NaNoWriMo 2012 thoughts and feelings
It's that time of the year again - NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is just around the corner. This post is for whatever feelings and thoughts I want to vent during NaNo - absolute misery or the deepest joy, or anything in-between.
Here's my NaNo profile, for the curious. And here is the synopsis and an excerpt of my story.
Last updated: November 16, 5:00
November 1, 12:20
Wordcount: 2490
Holy... it's here again. November. NaNo. And for the first time ever, I had an incredible amount of trouble starting my novel.
For many years, I've written only Tales of Symphonia fanfiction. For June Camp NaNo 2012 I wrote Mass Effect and Dragon Age II fanfic. Those didn't turn out very well, but I didn't have problems writing them, at least.
For this NaNo, I'm writing BBC Sherlock fanfiction, and the characters seriously refuse to work with me. I tried, for over a month, to write some shorter Sherlock fics before NaNo rolled around. I never got further than a paragraph or two in. The characters just didn't want to be written.
I've always started my NaNos at midnight and written about 1000-3000 words before heading to bed. Well... today, not so much. I was napping until midnight, so I was completely disoriented when the clock struck twelve. I started writing. I got 79 words written. Then I spent the next seven hours dithering about, trying to work on the story whenever possible, but mostly just doing anything else. (Reading fanfic, practising my German, watching LPs on Youtube... you get the picture.) I did eventually get 2490 words written, but the characters STILL have it in for me.
Sherlock is flitting about like an indecisive bat and I keep wanting to describe him as flouncing about and being stroppy. Lestrade is annoyed enough that it seems he wants to bash Sherlock's head in. *facepalm* NO. Calm yourself, Lestrade. John is the only one working with me instead of against me, at this point, and he's mostly just confused. Aren't we off to a brilliant start!
November 1, 22:30
Wordcount: 3860
I had to stop writing my thoughts and feelings down earlier because of class. Blah. Then I spent four hours traveling, approximately one of it writing. Could have written more, but my brain is pretty fried and I needed a break. I wrote a bit just now, but I actually have to fight against falling asleep, so now is probably a good time for me to go hit the hay. Perhaps the writing will make a bit more sense once I've had some sleep. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
Till tomorrow, m'lovelies.
November 3, 13:50
Wordcount: 6915
...What. Seriously, what just happened?
I had planned from the start that Sherlock would want to make himself a target in order to lure out a killer, but his plan would be thwarted and somehow Lestrade would in the end agree to be the decoy. Sherlock would have been annoyed, but they'd still all have been able to work together.
Apparently, my brain decided that scenario was too unbelievable, and now... now Sherlock said something that genuinely hurt Lestrade (who, it turns out, was already fed up with the Holmeses because Mycroft had been meddling in his affairs) and drove him away. Now Lestrade seems to be doing the job of the decoy anyway, but half-unwittingly. Geez. I think this actually makes maybe more sense than what I'd planned in the first place, but I feel so bad for making Lestrade miserable and Sherlock so... accidentally hurtful. He's actually trying to be nice in his own way, but it all keeps blowing up in his face. :( It's sad, and now John is mad at Sherlock. It may actually create some great tension and angst for later, but I want the boys to have some good moments too! I don't want to split them up while they think the others don't give a damn about them. :'( I want comfort too, not just hurt! Gah. Try to find a way to have your own quirky "happily ever after", boys, won't you? Otherwise you're just going to break my heart.
November 4, 12:40
Wordcount: 8570
I... finally seem to be getting the plot underway, but it's more sinister than I thought it would be. D: I'm afraid for the characters' lives and health! Sherlock also seems to have decided that John and Lestrade are his. Um. How'd I turn the asexual, aromantic character into the one so obsessed with relationships? Not that Sherlock is actually admitting to anything, and I have a sneaking suspicion he's not even aware of his possessive behavior, but John is starting to clue in and be creeped out. Lestrade is disappointed and hurt and about to be persuaded into having an ill-advised one-night stand with a random character. This is... really not how I planned this all out, but the scary thing is, this works. Too well. I find that... disturbing.
