In Which I Am So Glad To Have Finished Way Before Deadline.

My site was down today, wasn't it? It totally was. Man, I hate that. There's not even anything important on my site yet, and it still bugs me.

In other non-connectivity news, I talked to the DSL people, and they said they couldn't possibly help me until December 9 at least. This is because of how many other people in my area are using the same service. Just so you know I'm not putting it off....

Speaking of Andrew Bird, he is opening for Nickel Creek on December 6 and December 7 at the Roseland. If anyone else is as excited by this news as I am, you should probably come and hear them with me.

Unless you live in Japan. Then you're not invited.

In Which The News Is Only Good.

Yes. I finished Monday night, just before midnight. Thank you, thank you.

It's funny how, once the ol' wordcount passes 50K, everywhere looks like a good place to stop. I think my novel would have benefited from being ended a little more conclusively. But I did finish the story arc, so I'm content. There's always the rewrite for things like that.

And yeah, throughout most of this month I thought this wouldn't even be something I would want to rewrite... but as it all started wrapping up, I realized (to my very great astonishment) that parts of the story actually work pretty well, and that I really like several of my characters, enough to already be wondering about future stories for them to do things in.

It needs a heap of reworking, though. I still don't know exactly what I'll rework it into, since it didn't really turn out like I meant for it to, and I have no idea what it wants to be or how to help it be that. But I can figure that out some other month. In the meantime: No! You can't read it.

But! Many thanks to everyone who heartened me this month with enthusiasm and interest, sympathy and competition, food and companionship, and all other forms of encouragment. It wouldn't have been any fun without you.

Also! I tested negative for strep throat, and am feeling well enough today that I will probably actually have to go back to work tomorrow. I guess a full week of Thanksgiving vacation is probably about as much as anybody can expect to get away with.

And! Since a blog post wouldn't be complete without some kind of link, I leave you with the promise of snacks:

Andrew Bird - Tables and Chairs

In Which I Have Good News And Bad News.

The bad news: I'm sick.

The good news: I'm sick.

As long as I don't get so sick I can't wiggle my fingers, I should finish my novel sometime tomorrow.

In Which Even a Sith Lord Needs a Tray.

I got to talk with an old friend last night, a musician and songwriter who takes his craft very seriously. When I told him about all this noveling stuff, the struggles, lessons, rewards, etc., he could totally relate. One of several wise things he told me was that nothing you create is a waste of time; even if it doesn't come out right, it's still practice, which is valuable in itself.

I knew that, but I think I needed to hear it again. I sort of had the idea that last November's novel was Practice and that this year I would write a Really Awesome Book, but the novel that is emerging from this month looks, again, very much like Practice. Which only means that practice is exactly what I needed.

I'm sitting here next to my sister, who is surfing on a separate computer (we call this "quality time"). She's at comedian Eddie Izzard's site, and she keeps clicking on things with little sound clips attached. So Eddie is saying things like, "This is the home page: Mom, Dad, all that kind of thing," and "If you have broadband, download things now!" She is really, really amused by this, which in turn amuses me.

Oh, now he's doing his Darth Vader bit, and it's making me laugh too hard to write.
[Note: contains vocabulary unsuitable for small children.]

[Edit: corrected italics tags. Again.]

In Which I've Got Will And A Little Time.

Last night I wrote about 1500 words of dream sequence. I like writing dreams; the symbolic and the surreal are familiar territory for me, whereas reality all too often feels like a foreign country.

I sometimes listen to music while I write, but mostly not, because there is always, always music going on in my head. For instance, when I have exceeded my word count goal for the day, but am still bent on pounding my way through the rest of an interesting passage, this is often what I'm hearing.

The New Pornographers - Use It

In Which I Think Happy Thoughts.

