If you’re paying close attention, you might have noticed that up until today I was blogging my NaNoWriMo progress once every two days. That was no coincidence; my evil plan had me finishing a chapter every second day, with 15 chapters in all. That worked until yesterday, a day when my productivity crashed so hard I actually fell behind the projected schedule, despite an early lead. I was no longer just Not Exceeding Expectations; I had entered the realm of Falling Behind.

It’s what WriMo founder Chris Baty calls the “Week Two Wall—a low-point of energy, enthusiasm, and joie de novel that strikes most NaNoWriMo participants between days 7 and 14.” And boy, does he get that right. I’ve been avoiding the novel like it was some kind of thing people avoid all the time, choosing to do anything else instead of work on it. Because that’s what it had become: work. Even space monkeys couldn’t help me out of this pickle, because it wasn’t so much about not wanting to write, but more about not wanting to suck.

Continue reading →

It’s late and I’m tired, but I just wanted to let you know that I posted an excerpt over on my WriMo author page. It’s probably horrid, but I was particularly proud of it just after having written it, which was about five minutes ago.

…and that’s the real problem with the excerpt thing. I’m writing, writing, writing ever onward, never looking back, right? Well, that’s a problem when I want to pick something out to be representative of my work. This is supposed to be the Shitty First Draft That No One Reads ™, so I can’t just pluck something out and hope it’s excerpt-worthy. Neither can I go back and read through it looking for gems, because that would be ever backward, not so much onward. Even if I did find something, I’d be tempted to edit it, another no-no.

So instead, I just grabbed the last few paragraphs I’d written without cringing and uploaded them. Enjoy! (No space monkeys in this section, but maybe tomorrow. I haven’t a clue what the next chapter is about.)

I just finished Chapter 3, and my main characters have finally had a chance to catch their breath.  The space monkeys are no longer chasing them, so they got to introduce themselves a bit and get through some exposition.  Writing that was pretty easy, I just chugged along filling their mouths with dialogue.

And if you believe that, I have some space monkeys I’d like you to meet.

Continue reading →