My Nano Progress

Sheepishly Crossing the Finish Line - Day (A lot)

I'm half-tempted to remove everything else on this page simply so there's no documentation of how many times I didn't write this novel. But in the end, I got the thing done. My novel is done. To be honest, it is terrible. Writing 1,000 words in an hour will do that. (It surely couldn't be any lack of writing genius on my part.)

Anyway, here's the plan: I'm going to edit the sucker up over a long period of time, knowing my procrastinatory habits (I really hope that's a word). When I feel like one particular chapter has been sufficiently edited, and is not as awful as the rest of the novel, I'll stick it in the Crap I've Written section along with an introduction explaining the whole NaNoWriMo thing. That means that this section will be arbitrarily axed.

Now, you may have noticed that I just used the phrase 'arbitrarily axed' once again. That's because it's an awesome phrase. I look forward to using it again. Until then, I've got my procrastinatory habits to keep up.

Okay, so as you can probably gather, I failed miserably at writing a novel in one month. I made it to 37,000 words on November 29th, and I was seriously considering writing another 9,000 words on the 30th. Then I realized I was insane. I'd already failed a midterm or two because of this, and there were papers I needed to work on over the next couple days. So I pretty much threw in the sponge, or laptop, or whatever. But not without telling myself I would finish the novel eventually! After writing over 10,000 words in three days, giving myself two weeks to finish the last 13,000 seems easy.

And it really would've been, but I had those final papers to finish and finals the next week, so that idea soon died. You would think that I'd just totally put all this off and never finish, right? That I would completely fail? Hah! Not happening! It is now Christmas break, and I have two weeks at my disposal! If I write 2,000 words a day (well, 3,000 today) then I will finish my novel on Christmas day. Then I'll have the whole next week to pick out the most egregious errors before printing out all 150 pages or whatever and showing them to everyone. So I'm returning once again to my original project, with a slight modification: instead of writing a novel in one month, I'm writing a novel in two months. That's still fairly impressive, I think. So wish me luck! I will finish it by the end of this week!

Alright, I've written nothing for about six or seven days. Like I said on the main page, I decided to put school first for a week because my grades were seriously suffering because of this project. Now I've got to make up for that and double-time it. This is going to be seriously insane; like, 3-4,000 words a day. Which is, needless to say, a lot of words. I rummaged through the stuff I've got so far so I could put up some of my favorite excerpts as some kind of emotional boost to my writing self-esteem. Without further ado:

The dreaded golgarthans were unique to the rest of the universe in two ways. First, they were always, and completely black. Totally absent of color. A golgarthan resembled the outline of a regular humanoid, but they looked like some sort of walking abyss of darkness. For some reason, they could not create any clothing that would stay its color when worn by a golgarthan. Golgarthan architects simply could not build or design anything that wasn’t completely black. Color, apparently, was just not one of their things. But except among the more fashion-sensible races of the galaxy, this was not why they were so dreaded.

The second way the golgarthans were so unique to the rest of the universe was their inability to comprehend deceit. (They are the only race that has never had politicians or lawyers.) It was really quite impossible to barter with a golgarthan, and simply frustrating to attempt a game of cards with one. Conversely, golgarthans are incredibly, and brutally honest. And this is not the earthling form of brutal honesty. This isn’t brutal as in “I slept with another woman this morning, honey.” This is brutal as in “I slept with another woman this morning, honey, and it’s the same woman I’ve made love to for the past six months while wondering if our own relationship could last. Plus, you have fatty thighs, I married you for your father’s money, and I loathe your Tuesday special casserole.” This is why they are the dreaded golgarthans. Fatty-thighed women would do their best to avoid them, as well as those who tend to leave the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to their shoe...

...Several galaxies, solar systems, and generally just a very large distance away, was the planet Golgarth. Golgarth itself was very similar to the golgarthans in that it was mostly black... The best tool for sight was the sun and blue sky, which were completely normal and conspicuously lacking in pitch-blackedness. The shadows cast by the sun were made completely pointless by the darkness of the ground, but it did illuminate the outlines of most things. This allowed golgarthans to avoid running into things like trees, vehicles, and large buildings.

...Zorp entered a tall golgarthan skyscraper in the business sector of the world’s capital, Golgartha. Golgartha is widely regarded as the easiest city in the universe to get hopelessly lost in, due to its colorless architecture and the fact that the skyscrapers hide the sun from outlining anything. The city did have street signs at every corner, but no one could ever figure out why, as it was simply black words against a black background. The written golgarthan language, which was a decidedly stupid idea to begin with, has never been understood by anyone, including golgarthans.

I just finished my writing for the 15th, even though it's technically the 16th. Midterms last week absolutely killed my writing motivation. Conversely, writing every day last week killed my midterms. Pretty much everything died last week. So I'm probably a total of 2 or 3 days behind. But I still did manage to write something worth showing as an excerpt. I hope you like it, because I think it's pretty good.

"There are entire races of beings so completely adverse to your planet’s philosophies that it would make your head explode.”

