Ten Days Down, Twenty Days to Go

Or, well, almost ten days down. The date throws me off because I don't sleep during nighttime hours anymore, apparently.

I haven't written anything in a few days, as far as NaNo goes. I have two pep talks sitting in my inbox waiting to be read, but I haven't because I think they'll make me feel bad for not having written anything. Not that letting them sit there is any better. Finals time is on me full force now, so I have an endless onslaught of work to do between now and the twentieth. Somehow though, finals time is always when I find the time to do the most useless things -- it's how I cope, maybe. Yesterday, I finished penciling all the pages for my ten-page minicomic, which is my Sequential Art final. That was a little ahead of schedule as far as my day-to-day plans go, but instead of taking advantage of that fact to get a head, I watched Perfect Blue instead, and today, I watched some more of Spice and Wolf. I've got a 6-8 page paper due Wednesday I'm going to try and start now, but...

Still no ideas for where NaNo is going, if anywhere. My roommate has given up, and I feel like it's partially my fault because the idea was to motivate each other to begin with. Of course, there's still time to "catch up later," but by the time I get out of classes, there'll be ten days left -- and there'd still be traveling to do.

I think the idea of giving up completely is only hard this year because I really wanted to have three wins in a row (though of course, after any number of wins, it becomes harder to stop; whether I'd won once before or ten times before, the first year things stop going well will suck). The years before my first win in 2006 were all pretty lackluster like this. I think the worst part is just the idea that maybe I won't have the motivation to try as hard as I did in 2006 and 2007 if I left 2008 die.

Still Nothing

I haven't written anything today. I don't really feel like caring at the moment, but every day I don't write anything and don't know what I'm writing means more to do later if I ever get back to bothering.

I was productive today though, and I'm surprised I'm still awake considering I got about five hours of sleep yesterday morning (7am - noon) and couldn't nap because I had class all afternoon (back-to-back classes, 2pm - 7:30pm). I drew another one-shot sketchbook comic that I'll scan tomorrow and did some other little things.

No writing though. I have 10 comic pages to pencil this weekend, so I'm not sure how much I'm even going to try to write.

Hmmm.

Gonna sleep now, I think. I'm on New Zealand time tonight!

Flundering and Faltering

This has got to be one of my worst Novembers in a good long while. Really, the only good thing that's happened this month is the election, and I'm thinking that that won't really change for the next twenty-four days or so.

I've decided to start over on NaNoWriMo because Urban Decay just wasn't working out. I don't know. I just didn't have any ideas for it. The problem with starting over is that I don't have any other ideas.

I've come to the inherently depressing conclusion that I can't really write stories that end. Having roleplayed for so long has probably been a horrible influence -- in roleplay, I don't have to write endings, I only have to write deaths. Writing fanfiction obviously doesn't help either, especially since a vast majority of that dribble I've written, especially recently, is a single, canonical moment in time, which I'll describe in tedious, introspective detail. There isn't really any story to be written -- just emotions to expand upon. And thus, all that writting of "story" and I've really not written any kind of story at all.

It's kind of an epiphany really -- I've always wondered why I was just so bad at coming up with endings. Ideas I come up with just write themselves in circles until I get bored. There is a lot of slice-of-life crap kind of half-written stories on my computer. They don't end. Nothing ever ends. No wonder I can't finish writing a novel.

Currently, I've got 900-odd words on a fresh NaNo start. I was inspired by some miscellaneous strip of A Softer World, but I don't know where I can take those 900-some words. And I'm still thousands upon thousands of words behind. I'm supposed to have 10,000 words by tomorrow today. I don't even have one-tenth that. It feels like it's been an awfully long time since I've seriously entertained the idea of giving up on NaNoWriMo for the year, but I think I'm getting to that point. I've not been feeling very inspired or motivated in general for some reason.

It's not been a good month so far.

I'll Catch Up Later

Dangerous words those are, the intention to catch up later. I think I'll let NaBloPoMo go for this year... laptop dying sabotaged it though I suppose I could have tried harder to update on the down day instead of throwing a shit fit over it. As for NaNoWriMo... I haven't even written half a day's quota. Election night isn't a good night to write or really do anything for that matter. "I'll catch up later" has been in my head for a few days now... not a good sign, especially since finals are more or less already upon me. Art school finals last 2-3 weeks because they're all long-term projects. Sucks.

