I really want to use NaNo for is to get me to sit in the chair and write. I want to write at least 2-3 hours a day. I want to really get in the habit of treating my writing as seriously as I think I could. My friend Dana reminded me that that is how I turned the corner with working out. I turned my gym time from a "I should" to "I do" I do this thing because it's something I do. I work out like it's my job because if I don't I pay a heavy price physically. So it's my damn job to make sure my joints stay moving and my weight stays under control and my muscles don't deteriorate. I work out because it's what I do.

I write because I love it. But I also write because it's what I do. I write. I have things to say. Fiction and nonfiction. I have stories I want to tell you. Things that are important to me that I want to share and worlds that are in my head that I want to get out. So this year NaNoWriMo for me is not National Novel Writing Month, it's Naturally Now Writing More. Okay, so that's totally lame, but they already have the NaNoWriMo set so I'm trying to work with it. But you get the gist. I'm using it to get in the habit of writing 2-3 hours five days a week plus an hour on weekends. Habits need to be built.

And, honestly, the fact that I followed the rules one time is pretty amazing isn't it?

So here we go. All words count. Fiction. Nonfiction. Short Stories. Character Studies. And that means that you will get most of them on the blog. So prepare for a busy month. And hopefully a busy year ahead! My NaNoWriMo becomes your NaNoReaMo!

NaNo 2015....

All right, we are done again. Whew.

I sort of reached a conclusion to the story with Practical Magic. I say sort of because I'm not really happy with it. In fact I think it's mostly crap. But it's something and that will be good enough for now. I might just give you all a sort of Executive Summary or Book Report finish so you at least know what happened with everyone, but I don't know when or if I will ever actually finish the story itself. Maybe someday huge inspiration will hit me and I will know exactly the right way to finish their story. I just know for now this will do even if this isn't really it.

When I did NaNo in 2013 it was expressly to see if I could write that much in a month and to try to get Practical Magic out as a novel. It was a grand plan and I did it. But then this time after I finished NaNo 2015 I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, why was it so much like a forced march this time? It couldn't have been like that in 2013 right? So I went back and read the handful of blogs I did around NaNo in 2013 and I reached all of these wonderful conclusions about my writing that I promptly forgot for 2015. And it was a forced march then as well, I just blocked that part out.

First off, I don't like writing long form stories. A novella is maybe the furthest I am willing to go and even that might be stretching it. Writing stops being fun for me much past a short story and as I only write because it's fun it seems pretty dumb to fight that.

Second, I am a pantser. I will always be a pantser. I am pretty sure that being a pantser is the biggest reason why I prefer short stories. I don't want to think about where a story is going to go. Where it needs to end up. Whose lives need tidied up. I want to be as surprised as you all are by what comes out of my head. Sure, sometimes that does mean that I have an ending in place that I am writing to (yesterday's short story, for instance, started with the image of her wrapping up the gift and I had to figure out how she got there) or a line of dialog that I want to work a story around. But it doesn't mean that I have a beginning, a middle and an end all lined up with characters and situations blocked out. Trust me, I've tried that, but the voices in my head are an unruly bunch and will pout if I try to tell them what to say.

Third I write fast and I write sloppy. I might change the sloppy part in 2016. I'm thinking about a new sort of challenge and it will require a little more tidying up. But I write and I post here and I get feedback or I don't and I move on. Sometimes so quickly that when I re-read a post from a few years ago I've forgotten I wrote the story. Hell, there was one that someone told me they really liked from last month and I couldn't remember it. LAST MONTH. As in a few weeks ago! I write fast. Sometimes less than an hour per story. And yes, I know, that doesn't make them polished or perfect or even grammatically sound half the time, but it's still fun for me.

And that is the biggest lesson I need to hold. I am in a remarkable position in life where I don't have to write to make a living. I don't have to do copy-writing. I don't have to do Executive Summaries. I don't have to craft marketing messages. I don't have to make money from the words. I can just do it because it's fun. And I hate losing the fun things in life. Which happens more often than you realize. When you start "shoulding" and "coulding" instead of "getting to" and "wanting to" the things that used to bring you joy fade away to gray.

