Nanowrimo and you!
 

Nanowrimo, the nonstop writing challenge for the month of November. There is a ton of information out there, so I'm going to quote off the official website.

I've always wanted to do this and this November will be my month to complete this huge goal I have of writing a novel. This is not about writing an epic novel comparable to some of the writings of past classic novelists but just about writing a novel.

I know many members of the TFP community aspire to become a writer/novelist but are held bask by the daunting aspect of actually writing a whole book. This is your chance to throw yoru writing hat in the ring and do it.

The Nanowrimo website has a ton of resources for writing your first novel and helps keep track of your progress. I wanted to throw this thread up so that people from TFP can get together and lend moral support for each other during this contest. I know I am in for this and a few other members on TFP want to try.

Who else is with me?

I'm in!

I've already signed up. You can sign up anytime and so you'll be ready to receive communications when the time comes! It looks like the site will provide you with a lot of support.

I'm still figuring out my strategy and what I'll write. But I've been telling people that I want to go in with a plan: an outline and a stable of characters. I'm thinking about dividing it up by chapter and having a structure to fill in.

I'll likely write a fantasy novel. Given the length, it won't be an epic. It might be something along the lines of Gormenghast perhaps: claustrophobic, dark, gritty. I'm not sure yet. I'm going to toss out some ideas in this thread maybe.

I signed up. I'm telling you--ninja romance is where it's at.

I've got two good ideas and one trashy pirate romanice novel floating around in my head. I'm still deciding on which one I want to write. I've always wanted to write a trashy romance novel, don't ask me why cause I have no idea.

You know, really, I'm torn. I don't think I'd be comfortable with pulling off a fantasy. I'm not deep enough into it as a genre, and so I don't think I could write enough to sustain myself.

I'm kind of flip-flopping between fantasy and either a literary quasi-realistic novel or a literary/sci-fi hybrid...an urban near-future/dystopian novel with sci-fi elements.

I'll be flinging several ideas around in this thread, so bear with me. And, please, I'd like to hear your feedback.

Over the next few months before the big month, I'll be reading widely in fiction, and also about fiction/writing. I've kicked my video game habit and now I'm saturating myself in books. This is good for my lead-up to this.

I should also start doing some writing exercises and sketches and such. I think I'm going to approach this systematically. I really want it to work.

I was talking about this with some friends of mine today, and my intention to write a ninja romance novel. They were all quite excited about it, and one of my friends had some really great suggestions for building sexual tension that I fully intend to use! It was nice to hear from some real life, non-ninja-obsessed people that hey, a ninja romance novel is a good idea, and that yeah, normal people would want to read such a thing. Yay!

You know, posting some writing exercises here would be a great way to "work" our writing muscles, let me know what kind of exercises you are going to do BG.

Also, I think you are thinking to hard about this, the point here is to write crap. I think you are letting your editor brain get in the way of just writing.

I can do that. I have a decent book that has exercises categorized by specific aspects of fiction, including plot, characterization, and setting. I can summarize/simplify/synthesize the exercises for our purposes here.

It's a bit of both, and a bit of some other stuff. I know what I'll write will be crap, but that doesn't stop the fear of judgement from doing its thing. I'm going to write a novel regardless, and that's the point. I don't see a problem with overthinking it. It's what I do.

My main concern is being able to sustain an idea worth 50,000 words flowing at a rate of 6+ pages per day.

For the record, I'm leaning back towards fantasy again. I don't know why I think I should write about the real world and real things. I've spent my life avoiding the real world and burying or otherwise twisting the bits I've been unable to avoid. Why stop that practice with fiction? It seems unnatural. The real world can kiss my ass.

Over the course of these weeks leading up to the big month, I'll try to post various generic exercises for people to try. I keep them clearly categorized so people know what they're trying to accomplish.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue reading George R. R. Martin....and maybe some more Eddings....

I'm in. I have no idea what I'll be writing about, though...hmm.

Writing Exercise #1 (Sources of Fiction)
 

Read Bible stories and then redo one.

What if Cain and Abel were actually ninjas?
What if Joseph and Potiphar's wife lived in 12th century England?

Take a story and make a variation. This will get you accustomed to the idea of taking an existing story and retelling it in a new way. It's based on the idea that there are no new stories, but simply new ways of telling them.