I refuse to not finish NaNoWriMo though.

I'll finish.

...I'll just catch up later.

A Bad Start

Crap. Why is there only an hour left until midnight?

Last night, I went to the Metro Coffeehouse around 11:30 pm. There was supposed to be an informal write-in there, but no one ended up coming. This was disappointing because it basically meant everyone I had counted on to be there and who had told me they'd be there weren't there. Roomie was with me, but she had decided that she was too tired for a midnight sprint. In the end, it didn't really matter anyway because the Metro decided to have the Sweeney Todd soundtrack playing, which was highly, highly distracting. That was followed up by some weird techno music that was utterly unsuiting for a coffeehouse environment. We both got really ADD and couldn't get anything done and ended up leaving before one. Very disappointing.

The only really interesting thing that happened while we were there was that a guy dressed as a poodle walked right by our table's window and did a little dance. Mind you, he was wearing nothing but cotton balls. That was all though; I didn't even see much in the way of other notable costumes.

I got all of 71 words written at the Metro, but I did figure one of the plaguing mysteries of my novel... I figured out the protagonist's dog's name. (It's Nina.) Yup. Big accomplishment. The dog's name and gender had been a mystery since March.

I ended up staying up until about 7:30am this morning (what did I tell you about me not sleeping at night anymore?) during which time I got up to -- dramatic pause -- 251 words. Very pathetic indeed. And then all today, I've done nothing. I dragged myself out of bed around 2:30 pm. Did nothing. Lay back down on my bed around... I wanna say seven or eight. Slept until about twenty minutes ago. Haven't written a damn thing. I'm not feeling very motivated all of a sudden. I think last night's disappointments are weighing down disproportionately hard. We'll see how the rest of tonight goes, since I obviously won't be sleeping for a while. My dysfunctional sleeping schedule kind of makes this blog-a-day thing difficult, but it's still easier than grappling with this novel of mine.

The Night Before

What, starting entries for NaBloPoMo when I've still got a day to rest? I've forgotten how to sleep at night because I haven't done it in two weeks; that's my excuse for this.

My roommate, who will be participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, has been trying to get me to start/finish outlining my story tonight. The idea I'm going to run with -- Urban Decay -- has been kicking around in my head since about March and was originally intended for a comic until I realized that drawing it would require me draw a lot of buildings and perspective, which I'm just not up for yet. So when she suggested I use it for NaNo instead, I thought it was kind of a brilliant idea. Except now I actually need to think about more than just vague and stupid concepts that don't necessarily connect.

I have a premise. Kind of. I know it takes place in some post-apocalyptic era, but I don't know how the apocalypse happened or why. I don't know how things are now, I just know my protagonist is gonna try and start a revolution! ...That isn't much to go off of, is it? I don't know his motivation or his past; I don't know how the story will end... that's the main rub. Not having an ending means I don't really know what direction I should/can take it in and is the main obstacle a vast majority of my fiction works face. I can't write anything until I know how it's going to end... that's also one of the main reasons I dislike my 2006 NaNo so much. It didn't have an ending. My 2007 NaNo had a beginning and an end, but no real middle, but that was still better than having no end.

This year... I have neither a beginning nor an end. How problematic!

After talking with the roomie, I/she narrowed the main plot of my story down to two possibilities, but it hinges a lot on point of view and whether I would write it in third person or first person. Each possibility only really made sense for one POV. I think I will probably end up going with third person... the first person plot depends a lot on the "unreliable narrator' dealy, which I'm not all too confident I can pull off... I also haven't seriously written in first person since 2004, when I finished my last piece of chaptered fanfiction (ever want to read a 100,000 word epic about Digimon characters killing each other?). Maybe I should try and get back into it? Not sure about that one.

Roomie just gave up for the night and went to sleep (damn, I need to be up in six hours. When did it get to be almost four??), so I get to put off answering her until then.

I kind of have a bad feeling about midnight tomorrow. I'm going to chill in a coffee house with some people to write...

