Please Don't Quit While You're Ahead

I'd like to share with you, if I may, a brief history of my dealings with NaNoWriMo.

I don't know for sure what year I began, but I know it was when NaNoWriMo was still relatively unknown--I think 2003, which would make me a junior in high school. The concept was new and exciting, and I found myself really looking forward to November, when I would tackle my first ever novel-length writing project. I'd write the novel I started developing in junior high and had written an opening chapter to once before. Most of the book (I thought) was already planned out, so it was just a matter of writing it down. How hard could it be?

My first NaNoWriMo, I wrote roughly 200 words.

I tried again (with the same story) the next year. And the year after that. I managed to crack into 4 digits, writing probably 1000 words each year. 2% of the 50,000 required for NaNoWriMo. It was around that time I decided that NaNoWriMo was not for me--though oddly, I still believed I was capable of completing a novel. Just not in one month.

I stayed away for a few years until, late in the summer of 2009, I mentioned NaNoWriMo to my writer-type friends, forgetting that not everyone spends as much time online as I do and assuming they already knew about it. After I hesitantly explained to them the wonder and madness that is NaNoWriMo, they decided this was something we would do.

At first, I was adamant that I would not be participating. I knew better. I'd been where they were--the excitement that comes from a ridiculous, but plausible goal--and I knew the disappointment that lay ahead. But they were persistent. It would be different--I was older now, and my writing had matured. We'd be doing it as a group, so I'd be pushed to carry on. So against my better judgment, I went for it. But this time, I did things differently. I went in completely blind, making up my plot on the spot November 1, 2009. That year, I made it to 10,000 words. A vast improvement, to be sure, but another failure.

By fall of 2010, I knew what to expect. Again, they talked me into it (my wife, in her rookie NaNoWriMo year, was the only one of us to reach 50K). So I tried again. My 2010 count? 20,000. Still better, and still failing.

So this year, I convinced myself that I was going to give up the dream that NaNoWriMo was something I could accomplish. I told my writing friends that they'd be doing this one without me, and I stuck with it. Until a week before November.

I decided that I wanted to--needed to, even--try again this year. (Why I decided that is another post in itself). So at midnight on November 1, I again dove in.

And I don't know what it is--maybe I found the perfect combination of an idea that I had invested in but hadn't planned much, or maybe now that I'm out of school I can finally feel like writing is not something to be feared and avoided--but this year, for the first time, I feel like I have a chance at winning. At just over a week in, I'm already caught up with last year's all-time high word count.

It's today that worries me. Today I wrote only 100 words.

The key, I know from experience, is to get back to it tomorrow. And maybe I have nothing to worry about. Let's face it, I'm not exactly a prolific writer, and for the last week I've been putting in an average of 2300 words a day. To borrow an analogy often made by Mur Lafferty, it's like deciding to run 2 miles a day after years of sitting on a couch. You will burn out if you push too hard.

So I'm hoping that today was just the break I needed from the fatigue that comes from writing more in a week than you have in the past year. I'm not in any danger, since according to NaNoWriMo's handy graph I can actually go another two days without writing and be on schedule, but I can't let myself fall into that trap as I have in years passed. Tomorrow, it's back to work.

And somehow, that idea no longer fills me with dread.

Nearly November

I stayed up tonight with the intention of revising/rewriting a short story I intend to submit, but about 1300 words in I've pretty effectively lost focus.

I really enjoy the first of editing--finding the problems. I like to find some of the ridiculous inconsistencies I can manage even in only a few thousand words (typically, characters introduce themselves twice with different names, or start the story at 19 and end it as 29). I like finding the rough patches that I know have promise and cutting out the lines I was clearly insane to think had any potential.

But then comes the second part, where I have to figure out -how- to expand on the areas that I know need to be fixed. The part where I have to decide on a name or age that will be the same through the entire story. That part is entirely more difficult, which is why I enjoy editing other people's stories quite a bit more than editing my own. I don't have to do step two for other people.

And speaking of writing, it's something I'm becoming increasingly bipolar about. In the same day, I'll go from thinking that writing is simply too much work and a waste of my time to really believing that I should be spending every free minute working on a project and that if I do I'll actually find some success. And maybe that's pretty typical for writer-types, but it's also incredibly frustrating.

But I haven't stopped, so that's something. I'm debating if I want to give NaNoWriMo one more shot this year--every year, I insist that I'm tired of losing (which is true) and that I'm going to call it quits, but somehow I always end up trying again. I first gave it a shot only a couple of years after it started, and after several pathetically weak attempts, decided to give up. This was right about the time my writer friends discovered NaNo, and I found myself roped in again. I made 20,000 words last year, which is less than halfway to the month's goal. It is also the closest to it I have ever come and the most I have ever written in a single month.

