That Hobbit Lady

So here’s the thing: so far my novel is up to about 110,000 words and I haven’t lost any steam. I’m feeling so encouraged that I can actually do this, actually complete a work of fiction. This has always been a dream of mine, and now I am doing it.

So I started thinking…well, if I can do this, how about something else I’ve always wanted to do? Like finally lose all this extra weight? Success begets success, and the success I am having at writing is convincing me that I can also have success in losing weight. In the last week, with only trying a little, I have probably dropped around five pounds. It’s a start!

So I’m going for a double header: write a novel AND lose weight. I really mean it when I say “Success begets success.” I know I’m not explaining it right, but I think what I’m trying to say is BECAUSE I am writing a novel I now know that it is possible to lose weight. Sort of like, “If we can put a man on the moon…” then we can do anything else we put our minds to. That’s me. I am strong! I am invincible! I can do anything!

Wow! The power of self-confidence!

My 31 days were up on Tuesday, at which point I think I was somewhere around 85,000 words. I wrote a summary ending of the story in order to fulfill the Nano requirements. I will “flesh out” my ending at a later date, add details. In the meantime, I fully consider my Nano excperience has been a success.

The trouble is, I estimate I need another month writing approximately 3,000 words a day (my average thus far) in order to complete my story. But I am not tired yet, so I am going to do it. I’m wondering when the fatigue might set in, if ever.

I am also wondering if I might be one for the record books. In Chris Baty’s chapter about your 4th week, there is mention that only about a half dozen or so people have ever gone through to 50,000 words in one month in LONGHAND. Okay. So I’ve been writing in longhand, and I hit 50,000 words around day 22, and now I’m up to about 89,000. Does that make me one for the record books?

One of my main tenants about life is that no matter what, there is always somebody better off than you, and someone worse off than you. There is someone who does more, and someone who does less. Mathematically it makes sense that only one can be the best, and only one can be the worst, so everyone else by default has to be somewhere in the middle.

Only if I’m understanding what I read correctly, I have far surpassed anything anyone has ever done in Nano before. The one hitch is that it isn’t the official Nano month, so what I did is not being documented by Nano. I wonder if I will repeat this performance when I do my next novel in November. No idea yet what it might be about. Still have too much work to do on the current story.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I am feeling pretty good, pretty accomplished. I really believe that God has given me a gift, and that at long last the time has come to put it to good use. I wasted a lot of years. Nothing that can be done about that now. But from this point on, by the grace of God, I will write.

I’m so smart! Well, really I’m not, because it took me so very long to figure out these things, but at least I did eventually figure them out. In the last several weeks, I have come up with some good “Writer’s Tricks” and I will share them with whoever might be interested, in case you find they could do any good.

1. NOTES. Notes are really important for me. I can’t keep it all in my head, so I have to write down a lot of notes before even getting started. The problem was that even though I could remember that I wrote something down, after a while I didn’t know if I wrote it down in my notes, or in my actual story, so I would have to go back and check. I came up with the idea of doing my notes in a different color ink than my story, this way there is a visual cue to remind me. It’s not foolproof, but I think it will work sometimes.

The best will be when I can finally get a laptop and start composing on a keyboard. Then there will be no chance of mixing up notes with actual text. Right now I’m at 68,000 words and still going strong, and it has recently occurred to me that at some point I am going to have to sit down and transfer all this into a computer. Uuuugh! My typing speed is currently about 60wpm, and I think by the end of this task, I should be up to 75 or 80. Lots of good practice!

2. LOCATION. Don’t get stuck only being able to write in one location. I used to always write sitting up in my bed, and if I wasn’t there, I wasn’t comfortable writing. Get used to writing in public places like Borders or the Broward County Courthouse, in the car under a streetlamp, standing at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. If your personal physical location is not a mental distraction to your writing, then you will be able to write just about anywhere. I don’t write at work, by the way, but I do take notes on little slips of paper throughout the day.

3. CALENDAR. I just came up with this one this morning, and I think it’s brilliant. All stories take place over a period of time, don’t they? My story is taking place over an entire calendar year, so I figured out that I should “plot” the events on an actual calendar. For instance, if it is important in your story that Fourth of July falls on a Sunday, and you also give your character a birthday on May 22, then you need to know that May 22 is a Saturday, not a Monday or a Thursday. Especially if you want your character to be doing something special for their birthday, and if they are at work on a Monday or Thursday, then it’s not very special, is it? Or, if need be, you can always change the date of your character’s birthday (which, of course you can’t do with the Fourth of July).

Not that anyone other than yourself will probably ever look into all this in such great detail, but you yourself will always know whether or not what you wrote makes sense, as far as a real calendar goes. I just picked up an old calendar from 2004 and started using it. I think it’s really going to be able to help me stay organized.

That’s enough for now. Writers, let me know what you think, and if you have any little “Writer’s Tricks” that help you keep your story going in the right direction.

March 9. I’m almost at 25,000 words (only one page away). So…I’m less than a third of the way done on time, but about half done on word count. IF I was writing a 50,000 word novel, which apparently I’m not. I hope Chris Baty’s book gives suggestions on what to do when you reach the end of your month before you reach the end of your novel. Should you keep going at the same pace, or would that eventually become too exhausting? Actually, I don’t find the writing exhausting or troublesome at all. At least not yet.

The most revealing aspect of this experience is learning that you do not have to write it RIGHT, you just need to get it WRITTEN. In other words, don’t be afraid to write sentences that you know are semi-awful, because you can always fix them up later in the editing process. I’n trying to turn off my “inner-editor” and for the most part I am successful, but when I do a read-through I can’t help but make a few corrections here and there. But it’s not really interfering with the creative process.

Another revelation: you don’t have to make everything up, you don’t always need to “re-invent the wheel.” For instance, my main character needed a boss who just happens to be exactly like a boss I once had. So I made my old boss her boss, I even gave him the same name. There was no need to “create” a character, when I looked back into my own life and found that the exact character I needed already existed. Sometimes being creative is knowing when NOT to create (if that makes sense).

And last, but not least, I have been learning the full impact of Chris Baty’s words, which go along with the age-old idea that creativity is “10% inspiration, 90% perspiration” : “The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It’s the lack of a DEADLINE.” Very very powerful tool, that deadline. Don’t leave home without it.