NaNo Dud Confession

If you're wondering what happened with NaNoWriMo this year, it was a dud. For nine days I valiantly slogged through to the word count goal, and I never once, with any of those 10K+ words, got anywhere close to a glimpse of a drop of inspiration.

On Nov. 10 I woke up and thought:

1) If this write-til-you-have-a-breakthrough-and-gain-momentum thing were going to work for me this time around something should have happened by now,

and

2) I've been at this for nine days and am not having any fun at all, so why the frack am I putting myself through this?

Continuing to turn creative writing into what felt like a horrible punishment seemed like a waste of time I could be spending more pleasantly reading, or sewing, or working on one of the many in-progress non-fiction projects on my list, or catching up on the endless backlog of bookkeeping, or maybe even doing some laundry.

So, I bailed, feeling grateful for once that I am still a "pre-published" novelist and don't have an editor breathing down my neck or a contract that forces me to write to someone else's schedule.

I do believe there's a lot to be said for persisting in the face of writer's block, but I wasn't so much blocked on a work in progress as utterly and completely uninspired to do any kind of creative writing at all. Maybe all the stars were misaligned in my chart. Maybe it was the other distractions. Whatever is was, creative effort has to come from some kind of inspiration, and when inspiration is lacking the way to woo it back is to go do something else, preferably involving a good dose of fresh air and moderate exercise.

So, no NaNovel produced this year. But I'm back to my morning Pilates practice (which I had somehow dropped for about two years) and I'm going for walks again now that a bout of rainy weather has eased up, and those are both good things.

I do want to work on a new novel. Really, I do. I can feel that itch. But if one thing is clear from this failed NaNo effort, it's that the story I was trying to write isn't what I should be working on right now. There's another story out there, waiting for me to find my way to it. When I do, I'm gonna have my own private WaiNoWriMo here on Wainaku St. It's not gonna be this month, but maybe in January???

Falling Behind

One week in (okay, it's 11/09, but I'm rouding down and calling it a week) with NaNo and I am falling behind: have lurched past the 10K mark word-count-wise, but am in dire need of inspiration and ideas. Still hoping to slug it out with the word count and see what pops up during the process, but even if I hit 50K it sure isn't gonna look anything like a novel. I just don't seem to be in the groove this year, and am now distracted by news from home about a health challenge that has taken a deeply scary turn for the worse. It's hard to feel creative with that lurking in the background. Perhaps if I had a plot worked out I could focus on a specific scene and write my way into not thinking about the bad stuff. But staring at a blank page, feeling sad and worried... nuh uh, not working out so well today.

Ready, set, go!

Nov. 1, and NaNoWriMo begins again. I'm already procrastinating working up a giddy enthusiasm as I tank up the caffeine reservoir. 7:25 am here in Hawaii, which means most of the rest of the world has cranked out their first day's word count by now. I don't mind starting out "behind" because on 11/30 I will have (apparent, though not actual) extra hours to finish. My great plans to have some kind of story line in place by now fizzled and are lying in a dessicated heap by the side of the road somewhere. I do, however, have a premise, and I did finally manage, over the past couple of days, to get curtains made and up in my office. This may sound like a low priority, but with seasonal sun-shift southward, glare has become a problem here on my trusty computer screen. The eye strain and splitting headaches that have started to crop up after a long morning at the desk will not help with the NaNo thing (or any other desk-related thing), so taking a couple days to get "make curtains" off my to do list was worth it.

I'm going to go pound out my day 1 word count now, starting with a killer first sentence.

Ants in my pants

I'm getting Kindle: whooot!

And it's so bugging me that, having convinced myself and DH that it will be a useful (deductible!) device for ourselves and our business, and having worked up enthusiasm for the "new book in 60 seconds" thing, I now have to WAIT for it to ship! (Word to the wise: don't order something you want now over a holiday weekend, unless it's an ebook and you already have the reader).

It will be late in the week, or later, before my new toy lands in my mailbox here in Hawaii. I feel like a little kid staring at the Christmas gifts under the tree, with a week to go before the big day. Ogling an emailed order confirmation is not quite as much fun as shaking a nicely wrapped gift box, but at least I get to browse the Kindle store, think about which books I want first, and contemplate what level of weekly/monthly ebook indulgence our budget will support.