Literacy Donor

I just donated my annual ten bucks to NaNoWriMo. It isn't much, I know, but it's tough times for everyone, y'know? NaNoWriMo was the first charity I've ever really gone out of my way to donate to (those decrepit-looking Santas that stand outside Wal-Mart don't really count), so I like keeping tradition. Honestly, I'm not sure how much I really care about deprived children in Cambodia, but extra karma points never hurt anyone. Besides, I've always been big on that Christmas spirit thing, nevermind that it isn't even Halloween yet.

Anyway. I feel good. :3

National Be a Masochist Month

That's what November is going to be: National Be a Masochist Month. NaBeMasMo.

I've participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the last five years -- in five days, my sixth year will begin. I hit 50,000 words for the first time in 2006 and did it again in 2007. These have been grand victories for me, and yet neither of those novels are finished. I have a terrible time finding motivation beyond November 30th or even after I cross that 50k line (last year, I finished three days early and just couldn't write anymore). This year, I've decided that I'm going to write until I finish the story. It will be at least 50k words, but if it has to be 60k before I finish, then goddamn it all, I'm going to finish before December.

So I guess with that goal in mind this year, it might be (incredibly) stupid of me to even consider another NaNo-inspired event, especially one that also takes place in November. But NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) is the first of the spin-off NaNos to have really captured my attention. It doesn't necessary have a specific month, but November is its month of prize-giving. They're silly things, trinkets and artworks donated by members, but I like useless things and who doesn't like free stuff? Besides, I love blogging and have always struggled with consistent updates on not-necessarily-personal subjects so it would be a great exercise.

I think that maybe I like writing too much. Especially if I'm supposed to be primarily a visual artist.

I keep several blogs. My artblog is hosted on Livejournal here: Bad Dog, No Biscuit. Being an artblog, it isn't exactly writing intensive -- most of it is mirrored links and thumbnails from my deviantART account, but I also most weekly sketch posts with commentary and offer way too in-depth reports of events I attend, including conventions and concerts, so a fair amount of writing goes into that. In the same journal, but under friend-based security measures, I also post semi-regularly about my life. I know I'm not the only person that thinks, "Man, I need to write about this," whenever something bad happens in my life. I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing.

I also keep an anime opinion blog on Blogger named Opinion Prone. I try to update it at least once a week, though honestly, I'd love to try for twice a week. It's just that those posts take much longer for me to write because there are more things for me to cite, for me to read before I write my post, etc. I also use Opinion Prone to post my reviews -- typically very long and thorough -- on series, movies, and music. It's a tiring venture, but I'm happy with it for the most part. I enjoy writing it, anyway.

I have another Blogger blog that doesn't really have a name, but is currently titled What Are You Talking About? This blog went on indefinite hiatus when I started Opinion Prone, but I've been toying with the idea of writing in it again though because I've been giving thought to various topics that don't really belong anywhere else. What a time to be getting ideas again, eh?

Lastly, I'm the primary blogger at the blog for my college's student-run writing club. Thankfully, I suppose, school lets out halfway through November (art school, quarter system), and theoretically won't be posting as much during the latter half of the month. I say theoretically because I like writing about grammar even though no one listens and may be inclined to make updates even during the holiday.

I plan to update Bad Dog and Opinion Prone as usual during the month of November, on top of doing both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. Oh, did I mention yet that I also play at and administrate a substantial-sized, writing-based roleplaying community? Luckily, I have three fantastic colleagues to aid me in general administration, but I'm mostly alone in handling all the technical aspects of the game. And I play two characters who ideally require at least five posts each a week.

Like I said, I write too much.

In case you haven't guessed, this blog, NaBeMasMo, will be the blog I plan on updating daily during the month of November for NaBloPoMo. It will chronicle my life as I hack my way through the month trying to write a novel, trying to maintain the rest of my (writing) life, trying to make it through classes and finals with straight A's, and trying to do whatever else I may or may not decide to add to my plate between now and November first. I don't plan on "trying" to update this blog every day. I will update this blog every day. (I wonder if keeping a backlog of pre-written posts that will automatically update is cheating? It's a moot point anyway, the content of this blog calls for truthful, daily updates. No wriggling my way out of this one, I guess.)

Oh, masochism. It's the only explanation, isn't it?

See you in November.