Beautiful Handcrafted Animals

You know the punchline to that joke, “A good start”.

Whcih is to say I just sat down and put together 1,976 words and even though the NaNoWriMo website isn’t letting me post my wordcount for the night, hell with it, I’m putting it up here.  Edit: I can now enter a word-count.  For the sake of fairness, I’m just using what I’ve written since November started, so 1,976 words.

If we’re counting the “old” Chapter One, which I did some nice bit of editing to before starting this evening, the book is already 5,000 or so words deep. I’m not posting that to be nitpicky; I don’t think it’s going to be so close that I need to steal 3,000 words from myself to make the deadline. I’m either going to blow this out of the water or miss it so completely as to be ludicrous.

One nice thing, which is what I was hoping would happen and which has, at least for tonight, actually happened is that when I got stuck on a particularly annoying passage, I forced myself to push through it. That’s nice, and typically that’s the point at which I’d just say the hell with it and go do something easier. Putting myself on a forced timeline is definitely getting me going.

I can tell without reading back what I’ve written tonight that a lot of stuff is going to have to be extensively edited. That’s cool. The most important thing is that I’m moving from Point A to Point B. I can iron out little details (like the repeated and noticeable use of the word, “nice” and the fact that both the narrator and another character refer to faces being ripped off within a page of one-another) once things are ready to be edited as a whole.

It’s just good to see some new words.

Well, it’s November +43 minutes, which means it’s November here on the East Coast (but not that many other places).

The NaNoWriMo website hasn’t yet updated to let us start entering word counts, excerpts, etc., so I guess, to them, it’s not November just yet.

In preparation (heaven help us all), I installed Leopard on my 15″ Powerbook, the computer I plan to be writing on. The new OS is nice. It does some cute graphical things, but my favorite thing (I haven’t tried the built-in backup feature yet) has got to be the “Spaces” function.

Here’s what Spaces does; you have MS Word on a “desktop” and you have Photoshop in another “desktop”. You can set things to default to (what looks like) one of four different desktops and when they open they’ll automatically load to that desktop and hang out there until you get to them.

You can use a Hot-Corner to activate Spaces, which means no keyboard shortcuts (though you can assign a shortcut to it, of couse).

It seems very nice. I haven’t put Leopard on my desktop machine yet, but I’m looking forward to playing around with it there, as well.

There was further preparation taking place this evening. For one thing, I cleared out a lot of junk on my desk. I’m intending to have the desktop machine either off or with the monitors off, while I’m writing, but I’ve cleared some nice space on the desk for parking the laptop. I went through a MOUNTAIN of paper that is now out for recycling.

I also hooked up Guitar Hero III.

Now, that might seem counter-intuitive for a “focus and get stuff done” sort of atmosphere, but let me tell you, a few songs is great for limbering up the brain and the fingers. I suck, of course, and was only playing around on the lowest setting (i.e. “for people in comas or in the other room.”) but I was able to four-star my way through the first few tiers, including the first boss battle.

Let us not speak of boss battles. Let he who’s bright idea this was be struck down at God’s earliest possible convenience.

The last set I did I got an Encore (you get these at the end of each four-song set) and the song was “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones. I might not have shared that I’m a Stones fan (I am), but in case you were wondering, that’s probably my favorite band playing one of my favorite songs by them.

It was a good note to go out on.

For what it’s worth, sometimes I use the blog as a way to “warm up” before the night’s work. So you might see nonsensical posts pop up in here from time to time. Some of them might be quick, some of them long. Some might be about nothing at all, some might be reflective and some — very rarely — might actually have something to do with the book.

Right now what I’m going to do is get the file set up on the laptop and see what’s going on in there. I wouldn’t expect an outpouring of literary wonder on my first night out, but it’s good practice, I figure, just to open it up and snoop around.

I have requested a number of folks harass me while I’m undertaking this little project, and some of them were nice enough to start harassing me a couple days early. To make this official; you may now begin the busting of my chops. Feel free to use the Comments system on this page (I think you need to register, though I’m not sure) and follow along on this interesting little journey.

I’m not worried about the quantity of words required for “success” inasmuch as I’m concerned for my ability to focus and actually produce. If I can get a “first draft” onto paper in the month of November, I can use December and January for editing and rewriting. “First get it down, then get it right,” is the order of the day. Let’s see how badly I can screw this up.

Have you heard of National Novel Writing Month? No? Okay, then I will explain. Which is to say, I will quote from their own website:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2006, we had over 79,000 participants. Nearly 13,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2007. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!