So I'm sure I'll be trying again this year. Because if I can't hate myself for what I've gotten myself in to, what's the point of even being a writer?

The Planning Stage

Originally, I had planned on writing this entry from the Cellar, so that I could comment on how once-upon-a-time I frequently (okay, occasionally) posted from there but according to my archives, the last time I did was December of 2007.  But the wireless internet there hated me, so instead, I'm coming to you live from an empty auditorium where I'll be taking an exam in about an hour.

Things are changing.  In just over a year, I'll be married.  Yesterday I reconnected with a friend who bought a house a year ago.  My primary mode of communication with many of my friends is Facebook.

I'm still in school.  That doesn't seem like it'll ever be changing.

This summer I'll be starting up another writing project.  But this too, will be different.  Mostly because I'll be going through with it (and this will largely be due to the fact that I will be doing it for class credits as an independent project).  I'm not going to go over the details here, but it'll essentially be a human interest column that I'll be writing, editing, and publishing online.  Most importantly of all, it'll be a nice test to see if I really could be cut out for the writerly life.

I have two smaller projects that I hope to finish by the time summer hits--nothing quite so far-reaching as my silly idea to write a novel last summer.  The first is the War on Procrastination saga I've been putting up on Facebook; I try to update it at least every two weeks, and another one will be going up tonight or tomorrow.  The second is a short story that I would like to finish and submit to a podcast.  At this point with my writing, I'm more concerned with getting my writing to a level that it could be published (in some form) than getting payment for it.  If I'm lucky, that part will come later. 

In closing, blah blah changing blah blah write more blah blah more posting blah blah blah.

Where Tech Meets Take Your Own Advice

Author/podcaster extraordinaire Mur Lafferty just posted a video podcast about the tools every writer should have, and one of the things she mentioned was an external backup drive.  A flash drive, external hard drive, Google Docs--it's not important what you use, so long as you're backing up everything.  Most writers know this, and all techies know it.  But here's the dirty little secret:

Most of us don't do it.

It's simple.  It doesn't take long.  But we don't do it.

And now the obligatory horror story:  It's the Fall 2007 semester.  Midterm week.  I'm almost finished with my final projects.  My hard drive has been flaky for about a week, but I keep putting off backing it up until after midterms when I have more time.  I'm in the middle of copying the files onto a flash drive so I can print them off in a computer lab, and that's when the computer blue screens and dies.  Shit.

Figuring that not all is lost, I buy an adapter and hook it up to Melissa's computer.  The hard drive is detected!  Fantastic.  Maybe it'll be okay.

File type: RAW.  As far as Windows is concerned, this means: "oh man, there sure are a lot of ones and zeroes on this thing.  But what does it all mean?"  In other words, all is lost.

Luckily, I was saved by a small miracle--the drive was partitioned, and all my music was on the D: partition, which I was able to rescue through the magic of chkdsk.  I found a program called Zero Authority Recovery that claimed to be able to recover the gibberish in the other partition, and it was able to save only one folder--Documents and Settings.  It didn't get everything, but it got most of the important stuff.  I made it through the wreck with some minor cuts and bruises, but I was okay.

The experience was an awakening.  I have an external 80 gig drive that's just been sitting around, so I pledged to back up religiously when I got my new laptop.  Take a guess at how many times I've updated my backup since I got this one over a year ago.

That's right.  Not-a-once.  A mistake I plan to remedy.

And for the rest of you: if you haven't already started keeping a backup, start.  And if the words of Mur, myself, and the countless others who have suffered hard drive crashes (chances are, you know a few of them) fail to get through to you, you're a hopeless case.  Which is probably okay.  Hard drive crashes are pretty rare to begin with, and with storage tech getting more and more reliable (some flash drives are nigh indestructible) it's possible that you'll never deal with a crash that will destroy everything you've worked on.

If you're okay with the risk, fair enough.  But fellow writers--and especially fellow college students--I beg you.  Back up your files.

Because I won't feel sorry for you later if you lose everything.  And I won't fix your computer, either.

At Least It's Not Philosophy

So I ended up caving in and buying an iPod Touch. I even have some of those white Apple stickers now. Curse you, Apple, for making reliable products that do what they're supposed to do. And for making them so damn cool.

Anyway. I guess I might be becoming an English major now? Through two years of having no declared major, my focus touched on Music, Computer Science, Broadcasting, Creative Writing, Journalism, and even a little Psychology. Last year I officially declared as a CS major. And now I might be switching over to English. Here's why.

