I’m sure you can guess why, if you can’t, or even if you can because I want to show off, as of Sunday 13th November I hit 50,000 words (50,443 to be precise). Can’t validate until the 25th November, but still after falling short two years running, to hit a second week finish feels great.

I can tell you, it was quite a buzz to hit the 50,000 mark, and I didn’t stop there. Week three saw me push on with the aim of hitting 75,000 words, including “The end.” Want to know how that went? Well I did that too. Though, it was a bittersweet second victory, someone I loved dearly passed away on the Saturday, and I contemplated on just stopping with 8,846 words still to go. That wasn’t the memory I wanted to have of someone I love passing, and though it was a slog, I finished at 75,114 on day 21.

So, the last step of the immediate NaNoWriMo process is to validate your win. And I did.

So there you go – I officially win this year’s NaNoWriMo. I have a badge to prove it.

However, I have decided that there is more to NaNoWriMo than simply writing 50,000 words though – that’s goal number one, with a couple of sub-goals that are worth noting. Below I’ve listed important steps in the writing process as I see them right now, (I reserve the right to grow as a writer and evolve these later*).

1. Write a 50,000 word novel (or the start of a novel), in the month of December. Achieve that one day moment – one day I’ll write a book.
   Be inspired – be creative, imaginative, and push your comfort zone.
   
   • Partake in a vibrant community of local and international aspiring and published authors.
   • Finish your novel – if it’s precisely 50,000 great stuff, of it’s not use the momentum to get you there whether it’s by the end of November, or December, our however long it takes.
     
2. Learn to edit after you’re finished – if you edit during you’ll be lost in no time, even if you make it to the end, you’re edits may be wasted when you properly edit.
   
3. Decide where to go from here – if you think your manuscript is good enough, do you try to submit to publishers, try self-publishing (which is a lot easier with fewer risks these days with e-publishing), do you share it with the world online, privately with friends, or keep it just to yourself. Basically, review, research, decide.
   

I’m completed stage 1, and I’m enjoying 1A, and hopefully will still do so after November is over, and of course I’ve completed 1b.

I’ve found of late how I write and what I write has changed a lot. Not just big changes like the conscious decision to plan this year, but down to the dropping of attempted dialect and accents, little things like marginally improved use of the English language as well. However, I don’t generally finish stories before I run out of steam, disappear, then come back and write a new idea. This year has seen a change in that, I made it through an extended story to the finish of that story, with the marginally improved English (except for random paragraph breaks in the middle of sentences, and words my phone’s autocorrect gave up on and so on), better structure through planning and things like that. So, if I’m to continue the process of evolving it’s time to look at stage 2 and edit the damn thing.

Okay, in fairness to myself I’ve tried editing before. It’s usually what I do when inevitably I’ve gotten lost with what I was writing. I basically do it too early normally, and it’s to change things to get it going again (which it doesn’t because then I lose all momentum completely). This time though, I’m going to try and do it right. I’ll go into details in a subsequent post on here, as to how that right will actually work – at the moment having hit the end of the story I’m on a break. I need some time to deal with things, and also to read a book called How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. It’s a good book, there are things I wouldn’t do anyway, but there are also things I’ve decided I don’t want to think about before or during writing, but as a guide of things to change in my project during editing it is going to be invaluable. Especially if I decide to go down any form of sharing route once I make it through to stage 3 after editing my novel.

Anyway, editing won’t happen until around the start of the New Year. Give me a break from the novel, and will allow me to read mistakes, and not read over them while what should be there is still fresh in my mind. Instead, when I’m feeling like writing again, I’m going to make my way through a couple of short stories (maybe 25,000 words each, but depends how they go), one of them is a new project I came up with during NaNo, the other is one I’ve restarted twice already. The old project I’m really going to work hard on nailing, as I think it’s a fascinating little piece, and deserves finally getting a finish to it.

2011 has been a mostly shit year, and continues to be – but I’ll always have that win, and hopefully I’ll always have at least a few of the friends I’ve made on doing NaNoWriMo this time round.

