The Swing of Things

I've noticed before that transitioning between school and home and back is weird, not because it feels unnatural or off, but because it doesn't. Rather, when I get to the other place, the things that happened before feel oddly distant. The new reality is prevalent. In theory, this should smooth the transition, but it doesn't mean I snap back into good school habits the minute I set foot in my dorm.

Here, for your education and enjoyment, is a comparative study of instincts while at home and habits necessary for school.

Home instinct: Wake up in time for Good Eats at 10 a.m. (Too bad Cupcake Wars is on half the time.)
School habit: Be awake at 7:15 to be ready for class and start functioning immediately.

Home instinct: Talk gibberish to pets in high-pitched voices.
School habit: Have actual conversations with roommates, who prefer a normal tone of voice.

Home instinct: Crochet. All. The. THINGS!
School habit: Homework first. All craft projects second, or even third.

Home instinct: Eat when hungry -- which results in not eating till 2 in the afternoon, thus not being hungry for dinner, thus requiring extensive snacking before bed to not end up ravenous in the morning.
School habit: Eat meals at regular times, because the dining commons will close and then you'll have to buy food from somewhere.

Home instinct: Take life at a slow pace. Prioritize naturally, based on what opportunities come up.
School habit: Work according to deadline, or be woefully underprepared.

Home instinct: Get around to projects long abandoned and things left untried, because there is finally time and space for them.
School habit: Do what is necessary, and in down time, rest. Exploration into new territory is too much work.

I miss the openness of being home at a time when I don't have many responsibilities. I like the focus of being at school at a time when I do. The hard part is reconciling my mind from one to the other. It doesn't feel like a big mental adjustment, but the things required of me do change enough that I have to be intentional.

Time to get back into the swing of things.

NaNoHalfMo

Last month, I decided what I needed was a break from my novel, but not a break from writing. Thus, I planned to do what I started calling NaNoHalfMo -- write a story of 25,000 words. That seemed like a good idea to keep myself from being overwhelmed while still being creative and allowing a story that had been swimming around in my head to be told.

I'd like to think I have a talent for naming things, like characters and pet rocks. NaNoHalfMo, however, was too perfect. Half my month was eaten away with work in the theater, and I couldn't have written 834 words a day if I had tried.

Now, I have half a month left. Less, actually. Instead of 1,667 words a day to get to my goal, I have to write 1,923.

I just spent the last hour or so reading over all the NaNoWriMo pep talks and updates I've been ignoring for the last 18 days. And now I'm feel excited like I haven't been since last August when I started working on my second draft of Void. I'm starting to get infected with the frenzy that comes with NaNoWriMo. I'm starting to get hopeful, and stubborn, and determined.

Because now I have a chance to put other parts of my life on hold for writing instead of the other way around. Now I have room for a writing creative project and not just a theater one.

Now is the time for NaNo.

If you're writing a novel this month, I'll see you at the finish line.

Making Time

I haven't posted about writing much lately. That's because there hasn't been much to tell. Apart from marking up some manuscript pages with red pen and listing some changes for the first few chapters, I haven't done much. This has been gnawing at the back of my mind, and I've been wondering how to be more productive.

The question is, why is that a problem when I only have a part-time job?

When I first went to college, I had a hard time sleeping. Insomnia was really starting to mess with me before I figured out the cure: exhaustion. At school, I got to be busy enough that sleeping as soon as I went to bed wasn't a problem. Now, however, it doesn't seem like enough. I clean hotel rooms during the day. When I get home, my body is tired and sore from kneeling and scrubbing and carrying things. I'm usually tired enough that I don't want to even think about writing. Planning a chapter sounds exhausting. Still, it's a part-time job. There are lots of hours left in the day. And the troubles sleeping still sometimes come creeping back.

That restlessness is starting to bother me. And my lack of progress has been bothering me for a while. So I've decided I'm going to change to make time for my story.

I've claimed to be a morning person before, and now I'm going to prove it. My new goal is to go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 6. And in the hour and a half before I need to get ready for work, I will write.

Maybe it doesn't sound like much, especially to those who have to wake up that early to work. But it's the act of prioritizing and changing that matters. I'm going to show my body and my mind that I'm serious.

I've often prided myself on being a hard worker. But priding yourself on your abilities should be a red flag for a Christian. I've thought and I've struggled and I've procrastinated, and the only thing I can figure is that I'm supposed to finish my story. If God's given me the ability to write and work, I can finish my novel. And I think I'm supposed to finish it.

