|
From Nov. 1 to Nov. 30, I will write at least 50,000 words of what will become the first draft, by way of participating in National Novel Writing Month. I will post notable snippets here along with running updates and general grousing. fun for the whole family! UPDATE: I didn't make it. BUT i am not giving up. See further journal entries below. my other domains can be reached from carrielynnking.com.
|
| In a few* days, I will probably redesign this and make it less
journal-like, but for now:
* "few" being a dangerously fluid term in my universe
|
|
25 January 2003: idea scribble a flower from Charlie's grave.
|
|
8 January 2003: pondering I'm beginning to think I could do better with this as a screenplay. I can visualize quite a few things, but am not quite as confident going into long word-count-padding interior monologues as I had planned, and begun to do.
|
|
31 December 2002: still warming up I see why the NaNoWriMo folks chose November instead of, say, December. Quite a lot of other things going on in December. Full of important games and holidays and long-unseen people and fattening food. and laziness of many colors. ah, but January is the month of resolutions.
|
|
3 December 2002: shutdown -> restart Okay. Let's try this again. Goal set at 1800 words per day. I watched an A&E Biography of Stephen King near the beginning of November which noted with a tinge of awe how he tended to write 1600 words per day. 1800 is a nice number divisible by many others. also it gets you to 50,000 in slightly under 30 days. in theory. here we go! again!
|
|
13 November 2002: don't ask don't tell hey, i never said optimism alone could prevent doom. but i talked to grandma (aka The Source) yesterday about some of the details, and got my enthusiasm recharging again. yep. ok. here we go. riiiight then. aaany moment now.
who's afraid of the ulnar nerve, damn. forgot how the last line goes.
|
|
8 November 2002: old self Being paranoid about tingly fingers and unhappy nerves, suspected cause my habit of resting the heel of my hand on the desk edge (especially the left hand, which doesn't have mouse duties), word count still at 7259. But it wasn't tingling yesterday, except for a couple of very faint hints that it might think about it, and nothing at all today. Hopefully my new paranoid awareness of ergonomics will keep it that way. A rainy weekend will be a perfect time to catch up to the 18,000 words I'd originally planned to have by the end of Sunday. yeah, that's the ticket. 10,800 words in two days? nooooo problem. nope. nosireebob. hey, without optimism, we are all doomed.
|
|
6 November 2002 part second: word count quota pursuit temporarily suspended on account of ulnar nerve aka "the tingler"
6 November 2002: no comment 7:00 am: 7259 words yeah yeah yeah
|
|
5 November 2002: catchup 7:26 am: 7259 words. so, yesterday's quota. Now I just have to do today's, hopefully some of it still before I leave for work. No quotable bits yet today, either.
|
|
4 November 2002: first sign o trouble 9:50 pm: 6321 words. Quota would have been 7200. Only made it halfway today. My dentist appointment that prevented me from doing any work this morning is my excuse. hrm. to make up by the end of next weekend, if not before. but sleep must be maintained, during the early period at the very least, or all is lost. i don't like any of today's material enough to post it.
|
|
3 November 2002: on to chapter one 7:45 pm: 5502 words. "Zell crawled into a little cavern between the right side back door and the overflow of some blankets from the luggage space, and curled up with chin on knees, looking out despondently at her uncle and aunt, sister and brother-in-law, cousins, nieces and nephews, wishing that she could leap out of the car and run down to the creek and splash in the water, and they would have to give up on leaving because she would hide down there, among the ferns and the tree roots and the bushes and flowers, and they wouldn't be able to find her, and she knew her family would never leave without her. But they were leaving without Charlie."
|
|
2 November 2002 part second: goal! 8:42 pm: 3645 words.
"Zell thought for a moment that a sudden hard rain had started pounding
and hissing on the roof of the store, and edged a bit closer to Charlie as
she placed the sound as coming from the holes cut in the front of the box.
She edged closer yet when Mr. Hensley turned another knob carefully, and a
new squealing sort of sound started up, whining up and down and around
like nothing she could quite place having heard before.
hm. all my excerpts of the day have started with "Zell..." so far. really, not every paragraph starts that way. But even if they did, quantity over quality, you will recall, is the motto here. I shall not stress about anything except GETTING THOSE WORDS DOWN. at least until after november 30.
2 November 2002: movin' right along 10:10 am: 2726 words. "Zell made a face, as she did any time someone mentioned her full name. She didn't like to think about it too hard, because she knew it was wrong to hate anybody, much less her own mama and daddy, and she didn't really hate her parents, not a bit of it, she loved them more than anyone. But why did they have to let the midwife name her Ozelma?"
|
|
1 November 2002 part second: day 1 goal achieved 9:26 pm: 1846 words! "[Zell] still felt herself glowing from the unutterable joys of the day - first bare summer feet, and then bare summer feet in the creek, and then Charlie, and now Charlie was taking them on a walk to the general store. Surely it must be the most perfect day ever." 1 November 2002: aaaaand we're off! "Prologue: In which we meet the Stewart family, living on Morris Creek in the hills of Tennessee, and a favorite brother introduces our heroine to a radio, three years before his death." 7:46 am: 1128 words in the opening salvo. My benchmark goal per day will be 1800. probably will be under on weekdays, make up for it on weekends. 672 to go later this evening I hope. I hereby predict that late this month I will state these words: "Thank God for Thanksgiving vacation."
|