So I proved to myself that I can do it. Twice. The first time all focused on one story. The second time finding a finish for that one and allowing myself small fiction treats. I also discovered the second time around that I can force myself to write when I am in a lousy space creatively. Which might help my lazy writer tendencies. But it might not. Because just because I know I can do it, doesn't mean I have to do it.

Writing is fun for me.

I hope reading what I write is fun for you.

I am going to protect that a little more and keep it that way.

Crazy....

Okay, I'm doing it again. I'm signing up for NaNoWriMo today. I want to finish Practical Magic and be done with it and if this is how I have to get it done then this is how I will do it. At least I am hoping this does it. It worked last time.

I have put zero work in to it since the first week of October and I really do want to finish it and at least have it out of my head and complete somewhere. So this is the push I am hoping will get it all finished up and at least something I can then work with and see if that is enough or if I want to put the effort in to it to polish and fix and submit. But really, just finishing it will be good.

And, of course, because I am me and writing 50,000 words in 30 days isn't quite challenging enough I am going to do 50,000 in 25 days. We are traveling the last week of November and I really want to get it all done before we go. If not the 30th will be a long ass day as I recover from the Thanksgiving trip and try to crank out how ever many words short I am. But I did it last time in fewer than 30 days so I can do it again. That's the working theory at least.

So I need to put in 2000 words a day for 25 days towards Practical Magic which I have had pretty significant writer's block on for the majority of the time I've been working on it...easy peasy lemon squeezy...

And then this also puts a big push on my main blog goal for 2015. I have 27 more to write for the year to reach that outrageous goal of 180. Which I was feeling pretty cocky about last week. I mean 27 blogs in 2 1/2 months is simple. But now I've just dedicated November to NaNo so that means if I am lucky I will manage to squeeze in 4 or maybe 5 so all of a sudden December is on the hook for a ton! I am really a genius when it comes to making my goals harder, you know that right? It's like I am doing it on purpose or something. Which I would swear to you that I wasn't. All evidence aside...


This next week will be all about prep work (like how do I use Scivener as more than a simple word processor again?) and getting notes set up for how I think the story is going to go (I really have no clue, I had an idea this week though so that's something!) and cranking out the plethora of Halloween stories that crowd my head this time of year (the voices take on a decidedly dead tone in the Fall, not that they die out, but that they belong to dead people, I write dead people...) and as you can tell by the tone of this post I'm slightly freaked out by the fact that I'm doing this AGAIN.

It's like that part of the roller coaster where you are climbing. You know you are going to be fine, but you also know that first drop is a doozy so you can't help but be a little nervous.

(deep breath)

Okay, here we go. November is upon us and NaNoWriMo beckons!

50,000 words.
25 days.
Practical Magic finished.

We can do this!

Winner, winner, turkey dinner...

Since it's the last day of November I figure this is the time for the NaNo wrap up. For those of you that missed it, I did it. Oh wait, spoiler alert...now...I did it. Hit over 50K on Monday. I let out a little Whoop! of excitement, posted a picture and then started playing desperate catch up with other things that needed done. One of those being a nice tidy little wrap up blog. So here we are...

First off, I did it. I just want to say that again because that was really the main point for me. I wanted to do this. It was important to me to actually get through it and do it. And I did. So I'm pretty pleased. There were lessons along the way and things that I need to think about now, but before I get in to the weeds with that part I wanted to say again, I did it.

Okay, lessons, first off it wasn't easy. I write at 1,000 words per hour so really 50,000 words in a month should be easy right? But I write at 1,000 words per hour if the ideas are flowing. And on some days they aren't. I had banked on being able to write a lot while Brent was in Denver. What I didn't bank on was getting sick during that time. The good news was that there was only one really bad day. Bad enough that if a friend hadn't surprised me with lunch I wouldn't have eaten a hot meal that day. But only one really bad day. I didn't get as sick as Brent did the week before so though I didn't get the stellar numbers I had been hoping for, I did get some decent numbers in that week.