I did, in fact, write over 8000 words this weekend, landing me at a count of 31,459 (63%). Now I am almost back on track. However, I am feeling a little blah today. In order to keep my eyes on the prize, I find it helpful to think about exactly what that prize entails. Here are some fun things that wait for me on the other side of November:

1. Being able to say that I've completed a second novel (which has taken me to new depths of awful prose, clumsy characterization, and tedious passages of interior monologue written blatantly for the purpose of increasing wordcount without having to decide what happens next).
2. Attending the local TGIO (Thank God It's Over!) party, where exhausted and exuberant Wrimos will congratulate one another on their verbosity.
3. Catching up with a number of people I haven't spoken to in the past month.
4. Dusting off my bow and getting back to the archery range.
5. Recreational reading. There's a heap of half-finished books next to my bed. Also, Chesterton's Orthodoxy has been sitting on my coffee table for weeks now. It has a sketch of the author on the cover, and sometimes I could swear the old codger is winking at me.
6. Going out in the evenings... to places that are not coffeeshops or food courts.
7. Finally actually getting a broadband connection at home. My mama will be so proud!
8. A visit to Cosmic Monkey Comics, where I hope to acquire the final collected volume of Y: The Last Man, as well as the first MOME anthology and an odd little book titled Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed? However, frequently when I go to the comic book store intending to buy something, I come back with something very different, so you never know.
9. Resuming my habit of absurdly long phone conversations with Ah.
10. More time for blogging?

[Edit: Blogger won't let me do an ordered list, so I redid it manually.]

In Which I Am, As Usual, Easily Amused.

Remember when I said I really wanted to add some more water to the Mystical Tree to see if it would grow so top-heavy it would collapse? Well, I was saving this experiment for the 25,000 word mark. But the other night, in a fit of absent-mindedness, I tried to blow some invisible dust off of it. It immediately lost about 1/3 its foliage. When I tried to move it to clean up, it continued dropping greenery at an alarming rate. The stuff was like cotton candy, dissolving at a touch, only into dust instead of stickiness. Oh, well. I shook off the loose bits, which was pretty much all of it, and put more water into the base.

The effect, two days later, is somewhat disappointing. Before, it looked like I'd stolen it from a model train layout (N gauge). Now it looks like a cardboard cutout with some yellowy-green mold on it. Which, I guess, is all it really ever was. But still.

I know this is supposed to be an educational toy, but since it didn't come with any informative material about substances that turn into fuzz as they evaporate, I'm not sure what a kid like me is supposed to learn from the experience. Perhaps one of the following:

1. Mysterious chemicals have mysterious properties.
2. It's November. Trees are getting naked. Peer pressure?
3. I can kill any houseplant if I put my mind to it -- even the ones that aren't alive.
4. Little distractions go a long way when you're supposed to be writing.

Speaking of #4: the box of Christmas decor is still lurking in the bathroom at the coffeeshop.

In Which My Chances of Victory Seem a Little Less Remote.

Last night I figured out that if I could get 2000 words written before bed, and then write 4000 on each remaining day of the month that I don't have to work and 1200 on each day that I do, I'd finish on time, with two whole days free to dedicate to family Thanksgiving activities.

I then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch after only writing about 800 words.

Still! Hope springs eternal in the blah blah blah. Today I already have 3000 words under my belt, I'm about to launch into a scene that could wind up just about anywhere, and it's only 10:30! And I've already had a nap and some caffeine! I am unstoppable.

Besides, I have this lovely, lovely quote from grrlpup to spur me on:

And I will emerge, because there are people ahead of me and people just behind me, and in my mind NaNo is a group of people running pell-mell across the field holding hands. It seems like a stupid way to run, because why would you need to hold hands to run? and some people are ahead and others are lagging behind you, but if you don't let go, you'll get pulled along, and even if your foot lands in a rabbit hole, the others will yank you up and along.

She has totally pegged the NaNo experience. It does seem like a stupid way to run, but all those people really do get you across the field, as long as you don't let go. (I suspect her observation has wider implications as well. Maybe I'll figure that out, someday, when I have time to think again.)

The other encouraging thing I've discovered is that it's a lot easier to move the plot along if, instead of trying to come up with really cool things for your characters to do, you encourage them to do things that are really stupid. Why didn't someone tell me this a long time ago?

In Which I Disclose My Writing Progress Thus Far.

My word count currently stands at 22199: 44% complete. I'm significantly behind schedule, and have been for the past ten days. This bothers me a lot.

The nightly struggle is writing vs. sleep. The tricky part is that the less sleep I get, the slower I write. But the more sleep I get, the less time I have to write. So if I go to bed early (read: before midnight), my wordcount falls behind, but if I write an amount I'm satisfied with (read: 2000 words), I don't get enough sleep, and everything starts falling apart.