The sooner you come to terms with this concept, the sooner you'll get over the fact that you don't need to be completely original to be a good storyteller. Change it and make it your own.

[Note: These exercises are based on/taken from the book Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich.]

Okay, so I just had a plot breakthrough. I was tumbling around some ideas in my head while having in the background the structure of Joseph Campbell's monomyth (the hero's journey) that I've been reading about.

I have also been keeping my eye out for these elements in what I'm reading and watching. I've seen the structure crop up in various forms (deviations are key) and pop out at me while watching the first two Harry Potter movies and the second Chronicles of Narnia movie.

So what I was doing is letting these ideas I've had gestate and I found a way to connect this one recently planted seed with one that I've been developing for years, and the two clicked into a larger sustainable plot, whereas before the two separate ideas seemed to fall flat on their own. The older idea had problems of origins: Where did the character come from? Where does the story start? The recent idea had problems of development: Where is the character going? Where does the story lead? On their own, they didn't work. The character didn't have enough motivation to do anything. Nothing hooked him. And so neither idea allowed me to create a cohesive story.

Well, put the two together and I have myself a solid plot that will get a bigger story going quite easily. I think I have enough basic plot structure here to get at least one reasonably sized novel out of it, but it is a story that will need to expand beyond one book for the wider plot to resolve.

So...it's a heroic/epic fantasy story. I'll need to figure out how to tell the basic origins story I want to tell while setting up a wider scope for an overarching story. I hope to move from suspense and intrigue to all-out civil war between a crumbling kingdom and a treasonous duke.

That's all you get from me. I don't want to scare the ideas away.

Baraka, I presume you are familiar with Lord Raglan's list from his study of heroes. I know I spent way too much time in university with this.

For everyone else, the list is in the Wikipedia article about Lord Raglan. FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Actually, no, I'm not familiar with that. I didn't study myth except from a postmodern (structuralist/post-structuralist) perspective via Claude Lévi-Strauss. I spent most of my university years dismantling the idea of metanarrative, which is what is commonly found in myth.

Well, I've always found Lord Raglan a fun framework to have. One of my profs was a big fan of it. I think I have about six copies of the list in my files because Dr. Ahearn would give us a new one every time he mentioned Lord Raglan in a class. Dr. Ahearn's favorite example of its modern applicability was Luke Skywalker :lol:

Yeah, Star Wars is used as prime example of Campbell's monomyth—Lucas used the structure knowingly, as he's a big fan of Campbell's work. But it's this kind of thing that drove postmodernists mad, and to tell you the truth it is a bit counterintuitive to me because of my education. But I caught the tail end of the postmodernist movement, so I'm sensitive to the changing nature of literary theory, which is, in a way, moving towards a new kind of authenticity instead of being obsessed with ranting against and destroying artifice by playing around with it.

Hmm, this may be the format to explore the nubile-young-women-at-an-all-girl-college-caught-in-the-clutches-of-the-faculty's-neo-Nazi-satanic-cult genre. Oh, sure, it's a story as old as time itself, but can you really ever get enough stories of lesbian love between naked young women caged in the catacombs under the library, born out of the oppression of their latex-wearing, blood-drinking, sacrifice-making, physical-education-teaching jailers? I think not.

Can't wait, Fugly! :D

Writing Exercise #2 (Sources of Fiction)
 

Take one intense emotion you've experienced—envy, fear, greed—and give it to a fictional character. Make sure the character isn't you; just the emotion.

Create a scene based on this and involve another person as the antagonist.

Write two pages.

The character should come out acting quite different from you (mannerisms/traits), but the emotional conflict will be similar to yours.

I'm giving serious consideration to naming my protagonist "Harley Muff". It just might be pornstarry enough to suit my purposes.

---------- Post added at 01:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 PM ----------

Working title--Harley Muff vs. the Grammar Nazis

I would buy that in a heart beat. You should make an audio book to go along with it. Use your sexy voice.

So, to limber myself up a bit, I've given myself the assignment of writing a short story next week to work on tone and characterization. I'm leaning towards a hostage story set in a small country church involving a werewolf biker gang.

Now that I've made a post about it, I have to stick to it.

I really need to target down what I want to write about. I'm still deciding between the easy route (the trashy pirate/wench novel) and the harder route which is my Traffic set in a fantasy world. I have doubts about being able to finish the later novel. What to do, what to do.