Purchase #1 is going to be Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White because it's been over 10 years since I last read it and I'm overdue for a repeat visit. I have a paper copy, purchased at Borders a week ago with said overdue reread in mind, but the print is ludicrously tiny, and the paper quality so thin and awful, that I've set it aside as incompatible with my middle-aged eyes. Which is another reason DH and I decided to go for the Kindle: adjustible font size.

Not-so-subconscious

I had a dreamlet, just before waking this morning, that I was reading a [blog post? tweet? email? Facebook update? - don't know, doesn't matter] from someone crowing about her delightful first day of NaNoWriMo, and how she was thrilled to have so quickly cranked out an awesome word count. In my dream I realized it was already Nov. 1, and National Novel Writing Month had begun without me. Not only had I forgotten to get started, I still had no idea what I was going to write.

Gee, you think maybe my not-so-subconscious was delivering a wee kick to the patootie?

What a relief to wake up and realize it's not yet October, and I still have a month left to gain some glimmer of an idea for where I want to take this next novel.

And I did feel comforted when my sister pointed out that dreaming I'm slow to get started is a lot better than dreaming it's Nov. 30 already and I'd missed the whole thing...

What I Did This Summer

You already know that I moved. That was the big time-energy-money-attention monster that ate the first part of the summer. Since my last post I also:

~ Caught up on many bookkeeping/admin tasks. Much of my time goes to that, but it's not really worth mentioning here. Don't know why I've even typed this much about it.

~ Ate too many Hurricane Cookies, leading to thrice-weekly morning workouts with Jillian.

~ Renamed my "pre-published" novel: now "Lethal Blossom." Too soon to say how well that name will stick, but I'm liking it well enough.

~ Consulted my wonderful astrologer about an auspicious day to send out query letters to my most-desired agents list: turned out to be Aug. 17 at 10am, so I twiddled my thumbs and tweaked and retweaked and retweaked my letter/synopsis until I had to just stop looking at it.

~ Sent out query letters/etc. to said target agents on most-auspicious time/date, most by email, a few by snail post

~ Got three top-speed replies back: "Sorry, we're so busy with our current clients we don't look at submissions unless they've been blessed by the Pope, Stephen King, or Janet Evanovich." Such is life. I don't need 10 agents fighting over me, just one who really likes my stuff. Seven remain unheard from as of this writing, so that's still wide open.

~ Sent off for an entry form for the 2010 "Malice Domestic" competition. If no agent is delerious with excitement about my potential by Oct. 1, I'll give that a go.

~ Finally got around to joining Facebook.

~ Retrieved and reviewed my NaNoWriMo novel from 2005 -- the one that got set aside so I could write what is now "Lethal Blossom" (LB1)to which NaNovel '05 is the sequel. Much has changed during the writing of LB1, and much of NaNovel '05 is headed for a deadly encounter with the delete key. Fingers crossed there's enough left to give me a jump-start on a complete draft of the next one (working title "Lucky Bamboo" - LB2).

~ Got a Wordpress theme to use for my future author site. Don't have much of a clue yet what to do with it, but I'll be playing with that this fall when I need a break from working on LB2.

~ Downloaded a bunch of photos from Fotolia, for potential Wordpress site use.

~ Looked for free, interesting fonts online to use for Wordpress banner, maybe some headline graphics. Got as far as AbstractFonts, which is totally groovy, and only downloaded 37 of the 1019 in the "handwriting" category, which I think counts as remarkable restraint. It's trickier than you might think to find a font that's attractive and readable while also whispering "humorous mystery." Horror novelists have all the luck, as there are many fantabulous fonts that shriek of murder, mayhem, and madness. Not right for my stuff, though.

~ Oh, yeah. I also read a lot, as usual. And did some sewing.

Next up:

~ Try to remember how to install fonts so my font manager will recognize they're on the system.

~ Come up with some kind of a plot for LB2 before the end of October, in time for...

~ NaNoWriMo 2009. I may churn out nothing more than 50-60,000 (or more) words of drivel (it's happened before), but the group write-til-you-drop experience is too much fun to pass up.

Onward...

Settling in at the new place

I'm never, ever moving again.

I mean it. I'm done with the whole purge/pack/clean/schlep/collapse-and-look-at-the-mess/unpack drama. Five moves in the past ten years, three of those in past barely-more-than-three years, and I've had enough.

Good thing we're finally in a house we love.
Too bad it's a rental.

The silver lining: owner says he's open to selling to us should we ever decide we want to buy it. I'm ready to buy it today, if that would mean I didn't have to move again for a while. Not sure where the buckaroos will magically materialize from to support that little fantasy, but I'm deteremined this one is gonna be MINE some day.

