Novel

Resolutions for the New Year


As you read this I’ll be on the road toward California once again, ending my luxurious holiday vacation. I had a lot of fun with the family and I miss them already. Thanks to a rather rocking last few months of 2010, I’m pretty stoked for what’s in store in the new year. Here are some goals I’ve set for myself, separated by topic. YAY LISTS!

Writing and Projects

-Complete the two scripts I have in early draft stage.

-Write at least 3 more scripts this year.

-Get all current web series ideas through the writing stage.

-Write 3 short films and shop them to Columbia College friends.

-Write Sci-Fi novel I had intended for NaNo.

-Keep track of every day that I write in a cool excel spreadsheet, and try to work my way up to writing something every day.

-Start Hilarious Henry back up, streamline that whole ish.

-Write a footnote into my blog for no other reason than amusement and self-deprecation.

-Regularly comment on writer/screenwriter blogs.

Personal Stuff

-Get a better job, one that I can stand as well as one that pays more than my current place of employment.

-Go on at least one road trip.

-Be able to pay off at least 1 of my loans.

-Pay off my credit card completely.

-See roughly double the films I saw in 2010 and use flickchart to keep track of them.

-Play through at least 5 more video games this year.

-Expand my social circle some and find someone else who writes.*

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*This is actually a tougher one than it sounds because I haven’t met a writer in person whose company I’ve enjoyed. This could be why I don’t have many friends.

On NaNoWriMo

I R A WRITER NAOW

Dudes (and Dudettes), I totally frickin’ did it!

I wrote a 50,000 word novel. That’s about 93 pages using your standard Times New Roman font and the basic margins set up by Microsoft Word when you open a blank document. Seven more pages and I could use one-fifth of a ream of paper to print out my novel. Reading my words would take a few trips if you took the public transportation here. So, now what? What happens now that I’ve done the unthinkable (or at least have done what I thought to be unthinkable..or doable)?

I dunno.

I think I’m going to take the next month or so and let the project simmer so I can get a feel if I want to actually do more with it or if it’s going to remain merely a means of cheap therapy. There’s not really that much of a plot to speak of, since it’s based loosely on me and my life after graduation. And every few thousand words I throw in something fictional to spice things up and make it readable on some level. But for the most part there’s a lot of incoherent ramblings about the craft of writing, which perhaps works well with the crazier parts of the story as one would have to be a bit nutty to fictionalize themselves.

The process of writing out this monstrosity was kind of interesting as I forced myself to write at least 2,000 words on average every day. On days I took off, I made up for it by doubling and in some cases tripling the word count. By the fourth week, I started to feel the strain of the deadline and let myself get a little looser in what I allowed on the page. But what I didn’t expect was that all this writing would spark my creative juices in such a dramatic way. I started going back to my other projects and re-examining them, planning on what I would do when I finished my novel. On one particular day, I even planned out another novel that I want to write. I imagine that there will be a NaJaWriMo or something in my future.

This fire to continue writing hasn’t stopped since I passed the 50k word limit. In fact, I wrote two short scripts on Sunday and outlined another project. And as you can tell, tonight I decided to blog a bit.

If I could impart some advice from what I’ve learned doing this whole project it would be that you just need to write. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s good or not. Tell your story and save the validity of it for draft two. Be as raw as you can be and you’ll find that the words come quite naturally.

But fuck poetry, because that’s just stupid. :P