16,600 words--and leaving for LA in six days. . .

I have never written anything so badly before.

Okay, that's not true. I've been doing a three-page "morning page" brain-drain (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) for many years now, and virtually all of those pages are really, really, really badly written. Really.

But something that is badly written is not necessarily a bad story. (I know. Even Yi-ping here is confused. Bear with me.)

I repeat: My badly-written prose-novel draft-thing that is currently weighing in at some 16,000 words is, magically, forming itself into rather a good story.


(This is a refreshing change. Usually, my beautifully-written prose forms itself into rather a confusing story.)

My plan for the next few weeks and months, then, is to . . .

• slop on through these last two chapters,
  
• print everything out to take to Linda Sue Park's workshop at the SCBWI Conference in LA,
• read it on the train and be horrified at how badly it is written,
  
• work hard and happily to form my puddles into scenes,
  
• come back home and do what I love to do: edit and revise and polish to pieces.

So, yes: I've never written anything so badly before.
But what I've written is not actually bad.
See?

(Bonus for grammar lovers: Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for verily, we have unearthed a life-affirming difference between adverb and adjective. Go forth and live in peace with one another.)

15,300 words--and Glory Days

This is my dad and me, in Bedford, IN, watching my brother play Glory Days flag football.

My brother lives in Dallas, and I live in St. Louis.

My uncle also lives in St. Louis, but I mostly see him in Indiana, where we gather for reunions.

Today, my uncle asked me if I needed to have a certain routine, or a certain pen, or a certain kind of paper to write with.

Ah, such luxuries I indulged in only before kids and job juggling. I vaguely remember the luxury of knowing, for example, the location of my special pens, papers, notebooks, time of day, desk. . . .

In my real life, though, I am learning to write where I am. Any time. All the time. In the flow. As I can.

Which is why I now have a painted dining room, a family reunion, a high school flag football fundraiser called Glory Days (no--I didn't play; I screamed and hugged people) . . . and over 15,000 words.

Something I never managed to do back when I had the luxury of special routines.

P.S. For those of you who are reading my mind as the story develops (because I'm not about to let anyone, even the lovely Ladies of the Gordian Knot, near this version): our timid hero is about to hatch a plan to rescue the missing Library Dragon. He would rather be reading a biography.

13,700 words--and now back to our regularly scheduled life

This is King Arthur.

On Saturday, after the amazing Sue Bradford Edwards and I critiqued each other's stories, I rented a car, drove to West Plains to pick up milord, slept for a few hours, and then drove back to St. Louis--with teenage boy-king and his amazingly tiny new kitten named Yoda.

(When I post pictures, you'll see that Yoda does indeed look exactly like a Jedi Master with syntax issues.)

I know what you're thinking--and you're only partly right. You're thinking that I'm getting ready to apologize for not writing much these past few days.

But actually, considering that the dining room is almost painted and I'm almost sleep-recovered and we there are two almost-brand-new kittens meowling in the house . . . I've done pretty well. Chapter Six is drafted, and I have about 13,700 words.

13,700 very messy, disorganized, ugly, non-rhythmic, and often cliche words.

And I'm getting to the heart of the story now, the crisis, the conflict, the coming-together. I have no idea how to proceed.

So: I'm going to work on the trim in the dining room, find the third Encouraging Email from NaNoWriMo, knit, clean my desk, get the contract out to the tree guys to cut some trees (this is not an easy decision, btw), call our regular handiman to see if he can replace the shower and tile more cheaply than the new handiman, send out a Save The Date email for our November Conference, ask Floyd Cooper for autobiographical information, cook dinner, take a nap, avoid my email inbox . . .

You know. Live. So I can write.

11,500 words--amidst painting, novocaine, dancing. . .

Painting the dining room is good alpha-wave brain activity (though Boots the New Kitten's thorough enjoyment of the plastic drop cloth is probably not).

Serendipitously, just as I've gotten to the messiest part of the middle of the novel (which, by the way, is currently called "The Book Drop Dwarves"), I've gotten to the smoothest part of repairing the cracked and crumbling dining room wall.

So I'm taking the advice of the goddess-in-children's-author-form Donna Jo Napoli, who said at Chautauqua in 2006 something like this:

"I write my first draft very fast. It is AWFUL. I just keep driving forward, trying to get the emotion down. I never go back. If I'm writing along and suddenly discover I need a dog in this scene, and it should have been introduced it in the last chapter, I just scroll back to the last chapter and write DOG in big capital letters, and then GO ON!"

So now I have pop-ups like LIBRARY MONKEY and FIRE-EATING SALAMANDER--ANGEL? sprinkling my text with weirdness.

My amazing critique group, the Ladies of the Gordian Knot, is coming to my house this Saturday. By then, I'll have the dining room painted. But I think I'll not print anything out. I'll just tell them about the salamander and let them ask questions.


(For the thoroughly bored--a current list of the word-count by chapter:

• Ch. 1: 1545
• Ch. 2: 4280
• Ch. 3: 2880
• Ch. 4: 1650
• Ch. 5: 1135)

10,000 words: Happy Birthday to me

Yay!

I got up to 10,000 words, and in the process invented a creature that is somewhat like a salamandar, somewhat like a chameleon, somewhat like a GI Joe, and somewhat like an angel.

This is why I prefer editing to producing.

Still, 10,000 words feels good.
Other things that feel good:

• Dancing
  
• Celebrating my 44th birthday at the new place on the Loop that replaced Saleems
  
• Kitten fur
• Homemade birthday card

To all of you who wished me happy birthday on Facebook: I love you, and I'm sorry to be such a horrible Facebook Friend.

8300 words--and an empty house starting Monday

Today I read the Second Encouraging Email from the NaNoWriMo people. It seems that we are supposed to be thinking about plot more than character at this point, which is quite messy and depressing . . . so let's talk about something else.

Like how it feels when one of your dearest friends comes for a visit, and you allow yourself to do almost no housecleaning and almost no cooking and almost no sleeping and almost no writing just so you can talk.

If you don't grieve for too long at the end of the visit, you may find that you have enough energy to wash up all those dishes, scrub the bathroom sink, go blueberry picking with five-kids-and-two-moms AND write 1,000 words or so.

Plus, you might decide to go English Country Dancing with your husband as a way to celebrate your 44th birthday.

Then, if you have lived a VERY good life, you just might get the whole house to yourself for a week while your family goes to visit someone else's relatives on Monday.

Peace out!

7075 words--and three chapters drafted

As it turns out, telling everyone you know that you're writing a novel in a month is a good strategy. No one in my family laughed at me, and I even got a goodly amount of sloppy copy on the page. I also have three "chapters" completely drafted.

But I must confess the numbers:

• Chapter One: 1255 words
• Chapter Two: 4275 words
• Chapter Three 1545 words

Clearly, Chapter Two is hogging its share of the spotlight--but in such cases, we assume both that chapter borders are fluid and that no one will remember what they used to be after they become what they should be.

Here in Bedford, Indiana, we were going to have a Parade, an Ice Cream Social, and Fireworks today. But the rain fell, all but invisible, all day. So we now hear only distant firecrackers--and I hear as well my parents' voices in the living room, talking with old friends. It is the sound of no fireworks, and it is comforting.

6200 words--and a break for the holiday

I do know, in fact, that this is only the second day of July, which means that I am only just now officially beginning my journey into LyNoWriMo.

But since I also knew I'd be going to Indiana's cornfield's for the Fourth, I got a head-start. I'll likely get very little writing done this week, and even less blogging.

But I do have 6200 words.
Yay.