And since I've chosen that, it's time to make a change. It's time to cheat my internal clock. It's time to make time.

Interrupted rhythms

I consider myself to be a happily disorganized person. I prefer this to expending lots of effort to keep everything orderly and planned. It may not be the best system, but I can usually juggle projects with minimum fuss, and it works for me. Lately I've realized how the preservation of rhythm is one way I keep things straight without active work.

Sometimes at school I would get busy enough that I would forget which day of the week it was, but after a few second's consideration I could remember because today I had my lit seminar, and that happened on Tuesdays only, or I slept in this morning so that made it a Thursday. Rhythm from the days of the week and the habits that accompanied them kept me going so that I rarely missed anything.

I don't have that anymore. I also don't have nearly as much to do, but it's still messing me up.

For example, this last Sunday morning I had work. (Hooray, gainful employment.) Work is going to make me miss church about every other week, but I've only had the job for a week and it's not going to be regular anyway, so that rhythm is not in place. The Sunday before that, I was coming back from a wedding. The weeks didn't feel normal, so no weekly reminders, so no blog posts. (Sorry about that.) Plus work and new exciting taekwando classes are leaving me bodily exhausted, so I don't want to do anything but lie around and maybe read. This has not been good for my novel.

Still. Taekwando, twice a week. ...... that may be my only starting point, since I work most days but with unpredictable days off, my younger brother needs to share the vehicle with me on different days, my family takes on sporadic house-improving projects, and I don't have any other regular responsibilities.

Does this mean I'll have to start making a weekly schedule for writing and regular tasks, just to make sure I get stuff done?

I hope it doesn't come to that.

Time to get back to writing

One thing I'm really scared of is becoming one of those people who call themselves writers but aren't. They think about their stories. They read, sometimes. They have ideas they just know are fantastic. And then they don't write them. They spend their time drinking coffee and imagining themselves writing. Believe me, there are a lot of people like this. It's easy to slip into becoming one of them.

The last several weeks -- minus the coffee part -- this has been me. I've been busy, I've been exhausted. I've been making excuses. But I've realized that the semester isn't going to clear up at any point. I've got three performance weekends, a tech weekend, and lots of daily runthroughs in the next month for theater. I have a low but steady stream of homework. I have other projects and assignments. It is time to work around these things instead of just struggling against them.

My new goal is to have my novel in a form I would like to show an agent or an editor by the end of this semester. I have a little over a month. This is doable. Now I'm going to put my general plan here on the Internet so I feel like I'm being held accountable. (Any of you readers, feel free to heckle me about my progress as necessary.)

1 - Finish the final two chapters. I have a Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning I can spend on it this week. So, this part needs to be done by this Saturday, the 13th.

2 - Readthrough/compile a list of things to fix -- I've been working on this already. A readthrough will help me focus and assess the lists I already have. My deadline for this is Tuesday the 16th.

3 - Go over feedback. During January, two of my writing friends read the first ten chapters and made suggestions. Receiving such detailed feedback on my personal writing for the first time was a terrifying experience, and I was glad that I picked the right people to do it. They made lots of great observations that let me see both the good and bad parts of the story. I need to look at those suggestions and consider their implications in detail. (Those two friends who gave me feedback, I would be delighted to provide you with any baked good you wish.) Deadline: Thursday, the 18th.

4 - Develop an action plan. This already is one, but once I've decided what exactly I need to change/edit, I'll be able to establish smaller writing goals. As it is, I'd like the action plan to be ready Saturday, the 20th.

5 - Carry it out and get more feedback. My current plan for this is to give the sections I feel need the most help to writers and friends and ask for feedback. If people are interested in seeing the book as a whole and have the time to make edits, I'll be happy to give it. This process of reading and sharing I hope to have finished by Saturday, April 11th. The semester ends on the 17th. I have a week of extra cushioning.

Some of this isn't very specific, but I need to dive back into the story to see what it really needs. I'll probably have to make minor adjustments to the schedule, but the goal will remain the end of the semester unless I develop a serious illness and/or die.

How will this go? I have no idea. Is this process going to work? We'll see. If, through experience or otherwise, you have any ideas on how to improve my editing plan, please let me know. If you know me and are interested in providing feedback, I'll keep you in mind. To those willing to offer help, and those who've already helped me, thank you. My novel means a lot to me, and I'm grateful to all who believe I can finish it.

Now... time to finish it.

