NaNoWriMo Day 4

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

The woman I’m having dinner with wanted to do a “swap”–her art work for my fiction, and so I dug up a chapter of my old novel to share with her. One chapter, 8119 words. Jeez. That was before I learned that my writing was better when I cut any “full draft” down 25-30%. And also before I had mastered the art of writing descriptive detail. I was still in over-doing it mode back then to compensate for my earlier under-doing it instincts.

Anyway!

New words: 1417
Total words: 6718
Goal: 50,000
Percentage: 13.4%

Quote-worth snippet: nothing worth noting. I was just trying to finish my intro descriptive blurbs, and kind of rushing through them at that.

nano notes

NaNoWriMo Day 2

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 6 Comments

New words: 2249
Total words: 3250
Goal: 50,000
Percentage: 6.5%

Quote-worth snippet:

Connor flies out, yelling and flailing, then –

SMACK!

Is brought to a halt by something HARD he hits head-first.

TIGHT SHOT – He slumps flat, face-down on a dirt-covered plank of wood. His body is still for a moment. Finally, he shifts slightly and groans.

CONNOR
(muffled)
Ow.

Amazing how a little sleep (not to mention totally changing your tactics) can effect your effectiveness!

I will write no sentence before its time!

nano notes

Another problem with auto-word counts

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 3 Comments

INT. MY APARTMENT – AFTERNOON

If…you…use…periods…as…ellipses…between…words…without…a…space…it…counts…those…words…
as…one…word.

You… have… to… break… them… up… with… spaces… to… get… a… proper… word… count.

But–double–dashes–without–spaces–are–O.K.

Unless – there – is – one – of – them – with – two – spaces – on – either – side, in – which – case, the – dash – is – itself – counted – as – a – word.

Just saving the world…I think

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 11 Comments

Finally got done season 2 of “Lost” last night and can start watching my season 3 tapes and get caught up with everyone else.

Damn, this show is written by Whacked Existentialists smoking of the crack, no? I love it. Just when you think it can’t get more Absurd and Meaningless*, they throw a little reality at you just to keep you running the hamster wheel.

This is just gonna be how it is with me and TV, I think. I can’t be bothered trolling through all the new shows waiting to see what’s worth watching and what isn’t going to be cancelled. I’ll just let all of *you* do that, make recs, then catch the good ones on DVD a year later. ‘Cause of course I have to watch a show from the beginning and in proper order. Seeing a story unfold the way it was intended is Important.

I get caught up eventually, assuming I remember to set my VCR.

*Totally Existentialist technical terms, not criticisms.

ETA: watched the opening scene of season 3, ep 1. Forgot to add above that this show also threads in a healthy dose of Surrealism as well. Fun, fun!

More NaNowhinging

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 15 Comments

T-minus ten days and counting until Nov. 1st (which reminds me–buy birthday card for Mom!) I don’t think I’ve ever spent this amount of time outlining something before I just gave up and started writing it in my life. Well, maybe back in my teen years when I had this urge to write and nothing to say. Back then, all I did was outline until I got bored with whatever my story idea was (because there was no passion behind it) and tucked the half-finished outline in a bottom drawer.

Actually, like scrollgirl, I am writing a little bit of text of my NaNo “novel.” OK, probably a lot of text, but I’m not counting words, and it’s mostly scribblings of dialogue. Dialogue is always what I write in the “first pass” through the text of my new episodes. It serves as a kind of “skeleton” of a scripted scene and therefore is “practically part of the outline anyway.”

What I’ve figured out so far as a result of this outlining:

NaNo notes

Ways in which word counts are a pain in the ass

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 13 Comments

I just thought I’d get all my NaNo bitching done *before* NaNo starts, heh.

Question 1: How do you do a word count if the text of your story is scattered around in a million little files on your hard drive, *and* intermixed with your outline in any particular file, which doesn’t itself contribute to the actual word count? I mean, I guess you could just count the outline as well, but if you then erase or move the outline, your word count goes down because it was artificially inflated in the first place.

Question 2: How do you do a word count if you’re like me, and you have five versions of the same sentence all in a row because you haven’t decided which version you like best yet?

Do I really have such a different writing process than the rest of the human race, or is any of this making sense?

Ways in which I’m breaking the NaNo rules

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

(1) Fan fic instead of original fic. I wish it were otherwise, but I honestly got nothin’ at the moment. No plot? Big problem!

(2) I’m only working on three (possibly four) chapters of my “novel” instead of trying to belt out an entire rough draft.

(3) The “novel” in question? Already started. Two years ago.

(4) It’s in screenplay format.

(5) I already have bits and pieces of the new material written. In the official NaNo rules, it says you have to start on Nov 1. You can prepare before hand by, for example, making up an outline, but the actual text can’t be written until Nov 1. Um…hello? I don’t know how anyone else works, but my brain writes when it writes. Any time I am working on an outline, snippets of text enter my brain unbidden. Of course I’m going to write them down!

(6) I may or may not strive for 50,000 words. Do you *know* how many episodes of TD that is? 3.35293952. Approximately. I’m going to write three episode first drafts, and since I overwrite everything, those should come in together well over 50,000.

Can you tell I’d like to do NaNo by the rules and just can’t?