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.

The Cuba Street Garret

I am a stoic guy. I don't often get excited. About anything. When I first saw the Cuba Street Garret, I got excited.

What is the Garret you ask? It is a space in Wellington where writers can rent a small space, free of distraction and sit down to write.

It isn't just that there are private offices for writing or that it's a lovely space with lots of natural light and style that makes you want to take a clean, fresh breath. It's not that it's free from distractions like children or television or traffic noises. It's not that it's free from spouses asking for you to take out the garbage or do the dishes. That is just the start of the excitement.

This is a space that collect authors! This is people who write and publish. The idea of exchanging information with these people is intoxicating to me. The information doesn't have to be about writing either. It usually isn't, but doesn't matter and you always learn something new and go away feeling better.

In the interest of supporting something I find worthwhile, I am happy to talk about the Garret and get as many authors interested as possible. Come by, see what it has to offer. Contact me any time and I'll be happy to show you around. If you feel even 10% as excited as I do, you'll be happy you did.

Thanks to Douglas Wilkins, for first showing me around and thanks to Martin Haughey for taking the photos.

Kiwiwriter's collection has arrived in the post

I've been involved with Kiwiwriters since its founding. My participation lately has waned, but every once in a while, I throw out an idea, usually just for the name of a challenge (the zing thing, the collection challenge).

The Collection Challenge finished months ago, but there was lots of work after that to organize a printed book (fantastic work from Cassie and Kerryn by the way) and getting the PDF file together, the introduction and the cover designed etc... It eventually went on sale at lulu, a self publishing site.

Cassie Hart, Kerryn Angell and guest judge Philippa Ballantine went to work and the end result was "The Challenge Collection", which I ordered as soon as possible and got in the mail recently (while I was on holiday actually, so I had to wait another week!).

While you can buy it, you can also download the collection for free. Check it out here.

I bought two copies - one for myself and another for putting into the Wellington City Library.

The Chapter One Rewrite Club

Kiwiwriters has a new challenge posted that I thought was too fun to ignore. The challenge is called "The Chapter One Rewrite Club" and the challenge is this: Read and re-write the first chapter of Lord of the Rings and post your re-write on-line. Here I am, posting the first bit.

It runs from July 1st (now finished! I didn't write a thing!) to July 11th.

So, the beginning of Lord of the Rings starts with a Poem:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Which I have re-written:

The One Ring - a beat poem

A ring, just imagine, the thing that brings, doom
Like a groom leaving his chick behind in a room at noon
On his wedding day

Rings, three more, says the lore, for Elf lords
Rings, seven more, says the lore, for the Dwarf lords
Rings, nine more, says the lore, for the Mortal lords

Then the one, just the one, no more, says the lore, sits in Mordor
With the dark lord, on his throne, in that dark zone
Like a crone droning on whispering a Zen koan

Pour over the lore and if you can avoid a snore, it will say that the one is more
More than just a ring, but a thing that will bring, the doom to Middle Earth
Like the birth of the dearth, like the door's boom in a tomb
Shutting behind you

It's "Sign up a friend week" for Nanowrimo!

It's November next month. And you know what that means? It's Nanowrimo, and that means yet another novel.

Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who might read this has probably already decided yea or nay on this, if anyone reading this has ever had an tickle of an idea that they might have a novel in them, I can't recommend Nanowrimo enough to you.

It is a rush and a pleasure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you are done.

I'm as excited as I've ever been about my story idea, and I can't wait to get writing. I have already started outlining and that's unusual for me!

Here's to a great novel writing month!

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.

Snippet of my writing

I don't post many pieces of my stories, but I've been in the mood to write, and have been gearing up for The Southern Cross Novel Challenge in June and decided to have a play with some of the characters from the novel. This one is part of "The Station Challenge" from kiwiwriters a few months ago, as well as "a small descriptive challenge" some time later.

So, take a look at the short piece called "Natasha".

wwwW - the end?

I finished my 7500 words for the Waitangi Weekend Word Wace (wwwW) on the kiwiwriters site. I was luke warm about the progress and as I've already said, I struggled to finish.

We do get cool icons for finishing though. Here's mine:


When I say "finish", I don't mean finish my story, oh no, I mean finish my 7500 words in 4 days, which is a completely different thing.

