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.

I make no claim to it being especially good, or an annual highlight to the poetry scene, (though my 27th Birthday Poem is the most read page on site – from people Googling for the exact words of the title I guess), its just a poem about my birthday and what the day means to me.

A Year to be Surpassed

A shadow fell over yesterday,
I turned twenty-eight,
It’s not that aging is bad,
But that another year has gone.

For every joy I’ve had to pay,
Yet seek joy come what may,
The same old slate,
Without a wipe date,
I will not say it was all sad,
And it didn’t make me mad.

The beast of success I did not slay,
My performance didn’t rate,
Yet for moments I am glad,
With a niece as lovely as a chiffon.

Another milestone be gone,
Next year I’ll have myself outdone.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2010

P.S. I should add, as a cautionary note – I haven’t listed anything other than my niece being born as being explicitly good or bad. So I should note, that since my niece was born, I’ve enjoyed a fantastic time, being an uncle, thanks to some fortunate circumstances I’ve lived like a king, I’ve been to Prague, and I’ve come here to the Science Festival with some great people. Things like this were the moments I am glad for – just in case anyone thinks that I think I should be so rich and fortunate in life that the past two or three months have been less than notable.

When I think about it, it is quite strange that my niece coming into this world has marked such a massive turn around for my year, right at the end. However, life returns back to normal from here on in, I need to to start saving to make next year that bit more magical, all year round.

So to all my family and friends who have provided the highlights to my year, those moments I am glad for, have helped keep me sane when all else might have rendered me mad – I would like to say thank you. I hope I can do the same for you.

I have a confession to make – I didn’t finish. This year was not mine for the sweet smell of success. I peaked at 25,000 words (a quarter of my original target). To say I’m disappointed in myself would be an understatement – but equally, I’m not ashamed. Indeed, in many ways I’m quite happy, and proud of myself, during the final weekend, I finally learned to accept I can’t write all the time. I want to, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes there is no way round the fact that without will, inspiration is relegated to frustration.

I really really don’t like failing, but I could have pushed in that final weekend, and pushed, but I would never have hit even the modest target of 50,000, and even if I had. Instead I took a break, having accepted defeat, let go of the pressure – I felt wonderful. So immediately following my return home, I started writing again. Nice and smoothly, and without much effort. In fact I’ve had some late nights, because the writing has being going so well, and I wasn’t aware of the time.

I’m not finishing off my NaNoWriMo project for now, I’ve put it to one side, as my imagination is caught with  a sequel to my previous NaNoWriMo attempt (the one I won last year).

Just shows you, sometimes pressure helps, and other times it hinders – I think for me it’s the accumalative pressures I found myself under with family life, work, money, and writing, it made for some unsurmountable obstacles. Until I let go, and found away to enjoy myself away from the pressure.

Disaster of a Dream

Soaring high above the world,
Glorious hue of unadultered blue,
Wisps of clouds stretching far beneath,
Breaks of green, and brown, and blue,
I am free, nothing can ever get to me here.

Feeling secure here, I swirled,
Blinded by beauty, I never had a clue,
My flight is at an end, I fall towards heath,
Panic flairs, my joy now seesm untrue,
I am trapped, falling to my death in fear.

Without warning, I am curled,
My workplace, twisted and strange,
An assault of vaunted ceilings, and a scary bar,
Signs of the office I know in the range,
I flee, this new world is out to get me.

The scene to Birmingham I’m hurled,
All about me recognised in change,
I bump into a scarey person with a scar,
He grabs me, we fall down a derange,
I hold on, he continues to fall free.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2009

Now just a bit about this poem :

This poem is a half truth, if I’m honest to the best of my recollection I have never had a dream like that in the first half,  (Soaring high above the world), but I wish I had. The second half on the other hand is all too true, this was a dream I had not long since, it woke me up, and I was seriously freaked out.  I don’t often remember dreams, just one or two a month. When I woke up, and calmed down, I decided I wanted to remember this nightmare, so I grabbed my trust E71, and furioulsy typed the events of my dream. It wasn’t easy at 3:30am with no light, but I did it, and as a result, the nightmare has been with me since.

The notes I have are far more detailed than this poem, this poem just scratches the surface, I’ve got descriptions for everyone, and dialogue, more thoughts, more feelings – but if I wanted to retell the nightmare exactly, I would probably lose something in translation.

I would have liked another part of this poem, unfortunately the consistent rhyme based on the word "world", didn’t go as far as I would have liked. I know poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, but sometimes a rhyme keeps a focus. I could go back and abandon it, but then it’s spoilt my initial outpouring. I may post up a second version tonight that’s edited – but in this case the edit would be a similar be seperate poem to my mind, and heat.

Today we have one about the weather, which bears no relation to the weather experienced this weekend funnily enough.