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[AugustWest]

My god what a pretentious title!

Anyhow.

I've gained a new respect for Onstad recently (and for anyone who earns their living by creating words and pictures to entertain us.)

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo.  That's National Novel Writing Month for you philistines amongst us. The idea is that you write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.  Being a frustrated novelist in search of motivation, I bought into it this year.

Saturday is the halfway point (11/15).  With around 10,000 words, I am roughly 20% done as of 11/13.  And I'm surprisingly OK with it.

I'm not going to complete my novel by 11/30.  I won't get to call myself a NaNoWriMo winner.  Oh well.

Here's what I do know now:

I will finish this novel.  It is a good premise.  With enough time and effort it will be a respectable novel.  I will finish this novel.

This all makes me happy about myself.

Back to the topic at hand.

I've found that I can write about 1,000 words per day of decent prose.  This works out to somewhere between 1 and 2 hours a day.  Of course, much of my mental, emotional, spiritual, psychic and sexual energy is absorbed by other pursuits (e.g. my career, parenthood, inherent perversions, etc.)  This works out to around 2 single spaced pages (or 4 double spaced pages).  In novel time this covers anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 day.  I try to finish a scene at a time.

Based on my experience and my output, I gotta respect Onstad for what he produces on a weekly basis (at least lately).  Granted, I might have more energy to devote to my creative pursuits were I not working a full-time mentally-draining job.... But Onstad is putting quality product out there day after day.  Granted it may not be timely each and every day, but between the strip, Ray's column, Nate, the books, T-shirts and the various and sundry other stuff he comes up with -- Chris has earned my respect.

Please forgive me for this bullshit, rambling post.

[andalucia]

Agreed, and good luck with the novel!

[jough]

I was going to engage in finishing my half-finished novel for NaNoPoMoNiMiFaSoLaTiDo, but I haven't touched it in so long.  And it wasn't a good premise at all.

Best of luck to you.  I won't ask you what it's "about" as that is the most obnoxious question to answer about a book.

[andalucia]

I was proud of my ability to resist that question as well, since I've noted my inability to answer it.  You should see how funny the other 16-year olds look at you in Writer's Craft class when you respond to that question with, "Well,  numerous things, really: the American Dream, the betrayal of religion, you know..."

[V-Adore]

I briefly considered NaNoWriMo, but hell, it's not as if I have the time...

In the interim, I really ought to keep playing with the idea I've had for a fantasy epic-type webcomic thinger, but it's impeded by the fact that I have the drawing skills of a dead lemur. (Admittedly, this never stopped David Gonterman, but still.)

[andalucia]

God, that's horrible!

Egad!

[slink]

I do not know this thing of which you speak.
Although I guess I wouldn't be National, and I would never finish 50 thou words of mine by the time they wanted it.
I am dead set on finishing mine. For the first time in my long stint of writing, I know every bit of this novel. It's just that I'm a hideously lazy, procrastinating, un-motivated bastard.

So good luck!

[sjlimmer]

Wow.  I just hope I can hit anywhere near 50,000 words for my thesis sometime between now and May.  Damn you creative types, always making me look bad....

[wombat]

For what it's worth, sjl, I think writing a thesis is much more painful.  I did that once upon a time.  Now, in the last six or eight months, I've been working on drafts of two novels (OK, they are murder mysteries, for those who want to be snobs and dismiss it) and have about 95,000 words of each.  Writing the thesis was excruciating.  Writing the fiction is a blast.

Of course, the 95,000 words may all be lousy words including 'a' and 'the', while we know the thesis was at least good enough to get me a degree, so we may not be comparing equal products.  Maybe it's just that writing totally crappy fiction is more fun than writing a passable thesis.