In Which Our Heroine Forgets to Read Her Own Blog Post

I made a little bit of progress on the NaNo story today.  85 words.  Which is really only about two paragraphs.  So it's minimal progress.  But I'll take what I can get.

Last night I went to bed with two characters in my head-- Ethan and Harry.  I don't really know anything about these guys yet, but I figure if I stick with it I'll get to know them this month.  And then I woke up this morning with two paragraphs in my head about Mark and his bowel habits.  Who Mark is, what his relationship to Ethan and Harry is, and why he (or I) think anyone cares about his bowel habits is completely beyond me.  But I'm going with it.  hur.

I think, and I could be totally wrong here but it seems about right, that Mark is a bit of a Sheldonesque character.  (From The Big Bang Theory)  And I think that Ethan and Harry come in and disrupt his life in ways large and small.  In fact, I think Ethan and Harry are sort of modern day Gandalfs, and Mark is Bilbo, and the story is going to end up being a riff on The Hobbit.  Ethan and Harry drag Mark along with them on a Big Gay Adventure.

Hmm.  Ideas are churning.  This is good.  I'm supposed to be getting ready for my mom's Mary Kay Holiday Open House that starts on Friday (I have a few hand knit things that I'm putting out), but I may spend the day putting together a collage and soundtrack instead.  If I'm lucky I may even add another 85 words to my story.  At this rate I should hit the 50,000 word mark on June 13, 2013.

In goofy news, I was very proud of a new In Which statement that I came up with this morning, and I mentioned it in a comment on the last post.  And then I went back and re-read the post and discovered that I'd put it in the body of the post when I wrote it yesterday, and then promptly forgot it.  Because that is how my brain works.  (Julie's smooth brain has nothin' on me.)

So that's my progress so far.  And now, I think my sleeping pill is finally kicking in, so I'm going to post this and then go to bed.

'Night All!

In Which a Plan Is Born

Just in case you've been living under a rock (or, you know, you don't run in the same writerly circles I do), it's NaNo time again.  In honor of this annual event, I've changed my blog theme again.  Isn't it nice?  Much less shocking than the fall foliage.

So, we're over 24 hours into the grand event.  How many words have I written?  Nothing, nada, el zippo.  Despite spending the last two months in Lani's writing classes, preparing for this moment, there is nothing in my head.  (Totally not Lani's fault.  The lack of firing synopses in my brain is my problem alone.)  It's echoing in there like the inside of an empty 55 gallon drum.

But I did get an idea a few minutes ago.  In fact, I shamelessly stole it from Deanna Raybourn and her blog.  Every post starts with, "In Which".  Examples from the last week are: "In which we were just talking about Nora", "In which this is just BIZARRE", "In which I am out and about", and "In which I'm leaving on the proverbial jet plane".

So, this is what I'm going to do.  I'm going to start every section with an "In Which".  The first one will be, "In Which Our Two Heroes Meet".  I have not the slightest idea who these fellows are or what they're going to do.  But I like this "In Which" idea, so I'm going to run with it.  Or, more realistically, waddle with it.

Next challenge: come up with enough "In Which" statements to keep me moving for the rest of the month.  I have a few more off the top of my head:

In Which a Good Time Is Had By All
In Which Our Heroes Encounter a Problem
In Which Our Heroes Are In For a Bit of a Surprise

But I need a bunch more than that.  If you've got any ideas for "In Which" statements, please share them in the comments.  I'm hoping to have one for every day of writing, and that they'll help steer the story along, because right now I don't have a flipping clue.

Lip Balm of the Day: Shamrock Shake

I'm Magic, Baby

Today was the last day of Lani's Making Magic class.  We talked about Discovery and how important that is to your writing.  Very inspiring stuff.  (I'm still a little unclear about the difference between Magic and Discovery, especially since two of the homework assignments are the same, but if it gets the juices flowing I guess it doesn't matter.)  I have lots of ideas bouncing around in my head, and I'm pretty sure those ideas are going to lead to other ideas which will eventually lead to a good story.

Yay, me!

Next weekend the Discovery class starts.  The first lesson is Soundtracks.  I might refine the one I've already put together in Magic.  I've already done a little bit of fiddling with it.  But mostly I want to poke around in tropes and with my collage (which is still 99% in my head and 0% assembled.)

Have I shared my soundtrack yet?  Here it is:

Back to December- Taylor Swift
Fuck You- Cee Lo Green
Hit the Road Jack- Ray Charles
Human Heart- Carey Ott
If We Ever Meet Again- Katy Perry/Timbaland
Last Christmas- Glee Cast
Lush Life- Natalie Cole
Make You Feel My Love- Adele
Need You Now- Lady Antebellum
Turning Tables- Adele
Valerie- Amy Winehouse
What'll I Do- Rosemary Clooney
Breathe- Melissa Etheridge
Come On Up To the House- Sarah Jarosz
St. Patrick's Day- John Mayer
Big Bang Theory- Barenaked Ladies

St. Patrick's Day and Big Bang Theory are new additions.  St. Patrick's Day sparked a thought about structure (believe it or not), and led to some interesting (IMO) changes and plans.  I'm not 100% sure Big Bang Theory really belongs, although it sort of feels like it does.  Don't know why yet.  Mostly I just added it because I started watching the show this week (one of the local channels started airing two episodes a day during the "everyone else is running the evening news" time slot).  I don't know how I missed this show before. It's very funny, and the theme song is fucking addictive.  I figured, if I'm going to be humming the damn thing constantly anyway, might as well add it to the soundtrack.  I'd been thinking that Ethan was perhaps a tad bit nerdy, and this just reinforces it.  (Oh, please God, tell me I'm not going to have to learn how to play some table top, roll playing, 20 sided die game as research.  I love me some nerd boy, but that is totally not my thing.)

