NaNoWriMo: 30k, Hey Hey Hey

A little over 60% done now.  The end is in sight, but man, it’s getting tough.  As soon as this novel is done, I’m heading over to Bill O’ Reilly’s crib to play some Madden.

NaNoWriMo UhOh MeSlow NotSo?

Never thought I was going to be able to make my 1,667 words tonight. After a hard day of editing (who would have ever thought it could take an entire day to edit and revise a 11,000 word book chapter? And I’m still not done with the dang thing! Plus, I have another one I have to get done tomorrow!) Hmmmm … maybe I should start passing off some of this work onto my soon-to-be student assistant …

Anyway, I was out of juice and time by 11:00 when I started writing. 45 minutes later, though, I clicked the “Word Count” button and I’d gone from 16,828 words to 18,421 words. Not bad. Around 1600 words in 45 minutes. Plus, I got to introduce a new character, which was fun. Her name is Shelly, she looks to be around 100 years old or older, and she takes no nonsense from anyone. She should be a good influence on Tim-bo, who often is a little too curious and rambunctious for his own good. He should learn to be careful when dealing with the spirit world. Word is, the Oldman fella who is in charge of that place has a bit of a temper on him.

Of course this pales in comparison to the prodigious output from my pal Berserker, but that’s okay. As long as I don’t skip a day, I feel good about being able to finish this thing. We’ll see — I just took a look at next week’s schedule on my calendar and it’s going to be a Killer with a capital K. Just hope I can survive long enough to enjoy some turkey and mashed potatoes…

NaNoWriMo Day 5/30: Sunday Blues

Got my fun writing on my new novel done early today, which I’m a little sad about Too much work to do this afternoon and evening. I am now perched on a respectable nest of 8,444 words though, and Tim’s world is looking better than ever. Writing has been pretty consistent, and I’m only going back and making edits when there are logistical issues that require changing some prior page of exposition. It is a struggle to stop at my daily 1,667 words, but that’s probably a good thing. I need to build up some momentum to get me through Week 2, and I don’t want to exhaust all my fun ideas this week.

I guess I can always find a way to hack into Berserker’s WordPress account and find a way to steal some of his ideas if I get stuck. All his talk about hacked voting machines really has me thinking….

NaNoWriMo Day 4/30: Day of the Beast

With Bonus DVD Review: The Omen (2006)

In honor of today’s writing goal (6,668 words) Carole and I finished watching the remake of The Omen last night.  This was supposed to be part of our Halloween Movie Marathon last weekend, but it turns out you need at least an entire week to watch movies with a baby.  Especially movies like The Omen, which might be a little mature for a .25 year old.  It was definitely not a great movie, but it didn’t seem to be as bad as the folks over at Rotten Tomato seemed to think.  There was some beautiful cinematography, and they managed to find the creepiest kid alive for the role of Damien.  I never saw the original, for some reason, but I remember hearing about it as a kid.  One of those movies mom and dad wouldn’t let me watch growing up.  Ha!  Can’t stop me now, can you mom?!

The Good: Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (the boy who played Damien) and Mia Farrow were both super-creepy.

The Bad: I wasn’t overly impressed with Liev or Julia.  The monkeys and apes in the zoo gave better performances at points.

Grade: B

As for my novel, I now have a title!  It’s called Drifting West, and no, it’s not a prequel to Brokeback Mountain.  Writing is still pretty easy, but I’m trying to stick to no more than 1,667 words a day.  Don’t want to burn out too early! 

I had to wrestle with a few lines today, as my genre keeps threatening to slip from a sort of creepy romance tale to a full-on spoof and comedy.  Don’t want that to happen, but if the story demands it, it must be done. 

My total word count (as of today) is 6,777 words.  This is a much more positive number, I hear.

NaNoWriMo Day 3/30: 10% Done!

Still on track for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. I have to say, I’m impressed that I’ve been able to actually develop a semi-plot without having one when I started on Wednesday. Three days and 5,132 words later, I might actually have a halfway decent start of a story arc by now. Either that, or I’ve passed away unexpectedly due to a massive typing-induced blood clot to my brain and I’m stuck typing the same 1,667 words over and over again in Purgatory until I can find a better way of treating my characters.

Oh, I found a great little trick online today. For anyone using MS-Word who just has to see how many words they’ve typed since the last punctuation mark, try the new word count toolbar. Screenshot below shows how to get to it. I’ve highlighted the “recount” button, which just begs to be clicked at least a couple times a minute. This can’t be healthy.