It has to be. I've been affirming for two years now that "the next house we move into, we're going to buy." Clever me: I had in mind some kind of a rent now-buy later plan, as that's all our finances will stretch to a the present moment. And that's what I got.

Thing is, I wasn't actively looking for it. We'd talked early in the year about whether or not to renew our lease at the old place when it expired at the end of May, and had decided that moving was waaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a hassle (and expense) to be worth leaving the very nice, big, comfy house by the water we were already in. So, decision made: we'd stay put.

Then one day my Inner Voice spoke up out of the blue and said, "Go see what's on Craig's List." So I did. And there, in the Hilo rental listings, was a photo of our dream house. Seriously. The house DH and I have been talking about having "someday": north side of town, great deck, ocean view, etc., etc. It was all there.

"Honey," I said, "come look at this house on Craig's list."
"Why are you looking at Craig's List?" he complained. "We decided we aren't going to move this year."
"I know, but come look at these photos."
"Holy Sh*t," he said, looking, "that's our Dream House."

He's as big a believer as I am in listening to your inner voice, so we contacted the owner and after months (literally) of nailing down the details (much waiting on previous tenant to schedule his move-out), it all worked out beautifully and with perfect timing, and we're finally in. [I was gonna insert a photo of the view here, but realized they're all on hubbie's hard drive... oops.]

My estimate (based on way too much prior experience) that it would take a full two months to prep, move, and recover is turning out to be accurate. I haven't blogged, I haven't written, I have done barely more than nothing about the agent hunt, I've hardly even cooked, I have a pile of aging admin/bookkeeping tasks to do that's about a foot high and getting taller... but I have a new home office with a view of Hilo Bay and the ocean that takes my breath away.

There's some time-sensitive paper-pushing to be done (semi-annual General Excise/Use Tax filing, fun things like that), and a ton and a half of mental clutter to clear away, but finally, at last, I feel settled in.

So long as I don't think about the fact that it's July 1 and that means the year is half over (which could lead to panic attacks), I'm good to go.

Invisible Progress

Novelling has been the back burner for most of the past month, what with visiting family and our impending move (and all the stuff I'm supposed to be staying on top of, like doing my part to sustain our self-employed status). Getting to a signed lease for the next house has taken forever and a day, but has finally been achieved, and now I'm checking the calendar and thinking, "okay, not too soon to start packing."

In the meantime I've taken the tweaks and polishes as far as they will go without derailing my sanity, and in between all the other tasks that occupy my days I've pulled together a pretty darned good (I hope) query letter and synopsis and have embarked on agent research. Plan is to finalize the "most desired" list by the end of May and send out the first round of queries in early June, right before we move. I'd do it sooner, but Mercury is retrograde and there aren't any good dates between now and then for initiating important things like a novelling career (or a move to a new house).

Chapter Breaks

Chunking the text -- or, rather, re-chunking -- into optimal chapters is proving to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. I've done one pass, but suspect I may have gone too far: there are now 52 chapters instead of 35. That feels like too many. Started out just aiming to fix a couple of the original 35 that felt too long, not in terms of draggy scenes (I've fixed/trimmed those to the best of my current ability, although there's always the possibility I will find more to cut if I look at it again in, say, a week), but in how many pages are flipped before that refreshing half-page of white space. Perhaps I got a little carried away?

Wish there were some way to get a bird's eye view of the entire thing without completely losing legible text. Don't think there's any kind of computer function or human eye -- or brain -- capable of that.

Haven't made a rock-solid decision yet about the chapters, a reliable sign I'll have another go at it at whatever point I can face the task again. Could be soon, 'cause the only other thing I really need to do is get a frickin' synopsis done. Ugh. Don't know precisely what it is about even thinking about synopsizing that hits the procrastinate button so firmly. It's been on the list for months, and I still haven't squirmed butt into chair to get it done.

Well, I did play around with it a bit yesterday, from my narrator's point of view. Just to see if that would help me get into it. The result (which only got halfway through the story) could be a fun addition to my author webpage, if/when I ever get around to doing something about that, but is not useful for a submission packet.

On the progress front, I have produced a generic query letter ready to be customized for whichever agents end up on my "most desired" list, and a somewhat playful author bio in support of my non-fiction credentials. I think I'm happy with 'em, but they're still fresh. There's a chance I'll cringe when I look at them again after they've aged a few days, and realize they're awful.