So a few lessons, the dual deadlines worked for me. I had been working all along toward being finished by November 22 instead of November 30. And even though I got sick and didn't make that first deadline I had a giant cushion to make the hard deadline of the 30th. I ended up crossing the number line on the 25th. Not terrible. But to really make that first deadline I needed to have not counted on the extra time while Brent was gone so much. I should have treated it like normal time and then I might have still made the original deadline. As it was I looked at that upcoming "free" time as an excuse to slack a few days.

Writing a long story for me was hard. I like short stories, I talked about that before, but I want to mention it again. I noticed as I was writing scenes where THINGS happened to my main characters that the readers wouldn't really care because I hadn't given them any reason to care about these people. A lot of things I can get away with in a short story I just can't in a longer one. It was a good exercise in stretching for me. Why should the reader care? What did I need to add in to this story to make them care? I did a lot of back and forth writing. At more than one point I could envision the 6 year old me on the playground calling the shots in a game of make believe, "No, let's say that you did this instead!"

I also got a big glimpse in to what a lazy writer I really am. I told you that I had friends with kids and jobs doing this as well right? And keeping pace with me? My job this month? Writing. Hell, Brent offered to get me a cleaning lady for the month so I could focus just on the writing. I am hugely supported in this endeavor and extremely lazy. That I can fix. Though 50,000 words just for the sake of words probably won't happen again the schedule that I came up with will most likely stick. Breakfast, workout, writing. That's a good morning. Leaves the afternoon for the other things I need to take care of to keep this joint running and I also have the flexibility to move things around on days that I need to have the morning free for something else. But I did it this month. A busy month. And I did it.

As for the story itself? I don't know what I am going to do with it. For right now I am letting it sit. I know it will need a lot of editing. A lot of rewrites. Possibly a whole new plot line. But for now it's just sitting. It served its purpose. One continual story over 50,000 words. What it eventually evolves in to I would guess I won't know until sometime next year. I still think there is potential there. I still like the mother and daughter. I am just not sure what I need their story to be. In fact right now I have two different paths I merged in to one story (on purpose) but I'm not sure that they should be one story. Maybe they are two separate short stories.

And speaking of short stories, I think I am going back to those. I do believe that I will try out my other idea of stringing a group together to make a novel length collection. Recurring characters and situations that might dovetail, but stand alone stories. Now that I know I can just sit my butt in the chair and write daily without the world falling apart I should find it easier to get that done. That's the plan anyway.

Will I do it again? Hmm...I don't think so. I did it. I won. I got the huzzahs, seriously on the website when you win they give you a huzzah. I don't see the reason to do it again next November. I know I can do it. And I know that I can do a lot more on a daily basis than I was so for now it served its purpose and that's good enough.

And the last thing, thank you all so much. The encouragement I got from all of you when I posted my daily word counts meant so much to me! I really felt like I would be letting you all down if I didn't finish so thank you for standing behind me and pushing my lazy ass over the finish line, even if you didn't realize that's what you were doing!

Now on to December! Now I only have to catch up on Christmas shopping, cards, the letter, decorating, blogging, editing, starting the short story series....

The Dread Writer Roberts...

So if all goes as planned and I meet my daily quota at the end of the day tomorrow I will be 1/3 of the way through the NaNo challenge. Which is right on track for me since I want to be mostly done if not all the way done by the time C comes home for Thanksgiving.

Because I am writing every day instead of waiting for a story to come to me and reworking it over and over in my head before committing it to the screen I'm having to write in a way that is different for me. Less thinking and mulling more writing. I'm also not reading, rewriting or revising. It's all just dumping out on the page. So I have no idea at this point if when I go back and read it all at the end it will work together in to a cohesive story. It should be interesting.

I'm also having to think on the fly. As I start my yoga in the morning I feel like I've stepped out of Princess Bride and the story is the farm boy. Well that was a good story but as I have nothing left to write I'll most likely kill it this morning. Then I do my yoga, then my cardio and while that is happening part of my brain is thinking well, what next? Should I talk about Aric some more? So I go back to Deidre? Do I write the scene where Cal dies or do I leave it as it stands? And by the time I finish the cool down and stretch out again I have an idea. Shower, dressed and back to writing. As you wish....