This wasn't as much of a problem last year because of differences in my schedule. Also, last year I had a roommate who would fix me dinner, chat with me while I ate it, and then say, "Well, I'd better let you get to writing" and pretty much leave me alone for the rest of the evening. That was AWESOME. But this year she's writing her own NaNo in faraway Chicagoland, so I have to fend for myself with the food and the washing-up and the telling myself it's time to write.

One thing that would definitely help is if I were more interested in my story. I love the concept, and my characters have tons of potential, but I can't figure out what to do with them. I just know I want it to be something really cool.

But that's part of my problem, I'm telling myself. It's really more important, in an endeavor like this, just to have them doing something, just to get things moving. Fellow Wrimo Sanguinity aptly described the work of the middle part of a novel as "racking up the tension and racking up the price." I keep repeating this to myself when I wonder what the heck to write next.

Last night, in the interest of said tension- and price-racking, I determined to write a scene in which things actually happen, dramatic things, things that neither I nor my characters had planned on. So I wrote a few lines in which my main character is woken in the middle of the night by someone else. Then I had to figure out why. Various scenarios came skulking into my head, and I picked the one that seemed most promising. I looked at my list of things that need to happen in this general part of the book, and picked a couple to work into the scene. I wrote what happened next, and tried to figure out what happened after that, and whether it would be more interesting for things to go wrong at point A or point B. I wrote a little more. I rearranged events in my head, envisioned some possible scenes, and kept going.

It was slow going, what with all the figuring-out parts. But by allowing my characters to make a mess, and then letting them decide how best to clean it up again, I did manage to get over 2000 action-packed words out of the evening. And yeah, it was after midnight when I quit, and yeah, I am tired today. But it's Friday, so that's okay.

Whew, so that was a lot of writing about writing. Hey, did you know that male mice court their mates with ultrasonic songs? It's true. You can read the story here. Even if you aren't interested in the research involved, you may want to listen to mp3 clips of a mouse love song shifted down four octaves or slowed down sixteen times. I especially like the latter. It's no Marvin Gaye, but it wouldn't sound out of place on a birdsong recording.

[Edit: corrected sloppy italics tags.]

In Which We Discuss Fame and Anonymity.

Way back in Post the First, I established the following guideline for my blog:

4. I will neutralize any potential negative side effects of blogging by ... avoiding the use of real names, except when discussing Famous People, such as myself. Note: this last part will be extra fun, like writing in code or something.

At this point I would like to clarify my intent in making such a resolution.

The blogosphere is a funny place. Different people interact with it in different ways. Some confide in it, some perform for it, some write only the facts of their own existence, and some invent characters and write about their fictional experiences. However you handle it, the fact remains that when you post something on the internet, you're addressing the entire world. Granted, most of the world isn't listening. But anybody could be (and often is).

I'm a very private person. This blog is, among other things, an attempt to become a little less private, to get used to the idea of sharing my thoughts with the world - both in order to remind myself that my thoughts are worth sharing, and also because it's good practice for publication.

However, as a private person, I respect other people's privacy. Many people, for many reasons, prefer anonymity online. Thus the use of aliases. If you have an anonymous web presence, or no web presence to speak of, it's not my job to change that for you; so you get a Code Name by default. Which is, like I said, Fun.

On the other hand, aliases become sort of pointless if you already blog publicly under your real name, and if your weblog is obviously for public consumption. (I had no idea, when I started this, just how many of these people there were in my circle of acquaintances.) See, in that case, you're already Famous, by my definition. Anybody can google you up and read about your life. Anonymity is obviously not important to you, so I'm not gonna protect you.

Unless, of course, you do or say something I want to blog about, but suspect you would prefer I didn't. Then I'll call you something else.

Probably.

In Which Someone Else Says "In Which" Too.

I've been keeping an eye on Paul Ford's blog of late. Ford caught my attention after admitting to being the inventor of rock-star-wannabe Gary Benchley, under whose name he had written a series of articles for the Morning News. Benchley's "autobiographical" adventures ranged from the hysterically funny to the really, really disturbing, with ample cleverness in between. Sadly, they eventually tapered down into tedium. Then Benchley announced he was discontinuing the articles because he'd been offered a book contract, and Ford announced he was Benchley.

