Possible Insect Swarms Ahead
Daniel Beck's blog: Daniel Beck never* lies.

NaNoWriMo · 11/25/2005 05:47 PM

When I’m writing, it’s fun. When I lost the last two years, I lost because I wasn’t committed. I didn’t do the work. I just assumed it would happen and then… it didn’t. This year I knew what the problem was. I wasn’t trying. This year, I thought I could do the work, I thought I could make it happen. It didn’t happen.

The first year, I lost because I didn’t have a clue as to what I was in for, didn’t know I had to work. The second year, I lose because I didn’t work hard enough, even though I knew I should have. This year, I lost not because I didn’t want to do the work or because I didn’t put the effort in because I didn’t feel like it. None of mental hangups got in the way this year.

I was defeated by own body. I spent the first four days of National Novel Writing Month 2005 stuck in a hospital, when I had been planning to write myself into I have extra words territory. That didn’t happen. Instead, I planned and made lists and gave The Girl hell so I could catch up. I was within reach of catching up. I was going to be where I needed to be today. I had it all planned out.

Then I started Thursday, the 24th of November, by vomitting spaghetti and sausage. I spent the day curled up on couches and beds throughout the house. I didn’t, I couldn’t, write one fucking word. Today, Friday. The day where I was supposed to be on easy street, writing a mere 1667 words, I spent in bed, aching. I didn’t get up until nearly 2:00.

I’ve already put off so much already. I can’t put it all off any more for the sake of a novel. This is no reason to kill my GPA, is it? This isn’t a reason to drive The Girl into an angry madness, is it? I hope I’m right.

I have to live another year longer, to do this thing right.

In other news, go listen to Brian Eno’s latest, Another Day on Earth. It has that great depressing-yet-reassuring quality that made me love Brian Eno’s work in the first place.

This calling
This burden
This falling
The world is turning

Comment [5]

Tags: {music, nanowrimo, sickness, writing}

NaNoWriMo Update · 11/19/2005 04:10 AM

Suggested Word List

Previously on POSSIBLE INSECT SWARMS AHEAD, readers suggested some words for my novel. So far these have helped greatly, in one part adding a sequence involving strange office politics that included arguments over what constitutes an actual long word and a series of violent explosions that ended up clearing out some plot problems in my effort to use the word peripheral.

The list and its victims so far:

  • Narcissistic
  • Magniloquent
  • Ampersand
  • Antidisestablishmentarianism
  • Sesquipedalian
  • Assonance
  • Rapscallion
  • Peripheral
  • Euphoric
  • Psyche

Three of the words seem destined for an as-yet-unintroduced character, namely, the villain. Assonance, you’re on notice.

As Promised: Excerpts

First, I present to you a paragraph that wierded me out as I wrote it. It seems that there are strange recesses of my brain that want to relate the unrelatable. (please note that there is deliberate wordiness and not editedness):

Sarah and Henry arrived safely at the airport. After successfully avoiding a random car search upon arriving at the airport, she pulled the car to a stop beside the large main building of the airport, the one with the tall windows and a steep, graceful curve of a the concrete roof. For some reason, the building made Henry think of Audrey Hepburn. Maybe it was because of the word graceful. He wondered if she ever flew in or out of Dulles. Certainly, she must have, thought Henry. Sarah wondered what Henry was looking at, so she asked him. “It’s a good looking building,” said Henry.

The single word I am most ashamed of in my burgeoning novel:

Islamofascism

My first (and probably not last) depiction of casual drug use:

Michael shoved a hand into a pocket and extracted a short orange prescription pill bottle. He stuck it out into the air between Henry and himself. “Sleep deprive yourself a bit tonight, then swallow one of these at take off. I can’t sleep in hotel rooms and I’m sure it would work just as well on a 14 hour flight to Baghdad,” said Michael.

Finally, an excerpt illustrating modern consumerism:

Bryan was enjoying the day on his ass in front of the TV. But it was not any TV. It was a 50-inch Liquid Crystal Display High Definition Television. After rebates and convincing the manager to give him a price match on a similar TV at a competitor, the piece of consumer electronics now standing, imposing itself, in the front of the Rogers’ living room cost a cool $1300 plus taxes. Bryan considered it to be the best $1300 plus taxes he ever spent. He watched reruns of M*A*S*H on that TV that made Alan Alda’s head uncomfortably large. The day before, he watched football and the linebackers looked like they might have been life sized. The Home Shopping Network’s baubles looked the like the pieces of junk they probably are. He rented some Chinese movie—Hero—and watched Jet Li kick ass in the biggest way viewable in the modern American single-family home.

And that’s all I’m giving you until April and you’re one of my selected 2nd draft readers.

Comment [2]

Tags: {friends, nanowrimo}

Seven Down, Twenty-Three to Go · 11/08/2005 03:16 AM

National Novel Writing Month is here once again. It’s the race to the bottom of the literary barrel in which participants (such as Yours Truly) try to put out 50,000 words of some serviceable (and some not so serviceable) fiction in pseudo-novel form. This is the Boston Marathon of Literature.

Writing a novel is one of those things that a lot of people wish they could do and with effort are capable of, but simply don’t do, for whatever reason. Those who make the attempt may experience the agony of defeat, the inability to finish. Well not this year, kids.

50,000 words is daunting. But sometimes it can be aggravated by the fact that you spent the first week without any word count to speak of, thanks to pesky bacteria. Sometimes it can be relief, since you’d rather spend the day writing fiction than a research paper due next week. Sometimes it’s just daunting, without modifier.

It works out to be 1667 words per day, leaving you with ten extra words at the end of the month. Those ten extra words amount to a %0.02 buffer against failure. In other words, you can still skip about two or three words from this quota each week and still make it to the finish line.

If you take a look at the right side of the screen, you’ll find a nice dial reporting my current word count. This, ladies and gentlemen reading this at the start of the second week of November, is what a word deficit looks like. It’s like the national budget deficit in that it is upsetting and baffling. The difference is that the national deficit is meaningless, but the NaNoWriMo word deficit is ball and chain you carry with you for the month of November (as long as you continue to have a deficit). To start out at a 10,000 word deficit is one of the worst things I could think of, worse than the prospect of having my appendix removed.

That’s right, I’ve drunk the NaNoWriMo kool aid. I consider surgery to be a more desirable fate than failing to win NaNoWriMo in my third attempt.

But at your urgings, I’m going to win this year. Starting Friday, I’ll start revealing bits and pieces of my progress on this thing called a NaNo. I’ll even post the best and worst excerpts I’m comfortable sharing. But just to whet your appetite, I’ll give you the one paragraph plot summary (drum roll please):

A maladjusted young professional, Henry Burton, is sent to Iraq by his defense contractor employer. There he is paired with an Army widower with a death wish, Bryan Rogers, who volunteered for Iraq duty after his wife was killed there six months previous. The two get caught up in the chaos that is present-day Iraq: corporate, military, and civilian corruption, violence, and deceit.

Then stuff starts happening. I don’t know what exactly. That’s what the writing process is for. Can I get a “hoorah?”

Friends, artists, countrymen, lend me your words.

Comment [2]

Tags: {nanowrimo}