… or NaNoWriMo has driven me around the bend. It’s one of the two.

So here’s the thing: I’ve had a deadline this week, culminating in this weekend, to finish editing the glossary and calendar meta-documents that have to go into my actual published book. And I’ve been struggling because there were tricky parts, and my brain kept bouncing off those tricky parts, and to cut a long story short, I’ve been doing my NaNo words every day but somehow not getting to the glossary. Which left me with two days.

After hyperventilating, I came up with plan for the weekend. Saturday was for glossarising (morning) all the bits without calendar references, and if I got that done in time, I could go to  wagem007‘s place for the NaNo write in, in the afternoon. Then Sunday, which also features a birthday party, could be for finishing off the calendar stuff and maybe I could not get my words done that day and still not be too far behind. So of course, secretly I wanted to do EXTRA words today to make up for pre-emptively blowing off tomorrow.

Okay. So I did the first part, hooray, finally, thanks to the Wiggles who had the good sense to have a concert on this morning that we bought tickets to months ago. Two tickets. For Raeli and her Daddy. Glossarising – tick.

Feeling all accomplished, I drove down to the docks to pick up L (who lives on a BOAT) and then across the bridge (for the first time since I got my licence, I think?) to find Em’s place, which is in Howrah. I’ve never been to Howrah before, but it turned out to exist with a minimum of effort. The three of us then settled down to a lively and reasonably productive afternoon.

Um. Except for the part where I let myself doodle aimlessly, rereading some scenes, fiddling a little, just to warm up, and then suddenly realised at least half an hour into the session that I had 600 words less than I should have. No, I hadn’t edited them out. No, I hadn’t lost any scenes between yesterday and today. The word count was just – different. I finally came to the conclusion that I was so desperate to reach my word count yesterday that I had hallucinated the extra 600 words, and duly noted them in my spreadsheet.

Well, that was a blow. I kept working, but it was a struggle after all that, and by the end of the afternoon I’d barely made up to yesterday’s word count.

I had promised to be home in time to cook tea for the family – really at this point I should have made noises to leave. Instead, I wrote my brains out. I cranked the music up high, I tore into my two sets of square brackets, turning them into the violent fight scenes they were supposed to be, and I achieved another plane of consciousness. Finally it was late, the baby was looking dazed from too much rock-until-you-stop-crying, and I had written about 1500 words in under an hour. Also my brain was slowly leaking out my ears.

I haven’t got to the best part yet. I dropped L back at the docks, came home, started (late) to cook tea, and in between chopping and stir-frying, I opened up the version of my doc that I had backed up by emailing to myself before I left. Huh. Looked like the 600 words were there, all right. No obvious extra scenes that had been accidentally deleted. I opened the version I’d been working on in Howrah and slowly started paging through both, looking for what was different between them.

At this point I realised that the 600 missing words from the word count was back in the working document too. No new scenes. Just… a recount.

Yep. So… remember how I wanted to get ahead today? I did. By 600 words. Because apparently being in a different postcode makes a difference to Word.

Either that, or I’m still hallucinating.

I want to post my review of Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer, but apparently my brain is still sorting that one out (or rather is pushing everything else to the back so it can concentrate on turning stacks of square bracketed pleas of desperation into half-decent fight scenes), so instead I will share some links of other people’s thoughts on writing, and how it relates to meeee. Because right now, NaNo being NaNo, it’s hard to see past the end of the novel on my face.

Did I say novel? I meant nose. But mostly I meant novel.

Jo Walton writes on the fantasy technique of madey-uppy words – when it works to add depth of worldbuilding, and when it makes you look like a tool.

This fills me with due apprehension because I am indeed writing book 3 of a trilogy which does exactly this thing. Only hopefully in the depth of worldbuilding way and not the tool way. I have deliberately pulled a messed up hybrid of French, Italian, Latin and English into play, and have insisted in some cases of using particular words where ordinary English ones would do. In all cases, though, it was when the ordinary English version was not just ordinary, but so overused that it came with far too many connotations.

‘Princess’ for instance. It’s one of those words I can’t write with a straight face any more. Not with Disney’s finest staring out at me from my daughter’s schoolbag every day. I also banished ‘night’ and ‘girl’ because it was the only way, I decided, to avoid using them in every single sentence in the book.

Most of the trilogy, incidentally, takes place at night.

