It may be crazy but...

The challenge: To write 18,000 words in two days.

Possible? Yes.

Likely? Uncertain.

History:

1. This NaNoWriMo started out relatively sluggish for me. I managed to post my daily word count and stay ahead of the daily goal, but didn’t have any banner word count days.

2. Previous NaNoWriMos have been much easier to complete. (I credit this to better outlining and preparation for those years. After all, this is the first November in which I have moved in addition to NaNoWriMo.

3. In 2008 I finished 50,000 words in only ten days.

4. On occasion I have managed a 10,000 or more word day during NaNoWriMo.

Obstacles:

1. Work. Yes, NaNoWriMo is work in a sense, but I mean the kind of work that someone else values enough to pay you to do. I can’t drop that just because I’m behind on NaNoWriMo. I have finished today’s work, but some precious hours tomorrow will inevitably be eaten up by work.

2. Moving. Right now my apartment looks like someone is in the process of building a really cool fort. Or has a compulsion to hoard cardboard. Either way, there is a constant temptation to unpack and organize. Even if I resist the temptation, the piles of boxes make it harder to move around the apartment, so trips to the kitchen for food and bathroom breaks will necessarily take longer than they other would.

3. Writers group. Ah, the irony! But tomorrow I must attend a meeting of the Bethlehem Writers Group at 7 o’clock. These meetings generally go until 10, so that means I will use 3 hours of precious writing time right at the end of November 30^th.

Analysis: 18,000 words is a possibility, but I need a HUGE word count today to make it possible to finish tomorrow while still meeting my other obligations.

Wish me luck, I’ll check in later.

Home for the Holiday

What. A. Week.

Or perhaps I should say, “What a fortnight.”

The last two weeks have been filled with travel, family, Thanksgiving, and a book signing at the Bethlehem Visitors Center. And, if that wasn’t enough, my husband and I also searched for, found, and moved into our new apartment.

The move is something we had been planning and working toward for several months (since my husband started working over an hour from home without traffic), but it still happened very quickly. In fact, two weeks ago today, we hadn’t even seen this apartment.

But we saw it, and we liked it, and we decided to move in before Thanksgiving. Fortunately, we were not planning on cooking our own Thanksgiving dinner because not only was our apartment full of boxes for the holiday, but I was also under the impression that our oven didn’t work.

I say, "Under the impression," because as it turns out a gas oven needs to be left on for a while before the flame ignites. Who knew? Meanwhile, I was afraid to leave the oven on for more than a few seconds without a flame because I thought it would fill the apartment with gas. This means that the reason the oven wasn't working was because I kept turning it off. I felt a little silly when the oven repair involved nothing more than turning on the oven, but, either way, I'm glad the apartment didn't explode.

Moving is an educational experience.

For example, we also learned the down side of purchasing bookcases for under $40. It seems that while the cases do a decent job of holding books, and they’re fairly easy to assemble, they don’t handle moving well. We started out with three identical bookcases, but one fell apart as we moved it, and another fell apart as we filled it with books, so now we’re down to one-- which isn’t going to cut it because my husband and I have A LOT of books. Go figure.

Anyway, it’s the end of the weekend, and the oven works, and the books are in piles around the broken bookshelf, and the apartment is full of boxes and… it’s November.

Which means it’s still NaNoWriMo.

And I am horribly horribly behind, because while these last two weeks were full of family, and moving, and friends, and boxes, and learning how to use my oven, they were not full of NaNoWriMo.

At just over 32,000 words, and with only two days to go, my chances of completing the challenge this year seem slim, but, you know what? I’m going to give it a shot. After all, can’t the boxes and books wait another two days?

Can’t they?

NaNoDolDrums

NaNoWriMo this year has felt kind of draggy. I think it may have something to do with all of the traveling I've been doing recently. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I traveled from Portland to Pennsylvania on November first, which not only caused me to lose three hours, it also sort of threw me off my game. Either that, or the trip to Portland in the first place derailed me. Or perhaps the trip to Portland right after spending a week visiting my inlaws. Or perhaps all of the above.

In any case, today was the first day I felt truly back into my routine. My hour on the elliptical was energizing rather than exhausting, and I finally had a decent word count day on my NaNoNovel. Unfortunately, I'll be gone over the weekend, so I may lose some ground again. At least I'll be staying in the same timezone this time.

Feeling draggy during NaNoWriMo is kind of a new feeling for me. This is my fifth year doing NaNoWriMo and thus far I've won every year. My first year of NaNoWriMo I did it on the spur of the moment. I'd heard of NaNoWriMo for about a week before November 1st, and thought it sounded... well... kinda crazy! I mean, 50,000 words in 30 days sounds like A LOT, right? But I had a story idea I'd been kicking around for a few years, so I signed on to NaNoWriMo and figured I'd give it a shot.

