2008 nano wrap up

And that's nano #5 done, gone, and behind me. FOREVER! The boys can relax, and I can get out of Normandy for awhile and get back to the Old West. Though, ironically enough, I got the most words in today (figures), and I'm ready to keep going right now. Which is, of course, the idea... now that I'm nicely in the daily habit of writing, I must not lose it again. Must not, I tell you! Overcoming entropy is the hardest part.

So, wrapping up... I actually had far better discipline this year despite everything than during any previous year. I wrote every day (even if I did have to throw the word count out for two days) except for one. However, it took me half the month before I was actually, you know, writing, instead of merely interrupting my time-wasting sessions with a few words every few minutes. Writing shorts was both easier and harder than novel. Easier because when I got stuck on one, I could just jump to another. Harder because there's no room to ramble and explore, and so I had to stay better focused. But as long as I visualized the next day's scenes before I went to bed, I usually didn't have a problem picking up again. What surprised me most were the three unexpected stories that came out of nowhere and mostly wrote themselves. They sort of broke loose and went crazy. And even better -- all three of those are now completed too!

Stats:

Least daily words: 0
Most daily words: 6,034 (today)
Daily average: 1,800

Stories Completed:
Crossroads (5,700 words)
In Little Stars (3,000 nano words, 18K total)
Untitled Christmas story (4,000)
Teeth of a Dragon (12,000)

Still in progress:
Blood of the Air (17,000 nano words, 18K total to date)
Murder's Melody (6,700 nano words, 14.5K to date)
Misc fanfic bits and bobs (2,000)

Music listened to most:
The Bridge at Remagen (Bernstein)
Raggedy Man (Goldsmith)
The Stripper (Goldsmith)
Studs Lonigan (Goldsmith)
Main Title from Ride the High Country (Bassman) -- and no, I'm still not tired of it

Pandemic 2 games played until humanity was overcome:
6

Netflix movies watched:
8 (gulp! Bad me! And that's not counting repeat viewings on a couple of those. Ahem)

Hot tea consumed:
Too many mugfuls to count

And that's 40,000 behind me

Finally! I am fully back in the writing habit. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to wake up in the morning unable to wait to turn on the computer so I can get to it, to have scenes swirling in my head just waiting to be thrown on paper.

So far this nano, I have completed first drafts of:

1. "In Little Stars"
2. "Crossroads"
3. an Unnamed Christmas Challenge Story

Tonight, I should wrap up "Teeth of a Dragon," which is a Halloween Challenge story, which only leaves the much longer work "Blood of the Air" still in progress. I actually will complete Nano before I complete it though, I realized, because at 18,000 words, I'm only 2/3rds through it. If that. I may only be halfway through it, as there's still a lot ahead.

And then, there's "Murder's Melody" which I should have done first, but of course, pushed aside, waaaay aside. Bad bad me. I did get a few thousand on it intermittently, but nowhere near what's needed to complete it. I guess I'll have to buckle down on that one in December. Grrrrr.

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Ahhhh, habit. Writing habits are a good thing, and I'm finally settling back into mine. It's a really good feeling, particularly after a night like tonight, where I whipped right through 1800 words in an hour. It was quite nice to realize I wasn't stopping every paragraph to check my word count (oooh, look ma, another 101 words... how exciting!), I just immersed and went. I did the math and I need 2000 words a day between now and Nov 30 to complete Nano. Definitely can't afford any slackage. And short stories, I've found, are a far more difficult thing to tackle in a Nano sprint than a novel. On a novel, you can just blithely plow ahead no matter what, and there's room to roam. That doesn't work so well with shorts. At least not with my shorts.

Speaking of shorts, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" has always been one of my favorites. I had this very treasured book growing up called A World of Events that had all sorts of fiction and non-fiction in it. I read "The Most Dangerous Game" over and over until I had sections memorized. Probably one of those early influences that led me to believe that the scariest villain will always be another human being. Here's a photo from that book (of course, I still have it!). I always loved this particular picture. I always thought Zaroff looked like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in this drawing (click pic to make big). And Ivan always scared the pants off me, as I'm sure he supposed to. And yes, this book was a teacher's edition and has all sorts of interesting annotations in the margins.

So, since I did so well on writing tonight, I had time to watch the 1932 version of The Most Dangerous Game and not feel guilty. The movie changes a few things, naturally, from the short. Mostly in adding a woman to the mix. It is Hollywood, after all. Gotta have a woman around for the hero to protect. Fortunately she's played by Fay Wray and is a nice mixture of spunky, brave, and understandably a bit freaked. And despite her, the movie rather eerily captured exactly the feelings and atmosphere reading the story gave me. Weird. I didn't expect that at all. The jungle sets (same ones used in King Kong), the foggy swamp, they all looked like I used to imagine when I was a little girl. Being chased by a bloodthirsty pack of hounds... eiiii! Now there's something that always makes me cringe and hide on the couch. (Too much of The Hound of the Baskerville when I was young, I think!)