Anyway, I will hug my madey-uppy words to myself and brace myself for the displeasure and judging looks of  girliejones. I solemnly swear I have not added any apostrophes in the middle of names (cough except where grammatically accurate).

Meanwhile, Scott Westerfeld talks about “Passages of Disbelief,” a lovely term to describe that moment when the ordinary people of the familiar world are faced with magic, or aliens, or the Other for the first time. [I have lots of this in my book too, as it's basically urban fantasy that happens to also be otherworld fantasy]

Reading his post my first thought was ‘ooh, Buffy did lots of that, especially that lovely Oz reaction to vampires being real’ and Scott promptly linked to an essay he wrote on those moments in Buffy. The essay is awesome, and makes me want to a) buy the book (damn you, SmartPop, are you never satisfied?) and b) watch all the Buffy. Like I have time for that. Though it might help me with those damned fight scenes…

It has been a day of frazzle, from beginning to end. Waking up is HARD when you were awake at 4am. For some reason Jem has an unconscionable attachment to that hour. Whether she goes to sleep at 7pm, 10pm or midnight, she’s always wide awake at four.

Thursdays are put aside as an open house for Nano-ers to come work on my big table, which is lovely in theory. It was squashed today by the Sports Carnival smack bang in the middle of the morning – I only had an hour or two to myself before I had to leave, and I mostly spent that time cleaning up for guests and clearing said big table.

It was okay not getting any words written in the morning, cos I would have all afternoon with my Nano chums. (ha) I was also on tenterhooks because it was raining, and if the carnival was cancelled, I would have time to do actual stuff.

It was not cancelled. It got fine. I left the house. It started to rain again. I had the pram in the car, but not the plastic rain cover. I had an umbrella, but not the baby pouch. The wrong pairs of things! We managed to get to the sports field without drowning the baby. An hour of watching other people’s children line up and run around, with occasional flashes of interest as our own child participated in the shenanigans. Yes, Raeli still spends more time checking out what everyone else is doing than concentrating on the finish line. Just like last year. Only we did it in the rain.

A quick but satisfying sushi lunch, made more entertaining by the fact that the sushi chef and his partner spent the whole time trying to make Jem smile adoringly at them, which she did. She is so good like that.

Then an afternoon of chaos. I love my Nano chums, I do, and we all really did need a chance to catch up, chat about writing, and boost each other’s spirits. But it would have been nice if we managed to do some actual writing, too. We just had a few too many exciting things to talk about, and a few too many children in the other room (six, at one point, plus Jem) causing mayhem and making each other cry.

All pretty good kids. But there’s a certain number that you reach, and they become a horde. That number starts long before you get to six.

To make things worse, my writing wasn’t working. I’m normally pretty good at working through distractions, but every time I got pulled away, the scene fragmented just a little more. It didn’t help that it was a fight scene, and I find those the hardest. FInally I wrote something loud and judgemental in capital letters and square brackets (check out Justine Larbalestier on the value of square brackets, followed by the dangers of square brackets. I also enjoyed Maggie Stiefvater on the square bracket technique and how it works for her) and just moved on to the next scene, and the next. Also I found some actual earbuds and played some actual music instead of pretending I didn’t need to. I really need to. Glee soundtrack played super loud means that the sound of burst balloons and broken hearts does not get through.

The Nano afternoon segued into our normal evening of socialising, Battlestar Galactica etc, and I only had 300 words written. PANIC. I have not so far dropped below a day’s target (though I have often completed less than a day’s words), and I was convinced that if I did so, the whole thing would fall apart. I managed another 400 or so before actually having to socialise. Then, after all had departed and our girls were in bed, I started on the mammoth task of actually writing at night, an essential feature of last year’s nano, but something I have found impossible this year, due to the fact that I have seen nearly every 4am since August.

None of them are nice.

It hurt, but I got it written, and I am now a whole two words above the minumum word count. Frabjous day! I also got this blog post written 3 minutes before the time I promised I would get it written or come to bed and leave it unposted.

Thus: it is posted.

I had an attack of the plots today, and accidentally figured out the structure and events of three quarters of Saturnalia, Book III of the Creature Court. Can I hear a woohoo? Yes, I did sell a trilogy without a great deal of idea of what happened in Book III. How could I know, when I had no idea of the surprises Book II would throw at me?

