Nanowrimo

[rowyn]

ursulav suggested that what she needed wasn't a novel-writing month, but a novel-finishing month. Which struck a chord with me, as one of those people who has more unfinished stories than finished ones.

I'd been thinking about doing Nanowrimo in an effort to finish Sign & Sacrifice, the Nanonovel I started in 2007. I wrote 50,000 words on it then, but in the intervening three years it really hasn't gone anywhere, despite some faltering efforts. I was commenting to terrycloth that I feel like my work ethic died at the end of 2006 and everything since then has been fitiful and incomplete. I would like to finish something again. It'd be nice.

I was looking back at old journal entries, and noticed that one of my ways of tackling Prophecy had been to divide up the remainder of my outline (Prophecy had an outline! That I mostly followed, even) into bite-sized chunks of plot points, and then said "Okay, I'm going to finish two plot-points a week until this is done." The advantage to this over word count quotas was that it was no longer enough to just write whatever: I needed to actually move the plot forward. Sometimes I feel like I have an irrational fear of advancing the plot. I definitely have a strong tendency towards long-windedness, which the Nanowrimo format only encourages.

So, what the heck, I'm going to try this again. At the start of November, I'll spend four or five days hammering out an actual plot outline for the story. I have been reluctant to do this because Prophecy had an outline and I hated writing Prophecy, and Silver Scales didn't and I enjoyed writing it. However, at some point I need to stop assuming that everything I did on Prophecy was therefore necessarily bad and everything on Scales necessarily right, forevermore. Especially since, hey, three years of nothing suggests whatever my current method is, it's not working. (Life is complicated. I don't think I'm going to figure it out before I die of old age, unless medical science cures old age in my lifetime.)

Once I've figured out what's left that needs to get written, I will divvy it up into nice bite-sized chunks, figure out how many of those pieces I need to write per day in order to finish by the end of November, and then try to do so. Having plot-nuggets to finish should help me stay on track and keep me from feeling overwhelmed by the amorphous looming mass of Unknown Stuff Still to Come. And maybe assigning days to the task of plotting will remind me that Plotting Is Work and Counts. Since I don't think I am really convinced of that yet.

This correlates with another problem that I have with writing, and with measuring progress on a book. When you set up a measurement, you tend to get more of whatever it is that you're measuring. So if you measure time, you spend more time on it; if you measure words, you'll write more words. But neither of these measures what I really want to know, which is "is the book good?" and "how much is left to do before it's done?" And that's just for finishing a first draft; I still have no clue on how to tackle editing. Despite having tried. On two different books.

I can't remember how the "progress via plot points" measurement strategy worked on Prophecy; I thought I'd finished that book by switching to an hours-per-week schedule. I probably have it written down somewhere in my journal and could look it up. But even if it was a failure last time, I'm going to try it again anyway. It'll be different from what I've been trying lately, and I'd like a change.

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Outlining not only counts, it is a real opportunity to make sure that your story accomplishes what you want -- and satisfies you -- before you crank out words that aren't necessarily to the purpose.

November is going to be a strange month, but I might be able to finish Book 2, which only needs about 70,000 words. The outline is done, and that gives me some confidence.

I'd love to see you working on S&S again!

===|==============/ Level Head

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I'll second that. My last writing attempt came to a grinding halt in part because, while I DID have a rough outline (a very rough outline), I had left big, critical gaps in it. I was basically writing things in sequence, loosely using the outline as "checkpoints" along the way, and then I realized that I was coming up to another checkpoint and couldn't get the pieces to fit. I had been too vague on how I was supposed to get from point 50 to point 51, and the way I initially presented it just didn't make sense (to me), so it surely wouldn't make much sense to the reader, either. (E.g., "Why would this character suddenly act this way?" Lampshading it with "Because the universe forced him to!" was already a bit too overused in the story as it was.) It stalled, and I got busy with other things, and haven't touched it since.

I feel like maybe if I'd put a little more work up front into the outline, I could have done a better job of "setting up" for the major storyline shift earlier in the process, rather than writing myself into a corner and then procrastinating when faced with the daunting task of having to "back up" and do a major revision.

[rowyn]

I did a vague outline like that for S&S, but it's not feeling helpful any mored. I may need to revise what's written to make the rest work anyway, but I think I'll just plow forward as best I can and worry about what doesn't fit that I've already written later.

[rowyn]

I think the utility of an outline varies a lot from person to person, or project to project, even. I've heard some authors say that writing an outline kills their enthusiasm for writing the story, and I've wondered if that's part of why I disliked writing Prophecy so much. But at this point, I don't feel like I've got a lot to lose on it. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Since you've mentioned Prophecy, I'll use this as an excuse to reiterate that it'd be, like, really awesome if I got to actually read the whole, finished story in sequence sometime.

Regards writing plans ... I'm for whatever means I get to read more Rowyn stories, of course! =)

[rowyn]

Oh yeah, I keep saying I'm going to send that to you, and then I don't ..... Oops. We'll see if I manage to remember tonight!

[rowyn]

Hey look, I remembered. Are you still using the gate.net email address? Apparently I've never emailed you from my gmail account. O_o

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

On the bright side, speaking as someone who used to outline more than she used to, once you've practiced finishing stories enough you might not need the outline anymore. These days I can usually set down "milestones"--scenes I know need to happen between the beginning and end--and the story will grow to meet them, and I get to enjoy 'not knowing' what's going to happen next while writing.

Strangely, GMing campaigns also exercises this skill.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan! Poor Jack would probably appreciate waking up and not finding Izzy dead, or something. };)

Mmm, plot nuggets!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see you writing more of *something*, yes. v.v And Sign and Sacrifice is probably the better book to try to finish. Birthright wasn't as interesting somehow? It's like all the characters were out of their element and not able to act like you'd want them to, maybe. Except for the queen I guess.

...I'd also like to know what happens to Delight, though. n.n

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that's an interesting point. They ARE out of their element, and maybe the way they feel leaks over to the author. And if *she* feels out of her element, she's not likely to want to write more!

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I adore S&S, so I'm really excited about the prospect of you doing this! :-)

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Finishing Sign and Sacrifice gets a thumbs-up from me! I know I haven't commented on the story much but I have read the latest episodes. (And, strangely enough, beginning in the middle of things hasn't diminished my curiosity one bit. :)