Well, let me tell you, when you've kicked a story around in your head for enough years, it can come out pretty easily during NaNoWriMo. I reached 50K in a couple of weeks, so I challenged myself to actually finish the first draft of that story before the end of November. I succeeded, writing over 100,000 words by the end of the month. Now, that NaNoNovel kind of makes me cringe when I read it now, but I figure if I let it kick around in my head for a few more years, it will be ripe for editing.

Years two and three of my NaNoWriMo experience, I worked on the same novel. Yes, I know *gasp* *tisk* *oh the horror!* But the two NaNoWriMos combined with a March Madness writing challenge from the Bethlehem Writers Group helped me finish the manuscript I'm in the process of editing now. It was totally worth being a NaNoRebel for my third NaNoYear.

Year four I spent October preparing one novel only to decide on NaNoEve that I would work on a different story. NaNoWriMo success truly does depend on following your bliss to a certain extent. As hard as it is to write a story you're not inspired to write, it's even harder to do it in a month. That year one of my characters took over the story. She went off on her own personal tangent, and took my novel with it. This is another story I intend to return to, but I think I need to keep her in "time out" and make her stand in the corner a bit longer, at least until she understands why what she did was wrong. Or I convince her to move to a different story where all of her radical zaniness will be more appropriate, and appreciated.

But all four years, despite varying levels of inspiration, preparation, and contemplation I've been able to fly through my 50,000 words pretty quickly. In fact, in year three I finished in ten days! This year just hasn't been as easy. I like my characters, but I lost my outline when my phone rebooted--never again will I outline a story on Color Notes-- so I don't remember all of the nifty twists and turns that made the story really pop. I suppose if I weren't living day-to-day with this novel, struggling to get my 1,667 words before midnight, that I would be able to really brainstorm this story and give myself a road map to December.

Well, I'll be traveling this weekend, so perhaps during the long car trip I'll have an opportunity to think... and write another 5,000 words.

Wish me luck!

Oh, and to join in the fun, be sure to check out www.nanowrimo.org

Procrastination

I should be working on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or editing my manuscript, so obviously here I am posting to my blog.

Not that a post isn’t long overdue. I don’t even want to look to see when my last post was. If it’s any consolation, it’s not that I forgot you, it’s just that this was the Autumn of Perpetual Busyness. If it makes you feel any better, sometime in the middle of September I made a new year’s resolution to blog more in 2011. This resolution has the benefit of not kicking in until January first, which was the only way I could justify such resolve with such a busy schedule.

Things are freeing up a bit now. I have NaNoWriMo, which I WILL blog about later, and Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas and book signings in December, all in addition to the usual requirements of work and family but still the remainder of the year does promise to be somewhat less hectic. Or at least I can hope.

One reason I was busy of late was that I recently attended the annual general meeting of JASNA, the Jane Austen Society of North America. JASNA is a delightful organization that brings together lovers of Jane Austen and her work, which really includes a vast variety of people. I mean, we have people from all faiths, and political backgrounds, those who love Jane as an authoress of great literature, and those who love her as the inspiration behind Clueless. Jane brings us all together. No matter how different you may be from the other conference attendees, you know for sure you have something in common. You have to love it.

Most of the AGM is dedicated to the study and discussion of Jane Austen and her writings. This year’s theme was Northanger Abby, and I got to attend sessions on such interesting topics as entailment, rules of the assembly, and the importance of Henry Tilney’s role as a clergyman. It always amazes me how many different insights scholars and fans have into Miss Austen’s work. It is nearly impossible to attend an AGM without learning something new. (Indeed, I wonder if Jane would not learn something new about her own work, were she to attend.)

In addition to the congenial gathering of people, and the informative talks and sessions, I also love the AGM for the ball which takes place on Saturday night. Many of the attendees dress up in Regency costumes, and we all dance English country dances (which makes us all feel as though we are Elizabeth Bennet, or Emma, or, I suppose, Mr. Darcy). The dances can get a bit chaotic, with so many novices dancing in one place, but everyone is there to have a good time, and that makes all the difference.

On Sunday morning, I was sad to see the AGM come to an end, but we got such exciting previews of future AGM’s that it was impossible to be entirely forlorn.

But, for now, I must turn my thoughts forward to the remainder of 2010. If I write 50,000 words this November (in a single, new, novel) I will continue my “winning” streak for the fifth year. So far I am on track. Then will come Christmas, then new years, then… gulp. But I am resolved not to abandon you for so long again. In the words of Jane Austen if "I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am."