So yes, plot. Part of the reason I wanted to NaNo up the first 50K of this ms before I go back to my rewrite of Book 2 was because it involves a reveal of backstory previously only hinted at, and I wouldn’t know exactly what that backstory WAS until I wrote it. I am not a pre-plotter. I used to be, but it didn’t work for me. I generally have one or two future events in my head, and I try to work towards them, but usually end up taking the scenic route.

This makes meta-documents, as discussed in Scott Westerfeld’s post as part of the Westerbalestier Nano-tips series particularly important to me. I’m not one of those fantasy writers who has their worldbuilding beautifully laid out before they start working (though my cartographer informs me that this would be a Much Better Idea), I wait until the world turns up in crumbs and tidbits in my sentences.

Then I write it down somewhere important and memorable, because if I’m writing fast, chances are that some other worldbuilding that is Entirely Contradictory will turn up later, and that is the road to insanity and tears.

So, my current meta-documents, ie the docs used to keep track of the stuff I need to, include:

Map [hard copy, biro scrawl in notebook, now an ever expanding series of nicely inked sketches drawn by my mother]

Fasti/Calendar of Festivals [Excel, loosely based on the Roman calendar but with some extreme Tansyfication]

Glossary [a latecomer to the party, only constructed after the 3rd draft of Power & Majesty, housed in Zulupad, a platform so awesome it deserves a post of its own - it also now exists in a word doc cos editors want a less spoilery version included at the back of the book]

Playlist! [itunes, one for the whole series, separate ones for each book, mini-playlists for characters who deserve it, and a Make Write Good super playlist for writing fastly and brilliantly]

Saturnalia page [Excel, a list of important stuff the third book has to address or include, and my day by day projected & actual Nano wordcount]

Keeping Track page [Excel, used for wordcount goals for first two books, notes to self for next edits of first two books]

Character Timelines [Excel, column for each major character, keeping track of intersecting points of backstory and ages]

Courtesi and Alliances page [Excel, more backstory info, this time showing names and details minor characters and who are allied to whom, etc. Also includes all the words/descriptors I've used for my skybattles, and which animal everyone turns into]

Power and Majesty timeline [Excel, this listed every scene & chapter in book 1 and kept track of what day they happened on - now out of date because I suck and didn't update it when adding new scenes with recent edit]

Okay, that’s enough to make my head hurt. The important thing is that apart from the Fasti/Calendar of Festivals (well, four months worth of it), all of this was constructed during or after the writing process, not before. The downside of this is that I haven’t done it all that efficiently – I only started a real glossary late in the day, and probably wouldn’t have started or needed half of those Excel worksheets if I’d had it running from the start. In fact this is a problem because I have several times edited or added information in only one place, and had conflicting dates in backstory, etc. Aaargh!

On the other hand, if I’d realised how much STUFF there was to keep track of in these books (which honestly are not as complicated to read as they are to write and edit), I might have been too freaked out to even get started. So on the whole not having a plan is still the best plan for me.

However, next time I may draw the map first. To keep my Mum happy.

Oh, who am I kidding? I totally won’t do that.

Hot. Hot. Hot. Summer bad. Hate summer. Hot.

I finally made it to a NaNoWriMo write-in this morning, in which we hid from the offensively hot weather and tapped away with the help of cold cordials, iced tea and chocolate scones.

The good thing about writing at  godiyeva‘s house is that, while our laptops might not be connected to Google, she’s still likely to have a reference book to answer any random questions we might have, whether it be about ancient greek clothing and geography, or how to make a mint julep.

The mint juleps weren’t relevant to anyone’s book, it was just so hot that the topic came up, and we much enjoyed the reading from a very ancient and judgmental tome that listed the controversies surrounding whether or not to bruise the mint, and other period details.

Mmm, mint juleps. It’s so a day for them.

Jem was really very good, dividing her time between lying on the baby gym (she has that ‘I’m about to roll’ gleam in her eye but so far has only managed it when precariously balanced on cushions which not only doesn’t count, but is Very Bad Mothering) and actually sleeping in a stray cot.

My honey  aifin unexpectedly arrived at lunchtime, having skived off work (well technically I suppose he’s allowed a lunch break but it was suspiciously long) to sort out my some-bastard-ripped-my-wing-mirror-off problem, so we swapped cars and went to find somewhere air conditioned to grab lunch first.

