Writing • Page 9

I'm seriously to the point that this entire project is keeping me up at night. Not to get totally personal, but I seriously think NaNoWriMo is changing my life. I've spent the past year (or more) feeling entirely uncreative with no musical outlet and a few failed attempts at writing -- I go to bed dead exhausted at 10PM and spend my evenings pretty much looking forward to that moment. Over the past week, though, I've been tossing and turning, ideas on where to take my story and characters permeating through my head and my confidence has skyrocketed. This came along at just the right time for me.

 

yeeessssss

 

Congrats on the gig though! I wish I had freelancing work to do, haha

 

Fantastic! Happy to hear it!

 

That's crazy! Sorry so many things have gotten in your way. I hope you're feeling better.

 

Eh, it's my life. When I plan to do something cool for myself, shit gets in the way.

I'm feeling kind of better, but defs still out of it. I appreciate it. :)

 

I'm new here. Is this the best place to share some of poems and stuff?

 

NaNoWriMo week one - "Wow, really loving this world! So great to feel it out, it's like breathing life into something completely new!"

NaNoWriMo week two - "Where was I going with this again? I thought I had a plan. Did I just write a four page bar conversation? Word count, word count, word count."

Really, though -- still having a blast, but writing now feels more like getting to know characters than naturally moving them in a living world. If anything, I'm taking this as an opportunity to see where the story takes itself and then I'll just keep going until I see something that feels like an end and edit the hell out of it.

 

Share whatever you want!

 

Yeah... I'm not hitting 50k words. I think it's pretty much impossible at this point.

 

I write pretty much anything but lately it's been poetry. Music has been tough to focus on, been working on a script but don't wanna share that for obvious reasons haha, comedy writing has been slow. But just because I want to share something, here's a poem I wrote 5 months ago.

 

This is a work in progress that I didn't write but put together. I'm going to take away some lines away from it. It's called "plagiarism"

"Here is my new disposition your about to understand" "I'm not sad anymore" "cause what I learned is it's not about forcing happiness it's about not letting sadness win" "Fight every fight like you can win" "I spent the winter writing songs about getting better and if I'm being honest I'm getting there" "I'm pressing on"

"They say I suffer from a lack of serotonin" " The doctors prescribed me the pills" "I took the pills I took the advice" "and I'm happy here for now"

"Anyone can make what I have built" "It isn't hard" "Anyone can find the same white pills" "And the sad truth of the matter is I'll never get over it but I'm try to get better and overcome each moment"

 

Update from NaNo land - hit a little over 31k last night. Took a few days off for friends visiting so I'm doing my best to get caught up before the end of the month (hoping to hit 50k before FFXV comes out, a sort of pseudo reward to myself).

I've learned a few things. First and foremost, writing a book is hard. Writing a good book is harder. I have characters I like, but I'm still getting to know them. I have a world that feels a little more like reality than I wanted it to, but I guess that's an interesting facet of cyberpunk. I have a whole bunch of chapters that go, well, nowhere fast. If I've learned anything, though, it's that the most important moments I have start with saying "that's what should happen, but this is going to happen instead" and my editing process will be long and arduous, likely ending with a product that looks completely different.

Past that, I'm over the halfway point and have nowhere near half of the story I want on paper. Getting into the habit of writing daily has been great, though, and I think I'll enjoy it even more once it's not an "obligation."

Anyone else still sticking it out for NaNo? This is my first, but at the point I've reached I'm absolutely convinced that there is no way I can't finish.

 

I finished last night! 50,009 words.

I learned a lot of the same lessons you did. Learning to write daily was really great, but my word count goals had to be put aside on multiple occasions for friends coming into town. I didn't always take the plot in the same direction I thought I would (I changed main characters 30,000 words into the story and decided not to kill another one off), but ultimately found myself scraping away at a 50,000 word goal while writing a novel that will more likely end up in the 150-200k range.

This was my second NaNo attempt, but last year I'd given up after 8,000 words.

 

I finished yesterday morning at 50,206. Even in the shower this morning, I was mulling over what I had written thinking "how much of this will even end up in the finished product?" So much of it kinda rolled around -- I realized a little more than halfway through that I was describing and playing out every single little action which did, well, nothing to further the story, really just ended up being word count for the sake of it. But hey, that's what editing is for I suppose.

Either way, I'm extremely proud. I told myself when I was young, probably 7 or 8, and writing bad video game fanfiction in Notepad that one day I'd write a book. A few years ago I pretty much decided that was a dream I had given up. Now, even if it never gets fully done or edited or anything (and that's worst case scenario), I can at least pretty much say I did it and appease my younger self.

Congratulations!! Here's to the next year's worth of getting however many thousands of words down.

 

For anyone interested, I pieced together 7 lessons in creativity that I picked up from my time participating in NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo: Why I Disappeared and What I Learned

 

Congratulations to you, too! I bet there's more goodness in what you wrote than you're giving yourself credit for. I read through the "chapter 1" I'd written and--even though none of it will end up exactly as it is if I ever get to a final version--I was shocked by the decency therein. hahah

 

Poetry always been my personal method of writing. It started just as the typical teenager being down shit but over time I've used it for everything from self empowerment to using the poem natural cohesiveness (cus I tend to prefer rhythmic poetry) and flow to gather my thoughts both to sort through them alone.. or if I wanted to use it to address family or more likely women I been with.
My ex and I use to be terrible at talking things out cus we both were terrible at confrontations so I used poems to find ways to more gracefully going about addressing things. I found it left her more receptive and easier for her to respond back without the typical uncertainty/contention.

 

Hey, thanks! Yeah, I'm taking a bit of an extended break from this project to enjoy the holidays and other hobbies, then hope to go back and re-read/edit/reel things in a bit. Not sure whether I want to write more THEN edit or just re-read, edit a bit, and continue with more focus. I think the latter sounds best right now as I don't feel I'm anywhere near done with the whole thing.

 

I'm in the exact same boat. I've got waaaay too many other things to do for December (record an EP, edit another EP, a few performances, etc.), but I'll get back to it in January. I've considered the same thing, reading through the novel and making minor edits before moving forward.

 

Someone do this with me

 

I'm in

 

I'm trying to figure out the best method to do this... I kind of want to start a challenge and have other people join in. Maybe on Facebook or something? Idk.

 

Went ahead and made a group for this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1261342217244838/

 

I didn't know there was a NANO in April... I thought there was only one in November? (which I unfortunately missed due to outside forces)

Hopefully I'll be able to do it, I have a full length story idea I've been sitting on since December of 2015, and hopefully participating in it will give me the motivation not only to start writing it, but to also finish it up =D