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NaNoWriMo Day 15: Wanting Something...

This is the now -famous last frame from Randall Munroe's comic XKCD, in which one character dreams the coordinates of a particular place and time, goes to the spot, and finds nothing there.  What propelled this particular strip into fame was the fact that the date/time mentioned in the strip hadn't happened yet -- and so around a thousand people showed up in a park in Cambridge, MA, at the appointed date and time, and Randall Munroe appeared and said "Maybe wanting something DOES make it real."

It's a sweet and inspiring story, but of course, to make it real, Randall needed an audience.  He's built one over the last three years of publishing XKCD, and since he lives in that bastion of geekdom, Cambridge, home of Harvard and MIT, he's got a pretty big local audience (though I understand people traveled from geek meccas far and wide to attend the event).  So really the conclusion should be "Maybe having enough people want the same thing makes it real."

Randall Munroe's comic strip shuttles back and forth frequently between loneliness and optimism.  He's tapped into some universal paradox of the human condition with this idea, and  this particular strip embodied both ends of the spectrum.

So what does this have to do with me, and with NaNoWriMo?  My question of the day is, "What does it take to convince people to want the same thing as you?"  This can be a tricky proposition, whether it's convincing your boyfriend that you need time to work on your novel (mine's been very good about this) or convincing investors that your game ideas are going to make money some day (I haven't done quite as well in this area).

I spent most of last week in California at a conference of informal science educators, showing off my work on Geckoman.  It was a good group of folks, and I got some support for the project, but it ate up all of my time, so other than outlining the rest of my YA novel, nothing really got done.  Came back and went to NYC for the weekend, which was supposed to be my relaxation time, when I had decided I would not write, but of course, that put me even further behind.  Now I'm back, but work has been so stressful that I can't find the mental space I found last year during NaNoWriMo, where I'd spend 1 to 4 hours a day working on the project, with very few skipped days!

Now I just stare at the screen and noodle around with the ideas.  I feel like this novel idea that came to me in a single blast of inspiration was a great gift, but it's like getting a "some assembly required" toy with no instructions.  Last night I actually had another bizarre inspiration and indulged myself in writing another outline that was completely the OPPOSITE of what I wanted to do with the YA novel -- pessimistic, paranoid, and very "adult" themed.  But then the cold I've been fighting for weeks got the best of me, and I had to give up at about 1:00am.

I want to finish NaNoWriMo again, but it may not happen, in the face of all the other stuff I have to worry about right now.  When I started Metaversal Studios nearly four years ago, I felt like I was setting up the conditions for something wonderful to happen -- like Randall Munroe's lonely-optimistic comic.  And I've been very lucky to be surrounded by an incredibly talented group of students and professionals who have made some amazing things happen.  Unfortunately, it's very difficult to sustain such efforts on no money -- so we end up taking on non-game-related client projects to make ends meet and we move further and further away from our original goals of creating something wonderful and unique.

There's still a lot of promise, and a lot of hope, but even with our little band of creatives here working together in one big group hug, it still sometimes feels pretty lonely.

Come on, world.  We really want this. Maybe if you want it, too, we can make it real.

NaNoWriMo Days 3-4: No News is No News

So the last couple of days have kind of sucked.  Saturday was rainy in that Nor'easter way, which not only annoyed me because I had to be out in the rain, but also because I can't stand the term Nor'easter.  It's just a storm, people!

Anyway, I didn't want to leave the house, so I tried to get as much work done around here as I could.  It WOULD have made sense, of course, to actually also do a bunch of writing and get ahead, but no.  That wasn't happening.

Decided I'd spend Saturday evening writing, but then got an invitation to go watch "The Exorcist" at a friend's.  He said I was glad to do some writing while over at his place (he later admitted he didn't want to watch the movie alone...) but of course, put a cheeseburger and a drink in me, and I'm not going to get a lot done.  I DID spend some of Saturday rethinking the first chapter of the novel, since I am not happy with the current character dynamics.

Today, Sunday, I woke up determined to juggle getting a lot done with spending time with the boyfriend, since I will be busy tomorrow, and I will be out of town Tuesday through Friday.  I really really miss Andrew still, even when it's only a few days, so I always want to make the most of our time before I go on a business trip.  And of course I usually end up driving him crazy in my efforts.  So today turned into "Get my act together" day -- paying bills, trying to get my new (almost free!) Palm phone at least synced to the proper data although it can't make calls yet (WHY am I going back to Sprint?  WHY?  Oh right.  Because they have the sexy phones and T-Mobile doesn't.  But I'm gonna miss being able to move my SIM card to a new phone whenever I want...), etc.

So now it's nearly midnight and this will make my first "two day slump" in NaNoWriMo, and tomorrow does not look much better.  I will have to really push myself to make this happen.

Fortunately, I did run into NaNoWriMo buddy Seth today, and we talked about our works in progress.  I gave him my advice from last year -- write fast, and don't look back -- and then realized I should be taking that advice.

So yes, you will see the completed chapter 1 soon.  I may withhold it until I can edit it at least a bit, to make it match up with chapter 2 (since I'm now writing forward again!)... but considering I am supposed to be through 4 chapters now (if I stick to my original chapter-a-day plan)... I really can't afford to look back much!

OK, that's it from me.  Now I am going to go back to worrying about whether syncing my old Palm to my new Palm is going to mess things up...

NaNoWriMo 2007, Day 2

Quick entry today.  I made it to 3,358 words, just exceeding the 3,332 I needed to stay caught up.  Didn't get anywhere near done with Chapter 2, though.  In fact, now that I am in to the story, I find myself questioning a lot of what seemed so easy to put together in outline form.  But of course that is the hard work of a first draft.  I just didn't want another first "exploratory" draft like last year where I feel like most of what I'm writing will have to be thrown out.  But it's an interesting discovery process yet again.

