Sunday, November 04, 2007

She writes, a little

Nanowrimo has started, and so has my annual descent into the fresh hell that is fiction writing. This year, in lieu of a big scary story, I am writing "a man walked into a bar" stories. It's all the same bar, and I anticipate having enough through-story that I can call it a novel. But when the chips are down, I can just pick out a character from my little notebook of ideas, and write a thousand words.

And the chips were down today. I frittered away most of Thursday, but managed to eke out 1678 words, and even better, they didn't suck. I thought that was better, anyway. It turns out that, unaccustomed as I am to fiction writing, writing well freaked me out. I squandered most of Friday and all of Saturday. I was already 4000 words behind this morning. Things were grim.

Thank goodness there was a write-in, and thank goodness, Karen's first words to me were, "I'm behind, too, but we are going to get at least 1000 words before we leave." And so we did. I abducted a character from my friend Aser, and by the time it was all over, I had over 2000 words. I'm still behind, but less drastically that before.

Tomorrow, the reality that is a full time job returns to taunt my aspirations.

After frogging about an inch of the Flamingo sock, I have done the tiniest bit of knitting on it. I'm trying to negotiate a toe-up, gusset-and-flap heel on it.

I'm also trying to conquer spindle spinning again. Amy gifted me a spindle and some beautiful teal fiber. I want it to be yarn, but I need to improve my skills first. My first gambit: Predraft the hell out of the fiber. (Nonspinners: Drafting is sliding the fibers slightly apart lengthwise as you spin. Commercially prepared fiber is somewhat compact. Predrafting is loosening up the compacted fiber before even attempting to spin it.)

1 comment:

Lydia Manx said...

Laughing....How do YOU think I feel when writing non-fiction! I haven't done 50K I don't think (check my Pikers stuff) but I get it. See non-fiction for me is scary cause I have to fact check frantically more than 3 sources (blame the schooling).

Bar....hmmm...you can use any of my odd fanged set ;)