I have to say the greatest challenge (aside from doing it every day) has been in trying to do something different. When I write a short story, my comfort zone, I am giving you a window in to a life. Just the briefest glimpse of these people. One situation. One snapshot in time. They all have back stories, but they are in my head, I know them but you don't need to. You get pieces of them. The story I wrote recently about the couple in the coffee shop? You could piece together their back story with what I gave you, but there is a whole world there I left unsaid. And that's what I like about short story writing. You get to fill in the missing pieces and make the characters what you need them to be.

Now? I'm writing a long story. You need the background. You need to know who these people are and why they are doing what they are doing. Things that were vague ideas in my head when I wrote the first short story about them now have to be fleshed out. And that's tough. Because some of what I could leave up to you to figure out is now on me. And I don't know! I mean really, one of the ideas I had that is fairly central to the story I am having a hard time figuring out how to make work. Right now it's kind of water colored vague and I might just leave it like that. YOU figure it out.

But the good news is I am doing it. Every day. Workout, write. Small bites.

Update!

Okay, so today is the first day of the first full week of NaNo. Last week was the trial run for the schedule and it seems like it's a good fit. Though it was slightly harder to get motivated this morning than last Monday. And when I sat down in front of the computer to write the words were not so much fluently articulated. (or something like that)

Anyway...I powered through and did just over 3000 words for the day. I want to do around 11,000 more words by the end of the week so 2200 to 2700 words a day depending on if I am planning on writing on Saturday. Who knew there would be so much math involved?

I've already given up on writing linearly. I have certain scenes in my head and those are what I am writing. After I get those out then I will go back and write bridge chapters and filler to put them together. My biggest worry still is if I have 50,000 words to put to this story.  If I get to 30,000 and tap out I guess they can all take a wacky road trip someplace!

And as I am super competitive I am having to tell myself that my small bites of words are just fine. Even if Mel wrote over 10,000 words in two days. And she has a baby at home. How in the hell is she doing that? And Jen writing as much as I am on a daily basis but you know after her full day at work and brutal San Francisco commute home. But it's fine. Really. And Dana cranking out 1000 words while her daughter plays softball? No big deal. I mean I can do 1000 words too. As long as I'm home alone and don't have any distractions and...

Okay, yeah, so I have friends doing this who have jobs and little ones and other things and they are cranking out the numbers. It's motivating to say the least. I mean what in the world could my excuse be for not finishing? I broke a nail? The cat wanted attention? Both things that happened today, by the way, so I'm pretty sure I'm a hero for getting my word count in. Or something.

All right I just wanted to let you all know how it was going. Thanks again for the encouragement!

T minus two and counting...

Quick NaNo update time!

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out a new software system for writing. It sounds really great and I am sure it is, I just couldn't really figure out how to effectively use it. I think part of it was the tutorial was a bit overwhelming. A lot of information thrown at once. I will go back in tomorrow and see if I can make it work, and if I can't then I will just use Word like I had planned. But the main thing was while I was messing around with that I settled in on Practical Magic as the book I am going to write.

The other piece I decided on was to take the little short blog stories I have already written and expand them as the start of the book. The first one or maybe two will be the introduction chapter, then chapter one will start with Deeds at school. The first part of the book will lead back up to that first glimpse you get of her and Aska. I've already decided to make some changes and am treating those first stories as outlines.

The schedule thing seems to be a good plan. Though I didn't follow it today. Skipped the workout and messed around this morning, well if you can count the annual drape and scrape as messing around, but anyway I flipped the schedule, errands in the morning, writing in the afternoon a day off from working out. I don't plan on a lot of those in November, the days I have appointments are the end of the month and I am hoping to have reached goal by then so the schedule will be tweaked at that point anyway.

Workouts are good. Sitting still for a few hours at the computer is easier to do after a workout. I'm not so twitchy. Though I am at that tipping point of "why did I let myself get so out of shape? I will NEVER let this happen again!" and "holy shit I am so out of shape, everything hurts! I should NEVER workout again!" I'm pretty sure I'll tip the right way, but if I don't you have my blessing to push me.