A couple weeks ago I was hanging out with a bunch of friends and we were all talking about books. That's when the realization came to me that after less than a year working in IT, I'm already sick of computers, but after a lifetime of reading, I'm still not sick of books. In fact, since discovering BookMooch, I've started to get back into reading again.

And before you even mention it, yes, I have in the past spoken out against going to school for any kind of creative endeavor because you don't need a degree to create something. However. For those of you keeping track at home, it should also have become abundantly clear that I'm useless when it comes to setting and keeping personal deadlines. You know, deadlines? Those pre-determined dates a person is supposed to finish something by? The ones that make that pleasant wooshing noise as they soar past?

The point is, taking courses in writing not only forces me to get more practice in, it forces me to set and complete things by certain deadlines, which is a very relavent skill for anyone who ever wants to be published. Plus, I'm already three years into college, and it'll be another two before I graduate one way or another, so I might as well get a degree in something I like.

Another possibility is that it's just karma for all the times I've made fun of English majors.

But worry not, career-seekers. If I switch, I'll still be minoring in computer science (since I'm only two classes shy of that goal already) which means that I won't qualify for the 6-digit salary computer jobs, but I'll still have a pretty good shot at job placement straight outta college. Plus I'll still have two years experience as lead technician, and that couldn't hurt.

Regardless of what I decide major-wise, I still want to start to seriously pursue writing. And it's something I've said a lot on this blog--you can go back as far as three years into the archives and find that I've pretty much been saying the same thing over and over. So I'm done saying it. From here on out, either I write, or I don't. No more talking about it.

As always, I welcome any opinions/advice/criticism. So far, the people I've told have responded with everything between "That's a great idea!" and "That's a terrible idea!" but people have still been mostly supportive, if skeptical. And I'm a little skeptical, too, but with any luck, maybe I can evey surprise myself.

I've Been Waiting For Something...

I'm challenging myself to post daily, so that I'm at least writing -something- every day. Slowly but surely I'm trying to work back into writing. It's funny how over the past few years it turned from something I seemed to remember genuinely enjoying to a chore. I stopped writing for myself entirely and so everything turned into an excuse--why write in my blog if everyone has stopped reading it? Why put work into this assignment when I can BS my way to an A no problem? Why work on a story that isn't -for- anything?

And I've been realizing more and more lately that I want more than anything just to create. I've had the ideas all along but I've been lacking any kind of ambition. But I think I'm beginning to ease into it. Also, I've sort of given myself a kick to get started, because I've changed my mind yet again--and I'm taking the year off from school. Ultimately, the next year serves as a test for me. The majority of my friends will be either in school or working full-time so I'll have days to myself, and what I do with them will determine, really, the rest of my life. If it turns out that I really am so terminally lazy [or such a terrible writer] then I'll head back to college and throw myself upon the mercy of computer science. Which, by the way, isn't to say that I'm not still interested in it. But when I picture a career in computer science, it bores me. Technology, in small doses, still thrills me sometimes, I'll admit it. And there are some kick-ass jobs in the computer science industry. And with them come thousands and thousands of boring programming gigs. I could do it, yeah. And I'd make more money, and I'd probably have an easier life. But it's not for me.

If I could make a living just creating the things I want to create, that's what I want to do. Is it likely to happen? Not terribly. But I don't think I can possibly give up on it without even trying. [Don't worry, I'm not quitting my job too. I'm being naive, not stupid.] In addition to writing I want to put some time into music as well, songwriting and arranging and recording if it gets that far.

So this is where it begins. They say journaling on a daily basis is important for writers, and I figure blogging is close enough.

Oh, and anyone curious about that last post: Elizabeth Mohl was a sixteen-year-old girl who died at Lifest, a Christian rock festival in Osh Kosh that most of you know I go to every year. There was a bungee ride there and she fell from the top of it, about 50-60 feet and died that night of the resulting injuries. The fest continued [but everything was late; apparantly the staff had to make the difficult decision of whether or not to cancel the fest] but we were all pretty shaken up over the whole thing. I had actually been writing about Lifest while I was there and had planned to type up everything as blog entries when I got back, but it seemed a lot less important after what happened. I'm alright, now, but I was pretty freaked out at the time and I'm pretty sure that the friends I went with came as close as they may ever be to seeing me break down. That being said, Lifest was for the most part another positive experience and I'll more than likely end up going again next year--but if I ever feel as helpless as I did when I saw her body it'll be too soon.