Lunch was very nice and very air conditioned (ahhhhh) but I did feel guilty about the fact that my baby had to be strapped to me the whole time and thus was probably not getting the best benefit of the cool air. I brought her home after that to spend the afternoon playing the exciting new game ‘look, it’s a wet washcloth on your tummy, hooray’ and watching Days of Our Lives.

It’s allowed, okay? I am ahead on wordcount! Also it was a very exciting episode in which the sweet, innocent geekboy is revealed to be a murdering madman, hooray! The plot moved startlingly fast for a single DOOL episode, which made me wonder if they’ve changed things around there or if I just lucked out and got the one plotty episode for the year.

Now the baby is asleep, the schoolgirl is off somewhere with her Toto (translation: grandfather who actually has never seen the Wizard of Oz) and I can lie around in the heat wishing I had a mint julep while I thumb through my spanking new copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife. You may all be jealous of my lifestyle.

If only the bottle shops and herb farms delivered, I could actually have a mint julep. Provided I was willing to take a position on mint-bruisage.

The horrible, horrible thing about being a writer is that sometimes you can work for an hour and get 200 words, and sometimes you can work for an hour and get 1000 words. When you’re working to a deadline, you can’t just hang around waiting for the speedy words to come, you have to plug away to reach your goal even on the days when it’s just not happening.

Well, you don’t have to. But it’s usually a pretty good idea, because it could be weeks before the speedy, brilliant, easy words turn up.

Nano has been hard for me so far. I like what I’m writing, but it’s been sloooow. I don’t know if it’s because I’m at the start of a new book, or because a substantial percentage of my brain is working on milk-production, or because 1667 is just not a reasonable daily wordcount for me right now.

I’m sure I was writing faster last month when I was trying for 1000 words a day. On the other hand, that was the end of a book. The end of a book goes faster! Why do I never remember this.

So I just plod patiently along, enjoying the company. Today I got more ahead of my overall wordcount than I have all week. 600 words, woo!

But the important thing, the really important thing, is that today I got to use ‘milksop’ in a sentence. And  godiyeva brought gingerbread cakes, and M brought almond tea. And holy crap, I wrote nearly 2200 words. That’s kind of good.

Also, the baby is sleeping and thus far has managed to not explode her nappy open. Hooray!

There are two fairly tired myths/criticisms of NaNoWriMo and I often see them trotted out regularly at this time of year, usually by people who a) don’t GET NaNoWriMo and b) are offering them as reasons for why they don’t want to play.

The first myth is that there’s no point in writing a ms that’s 50,000 words long, because it’s an unsaleable length. The second myth is that no one writing 50,000 in a month can produce anything that’s actually any good.

My first response actually addresses both of these myths. Nano is not about producing a hot-off-the-presses-ready-to-submit novel. It is about writing a FIRST DRAFT. (or as Justine recently reminded us, a zero draft)  First/zero drafts can take many forms.  They can be skeletal novels that get fleshed out later.  They can be rough-as-guts.  They can be crap.  As Maureen tells us: embrace the suckmonster.  It’s okay.  Because your zero draft can also be awesome, and there is absolutely nothing about writing fast that automatically makes a draft/manuscript crap.

[A book's true awesomeness requires a lot of post-November editing and reworking to show it to best advantage, and I do weep a little for those agents who get flooded with unedited Nano manuscripts on December 1st.  That's just nasty]

Also it’s worth noting that there are various kinds of books which can in fact be complete at 50,000.  Children’s, YA and romance, for instance, can easily run to that length.  Many Nano-ites writing in less short-novel-friendly genres like to get around this issue by using NaNoWriMo to add 50,000 words to an existing manuscript (as I did last year), or to write the first 50,000 words and continue in December, possibly at a less breakneck pace.  For some reason, the former is not considered “real” NaNoWriMo while the latter is.  But everyone is welcome to the party.

That’s the first myth out of the way.  Now for the second, which is quite simply wrong.  A lot of sarcastic eyebrows get raised at NaNoWriMo.  The assumption from outsiders is that this is a whole bunch of amateurs looking for a shortcut to a novelist’s career, and that all 100,000 of them are producing crap which will never amount to anything.  Truthfully, a lot of crap is going to be written this month.  Some produced by people wanting to tick ‘write a novel’ off their life list.  Some from people just wanting to knock 50,000 words off the million words of crap they’re supposed to produce before they can be any good at writers.  Some manuscripts will be shoved under the bed (or into the Do Not Disturb folder) and never looked at again.  Some manuscripts will be emailed directly to an agent, long before it’s ready to be seen (seriously, don’t do this).  Some are just being written for the sake of writing them – because NaNoWriMo is a party in your computer, and it’s sad not to play.