I expected the movie to be corny, and it wasn't at all, exact opposite, in fact. It was tense and the violence and a couple of the deaths quite gruesome. Some of the dialogue was even straight out of the short story. They shortened the timeline from the story's three days to 24 hours, and that suits the movie quite well. Injects a lot more tension into it, as there's no time for the hunted to rest. This Zaroff's also quite mad, where I never quite got that impression from the story version. That makes him quite creepy in the movie. Him and his forehead scar, and his post-kill cigarette, and mad buggy eyes. AHHHH! I have to admit, if I were Fay Wray in this movie, I'd rather take my chances in the jungle too than be anywhere near Zaroff. Particularly as going into the jungle means going with Joel McCrea, and I'd go with him anywhere.

Ah yes, Joel McCrea. The real reason this movie got bumped up to the top of my Netflix queue right now. Thirty years younger here than in Ride the High Country, still learning how to act, but he's still a wonderful combo of earnest and athletic and naturally relaxed. And he's already got that intense way of looking at his female co-stars, like time just stopped for him when they entered his view and nothing else in the world matters but them. Something about the way he's so laidback the rest of the time just makes it that much more arresting. He does this in every film I've seen so far where he's the romantic lead, and it's one of the absolute sexiest things I've ever seen from any male actor, and, out here in the audience, it melts me every time.

The Most Dangerous Game only has an hour running time, so I'll probably watch it again before I return the DVD. I've always wanted to see the Richard Widmark movie variant of this story, Run for the Sun, but somehow I don't think it will be nearly as satisfying as this one.

Halfway!

Hah! I made the halfway mark in Nano. Minor miracle considering all the fits and starts, but it's taken this long to get back into the daily habit of writing. I'm finally actually sitting down and writing, instead of checking out internet sites I've already visited sixteen times that day alone. I've also set my movie watching and reviewing aside for now, like a good girl, until I can finish out the month.

I've now finished drafts of two stories, "In Little Stars" and "Crossroads." I'm about halfway done with "Blood of the Air" and the one everyone really wants me to finish, "Murder's Melody"... well, I've gotten a couple thousand words on it, but other than that, it languishes. Naturally. I don't want to write that one. But BotA is not going to last me another 25K, so I'll have to get to it eventually before November ends.

(Joel McCrea in Buffalo Bill, sprawled and scribbling a letter...
my reward movie, and another writing picture for my collection!)

Reason #1 not to read TCM's schedule

Dang it. I really really wish I could get just subscribe to one cable channel sometimes: Turner Classic Movies. Cuz they're having a Ralph Meeker night tonight, and as I don't have cable or satellite, I can't watch any of it. Sniff. And if I'm going to procrastinate on Nano writing, I can't think of a better way to do it.

Maybe it's a good thing, because my goal is to get 5000 words today. (The most I've done is a little over 6000 in a day, so I know 5K is doable.) I'm thoroughly distracted already by Joel McCrea right now... add a healthy dose of Meeker back into the mix (including two movies I've never seen that aren't out on DVD) and I'm doomed.

But what a pleasant doom it would be.

Ahhhh, road blocks

And not the good kind.

My neck spasmed again yesterday, and that kept me from sitting at my computer last night, which kept me from writing. I'm icing it now, so hopefully that will help get me through work today. Nano has been up and down, and right when it was coming up again... this happens. I'm not sure why I even keep trying this year. Though nano has gotten me through a stuck part in ILS and now I just have a few hundred words to button that story draft up.

I've been watching more Joel McCrea movies, but that's a whole happy post all by itself.

Yesterday, I got the Indiana Jones Soundtracks Collection from Intrada. Ah yes, me happy. There's music on here I've been waiting years and years for, like the "Approaching the Stones" cue from Temple of Doom. Naturally, that was the first music in the set I listened to. I'm not the biggest John Williams fan (give me Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein any day), but I do love the Star Wars and Indiana Jones scores with all my heart. They're part of the fabric of my existence, much like the movies themselves. I'll be kicking back and checking out the rest of the previously unreleased cues this weekend, and I can't wait.

Speaking of unreleased music, it appears Bernstein's score to Hud has never been released. Damn. I watched that film for the first time as part of a mini Paul Newman tribute, and while I did not like the movie, the score was great. Hud reminded me a bit of The Sweet Smell of Success -- I recognize both are very well-done movies, but the lead character(s) are so nasty and miserable, spending time with them is just too unpleasant to do more than once. And no, the wonderfulness of Melvyn Douglas and Martin Milner, respectively in each film, does not offset the yuckiness of the other self-serving characters.

So, it's going to be one of those days

Unexpected interruptions and just now Word crashed and took all my latest words with it despite me saving every few minutes. Like I'm not having a hard enough time.

And then again...

I've just dropped my nano word count back down to zero, as I've decided not to write "The Traitor" right now. I really wanted to write the book following the Think Sideways course techniques start to finish to see what works/doesn't work for me, and I simply decided on this project too late to get all the right prep work done in time. I know very well I can write a book without more planning than I have right now, I've done it successfully before. But I want to try something different with the next book I write. So, back into storage it goes.

I do believe (and this will delight Ms. Maggie LeMay to no end) that I'm going to follow my Fruit Salad partner's steps, and do 50K of new words on Combat! fanfiction. Why? Because I'm bloody sick to death of having these last three stories taking up brain space, and I want them gone gone GONE.