This is why I need to get myself in the mode of writing now. My normal method is prolonged procrastination. A lot of the stuff I wrote in college was stuff hammered out in 8 hours the day before it was due. Fifty thousand words is not a lot, but it's more than I can do during one caffeine fueled death march. I need to go around the block a few times before I head to the track.

"T minus two hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds until launch...."

Good luck to my fellow NaNoWriMo participants!

I'm going in almost blindly, but I'm writing something personal and literary.

It will be an experiment, like pulling a 50,000-word novel out of my ass.

See you on the other side.

I'll check in here with word counts and experiences every so often.

Good luck BG, I'm bowing out of this. I just don't think I'll do it this year. Maybe next year.

I always forget about this until Nov 20th or something silly.

My goal is to write an hour a day in the evenings. Given that I'm not in school anymore, I'm going to view it like doing my homework.

o nice. i forgot all about this. and hey! it's 1 november.

i may try to do this---depends on schedule really as i'm pretty busy at the moment. but i've been working alot with really short forms and think it'd be good to try airing things out, spinning out more text and see what happens. try to keep the compulsive editing to a minimum.

all i'm lacking is plot, characters, setting and time.

no problem.

i'll either put stuff up about the progress, if there is any, or will cheerlead the intrepid souls who sally forth into the 30,000 word mire.

Okay, so I set sail and spent 30 minutes writing. I broke 1,000 words. So I suppose I'll need to do that 50 more times. That doesn't seem so bad looking at the numbers. I just don't know if I can remain that consistent and optimistic.

You know, because I just started. I think I might spend time doing more mapping of plot and character as I go.

I switched to doing a sword & sorcery fantasy because I chickened out of the literary thing.

The story is inspired by my cats.

Don't ask.

However, I'll give you the working title: Kira, Bloodhuntress.

ok so breaking out of the micro-formats i've been working with is a little more complicated than i expected.

initial word count: 562.

i'm not at all sure what this is about yet. i think i'm just going to roll with generating material and once there's more to play with, i'll rearrange it and see where things are.

My husband has been a great help in mapping out the plot for this sucker. I think I have a final conflict and resolution now, thanks to him. Now I've just got to write more so I can get there.

I joined a lunch group here at the office.

The good people over at "Fake AP Stylebook" have a new Twitter feed to help you with Nanowrimo: https://twitter.com/FakeNNWMTips

Ugh, work emergency interfered with my writing time last night :( so I'll have to squeeze in an extra hour somewhere.

Maybe the resulting novel from this will be so awesome that I'll never have to work again (haha,yeah right).

well, i got all the way up to 357 more words today than i had yesterday.
i kinda like this 357 though. surreal-like.


it's already obvious to me that there's no way i'm going to get to 50,000 words. no way.
but i like the idea of making a continuous project anyway over the month, even if it's too short to get me a prize.
and who knows...maybe either i won't have that much editing to do at the end or i'll figure out this whole plot, character, setting, time-frame thing and it'll speed up.

I was thinking of signing up and attempting to write a story, but I had a difficult time writing a 20 page exit exam report on wireless sensor networks, so there is no way I can write a well written story in 175 pages.

roachboy, I'm finding this to be an exercise mostly of psychology. I've quit this thing 4 times already. However, I will attempt to write again this evening.

I have two novels on the go. One will have to be culled, or perhaps integrated somehow into the other.

apparently there's a little controversy out there about nano...

PANK Blog / Breeding and Writing: Be awesome or die

pshaw, i say.

i'm still moving forward but have entirely abandoned the 50,000 word goal.
i'm looking to make a piece over 30 or so consecutive days.
it turns out that i can't really just spit text out without editing it and worrying it because where it starts and where it lands are often really different...so there's no piece without the editing.
this i have learned.

how are you folks holding up?
learning stuff?
what?

I broke 5,000 words, but I'm not sure I'll get any writing done tonight. I'll try to write heavily on weekends.

I'm learning much about the psychology behind writing and creating.
I'm also learning about work habits and the concept of "just write."

I'm not trying to produce something good; I'm just trying to produce a novel.

I imagine my hindsight on the month will greatly inform whether I choose to write a "serious" novel, or anything.

I'm toying with the idea of making December a "Write 10 Short Stories in 30 Days" and January a "Write 30 Poems in 30 Days."