I'm afraid to go on writing. I don't really want to know what evil my brain and fingers have in store for poor Lestrade. :<
On the plus side, I finally have an excerpt in my profile. Yay?
November 6, 00:20
Wordcount: 15070
Gaaahh. *flops over dead* 15k, and it's still not enough. I realized yesterday that I could actually aim to crack that magical 100k this year when my original goal was 60k, but I think I've found my limit. I have written more than 5k words a day a few times over the years, and I wrote 8,5k in one day last year, but writing nearly 3,5k words every day is more than I can really deal with. 2k is fine, 2,5k is what I tend to write, but anything more is just... insanity. It's not like my NaNos are of outstanding quality to begin with, but after 2,5k it all just becomes even more nonsensical. Well, I suppose this information may come in handy later. This year, I'm more interested in seeing where the story will take me and whether it will get finished in November, but assuming that it doesn't, I would like to hit 90k at least. Last year I hit 80k and was somewhat disappointed, even though that was more than what I aimed for in the first place. I felt like I could have written more. So... we'll see how much I get written this year.
I'm still a master at word-padding, but at least I have a plot this year. True, it's moving along slower than a snail in tar, but there's some progress at least. Can't say the same for consistency, though. Lestrade decided to go from mildly intrigued by another character to repulsed by him in no time flat for no good reason. *facepalm* That's just great. On the other hand, the weird slashy undertones seem to want to creep into this story even without my conscious effort. It's... interesting, but Sherlock still scares me.
I realized that I can't write Sherlock. Or at least from Sherlock's POV. His mind is a mystery to me. I can read other people's fanfics and tell when Sherlock is IC or OOC, but as for me personally... I can't seem to write him at all. I feel guilty for making him seem like such a prick when writing from Lestrade's perspective, but Lestrade's perceptions ≠ my perceptions. Lestrade has good reason to be mad at him. I still feel bad for writing the argument out in the first place. D: Damn, guilt-tripped by fictional characters. How wonderful. Maybe it's time I just went to sleep.
November 7, 14:10
Wordcount: 20075
Hmmm. I had a very productive day yesterday. I didn't think I'd get much written in a write-in, but I did manage 3,5k. :O That was a surprise. Then I got home around 20:30 and decided that I'll crack that 20k before midnight. I was about to fall asleep on my keyboard at half past ten, but I did it! So if I want to aim for 100k by the end of the month, I'm now just barely on track. Lovely.
I am also still a master at word-padding. 20 000 words, and I'm now starting chapter 2. The plot is taking a reeeeally long time to get underway, but I'm just happy I have a plot, or a semblance of one, at any rate. I did manage to write some peculiar things yesterday, too, though, without ever planning them.
I needed Lestrade to have had some experience with extreme sports/thrill-seeking activities in his past. I was in the middle of a Write or Die session and didn't have time to think, so what did I default to? Skydiving. Not a bad choice in and of itself, right? Even if it's a bit... out there. Why did I choose that sport? Because my father used to skydive in his younger days. O_o; Nothing wrong with that, right? Except that I didn't speak to my father for ten years before he finally died this spring. Where the hell did I pull THAT old memory from in the middle of my NaNo for a character I love?! I even went so far as to reference an old injury my father sustained once. Sheesh.
Another odd thing in my NaNo - I apparently seem to want to complicate my already jumbled story even further. In one scene, Lestrade was supposed to get out of bed, go about his day, and get a phone call in the afternoon. Um. Well. He got out of bed, sure, but then he checked his phone to find several texts on it. All but one of them were from Sherlock (who wasn't supposed to contact him, but it's not like Sherlock ever does what he's told to do). All right, I can roll with that. But the last message was a cryptic warning/threat from an anonymous sender. Which would be fine in a mystery story, yeah? But I have no clue who the mystery texter is. I did get several paragraphs out of that scene while Lestrade is WTF-ing over the text. Why do I feel like this story is trying to become even more sinister and creepy than I intended it to? D: And my plans were plenty violent and dark to begin with, trust me.
November 10, 14:20
Wordcount: 30020
No. No. No no no no no.
Do my NaNos do this just to spite me?!
