It was overly grand ambition (or stupid ass planning) that got me thinking I could do NaNoWriMo again this year.

I’m bailing.

And of course I do not need to apologize (especially as most likely no one will even notice). I’ve already got enough on the plate every day, with training for a half marathon, doing my photography dailyshoot and daily 365/2010 photos, where the heck was 1667 words per day gonna come from?

Well, I could do it, but at this point I feel like I’d be just spraying words for the sake of it. While I had a few good writing spurts. my story of a dog’s eyed view of humanity was just not feeling like much of anything.

I did reach my goal to tinker with WordPress and to try out Patrick’s nifty riff on Anthologize (I was publishing ePub updates, last one is hanging in the breeze).

That’s the way the blog bounces.

I’d rather be playing, so am leaving http://nano.dommy.com in the Grand Ideas/ Lousy Execution pile.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by OakleyOriginals

Wow, does anyone remember 43 Things? It was one of the early social networking apps, and to me, still a nifty idea. You list 43 things you want to do, it connects you with other people who have the same goal or have completed it. You can post your success or ask questions of people with the same goal.

I’d not been there is well over 2 years, but I did remember tossing out the goal “Write a Novel”. It was not “publish a novel” or “work as an author”, it was just write one. I had no idea where to start so I didn’t because I told myself I could not do it.

That was the same thinking I had about running, but by committing to a goal where there is a deadline (like run a marathon on a given date), and putting it out there- well that works for me. So in November, I decided to do the sprint marathon version of writing by signing up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where you set a goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.

I think that was almost as hard as a marathon. At some point I was padding it with a lot of extra adjectives, but I ended up clearing the 50k mark before the end of November (it might have been the last day). No one sees your stuff, that’s not the point- what they do is provide the encouragement, tracking, and other structures to help you reach the goal.

When I was done I put the damn thing aside. It was a holey (not holy) draft, rampant with typos and plot fragments hanging in the wind. It took more than another 4 months before I could even make about 2 or three edit sweeps.

And then I thought, what do I do with this thing? I thought about sending it to some friends, like friends who know how to write, but what is that message when you get an 80 page PDF with “Hi, Here’s My Novel!” That seemed like a horrible expectation to drop on friends, to make them feel obligated to peek at it and then respond with something nice.

And then I let it sit another two months.

Which brings me to today. I decided to just post it online. Not with any expectations that one nutcase might read it, or Oprah might find it by accident. No, the point, and the scary peeking over the ledge part, is just to say- I put it out there.

So it’s down there, hiding meekly at the bottom of this post.

Maybe. If I get the guts.

But first, a little bit about it.

I almost started NaNoWriMo in a vein more like writing here. But that felt… chicken. So I aimed for a story unlike anything I’ve written ever.

And then I flashed back to a vaguely formed idea I had like 15 years ago, when I was riding a bicycle every day to work from Scottsdale to the Maricopa office in Tempe. Everyday, I would ride through a busy intersection at 68th Street and McDowell Road, which was also the intersection of the cities of Scottsdale, Phoenix, and Tempe. And I thought about a story involving two strangers, one on a bicycle, one in a car, one male, one female, who had a fateful interaction at this intersection. But I had in mind something where the character genders were vague– so that when the “incident” occurred, it would reverse your expectations. And then I would shuffle the names and personalities and re-tell the incident again, same place, different situation.

Since I know the area well, it was easy to visualize places, and use local references, though I took a few liberties with one or two places.

So that’s what I started with. As the first quadrant started flowing, I felt there would be “theme” or emotion that would be played out in each story- fear, love, humor, etc, with the main characters being opposites on a spectrum. I also added pre- and post dream sequences, which are a cheap ploy. I make a cameo in each story.

I ended up having to make a chart of the characters and plot focus, because I started confusing myself- this was my sketch (I ended up changing one lead from “Pat” which someone said was predictable as an ambiguous male/female name, to “Terry”).

That’s about all I have to say about it.

It’s done.

And I don;t know if I really have the energy to go back to it again- I’ve always said that writing is very hard work (it’s not just sitting down and tap-tap-tapping it out), and I know first hand now. I’ve heard that published authors re-write and re-write and re-write again and again (and again).

