NaNo Progress Report: Week Two

Day Eight: Wordcount-wise, I'm doing fine, even a little ahead as I write this, but it's back to the mumblecore dialogue problem I was having when I first started. I know filler is part of NaNo, and can be edited out later (which, actually, is the whole point of NaNoWriMo), but everything is very static. I have no idea how to write plot-driven fiction -- I barely read plot-driven fiction -- so I let characters take over, but now they're boring twits.

Day Nine: I wish I had some wise words for the rest of you NaNo'ers. Er, it gets easier? Or you actually do stop caring so much. My inner editor is gone. On vacation. It's not exactly liberating. Mostly I feel like I have a job or a chore to do. Not the worst feeling in the world, but there's no magic there. Maybe that's supposed to be one of the lessons of NaNo: if you keep waiting around for the magic to happen, you'll never get around to actually writing.

Day Ten: This quote has been echoing in my head all morning: "You're work is both good and original. Unfortunately the parts that are good aren't original, and the parts that are original aren't good."   I'm not ready to be convicted of outright thievery yet, but it does feel like I'm channeling the writers I like a bit too much.

Day Eleven: One nice side effect of NaNo is that my non-NaNo writing seems a bit smoother and less stilted. Or maybe that's just in comparison to the steaming pile of donkey dung I'm hesitantly calling a novel. Word to the wise: don't write while watching a marathon of My So-Called Life. All your characters will start to sound like Brian Krakow. I envy you guys who write genre fiction with, you know, plot points and whatnot. I should just turn all my characters into zombies. Zombie Brian Krakow.

Day Twelve: Well, I'm neglecting my blog. (Which is why this is coming a day early -- I don't have anything else planned.) These progress reports are mostly to validate my own sense of accomplishment. I'm sure those of you who are not doing NaNo -- and probably most of you who are -- find them boring. I initially hadn't planned on blogging NaNo, as it feels almost too self-indulgent.

Here are some nanoisms from my story so far:

"... he jammed his hams into the pockets of his jeans."

"shimmying on the dancefool."

"He wished he'd brought earplubs."

"Splurging on hotel rooms was a luxury smeller acts couldn't afford."