Purple Bar, Bitches

Well, the fastest November I’ve ever experienced has ended, and so has the NaNoWriMo competition. And I’m absolutely floored to have won, my very first year. The completion rate is about 17%. Beating those odds has really forced me to see how seriously I desire to take writing as a profession. I’m in this to win, November and the rest of the year. And I may actually have a chance!

There have been too many times, in the last half-decade or so, when I’ve been forced to quit something I cared about–finances, exhaustion, disillusionment conspiring to pull me away from something before I’d had a chance to give it my all. And that’s not counting the things I’ve decided sucked, and walked away from. It ‘s meant a lot to me, seeing this novel project through from start to finish. It’s restored my confidence in myself that I can actually finish something.

I’ll be thinking of things for a while, that this experience has taught me. They were right when they warned that it would change the way you see yourself, the way you see the experiences of your life, the way you read, and the way you approach any creative work that you do. All for the better, I say. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Even if I had lost, I’ve had so much fun, met some awesome local writers, and thought up a pile of ideas for future works (thanks Rance!).

Fifty thousand words in 30 days. I can’t wait until next November!

Stats:

Days Where I Wrote: 17

Total Words Written: 50,219

Highest Daily Word Count: 5,298

Here’s a Wordle of the words I wrote:

Excerpt, Via De Luna, chapter 7:

My feet met the hot road, and I started walking up towards the corner. My mind was on nothing, really, just the road. How it felt on my feet, the drifted sand grinding under my toes, the occasional pebble pressing into my heel, the warmth. Drips of water ran down the back of my thighs from my soaked shorts. I reached Via de Luna, the main beach road and turned left, towards where I’d parked my car, what seemed so long ago. As I waited to cross the road to my car, a fresh breeze blew in my face, drying the saltwater there, making me shiver. A memory of other winds, other heat. I’d left something behind, I was open, headlong, sightless, glowing. No cars were coming. I walked out into the road, an uncontrollable smile stretching my salty face. Angling a bit towards my car, I breathed in a lungful of the warm beach air, and fell…

through heartbreaking sweetness

—I came to, flat on my back. Realizing I was laying in the road, I scrambled up hastily, looking around me. Then came to a dead standstill. The houses were gone. Every one of them. The beach was empty, just dunes and gnarled beach trees, and one long, straight road, as far as my eye could see. I breathed very slowly, very calmly, and waited for things to return to normal. And waited. I mentally congratulated myself that my breathing remained so steady and regular. The road continued to stretch into the hazy distance in the east, absolutely absent of any cars. Perhaps they were behind me. I would look. I turned, again clamly, towards the west, towards the sun. Well. No buildings that way, either. I was all alone on an extremely deserted beach. This was where my breathing started to come a little faster, then a lot. I laughed a bit unbelievingly, my mind at a complete loss to process. For want of instructions, my feet began carrying me in the direction I was facing, which happened to be west. I’d say I got a good twenty or thirty feet before the shock broke.

I stopped in my tracks. “Hello!” I screamed. “Hello! Where—“ And then I admit, I just screamed, period. Once.

I slowly caught my breath, feeling a lot better, except for the rawness in my throat. Okay. Where was I. That was a good question, let’s start with that.

Well, I was still on the beach. I knew the layout of the land, and more importantly the feel of it, as well as I knew anything in the world. But there were blatant differences. The complete and utter lack of sign of any people was one. The tall dunes were another. Some were two stories high, topped with waving gold sea oats. The no cars, no buildings thing was another, and that was the one my mind kept coming giddily back to. The sun was the same, in the same late afternoon place in the same silver blue sky. It was hot. I was still wet. And now I also had sand on my back, from having laid in the road.

Laid in the road. I turned around and ran back the way I’d come, fifteen feet, twenty, thirty. Forty. Fifty. Nothing happened. I slowed down. Catching my breath, as much from panic as from running, I turned back around. No car, no people, no difference, no nothing. I knew one second of utter terror. Then I sighed, and again began walking west. After about twelve paces, I came to a very clear mark in the sand that spread in thin drifts over parts of the road. It was about a foot and a half feet wide by three feet. My back. I bent and touched it, then turned around and laid down in it, closing my eyes. Sparkling blackness. The sound of wind blowing sand. A feeling of absurdity. I opened my eyes and looked straight up into blue nothing. Then I took a deep breath and got back up.

I stood for a moment in the spot with my head bowed. It felt like an island in the middle of a strange wilderness. I was reluctant to leave it. But the idea of being out here alone when night fell terrified me into the farthest corners of my soul. Bending again, I wiped out the mark of my back with my hand, for reasons I’ll never know. Then, straightening, I turned west and began once more to walk.

National Novel Writing Month: What I Learned

1. If you want to lose yourself in something beautiful, you can do so, at any moment. It’s always there, waiting for you.

1. People around me all become characters. Even when I didn’t write them into my story, their words and actions all seemed scripted by some gorgeously demented Higher Author.

