Saturday, October 31, 2009

Wrockstock and NaNoWriMo. Period.

"I was out of your league
And you were 20,000 underneath the sea
Waiving affections
You were out of my league
At a distance that I didn't wanna see
Down to the bottom"
-The Blow, "True Affection"

Yesterday was a stressful day of stressful stress things, but it ended with a Halloween themed and costumed wizard rock show in Bellevue so it was ultimately a good day.

Matt and Justin stayed over a second night, and we intended on making it a wizard rock party fun night, but everyone was so exhausted from the non-sleep and pizza the night before, that.. well, I dunno about everyone else, but I was in bed by 1 AM. Pretty lame.

This morning I had a nice little morning chat with the boys before they headed on their way to Spokane, and I pulled myself from the couch and a day of Halloween movies on tv (ideal day, I wish) to a day at work. I'm only working five hours today, and it's really slow, but I want to go home and study for my Japanese American History midterm (I am SO lame) so I can be done with that and just focus 100% on my novel. Writing starts at midnight tonight, and I am kind of partied out, so I decided to just stay in, forget parties, and start writing at 12:01. My roommate PJ has a Chemistry midterm on Monday anyway, so she's staying in with me. We're going to eat candy. What.

I'm a little nervous because I feel like I know nothing about my characters, and I don't have a vision for how the novel should start, and I have a serious fear of pacing problems after the disasters of the last 3 novels I wrote. I think this is what makes NaNoWriMo fun though.

It's literally like throwing a bag of Scrabble letters against a wall and hoping when they settle on the ground, they arrange themselves in the form of an eloquent novel. This is very, very unlikely. But every year I cross my fingers, grab my laptop, and hope for the best. I think I've improved a bit each year as well. And while I know I am never going to write an awesome perfect novel in my first try, I can't help but continue to cross my fingers behind my back. Lemony Snicket wrote a novel in a weekend! It's possible!

I've decided to set a 10,000 word goal for myself by Wednesday. That's in 4 days (from kickoff). I will feel much, much better about leaving for EIGHT DAYS for Wrockstock if I get myself ahead like that.

In Wrockstock news, I am SO EXCITED. Eia and I met a handful of people at the show last night who are going to be attending as well, so we had a bit of a squee-and-dance party together in anticipation. It was fun getting to chat with some other people from Seattle (two of which I'd never even met before!) that are also getting ready to leave, and who understand how weird it is to tell people, "Yes, I am going to Missouri. Potosi, Missouri actually. Why? Erm. Wizard rock summer camp... thing."

People who 1. aren't going to Wrockstock and 2. aren't doing NaNoWriMo probably are going to want to kill me soon. Please don't remove me from your feeds! I promise that this, too, shall pass. xD

3 more hours of work. Back to researching carnie-life and thinking about writing. And, you know, occasionally answering the phone or something.

20 comments:

becca87 said...

I'm afraid of what Wrockstock is going to do to my NaNoWriMo-ing, honestly haha. I have these great visions of getting writing done on the planes, during dinner, or on the bus rides there and back but I know full well it's not going to actually happen haha.

Also, hi roomie! I feel slightly awkward saying that haha. If you see me huddled in the corner of our cabin with my laptop, feel free to throw things at me and tell me to go have fun =]

Anonymous said...

I am so excited for NaNoWriMo to start! What I think I'm going to do with my characters is make fake Facebook profiles for them, so when I want to take a break from writing and creep on Facebook I will be FORCED to be on my characters' pages and flesh them out a bit more. I don't know if it will be useful but I'm going to give it a try.

Mustikoita said...

I haven't planned anything for NaNoWriMo. I was sort of hoping that when I stat writing my characters will just come to me, but it seems like everyone's planned stuff, so I'm getting slightly nervous. Whoops :P

Anonymous said...

woot, nanowrimo!! finally!
i just started plotting and outlining today. i got so into it that i spend about two hours sitting by my desk writing and writing. i love it :D

Cat said...

I really have no idea what to write about NaNoWriMo-wise. Too late for that huh?

hannah said...

I haven't started yet, and it's been november for 12 hours!

good luck with the first 10,000 =]

ginger jones said...

I started at midnight (NZ and Aus kick off first!), wrote half a page then made up a friend for my main character who is currently called Eddie and named his friend Jasper ahaahhaha. Hmm lets just say in the final edit there will be some name changes...

to_thine_own_self said...

Hah. I just realized something, Kristina. We set our clocks back tonight, right?
So that means we'll have an extra hour for NaNoWrimo-ing. XD
Or, maybe, an extra hour of sleep to get ready for NanoWrimo-ing. That's probably what I'll do.
=P

Sarah said...

NaNo is off to a great start for me already! I started at midnight, it's now 1:30 (though the time changed, so more like 2:30) and I'm 654 words in. This is excellent.

GOOD LUCK!

usernamessuckfully said...

this is why its sucks to live in australia there is no wrockstock maybe i should move to america, and dont worry wont be removing you from my feed anytime soon lol

Ana said...

Good luck for NaNoWriMo! I'm really excited about it. :D

SigneHansen said...

10000 words by wednesday?! If you can do that, I'll be impressed.. I've only written about 700 words, and I'm beginning to regret not outlining the story first - and the characters. I'm completely blank.;D
But good luck! :D
And also: I would give just about anything to be at wrockstock :(
Too bad I'm broke - and also living in Denmark.. ;D

Sarah Batya said...

i want to go to wrockstock so bad but unfortunately high school does not wait around especially junior year and i'm kind of broke and on the east coast. :(
also i like the quotes it's a nice touch

Madeline said...

Good luck with your novel and have a blast at Wrockstock!! I so wish I was able to participate in either one of those things right now.

Sarah said...

*sorts through 635789498573948568965895 NaNoWriMo plot/character planning pages*

KatOfDiamonds said...

Since I am not going to Wrockstock and Im not a writer, I AM going to keep you on my feed and read and pretend like I'm doing it too! heh

HanPlans said...

I'm on about 2900 and it's lunchtime on the 2nd Nov. I'm moving house on the 5th so I need to cram in lots of words over the next few days. My Hubby doesn't get the jist of why I am writing this story at such a pace lol

Surmayee T. said...

im living the NaNoWriMo experience vicariously through you kristina! so you musn't stop talking about it :)
see, i only found out a week or two ago what NaNoWriMo was and, being a writer, i was SO excited, until i realised two weeks is not enough. so i must live through all of you participating, and i've promised myself that i WILL do it next year. I WILL I WILL I WILL

as for Wrockstock, I WISH i could be there, and it's annoying because I'm in Hong Kong and obviously, i cant just fly out there and attend (which if i could, i totally would)
so there's no way you're being removed from my feed :)

Jaime said...

1) I don't feel like I know my characters at all. I wrote up a character description for the main character of my story, and worked out an outline (this is the first year I've done either, I usually try to just wing it), but I still don't feel like I know what's going on yet. I guess that's part of the beauty that is NaNoWriMo. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be good. You can make it good when it's done. For now I'm just focusing on writing and trying not to edit (it's hard!).

2) I wish I could go to Wrockstock.

Anonymous said...

When you say Lemony Snicket, do you mean he wrote one of the A Series of Unfortunate Events novels? Or he wrote a novel under his real name? xD

Sorry, just wondering. I'm a fan of his!