But before I go… here’s a ridiculous complex chart of my various targets and progress through NaNoWriMo this year:

I’ll do a proper stats post later; I have stats coming out of every pore right now with NaNoWriMo. This one contains all the salient information really in one place. If you know what you’re looking at this is a handy visual guide to how NaNoWriMo is going for you. A quick explanation:

The dark green line is the 50k target of NaNoWriMo originally, the bright red line at the top is where it switched to being 75k once I’d hit the 50k.

The dark purple bars are my actual word count, while the red line at the bottom are the words per day I actually achieved. The light purple area at the bottom meanwhile is the words per day I originally scheduled for myself, (and rescheduled once I hit 50k).

The brown line is what I actually rescheduled for myself at the beginning of NaNo (and reschedules from 50k onwards). I’m happy to report, for once my over ambitious scheduling was somewhat more comfortable than I’d expected, especially after I had a sluggish start.

The turquoise line was my very first schedule, which was over ambitious at the start, I felt, but was designed to push me has high as possible early on, in case I lost momentum later. It wasn’t reforecast, and so stayed at a 50k end.

The blue line is the new goal after hitting 50k, which gives you an idea where you need to be doing the 75k each day if you actually spread it out over the month.

Last the grey line amounts to a trend, based on performance where I could have ended up had I not stopped and maintained the pace. This changed constantly throughout the month depending on good and bad periods. At the point I stopped, had I not stopped I should have breached 100k easily (indeed since I did 75k in three weeks, the extra week should have gotten 100k, with a couple of days left over).

First of there’s how I’ve done the planning. There are obvious tools such as the browser I’ve done online research from (Firefox on my PC, and Dolphin Browser on my phone), and then sites such as Wikipedia,  space.about.com, and news websites (for the latest science and technological developments and theories). Nothing ground breaking there, I’ve been using a lot of science based sites to flush out details I can populate my universe with, but some sites on the history of piracy, and 16th, 17th, and 18th century naval life.

That’s all great but once I’ve got it, whether it’s snippets or whole articles I need to store it so that I can access it again, preferably offline so I’m not distracted by the internet later on. For this I use Microsoft Office OneNote – something I’ve had for ages but never gotten round to exploring for writing. It’s good, I’ve two projects on there, one for all that juicy research, the other for character bio’s and scene/locales.

I’m also using an app on my phone called Thinking Space (I’m using the pro version, but the free version doesn’t restrict you other than listing some screen retail to ads). This is a mind mapping (or brain storming if you want to call a spade a spade) tool, it’s a lot lower on detail than one note but has the advantage of quickly summarising thoughts and ideas and showing how things are interconnected. It’s in Thinking Space I’ve also mapped out the structure of the story, so I can clearly see what each chapter needs to include to feed events four or five chapters further into the story, and ultimately the end. Hopefully it means no loose ends at the end, and if I can keep it up to date it gives me a to-do list of changes I need to make in editing if things happen later in the story that weren’t originally part of the plan and need supporting events.

Other basics in the planning stage include Microsoft Word, Notepad, and a calculator. Then there’s my Kindle, where I’ve been reading plenty of similar sci-fi, and piracy novels. They’d also a few travel guides on there as this is an interplanetary novel each location needs to be distinct but something that can be related to by the Earth found denizens of today’s earth. It helps to borrow from out countries, cities, and cultures to enrich my fictional universe, lest everything in the universe somehow looks and feels like Leeds.

Add into that Google Sky Maps, Google Translate, and we’ve pretty much got everything I need for a space based science fiction story.

These are the tools I’ve used fire the planning, and they’ll be reused in the writing stage, but added to by things that are geared to better improve my writing, speed me up, andkeep me going. I’ll cover those in a subsequent post dedicated to that subject. I’ll do one in January to show the tools I’ll use to edit this story. For other novels I’ll try different tools and review them.

The first two chapters of my Memoirs of a Space Corsair are completed, and edited (though I offer no gaurentee to the quality of my self-editing, especially in the small hours of the morning). I’ve really gone for a bleak start to my characters adventures, and the third chapter will largely be bleak, though of course I can not keep it in such bleak a circumstance, I’m fairly sure if it continued into a fourth chapter, Arsène Frassin (my main character), would probably but aside his principles and simply off himself. He’s been through a lot, poor lad.