I find Ford, like Benchley, to be hit and miss. His writing is sometimes outrageously clever, sometimes inspiring, sometimes disgusting, and sometimes it just makes me sad for him. Aside from a refreshing neo-Luddite essay (in which he admitted to using WordPerfect for DOS, which I find oddly endearing), I wasn't all that impressed with his recent output.

But then some low-end business blog (the kind that essentially runs on stolen content) stole one of his images, and his response just about made tea shoot out of my nose.

Note: If you see a word you don't recognize in one of the images, replace it with "much, much worse." It will then communicate the intended message.
More Important Note: I really don't recommend clicking through to see what he did the other time this happened to him (in his final paragraph). Just take his word for it: he's matured since then.

In Which I Receive The Proverbial Mad Props.

I passed an old and dear friend in the parking lot yesterday. He pulled his vehicle over next to mine, waving frantically. "Do you have a blog?" he asked.

Why, yes. Yes, I do. Seriously, is there a more flattering question one could ask of a fledgling blogger, given the obvious implication that he really, really wanted to read it? And that he also has a blog which I read regularly? Of course I gave him my URL with all good speed. He even went so far as to say that if I didn't have a blog, he was going to tell me that I should.

I was going to blog about this yesterday, because it was pretty much the nicest thing that happened to me all day (except for the part where I went to bed at 7 p.m.; that was pretty sweet too). But somehow I didn't get around to it.

This morning my RSS feed notified me that his blog had a new post. I clicked through, wondering if I'd get a mention.

Goodness. If I ever need quotes for a book jacket, now I know who to call. Not only did he bestow copious compliments on my blog (after reading all my posts in one sitting), he also, if I understand correctly, now intends to write a series of posts inspired by stuff I wrote. Really! I'm not making this up! You can read it for yourself.

So thanks for reading, Ike.* It's an honor. Please accept this reciprocal shoutout. Here's to many more years of interaction, parasocial and otherwise.

*Yeah, I'm using his real name. He's one of those Famous People.

In Which Time Passes.

I wrote some this weekend. I also took some naps. I am still behind on both the writing and the sleeping, but at least I made a little headway. I'm doing my best to be optimistic about the week ahead.

This helps a lot:
Elliott Smith - See You in Heaven (Instrumental #1)

In Which... uh... zzzzzzzzz.

My wordcount is in sad, sad shape. I haven't had the energy to get much written this week. When I finally get a chance to sit down with the laptop, my eyes glaze over. My immune system has been fighting off a cold (so far successfully, with assistance from the good people at Plum Blossom), and various other factors, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre, have interfered with my sleep.

It's weird, because I feel like I've been really disciplined, despite having very little to show for it. Yesterday I turned down an invitation to dinner and two invitations to movies I wanted to see. I was tremendously proud of my iron will. Then I ended up staying late at work, grocery shopping took longer than expected, and my sister called. My NaNo chart now says, "At this rate, you'll be done on December 11, 2005."

I am so glad it's Friday.

(Justin Hawkins is, too.)

In Which Banjos Make The World A Better Place.

Sufjan Stevens - The Lord God Bird

In Which I Go Astray.

After last night's writing meet-up downtown (at which I wrote a stunning total of 186 words), I hopped the next MAX train east as usual. A couple of teenage boys sat down near me, and I began listening to their conversation, which was lively, humorous, and wide-ranging. I couldn't pick up everything they said, but I do recall that one of them was complaining about how Li'l Jon's crunk was disrespectful to women. "What kinda girl want that?" he kept saying.

A couple of stops later, a ragged, unshaven middle-aged man got on, smelling strongly of booze and cigarettes. He listened for a little while, then began talking with the boys. The subject was local high school sports teams. Despite obvious differences in age, race, income level, and sobriety, the conversation was respectful and warmly friendly. Before long, others sitting around began to throw in their two cents. In my limited MAX experience, this was unusual; generally everybody just seems to want to be left alone.

