I live to write…

What to do when I don’t feel like starting on my monster of a 2008 novel rewrite? I color. Templates from Geometrip.

I’ve just discovered, downloaded, and purchased an awesome writing program called Scrivener. It was offered at 1/2 price to NaNoWriMo winners this year, and I’m not sure it would have appealed to me in the past, but now that I’ve been using a program called Journler for the last two Novembers, it’s perfect for me. It does everything that I do with Journler, only it’s actually designed to be used for writing a novel (rather than for keeping a journal). I love it. I actually downloaded the trial version and went through the tutorial. About halfway through, I purchased the program and started importing all of my writing/notes/research into it. It’s awesome. It’s as if someone sat down with me, asked me how I write…no, watched how I write, and then designed the program based on that. The only shortfall is the lack of a timeline function, which Write it Now had and I loved, but Write it Now is not Mac native, and was a little scary. A person could conceivably quit the program without saving, and it wouldn’t alert, it would just close. Scrivener is only available for Mac OS.

Anyway, so I spent a day importing my last four NaNoWriMo novels into it, as well as one partial novel that I started–but never finished–outside of November. (This is typical…November is my rough draft writing time. Any other time of the year it just doesn’t happen.)  Now I’m faced with what to work on next. I have four complete novels:

Night Music – 2006 novel. Ready for 4th (and final, I hope) read through and revision. Frankly, I’m tired of messing with this one, so one more go-through will do it, whether it’s good or not.

The Third Time’s the Charm - 2007 novel. Ready for 2nd read through/revision. This might only need one more go-through. It was a pretty solid rough draft, except the last quarter or so that was rewritten in 2009.

Mancunian Waltz – 2008 novel. Needs complete rewrite (1st). This is on the 2010 agenda. Probably the sooner the better.

Friends and Lovers – 2009 novel. Resting. Will need a complete rewrite, probably after November 2010.

Love Bytes – 2007 idea that never saw a completed rough draft. This might end up to be my 2010 November novel, just to get the completed rough draft. I like the idea, like the characters, just couldn’t come up with a solid story, and that’s something that just doesn’t stop me during November. (This year, case in point.)

Not sure where to start, but now that I’ve written nearly every day for an entire month again (I took about eight weeks off from writing before NaNo) I feel empty not working on something. Not writing just isn’t normal for me.

So… What to tackle first?

I love the things that I do–writing, playing in orchestras–but come December, I am so glad for some time off. There is one more rehearsal and performance for Play Ethic (the chamber orchestra that I’m in), but other than that, nothing. Even though I still work 40 hours per week, I feel like it’s a vacation.

I’ll take a couple of weeks off from writing, and then it’ll be back to it. I’ve got two novels that need another read through, and one that needs a rewrite/revision. This year’s novel will wait a while before I tackle the rewrite.

First thing I need to do is get back into an exercise routine. November is particularly hard on the waist line. We start training for the mini-marathon come January. I’d like to be in some decent shape before then.

Finished. It’s a mess, but it’s a complete mess.

Maybe 5k more to go. I’m skipping some stuff that just isn’t important right now, in the interest of finishing. My little murder mystery part is really, really bad, but it’s not my normal type of writing, and that’s what revision is for anyway. In fact, all of the revelations are rather anti-climactic, but I don’t care. NaNo is all about not caring.

I will get to “the end” tomorrow. Then I think I’ll take December off. My brain hurts.

…has made its appearance in a novel of mine for the first time. My DH made a comment several days ago now that I should try putting the shovel in there, and for the first time, I thought it could actually fit. I don’t typically write novels with murders or violence in them, and I’m not entirely positive it really works in this one, but I’m pretty desperate for something to happen, so throwing a death by shovel in there is as good as anything else.

I hit 80k today. I figure I might have 10k more to go, maybe less. Probably not more. But I can be very wordy, so who knows? Only two days left. I will reach the end. (I am determined!)

I’ve reached over 75,000 words, and I think the story is finally getting off the ground. I’m still making new discoveries about the characters and what’s going on in their lives. This is the fun part, I suppose, now that I’m actually coming up with something to write. I’m going to shoot for finishing by Monday night. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but I really want it to. I might not actually have much more to do. I’m just going for the main scenes. There are two different storylines that need to be resolved individually, and then the whole story arc needs to be resolved after that. I had so little idea for what this story was when I started out, and it’s actually gotten pretty complex. Too complex to worry about all the various intricacies right now. I just want to get the main themes written, and worry about fleshing them out more fully on the rewrite. *sigh* This one will definitely need a re-write, which makes two now. Last year’s needs a complete re-write as well. And where I thought I might not care enough for this one to bother, I do. I always care too much. These characters become so real to me.

Not that I need another time sink or anything, but I found this on my friend Tom’s site, and I can’t resist. I’m going to have to find my colored pencils.

My goal for November has always been to finish the novel, but this year may be the first that it simply doesn’t happen. In previous years, even though I’ve gotten my ideas late (except for last year, when I got it in March) I’ve always had a week or so to work the idea through in my mind and have something fairly solid to work with by November 1. This year, I had no idea even for a character until October 29, which meant I spent the first 30k words in November meandering around trying to find the story. And even though I eventually found a story, it wasn’t solid, and it’s still changing. Now I have 65k words of…well, just words. There’s no plot. There are finally characters, and I finally know their stories, or at least I think I do. But what I’ve written is such a mess that it does not make even a sort of coherent story. I am trying not to care, and just push forward and try to finish the damn thing. At least I do have an ending in mind, and I’ve even found a place for the Traveling Shovel of Death, which just tells how strange this story has been for me. It is hard, though, to keep going forward when what has been written just isn’t right anymore with what is yet to come. I want very badly to just start over, but I know if I do that, the chances of me finishing the rough draft at all are slim. I’ll revert to my outside-of-NaNo ways, and now that I’ve grown to actually care about these characters, I’d hate to leave their story unfinished. I blame them, of course, for not letting me know who they are and what their story was for so long. Yes, it’s their fault, not mine, if I don’t complete this in November.