NaNoWriMo 2012 - Day 5
Nov. 5th, 2012 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyseishou posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
nano_writersDon't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
— Voltaire

Today's word count is 8,335 Nano Writer! And something to keep in mind: every word counts - even the ones that might seem too big or too small or just not quite right. Remember that you're writing a rough draft this month - it's not suppose to be perfect - but it needs to be written!
Questions? Comments? Funny or weird typos to share? It's all go odd ;-) So keep writing!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 08:36 am (UTC)ETA: Now at 16,400, so I've now met my writing goal for today, too. It's not even 9am yet. *proud sniffles.*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 03:49 pm (UTC)Wrote a scene I wasn't expecting to be as sad as it was. Three of my characters have ended up watching their hometown burn to the ground. The whole city is on fire, burnt by the soldiers to 'cleanse' it of disease. The whole place is being destroyed before their very eyes. They realise in that moment that they can't go back because there'll be nothing to go back to.
Also, I now have another character! The city was being guarded by a bull spirit, and it decided to flee and help my guys out. I thought he'd speak more, though.
I'm also getting a better idea of how to structure this fic, which is great. I've been waiting for it to settle so I can get a better idea of how to progress the plot.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 06:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 04:38 pm (UTC)Which means I am now behind on my word count. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 04:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 05:11 pm (UTC)So out goes Lowell, in goes Quimby (this involved trying to find pics of Quimby as well as a blueprint for the floors), and the whole geographical scape of Chapter One is changed as he is no longer running down the wooded hill side behind Lowell but in the crux of the wards looking up at Quimby.
*wrenching hair from head in frustration*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 05:18 pm (UTC)I may be getting overly hopeful; I think this experience is helping me a lot, though. I feel like churning stories and going about research after this will get a lot easier.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 05:45 pm (UTC)Yours sounds wonderful and I am jealous as hell that you are already at your mark. I still need to write 1000 words today just to be on target! And so much of the plot has to be reworked with the new information coming out. *heavy sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:14 pm (UTC)What sucks is that I spent nearly a year researching it and have put out so many calls to everyone from the UMass Med School to Harvard to Worcester Preservation Society for info on Lowell, which is where the action in my story was to take place. (Basically it is the mystery of a little boy who lived there, based on a comment I once read in the archives by a person who said she "grew up in Lowell Home".)
My friend Kate Anderson has published two books on WSH and photographed the grounds extensively prior to the demolition and she had no idea what went on in Lowell. It turns out she knows the guy from this blog
http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/
He helped her on her last novel. So I was like "WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME ABOUT HIM??????????????????????????????????????"
And now I am working with him to get some solid info to make story hold up under scrutiny.
His off the cuff remarks about Gage and Lowell blew me out of the water.
Hun, if I get 1000 readable words a day, I am thrilled. THRILLED.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:16 pm (UTC)Anyway, good luck! You're making me glad I'm not committing to a specific region beyond 'it has deciduous trees' lol.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:21 pm (UTC)I was trained as an historian and published academically prior to giving fanfiction a shot. This is my first attempt at original fiction.
It's killing me. Clearly academia had ruined me for life. I need to just enjoy Caleb Carr and Alex Grecian and throw in the towel while I am ahead...
*mopemopemope*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 07:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 11:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 01:36 am (UTC)Grad school makes everything unfun. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 03:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 03:35 am (UTC)I'd kill myself first.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 06:32 am (UTC)But that said, I can relate to your frustration! It seems no matter how much research I've done beforehand something always comes up in the writing that I don't know or is just wrong. What I try to do is make a note and move on, trusting I will be able to fix it later.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 02:28 pm (UTC)Here's an excerpt of why the grounds matter so much:
He climbed Hospital Drive, glancing but not seeing the sights left and right. He drove past the cottages and massive trees, past Hale and the remnants of the archway that had once been the entrance to the great asylum. Cars lined the road from Belmont to the Clocktower and he wondered why troublemakers were accommodated in this manner. The next thing you knew the city would be supplying busses to bring them in en masse. He really had to wonder about the goals of democratic society at times like these. He sighed. But his thoughts were interrupted by the presence of orange and white barriers on Clocktower Drive, blocking his entrance.
and
On a whim he turned to travel northeast towards the lake. He skirted the commotion on the other side, taking the overgrown path past the maintenance buildings that were tucked behind Sargent Hall, connected to the greater structure only by a series of tunnels used for heating and transport. He meant to travel across to Innovation Drive, down to where the old cottages stood. From there it was an easy skip to Belmont. Then he would be home again, safe and sound on that terrible terrible day.