So, there is more work to finish, and I'm not sure how I'm going to end it. I have a few ideas, but maybe I'll heap a little more trouble onto the main character and see if he comes out the other side.

New writing resource page

It was the end of November, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) was almost over and a small group of Wellington writers got together to celebrate the insanity of writing 50,000 words in one month.

As it turns out, we got along so well that we decided we have to extend this insanity, we have to share it with the rest of the world, well, the southern hemisphere anyway. November was over - long live November!

So, like gears turning, our little minds went to work, scheming and plotting, planning and organizing, making check lists and checking them off, putting notches on our bedposts, creating a googlegroup and buying a domain name.

Two months later, we have a new web page ready to unveil! Muahahahaah... it's alive! It's alive!

The goal of this page: Nanowrimo has been so good to us, why have that feeling confined to November? We are gradually adding functionality to the page to let members issue writing challenges to everyone interested. The site will have "official" challenges like weekend short story writing (Waitangi Weekend Word Wace this weekend) to a full, Nanowrimo like novel writing contest in June ( Southern Cross Novel Challenge or SocNoc for short), but the real fun is in issuing your own challenge and seeing how everyone does and how many people you can get to join you! Want to write a travel guide for Palmerston North? Want to write that love letter to your partner that you've been putting off? Why not make it official and get other people to spread the love?

Join us in craziness, join us in fun - for whatever reason, please join us at kiwiwriters.org

After Nanowrimo - downer

I have to say, the Nanowrimo, novel writing month was a huge high... the beginning, the progress, the finishing - all exciting and life changing.

Here I am, at the end of the month, rough draft in hand, feeling a little down. I still feel like writing, but unlike when I was working on my novel, there seem to be good excuses to not write!

I'm hoping that a new novel writing group with spur me on (maybe not a good approach! Ha!) . All I need is something to read to them when we gather, and that will probably work out.

Also - I'm reading and almost done "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty - a good book for sure. A real preparation manual for Nanowrimo - I wish I'd had it before I'd finished my novel. I will be reading it again before the next novel writing month - likely to happen in June, although I'm sure there will be other writing before then.

A few key items in the book that I found good ideas that I never followed in my month:
1) Outline for a week or so before the novel writing starts (I worked on the fly all the way)
2) keep a "novel ideas" file open at the same time as the novel to put random thoughts
3) Some word processor ideas to mark bits and pieces as being "bad", i.e. transparent etc..

Otherwise, I think I did pretty well - I regret not outlining more, as it left my novel in a sorry state - not publishable without sizeable edits, large sections removed or relocated etc... A jumble of ideas. I like the ideas though - so that is a huge accomplishment. I'm just having trouble going back to it.

Someone did offer to do a novel swap though, and I'm reading "Shark" by atomic_willis, although I'm still days away from a real review.

Nanowrimo 2006

If you're ever, ever, ever even remotely considered writing a novel (I have for years - since I was a teenager), then I highly recommend trying out the Nanowrimo competition. The 2006 one is almost over - it happens in November every year, but there is always next year.

It is a competition with yourself, there are no prizes except that if you finish, you have a nice, shiny new rough draft of a novel. The support network is amazing, full of like minded, delusional people also trying to finish a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Check out www.nanowrimo.org site.

I was roped into this by my good friend Andy, who casually pointed me to the web page one day in an email, subject line: “Interesting Challenge”. So, something like 3 or 4 months later, we're chatting about it in the weeks leading up to November.

Andy: “So, are you going to do it?”

Travis: “Sure! Why the hell not?”

My first day, November 1st. I couldn't sleep, I'm up just after 6AM, wired (I don't drink coffee - this is caffeine free!). I am at work by 7:15AM (unprecedented outside of a support call). I start writing. I was a purist – while the site says you are allowed all the outlining you want before November, as long as you write the prose starting midnight Nov 1, I didn't even know the main character's name going in. No outlines - nothing but a concept that had come to me while watching a mediocre sci-fi movie.

8:30AM, I'm at 1400 words and completely stoked. I know, know that I will finish this. It is one of the greatest moments of my life! That made it all worth it, that first morning.

I never duplicated that feeling for the rest of November. However, it was pretty close, when at 6:45 on November 22^nd, I check my word count and I'm at 50016 words! It is awesome, and I love my ending – I can hardly ask for more!

Check it out – you will thank me!