Hopefully these first two chapters give you a hint of the potential in this boy, trapped by circumstance. It is the foundation for the character, and ultimately the whole series of stories I have planned.

Hopefully, once we move out of these initial chapters, each entry will actually work as its own short story, but feed into the overall plot I intend. However, I must admit, the first three chapters, and possibly into the fourth are sequential, and intended to be read as such. I want to try and keep a word count of between 5,000 and 10,000 per instalment, just because its neater than trying to read 30,000 words in a single posting, and more convenient for the style of writing I want to achieve. As we do move into later chapters, and each adventure is one instalment (albeit with the possibility of an adventure or two being split across two instalments), it should feel a bit more like the pulp fiction of the first half of the twentieth century. I suppose I should come up with a garish and extravagant cover or two to go with milestones in my story.

I am finding this project very exciting, and its been relatively easy to write (albeit in between work, and family), but I can honestly say, the editing has been a lot tougher. I’m sure if I were to re-read either chapter through right now, I’d probably find another hour or two of changes to be made. There is little time for that before the first chapter publishes, so I shall let it lie, plenty of time before the scheduler posts up the second chapter though.

I had to have a little think about the impact of posting a story online, just as with poetry, I want to share my creative works, but a part of you does wonder, what would I do if someone misappropriated my ideas? I’ve of course added “© Jonathan L. Lawrence, 2010″, but also a disclaimer at the beginning, spelling out that this is mine, and mine alone. This may be overkill – however when I ran forum for writers, way back when, the issue of copyright did come up, and I can appreciate the wronged parties point of view.

I want to do a post on copyright, (I did do one previously, but it was more an idea, rather than a real look at the subject), and will probably do this week. I sometimes think copyright isn’t really reflective of the time, yet at the same time, I want my creative works protected as I share it with the world. There has to be a balance somewhere, and maybe it lies with the creators rather than the law to find that balance. Of course I am, in my small, untalented way, a creator, so I’m biased.

Anyway, I hope you read and enjoy the first two chapters, and I hope not keep those that do enjoy it waiting with the third and fourth.

Au revoir,

Sage

P.S. Feedback, good or bad, is always welcome – it makes me feel important that someone felt enough about what I’ve written that they would say something about it. I am an egotist after all is said and done, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Plus, it might just help shape me into a real writer, then if I was ever published, I’d have to acknowledge your contribution – (bribery gets you everywhere, or it does in Arsène’s corrupt world).

The man stands there a few moments before finally seeming to get the confidence to raise the microphone to his mouth again, as he megaphone reaches position this time his cheeks take on a bit of velour, and his eyes seem ablaze, he takes a deep meaningful breath, and speaks into the megaphone,

“Right, listen up,” now all eyes are on him, only they’re attentive rather than annoyed, “I demand to know where my inspiration is! I think it’s wholly unfair that you’ve abandoned me right now. I need you, I can’t write without you. Without you these pages are blank, and what words come are empty.
“Inspiration I’ve never needed you so bad, I’ve got all these things to do, and you’ve abandoned me, given up the fight, and now I stand alone against the tide of battle.
“I beg you return to me your charm, your talent. Words are meaningless without you!”

The audience looks rapt, his words have moved them, they feel his desperation, and they ponder borrowing the megaphone.

The man looks down upon his audience, upon their swept up faces, he watches the emotions play across their faces. Then a thought dawns in his mind, a realisation, maybe even epiphany.

What the man realised was this – inspiration is hard to achieve, but it can hit at the strangest moments, and all you can do is find the nearest waiting apparatus and take advantage.

Everyone has different things that inspires them to write, and inspires what to write. For myself these are most often two different events, for others they might be most often the same.

There is also another possibility one without the other, which can either be liberating or frustrating, for example:

• I may have a brilliant idea what to write, but no inspiration (will) to write it – so it all plays out in my head because try as I might I can’t convert it into words. Obviously a form of writers block.
• Something may give me inspiration (the will) to write, but without any inspiration. Here my mind, and the paper is ab empty canvas, and I can just let my thoughts flow freely. Probably doesn’t make for great reading, but it’s fun and liberating for me.