2. I lost patience with boring, self-absorbed and fake people. Why waste time with them, when the folks in my head are cooler? And when the other people with characters in their heads are so much more fun?

3. Reading can sometimes be agonizing. It’s either too crappy, which makes me impatient; or so much better than mine, which fills me with despair; or it gave me ideas I want to pursue RIGHT NOW, but frustratingly won’t fit into my novel.

4. I can do the impossible, if it’s amusing enough.

5. There are a lot of really cool, really funny people in the world, and many do NaNoWriMo.

33,133 And Counting…

For those of you wondering if I’m still alive, the answer is yes–albeit in weirdly mutated form. I went from a fairly pass-as-normal college student, able to cook a meal and stay up for most of the daylight hours; to a madly-giggling, dirty-haired wreck, existing on merlot and coffee drinks, reese’s peanut butter cups, and veggie trays. I don’t think I’ve seen high noon in a week. I’ve listened to so much techno, random noises are now taking on a danceable rhythm, like in that yuppie car commercial. I sleep in my fingerless writing gloves, the black ones with little pink and blue stars. They keep my mojo from leaking away when I finally crawl into bed at 11 am. I am a sad, sad case. And just think, this condition is shared by 70,000 increasingly-insane people worldwide! I watch their spiraling towards madness on the NaNoWriMo forums, typing my own bizarre posts at three in the morning with shaky, spastic fingers. And as you can see, I’ve begun to use waaaayyyy too many adjectives. Word padding, baby! I’ve still got 16,867 words to do in 9 days, w00t! 

Wait, this is my blog? Oh shit.

See you on the back cover…

(203 words)

photo originally uploaded by the catalyst….

NaNoWriMo: What works and what doesn’t

Ten Things that Worked:

1. Finger foods and booze: Casillero Del Diablo merlot, in tulip wine glasses; vegetable party trays; Reese’s mini peanut butter cups; Starbucks Doubleshot canned coffee drinks; mini pizzas
2. Being nocturnal
3. Techno
4. My starry fingerless writing gloves
5. Checking the NaNoWriMo forums
6. Large supply of votive candles: candlelight was vital!
7. Wordcount goals calendar and foil star stickers to mark my progress
8. Christmas lights around my desk
9. Old “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” episodes: the absurdity suited my mood
10. Writing chapters in any order I wanted, skipping around

Ten Things that Didn’t Work:

1. Staying awake during the day
2. Trying to cook meals
3. Not “nesting” before NaNo: bills, homework, housework, laundry and groceries were a constant distraction; better to have them done beforehand
4. “Rewarding” myself with treats—I work better with immediate fuel, not delayed gratification
5. Chatrooms: too much of a distraction
6. Writing to a timer: too much pressure
7. “Inspiration” novel: got sidetracked rereading it
8. Trying to go to football games, or socialize with people NOT doing NaNoWriMo—it’s like a one-month cult!
9. Only meeting writing buddies towards the end; next time I’ll kickoff with some
10. Giving a damn about the trivial gets hard, when you’re immersed in your bliss.

NaNoWriMo 2006 cover art

Rance and I Chat

Rance– 4:50 PM
thought id send some info about the job future, there is a possible chance of the co. beginning a branch in the states and i’m defnately on trac to be a director

Rance– 4:51 PM
i would definately become a director before they get a branch in the states–I also would probably be working in both countries

Rance– 6:18 PM
1=pure dream also ’0′ and ‘infinity’…2=polarity of good and evil also loath of reality but ultimate reliance on it lest it cease to be realm and becomes ’1′…3=reality and intersection of 1 and 2 but is only the surface, exists superimposed on 4…4=the intersection of all just beneath the surface of 3 where 2 fights to not become 1 by feeding off 3 but also being opposed by the manifestation of 3 in 4 (ie people and personalities), represents all and infinity

Rance– 6:37 PM
1=moot, complete creative access…2=bad, polarity…3=convergence, gray…4=all, spectrum

Me– 6:39 PM
3 4/2 1 4/2 3

Me– 6:40 PM
3 4/2 1 4/2 3

Rance– 6:42 PM
1-top 2and4-sides 3-bottom

Rance– 6:51 PM
1-Blank sheet of paper…2-010101010101010…3-still life drawing…4-still life of fairies

Rance– 6:53 PM
I take the ‘the’ out of psychotherapist

Rance– 6:55 PM
Loves the cock —->

My NaNoWriMo Writing Playlist

The Arcade Fire
TV on the Radio
Hot Hot Heat
Happy Mondays
Oasis

Richard Cheese
Raconteurs
Spoon
Spiritualized
The Presets

Cobra Starship
GWAR
Primal Scream
Elbow
Iggy Pop

Leftfield
Louis XIV
She Wants Revenge
The Wolfgang Press
The Veils

Goldfrapp
Massive Attack
Peaches
Interpol
Reverend Horton Heat

And these iTunes radio stations: Proton Radio, Frisky, Philosomatik, AfterHoursDJs, XTC, Party 107, RaveTrax