*sigh* Okay, now that the drama llama moment is over, let me explain. I have never in my life finished a story during NaNo. Once, I came very close -- by continuing the previous year's NaNo. Just never finished the epilogue. So, even that story was 97 000 words long at that point. Most of my NaNos, had I ever felt the need to continue them after November was over, would have been significantly longer than 50 000 words (or whatever the wordcount I reached was). So this year, I decided that yeah, I'll aim for 90k or even 100k. I'm 30k in, and I'm seriously starting to doubt this story will take another 20k to finish, let alone 60k or 70k! Why did I have to find out THIS year that oh, hey, the story can run its course in 40 000 or 50 000 words? I'm a master at wordpadding, yes, but 70k of wordpadding... er, no thanks.
*grumble* I can't believe this. The pacing in my story is horrid, so that kind of cut out many things I had planned, but I now wrote myself into a situation that needs to be solved rather quickly or one of the characters will end up dying a gruesome death, and that wasn't my plan. What the heck. Well... if this story reaches its conclusion, I guess that's a good time for me to start working on some pieces for my hurt/comfort bingo card. Still, I'm a bit dazed - for years, I never managed to finish any stories no matter how much I wanted to finish them, and now that I'm all geared up for this story to go on for a long while yet, it seems to want to be finished. I really shouldn't plan much, I guess, since my stories seem to do whatever appeals to them anyway.
I'm just... baffled. And sort of amused. It's like my brain wants to keep screwing me over. Regardless, I'm curious to see where all this will take me.
November 16, 5:00
Wordcount: 46435
Huh. It's been a while since I wrote here. It's been... crazy lately. Mostly in a good way.
So, the midpoint of the month has passed. I should have cracked 50k last night, and probably could have, but I was too tired and lazy and contented to keep writing when I got home from our local write-in, so I went to sleep. The story has been about to end for way too many days now, but it's ridiculous now - I have 46,5k words and I'm in the middle of the epilogue. If I were aiming only for 50k, then yeah, I'd just drag it out now and finish the story as soon as I hit 50k, but my aspirations are higher than that. I'll be changing stories as soon as this one comes to an end, whenever that is. Knowing my ability to wordpad everything everywhere, though, I wouldn't be surprised if this epilogue dragged on for another 5000 words!
Now to decide what to write next. I will be writing more Sherlock fanfiction because the time frame and the sheer rate of writing I have to do to stay on schedule don't really allow for changing fandoms in the middle of it all - not successfully, when I have no preplanned stories in mind for other fandoms. Plotbunnies, yeah. Plans, not so much. The problem is, I don't know what to write, haven't been able to choose yet. I love Lestrade (which every single friend of mine who knows about Sherlock is sick of hearing already, I'm sure), but he got kind of evil treatment in Chokehold, my NaNo. (Even if he did get to save Sherlock and John with a crowbar in the end! That was awesome. Whoo, spoilers. I won't apologize, you wouldn't have gotten a chance to read this story even if I hadn't told you that. :P) So then... I wanted to write a fluff fic in which his life really is going rather nicely, he has a loving family and a stable, sane relationship with no cheating involved - and then I got hit with a nagging, angsty plotbunny which I had to share with soryualeksi. After I did, we spent the next two hours planning and discussing ways in which Lestrade might commit suicide. Erm. The discussion was fascinating, but a bit... unconventional. It's not like I tend to give much of a damn about some topics being taboo when I'm talking to my friends, but still, it's rather unusual to spend so long planning a character's suicide, I guess. I found that just amusing, in a dark way, but I'm sure it makes me seem even more creepy to those who don't know me. Oh well, their loss!
So, to return to the original topic, I thought I had two options after finishing Chokehold: write the angsty fic or the fluff fic. Someone at the write-in told me, as a joke, to write the fluff part first and then turn it into angst, but that would be so beyond the casual cruelty I show to Lestrade in Chokehold that I would be left feeling horribly guilty if I did that! That's not an option for me. So which one to go for first? Turns out my brain ran away from me and latched on to a third idea that is neither fluff nor really angst. It's just... drama! We'll see which one I end up writing. I'm kind of in favor of this third idea, if only because it would give me a fic for the hurt/comfort bingo card, but we'll see.
