It Came From Outer Space…

I’ve been feeling a lot better lately, which I’ve found is showing itself in story inspiration. I had something happen at work today which hasn’t happened in a while, which was that I started having scenes of part of a story run through my head and I couldn’t get rid of it until I found a notepad and started writing it down. Thankfully the manager on duty was understanding about this, which was probably because it was a slow Sunday and I would write a paragraph and then go switch out the coffee and stock things and come back while the coffee was running and write a bit more, unless a customer came in and then, of course, I would deal with them.

I’d been planning on writing on the story that I have on the go which so far I’ve called ‘Ledger’ as that’s the name of one of the main characters. However this scene was part of a story called ‘Sanctity’ apparently the being and working in a gas station just clicked with a missing part of the story, and I wrote a scene where one of the main characters gets accused of drug abuse and fired from their job at a gas station due to being tormented by an angelic spirit trying to get her to go somewhere she’s Supposed To Be.

I’m very excited. I wrote just over 1500 words today and hope that I can continue on with this. I have a few drafts on different parts of this story and a lot of background information because I had been working on this story for NaNoWriMo in 2007, but then on the 11th of January we found out we had to be out of our apartment by the 31st of December so I stopped working on NaNo to focus on finding a house.

Or should I say that I reached my goal?
As of an hour or so ago my wordcount is at 25212, which means I beat the goal I set of 25000.
I wanted to make sure I did a good stretch of writing today because I work tomorrow from 7 a.m to 3 p.m. so I doubt I’ll get much done tomorrow, if anything at all. I ended at the end of a chapter, and am hoping to work on the story some more at a later date. There’s a lot of work that has to be done on it. A lot of things that I thought would work while planning really don’t work as I’m trying to write things out; and certain elements or rather character perspectives were a lot harder to write from than I thought.

Still I’ve written the most this month since I did this time last year, and that’s saying a lot. A friend of mine has put together a community on LJ for “Nanoing all year round” Nanowrimo_ayr and I just requested to join in the hopes that I can keep going with motivation of fellow writers all year rather than just in November and get some writing done on other stories that I’ve been trying to get to work over the years. I think the first one I might tackle is “The Ledger” which is about a group of D&D players who get to experience what is a lot of players dreams fighting monsters in real life but, of course, it’s nothing like the game and a lot more dangerous.

I keep thinking maybe if I use spring plungers I can suck the ideas out of my brain and redeposit them on paper. I can’t come up with words for that but I can write blog posts. I could cut and paste all of those into my NaNo document, but that’s cheating just as surely as writing “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty —” would be to fill a few pages.

There are lots of cheats on the NaNo forum for ways to pad word count. Ones I remember and have used are just to describe everything in infinite detail, it makes me feel like Tolkein. However, others I’ve seen and not used are to have your cast members start singing “100 Bottles of Beer on the wall” or have them have to explain things over and over again to a character with amnesia, or have someone with a really thick accent who several people can’t understand them and either keeps having to repeat himself or has to keep being translated.

I’ve just broken 24K words, and am stuck, which annoys me because I have less than a thousand to go and I meet my personalized goal. I took a break just now to clean up the kitchen a little hoping that things would come to me a little more, but so far they haven’t so I’m going through and looking at different blogs so I’ll see if something will come to me while I’m writing other things.

I hope those of you out there still working on NaNo aren’t experiencing this sort of writer’s block, and I have to give a shout out to Dethas, Hero and Jackdaw on my NaNo buddy list who have already won! Congratulations!

Nanowrimo, I mean. There are two days to go and I’ve got to 23075 word count. There’s no way I can write 12K per day for the next two days and get to 50000. I’d probably have an easier time losing 5lbs on a quick weight loss diet than that.

However, when I started out I said I wasn’t going to push myself to win, and while I did have a few days of freaking out I’ve come to terms with the fact that what I’ve written is great, if I can get to 25K that will be awesome, because that’s the most I’ve written all year, in fact it’s the most I’ve written since last years NaNo when I did actually win, so that’s awesome. A friend of mine is planning random WriMos for the rest of the year because it’s her first year doing NaNo and I’m hoping to participate because I’d love to keep writing throughout the year, even if I do a few hundred words per day that will be brilliant because I may actually finish some of the stories that I’ve been working on for years.

So, I suppose despite not winning Nano I’m still winning overall because things are coming to me and the cogs are turning, and they’re not going to seize up just because November is over.

I’ve had so little sleep over the past few days I’m sure I’ll be needing industrial strength wrinkle cream soon.

Today when hubbie got up at nine he sent me back to bed to rest and I didn’t see the light of day until almost one. I still feel drained, but I’ve at least been able to do the dishes and get something to eat.

However, I’ve not written anything for a few days, especially not on NaNoWriMo. I need to see if I can write some more, but it’s been difficult to focus with the lack of sleep affecting my creativity.