At some point my attention was drawn to a sign outside the window: Albina/Mississippi. Waaaait a second... isn't that in NoPo? Part of my brain had been tallying up things that weren't quite "right" about the ride all along, and now it reminded me none too gently that I was on a "Yellow Line MAX" and that I didn't actually know what that meant. Now you're outside Fareless Square with no ticket, already well into a strange neighborhood with a shady reputation, and it's late and you're so tired that you're stupid and you may be in danger once you get off the train and what are you going to do whatareyougoingtodo?!?

The other part of my brain said, Ooh. I'm having an Adventure!

I got off at Prescott, and there was a train going the opposite way right there waiting for me. As I sat down, still smiling at my own mistake, the disheveled man opposite me smiled back and waved. I nodded, wondering if he was the source of that awful smell, and began to study the diagram of MAX routes on the wall. If only there had been one of these on the last train, I thought. Well, if I get off at the Rose Quarter, I should be able to get on the Red Line, or the Blue Line. Either one will take me back to my car.

"You okay?" asked my neighbor. His shaggy hair curled out from beneath an old baseball cap, and he had a blanket over his lap.

"Yep," I said. "I'm okay." I gave him the thumbs-up.

He grinned, showing his yellow teeth and the gaps between them. "Me too," he said, and launched into a mumbled narrative involving getting shot in the back of the head at a Rolling Stones concert, and surviving a really nasty car crash. I could only make out about 2/3 of what he was saying, but I tried to make the right noises at the right times. "I know it must be God lookin' out for me 'cause ain't no other way I could still be here," he said.

I told him I hoped God would keep it up, and then I switched trains. Back on the right route this time, I heaved a sigh of relief and looked around me.

Everyone in the car was clean and tastefully dressed. Everyone was white. They were all sitting very quietly, as far as possible from one another, carefully avoiding eye contact. No one was smiling.

Which Contains An Unexpected Plot Twist.

Sunday night I fell asleep trying to figure out the history of a couple of minor characters, and when I woke Monday morning, my brain was still working on it. It (i.e, my brain) did other things when I required it to, but anytime its assistance wasn't absolutely essential it kept defaulting back to this side story, trying to work out "...and then what happened? And then what happened?" Eventually I thought I'd better jot down some notes so that I could revisit these characters when I had time for them.

Nothing doing. The "notes" came out as a tide of narrative and dialogue. I couldn't help myself; it just went on and on. I was obsessed, I was infatuated, I floated around in a sparkly cloud of story-fluff. And the words kept coming. Shortly after midnight, when the tide finally went out again, I had over 5500 words of character history, in the form of something vaguely resembling a short story.

The problem is, I can't incorporate any of this into my NaNo novel. It gives too much away. I was painfully aware of this the entire time I was writing -- but I also remembered Annie Dillard's advice never to save ideas for later, to spend it all now, now, because that is how to keep the creative pump primed. And so I can't find it in myself to regret going an entire day without adding to my wordcount. Maybe it will pay off; maybe the novel will flow more easily now that I have a better idea of who I'm writing about, and I'll catch up in no time. Or maybe not...

...but it will still have been worth it.

In Which Curious George Finds the Tinsel.

I haven't written as much today as yesterday, but I wrote more in less time. Something about writing in the presence of other writers keeps me focused on moving my fingers instead of spacing out or nitpicking. Result: 750 words per hour, a marked improvement over 600.

I definitely need a break every hour, though. On this gray and drizzly afternoon at the coffeeshop, there wasn't much to do for a break besides get up and go to the bathroom. So I did that. There was a very large, battered box propped against the wall opposite the toilet, and I briefly contemplated what it could contain. Old clothes? A body? Many, many rolls of toilet paper?

The answer, friends, was Christmas decorations.

In Which I Grouse.

I'm only averaging about 600 words per hour. Also, I am so incredibly eager to be distracted that I didn't even quite get 2500 words down today. And this after a week of mostly not making my word count goals.

Maybe I'd better relinquish my secret plans to finish before Thanksgiving. Poo.

In Which Prophecy Is Fulfilled.

   
Today is the day I made the switch.

In Which The Man Gets Us Down.

