NaNoWriMo Day 14: 20,338 Words

My lovely wife, Sonia, has patiently allowed me to write during our normal DVD viewing time for the past two nights, allowing me to almost catch up with my word count (I should be at 14 x 1,667 = 23,338 words).  It's still not great, but definitely do-able.  Also, a quick check of the NaNoWriMo founder's web page shows him at only 17,905 words, so I feel like I'm doing okay.  Day 15 is the halfway point.  As I understand it, things should actually get easier from this point on.

The novel is definitely set at the Naval Academy right now, which I didn't really expect (hell, it started out in the UnderDark world of Dungeons & Dragons).  As if I hadn't stressed this enough, you should definitely try doing this.  I have had to take a hard look at some of my old memories and realize the complexity of some of them.  Almost no experience in this life is 100% good or 100% bad.  Trying to extract detail out of my memories so I could make my precious word count has forced me to relive some of what I had considered the worst times in my life and made me remember that there were positive elements to all of them.

Aside from that, my support network has been positive so far, and the people I have told about it have said they'd like to try it (if only to humor me).

NaNoWriMo Day 13: 18,187 words

The last couple of days haven't been as productive as I had hoped-- now that the first week is over, life has crept back in and I'm finding that I have to return to my obligations outside of novel writing. So tonight I played a little catch-up and made up for most of the 5000 words I had fallen behind.

These scenes in my novel are coming from scenes in my own life, intentionally or not. I'm finding that writing about them is making me think about parts of my life that I had pretty well decided not to think about. And I feel really strongly about some of the stuff that I've experienced. I didn't realize that there would be this unexpected side effect. There are many parts of my life that I have distilled down to a caricature of reality because that kind of shorthand is just emotionally easier to deal with. Writing about them forces me to re-consider all aspects as I try to wrest another 300 or 400 words out of it.

NaNoWriMo Day 9: watch out for research

I'm still ticking along with NaNoWriMo. At 13,941 words I have 1062 to write before midnight to make my quota of 15,002 words tonight. I got a little behind over the last couple of days, primarily because I got bit by the research bug. My protagonist is still at the Naval Academy. Although I remember a lot about USNA, I have had to resort to the web to remember some of the layout of the actual campus. That's fine, I probably could have cleared all of that up with a couple of trips to Wikipedia, but day before yesterday my research just simply turned into web surfing and I didn't make quota.

I realize this may sound like an unhealthy obsession with making quota, but there really is something to this. I have tried writing a novel several times before. In general I have carried around a notepad and a pen and just written whenever the spirit moved me, and got some very good scenes out of that process. I've also tried following a structure in The Weekend Novelist that was supposed to allow me to write a novel in one year, writing only on the weekends. I found my enthusiasm for this was not something I could sustain more than a month and a half. I find that by writing a set amount each day I am producing some pretty good stuff every day, along with some things that are regrettable that will have to be edited out in the end. But in the past, that regrettable material would have stopped me dead in my tracks. Since I'm writing with the understanding that this is a first draft that will have to be edited, I feel a lot freer to get my material out. Different stuff works for different people.

National Novel Writing Month Day 5: 10,002 Words!

I have to say that I'm surprise at myself. I've managed to keep on track with National Novel Writing Month for five days now, and have written my 10,000th word (well, 10,002 exactly). At this rate, I will have written my 50,000 word first draft on the morning of the 30th of this month.

I would have liked to have built up a little cushion by now, as I understand that the second week is harder. But I'm happy to be at least up to quota. I've had to leave behind the idea that I was not going to write about my years at the Naval Academy. It turns out that this is the story I've been waiting to tell. At least part of it. I dunno. Anyway, my protagonist is now firmly into plebe year. That's all I can say. This still might turn into a dragon rider fantasy novel in the end. Okay, I've said too much now.

If I haven't said it before, you definitely should consider doing this. It is crazy, but in a good way.

National Novel Writing Month Day 4: how I got to hate the number 1,667

I can't believe it, but I'm still on track with the novel. If I keep cranking along as I have been, I can actually produce 50,000 words this month. The good thing about this is that no one said they had to be good words. I'm not proud of every line I've out down. However, I have to say that I'm pretty proud of a lot of them, which I think is about as good as it gets for a first draft.

One thing I'm not really too happy about: I had sworn to myself that I would not write a lot about the Naval Academy, but here my character is, showing up for Induction Day. Guess there isn't much I can do about it except wait it out and hope the next part is something more or less original.

National Novel Writing Month Day 3: Sleepy but made quota

Today was the first time since I started NaNoWriMo that I didn't write in the morning. I didn't plan it out too well this time. I kept meaning to sit down and write, but Daniel woke up, then we had to go play for a while, then this that and the other. Finally, Sònia and I went out to dinner with friends, and I had still not sat down to write. I knew this meant trouble.

You see, I have consistency issues about my hobbies. There have been times in my life when I have had a very consistent running habit, for example, only to miss a couple of days, then realize that I had not returned to running for several months. So missing a day's writing could add up to not finishing out the Novel Writing Month for me.