Everybody is different when it comes to inspiration, I know all too well what holds true for me, is complete gibberish to another. In broad strokes, I have probably captured the general forms of inspiration.

In terms of what inspires me to write (gives me the will), it falls down to three categories: the outdoors (nature, weather, scenery, architecture, etc…), other people’s creativity (a book, a film, a piece of music, also biographical information about a creative person, or someone who’s faced adversity in their life), and challenges (nothing gets my creative juices better than a bit of competition).

Sadly these things aren’t guaranteed to get me writing, but most often once I start writing it’s because I was inspired to by one of the above.

In terms of my inspiration what to write, it’s usually something close to hand, something I’ve imagined happening, my emotional state (yes, I can be a bit emo in my poetry), or a need to impress others so I can belong, and validate myself.

I’ve written about many things, from religion to coke cans, from fantasyic tales to mundane moments of life, and from historical events to nature.

Sometimes my indpirations puts me on the path to something specific, sometimes it’s just the starting point, or catalyst for a cascade of ideas.

I will say this, whatever the idea, I do love it when it happens, it’s a veritable joy to let poetry over take me, a joy and love that only falls short of sex.

As I’m getting older, inspiration is getting harder – dry spells last longer, but when the floodgates open, I feel sure the joy is deeper, as I come to appreciate it more.

Still I would live in those moments more if I were able to, giving myself over to the wild abandon of inspiration.

So I feel abandoned when inspiration doesn’t come, and call to it from my megaphone, hoping to attract it back. For me my megaphone is going to beautiful places, reading and listening to music, and entering challenges – hoping beyond hope, inspiration heads my call and answers.

That’s what inspiration is to me.

Charmander - beause everyone should be a Pokémon - or something like that

So Charmander gets in a fight, it’s against a more powerful Pokémon, though his trainer is sure his Pokémon can handle it.

The battle rages, and indeed in a last ditch effort, Charmander gets the win. The crowds go wild, it’s the little pocket monster that could.

Wait, but what’s happening now? Why Charmander is glowing, what’s going on? Suddenly the glowing shape of a small odd looking lizard is replaced with a larger odd looking glowing lizard, and as the glow fades, Charizard is stood there looking thoroughly chuffed with himself. He’s evolved, become a better Pokémon, bigger, stronger, and smarter. Everyone is shocked into a stunned silence. His trainer starts clapping, and soon the auditorium goes nuts.

What’s this got to with anything? Well after a fashion I think writers evolution is similar. Certainly my own is, I get stronger very gradually, but every so often I tackle something big – and win. The gradual improvement, the many small lessons learnt, and the sudden influx of effort and challenges pushes me to a new level.

I’ll admit, it may be a confidence thing – I’m not a biased judge of my own ability, in the absence of Mr Horobin and Mr Barrand (my English teachers in high school), I can only presume to rate myself.

Every piece I write I get a little better, every review and edit nets me a few more lessons to avoid problems in the future, but every major trial tests everything I’ve learned, and gives me so many new lessons.

In terms of talent and experience, I evolve into a whole new monster, with new lessons to learn and embrace. I find the end of a piece of work, or project, the most exciting time, and I need to focus on that when the challenge seems too daunting, or I lose the inspiration (will), I have reasons to carry on.

It’s true of most things in my life, I’m a far better analyst now than I was four years ago, there are periods of gradual improvement, and those moments where I’ve jumped to a whole new level.

Now I’ve turned myself into a fictional firey Japanese lizard, I think the job is done for this post.

P.S. I don’t know Pokémon that well, if I’ve got the evolution wrong, aplogies to the diehard Pokemon fans out there.

My own process keeps me sane, keeps me trying, and ultimately makes my work better. That’s what I’m going to explore in this entry.

I’ve found, that in the past spending a few moments considering what my process is has made for better poetry. It prevents me trying to force myself to fit molds that aren’t mine, which so far when I’ve tried has led me down paths of frustration. Having the desire to write a poem, and then destroying the will to write is a terrible thing.

