New Years Resolutions Update

Last week, I said that there were two things I was going to do to stop myself procrastinating, but it is actually a third thing which I didn't mention that I have found most helpful. It's a bit like a clock-in, clock-out system. I write the date on a piece of paper, and I write the current time. Then I start my school work. When I finish that piece of school work, I write down the time again, and write down what what I did. Depending on how long the school work took to finish, I might at this point write down the time again, on the line underneath, as a starting time, and do some more work, or else I might have a break.

Like this:

On a school night, the minimum I try to do is two hours, and I generally manage it, although admittedly I have rarely done more than about ten minutes extra. But two hours a night is an improvement; I feel like I'm getting things done, and I'm not leaving work till the night before anymore and having to rush it and panic.

On the subject of New Year's Resolutions, one of my other resolutions was to finish a novel this year. The past couple of years, I have attempted NaNoWriMo (the online write-a-50,000-word-novel-in-a-month challenge, which takes place in November) and not finished my novel, but I do find NaNoWriMo a good way to write, and the stats page is very good for tracking your progress. But what I figured I needed, especially this year when I have important exams which will decide whether or not I go to uni, is more time, so I made a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel. It's not a very good spreadsheet, because I don't use Excel very often so I can't remember how to use it properly, and I don't think they taught us in school what I would need to know in order to accomplish a NaNoWriMo-style word count tracker thing and graph anyway, but I did my best.

Basically, I worked out the daily word counts that would be necessary to reach to 50,000 word goal in two months instead of one (834 words per day). Of course, you don't have the feeling of knowing that while you're typing your heart out trying to write a novel in a month, thousands of others all over the world are doing exactly the same thing, but you do have to write less each day, which is helpful.

I didn't intend to start using my spreadsheet until the summer, after my exams, but alas inspiration and imagination stopped listening to sense, and two days ago I started my novel. Another new novel. That's just what I really needed, wasn't it? Another one.

However, technically, it's not a new one. My currently unnamed novel (the document on which it is saved is titled "Just Keep Writing") is to be a rewrite of what was probably my first attempt at a novel. I remember when I was about thirteen being at my grandma's house and having the urge to write but having no paper, so my Grandma found me a little black and red notebook with squared paper that nobody had used, and said I could keep it. So I opened it to the first page and started writing. I never finished it, in fact I never got to the end of that little notebook, but looking back, it's just as well, because it was terrible.

But I loved it, and upon rediscovering it, and rediscovering some later attempts at rethinking and rewriting it which are saved on my computer, I decided that this was what I wanted to be the novel I write this year, despite having not much of an idea of where my plot is going (I have a sort-of beginning point, I have an end point, but I have no middle except the vague idea from my first draft that my characters go on some sort of journey - which is why I named the document "Just Keep Writing", because then I'll just see where it takes me, and hopefully eventually end up in the right place). This is slightly annoying, because I already had three ideas for novels (two of them rewrites) that I wanted to write this year.

So far, I have written almost two and a half thousand words (and not very much has really happened yet), and my word count for today is 2,502. Wish me luck. This may well be a long two months.

Plothole!

Plot-hole! Plot-hole! I have hit an unexpected plot-hole! I didn't plan for this to happen, this event was not in my outline, and now it's turned itself into a bit of a problem, like oh crap how on earth can I get my characters out of this in a way that means they can carry on with the story like I want them to??!!

Sorry, I just needed to share this with someone, and I thought it was better on here than on my Facebook, where there are all those people that I know, ugh... (I have nothing against my friends, btw, it's the people, you know the ones, who you only added because you had no logical reason not to, you do know them after all, you just don't want to share all your personal secrets and shit with them - and what one writes is most certainly classed as a personal secret. Writers may not put their life stories into their novels, but they do put their souls into them, and that makes them very private, so I do not wish to even talk about this novel that I haven't shown anyone to those awkward people who I both know and don't know. Also, I just started craving orange juice.)

And it's nearly the 23rd of November!! And I managed to swap my shift to get the night off work after all!! I can't wait and I can't believe it's so close!!! (I was about to say, the world had better not end now, when it's so close, but if it's about to, it's fine, the Doctor will save us). We're going to the cinema to see it. I'm not entirely sure who "we" is, because personally I'm going with my boyfriend, but two of my best friends will also be there somewhere, and a few other people we know are going too. Basically, my boyfriend and I are going, along with as much of the Whovian population of our town that Cineworld can fit into two screenings at once, and it just so happens that approximately half of that Whovian population of our town are at our school and are a similar age to us.

Mid-Month Update

So now we are halfway through November, and halfway through NaNoWriMo, so every novel written by NaNoWriMo participants should, by now, be at least 25,000 words in length - halfway to that winning 50,000. Of course, there will be people who are nowhere near that and people who have given up, and people who are a couple of thousand words behind. At just over 18,000 words, I am one of those people.

Now, it could be worse. The last time I took part in November NaNoWriMo, I think I got about 5,000 words - definitely no more than 10,000. I had exams to revise for. I had no time for writing. Technically, I don't have any time for writing this year. With a new part-time job, school, actually having a bit of a social life for the first time in my life (which is basically watching old Dr Who episodes with my boyfriend - although I'm still slightly surprised I can actually say that) and starting driving lessons, more is going on in my life right now than has ever gone on before. It's a bit tiring. It might be alright if I'd kept up from the beginning and not skipped a couple of days, but now I'm trying to catch up more than the required daily word count, and I don't have time.

According to the stats graph on my account on my website, I will finish my novel on the 14th of December (this year, luckily - I'm not doing that badly) if I carry on the way I am, and I need to write 2,119 words every day to finish on time. I don't think I'll make it, but that's not to say I'm going to give up! Wish me luck, and I may well cross that 50,000 word line yet!

Note: I said before that I should be at 25,000 words by now - well, it seems now that I checked on the website that I lied. Today's target word count is 26,666. Which means I am about 8,000 words behind. I think I will definitely need that luck you were just in the process of wishing me. :P