The Fountain Pen

All is not well in NaNoWriMo land. I am tired. I am more tired than I have ever been. I’ve been exhausted, I’ve been burned out, but I’ve never been tired like this. Last night I could have gone to sleep at 9PM (A full 2-3 hours early!) and tonight is no different. My brain is not functioning normally. I am forgetting things, my speech is abnormal (in conversation my words are getting jumbled). Things are not good. I cannot even write.

I wish I could quit. I wish I could say, “I’ll do it next week, but not this week,” but those kind of thoughts seem to always end up leading to things never getting done. So I will press on. Besides, I have come too far to quit now. I am half way to my goal. Now if I could just keep my eyes open … . Oh yes, I had some coffee before I left work (I hate the stuff) but it is having no effect. Makes me wonder if I’m getting sick or something.

I’m 866 words behind as of now, but it’s bound to grow by tomorrow. It’s too late to hit my goal for tonight, and I fear that will be my death knell.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night did not go so well. As it turns out, last night was a horrid night for writing. I arrived home late, accidentally deleted the show from our PVR that we were going to watch (I did this before we watched it), fought with my wife’s machine, trying and failing to get it to cooperate with a microphone, and had to send a gob of pictures to my brother in Hawaii. In the end I had 90 minutes to write and a fume that took 60 minutes to calm down from, so I only managed 500 words.

I have a meeting tonight, Saturday is swamped with activity, Fridays usually find me desiring rest from the week, and I’m already 1500 words behind. Maybe I’ll catch a break or something.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend was a terrible mess as far as writing goes, but in that mess I think I might have learned something I suspected might be true: the weekends are bad writing times for me. There are simply too many distractions, too many things I want to do, too much unwinding from the week I need to do in order for me to make any real progress. This is good for me to know, because in the future, when I want to write another book, I will not force myself to write on the weekends. Instead I’ll be free to socialize, work on household projects, and vegetate.

I have to end the weekend 1,000 words short of my minimum goal and 3,000 words short of what I would have liked to obtain. And to top it off, I am beginning to wonder if I should shift my outline some, or make this one book into 2 or 3 books (it looks like daglo was right after all). More on this later, for now I want to go watch some TV!

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Defeat, thou vile creature. Dost though know my name? Dost thou pursueset me?” Okay, so that’s not really a quote, I just made it up, but that is my sentiment for the past two days.

I have not been able to get anything done on my story for two days straight now. I know I will need a slight break before the frenzied writing begins, but I was hoping to acquire said break after I had finished my preparations to my satisfaction, and I have not. Last night was excused, my folks got a new laptop and I helped them configure it (the happy news there is my mother now has a machine capable of keeping pace with projects, and her being a writer I am excited at this prospect). Tonight however, tonight has no excuse, none other than mental burn-out due to lack of sleep, brain puzzling tasks at work, and a desire to keep up with my other blogs (Promethean Logophile was updated tonight, and I actually like what I wrote!).

What scares me here is knowing my tendency to get tired and to look for refreshment. Tendency? Nay, it is a requirement. Tired minds need rest, and I work mine all the day. In fact I find it surprising I can even think when I get home, for some of my days are quite taxing (some nights I cannot put together a sentence proper order in the). Soon I will enter the time when I will be able to write and I want to let fly with as many words as I can muster, but along with that I would like to have a complete story.

Habits are hard to break, and hard to form. Thus far I am trying to break one (not writing) and form another (regular, daily writing). I have been defeated upon a few battles, but the war … is she over yet?

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I may have learned something these past two days, something that could spell disaster for me. If my weekend was any indication of the weekends to come I am doomed. Perhaps doomed is too strong of a term, it might be better to say I will be greatly inconvenienced and pressured. I was wholly unable to do any planning this weekend, and I had high hopes for it. Looking back on my weekend I am not sure what happened. Saturday I was in terrible pain (and I already know it is near impossible for me to do any quality thinking when my body is not cooperating), I had a football game to listen too (we won!), and a party to attend. Today I was again in [much] pain, and we hand out-of-town friends we entertained all afternoon (much longer than we anticipated) and then I had to run tech-support for my brother which took up the rest of the time. So maybe I won’t be so doomed afterall. It looks like all I have to do is arrange my schedule so I get my writing done before I do anything else, or suffer the burden of an extra 4,000 words due Monday night.

On a different note, I did take some time out tonight (while on the phone with my brother) to re-arrange my desk to better suit my current working habits. I used to use a workstation exclusively, but ever since I got my iBook I have not spent any time worth noting on my desktop machine. My desk was almost unusable for my laptop because the monitor was in the middle, and I want my laptop in the middle. Now I am in happy land, with my monitor off in a corner (running dual screen too) and room for my laptop, my Lava Lamp, a desk lamp, and plenty of open desk space to keep my mind from dwelling on clutter. In my mind, I am all set for writing … as far as my environment goes. :) I can only hope I have enough notes and points in my outline to keep me from getting writer’s block in November.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I am having a hard time with my novel right now. I am only allow to plan it, and that’s a good thing because I would not even know where to begin writing it. I don’t really have a plot, but I have a few character ideas. I have a large plot goal, but no real plot line. I know some events in the life of my plot (leave home, travel through rough land, find & retrieve “the package”, change motives/goal while returning, … <<insert the end point here>>) oops, I guess I don’t know how my story will end (that’s probably a problem).
I am not sure how to proceed from here. Do I continue to develop some characters? Problem with that is I might get bogged down in character creation and not figure out the plot. Do I work on the plot and ignore the characters? The problem with that is I might make a plot that I really don’t have any characters to perform in. How do I balance the two? What is my next step?

I have a theme (sacrifice) and I have at least one side-plot/conflict (the main character will be torn between two love interests, but the loves will be drastically different, one exciting and unknown, the other comfortable and familiar). I need more. I need more interesting things to happen along the way. I have a whole world of imagination in front of me … why can I not find anything interesting?

(Note to self: I don’t think I want this to be a particularly dark story, but I really don’t care, as long as I get 50,000 words and some experience writing a complete story, beginning to end.)

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)