See you tomorrow for the next exciting update!

NaNoWriMo Day 2/30: PM Update

I’m two days into the National Novel Writing Month challenge now.  I’m happy to report that I am still on track to meet the 50,000 word deadline on 11/30.  In fact, I have a 101 word buffer.  Yep, that’s right, I have a whopping total of 3,435 words in the bank.  I also read the first week’s writing advice in No Plot, No Problem, and I’m pleased to have sequestered my inner editor in a windowless room until December.  Take that, you comma-splice-pointing-out bastard.   

What’s going on in my novel so far?  Well I’m so glad you asked!  I don’t want to ruin the surprise by telling you everything (read: I don’t know anything else yet), but here are a few tidbits:

1. The title of my novel as of right now is Untitled Novel.  I pride myself in my creativity.

2. Like my writing pal Berserker, I’m choosing to go first person point-of-view with my story.  I realize this often means trouble for trying to get it published, but first person simply felt like the right voice for me to use for what I want to say.  One of my favorite books of all time, Odd Thomas, had an amazing use of first-person voice.  The story seemed more emotional and real to me when seen presented directly through the eyes of the character.  Not that I’m comparing myself to Dean Koontz, by the way.  That hack could learn a thing or two from me   Actually, Koontz seems to be a really nice guy.  I sent him a letter a couple months ago telling him how much I enjoyed The Face, and he sent me back a handwritten note.  Sure, it was scrawled beneath a form letter, but I appreciated the fact that he took the time to jot down a few sentences.   He gets an enormous amount of mail.  And, he wished my Golden Retrievers well, which always wins you points in my book.  Even if one of them does have diarrhea (see yesterday’s post).

3. Here are the first two sentences of my novel: “My name is Timothy West and I have a story to tell. In some ways, it’s a love story, but that’s not really how I think of it. “  I’m pretty sure this opening paragraph will change as the novel progresses.  Had to get something down to kick it off, though.

4. Here is the final paragraph of the novel so far:  “I’d like to say I put my arm around her and comforted her, but like I said earlier, I promised to be honest with you. So, I told her to be quiet and stop shaking like a baby. It was mean, I know, but I was shaken up pretty bad too.”

5.  A few other tidbits going on so far: in the first two chapters, we hear about a dead love interest, two dead parents, a dead duck, and a red-haired nemesis named Lonnie Hamler who is still very much alive.  Things are looking grim for Tim-0. 

How did his parents die?  Who is Tim talking two at the end of Chapter 2?  What’s the point of killing off his love interest in the first chapter?  Did Lonnie Hamler kill the duck?  You’ll find out this December, when Untitled Novel becomes Untitled (but Finished) Novel.  By then, I may even have a title.  I’m told a belly full of turkey meat can do wonders for the imagination.     

NaNoWriMo Day 2/30: Tools of the Trade

Woke up today feeling renewed and refreshed, full of vigor and enthusiasm. Really? No. But, I did wake up, at least.

Haven’t started writing yet, but I did find a great collection of nanowrimo tools online. Check them out: http://brandicedesigns.net/monkey/?page_id=293.

The handbook looks especially useful.

Now, to eat some brain flakes (corn flakes with sugar, don’t tell anyone) and get those creative juices flowing…

Back tonight with an update of how it went.

NaNoWriMo Day 1/30

Today I started the National Novel Writing Month challenge. Armed with the founder’s No Plot No Problem book, I embarked on a new and exciting journal as a novelist. I discovered on this first day that not only am I truly and certifiably insane, but that this task may very well be my final undoing. Here are the snags I have run into so far:

1. The 4 1/2 month old baby doesn’t seem to understand this whole “national novel writing month” concept. I’m trying to explain it to him, but he only responds with drool and shrieks. Mom doesn’t have much sympathy for me, either.

2. Our younger Golden Retriever, Sampson, decided that today would be a good day to renew his passion for diarrhea. Picking up solid dog poop from the backyard is fun and all, but what I really live for is anxiously waiting for Sampson to do the poo-poo dance so I can take him outside and then wipe his butt with paper towels. Yeah, now that’s the good life!

3. 1,667 words a day for 30 days doesn’t seem so bad. However, 1,667 words after a full day of work and then a full evening of teaching and driving back and forth from downtown is a lot!

