SoCNoC - just caught up!

I finally caught up on SoCNoC after lagging behind for the last few weeks. After losing a day early on, I've struggled a bit to focus and at least keep my lag down to one day only.

It's funny, I keep imagining that I'll wake up early and spend a few hours catching up, but in the end, it's always after the TV shows are done and it's 10 o'clock and I write until 12:30.

Still, caught up is caught up and by day 21, here I am at 33414 total and over 3200 words written today.

I can't say that my story is working out that well, but I have managed to pull all the 5 different threads together into one. I consider that alone an accomplishment. It's the first time that I've had so many separate threads before. I kept it very simple and just cycled through them, bringing them closer and closer together, merging first two, then three and four and finally five. Very satisfying.

SoCNoC - halfway mark

I hit the halfway point with SoCNoC (Southern Cross Novel Challenge) last night. That means I've written 25k words so far in June and am just one day behind the expected pace.

Here's how I got there:

day date total today
1 01/06/10 1694 1694
2 02/06/10 3615 1921
3 03/06/10 5352 1737
4 04/06/10 6197 845
5 05/06/10 6829 632
6 06/06/10 8861 2032
7 07/06/10 9741 880
8 08/06/10 11597 1856
9 09/06/10 13342 1745
10 10/06/10 15736 2394
11 11/06/10 16755 1019
12 12/06/10 19205 2450
13 13/06/10 20068 863
14 14/06/10 21301 1233
15 15/06/10 23511 2210
16 16/06/10 25096 1585


Not exactly stellar, but despite being a little lazy, I've managed to stay only one day behind every day. I keep telling myself that I'll catch up on a weekend day. Maybe this weekend. :(

Good luck to all the other SocNoCers and HalfNoCers out there - I hope you're having a great June.

4th annual SoCNoC continues...

I've had this story in my head since November's Nanowrimo. I've mulled it over and talked about it with some friends and read a book that had some similar ideas between then and now.

Strangely enough, for such a fully formed story idea, it's been slow going. I'm at 11,597 words so far, which is a full day behind yesterday's required pace (13,333), let alone today's (15,000). Probably the slowest I've had in the first 9 days of any novel writing month, since I always tend to hover around the slightly ahead mark (last year was a little wonky, since I had a house move, but that's exceptional and only later in the month).

Oh? You want to hear about the story?

I have five, count 'em, five threads all with the same main character happening at the same time. The settings are a soldier in a war, the member of an Antarctic expedition, a monk in training, a software developer in Montreal and finally, a businessman working with a scientist. Eventually, they begin to meet each other. The question is, why are there duplicates? Who made them? What is their purpose?

4th Annual SoCNoC starting tomorrow!

SoCNoC, to those who don't know, is "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge", which is to some of you, a difficult, challenging, novel writing competition where competitors write 50,000 words in one, 30 day month. To others like myself, it's a giddy, beautiful, roller coaster ride of excitement and fun. Not that I would ever imply that these things can't overlap!

I'm sure that there are people reading this saying, "What Travis? Another novel writing month? I thought you did one in November?!"

Indeed, November is a novel writing month, but that's "National Novel Writing Month" or Nanowrimo, is a completely different beast. SoCNoC is set up for people in the southern hemisphere, where the weather cooperates during June to keep people indoors and writing (true for the last three weeks!).

SoCNoC is special to me since it is, at least partially, my creation. This is a photo of the original Kiwiwriters crew dreaming up something that would let us do writing challenges all year round:


I'm not in the photo, since I was taking it, but that's my old place, I swear it is. Left to right, it's Andy, Chris, Jane and Kerryn. Andy came up with the name "SoCNoC", which is one of his many, brilliant contributions. Kerryn is still the energy that keeps the site going.

Although I haven't done a thorough check, I believe I am the only person to have completed every single SoCNoC (three so far), and I plan to finish this one as well. I have an idea lined up and I'm ready to go. Tomorrow is the day.

I'll see you all in the writing trenches!

SoCNoC Novel - 2009

SoCNoC, or the Southern Cross Novel Challenge is in its 3rd year. This is my third one.