So when we got back home from dinner, I told Sònia that I was going to have to sit down and write, like it or not. So I did. I needed to up my total word-count to 5001 words. Fortunately I had written a little extra on Friday, so I didn't have to make the whole 1,667 words tonight.

I'm happy to say that I made quota: 5,005 words. I fell back on that old tried and true formula: personal experience. I've got a pretty good mix going on fictional elements and stuff that actually happened to me. One good thing about being 43 is that a lot of stuff has happened to me. I hope I've learned my lesson. I feel pretty tired now and need to go to bed.

National Writing Month Day 2: still alive

It's day 2 of National Writing Month and I haven't quit yet. I got up and wrote my quota again this morning. I re-read what I wrote yesterday and have decided to take the attitude that even Sinatra cleared his throat before he sang. After the first paragraph it wasn't half bad. Maybe some elements of what I wrote won't make it all the way to the final draft, but that's why this is called the first draft.

Except for the first paragraph. That was crap. Utter bat guano.

But this morning things started rolling pretty well. I dredged up stuff I hadn't thought of in ages. I realized that I've done some pretty weird stuff that could probably be wedged into a work of fiction somehow. I chirped along merrily and wrote until Daniel woke up.

National Novel Writing Month starts

National Novel Writing Month started this morning at Midnight and goes for the entire month of November. The objective is to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. For reference, The Great Gatsby was about 50,000 words long. In case you're wondering, that works out to right at 1,667 words a day, or about three and a half pages in a normal Word document.

So this morning I dutifully sat down and wrote 1,667 words. I should preface this by saying that I have done some writing in the past, some of it quite good (that's just my opinion, but for these purposes it's the only one that matters). What I produced this morning was garbage. Really very bad writing. Right on up there with Vogon Poetry.

I thought that maybe I was exaggerating, but I just opened the document and started reading it, and couldn't stomach it. I wouldn't read what I just wrote if you paid me.

Part of me is a little depressed about this. I mean, after all the good stuff I've written in the past, the one time I make a committment to actually finish something, it really stinks.

But I'm going to continue with this. First off, the goal is to produce a first draft. As Hemmingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit". But more than that, it occurred to me that I'm a pretty good writer when you look at me at a tactical level-- I write funny sentences. I write pretty good paragraphs. I probably could (had have in the past) pull together a decent short story. But I have never even tried to maintain the strategic level required to write a full novel. So why should I expect it to be great the very first time I do it? I think what I mean to get out of this exercise is to prove to myself that I can do it, to learn the logistics of fitting writing into my life, and to get better at seeing a longer story from a strategic level.

Besides, I think I get a t-shirt or something for doing it.

VBScript: How to ensure the script is running from the command-line

There is a pretty awful feeling when you're debugging a VBScript that produces hundreds of lines of output, and you absent-mindedly double-click the VBS icon and it starts producing message box after message box. When you do this, you are pretty well stuck. You either go to task manager and kill the wscript.exe instance (and pray it doesn't mess anything up) or click "OK" a few hundred times.

If you put this little piece of code at the beginning of your VBScript, you can avoid this:

'check that we're running from cscript
if lcase(right(Wscript.FullName, 11)) <> "cscript.exe" then
   wscript.echo "Please run this using cscript"
   wscript.quit 0
end if
' Okay, proceed with the regular program
for n = 1 to 1000
   wscript.echo n
next

Big Update: Moved to Washington, DC, working for FEMA

It's been a while since I wrote-- guess I got busy. After a fairly long process, I got hired by FEMA. As a Katrina survivor the irony is not lost on me. We moved from Philadelphia to Washington almost two months ago (it seems like forever now). I've been working for a month and a bit. It's an adjustment. In my last job, I was in charge of no one at all. In this one, I have a section of folks working for me. I'm nearly twice as old as most of them. *Sigh*. I remember my first job after Peace Corps working at the Office of Management and Budget as an eager young programmer, and wonder if I had it as together as my folks.

The really big adjustment is that I'm not programming here. Not an electronic sausage. I'm not sure what to think about that. I've been trying *not* to think about it much. But the fact is that I have defined myself as a programmer for... (quick math problem... oh wow) 15 years. I actually started writing programs 28 years ago, when I was 15. On second thought, let's not count from when I was 15. That's just masochistic.

So I'm not sure what will happen with this blog, as most of what I wrote about here had something to do with programming. Guess I could go back to writing about what this blog was originally supposed to be about: writing.

I'm toying with the idea of participating in National Novel Writing Month in november. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I biked from Natchez, Mississippi to DC solo with no training once. I suppose I'm foolish enough to try this as well.

One high point: I did find a group with whom to play Dungeons & Dragons. We're even playing 3.5. We'll see what happens when 4th edition comes out (supposedly Really Soon). I'm playing a cleric for the first time, which is fun. I found this D&D group through http://www.penandpapergames.com.

I'm training for the Jingle Bells All The Way 10K. It's fun running my old running routes from 18 year ago (Jeez, I'm determined to feel old today). I've found a 10K route from the corner of 29th and Calvert to Westmoreland Circle, on the border between DC and Maryland. It's essentially a run up Mass Ave, which goes right past the National Cathedral. It's all fine, I just have to watch it, because my old knees are always warning me that they'll go on strike.