Here's my NaNo profile, for the curious. And here is the synopsis and an excerpt of my story.
Last updated: November 16, 5:00
November 1, 12:20
Wordcount: 2490
Holy... it's here again. November. NaNo. And for the first time ever, I had an incredible amount of trouble starting my novel.
For many years, I've written only Tales of Symphonia fanfiction. For June Camp NaNo 2012 I wrote Mass Effect and Dragon Age II fanfic. Those didn't turn out very well, but I didn't have problems writing them, at least.
For this NaNo, I'm writing BBC Sherlock fanfiction, and the characters seriously refuse to work with me. I tried, for over a month, to write some shorter Sherlock fics before NaNo rolled around. I never got further than a paragraph or two in. The characters just didn't want to be written.
I've always started my NaNos at midnight and written about 1000-3000 words before heading to bed. Well... today, not so much. I was napping until midnight, so I was completely disoriented when the clock struck twelve. I started writing. I got 79 words written. Then I spent the next seven hours dithering about, trying to work on the story whenever possible, but mostly just doing anything else. (Reading fanfic, practising my German, watching LPs on Youtube... you get the picture.) I did eventually get 2490 words written, but the characters STILL have it in for me.
Sherlock is flitting about like an indecisive bat and I keep wanting to describe him as flouncing about and being stroppy. Lestrade is annoyed enough that it seems he wants to bash Sherlock's head in. *facepalm* NO. Calm yourself, Lestrade. John is the only one working with me instead of against me, at this point, and he's mostly just confused. Aren't we off to a brilliant start!
November 1, 22:30
Wordcount: 3860
I had to stop writing my thoughts and feelings down earlier because of class. Blah. Then I spent four hours traveling, approximately one of it writing. Could have written more, but my brain is pretty fried and I needed a break. I wrote a bit just now, but I actually have to fight against falling asleep, so now is probably a good time for me to go hit the hay. Perhaps the writing will make a bit more sense once I've had some sleep. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
Till tomorrow, m'lovelies.
November 3, 13:50
Wordcount: 6915
...What. Seriously, what just happened?
I had planned from the start that Sherlock would want to make himself a target in order to lure out a killer, but his plan would be thwarted and somehow Lestrade would in the end agree to be the decoy. Sherlock would have been annoyed, but they'd still all have been able to work together.
Apparently, my brain decided that scenario was too unbelievable, and now... now Sherlock said something that genuinely hurt Lestrade (who, it turns out, was already fed up with the Holmeses because Mycroft had been meddling in his affairs) and drove him away. Now Lestrade seems to be doing the job of the decoy anyway, but half-unwittingly. Geez. I think this actually makes maybe more sense than what I'd planned in the first place, but I feel so bad for making Lestrade miserable and Sherlock so... accidentally hurtful. He's actually trying to be nice in his own way, but it all keeps blowing up in his face. :( It's sad, and now John is mad at Sherlock. It may actually create some great tension and angst for later, but I want the boys to have some good moments too! I don't want to split them up while they think the others don't give a damn about them. :'( I want comfort too, not just hurt! Gah. Try to find a way to have your own quirky "happily ever after", boys, won't you? Otherwise you're just going to break my heart.
November 4, 12:40
Wordcount: 8570
I... finally seem to be getting the plot underway, but it's more sinister than I thought it would be. D: I'm afraid for the characters' lives and health! Sherlock also seems to have decided that John and Lestrade are his. Um. How'd I turn the asexual, aromantic character into the one so obsessed with relationships? Not that Sherlock is actually admitting to anything, and I have a sneaking suspicion he's not even aware of his possessive behavior, but John is starting to clue in and be creeped out. Lestrade is disappointed and hurt and about to be persuaded into having an ill-advised one-night stand with a random character. This is... really not how I planned this all out, but the scary thing is, this works. Too well. I find that... disturbing.
I'm afraid to go on writing. I don't really want to know what evil my brain and fingers have in store for poor Lestrade. :<
On the plus side, I finally have an excerpt in my profile. Yay?