I think Breathe is going to have to come off the soundtrack, though.  The more I listen to all of it, the more I think that it's the other guy's song, not Ethan's.  And while some of those songs speak to the relationship as a whole, this is mostly Ethan's soundtrack.  The other guy will have his own soundtrack later.

Oh, oh, oh!  Good news!  The Other Guy has a name!  He's Jack.  It was right there, staring me in the face, and I finally got it.  (Hit the Road Jack.)

I think that's about all the writing news I have at the moment.  Eventually I'll get the collage done(ish), and I'll post a picture of that.  Oh, and while we're supposed to be working on soundtracks, which I feel pretty solid about at the moment, I'll be working on Kelley Armstrong's Outlining 101.  It's fabulous.  This is the program I followed (in my own special, Becky-ish way) in 2007, which was by far my best, most productive NaNo year.  (National Novel Writing Month for anyone unfamiliar.)  I want to mesh some of Lani's Magic/Discovery work with Kelley's Outlining 101 to hopefully get me on the right track and revved up for November 1st.  (I hadn't been planning to NaNo this year, but what the hell.  And since I'm off in my own world, doing my own thing and making it up as I go along, I might just start before Nov 1!  I know.  I'm such a rebel!)

If you're interested in checking out Kelley's writing info, go to her website, kelleyarmstrong.com, and join her forum and the OWG (Online Writing Group).  That's where you'll find her NaNo prep stuff, as well as lots of talented and welcoming fellow writers.

And now I think I really am done.  Pretty jazzed about all the work ahead of me.  But it's fun work.  Fwerk!

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Another round of good news on the medication front.  My doctor's office called this morning.  The makers of Savella (my other Fibro medication) approved my patient assistance, and there was 3 months worth of free meds waiting for me at the office!  Yay!  My Fibro meds are the only ones I take that are too new to have a generic, which means they are the most expensive.  Now that I'm getting both of them for free, my monthly med costs have gone down by about 3/4.  That's huge-- a significant line item in the monthly budget slashed.

In other news, I've got the Kindle down to 724 items.  So far it hasn't made a bit of difference.  In fact, the battery is dying even faster.  But that might be because of all the clicking around to delete stuff.  I'll go back to more normal usage for the next couple of days and see if there's any improvement.

And more good news-- I have a solid story idea to work on.  Last night I was thinking about a story I started almost 15 years ago and abandoned.  The actual pages are long gone at this point (trust me, it's no loss), but the idea lingered.  As I was falling asleep last night it fused with another scrap of an idea, and suddenly I have a viable story idea.  In the next few days I'm going to work on Kelley Armstrong's Outlining 101, and then I want to start writing March 1st.  I'm not going to push myself to NaNo it.  I'm afraid I'll flame out in a couple of days at that kind of pace.  But I'd definitely like to finish March with a nice chunk of pages.  I've also had a little bit of a brain wave about the story I was working on last fall during Discovery.  So I think I may end up outlining both at the same time.  We'll see how confused I get.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Gingerale

It's Almost Time

Three weeks from today it will be November.  You know what that means.  NaNo time.

I haven't really done NaNo since 2006.  That was an excellent NaNo for me.  I made serious progress on a book that I really loved, and only got a little lost at the end.  As opposed to other years where I started out strong in the first week/week and a half and then scrambled to throw any old words onto the page to finish out the month with my 50,000.

I'm not sure what I want to do this time around.  I've kicked around three ideas.  First, there's the story that I've been working on in Discovery.  It's a good concept, definitely one worth working on.  But it's... big.  Slippery in my mind.  And I keep finding the most creative excuses not to do the homework for class.  (Embarrassingly, I fell asleep in class yesterday and missed about half of it.  Lucy, if you're reading this, it was all me, not you.  I woke up long enough to type I'M A GREAT WRITER!!!! and then fell asleep for another two hours.)  I strongly suspect that this is just too much story for me at this time.  I haven't done any writing worth mentioning in almost 4 years.  Maybe I need to start with something smaller, with less at stake.  I really want to try something with this story, and to do that I need more confidence, more practice under my belt.

My second idea is to write anywhere from 3 to 10 short pieces aimed at the Harlequin Spice Briefs line.  I don't mean to say that these are easy to write.  It takes skill to take a small concept and turn it into a full story without any extraneous bits or feeling like there's stuff that's been left out.  Not to mention these are hot stories, and if you can't write a heck of a sex scene, you're sunk.  But I think this is something I might be able to do this year.  Take a moment, a look, a touch, and spin it into a story.  Too short for saggy middles.  No wallowing around, trying to figure out what to do next.  It starts, they do it, you tie it all up.  At NaNo pace each one should take me anywhere from a few days up to a week.  (The length requirements are 5,000-15,000 words.)  But can I come up with 3 to 10 little fantasies to write about?

My third idea, which has merit just for it's ridiculousness, is to just wing something, some silly, fun story, and blog it.  Let any commenters throw out ideas when I get stuck.  Something that will be just pure fun.  Strictly writing for the hell of it.  That winging it, writing on the fly type attitude strikes me as particularly NaNo-ish.  And provided I can keep going and actually find a way to wrap up whatever mess I've created by Nov 30, I think it could be a pretty satisfying way to jump back into the writing pool.  The only problem is, I have not the tiniest idea what this story would be about. 

So, what do you think?  Set my self up for failure with the big scary book, go nympho for the month and write a series of sexy shorts with an eye toward submitting one or more of them by the end of the year, or should I go foo foo crazy and blog the results for all the world to see?