The Writings and Musings of B.A. Matthews

Belated Updates

November, all in all, has become in recent years a high flying energy period where I write insanely and notice how and where I’ve improved in the last year.  Most people probably wouldn’t choose to do this sort of reflection while they’re writing a novel in a month, but I’m a little wild (re: crazy) and I know it.  I also know that this year has been very different than the last two.  I’m still noticing what I’ve improved on (more on that later), but the high flying excitement that comes from writing a novel in a month along with over 200,000 other people worldwide, seems to be lacking this year.  I’ve thought about this perplexing question and finally come up with an answer as to the reason.

I made the mistake of going into this Nanowrimo without a clear defined goal of what “winning” would mean.  Okay, that’s not entirely true… I’ve been desperately holding onto last year’s meaning and that’s where the problem was.

Two years ago my goal for winning was “finish the story or add more than 50k words to the WIP” and that worked great.  It’s the year that I consider my first, since I only took part in 2007 for about 4 days total before I realized that I was simply too overloaded to give it a good go.  That definition worked well because I wasn’t sure how much I could write, and I wasn’t sure how long the story was going to be.  Last year, it was “Write more than 67, 306 words (my total from the year before)” but it changed halfway through the month to become, “Get into the top 5 word count totals in the city”.  I succeeded that year as well, finishing the month having written 83,083 words and having the 3^rd highest word count in Calgary.

This year though, I went in with a vague undefined goal.  “Use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to do my novel and write over 100K/completely finish my first draft (in case it only came out to 90k)”.  Unfortunately, Dragon isn’t as reliable as I could wish and I’m still spending a lot of time working with it.  I’m not sure if I just have a difficult accent to follow or what, but Dragon has issues with me.  I’m only a little slower with it than I am normally typing, but I am slower.  In addition, I agreed to other items on my plate…  I’m gaming twice this month (not typing at them either), I had to write two music reviews (a few hours each, but I’ve only finished one so far) and I agreed to write a short story for our gaming group (Finished, it came in at 1679 words plus a bit of time for editing and research – I’ll probably post it sometime).

I also injured myself, somehow winding up with a pinched nerve in my neck.  For a week and a half I was in quite a bit of pain, and couldn’t turn my head much at all.  It’s completely better now (I’m just shy of full mobility and I have no pain unless I’m pushing it), but that still doesn’t help me make up for the lost time when I hurt too much to write  like I am used to in November.  Even with my husband helping me clean the house more often (and doing my jobs a bit) I find myself constantly falling behind.

Right now, I’m about 5k behind on my word count, but I do have vacation coming up at the end of the month.  As I said though, I’m disappointed in what I have accomplished due to my low word count.  I still had the dream of me easily running the finish line and getting over 100K, but with these issues, it’s just not a practical one.  It can sometimes be hard to understand the difference between a dream and a goal…  So, I’m redefining my goal.

My goal this Nanowrimo is to write 50K of a rough draft using my Talk-to-Text program for at least 60% of the work.  So far this puts me on task.  I’m only sitting at 36,217 words and about 50 – 60% of them were written using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

I won’t finish my novel this month and in fact it looks as though my novel will come in bloated at 130K to 150K when I’m done.  Fortunately, a bloated word count can be fixed in post.

For the final question of what did I learn this past year, I would have to say that my area of real improvement is both in writing in order and keeping a plot together.  The other thing that I’m learning is to do technically what I already do naturally, at least in part.  I’ve been learning to understand what I do and have been able to spot when I’m not doing what I should (like realizing ‘oh, I haven’t even described what this room is’).  I have even found myself correcting while doing the writing.  It’s a hard job, remembering everything that needs to go into a good book, but to quote Neil Gaiman, “…sometimes you FLY, and that pays for everything.”

Posted in Blogs on November 25th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 6 Comments »

What a pain (in the neck)!

Well, I just had a killer of a weekend trying to play catch up with my word total.  Friday I didn’t get to write at all since I had gaming directly after I got home from work.  Unfortunately, the incomplete sleep that I’ve been getting all week finally caught up with me, and I slept like the dead.  At least until I woke up out of a sound sleep around 6:30 – 7 am.  What a pain in the neck, literally.  I tried putting heat on it and went back to sleep, but I could hardly move and there was a lot of pain.  When I did wake up again, I couldn’t move at all for a moment.  Finally I made it out to the living room.  I started writing, slowly and painfully, trying to ignore everything but the writing.