I have been behind on this SoCNoC more than I've been behind on any novel challenge, but a 5,000 word flurry of activity last night brought me to 46,861 words, only 3139 words off my 50,000 word finishing count. As long as I don't get distracted with anything else, I should be fine. There are a few big scenes planned, including an army attacking a city made of diamond weaved buildings. The words should just flow.

I have never been so ill prepared on one of my novels before and procrastinated in May for coming up with an idea and working out some kind of outline, so it's pretty random stuff. I decided to try an idea I'd had back in high school (this is a long time ago - probably 20+ years). Also, part way through the novel, I switched from third person to first person, just because it's faster to write. I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but here I am within striking distance, so it wasn't too bad.

I took the novel out just now and started reading it from the beginning - not something I do until well after I finish, but it was almost 30 days ago, so I decided I'd try and see how bad it was. To my surprise, I enjoyed the voice and writing style. It was clear and had some suitable metaphors, but wasn't overloaded with them. I was pleased. I know it gets much worse later when I was stuggling to get my word counts in, but really, I couldn't have asked for much more.

Storyline summary: Victor, the main character (his name is Victor because of a funny story I will tell in another blog later), finds himself in a new world full of aliens and alien landscapes. Very little explanation is given as to why he is there, but he finds himself talking to alien people who have left their worlds and come to this new one and who are opressed by a group of humans from earth who have come through from various periods in Earth's past. There are Romans and Phoenicians, Babylonians and Vikings, none of whom have a problem massacring aliens who they consider sub-human and just animals getting in their way. Not only that, but the humans have access to the super-technology of the world's original inhabitants who died of a plague a thousand years before.

All a little seat-of-the-pants but some of the scenes are just really fun to read over again.

One of my more satisfying efforts, although quite stressful. Throw into the mix that I moved house over June and had to work late a few days (5 days where I added exactly zero words and another half dozen or so where I added just 200-300, and I would say I did pretty well).

SoCNoC is over until next year

I hit 50,294 words by about 11PM on June 28th, a couple of days ahead of deadline!

This novel is about the far future in New Zealand. It's a dystopian sci-fi where different species of humans war with each other and live their difficult lives. The machines play an important role, and interact with the different species in mysterious ways that no one seems to understand.

I've enjoyed writing about the ruins of Wellington, the odd church in the wilds around Nelson, the b-mod city around Napier and the g-mod military installation in the bay of islands.

I still have a few thousand words to write to finish my story. Then, let it sit and edit it later, maybe sometime next month.

Thanks to everyone at kiwiwriters for the encouragement, and congratulations to all those other winners. It's been a great month to write a novel!

I'm looking forward to SoCNoC next year. I'm sure it will do nothing but grow each year.

SoCNoC day 21 and 22 - word wars

My best days so far this June for writing kiwiwriters's SoCNoC have been during word wars. You sit there for 10 minute spurts and get as many words in as you can. Having a group of crazy friends around usually helps. I do war with myself on occasion, but it's nowhere near as fun.

One thing is that you learn how fast that you can type, especially if you've got the scene you're going to write outlined in your head already. You also get lots of words out for completing the challenge, which is 50,000 words in one month.

Here are my word amounts - all are in 10 minute increments except where noted:
21st June:
736 (15 min)
828 (15 min)
531
548
551
489

- my goal that entire night was to hit 600 (in 10 minutes) at least once. Never happened.

I joined up with Andy and Kerryn tonight and got a couple of ten minute word wars going before I had to leave and watch a movie. Here are my word counts for tonight:

22nd June

612
573

Got my 600 in 10 minutes! I was very pleased. My fingers were relaxed and finding the keys. It was also lovely in the room, since I moved to the back room and blocked every route for the heat to escape, turned on a heater and loved every minute.

Oh - found an ok timer on sourceforge. It's called tea timer. It was useful and has a lot of features. It pops up while I'm typing and that gives me accurate measurements of how fast I'm typing. It's gotten faster over June actually. :)

SoCNoC, the drama!