There and back again

The conference was great. We got there without sliding off the road, and are now back home again. (Turns out there were some debris-related delays on Saturday afternoon, so points to us for lounging at home rather than getting stuck on the road.)

Highpoints of the event were:

1) Walking into every session room and finding it full of mostly middle-aged (or older) attendees, almost universally gray-haired, glasses-wearing, and more pudgy than not, most with their nose in a book as they waited for things to get rolling. Ahhhh, kindred spirits! I felt right at home.

2) Meeting Donna Andrews and Hallie Ephron and making new friends Sunny Frazier (Fools Rush In) and Cindy Sample (Dying for a Date) and Debra Purdy Kong (Taxed to Death, Fatal Encryption).

3) Meeting everyone else I had the chance to chat with, of both the author and fan variety.

4) Going way, way, way over budget in the bookstore (and that's on top of all the freebies). I won't be wanting for anything to read for a very long time.

5) Dinner with my beloved at Roy's. Every time we eat there we set a new personal record for how much we've spent on dinner for two, and it's always worth it.

6) Upgrading to an ocean-view room.

7) Receiving lots of compliments on my wardrobe. Even nicer than usual because I'd made those things myself.

Toastmaster Lee Goldberg (of Monk fame) was consistently hilarious, and much fuss was made over Guest of Honor Barry Eisler, widely considered hot and handsome, but really it's all about the hair. My husband meant to get a haircut pre-conference, but forgot, which I think put him in BE territory in the sexy-shaggy-locks department. I admit I'm biased.

Being the at-best-half-assed blogger that I am, I didn't take any photos.
Sorry.

Rain delay

I thought I'd be halfway to the Left Coast Crime conference in Waikoloa right now, but 18 hours of heavy rain have made the northern route (2 hour drive) iffy.

It's a spectacular drive in good weather, and can be a hellacious one when it rains like this. The belt highway curves through three huge gulches with practically vertical sides, and when the ground's saturated rocks and debris start coming down.

flickr.com

At 1 pm Civil defense said the road is technically still open (i.e., yes, there are rocks and debris landing in the road but not so much, yet, that they're not letting anyone through). Nevertheless, drivers are cautioned to stay off the road if they have that option.

Being halfway to Waikoloa would be great. Getting stuck halfway to Waikoloa would be a major pain.

Last time we drove in conditions like this it was Waikoloa to Hilo and a white-knuckler most of the way. We were lucky: the road wasn't closed by rock-fall until 30 minutes after we got through. Yeah, downtown Hilo was flooded when we got here, but that happens. At least in town you can detour around it. On many stretches of the the belt road your only choices are to sit there till the road is cleared (which can be an hour, or several hours, or many hours) or turn around and hope the road behind you is still open.

The other option is the southern route, but that's about a 4-hour drive in good conditions and it's raining just as hard (maybe harder) down there. So the hell with it. We'll go tomorrow. Or even Monday.

Of course, as soon as I'd alerted the hotel and our neighbs (bringing in mail, paper) to our change in plans, the rain let up here in Hilo. But I've been keeping my eye on the radar and it's still coming down strong on both the north and south ends of the island. I am truly glad not to be driving through this:

Which is wimpy of me, I guess, 'cause it was a lot worse a couple of hours ago. For Hawaii rain, not so bad.

* * * * *

Update: Rain lull was temporary, although now it's just a steady rain, not a roof-pounder. A flood advisory for East Hawaii (that's Hilo-side) was issued this afternoon, no saying when it will be lifted.

I've had some time on my hands this afternoon, whiled it away Googling Hilo rainfall and comparing real-rime radar images. One bit of trivia I've learned is that average March rainfall for Hilo is 14.35". We've had almost 9" in the last 24 hours, and it's not expected to stop anytime soon. Gosh I love the Internet! I can deal with rain delays, it's the thunderstorms and power outtages that take me offline that are hardest on the psyche.

If you think 9" of rain in 24 hours is a lot, keep in mind that Hilo "has long been recognized as the wettest population center in the US" (found that quote on a tourist info site, gee, they might want to downplay that!). Our average annual rainfall is a measly 129" or so (only about 3.5 times Seattle's 36"), but we had to hit 211" in one year a while back to set a record.