Jared in Japan points out some good reasons to stop buying Sony products. Particularly interesting is the bit about DRM:

Sound bad yet? Well, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Because a new story out yesterday revealed that Sony has surreptiously laced music CDs distributed through their Sony EMI Label with a “rootkit” or a series of files that will install on a users PC without their knowledge, and which will lock the CD to that one player, will not allow the CD to be ripped to a universal MP3 format, will not allow the music to be transferred among the different devices a user might own, and will definitely not cooperate with Apple’s iPod. And if you try to disable or uninstall the software without instruction from the Sony or the company responsible for creating the software, then you run the risk of causing irreversible and irrepairable harm to your PC.

He's got a couple of interesting links for your further enlightenment.

A word to the wise music consumer: If you find yourself in possession of a CD that asks you to agree to some fine print the first time you put it into your computer, take it back to the store.

Labels distributed by Sony include: (BMG) Arista Records, BMG Classics, BMG Heritage, BMG International Companies, Columbia Records, Epic Records, J Records, Jive Records, LaFace Records, Legacy Recordings, Provident Music Group, RCA Records, RCA Victor Group, RLG - Nashville, Sony Classical, Sony Music International, Sony Music Nashville, Sony Wonder, Sony Urban Music, So So Def Records, Verity Records; (EMI) Angel Records, Astralwerks, Back Porch Records, Blue Note Records, Caroline Records, Caroline Distribution, Capitol Records US, Capitol Records Nashville, Chordant Distribution Group, CyberOctave Music, EMI Latin, EMI Christian Music Group, EMI Music Publishing Nashville, Forefront Records, Higher Octave Music, Manhattan Records, Narada, OmTown Music, Priority Records, Real World US, Shakti Records, Sparrow Records, Virgin Records America.

In Which I Reveal My True Identity.

Now you know. (This fleeting internet fad brought to you by H.O.L.L.Y.)

"Sunless Enchanted Yonder" (Yunder?) sounds suspiciously like a reference to my novel. A couple of other local Wrimos are calling their novels "Portland Underground" and "The World Beneath". Hmm. For the present, I'm just calling mine C.H.U.D.

At this point I'd like to be able say, "Except my underground dwellers aren't really cannibals, Mom." But to be honest, I'm still not quite sure about one of them.

In Which I Offer Some Updates.

When I got home last night, before I had written a word, I checked my voice mail and found two messages from fellow Wrimos, both proudly announcing they had made their word count for the day.

I did not call them back.

Gene Wolfe once asserted that "You never learn how to write a novel. You only learn how to write the novel you're on." But I think that, to a limited extent, there are things about novel-writing that you can learn once and be done with: things that have to do with trusting your gut and valuing your work and writing through the rough spots.

I hate to jinx my success so far by projecting it into the future, but the solid, gleaming fact remains: despite my fears, I managed to write 2154 words in about three hours last night. It felt good.

The amazing Mystical Tree has grown far more foliage than the packaging would lead one to expect. Best $2.25 plus tax I've spent in a long time. It sits in my kitchen, lumpy and improbably green, like fairy broccoli. I don't dare touch the boughs; one clump has already fallen under its own weight, and others are sagging. The trunk is ridged with frost-white fuzz. The instructions say that if its foliage gets broken, it will grow back if more water is added. I am tempted to add more anyway, just to see how overgrown it can get before it collapses.

Yesterday I added a yousendit link for "Clumsy Dance" into Sunday's post. Here it is in case you missed it. (Warning: I named it that for a reason.)

I also replaced the written sound effects in my first post with an illustration.

In Which We Wish You A Merry NaNo.

It's the first of November, All Saints' Day, Rick Allen's birthday, 12th anniversary of the EU, and Day One of National Novel Writing Month.

At this moment, I'm ambivalent. I wanted to have a concrete story outline by now, a roadmap of sorts, so I wouldn't get lost en route to 50,000 words. Instead, I have only the vaguest idea of how to begin my story, I can't settle on a flavor for it, and I really don't know where it's going, beyond a single climactic scene.

But I know that tonight, I'll sit down with my laptop and my notes and some deli fried chicken, and start in a-typing. I probably won't make it to my daily goal of 2000 words (though I'll try my darnedest), and I probably won't write anything terrific -- but I'll be writing, and that's what matters.

I hereby renounce my intentions to draft a potentially publishable story this November. I grant myself permission to write utter garbage, complete with inconsistencies, useless descriptive passages, and dialogue that leads nowhere. Because what I need as a writer, more than anything else, is practice.

Here we go.