Highmoon's Ponderings

I saw that Chuck Wending posted a Flash Fiction Challenge this past Friday, and since tonight I was just goofing off online before spending all of Sunday studying for a test, I said, “Sure, why not?” So, challenge accepted!

Flash Fiction Challenge: Random Photo Story -  Write a 1000-words-max flash fiction piece based around three random photographs.

Here are my three photographs:

• Paraty
• Untitled
• Hungry Like The Wolf

My story is called Parati, and clocks in at 986 words. I wrote it cold; I looked at the pics for like three minutes and started writing, letting the story emerge as I went. It was a fun exercise, especially after two weeks of being in “nursing school” mode. I warn you, it gets a little graphic toward the end, but just a little. Feedback is appreciated. Enjoy.

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On Dec 13, 43 days after I started the mad-dash that is NaNoWriMo, and 71,587 words later, I finished the first draft of my very first novel, now titled The Myth of Romantic Comedies.

Woohoo to me!

I am still in shock over the experience. I was “in the zone” that last day; I wrote 4539 words on Dec 13 alone! I was writing as fast as I could and then, suddenly, the ending line I had had in mind since the second week of November was written. I was done. I teared up a little.

I never thought I could write a novel. I always said I wanted to do so, but never thought I could. And now I’ve done it. And I cannot wait to write the next one, even with the crazy schedule I know awaits me next year with Nursing school. Because writing is something I have to do. I stopped doing it for years and I was miserable. And now, whatever else happens in my life, I have writing back in it and I won’t let it go.

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I talked about this briefly already, but I’ve been thinking about it more and wanted to expand.

Plain and simple: writing demands a sacrifice of you, the writer. If you’re not willing to pay it, you won’t write.

This was made evident to me during NaNoWriMo; the format of the event forces you to make brutal choices if you want to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And yes, I mean brutal.

This year, my sacrifices were two:

1. The smaller one: I put aside everything writing related in my life (blog posts, my Play-by-Post RPGs, sometimes even my journal) to save all those words for my novel.
2. The bigger one, my true pound of flesh: sleep.

A few years back I started getting up at 5 AM to have time to write before the start of the day. That worked for me fairly well, so with the start of NaNoWriMo, I went back to that format, except I would wake up at 4 AM to give myself an hour to do all my waking up prep before being ready to sit down to write. Every day, with few exceptions, this was my routine and I would write my 2000 words for the day between 5-7-ish AM.

It meant that by 10 PM I was beat and ready for bed (though in reality my bedtime is more like 11-12 Midnight), but it was worth it for the burst of fresh creativity I experienced in the mornings.

And you know what? I’m still doing it. And I will continue to do it for the foreseeable future.^[1]

So, what about you? What’s your sacrifice? What’s your pound of flesh offered to this cruel mistress, Writing?

1. ^[1] We’ll see once I start Nursing school what sacrifice must I make to carve even a couple minutes to write down a few words. ↩

So, NaNoWriMo? I accomplished that shit I set out to do. I “won” at 50,469 yesterday, Nov 29, though I’ve added another  1500 words by now. I’m about 60-ish % done with my story, so I continue to write.

I loved doing this. I’d done NaNo four times before, “won” once in ’06 but with a memoir, not fiction. To have done it this year with fiction, and new fiction that was flowing like a friggin river, has been fantastic. Why? Because I am a writer, have been a writer, want to be a writer, but I wasn’t writing, and that’s bullshit. For reasons I cannot even remember I stopped doing it and it left a hole in me that I plugged with words this month. And I will keep on going. Because writing is something I HAVE to do, for myself if for no one else.

So yeah, the fuck-you-don’t-think-just-write-50K-words-in-November boot camp march was what I needed to clear the cobwebs and get the engine running again. I woke up pretty much every day at 4-ish AM so I could write from 5-7 AM, before the world woke up. I’m not a morning person at all, but that worked for me so awesomely, I continue to do it even though I “won.”

Writing is a cruel mistress and she demands a sacrifice. Without a sacrifice, nothing is going to happen. Ante up your pound of flesh, cause that’s what it takes. At minimum.

I know a lot of people hate on NaNoWriMo, but I love it. Even the years I didn’t participate in it I glanced at it like a boy peeping through the glory hole in the girl’s bathroom. This time next year, G-d willing, I will be finishing my Nursing clinicals and studying for finals, so who knows if I’ll be able to do NaNo then. But it doesn’t matter, because I intend to write every day, and turn NaNoWriMo into NaNoWriYe(ar).

Go read Chuck Wendig‘s post, “The NaNoWriMo Epilogue: Miles To Go Before You Sleep.” This post started as a reply to Chuck’s post, and what Chuck says there is gospel truth.

If you “won” this year, HIGHFIVE for those 50K!
If you didn’t, HIGHFIVE for those [whatever]K!
Now, here’s the knife: where are you gonna cut that pound of flesh from? The words are waiting.

After skipping it for a few years, I am doing NaNoWriMo this year and I am loving it. I started right on Nov 1 with a scene that I had had in my mind for over ten years. I stripped it of the details that had accumulated over time and left it as the simple concept, then let the characters show me how it happened now. They very much did and they have continued to tell me their story day by day.

As of this post I am right on target with 14,201 words written. I have a daily goal of 2000 words so I can account for Shabbat and have a day off each week and after week 1, so far so good. I get up every day at 4 AM to give myself time to wake up and get some coffee made and by 5 AM I am typing, usually until 7 or so when it’s time to wake my wife up and do all the usual morning chores. It’s a bit exhausting, especially days when I work 9 hours until closing at 9 PM, but I am loving the early morning quiet writing time. The words flow so much better on a clear, rested mind.

I don’t know why I stopped writing. I have found a part of myself I had missed terribly and am loving reacquainting myself with it. I have a really good idea where this novel is going, too, which has me really excited to continue.

You can take a look at my NaNoWriMo profile (if you’re doing NaNo as well, friend me up), where you will find the very first scene of the novel as an excerpt.

Ok, that’s 287 words I could’ve put into the novel. Back to work!

I was listening last week to episode 18 of Dice + Food + Lodging Podcast, the second part of a conversation between host Tim and guest Robert Bohl. It was an interesting chat all around, but around halfway through the episode they started talking about innovation in gaming, and my ears perked up.

I have a love-hate relationship with that word when it comes to game design. And I’ll admit up-front that it’s my own baggage, by the way.

As a game designer, I fall squarely in the System Hacker camp; I like to tinker with systems I fall in love with and add fiddly bits to them to make them do extra things that appeal to me. That’s why the d20 era was so great for me. As I started to work on my Vampire rebuild, I very quickly copped to my (self-imposed?) limitation saying that I was setting out to put together elements I liked, not to create the Next Big Thing in Gaming (TM). In short, Hey, I’m just messing with existing parts, not creating new ones. I did this because I have never thought of myself as that kind of game designer: I see some of the really nifty ideas-turned-games out there and I appreciate the elements they add to the general gamer/designer toolbox, but never think I can do it as well. Again, my own baggage for another occasion.

The point is that innovation is this bugbear in my game design highway that I constantly feel I need to be on alert for. So when I hear the topic come up in this conversation, it immediately recalls to my mind all these thoughts and feelings. But this time, there was an extra piece that had never been there before.

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