Back to the schedule thing, writing in the morning is good as well. I've noticed as I sit here writing this blog and thinking about the other blog that I want to write I am MUCH more distracted than I have been. I think I just need to get the focus oriented things out of the way early in the day.

And that's that for the update portion of our day.  Tomorrow should be a straight up ranty/rambling/randomy blog. I have a lot of different ideas that sort of tie together in a theme so expect that. Then....dum dum dum....NaNo starts...  Eek!

Preparation!

And here we go. Day one of setting up new habits and schedules and such. NaNo starts on Friday but as I mentioned earlier starting something on a Friday just seems like a bad idea. Especially since I am not sure yet how much I will actually be writing on the weekends. So today was the start of setting up new schedules.

And me being me I decided since I was setting up a new schedule anyway and I need to get back in to a consistent work out routine again I wove the two together. So as of right now my mornings are breakfast, Brent to work, workout, shower, writing. When lunch time rolls around I will break for lunch and if I have put at least a few thousand words down I will move on to the rest of the day, chores and then reading or watching something on TiVo. If I haven't then after lunch I come back in and write more. Exercise, discipline then affection. Yep, I'm treating my new schedule the way Caesar Milan trains a dog. Because it amuses me. Well that and I'm not likely to push off reading but I will push off a workout. Do the harder stuff first so you have the treat waiting for you at the end.

The number count part will start on Friday, the first few days this week are still prep work. For instance this morning I re-read the Practical Magic story to see if I could really turn that in to a book. I have 3,000 words invested in it already do I have 50,000+ more? Also I started that story as a lark. Something to post only on the blog and only as the ideas came to me. If I use it for NaNo I will be taking it off the blog and putting it in to a book. Or at least trying to. But on the other hand if it works out that I write it and still don't think it's something to send to a publisher I will have weeks of things to post in the bank. I'm not completely settled on the idea of writing that story for NaNo but I'm leaning enough that I've added Aska to my spell-check.

The biggest habit to make (break?) will be not being online when I am writing. That's the discipline part. No Facebook or email running in the background. No quick dashes off to ew.com to read about something. Actually sitting down and focusing on my writing. So far I've made it 45 minutes without checking my notifications. Go me!

Right now I'm also deciding if I just give up on my inconsistent blog posting for November, knowing that you all understand I'm here, writing, I'm just not posting, or if I try to make sure that I fit in some time for some writing that doesn't count towards words and goals and is just head clearing or fun. Most likely I'll post here keeping everyone up to date on how it's going. I have a feeling I will need the head clearing. And the venting.

All in all I think that November will be good for me. Getting back in to a schedule will be fun, at least for awhile, and if I can get that workout ingrained again I will be a much happier camper. I'm always really happy when a workout is done.

Okay, off to take notes on PM and see if I can get a few more ideas for a few thousand more words!

Aska and Deeds and Cal await!

So who thought this was a good idea anyway?

Okay, well, Friday is November 1st. That means NaNoWriMo is upon us. Or me. Or us. Or whatever. Words. Bah!

Yes, that's about where my brain is right now. The reality of what I am doing is sinking in. Schedules. Deadlines. Discipline. I'll take Things Denise Doesn't Like for $100, Alex.

So anyway as my brain is giving me 1000 reasons why I should bow out now I'm fighting back with the one main reason to keep doing it. To show that I can. Which, as most of you know, is usually my reason for doing anything challenging. I've got this.

Because Friday is a stupid day to start something (reason #478) I'm actually going to sort of start on Monday. Not writing the novel part, that would be cheating, but writing for a set amount of hours. So there will be a few blogs up next week. Probably nonfiction but maybe a little fiction might leak out. Only if I can't possibly turn it in to part of the story I will be writing for NaNo, but it might happen. That has been one of the main realizations I've had heading in to this challenge, my entire schedule needs to shift. To get the writing done as well as the other things I want to do I have to go back to managing my time. And for someone who hasn't worn a watch since C left for college that's saying a lot.