Some Nano manuscripts will be the cornerstone for something publishable.  Some will go on to be edited and polished and turned into something of professional quality.  Some (admittedly a small number) will sell.  Some may have already sold, in fact. (I used last year’s Nano to complete the first draft a manuscript I had already signed a contract on, and am using this year’s to get down the first 50K of another pre-sold book)

The main thing about writing is that the speed at which you produce the words (and in fact the effort it takes to produce the words) has little to no effect on the end result.  There’s no such thing as ‘too fast’ when it comes to writing.  Some writers work slow, producing polished first drafts.  Some work fast, and take several more passes before the manuscript is ready.  Some write for twenty minutes a day, some for two hours a day, some for eight hours a day.  Many professional writers produce more than the Nano daily word count (1667) every single day.  Some of them work at a pace that leaves the 100,000 Nano-ites in the dust.  And in fact, many of the people participating in NaNoWriMo this and every year are experienced, professional writers.  It’s very likely that what the experienced writers produce will be potentially publishable, just as it’s likely that most of the first novels written during this Nano will probably not be publishable.  (Very few first novels are publishable, but that’s true whether they are written over five years or in one month)  Some people who are doing Nano for the third or fourth or fifth time are doing exactly what they need to in order to make it as writers.  They are practicing.

Nano is not for everyone.  Some people can’t write that way.  Nano could well blow out the brains of many writers, and would certainly not bring out the best work in others, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend that anyone who already knows they hate writing fast first drafts should feel obliged to participate.  But if you’re not sure what kind of writer you are, a blurter or a planner, a sprinter or a marathon stroller, Nano is definitely an efficient way to find out.

Glenda Larke and Jennifer Crusie are among the pro writers giving a whirl this year.  So Nano-ites, take heed!  Next time someone tells you that your November activity of choice is pointless, remember that you’re in good company.

For the record, if you need an excuse not to participate in NaNoWriMo (other than ‘I don’t want to’ which is, let’s face it, perfectly reasonable) then rather than belittling the efforts of those who do choose to take part, consider just saying: “No way, you people are crazy.”  Nano-ites adore being told how crazy they are.  It’s a point of pride.

I love being part of NaNoWriMo.  It’s like one giant month-long flashmob of creative insanity.  It is inspiring and enervating.  It’s the month when it’s most fun to be a writer.

That’s right, I am rocking the minimum. Go, minimum!

New music added to writing playlist: the Glee soundtrack. Awesome writing music, I have to say. It’s so peppy. But then I’m the girl who likes to write to Lily Allen turned up Way Loud, so possibly my suggestions won’t work for others.

Writing was harder today because the baby was just a bit squeakier, and being somewhere other than home ceased to be a novelty for her. I have to suck it up and start TAKING THE BOUNCY CHAIR anywhere I intend to write. She does love the bouncy chair. Still, minimum achieved. And the day isn’t over yet…

In other news, I just found out that Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels was the co-winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It’s always awesome when Australian writers get recognised at an international level, but I’m particularly excited because I think this is one of the most interesting and important fantasy novels of the last decade. Tender Morsels has so much depth to it, and so much to say about the nature of fantasy, reality and fairy tales. It’s not an easy book by any means, but it is a true classic of the genre. I’ve never formally reviewed TM because I felt too close to it to appear unbiased (I am in a critiquing group with Margo and critiqued an early version of the manuscript), but I would love to write an academic paper on it some day. There’s plenty of crunch there to work with.

Had a satisfyingly successful Nano writing session with the girls at Mures (large fish and chippery, very supportive of writers with laptops) on the docks – I managed most of my day’s wordcount with the baby strapped to my chest. It’s exciting to finally be letting myself loose on Book 3, which has decided it is called Saturnalia.

Google searches for the day: oyster season italy, theatre history, Commedia_dell’Arte, backstage theatre terms, Bill Oddie.

Okay, maybe the Bill Oddie part wasn’t relevant to the book.

I’m deep in backstory because yes, even by book three, it’s all about the backstory. The scene I’m writing is one I first started thinking my way through more than five years ago, and it’s awesome that I am so much a better writer than I was then. Sometimes it’s good to wait it out.