November 6, 00:20
Wordcount: 15070
Gaaahh. *flops over dead* 15k, and it's still not enough. I realized yesterday that I could actually aim to crack that magical 100k this year when my original goal was 60k, but I think I've found my limit. I have written more than 5k words a day a few times over the years, and I wrote 8,5k in one day last year, but writing nearly 3,5k words every day is more than I can really deal with. 2k is fine, 2,5k is what I tend to write, but anything more is just... insanity. It's not like my NaNos are of outstanding quality to begin with, but after 2,5k it all just becomes even more nonsensical. Well, I suppose this information may come in handy later. This year, I'm more interested in seeing where the story will take me and whether it will get finished in November, but assuming that it doesn't, I would like to hit 90k at least. Last year I hit 80k and was somewhat disappointed, even though that was more than what I aimed for in the first place. I felt like I could have written more. So... we'll see how much I get written this year.
I'm still a master at word-padding, but at least I have a plot this year. True, it's moving along slower than a snail in tar, but there's some progress at least. Can't say the same for consistency, though. Lestrade decided to go from mildly intrigued by another character to repulsed by him in no time flat for no good reason. *facepalm* That's just great. On the other hand, the weird slashy undertones seem to want to creep into this story even without my conscious effort. It's... interesting, but Sherlock still scares me.
I realized that I can't write Sherlock. Or at least from Sherlock's POV. His mind is a mystery to me. I can read other people's fanfics and tell when Sherlock is IC or OOC, but as for me personally... I can't seem to write him at all. I feel guilty for making him seem like such a prick when writing from Lestrade's perspective, but Lestrade's perceptions ≠ my perceptions. Lestrade has good reason to be mad at him. I still feel bad for writing the argument out in the first place. D: Damn, guilt-tripped by fictional characters. How wonderful. Maybe it's time I just went to sleep.
November 7, 14:10
Wordcount: 20075
Hmmm. I had a very productive day yesterday. I didn't think I'd get much written in a write-in, but I did manage 3,5k. :O That was a surprise. Then I got home around 20:30 and decided that I'll crack that 20k before midnight. I was about to fall asleep on my keyboard at half past ten, but I did it! So if I want to aim for 100k by the end of the month, I'm now just barely on track. Lovely.
I am also still a master at word-padding. 20 000 words, and I'm now starting chapter 2. The plot is taking a reeeeally long time to get underway, but I'm just happy I have a plot, or a semblance of one, at any rate. I did manage to write some peculiar things yesterday, too, though, without ever planning them.
I needed Lestrade to have had some experience with extreme sports/thrill-seeking activities in his past. I was in the middle of a Write or Die session and didn't have time to think, so what did I default to? Skydiving. Not a bad choice in and of itself, right? Even if it's a bit... out there. Why did I choose that sport? Because my father used to skydive in his younger days. O_o; Nothing wrong with that, right? Except that I didn't speak to my father for ten years before he finally died this spring. Where the hell did I pull THAT old memory from in the middle of my NaNo for a character I love?! I even went so far as to reference an old injury my father sustained once. Sheesh.
Another odd thing in my NaNo - I apparently seem to want to complicate my already jumbled story even further. In one scene, Lestrade was supposed to get out of bed, go about his day, and get a phone call in the afternoon. Um. Well. He got out of bed, sure, but then he checked his phone to find several texts on it. All but one of them were from Sherlock (who wasn't supposed to contact him, but it's not like Sherlock ever does what he's told to do). All right, I can roll with that. But the last message was a cryptic warning/threat from an anonymous sender. Which would be fine in a mystery story, yeah? But I have no clue who the mystery texter is. I did get several paragraphs out of that scene while Lestrade is WTF-ing over the text. Why do I feel like this story is trying to become even more sinister and creepy than I intended it to? D: And my plans were plenty violent and dark to begin with, trust me.
November 10, 14:20
Wordcount: 30020
No. No. No no no no no.
Do my NaNos do this just to spite me?!