I'd also be open to participating in Script Frenzy in April, whereby one must write a 100-page play (for the screen or the stage). You can have a partner for this one. I'd be open to working on something with you, roachboy, if you'd be into it.

I haven't even started writing. I've just not been able to get the quiet time to sit and just let my fingers translate over the diarrhea of thoughts I have.

I'm thinking I'm going to have less to write than I think.

Cyn, that's exactly the same issue I had (thinking I have nothing to write about). And the not starting thing apparently is an issue with many participants. Several have been known to not really start until the second half, after which they write like demons to make the deadline.

The deadline is the thing. Publicly announcing your intentions helps too.

In my own experience, I've found that writing begets writing. The thing is to write. I've read about this before and it's difficult to conceive, but once you've experienced it, you have that "a-ha" moment. At least I did.

The thing is to just write.

What I've found that works is to have a double espresso; plug my headphones into my laptop; play either soundtrack music, jazz, or classical; turn off the Internet; and just write. At first it seems to come out like crap, but then sometimes you get surges of interesting bits. The more you try, the more you get the interesting bits.

You're going to write crap. We all do. But if you write enough, you just might like some of the things that come out.

The more I've written, the more I want to do it. The more I've written the better time I seem to have of it.

I say just go ahead and do it. Worry about what comes out later.

i'd second everything bg just said.

a while ago i decided to take back my writing from academic-ese as part of my 12-step reforming program. i used the journals at tfp as a big part of that process because they were easier for me to write in than a paper journal was---never could get with that in part because i couldn't figure out who i was talking to---the idea that a few people might plausibly read what i was writing erased that bind.


learning how to write when you've got nothing to say is a good thing. it's part of building the routine.

my ex is a poet--a really good one no less----and from hanging around her and from my own experience with sound, i figured that what matters really is the doing more than the what is done, so that you write stuff more than what you write.

what i figured out is that (for me anyway) writing is mostly about a routine---setting one up and protecting it, keeping it going. over time, what you make inside that routine will change and things can start happening that never would have crossed your mind outside that space of routine doing.


so far as what you make is concerned, it's like anything else, yes? some things work better than others and some stuff sucks. the stuff that sucks i try to catch and squirrel away on my hard-drive for sometimes later when i remember it and do something else with it. very few things suck so completely that they can't be plundered. so that's the other thing: save everything.


o yeah---if you write in the morning it's easier to plunder your dreams i find. alot of what i'm playing with now comes out of sliding along these curious seams in your sense of the world that float about until the 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee hits.

i like editing, too. but that's another story.


and let yourself have fun with it. constraints are generative. having a deadline--particularly an arbitrary one---is really just a prompt to get you to crank something out. it doesn't have to be a Burden or an Ordeal. it can be playtime. you get to play with word-toys. you can make silly structures with them.

10 days.

wondering how everyone is doing who's undertaken this or thought about it.

my update: i have the bones of an interesting piece and i think---i think----i have a structure that's starting to take shape.

what i know is that i'm working a set of themes---forgetting/memory & permutations of the two---and that there are recurring images most of which seem linked to the change of season.

i have a character who appears to be ocd and who is, as best i can tell, stuck inside the front door of his apartment building unable to go outside because he's sure that if he leaves the building will burn down but that if he goes upstairs to check he'll just have to start his morning all over again, a loop that will end him up forgetting again whether he checked or not and so he'll just be unable to leave. maybe it's always been like that. i don't see quite how to save him from himself.

there are drifting other figures, geometrical problems, different people inhabiting he and she---none of them have names---they feel like different people, but it's hard to say whether that's the case for a reader.

and the past few days have turned more toward reprocessing memories, particular about radio.

my new idea is that the whole series is a kind of stamp collection.
i think there's alot that could be done with this.
interesting meta-games...

o yeah, my word count is embarrassingly small. but the pieces are tight. so there's a trade-off. i just am not gonna win the nanowrimo prize.

so how are you faring?

and any ideas about whether or how this space could help things along?

I'm sitting at just over 7,100 words.

I'm going through a mix of things. Apparently Week Two of the contest is notorious because it's the week during which the lion's share of participants drop out.

I've found it especially the case that this is more so a psychological challenge more so than it is an artistic or creative challenge. I keep wanting to drop out. I keep telling myself I could be doing something else with my energy. Like getting a better job, like reading more, like writing a "real" novel and taking my time with it. You know, the grass is greener.

