Funny New Habit

Welp, the first week of NaNo has come and gone. I was ahead of the curb until this weekend when I bought the latest Wayback releases from TWRP. Sue me.

As I was reading over what I'd done over the week, I came across a funny new habit. My western editor brought something interesting to my attention while combing through Blackest Heart. My sentence structure seems to be a bit repetitive in the midst of emotional scenes. Reading back through old manuscripts, I realized that it was indeed a problem. Most of my sentences in love scenes especially tended to begin with he/she/his/her/they/their/etc. Since she showed me this, I've been determined to break myself of this icky habit. In doing so, I developed a new one while writing for NaNo this week.

Observe...

Though her body still craved sleep, she knew very well her mind wouldn’t allow her to drift off again. Not without pharmaceutical aid, at least. With a glance at the clock, she saw that the night had passed into that no-time stage that felt like neither the end nor the beginning of the day—just the gray matter that hung in between.

With a curse, she kicked the covers off and shifted over the side of the bed. Her limbs felt heavy as she dragged them across the room, grabbing her glasses off the desk and slipping them on as she went. She’d brew coffee to get them moving, maybe have a midnight snack since she’d missed dinner again, and work on fine-tuning the rough draft of her next column.

Her brow creased and her feet came to a halt when she saw the dim beam of the stove light. Straining to remember, she couldn’t recall turning it on. A glance at Kale’s door showed her it was closed tight, as per usual. The television light flickered underneath. With a sigh, she wandered that way.

As I went back through the first couple of chapters, I saw this wasn't an isolated problem. Catching it was completely coincidental. This is one of those things your CP or editor calls you out on. I'm glad I caught on before I peppered my entire 90K manuscript with the same cursed prepositional phrase over and over and over again!!!

Anyway, I'm procrastinating again. Time's a-wastin'! Just so I can fool my scattered brain into thinking this post is somewhat productive, NaNo-ers and any other fellow writers, what's been your hard-to-break bad habits lately?

Voices

Okay, maybe I freaked out prematurely. Thank you so much to all those who doled out advice and confidence as far as NaNo is concerned. Being the chicken that I am, I couldn't just dive into it on the first day. I wanted a crash course. I needed a bit of a head start anyway because I've committed to write 90K instead of the required 50K. I tend to overwork myself anyway, but the truth is I haven't written a novel in over a year. That scares me and NaNo provided the perfect dare to see if I can still do it.

Well, so far I'm up 12,803. The last couple of days I wrote close to 3K. I haven't written that way in a long long time and it felt unbelieveably liberating. It's the way I wrote my first four novels. Just writing. Not over-thinking it. Just sitting down, laying my fingers over the keys, and trusting them to do what they do best. I got to the last scene in chapter three and an unexpected scene cropped up. Instead of hesitating and rethinking it, I went for it. Before I knew it, the chapter was nineteen pages and I had to inject the heading of chapter four in the midst of it to give it a structural boost. Turns out, trusting my instincts really pays off. I found an intriguing, unforseen character who will add her own little dash of color to the plot.

Then it was bedtime and my head was brimming with ideas for subsequent scenes. I opened up another document and began to tap out 2,010 additional words of notes for chapters four, five, six, and seven. I even brainstormed a key scene for the latter half of the story as well as a few tidbit ideas for the two sequels. Even as I closed my laptop, the voices were still buzzing. They didn't stop in the shower. They didn't stop when I laid my head on the pillow. It was 3 a.m. before I could finally go to sleep.

I love sleep. In fact, the one thing I do better than writing for hours on end is sleeping for hours on end. Yet I can't begin to imagine how many blessed hours of sleep I've sacrificed because that voice in my head won't shut up. Though I need sleep (especially with a part-time job that's really picking up at the onset of the holidays ) and the voice gets annoying after tossing and turning and my dh tells me to turn out the light and just go to sleep for heaven's sake, some worrisome part of me doesn't want that voice to go away. There's no on-and-off switch, and that is both a frustration and a comfort. What if I switched it off and I never heard that voice again? I've lived with its quirks for over ten years, and these past few months of staring at the blank screen hit me hard and made me realize that it's a very vital part of me.

So, winding around to the point of this very long narrative, NaNo hasn't even begun. Until two days ago, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do it or not. But already it's done wonders. It's made me get reaquainted with my love of writing instead of the business side of it which I've been dealing with on edits for my two contracted stories over the past few weeks. It made me remember the whole point of starting this blog to begin with. Not for promo. Not for procrastination. To share my love of writing.

Though I know by week two I'll be cursing whatever questionable impulse that compelled me to sign up for this insanity to begin with, NaNo's already been a blessing!

NaNoWriMo

It's been like trying to decide whether or not to jump off a bridge, but I've decided to take the leap and participate in my first NaNoWriMo. For those who don't know what this means, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel, starting November 1st and finishing by midnight November 30th. And, yes, I'm absolutely terrified. I've written novellas in a month, but never whole novels. This total "seat-of-the-pants" and "kamikaze approach" to writing is completely out of my comfort zone. But since I haven't managed to do anything but juggle ideas since the end of August, it'll probably be good for me...like taking a really icky mouthful of pink Pepto every night before bed. Bleck!

If anyone else has decided to take the plunge this year again or for the first time, sound off and remind me why I should be doing this! I need some serious Chicken Soup... Thanks a lot!!!!

http://www.nanowrimo.org/