4. It might be good to have some general sense of, oh, let’s say plot, or maybe characters, or even environment. I actually wrote the beginning of three different stories before settling on one opening I think I can live with. My second idea was going to be about this guy who was known in “the biz” as a “dangler.” He would be used as bait to try and get the right crowd of people together and then things would happen. You see what I mean? Pure crap. Had to scrap that one quick, before it tried to hijack my fingers. I got about 500 words in, though, which is scary. Reminded me of writing my dissertation…

5. Using short names for frequently used characters is a good thing. Still have no idea where this thing will end up, but at least I have a protagonist’s name I can live with. It’s Tim. I think (see 6).

6. Writing from multiple locations can be annoying, especially if you’re scatterbrained. I was sure I had saved my first 450 words on my USB drive, then I got home, and no file to be found. I must have left it on the laptop. No way I’m hauling that behemoth inside tonight. So, I’m forced to write my remaining 1200 words separated from their parents. I hope they match up when I go to combine them tomorrow.

7. When you buy a book named No Plot No Problem, it might make sense to actually read the thing before embarking on a quest to write a book with no plot. Pure osmosis isn’t doing the trick so far.

8. Wednesdays this month are probably going to be the hardest for me. So, I’ll try to make a nice little cushion by doing a little extra on Thursday and Friday. Ha! I love telling myself stuff like this, because it never happens that way. Something always manages to come up.

9. I need to get over my relentless drive for perfection and my obsessive-compulsive need for symmetry. So take that, incomplete list! Only 9 items! Ha!! Who’s Howard Hughesish now? Huh, huh?

Need sleep….

100 Ways to Write Like a Pretentious Academic: Part I

I’m now well into my academic career (year two after graduation) and I now feel like I have read enough academic writing to make a few observations about it. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of really good research going on out there, and I love being able to write and read about it, but it’s funny to see how many generalizations you can make just from reading scholarly articles for a few years. The really funny thing is that these generalizations hold up across genres! Psychologists, English Professors, Social Scientists, Biologists — many are guilty of the techniques I describe below. Although I too (of course) have been prone to err in my own writing, I like to tell my graduate students to follow the three C’s of writing: clarity, conciseness, and correctness. In many cases, anything else is just show. Forgive the coarse language here, but perhaps the most apt statement about reading overly pretentious writing was made by a Ph.D. student during a development workshop a few weeks ago. In his own blunt terms, describing a particular buzzword we were throwing around, he said, “Every time I hear that word it makes my asshole pucker.” Fair enough.

So, without further adieu, here are the first ten entries of my Top 100 Ways to Write Like a Pretentious Academic:

100. Use the word “salient” as often as possible. Never use the word “prominent,” as that is a word for commoners.

99. Learn and use as many Latin abbreviations as frequently as possible. Never write out phrases or words like “such as,” “for example,” or “compare.” If you think you can get away with it, use them incorrectly (use i.e. for e.g., or just throw a c.f. in there for the hell of it). The more obscure the abbreviation you can find, the better.

98. Never read or appreciate anything that is not in a top-tier refereed journal. Argue vehemently with anyone who cares to listen about what the top tier journals are. If someone disagrees with you, create a Wikipedia entry for them and write something about “questionable scholarship” or “lack of critical maturity.”

97. Include as many sources as humanly possible for every sentence you write. If you make a statement that has less than ten sources backing it up, you’d better rethink your position on the issue.

96. List every source for every possible funder you’ve ever been given a dime from on the bottom of anything you write. An example would be, “This paper was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Center for National Multirationalism, George Bush and the U.S. Treasury (for that $300 tax check refund six years ago), and mom, for lunch money all those hungry years. Thanks, Mom.

95. Destroy your students’ essays, noting every misplaced comma, every sentence fragment, and every clichéd observation. Proceed to make these same mistakes in your own writing, but argue to the death if an editor insists on revision.

94. Haughtily declare anything published in an on-line journal to be suitable for nothing more than the equivalent of dog poop stuck to the bottom of your Vita. Secretly read on-line articles, and steal the ideas for your own print publications.

93. Talk about your own writing as if it were the holy grail of all earthly things. Don’t ever think that someone else might have a valid argument or counterposition or criticism.

92. Cite your previous work whenever possible, even if it is irrelevant to the current subject.

91. Use numbered lists, to show just how many important things you have to say about something.

90. Divide your numbered lists into multiple essays, so that you can generate multiple publications from a single idea. It’s all about the numbers, you know.

See you next time for numbers 89-80…