And consider this:

11/02/2000: "According to the National Weather Service, the massive storm set a record in Hilo where 27.83 inches of rain fell at the airport in the 24-hour period ending at 11 a.m. Thursday. The previous record for a 24-hour period was 22.30 inches set in 1979. If Hilo wasn't wet enough, the most rainfall happened over Kapapala Ranch in north Ka'u. Between 2 p.m. Wednesday and 2 p.m. Thursday the recorded rainfall totalled of 36.68 inches. "

Geeze, I hope we don't get that much!

Good news is the west side of the island should be a bit drier tomorrow. As of 7pm, any hopes for safe driving of the northern route tomorrow are out the window, so we may take the long way 'round. Hoping for a morning departure ("isolated showers") before things pick up again in the afternoon ("scattered showers" expected).

Secret confession of the day: I really don't mind missing some of the conference. This shindig goes on for 4-1/2 days, which, in my experience, is a at least one day longer than my conference stamina. Cutting that down to size is a fine idea. I am sorry to miss "Desserts to Die For" this evening though (one of my other blog personas is Cake Junkie: I take desserts seriously, gleefully, and frequently). Especially after spending an extra $30 so hubbie could indulge, too. I guess I owe him a cake. If we don't go until Monday I'll be out another $40 for his ticket to the luau... starting to add up to enough reason to hit the road.

inputting edits...

...gah, what a boring chore. Since my last post, I've done an out loud readthrough of the hard copy and a silent edit of same, and then the fun began. Ugh. Typing in the hard-copy tweaks and scribbles. What a deadly-dull task that is, but it must be done. So much easier to edit on-screen, but a print-out looks and reads differently. A font prints slightly differently than it displays, and minor punctuation glitches (comma instead of period, extra space between words) show up on the paper page that are sometimes difficult or impossible to see on the screen.

Anyway, that's finally done. Took forever and a half because I set it aside for a bit to tackle end-of-year bookkeeping for our various businesses. Fingers crossed incorporating last year ends up saving the significant money predicted by our accountant, 'cause sheesh it's been a lot of extra work. Not so horribly much now that it's all set up and systems are in place, but those only do so much good when I get caught up trying to meet a novel contest deadline and let the bookkeeping slide for a couple of months.

So here it is, March first already. Saturday afternoon we drive over to Waikoloa for the Left Coast Crime conference. Looking forward to that, but got a few things to cross of the "to do" list before then. Including finding somewhere/way to insert one more "Rose" incident in this draft (that will make sense when the book is published and you read it), and crafting some kind of elevator pitch: a two-sentence answer to the question, "What's your book about?" This is the kind of thing that brings me to my knees. I find it harder to write a pithy description than to write the entire book, which is why I've let the entire past month go by without sitting down to tackle it. If/when I get a good (or even barely acceptable) one put together I'll post it here.

In the meantime, I've got a few wardrobe issues to finish up: one and a half of the four (yes, that's 4) skirts I sewed last week still need to be hemmed. And there's one more casual top I might see if I can whip up before next weekend. That's all over at my sewing blog.

Tweaks and Polishes

Took all of December away from the novel, started the New Year by diving into tweaks and polishes. And corrections. Lots and lots of corrections. The problem with making the contest mailing deadline by barely more than minutes is I did not have time for a careful proofread of a printed copy. Now that I've been away from it for awhile, and reading a printout rather than onscreen, I'm appalled at the number of typos/editos lurking in there.

Oh well. The main goal was to get it DONE and out the door to somewhere. Yeah, I could have held onto it, taken my time, made it as close to perfect as it will get, then submitted it to the next contest round a year later. But geeze, I didn't want to wait a year.

And now I'm cleaning up. The messiest bits have turned out to be the ones I edited the most (in a hurry): lots of little glitches resulted that I didn't have a chance to search out and destroy.

So, as of today we're 2/3 of the way through January and I'm only about 1/4 of the way through the tweaks and polishes I'd hoped to have done by the end of the month. But that was with plenty of wiggle room, so no biggie. Yet. We'll see how much progress I can make by, say, Valentine's Day.

In addition to essential cleanup, I am also looking for opportunities to:
~ bolster place/character descriptions (a bit thin in current draft)
~ enhance "mood" and "tone" in a few key places (wanna make it just a bit creepier without getting too woo-woo: a fine line to tread)
~ fine-tune pacing and dialogue, especially in the draggy bits

All that non-structural stuff (the tiny details that aren't all that important one sentence at a time, but adds up to a major difference in the quality of the whole) needs more attention. Just gotta slog through it. Some days it's smooth going, others it's an effort to keep butt in chair.