Preface: Before I start exploring, it isn’t fair to say I have one writing process, I have several – the aim of this post is explore my writing process for poetry, I will do another blog entry in regards to writing literature.

So what is my poetry writing process?

The specifics change, depending on the situation, locale, and the style of poetry. However, we’ll proceed as if there aren’t any specific problems to deal with – and come back to those later.

• My first step is usually to find inspiration to write – usually kicked off by something, an event, a song lyric, a joke,or where I am. This isn’t necessarily inspiration what to write – just the inspiration to write. Who can waste a bench along the canal, the sun high in the sky, and just the odd wisp of cloud breaking up a beautiful blue sky?
• After that comes preparation, I need to find what I have on me, in pockets or bag, that I can write with. Most common for me when it comes to poetry is to write on paper. So, if worst comes to worst, I’ll use the back of a piece of paper – as long as it’s blank. Usually though, I have some form of notepad with me (either my trusty spiral bound notepad, one of my desk pads, or my little black book of story ideas). A pen comes in handy, usually I have travel with a couple. At home or work, these things are usually ready to hand.
• At this point, for me comes committal. Having gotten myself into a position to write – the desire must be there, so with pen in hand, I’ll say to myself, “I will write a poem now, no matter what”, I’m committed.
• Once I’m committed then I start sifting through as many random thoughts as I can seeking a subject, a goal, or something of inspiration. I will hoenstly go through dozens upon dozens of ideas, casting off, or embracing several as I go, until finally my pen moves.
• Now comes the first line – the first line for me is most important, generally it sets the theme of the poem. It also is most likely to form the base for any rhyming I do, it’s also the part I consider most important in grabbing a potential reader, I need to get them through the first section.
• Once the first line is written – a series of decisions have to made,
  • Do I have a rhyme?
  • Where does the rhyme reside?
  • How long do I want this poem to be?
  • How many sections or stanzas do I want?
  • What am I evoking?
• From there, I write the first section or stanza, applying the rules. Often, say in the creation of a rhyming poem, I’ll be crossing out words and lines, and replacing them with something that rhymes better, or can have something later rhymed with it.
• From there, using whatever rules I’ve created in the first section, I complete more – always revising to get the best outcome for the rules to fit backwards, and to leave room to write more going forward.
• Once I’ve written the poem to it’s end, it’s time to read it through – at which point I squirm uncomfortably realising that this or that doesn’t really work. Time to start crossing things out, and replacing them with things that do work. This goes on until I’m finally happy what’s on paper is satisfactory.
• Next comes the typing up, this also involves further revisions, because reading it through, and re-typing it lead to different thoughts and feelings on my work.
• Finally, the process is complete, and I can post my poem somewhere, or just send it to a friend see if they like it (or it just sits in one of my books of poetry, and a folder .

So, that’s my poetry writing process in detail, it could be summarised as such (just all those presentations at school and college would do):

• Inspiration
• Preparation
• Commitment
• Subject
• First line
• Decision
• First section
• Completion of draft
• Review
• Revision
• Typing up
• Presentation

If I were really clever, I’d use a thesaurus to turn it into a mnemonic, however it’s not neccesary, this is simply my instinctive way of writing poetry.

Like I said everyone has their own process, and soemtimes we change it for certain reasons – if I’m taking part in a challenge, then chances are I already know the rules I need to follow to layout and finish my poem, if I’ve been pondering a certain poem for a while, say an epic, other steps change.

Also, if I am rhyming, and I want more than simple rhymes, chances are to hand I’ll want a dictionary, a rhyming dictionary, and a thesaurus, if i’m out and about – the review stages take place at home, where I have said books (or websites). Not being a natural rhymer, I couldn’t write rhyme without them – but I do love the occaisional rhyme.

I must admit, my process isn’t all that organised, it seems it when I write it here – but really, I just go from one step to the next, to me at the time it feels instinctive, and impulsive. I’ve tried to use other writing processes, to try and break away from the chaos that I feel as I write – but all that happens is I become frustrated, and lose interest in what I’m writing. That’s how I know how important have the most write, and most natural writing process is. You break it at your own risk – but maybe, if you take that risk – you’ll find a better more natural way for you to write.