I slipped on the weekend. I intended on doing a bunch of writing to keep on pace, but I didn't write a single word. I didn't do much of anything. I tried not to think of the book.

Silver lining: I've found that the last two or three thousand words were much easier to write than the first five or so. I think this is because I have the shell of a story now: I have characters, I have the makings of a setting, I have a plot, I have a plot trigger that can lead to a climax. I just need to keep going. Keep on keepin' on. I need to stop thinking about it too much. I need to just work on it.

I just restocked my coffee stores. I have a machine now that makes a quick single-serving cup of coffee—much less work than before, much less setup, much less cleanup. Fuel.

I really want to hit some kind of stride and do most of the work needed to still make the deadline with 50,000 words. Wow, 50,000, it seems so far away sitting at ~7,100 and 10 days in. The work will need to be backend-heavy. I see a pressing need for it, but that's what deadlines do to you.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that another stall for me was fighting off the flu over the past two nights. I hope to continue writing tonight now that I'm feeling better.

I've been so busy that it's not even funny. I'm at about 500 words.

i'm at something like 3200.
i thought i'd be able to just write out stuff, but apparently i've trained my edit function too well for that.
but i think it's ok.

Word count: 13,703

It's now just past the halfway point in November. I just passed the quarter point in the word count goal of 50,000 (I'm sitting at 27.4% completion).

Some observations:

• I'm still doubtful and I still contemplate quitting (psychologically I'm still quitting, telling myself I'm done with it only to sit down to the story again).
• My hangups include: "The story's going nowhere." "There is no story." "It's not was I had in mind." "It's not the kind of story I want to tell." "It's not any good." etc.
• I find it increasingly difficult to sit down to write. I've missed entire days, especially weekends when I have the most time/energy to write.
• I find it increasingly easier to write when I do sit down.
• The more I write, the more ideas I get.
• An outline would have made writing this easier, but I don't know if I could have come up with the storyline I have thus far.
• A storyline is developing. I can feel it.
• I'm getting over the concerns with quality. I don't care if my descriptions are sparse/missing, my character actions are wooden, my dialogue is confusing, etc., there is something I'm building, and I can make more sense of it with future revisions if I want to.
• Much of what I've written is front-ended. So in sense I've been hammering out the "boring" stuff and still have the exciting stuff to write. Maybe this will make it easier to up my daily word count.
• I've built one hell of an awesome soundtrack library on my iPod for listening while writing this thing.

I've just not had time to sit down and write again. I've been writing report after report after report. Maybe I should just use those narratives as scenes.

so today is day 18. how are you faring with the project?

i've been putting mine up in my blog, but it's in reverse order so is hard to read as a project in that form. what's useful for me anyway is that i can read the parts as isolated bits and see if they work on their own.

i gave up on the word limit pretty early on, but i think the piece is much bigger than the number of words would have you think because it's so much about forgetting and erasure and blank spaces around and inside of what you remember.

it's moving in and out of memory and dream materials, mixing the two up, mapping one onto the other.

there are some abrupt direction shifts. not sure whether they're problematic or just part of the machinery.

i still have no plot or real characters. there's no actual story. i think it's fun to read though.

and your project?
and you with the project?

well, here we are. nano is a completed cycle. i have 32 new pieces, but only 8800 words. but that's ok.

i made a long cycle about forgetting.
i think there's good stuff in it---actually there's only one segment i have real questions about at this point. but it's time to put it away for a little while. maybe.

how have you made out over the this nano-month?
how far did you get?
are you pleased with the outcome?

what's the next step?

I've been perusing your pieces, comrade, and you should be pleased. Although you fell quite short of "winning" the official NaNoWriMo, you did well to reinvent what the experience means to you. I think that's fantastic.

Whether this becomes a core for something you can expand on later, after it has fermented, or if you take away from the experience an insight in the writing process, it would seem to me that you had a good month.

I myself can say the latter. I learned a lot about the process of writing—the psychological and the physiological. I fell just shy of 17,000 words at the midpoint of the month before I hit a wall, which I think happened because I was writing without an outline. Without an outline, a plot-based story gets unwieldy and fast. I felt I wasn't making the story go anywhere productive, that I was wandering, and so I came to a halt.