Now, I don’t know if it’s “cheating”, per se, to participate in NaNoWriMo with a “started” novel, but I figure I can get away with it for a few different reasons. To wit:

1. It’s only “started” insofar as I haven’t deleted this latest opening chapter, yet, and
2. The finished novel should be about 75,000 to 90,000 words, when all’s said and done. NaNoWriMo only asks for a 50,000 word book. Also,
3. There’s no cash prize, or anything, so even if I am “cheating”, the only person I’m hurting is myself. And that I’m alright with (see also: my life).

Okay, so with that out of the way, I am, obviously, participating in this funky event. I even have a page you can visit to “check out my status” or, “see how badly I’m slacking.” Either way works, really.

Here is the link:

My NaNoWriMo Page

Essentially, I’m using this as an excuse to kick-start myself. 50,000 words in a month is, believe it or not, not an unrealistic goal for me, so long as I’m actually writing. I will do my damndest to get my words in each night. To hit 50,000 in ~30 days, I’ll need, obviously, about 2,000 words a night. Usually I work towards ~1,000 words as a minimum for an evening’s writing, but honestly, when I’m cranking, I can get 5,000 words or more in a night.

I’m an animal.

So, I will be doing this. I will be posting word counts at the NaNoWriMo site and I will be posting updates in this blog. My goal is not to produce a “finished” book here, but rather to get through the first draft of Beautiful Handcrafted Animals. If I actually stick to this (I really do intend to), I might have to knock off the last chapter or three in December, but then I can look forward to editing the book over Christmas.

Not too bad.

Feel free to post here or (if there’s a tool for it — I’m not sure) over at the NaNoWriMo site. Allegedly, there’s a place for uploading an except, so I might toss some stuff up, once I have it. It’s supposed to be a fun thing and I figure, like I said up top, it’s a good excuse for me to make myself line some words up, one after the other, in a unique sort of fashion so the sentence that form are amusing, moving, maybe a little scary, and above all, interesting.

I just deleted 184 spam messages in the “comments” for some older posts.

I don’t want to get nailed, should someone be reading (ha) this blog from work, but I really have to wonder just who these guys think they’re selling pills, enlargements, weight-loss and the like to by filling my comments with their garbage.

Guys, I don’t even read this stuff. Trust me, NOBODY else is either.

(Yes, I know these are bots, and it’s automatic, and it doesn’t actually cost anything for them to “comment” but that doesn’t make it any less sad that this site is part of someone’s idiotic strategy for marketing pills and stuff. Really, they could just shout ads from a moving car and have a better chance of making a sale)

I was in a meeting this morning with a guy . . . listen, he was fifty, maybe sixty if he was a day. His face was not that of a young man.

And that’s okay. Good for you, dude. He certainly wasn’t “old” in any negative sense of the word. He was just a guy sitting in a construction meeting.

With what HAD to be a wig of flowing red hair.

Down past his shoulders.

To the small of his back.

The top was a freaking hair helmet that Frankie Avalon would give his left nut for. I’m telling you, this guy didn’t need a hardhat to go into the construction zone. He could spend all day at the batting range and not have to worry about hat-head. If Gary Busey had a hairpiece like that his whole life woulda been different.

But I digress.

Hey, I don’t know the full story. Other than laughing, momentarily, at one of my jokes (it was a business meeting, so no, it wasn’t the one about the hooker with the dysentery) we didn’t exchange even business cards. Maybe he’s recovering from cancer, or maybe he’s been bald since he was ten.

But dude, there’s a hairpiece that says, “hi, I am a dignified businessman here to assist you with your project. Please pay me a lot of money and trust the future of your company — at least this piece of it — to my capable hands,” and there’s a hairpiece that says, “squeeze my nose and I’ll do a little dance. You can hit me in the face with a pie and my pants will fall down. That, or I’ll go get one of those awesome double-guitars and a pair of tight, spandex pants and rock the amphitheater.”

I’m not saying you can’t have fun with a wig. You can. Maybe you should.

But there’s “having fun” and “playing dressup” and I’m saying he was doing the latter.

Or hey, maybe it was his real hair. Stranger things, after all, have happened, eh?

I have the theme music from Baywatch stuck in my head (and now, so do you) and I have no idea why.

I never watched Baywatch, which is to say, I never watched it beyond flipping channels and pausing for an inevitable running-on-the-beach-scene, sighing contentedly and then moving on with my life.

I suspect I am not alone in this.