*sigh* Okay, now that the drama llama moment is over, let me explain. I have never in my life finished a story during NaNo. Once, I came very close -- by continuing the previous year's NaNo. Just never finished the epilogue. So, even that story was 97 000 words long at that point. Most of my NaNos, had I ever felt the need to continue them after November was over, would have been significantly longer than 50 000 words (or whatever the wordcount I reached was). So this year, I decided that yeah, I'll aim for 90k or even 100k. I'm 30k in, and I'm seriously starting to doubt this story will take another 20k to finish, let alone 60k or 70k! Why did I have to find out THIS year that oh, hey, the story can run its course in 40 000 or 50 000 words? I'm a master at wordpadding, yes, but 70k of wordpadding... er, no thanks.
*grumble* I can't believe this. The pacing in my story is horrid, so that kind of cut out many things I had planned, but I now wrote myself into a situation that needs to be solved rather quickly or one of the characters will end up dying a gruesome death, and that wasn't my plan. What the heck. Well... if this story reaches its conclusion, I guess that's a good time for me to start working on some pieces for my hurt/comfort bingo card. Still, I'm a bit dazed - for years, I never managed to finish any stories no matter how much I wanted to finish them, and now that I'm all geared up for this story to go on for a long while yet, it seems to want to be finished. I really shouldn't plan much, I guess, since my stories seem to do whatever appeals to them anyway.
I'm just... baffled. And sort of amused. It's like my brain wants to keep screwing me over. Regardless, I'm curious to see where all this will take me.
November 16, 5:00
Wordcount: 46435
Huh. It's been a while since I wrote here. It's been... crazy lately. Mostly in a good way.
So, the midpoint of the month has passed. I should have cracked 50k last night, and probably could have, but I was too tired and lazy and contented to keep writing when I got home from our local write-in, so I went to sleep. The story has been about to end for way too many days now, but it's ridiculous now - I have 46,5k words and I'm in the middle of the epilogue. If I were aiming only for 50k, then yeah, I'd just drag it out now and finish the story as soon as I hit 50k, but my aspirations are higher than that. I'll be changing stories as soon as this one comes to an end, whenever that is. Knowing my ability to wordpad everything everywhere, though, I wouldn't be surprised if this epilogue dragged on for another 5000 words!
Now to decide what to write next. I will be writing more Sherlock fanfiction because the time frame and the sheer rate of writing I have to do to stay on schedule don't really allow for changing fandoms in the middle of it all - not successfully, when I have no preplanned stories in mind for other fandoms. Plotbunnies, yeah. Plans, not so much. The problem is, I don't know what to write, haven't been able to choose yet. I love Lestrade (which every single friend of mine who knows about Sherlock is sick of hearing already, I'm sure), but he got kind of evil treatment in Chokehold, my NaNo. (Even if he did get to save Sherlock and John with a crowbar in the end! That was awesome. Whoo, spoilers. I won't apologize, you wouldn't have gotten a chance to read this story even if I hadn't told you that. :P) So then... I wanted to write a fluff fic in which his life really is going rather nicely, he has a loving family and a stable, sane relationship with no cheating involved - and then I got hit with a nagging, angsty plotbunny which I had to share with soryualeksi. After I did, we spent the next two hours planning and discussing ways in which Lestrade might commit suicide. Erm. The discussion was fascinating, but a bit... unconventional. It's not like I tend to give much of a damn about some topics being taboo when I'm talking to my friends, but still, it's rather unusual to spend so long planning a character's suicide, I guess. I found that just amusing, in a dark way, but I'm sure it makes me seem even more creepy to those who don't know me. Oh well, their loss!
So, to return to the original topic, I thought I had two options after finishing Chokehold: write the angsty fic or the fluff fic. Someone at the write-in told me, as a joke, to write the fluff part first and then turn it into angst, but that would be so beyond the casual cruelty I show to Lestrade in Chokehold that I would be left feeling horribly guilty if I did that! That's not an option for me. So which one to go for first? Turns out my brain ran away from me and latched on to a third idea that is neither fluff nor really angst. It's just... drama! We'll see which one I end up writing. I'm kind of in favor of this third idea, if only because it would give me a fic for the hurt/comfort bingo card, but we'll see.