I originally went on with the intention to work on outlining, but I seem to have lost interest in the story, at least for now. I'm not sure I want to continue it. I'm not sure this is the kind of writing I enjoy. But I do enjoy writing, but I need to find out how to make the process more naturalized—that is, inclined more towards my strongest and most heartfelt curiosities—and not so forced. It felt like I was pretending, like I was writing into a genre or towards an audience rather than for the sake of writing fiction itself. I'd like to think writing should be about what you want to create rather than what you think you should create.

That's what I've learned, and so now I'm reevaluating my approach to writing. I've been doing some soul searching. I've been thinking about weather I want to continue with fantasy and explore the genre more from a readerly and theoretical perspective to get a firmer grasp on it. I've been looking underneath the hood with regard to Tolkien's writings on fantasy (Faerie-stories) and the idea of myth-making. I'm not sure this is where I want to go. I do know want to avoid the trap of cliche and genre fodder, and so I want to steer clear of conventional fantasy, namely, epic and heroic fantasy trilogies and the like. I'm not even sure I want to write genre fiction at all, as I'm not sure I even fully enjoy it as a reader.

I'm learning a lot about my aesthetic sensitivities, and this, I think, is what it comes down to. My approach to writing fiction is more artistic than it is something that is merely fun. I don't want to write fiction that is merely entertaining; I want it to have some artistic merit as well. I'm not saying that fantasy or other genre writing is devoid of art; I'm saying that I must determine what form my approach to fiction will take. I'm doubtful it will be as fantasy or other mainstream genre writing. Magic realism, perhaps? I don't know.

Like I said, I have soul searching to do. I think this month essentially opened up a can of worms, which I think is a good thing. I've been sitting on the fence and waffling for a long time now. Jumping into something, even if I consider the output a "failure," was in itself a success, and I consider myself a victor of sorts, as I have vanquished (at least this once) one of the greatest enemies of the arts: fear.

thanks, comrade.

it's been an interesting experience. i had initially considered trying to get closer to the 50k but found that i'd adapted my mode of writing around the time constraints that i work with tightly enough that it was really difficult to move away from them.

i have to split my working time up. i like to write in the morning but i only have an hour or a little more, depending on when i get up. so i generate material as i'm having the initial coffee. maybe that's why the writing is so dream-like in places: coffee doesn't chase them away immediately.

then i start moving things around...more often than not i don't know exactly where a piece is going to go. it comes together out of the rearranging and cutting process. sometimes it just requires moving a sentence in a sequence. other times it takes longer.

then i have to walk the wonder husky and move into work mode. i usually steal and hour or so when i first arrive to edit.

i found it really interesting to work with notions of forgetting. you can't talk about forgetting without talking about remembering, but trying to combine the two pushes you to pay attention to holes and gaps in what you remember and not fill them in. it also nudges toward the similarities between remembering and dreaming and seems to make it easier to let one drift into the other.

stuff that was happening in real time would show up warped through the thinking and dreaming.

since i didn't really have anything like a plotline, only a motif linked to a procedure, i decided that i would try when i could to work in repetitions and variations on smaller elements. that turned out to be easier than i thought because my brain doesn't move that fast and the things that occupied me at a detail level a month ago still do now. apparently.

there is an intertwining with a woman that always happens in exactly the same way. all that changes are the details of it.

there's a curious obsession with birds falling out of the sky because---i think----it's like flying except more irregular. maybe.

there's the creeping-in of fall. for example, i know the yellow dot clouds were leaves stuck on trees the branches of which were too far away for me to make out through the window of my apartment that looks out over the marsh. and there's the marsh. always the marsh, it seems.

i had an idea that fall and cold meant a slowing of movement within systems (bio-systems, but in general) and that an effect of slowing would be the opening up of gaps, which doubled the forgetting procedure.

so it turned into a pretty tight little game with some arbitrary bits that turned up now and then (seeing the woman in the leopard print dress; playing congas; etc.)

the bits from my past are all altered by these procedures.
my mother's quite offended about what i did to the uncle jim story for example. she claims it never happened. i'm not so sure.

i feel like i'm following a process at this point, one that's taking a pretty definite shape--by this i mean the writing thing as a whole, not just nano-space. it's taken a long time to get to this starting point. i'm getting more stuff published and am starting to get asked to make new things for publication by people i don't know personally. so something's going on.

my plan is to keep going.
i don't have a real plan beyond that.
we'll see, i suppose.