On a side note, I accidentally discovered a "cheat".  Turns out my NaNoWriMo account info was reset, and as part of that i went back to being on default Pacific time.  So that means that rather than having writing done by midnight to have it count for the current day's graph, I can go to 3am!

Of course, when I am in California next week, this won't be the case, so I'll have to be good... here's hoping I can get ahead on writing on the plane out there!

NaNoWriMo 2007, Day 1

So here we are at the end of another Day 1 of National Novel Writing Month.  Unlike ScriptFrenzy, where I let myself get off to a bad start and not even close to an end, earlier this year, I decided I'd hit NaNoWriMo running, just like last year.  I'm all about trying to keep the graph as flatlined as possible!

So for the last two years, I've used NaNoWriMo to explore the big worlds that get stuck in my head, places that are very special to me, but which aren't easily mapped out for the rest of the world.  I admire and envy people like JK Rowling, who have an entire world in their heads and find the story that will get the world out on paper (though then sometimes they can't stop with the world, already, and we end up with interminably long fantasy series; thanks, JK, for stopping at 7 books, and now please don't spoil all the mysteries you left for us to ponder.)

Last year's NaNoWriMo entry wasn't particularly good, but I am still excited to write a very different second draft of that novel.  In fact, I felt like the second draft would be such a different novel that I could even get away with using the same story two years in a row!  But, that isn't in keeping with the adventurous spirit of NaNoWriMo.

So, a couple of months ago when I started talking with friends about getting a group to do it this year, I started figuring out which of my many ideas would make it to novel form this year.  I should explain, I used to average a story idea a day (sometimes I'd get seven in a day, sometimes one in a week), but it's not like these are genius ideas; they're more like mini-concepts, usually. I get excited about those ideas like a Hollywood producer gets jazzed about a movie logline.  Heck, some of these ideas aren't much more than a logline, really.

So, I picked a deeply personal novel idea I've had for a while and mixed it with a humorous idea I had, and I started to outline in my head.  But even though I could see the structure I wanted the novel to have, I couldn't get the pieces to fit.  I was prepared to jump into this year even less prepared than last year and just see where the story might go, but I also worried that the world I was creating was so specific to me that it would not make for very good storytelling, and might also be a bit too revealing.  (Yes, this concern from a guy who blogs about his life and overshares with his students every chance he gets).

At any rate, today at lunch, I was eating a tuna sandwich while walking through the mall.  Yes, I know it's not good to eat and walk a the same time, but I think best when I am moving (I've seriously considered an office treadmill!) and I was hungry!  So maybe it was the combination of the brain food (if that thing about fish is true) and exercise, but suddenly THE IDEA hit me!

Specifically, and I feel this story must be shared, a piece of tuna dropped from my sandwich and on to the descending escalator.  I watched it, two steps ahead of me, wondering if it would get pulled in to the magical place where escalator stairs go, or if it would just sit collected at the bottom with the other refuse.  I gave it a 50/50 chance, since canned tuna seems neither entirely solid nor liquid... a strong fishy plasma, if you will?  But I digress.

Anyway, the concept of the tuna disappearing in to the escalator (it didn't, by the way) reminded me of childhood fears about slipping down drains, getting sucked into the escalator cycle, riding the elevator too far down into Hell, and all kinds of other fun things.  I never was afraid of the drain (well, except briefly after seeing Stephen King's IT, with the clown), but anxiety dreams about escalators gone wild plagued me for years. And elevators?  I think more people probably have dreams about elevators giving way and plunging to their deaths, but no.  I just always worried I'd lose my mom if she got off and I didn't manage to get off on the same floor!

So, silly childhood fears.  Slipping away to other worlds.  Young Adult fantasy material anyone?

On my walk home from work, I wrote 30 quick chapter titles to give the book some direction (the final probably won't have chapter titles, but it's like an outline for me).  On the way to the store, I outlined some of the first chapter, and on the way to the gym, I came up with a couple more ideas.  What's amazing is that even though this is a fantasy story, the more I think about these things, the more I realize it relates back to my childhood.

What is great is that just a few days ago I was thinking how I remember vividly the few bad parts of my childhood, but all the many good parts seem to fade into a general blur of happiness.  And now I'm remembering all of these very specific things as I write.  It's cheaper than therapy and it has me smiling a lot more, too.

Speaking of smiling, while I was a the gym tonight, I finally caught a bit of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"  Even with the sound off (or maybe because of it) the show is really hard not to like.  Even with cloyingly sweet Clay Aiken as the celebrity contestant (or maybe because of him), it was still just so darned... NICE!... that I found myself grinning while running on the treadmill, even on the hills!

I'm trying something a bit different this year.  I still am going to post my writing for all to read, but I'm going to post full chapters as I complete them.  Tonight, although my goal was to do a chapter a night, I didn't quite make it.  Plus, I discovered last year that I do better picking up in the middle of the action the next day, so it's not such a bad thing.  So, if I stay on track, you should get a chapter up here every day, starting tomorrow.  We'll see how long THAT lasts!

So NaNoWriMo must be getting really popular; the site was so slow that I worried I wasn't going to get my 1,666 words registered before midnight.  And yes, I wrote EXACTLY 1/30th of the required number of words today.  All about keeping that graph flat, remember?  And besides, I churned out a whole freaking novel outline in a day, people!  What more do you want?!

Oh yeah.  You probably want to read it.  Fine, you'll get to.  Tomorrow!