I know, I know, backup your work. I can't tell you how often I've heard this in the past.

I did back up my work, I did, I did, I did. Unfortunately, I backed up an older copy over my newer copy and lost about two thousand words of my SoCNoC entry. I did it last night and stubbornly stayed up late tonight to correct it. I went from about 31, 000 down to about 29,000 in one stupid mistake. I wrote about 3000 words tonight, not quite catching where I could be, but at least I made my quota (19 * 1667 - the number of words you should have on the 19th to meet your 50k by the end of 30 days).

It isn't just backing up your work, it's about not being stupid about it! Geeze, I've been around computers long enough now, you'd think I'd figure out how to drag and drop.

Still, the worst thing is that my re-written scenes felt awkward and not as good as the ones that I wrote last night.

Anyway. I'm off to bed now (2AM). Bummer of a night.

Novel writing: SocNoC day 19th - nothing so far

SocNoC, Kiwiwriters own novel writing challenge has been going on all of June.

I thought that I'd breeze through it and be done by now (or close), and here I sit at about 31,000 words. 50,000 is the goal, so I'm pretty close to pace, but it's 10 to midnight, and I know that I should go and write a bit and at least get to my daily word count.

I know that I'll get through it, but I really have to put aside a few nights where I can really push the word count up. I had a word count over 4,000 one day... I need a few more like that!

Anyway - off to write a thousand words or so.

First day of SoCNoC completed!

If you're been following my blog, you are aware that it's Kiwiwriters SoCNoC novel challenge time. I started at midnight and here I am 24 hours later sitting at about 3500 words (about 7% finished). I spent about 3 hours of writing total, although there was a lot of unfocused sitting around picking at my writing.

The television is such a distraction, and I write in the same room as the TV, since otherwise, it's somewhat anti-social. The mp3 player doesn't seem to help. I might have to go back to Avril Lavigne songs, since that is all I could write to during Nanowrimo last November.

On the plus side, I got some good writing food from the grocery store. While I tell myself that it is stock-piling for the month, I'm just kidding myself and it will be gone in a week. Chips and dip, tim-tams, macaroons, trail mix, juice... I think I sampled one of each today - no way, it won't last long.

I also went to the gym for the first time on my new membership which I got on trademe just the other day. With winter coming, and it's pretty nasty today, it will be nice to have a way to exercise without getting myself cold and wet. It also helps me focus with the writing, and I'll be spending lots of time at the gym throughout June.

Good luck to the rest of you kiwiwriters!

SoCNoC has begun!

I did a midnight start on SoCNoC (the Southern Cross Novel Challenge) last night. I managed to get in about 1300 words and continued this morning and got my quota. I will continue today and try and get a head start going into the weekend. It's a long way to 50,000 words, but making my quota every day will do it nicely, even if I'm more ambitious than that.

If I can get 10,000 words by Monday, I will be very happy and well on my way. It would be better to get even more, but considering how much I'm struggling with the current storyline (it feels like it's going quite slow), I'd be surprised if I got over 10k over the weekend.

Still - very exciting and I'm wondering where my story will go in the end. I've only sketched out the world roughly and some of the characters.

I have gone away from the first contact/telepath story, to a different one which I did on the kiwiwriters easter challenge. That story, which was never finished, is almost exactly like my current novel.

It is set in an alien land (I think it's New Zealand 1000 years from now), with many types of humans roaming around and big, mechanical creatures that aren't so friendly any more. Oh yeah, and there are packs of wild dogs all over the place. What would your pet do if all the people went away?

Signed up for SoCNoC 2007

What are you doing this June? Me, I'm writing my 2nd novel.

Seeing as Nanowrimo happens in November, just when the weather is getting more and more like summer, Kiwiwriters decided to set up a novel challenge more in line with the Southern Hemisphere. So, June it is.

50,000 words and a massive rush of accomplishment, Kiwiwriters brings you SoCNoC, "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge".

Here is my participation certificate... I'm sincerely hoping for a winner's certificate at the end of June!



I highly recommend that you join us. Good luck!