(Note: Harrow didn’t just use that phrase for dramatic effect. This has actually happened. Once, a race of beings who believed strongly that the dark meat of a turkey was a sacred blessing from the gods, discovered space travel and met another race of beings on a neighboring planet. This other race had a religious dictate stating that dark meat represented the temptations of a pervasive evil, and so they generally preferred white meat. The historic first contact between these races was the first time, according to current records, that two diplomatic delegates’ heads have exploded because of frustration. It was also the first time that more than one person’s head exploded simultaneously, and the first time a form of poultry was responsible for the ruination of a historic first contact as well as the beginning of a century-long war. The ensuing conflict cost billions of lives and is referred to in textbooks as “the Thanksgiving Wars.”)

So I've already screwed up and got myself behind. I'm about 2600 words behind where I wanted to be at this point, because I had no time for writing on Friday and I was incredibly lazy on Saturday. I hit some bad writer's block on Saturday, but I broke through it on Sunday and managed to make good progress. I'm particularly proud of one excerpt, which is, like much of my novel, inspired by Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It goes as follows:

The Glass was a crappy starship. Even Alvin, an ignorant earthling, could figure this out. It was originally shaped to resemble a sleek, smooth-edged, futuristic frigate. And it was, at one point; the Glass was one of a model of prototype starships made in the 1980’s (Earth time). This line of ships was designed to answer a problem which continued to plague space travel: not being able to urinate while the ship is going lightspeed. For some reason, despite all of the technological advances occurring in the universe during the ‘80s, anytime a being tried to relieve himself while his ship was at light speed, he’d end up urinating all over his front. The Glass was a prototype ship wherein the bathroom was an air-locked, light-locked vault. By completely isolating light and all its variables from the room (similar to sound-proofing a room, but involving many more over-paid scientists and government contracts), those urinating in the bathroom, as well as their urine, would not be affected by lightspeed. But because the factor of light was removed from this room, the pilots would end up taking care of business in the dark. This led to them peeing all over themselves anyway.

While this line of ships was widely considered to be an over-funded failure, several of them were still put to use as garbage scows. This led to the eventual deterioration of their once-smooth look, and the rapid increase of rust, burns, and unidentifiable alien bacteria on their hull. Large chunks had been taken off the corners and edges of the Glass, likely from ugly accidents involving heavy starship traffic. This disastrous line of ships was known throughout the galaxy as the least reliable, the least reputable, and the most odorous. Spacemen coined the term “kybo ships” as a useful, three syllable description.

It was this deteriorated ship with a legacy of disgust which Alvin saw coming down into the clearing. As far as impressing the planet Earth with superior technology, these aliens failed miserably; the Glass reminded Alvin of a retarded goose. As it got close to landing, the force of its retro jets blew dust, leaves, and small woodland animals off the clearing. The whine was so loud it sounded like there was a herd of elephants being killed inside the ship.

Starting Line - Day One

So, I've written my first 1800 words or so, and I'm excited about the options I've set up for myself, plotwise. (Hey, maybe I should mention, just one more time, that I'm excited. I don't seem to do that enough.) 1800 words isn't as bad as it sounds once you get going. Some of it is great, some of it is not so great. But that's kinda the idea. I figured I'd put up an excerpt, in the vain idea that people care enough to even be here reading it. It makes me feel important, at least.

The starry void of space that was on the large screen suddenly switched to a frowning alien. He was a perfectly humanoid alien, except for the fact that he was completely black. Not black as in skin color. This being had the basic outline of a person, but absolutely every part of his body (and any clothing he might have been wearing) was darker than a black hole. So Argon and Draxor didn’t actually know that he was frowning. They just assumed that’s what they would be doing if they were completely colorless.

“We have had a change of plans,” the alien said in a reverberating bass. “The Council has asked that we procure the subject immediately.”

“Oh,” Draxor said. “That’s dandy.”

“Ah,” Argon said.

“The situation is becoming drastic,” continued the frowning alien. “It is vital that we take the earthling off the planet now.”

“Mm-hmm,” Draxor managed while drinking orange juice.

“We had hoped that we could have more time to study the earthling’s habits, but recent events require that we move to the next stage prematurely.”

“Got it,” Argon said. Wow, he thought, my fingernails are getting kind of long…I really ought to fix that.

There's obviously not much to see here yet, especially considering that the thing hasn't started. I'm planning on putting up some excerpts from my work every week or so, so you can all see how amazing and great I am. And cool. *cough*

I'll try and update the word count every day, but I'm pretty darn lazy, and if I'm spending 2 hours a day writing 2,000 words, I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have just lying around. But you can look at my word count and root me on, 'cause I'm sure that's all you'd ever want to do. Hey, I need the support.

By the way, let's get all these freaking acronyms straight. First of all, let's take "Nanowrimo." That's short for National Novel-Writing Month. Secondly, a Nanoer, despite not being an acronym, is simply somebody who's writing a novel through NaNoWriMo. I'm sure you probably already figured that out, but I just felt ridiculous referring to somebody as a Nanoer. That's just not something you want to catch yourself saying out loud. Anyway, I hope you come check on my progress during November and give me all kinds of awesome support.

-Carl

National Novel-Writing Month Website

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