Here's the real kicker though, I'm still not sure what I'm going to write about in November. I had settled on an idea, the sort of short stories I do most of the time just all tied together with recurring characters. Those of you that have read this blog for awhile know I've had these people in my head for awhile and thought about doing this so this would be a good time. And to be honest I felt that would probably be the easiest. Those stories come to me fairly regularly. I could just fluff them up a bit and be on my way. So after spending a few weeks making notes and plans to do just that I thought... wait! maybe I want to go ahead and go back to that science fiction fantasy story I started on here ages ago and then just left to wait.

Blame Susan for putting that idea in my head.

But the sci/fi/fantasy story actually does have the makings of a real structured novel. Not just a thread of short stories tied together. So maybe I should go ahead and do that instead. But what if I don't get any more inspiration on that front? I know the story I want to tell there I just have never really been able to figure out how to get there. Maybe this is the kick I need to get that world out there?

Words. Bah.

So for the next few days that will be my challenge. Figuring out what I want to do for the real challenge. And calming down the gremlins in my brain. Wish me luck!

Write, write, write....

Okay, I did it, after much back and forth I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I first heard about it a few years ago, though I can't for the life of me remember who was trying it out. I thought at first it was my friend Shay but she said no, and then when I thought about it I realized no way would she do it, she would have to slow down her production too much. Last year I forgot about it until halfway through November and so that wasn't going to work. This year another friend was peer pressured in to signing up and posted about it so I thought...well...hmmm....maybe?

For those of you who don't have any clue what I'm talking about; NaNoWriMo is a little contest of sorts that happens every November. The challenge? Write a novel of 50,000 words in a month. You sign up, you submit your completed work at the end of the month and you win a...umm...a certificate I think? For me it's all about the "can I do it?" this is the biggest writing challenge I've ever given myself. You all know I do mini challenges on here from time to time, blog every day, write a certain number of fiction pieces, submit something to a publisher. But this will be the first time I commit to anything of that length.

And it terrifies me.

Because I have just about reconciled myself to the fact that short stories, micro stories practically, are really my sweet spot. That's how they come to me. That's how I write them down, one quick blergh all over the page and then move on. But yet...

There is still a part of me that wonders if the one or two longer story possibilities I have bouncing in my brain could come to fruition as a full length novel? Granted one of those ideas is really a series of short stories all tied together by the characters in them, but still, it's a long term concept. And maybe it's time to give it one last push.

November as a month to do this sucks. Thanksgiving, the boy is home for a week, but I have no other real time commitments so there is nothing to stop me from writing extra during the first three weeks and just finishing up that last week right? Fifty thousand words in a month breaks down to 1,666 a day if I wrote every day, 2,173 if I don't write for the 7 days C is home, 2,500 if I write 20 days out of the month (weekends off) and so on and so on... I've thought a lot about it. And about all the ways to talk myself out of it.

But a few things made me decide to give it a try. One when I first posted about it I drug my brilliant friend Dana in to the mix. And she's going to try. And she has two kids, a job outside the home AND still will find time to write so I can't really beg off on time. Second when I posted and drug Dana in I had other friends who decided to give it a try as well and seeing them give it a go makes me think I can. Third my friend Nadine put it very well when she saw me post about it and said, "Do it. It's time to stretch yourself and your abilities, woman." And then the last piece came when I started debating whether or not to try my friend and happiness guru Dr. Brian King posted the following as his status: "The only obstacle between you and change is the fact that it's hard. Are you that eager to admit defeat?" I always say when the universe starts talking to you, you should probably listen so...

Oh fine! Fine!! I will try it...

So what does this mean? Well it means that for the next few weeks I will be planning my November writing. I KNOW! So odd for me, I never outline and plan and shit, but if I am going to do this I feel like I really need to. I also will be shuffling through my schedule and doing some trial runs on how long it takes me to write a good chunk and still get things done I need to and want to. Schedules and planning and me. What could go wrong? But it's supposed to be a challenge right? And challenges are fun. Especially at the end when you get your gold star. I do love a gold star.

But still...right now 50,000 words is a bit daunting. Wish me luck!