Oi. I might want to take up running again.

Done.

One off the 43 Things List.

Finis.

Oh.

I said I would share it.

Damn.

What was I thinking?

Ok.

I uploaded it to Scribd. the document sharing service, where it can be read online or downloaded as a PDF (MS Word did something funky with the header, adding 4 lines, so it made the thing like 20 pages longer than my original).

Here is Four Way Intersection….

Four Way Intersection

And I am ducking out of here.

November was a month of taking on more of the “do something every day” type projects, and I think the madness needs to stop. I’ll stop every day.

This of course, is not a promise I intend to keep. I find these challenges very rewarding, especially the ones that you convince yourself that you can’t do before you try. How common is it we defeat our efforts from the start?

For a recap…

2009/365 Photos
I’m in the second year of the informal group that spring up over the idea of trying to take photographs every day, and posting our best to flickr, sharing in the 365 Photos pool.

This is one of many things I file under the strategy of Do What D’Arcy Does. In 2007, this idea was a solo project of D’Arcy Norman; I chimed in 2008, and we started the flickr group, which grew to about 120 people. In 2009, we have 238 active people, over 25,000 photos shared, and an active group discussion area (I’ve been away a while, but I see the monthly theme has made it all the way to December).

The most exciting thing about this group is that it is totally without leaders, it has no structure, and the rules are loose enough to drive Mars through it — a lot of this was covered in my February 2009 Northern Voice presentation Say/Blog It in Pictures.

I’ve heard a number of people say it is too hard, or they peter out after a month, 2 months, etc. I understand, and have no expectations or even snobbery that this is something that anyone can do. It’s really not hard; you just make sure you go out once a day and take some pictures. Frankly, after almost 2 years, it is just a part of the daily routine like brushing my teeth (which I may not do every day, oops! Sorry Dr. Fow!).

The dailyshoot
Again, I am DWDD, as well as following the lead of Barbara Ganley, this is yet another ting to post every day to flickr, and so far, it has not been the same one as my 2009/365 photo.

For this, every day the twitter account for The Daily Shoot tweets an assignment- a specific thing we need to capture in a photo, then post it to flickr and twitter. For example, today was

In a way, this is almost easier, because we are given a goal. But it also provides an opportunity to stretch, and work hour to meet a specified topic. I’m finding myself trying to get around 3 or more variations so have something to choose from- today I got water drops as a pattern:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

This too has been somewhat of an organic group, conceived just this month by Portland based photographer James Duncan Davidson
.

Ironically, in early November, I was stuck in the Portland airport because a United Flight was canceled. After I tweeted about it, D’Arcy Norman messaged my to look for this pro photographer named James Duncan Davidson who seemed to have been on the same canceled flight. I looked up his twitter profile pic, and was fairly sure I knew which one was him, but then felt a little fan-boy stalkerish walking up to someone and said, “My friend on twitter said I should say ‘hi’”. Now I regret being reluctant! Especially after leafing through his photos on flickr.

I’m only a few days in on doing the dailyshoot but it feels like a fun fresh challenge; ny dailyshoot set is at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/sets/72157622779450205/

NaNoWriMo
I’d heard in the past about National Novel Writing Month, where the challenge is to write a 50000 word piece of fiction in 30 days. Writing a novel is one of those fuzzy goals that floats around in your head, like doing a parachute jump or running a marathon, and then just never get around to actually following through.

I decided this year to just say ***** It and give it a try.

I just finished tonight; my work stands now at 50239 words, and this was a super hard and effective challenge. I fell behind, some with travel, more with procrastination, but poured it on in the last week with a row of 5k and 4k writing nights.

Now I agree it is not about writing to some goal, but I agree with the project’s assertion; without some arbitrary goal, a lot of people like me would never try.

The other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that.

(enphasis added by me).

Sure, 50,000 is an arbitrary number, but the rationale is:

Our experiences over the past nine years show that 50,000 is a difficult but doable goal, even for people with full-time jobs and children. The length makes it a short novel. We don’t use the word “novella” because it doesn’t seem to impress people the way “novel” does.

