This is a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be.As I continue to work on my Nano book/musical, High School Yearbook, I am pleasantly surprised with its depth in plot and the gentle steer away from stereotyping my leads. When I was planning out the story, I was a little embarrassed with how pop-ish it seemed and how Disney-esque the whole story line felt. Some of my students (for those who don’t know, I teach high school and advise our school’s yearbook team) wanted it to be exactly like High School Musical, where I would write more of a fan fiction piece than an original story. This would have been easy to do, of course. Just watch the movie and plug in “yearbook” every time they said musical. Change a few of the names, and you are set.But I knew that, by doing any such thing, I would be compromising my own vision of this story; I would fall into that trap of reinventing the wheel and wasting my time on something that would never, could never get published.So I broke every rule and did not study the tapes.

Yes, I confess. I am writing High School Yearbook, and I have never watched High School Musical.

I get the main idea, though, and I’m running with it, using every stitch of previous knowledge I’ve gained about working with yearbook teams over the past 20-plus years. What I’m realizing is that these teams that I’ve worked with are micro-dramas capturing all that is real to the rest of us, regardless of our age. The concepts of love, fitting in, doing your best, and working together are universal themes that, even if you’ve never worked on a yearbook team, you can relate, even if you’ve found yourself on the other end of any of these concepts.

Maybe that’s what is so fun about this: I’m writing about you, about me, about the rest of the world, and I’m having the time of my life doing it.

First, my kudos to Carl for his incredible R.I.P. Challenge that concluded this week. I am deeply sorry that I did not participate more by posting about the readings. Carl, you got me reading nonetheless, and I thank you for that. Keep up the great work, Friend. You inspire many.

Second, I’m done committing myself to any Challenges online for awhile. I keep trying to do these things, and I keep falling way, way short.

Third, as if this seems foolish to write after I just said no more challenges, I’ve begun my third annual NanoWriMo challenge, which is to write a book during the month of November. Believe it or not, I was successful in my previous two attempts (and the first year’s fruit, Journey to Cold Rock, will be released in March 2008–pushed back a little because of some last-minute necessary revisions). I had planned on writing a serious, deep novel about a person who learns he has a gift to heal, but I opted for the much less serious, more superficial book that spins off of High School Musical and is aptly called, High School Yearbook. I’ll post excerpts here whenever I get excited enough about a particular passage or chapter. So…stay tuned!

Fourth, I’m Back on my Mac! It’s old, it’s taped together, but it WORKS, and now that I figured how to be a little creative with Comcast, I should be back online more regularly. . .

woohoo!
Fifth, more meaningful stuff to come later tonight/tomorrow. Just had to share the good news that I’m finally back with a computer in front of me! WooHoo!!!!!

4:15 a.m.

Uploaded my still incomplete novel a few moments ago….Total word count submitted: 51,777. I’m feelin’ really good about this. Second year in a row I’ve written 50K in the month of November, although this work is still unfinished–unlike last year’s book, which I was able to type “The End” on 11/30 and feel like I had a complete draft to play around with. I’ve still got a good 15K to go for this book before those lovely two words can be typed after three hard returns and a shift to the center of the page….

Now, I should probably try to get an hour or two of sleep, because at 9 I need to be at the courthouse for jury duty….That’s right! They selected numbers 50 through 687. And because I’m number 625, that makes me the big jury winner….

Wouldn’t that be great if they gave you juror door prizes or parting gifts?

And special thanks go to Juror no. 7, who leaves us today with a brand new blender and a $20 gift card to Kameras R Us! We think he did just a great job of intimidating Juror no. 2 to change her vote to convict! Congrats, Juror no. 7! We hope to see you back here real soon!

Ah, yes. Sleep is a definite priority for me right now!

I’ll update when I return. I can’t wait! I’m taking HP and the Half-Blood Prince with me, as well as my Moleskine Reporter’s Journal (I have a Moleskine for every occasion!) and “plenty of quarters for the vending machines” as the district court’s recorded message advised me to do in my special instructions phone call….

Enjoy the day, all! And for those of you who are wrapping up your books or who are blogging for the 30th straight day….waHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Congrats to you!!!

Those of us who are writing novels or blogging daily in the month of November are facing the home stretch; many of us are being asked many of the same questions, so I thought that I’d address some of them here…

Q: Will you finish?

A: Of course we will. It’s what we do, we crazy writers. We set a goal to write 50K in one month, and we do it. We never said it was going to be pretty (although some great things do happen when you write 50K in one “sitting”).

Q: Is any of it good?

A: It’s all good, if you ask me. It’s a vomit draft, and therefore it serves its purpose to have words on a page to work with. This activity, this exercise in writing, is making the clay–lots of clay–to spend a whole year molding into something worthy of sending off for representation.

Q: What happens after you finish?

A: You take a breather–at least I do. Last year, I took off two weeks before I just had to jump back in and start working with what I had just written. Some people take a longer break. I think that there is another nationally sponsored revision month (maybe March) where you spend a certain number of hours in the month revising what you wrote in November. I can’t wait that long. It took me a full year to revise Cold Rock, which was last year’s Nano creation.

Q: What’s this final week going to look like for you?

A: It’s going to look a lot like the screen on my laptop. Virtually every possible minute will be spent on this draft to make sure I make the November 30 deadline. That means night time sleeps turn into short naps whenever absolutely necessary. It means lots and lots of coffee and very little sugar (causes too many quick crashes, which is devastating for any artist). It means I send my internal editor on a week-long trip to the Bahamas so that he doesn’t try and stop me from finishing.

In a nutshell, it means insanity.

And I love every minute of it.

:)

For the last 14 days (including today), I have been working on a novel for National Novel Writing Month (Nano) that is requiring too, too much of my time. It’s not that I don’t want to invest the time in to this story line, it’s the fact that it just cannot–nor it should not–be done in 30 days.

So. I am, on Day 14 here, tabling all of my work on The Pact and beginning anew with a stream of consciousness piece aptly titled, Seventeen Days in November.

This will be the ultimate of discovery drafts for me, and I’m not sure what I will end up sharing with my larger community, if any of it. I am committed to writing 50,000 words this month, though, so I may very well produce something worthy of posting here. . . .

Did I mention it’s good to be back?

I have one more major deadline to complete for a pub that’s going to press for release on Saturday, and then I’ll be free to post on a more-daily routine…I can’t wait to trip on over to all of your sites as well and see what y’all have been up to in the last few weeks.

Love to all, and in peace,

Good night. :)