When my husband woke up he said I most likely had a pinched nerve. Unfortunately, chiropractors apparently don’t work on weekends (or at least on Saturdays after 2 pm) and I didn’t feel it was necessary to head to the emergency.  My husband helped me stretch and that seemed to help as well.  Off hand, it’s always amazing to me exactly how stretching a leg can help anything in my neck.  I understand why it works, yet I always seem surprised when it does.  In my mind, there’s a heck of a lot of space and stuff between the muscles in my legs and the ones in my neck.  I’ll keep you updated regardless.  And I suppose even with the pain I was able to write about 2000 words, so it definitely was still a good day.

Sunday was much better.  The stretches really helped and I had a lot more of my mobility back so writing was much easier.  Through word wars on the Calgary Nanowrimo Chat, I was able to write just over 4000 words.  I’m now up to 11,135 and I’m only about 500 words behind. Okay, so I started writing this on Monday Night after I got home… I got no writing done Monday or Tuesday (not writing on my lunch breaks kills me, but saves my hand from the crippling Tendonitis demons), so I’m 5535 words behind.  Fortunately, I have both Wednesday and Thursday off from work, so plenty of time both days to catch up.

This entire year seems to be turning out that way…I ignore my writing for a few days, let my wrist rest and my tendinitis get a bit better and then catch up in an extravaganza of writing.  It’s very odd, since in all my prior years I’ve worked best by getting my daily count (plus) every day.  This could just be a continuation of “first week = slump week” for me, but I guess I’ll have to see if the rest of the month continues like this.

EDIT: Yep, it was indeed a pinched nerve.  I saw a Chiropractor on Monday and I’m feeling mostly better.  I’m still getting shooting pain up my neck and my back muscles still refuse to relax and soften, but I have mobility.  He said it would take 3-4 sessions but after that, I should have no more pain.  I’m going in for my second session later today.

Posted in Blogs on November 10th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off

Updates from the Nanowrimo front!

Day Four of Nanowrimo has come and while it’s not gone yet, it is quite close to going.  Yesterday’s goal for Nanowrimo was 5001 and today’s total will be 6778.  So how close am I to my totals?  Well, as of yesterday my total was at 5078, so a little bit ahead of where I was supposed to be.  However, I haven’t gotten anything written today, and I know that I won’t be able to meet my total today.  Even so, one low day doesn’t mean anything.  In fact normally I don’t hit any of my totals in the first week of Nanowrimo.  Usually I don’t even hit 7K by the end of week one.  The fact that I’ve been on total for all of the other days heartens me.  What I really consider my victory is that 4k of my current total was done by using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  This is a really big move for me, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m already seeing the benefits of using a Talk-To-Text program in my writing (I’m also seeing the detriments as well, but that will be for later).

Dragon offers me the ability to still write and type, when my tendonitis gets bad and to its credit, it does it well.  I think my tendonitis has become a forever thing at this point and it horrifies me that it seems to be changing into a weather ache as well.  I now understand two types of pain, active pain (which really hurts) and passive pain (which still hurts, but as it’s relatively constant, it starts fading into the background), but I digress.  This is a writing blog, not one I complain or rant on.  I find that I’m slower writing with Dragon than I am when I just type, especially when I still have to correct names and words quite often using it.  However, I also notice that I go back to delete less, since I spend longer thinking about what I want to say.

I think part of the reason I made so many mistakes before was because I thought faster than I could type, so I would be 2-4 sentences ahead of what my fingers were still typing… I’d get ahead of myself and have to go back to change my word choices.  I think that by the time this nano is over, I will be able to use Dragon without having to make corrections at all (in so much as that’s possible anyway).

So, this being just a quick update, I’ll say that yes, I’ve been writing, it’s been going well, even though I’m a little bit behind and that I’m not at all worried yet.  Oh, and as a final cheery moment for me, Dragon finally got my characters name right yesterday… Sometimes it’s the small victories that count for the most.  Also, I submitted my review for Omnia’s newest album, Wolf Love and as soon as the article goes up on Pagan Radio, I’ll post a copy over here.  In the meantime, how is your Nanowrimo trip going!   Excellent?  Or could you use a little encouragement?  Let me know, and remember to tell me about what your story is about.

Posted in Blogs on November 4th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 4 Comments »

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