Pressed & Bound

Have you ever felt like writing totally sucks because you can’t get away from all the distractions that exist on your computer? Why is it that every time you want to get something done a chat window pops up or you get an email? Well, if you own a Mac, you might want to look into OmmWriter.

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Just a heads up for all of you wanna-be writers out there: NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month – officially starts today. It is now time to stop playing Minecraft and start rocking some Wordcraft.

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It’s been one week since I got my life back, and as I reflect on thirty days of no video games and other fun stuff (read: other video games), I feel as though I have grown. Grown as a person, a writer, and in finger muscle.

First off, like I mentioned before, the excitement from “winning” is something that has not yet lost itself from my being. I feel like I have finished the largest essay in my life, and as far as pure word count, it would be. But since there was an incredible deadline for the whole event, I felt the pressure of each day, and the stress that came with that. It’s very interesting to see how worried I could get to be a part of a completely free, voluntary thing.
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This post will be short and sweet, since I just pounded out 4,000 words, but I just want to bring to the masses the news that I, Garret S. Preston, Esquire, has officially completed NaNoWriMo for the first time! And one day early to boot!

It has been a grueling month of typing and falling behind and then typing some more, but we have done it. He have claimed the golden chalice of success and are currently holding it tenaciously to our bosoms, the excitement and elation are vibrant for all to see. I have posted on the sidebar the image you receive for winning. That’s about it, really, save for a PDF certificate of badassery that I will print and hang on my wall next to my college diploma. Which is more important? It’s honestly hard to tell.

But alas I leave this post tonight on the highest of horses. It is well passed my bedtime, but I believe I will be up late into the night, partying and drinking mead until the great sun doth awaken the land. Also just so I can stop typing in novel-speak.

To everyone who had wanted to view a show this week (that includes me!), I am sorry to inform you that I totally screwed up and had the camera set in a mode that Final Cut rather hates, so the show that we shot for this week is completely worthless and cannot be used. It’s rather sad, but we can recoup for lost time in the coming weeks. Due to the holiday of massive turkey slaughterings, we will not have a show this week.

In other news, it is the last week for NaNoWriMo, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s been a fun and sometimes stressful ride, but the end is looming over the horizon, and even if I make it or not, next Tuesday will be a fun day to be had by all. Right now I’m sitting at 39,003 words and 111 pages. There are officially five days left in the event, and 10,997 words to write over five days equals 2,199.4 words per day. It’s totally doable. The last few days I’ve had to write upwards of 3,000 just to partially keep pace, so two grand is a piece of cake. I also need to take some time to make a sweet cover for the book. I will do that over the weekend.

No, I’m not going to be talking about a famous WWII battle in the Pacific, I’m going to be talking about this monkey on my back; I have named him Jingles, but he sometimes goes by NaNoWriMo.

Today I will officially have passed the halfway point (three days late). They say slow and steady wins the race, but what about simply slow and slow? Because that’s what I’ve been doing. I have, however, found some useful tips that have greatly helped me not strangle small children as I struggle to write.

The first tip is to basically not go for 1,667 words at a time, or whatever the day’s goal is. I have started going for something more manageable: 100 words at a time. This post, for example, is already over 100 words. When you break it down into smaller chunks, it’s much more digestible, like a steak.

Today, I’m going to be trying out a new tactic. Since I’m behind by – a lot – I am attempting to write 250 words per hour throughout the day. I’ll need eight hours to do the 2,000 words I’ve been trying to knock out per day due to me being behind on it all. We’ll see how that goes.

I don’t know if these tips will help any one else, but look into it if you’re getting stuck. Or, if you’re not writing anything for NaNoWriMo, go ahead and laugh at my laziness, because it’s going to be a total bitch to catch up at this point.

So it’s been exactly one week and a few days, and I sit humbled by the task at hand. The task of writing my face off.

So the daily word count was to be roughly 1,667 words per day. Each day that I tried to accomplish this I would spend an hour or two blasting through those words. I have been increasingly aware of the time limitations of our standard day, and hope soon that the powers that be add a few hours to the mix. Or simply that we make November a forty-five day month.

Over the weekend I missed about two days worth of writing, on Tuesday I only wrote 1,000 words, and yesterday I wrote nothing at all. All told, that’s about 4900 words that I’m behind on. I’m in a sad state of affairs. I should be around 18,000 words, but I sit forlornly at 13,000. To make up the words missed I have a couple of options:

1. Write like crazy.
2. Divide the remaining words up among the rest of the days.

I’m going to attempt to do #2 (teehee attempt to do #2…), but we shall see how that goes. Using only my brain meats, I figure that I’ll need to do about 2,000 words per day to get back up to pace by the end of the month. So if 1,667 took up to two hours for me to write, then another 350 words or so should tack on another 20 minutes, roughly. In the end it’ll simply a ton of words per day. This weekend I need to vow to sit and write, and not play video games or read or edit or anything else. (Actually, I’ll probably still edit video.)

So wish me luck, dear readers, because I might be on a path of failing this event, and if I fail then I will have to commit seppuku.

This week, Joe was out of town because that’s what he does, so we didn’t have a show this week. INSTEAD, yours truly spent a good deal of time writing for the big, crazy authorathon called NaNoWriMo, although admittedly not as much as I should have.

So for the one week of November, I’ve settled down with 10k words written, which is about 3k behind schedule. This weekend was not too kind for the writing.

Anyhow, since there was no show, we at least taped some super exciting footage of how the writing process works. Trust me, it’s two minutes of awesome.

Right click and download this video:

• MP4 18mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

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This message was posted very recently to Twitter by our very own Andrew:

RT from @neilhimself: For all of you doing NaNoWriMo, or just writing a book: http://bit.ly/jvSNO was the letter of encouragement I wrote.

It turns out that Neil Gaiman at points has doubts on his own work. We’ve finally solved the mystery, he IS human. You’re not the only one who gets stuck writing, don’t worry. A couple of years ago, Gaiman sent this letter to NaNoWriMo as encouragement for would be writers. Here’s an excerpt:

You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

Check out the whole thing, it’s worth a read, and definitely helps. I was honestly not feeling too hot about churning out 1,600 words today, but after reading his letter it’s helped to ease the pain a little.

p.s. I’m up to 5,000 words! Have to hit 6,667 tonight.

So I’ve successfully written enough words to count for both today and yesterday. I had got on to a rough start by skipping the first day, but now that the ball is rolling it should go pretty well. Total words for the end of day 2: 3,442.

So far, since I haven’t really planned anything, my main character is named Jack Tarley, a normal truck driver who inexplicably gets mixed up with some bad folks and has to transport contraband or else bad things will happen. Will he survive? WHO KNOWS. In the end, though, there will probably be some space sharks, so watch out!

Soon I will put up a word count widget on the page so everyone can keep track. NaNoWriMo’s widget stuffs is currently broken on their site, but as soon as it comes back up I’ll have it for all to see. If anyone else is currently writing, let me know. I’d be more than happy to put up a few more folks’ counters so we can all help each other out with some friendly competition.

Until next time, keep writing.