I’m stalled with NaNoWriMo once again. The past few days I’ve not been feeling so great, and haven’t been up to much in the way of writing, and so other than a few hundred words that I wrote last night I’ve been around 14000 for the past few days, current goals indicate that it’s supposed to be around 28K by now, so I’m halfway behind again and I’m not sure what I’d be doing as far as catch up because I seem to have lost the thread of where I was going somewhere along the line.

I’m trying to skip ahead a little in the hopes of picking things up, perhaps I can talk about one of Kelsey’s alters being interested in carolina designs, something, anything to actually get the words going again. I think part of my problem is that I already know that I’m going to be scrapping half of what’s been written or at least moving it to later in the story to try and salvage it, because the way things are being written right now there’s nothing much in the way of actual action going on compared to what I was hoping for when I originally decided on the plot, some times that’s not a bad thing, but in this case I feel as though things are dragging a lot in certain ways, where I’ve been writing pages about things that aren’t entirely relevant just to keep writing.

I’m having some issues picking up where I left off yesterday, if you see the last portion I wrote you may understand why.

So she lay still and tried not to say anything, because that was playing along with the game and then the game would be over because she had been good and played along, and Maddie, Maddie was really good at the game now, she wasn’t saying anything at all. She was just staring straight ahead, like Snow White when she ate the apple, so Maddie, Maddie would get to go home first, she knew that, but maybe if she kept just as quiet they would both get to go home.
Maddie was the one here trapped here. She could never leave.
It didn’t matter how cold it got, or how much it rained, or if the ground shook. She was still here. She liked to paint, pictures could be distracting, and she wanted to sing, but that would be too much noise and that would make him angry. When he was angry that was going to be bad. He would know if she was telling, or if she was bad. He would know and then she would be in trouble from him and from her family. So she knew that she wasn’t going to be talking about it, maybe she just shouldn’t talk at all, that would make things a lot safer.
But that would make her family angry. Her mother didn’t like when she didn’t say anything, it made her angry and it made her cry and Mom and Dad would fight with each other then and shout about her, and Des would be unhappy too.
Des was always unhappy. She could see him sitting in his room. He didn’t play football or soccer any more. He stayed inside and tried to get her to play Snakes & Ladders with him or Ludo.
Dad would drive her to a special lady who kept telling her that she would listen whenever she wanted to talk, and that was something to not tell Mom either, wasn’t it? Mom would get mad about that. She thought the lady was a waste of time.
Still he had to be there. He was watching, always watching. It wasn’t going to matter where she went. Sometimes she saw him looking through her window, so she would sleep in her closet, curled up in blankets underneath her clothes, everyone would always think to look under the bed, so that wasn’t a safe place to go.
So, she would sleep in the closet, it was warm and snug, and one day he would stop watching and it might be safe to talk again.

I decided that should be the end of the chapter, and I need to decide where to pick up for the next chapter — but that’s tricky. I need a Garmin GPS to navigate my way out of this one. I’ve been trying not to keep pressure on myself…because I know that doesn’t help getting out of a writer’s block but it’s hard with my perfectionist nature to not get hung up on these things.

I forgot to say my current word count for NaNoWriMo is 7296, so this is getting there. I’m about to start the sixth chapter of the story. I’m sure there is a LOT of editing that has to be done but the point of NaNo is to get things out there and turn off the editor it’s just about forging through and writing and writing and writing.

NaNoWriMo has been a struggle for me this year, this is not the first time that it has, but at times the writer’s block feels like a horrendous acne treatment.

I think it’s because a lot of the topic is very familiar to me in a haunting sort of way. It touches very close to real fears and issues that I have, as well as being surreal and fantastic, so when one of those “close to home” scenes is coming up I find myself hesitating to write and having to really zone out and just type in order to get those things out.

Still each day I’m managing to write at least a couple of hundred words, today I’ve written a thousand. These aren’t the average NaNo goals which is just over 1600 words per day, but it’s still writing and I’ve only had one day where I didn’t officially up my word count at all, so these are good things.

I’m behind with NaNoWriMo as I anticipated, but I’m okay with it. I’ve been angsting a bit even though I told myself “just to be writing” was okay, but I’m gradually coming to peace with the fact that I’m behind and just dealing with it and writing what I can when I can.

I’m currently at just over 4500 words, which is the most I’ve written in a while, so that’s the main thing. I’m sure some of it isn’t great, but it’s out and it’s following a plot line and that’s the main thing. Writing’s not easy it’s not like taking christmas photo cards where after a half hour or so your work is done and you just have to mail everything you have to persevere and that’s what I’m doing. If I get stuck I walk away. I ask for pointers and help, such as last night where Kore brilliantly advised me, “If X character is giving you a problem in the scene remove her from it.” and I was able to rattle off another 200 words before calling it a night.

I’ve been working a bit on other things today, blogging, tweaking a site design for someone and am going to write for a bit while I’m waiting for feedback on the design. I’ve got 40 words done so far; but hey 40 words are 40 words ^^ and at least they’re sentences they’re not just word salad.