45K

Every year during NaNo, I get a couple moments that I realize I would not be able to have writing a book any other way.

This morning, for instance, as I hit 3,000 words on a FLASHBACK, I realized I would never do this with a real novel, but for NaNo, 3,000 words kicks ass!

Anyway, the deadline is approaching. Is it fitting that Nov. 30 is the end of NaNo and also my dad's birthday?

I thought so, too.

Home stretch

I'm at 43,003 this morning. About 300 words short of pace, but I'm feeling good.

Here are the things that have failed to slow me down this month:
* Movies (saw Gone Baby Gone (awesome), Air Guitar Nation (rocks) and Helvetica (yes, the documentary on a font ... and it's great!), but the word count grew.
* New TV (yup, it rocks but I'm still going).
* Reading (still reading Team of Rivals ... a great book but very dense so it takes me awhile to get through it).
* Conspiracies (for some reason I've latelhy become obsessed with the Kennedy assasination. Saw a couple DVDs called "The Men who Killed Kennedy" about the conspiracies and then I saw a History Channel show called "The Kennedy Assasination ... Beyond the conspiracy." The first one showed a bunch of the same stuff I've seen as to how there was no way Oswald could have done it alone (or done it at all). The second debunked all of that stuff. I have absolutely no idea which side I'm on now. But it's interesting.
* Christmas lights ... got most of them up except the ones on the house because there's still a little snow up there.
* Kids ... I don't think I've ignored them too much.
* Wife ... OK, maybe.
* Work ... still going fine.
* Friends ... had one poker game a couple weeks ago and planning another.
* Health ... worked out a little bit and play racquetball at least once a week.

So, all in all, I'd say I'm doing pretty good.

No No NaNo

Realized that for folks who don't care about National Novel Writing Month, this blog just got incredibly boring, so here are some other updates:

1. Boys ... Fine, I think. I'll tell you after NaNo.
2. Tracy ... Same as #1.
3. Work ... huh?
4. Movies ... OK, I'll admit I've been watching ... Saw the Darjheeling Limited this weekend. I have decided that there are people who like Wes Anderson movies and then there are normal people. I laughed more at the preview for "Walk Hard" than I did the movie. Got a nice nap during the movie, though.

This has been your Non-NaNo update. We now return you to a novel-writing month already in progress...

By the way, this is funny ...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EodzF_orJQY

30K

Actually got past 31K as of this morning. Only a couple hundred words behind pace.
Usually turkey time messes up my writing time, but other than visiting relatives on Thursday, the rest of our time is relatively free. So, I'm confident right now.

Story's going well. Developing a lot of backstory I wasn't planning on doing and the main story has taken some interesting turns as well.

Having fun with it now, too!

Downhill

So, I eked past 25K today. Going slow right now, but Tracy is taking the boys to a show tonight so I'll have plenty of time to catch up (of course with Turkey Day coming up, it gets tougher ... tiptaphan and NaNo don't mix well!).

Thanks to Dan for a rather disturbing suggestion for a murder. Didn't quite go down that badly but if some of my other characters start pissing me off, at least I'll know how to handle them.

Should be a good weekend. Not a lot scheduled, so hopefully that means plenty of writing time.

On the downhill side now, so hopefully I'll start picking up speed.

Halfway

OK, so the month is half over ... and my book? Well it's almost there. Was at 24,100 this morning. Hope to get some more done this evening. We'll see.

I just created a whole back-story for my bad guy and the death of his father. That was fun. And he's stuck under the bed with the new Dad staying in the room. Should be fun.

Nearing halfway

Only about 600 words below pace right now.
Story's going well. It's fun because the story really is just going where the characters take it. I truly hope they know how to end this thing because I have no clue.

Lagging, but not by much

I'm at 19,003 words this morning. Slightly behind pace. The story just got good again and I'm pretty excited because I think it may actually be setting up for some sort of conclusion. Still not sure what.

The other fun thing I did this weekend is saw two movies. One on NetFlix and One in the theater.