This will do it. One month. Three stories. 50K. Out of my head forever.

And then, I can focus properly on the novels. This makes me very very happy. It's a win-win proposition!

And nano has begun

1700 words on the first day, in fits and starts. Gave the book the temp title of "The Traitor" so I at least have something to call it. Today I spend most of the day babysitting my nephew, so I guess that means I'd better hop to it! Tea is brewing, music is playing (Goldsmith's Masada appears to be the kick-off score for this one).

How to avoid Nano prep work

So, just two days left until nano insanity begins and last night, after struggling with determining my new novel's world's naming conventions, I gave up and watched Foreign Correspondent instead.

You know I don't think it would be very hard at all to develop a crush on Joel McCrea. This is the second film I've seen him in recently (the other was Sullivan's Travels), and in both he's so unpresuming, laid-back, and earnest, just an all around nice guy. And he's pretty darn cute besides. After Nano, I'll have to see what else he's got out there.

This movie was quite fun and entertaining. Nothing truly unexpected or twisty, just a good, solid spy yarn. Built some excellent tension and creepy suspense in places, and it has that spectacular plane crash. Dude, they don't make plane crashes look that good nowadays. Not just the crash itself, but the sinking aftermath. Yikes! I was pleased George Sanders got to play a good guy for once, just as suave and cool as always, but on the right side of the law. It was also nice to have someone as tall as Joel McCrea around so he didn't tower over everyone. And Ian Wolfe... was he ever young? LOL! He looks perpetually old. From this film to Star Trek twenty-eight years later, he doesn't seem to change hardly at all. He's even more unchanging than Walter Brennan!

Oh, and for the record, between Alistair MacLean's "Puppet on a Chain" and this movie's creepy windmills, I am never visiting Holland. I'm sure there's nothing scary about the real Holland, but the fictional versions are always so damned freaky.

Why, there must be less than a week left before NaNo...

...because I've changed my project. The YA novel is out. The new idea I came up with a couple months ago for the Think Sideways course is in. It doesn't have a title, nor do the two lead characters (any of the characters for that matter) even have names. But I know what happens in the first few chapters, I know a couple of the important plot points, I know enough of the setting, I have one ending in mind (which I already know will most likely change as I get into it), and I've still got four whole days to figure out the rest. Woo! I mean... oh yeah, four days. Dandy. Nothing like coming down to the wire.

Why? Because the one major similarity between the YA novel and both DTD and POW was driving me crazy. I don't need or want another book exploring those same things. I want something completely different. Well, the Think Sideways novel is radically different, so it earned itself a chance to step up to the plate. Oddly, I'd forgotten all about it until last night. Then it sort of raised its hand, tentatively, and asked "what about me?"

So, those characters better step forward and name themselves, right away please. Writing "the traitor" and "the serving girl" just doesn't cut it. Hahhahahah! Cheesy fake title alert!! "The Traitor and the Serving Girl." Groan. Oh, I just love snatching at ideas at the very last minute.

This is positively my last NaNo.

Gearing up for year five...

...or, in other words, yes, I am insane.

I committed to NaNo 2008.

Went through all the open projects, and unless it changes at the eleventh hour (which wouldn't be the first time), I'm aiming to do the long-delayed fantasy YA novel, current title: "The Barristal Riders." I was figuring my brain wouldn't get excited about it, as my brain has rejected everything without a noir aspect (and the men to go with it) for three years now, but I sat down with paper and pen and got down the main characters and a map with most of the main locations named. I know where the story ends, I know where it starts. I understand pieces of the subplots and the character arcs that go with them. My characters sure did choose some most interesting names, but I know better than to argue with them. One important character even cast himself with a "who else should be in this role but me?" big grin, without giving me a chance to even look around the wings. Well, I haven't worked with this one before, um, er... that's not true. I have! It was just awhile ago. How could I forget that? Duh! And he was very easy and professional to work with too. Okay, maybe I won't mock him. And besides... he's right. He is perfect for this novel, and you know me... when I have the right men to write for, the novels write themselves.

Rule #1. Always trust your muse(s) and your subconscious. They know what they're doing.

To nano or not to nano

Oh, it's that pesky time of year again... I've completed nano successfully the last four years, how can I not make it five? Particularly as Tillane is doing it, and as we started this madness together, I don't think I'll be able to watch him cross the finish line while I sit idly twiddling my thumbs. (Competition can be a very healthy thing!)

But if I do it, which project do I pick? Do I re-do POW from scratch? Do I do 50k of C! fanfic? Do I start on that YA novel that was supposed to be my nano novel 3 years ago until DTD shoved it into a corner? Or start the trilogy that I've also been debating doing for four years of nano? Or something brand spanking new?

Whatever I do, this year I'm determined to be organized. As much as I love what I got last year on POW, as much fun as I had writing it, it ultimately doesn't work because I didn't know when I started where the story needed to go. The last thing I need this year is 50K I'm promptly going to throw out and re-write. I need something like DTD that worked the first time. So, I have half a month to get those ducks rowed.

But which novel to pick??