Writing as Work

I consider myself to be a very hard worker. If I've committed to do something, I will do it, and I will go above and beyond the generally accepted minimum. This is how I get things done at school. I'm working on someone else's time, doing things they expect me to get done. How can I possibly fail them?

But things are a little different if I'm working on my own time. I finished NaNoWriMo, but it wasn't a walk in the park. It was something I wanted to do, but it's easy to put wants aside for needs. Sometimes once all the needs are finished, it's hard to balance the wants.

For me, this is what makes writing hard. I have no limit to willpower if I need to get something done. But when working on my story, there is no one else telling me to finish it -- just me. And at this stage of revision, I'm unsure enough that I don't know when to give myself deadlines, let alone how to make myself meet them.

Another difficult thing is that writing takes time. Sometimes, you need to give it a rest instead of working a piece to death. Sometimes you need to get away from it so you can come back to the story with a fresh mind. And if you leave the story for a few days, it's easy to let those days be a week. Or weeks. Or more.

For fear of this happening again, as it did to my previous NaNovels, I'm proceeding blindly into the revision process. I'm great at revising papers. I can revise short stories. I can analyze someone else's story and clearly point out the good and bad points. Right now I can't do that with my writing, because basically my story's not written yet.

Sure, I have a NaNoWriMo draft. But in the past few years, NaNoWriMo has been a way for me to spew the ideas in my head onto a document. I find basic ways to make them fit together. I touch up a character portrait. And I finish -- something. But not the thing it has potential to be. Taking a rough draft and making it into something great is not yet my area of expertise, but if I'm going to be a real writer, I have to make that weakness one of my strengths. To do this, I think it's time to turn to a tool I've previously hated an feared: the outline. Perhaps if I had one of those going in, I wouldn't have so many problems now.

I love the ideas in my story. I've got a government that's outlawed all technology, a secret underground organization, an immortal beast who was once human, and a nine-year-old-boy trying to find out the truth about his family. The big pieces fit together, but as I'm refining it, I'm having trouble making my character's motivations align with the action I need.

I'm home in Iowa for the rest of January. My parents and siblings are at work and school, so for the majority of the day I'm by myself. I'm going to make this into writing time. I can't let what I have go to waste. For the next day or two, I'm going to be brainstorming and taking notes on how to put together my broken pieces. Then it's time to tame the beast. The deadline I have for my finished outline is January 11th. I have no idea if this is reasonable or not, but it's definitely more reasonable than me spending the entire month of January sleeping in and playing Wii.

Resolving is making me feel better, though it hasn't changed the fact that I don't necessarily know what I'm doing. Feel free to offer advice. It looks like I'm going to need it.

NaNo Update 2

Before November started, I said I would probably write all the time about my struggles and discoveries this National Novel Writing Month. Now that the month is nearly gone and I've barely mentioned it, I feel slightly guilty. But I was using my time to write my novel, not blog entries.

Time to make up for that.

I've kept up with word count, though it's been difficult. There's been a day or five or seven where I didn't write, too busy or not in the mood. But most of the time, I made it up in the next day or two. I knew I couldn't afford to let myself get too far behind. Right now, I'm at 43,347 words, right on track and close enough to the win that my breath is fogging up the finish line on the other side of my screen. I still don't know precisely how I want to end it, because I have very little idea what the best ending will be with all these scrapes and plot holes, but so far the ending's involved a few explosions, so I guess it can't be that bad.

My first year I tried (and failed) NaNoWriMo, I started with no idea what the story would be like. Halfway through the month, I was busy and still had no idea what my story was about, so I quit. This year, I've been a little better prepared. I had maybe 1/4 of a story idea. There are four days left. I can probably come up with four days of material.

My problems this month so far have been leaving character development to the last minute, loving characters but slowly realizing they didn't fit with the story I'm trying to tell, loving the story I'm trying to tell and realizing I know nothing about it, being too confident, not being confident enough, and being too busy. This last has helped me write my full 1,667 in 45 minutes, however, so I'm not terribly grudging.

Basically, my NaNovel is a NaNovel. It is awkward and lopsided. It doesn't deserve to see the light of day, and it deserves a full revision as soon as I can give it. It's somewhat daft and rather wild. It's like one of your dear friends who likes to do strange and awkward things in public. Right now, it's a little insecure. Maybe it will feel a little better about itself once I figure out how to help it say what it wants to say.

But what interesting things our imaginations can do.