In the theater, we saw Dan in Real Life. Not a bad piece of fluff, but nothing too great either. Steve Carrell always cracks me up, but he wasn't as great here with lesser material.

The best movie was "Air Guitar Nation" that I rented on NetFlix. What a fun movie. It's about the 2004 International Air Guitar Championships. And, yes, it's exactly what it sounds like: a competition where contestants pretend to play guitar on stage. It was funny and oddly exciting to see the competition. At some points it actually felt like a parody of documentaries which made it even funnier.

hurts so good

I have to admit that when I started Nano this year (hoping for my fifth year of success!), I wasn't too excited. It almost seemed more of an obligation.

But numerous times over the last year, the story for this novel snuck up on me and invaded my thoughts. (Sadly, an ending hasn't created itself yet). And so, I knew I had to finish this novel this year.

The good part is that I'm scaring myself already. I turned a simple task of my bad guy stealing some dinner from a fridge into a race and a hunt. It's been really fun. The plot is driving the story right now. I occasionally make myself make note of the characters, descriptions, place, smells, etc. But I just want to get back to the story. And since that's the kind of story I like to read (see James Patterson), I think that's what I should focus on.

The hard part is having no idea where my plot is going and relying my whole story on it.

We got a note the other day from NaNo about characters and how, if they feel like they aren't fleshed out, you should cast them. So here goes:

Anthony Speck (my bad guy) ... A genetic mutation of Kevin Spacey and Vince Vaughn
Dean Wilson (Dad) ... My neighbor in San Diego Donnie Crabtree
Elizabeth Wilson (Mom) ... Kate Hudson and Teresa Myers (who I worked with at the Trib)
Peter Wilson (4-year-old son) ... Alex (smart kid with a big imagination)
Olivia Wilson (2-year-old daughter) ... Andy (not the gender but the attitude)

Oh, and as of this morning, I'm at 14,800 words which is slightly behind pace but the weekends tend to be tough for writing so I hope I can keep up. Plus I have poker tonight.

Cheating

I’m at 13,531 words now, but I cheated a little ... I think. What do you think? Is this cheating?

Since I had to write my column for the paper anyway, I put it in my book as I had my character read a newspaper and read my column so I could get credit for those words.

I figured I did write them!

So, I may have cheated a bit, but at least I'm on pace.

Double-digit K

Got to 11K (and change) this morning. Story is stalling a bit (I did a 400-600 word side thing on eating at McDonalds ... I don't know why).
But I'm still enjoying it and I found a new way to torture the family in my story. MICE! Should be fun.

330 words short

Getting up this morning at 5 a.m. was a lot easier this morning since my body thought it was 6 a.m.

I was cruising pretty good on my novel. The writing is going well. Not great literature but words are flowing relatively easily. Not good words. But words.

I was hoping to end the morning at my goal of 8,335 words (supposed to do 1,667 each day), but as I got to word 8,005, my desk fell apart.

Literally.

The whole top part that holds my keyboard just fell off. So, I had to spend the last 20 minutes getting the right Allen wrench for the funky screws that hold the whole thing together. For once, I can honestly say I wasn't trying to find a way to procrastinate.

That means I need to write at least 330 words tonight to stay on track. Shouldn't be a problem ... D'oh, it's "Heroes" night!?!?! And now when I go to bed it's midnight but my body thinks it's 1 a.m.

NaNo

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) began this morning. For me it was at 5 a.m. this morning. I got up -- still pissed they moved the daylight savings thing -- and wrote 2,200 words.

A little ahead of pace. I'm finishing the NaNo book I started 2 years ago (last year I tried to re-write a book I wrote in college and it was f-ing terrible).

Over the past few days, I've been re-reading what I did two years ago and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't crap. In fact, I liked it a lot. Only thing I've written that actually scared me.

The scariest part of this whole thing, however, is that I have no idea where the story is going. I don't know who is going to live or die. What is going to happen to my bad guy? The only thing is that the family the bad guy is living with just hired a migrant worker to do some yard work for them and I don't think he's going to fare very well.

Go NaNo!!!!