We define a novel as “a lengthy work of fiction.” Beyond that, we let you decide whether what you’re writing falls under the heading of “novel.” In short: If you believe you’re writing a novel, we believe you’re writing a novel too.

The last thing I wrote of any length was in 1989, at 157 pages, when I finished my Masters thesis in Geology. 5 people have read it (my committee). It sits on my shelf gathering dust.

So of course, your question is, “Okay hot shot, where is your 50239 word novel?”

Right now it is sitting on my laptop (and in a backup location) as a really messy draft. I need a break from it before thinking about cleaning it up.

But you may counter, “Fair enough, but what is it about?”

It is called (for now) Four Way Intersection, and was really a germ of an idea I had 10 or more years ago when I was bicycle commuting to my job at Maricopa. I use a real intersection, McDowell Rd and 64th St/Galvin Parkway at the Scottsdale/Phoenix border as the location, and use a lot of settings I knew from living and biking in the area.

Let’s say it is a 4 act study of an encounter between two strangers. Each telling involves two people, one is Pat and the other is RJ, and until the end of the act, you actually don’t know their gender, but one is male and one is female. One works as an architect and the other is trying to fit in as a military vet. One drives a car and one is on a bicycle. Each story fades in with each character’s dream sequence, that sets in motion a series of events that has these two people meet at the intersection and fades out with a closing dream sequence. Then I shuffle up the characters and tell it differently.

The encounters work through 4 human themes- Anger, Love, Humor, and Ambivalence.

And just for fun, I insert myself into a cameo role in each act.

At this point, I am not sure if it is too contrived/gimmicky or just not sensible, but the point was not to write a best selling novel, but just to do the writing, and reach the goal. I likely will post it here soon, but just need to put the damned thing down.

I’m glad to be done this one.

And that leaves me with 2 daily photo chores (not to mention keeping up in running)

]]> http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/30/x-a-day/feed/ 3 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/14/its-kind-of-like-that/ http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/14/its-kind-of-like-that/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:12:01 +0000 Alan Levine aka CogDog http://cogdogblog.com/?p=4384
cc licensed flickr photo shared by Darren Larson

I’m feeling many parallels between my current training to run a half marathon and trying to crank out 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo.

Obviously a regimen is needed, the goals are both things I question (or have questioned) whether I can do, falling behind the schedule– puts you behind the schedule, sometimes in a spiral of self-criticism. I’m not saying I Hate Writing, but it is damn hard, especially when there is little time to be un-inpsired. Just when you think you’ve done a good run, the damn clock on a treadmill or the NaNoWriMo chart, sets you in a head down grunt up hill.

I am not climbing the right hill! Tomorrow is mid-way in the month, and to be on pace, I should be at 25,000 words, and thus am about 7000 behind. It’s easy to get obsessed with the count, as much as the details of a running program.

My novel is mostly charted out in structure, but I’m still feeling vague of sharing a lot of detail to I can at least get the next quarter done. I will say it is not about dogs, not about technology, not really too connected to anything I write here (well there is some bicycle elements to the story– and the germ for it was started by thoughts about 10 years ago when I biked to work).

It has somewhat of a formula to it, say some symmetry, in that there are 4 parts, and I know what characters and plots need to happen in each. At the same time, I wonder if it is too gimmicky, so am trying to mix up the edges of the patterns. I both like and am challenged by character development, in trying to shape it for the reader without being so explicit. Will my characters seem real or more like cardboard cartoons? Can they elicit a response from a reader or just a “ho-hum”?

Also, for fun, I play a bit part in every quarter story, not central at all to the story, kind of like a walk on actor part.

Tomorrow morning, I am headed out for a long ass plane flight, all the way to Doha Qatar for the World Innovation Summit for Education, hoping that the 20+ hours in transit can provide the impetus to crank out maybe 10k more words.

I know I can do this, but I am thinking that perhaps writing a novel, now, seems harder than doing a full marathon.

And WTF, I am wasting words here when I can use them eslewhere!

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