Again his thoughts flickered between past and present. Even the names of the streets would change in the new order. Innovation Drive. How very novel it must all have seemed back then. How excited they must have been to be on the brink of discovery. They were like gods, standing in judgment over the lesser members of society. Too well did he understand the importance of that position, had known it from his earliest childhood years. He had felt it in the way he was addressed as a child, as if he were a little lord, had seen it in the creases on his father’s brow, deepening with strain over the decades as the asylums came under fire for their practices.
and
The room was exactly as he remembered – wood paneled walls with pencil marks still visible. They used to laugh about it, shining their flashlights up onto the arcane numbers – marks the carpenters had forgotten to erase before they applied the varnish. Honestly the workers were so hopeless. But no one expected much of the laboring class. They had no education back then. His father’s predecessor had spoken of educating the attendants to improve the quality of care but once again economic reality buried that ideal. Willie’s was the first generation that attended school alongside “proper folks” and actually stood a chance of bettering itself. That was innovative – the concept of bringing the poor up to a better standard. Everything done then was done for the greater good. Noblesse oblige in America. He wondered fleetingly when those ideals had perished. Sometime around Viet Nam probably. The leveling of America.
In short, for him to walk the grounds being demolished and have it trigger memories of childhood, I need to know the grounds COLD.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 04:33 pm (UTC)And it's really wonderful that the actual asylum has been so inspirational for your writing. But as far as re-writing your novel so that the narrative reflects the real facts as you have uncovered them to date, how uncomfortable would you be with a preface that stated "a fictional work as inspired by..." Or in other words, how important to you is it that your story faithfully adhere one hundred percent to the facts that might be only known to a very limited audience for your novel?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:02 pm (UTC)I am most influenced by historical fiction and I would be lying through my teeth if I said I didn't want to be the next Caleb Carr. :) When I read The Alienist (or Findley's Pilgrim or Grecian's The Yard) what I loved most was the historical accuracy. I think that is just from my training as an historian.
I originally started the story as fanfiction -- I was going to have a vampire coming out of the horrors of Ellis Island in 1911 discover the work of Jung and Freud and become a professor at Clark University. The asylum was chosen simply because of its proximity to Clark.
And then I saw the building.
Is it possible to fall in love with an inanimate object? :D I took one look at the building and was smitten. Then I fell in with a group of urban explorers who had been breaking into the buildings for decades. They had worked on Shutter Island (as experts as well as extras -- they KNEW the layout and how to get the cameramen where they needed to be for shots) and a whole new adventure began. I amassed a large collection of photos and videos from when the structure still stood and was put in touch with a number of psychiatrists who actually worked there.
So, I think it is my love for the physical structure that comes across in my character. I've put the awe and passion in him -- albeit supressed by years of being part of the establishment. The story is him recovering that sense of wonder -- the years of childhood when Worcester was a world unto itself. Witnessing its demolition unleashes those feelings.
Does that make any sense??????
PS I cried when they the wrecking ball hit the clocktower. :(((
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:22 pm (UTC)But... don't become enslaved by the details while writing your first draft. It's not cheating to use a "marker" of some kind that you can search for later to add to your list of "things you need answers for" (I use "xxx" as in "He knew komi for the Chinese games was xxx" and "komi" is a real word used by Go pros but that's another story ;-) Yeah, I know that "xxx" will be counted as a word but I also know that it's something that I'll be adding later (as opposed to writing something like "xxxx xxx and xxx").
So keep writing! Make notes for yourself to be added to your next draft. The important thing is to get the story down on paper so-to-speak and sweat the details later!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:55 am (UTC)Don't delete anything because you never know what you might salvage of it later - if even the phrasing of a sentence.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 02:36 pm (UTC)He rounded the corner past Hale and the great structure came into full view. It had been planned that way, every angle considered by the architects so that it would be a presentation of magnificence from every side, causing the observer to stop and admire its beauty. Had people once criticized the addition of the red brick when they ran out of stone? What fools. It was perfection, the symmetry and elegance unlike anything else. The kirkbride structures were unique in many aspects but of them all only Worcester was u-shaped, its wings spiraling back on itself, reaching inward as they went outward. The detail allocated even the steps to the ____________
Description of buildings here
He thought that he could close his eyes and now exactly how many steps were between each ward. He had run the corridors and paths, skipped across them, strolled down them, crept over them in the dead of night. He knew where some of the walkways had been dug up to allow for an expansion of the road and the creation of parking lots. He knew why the triangular patch existed.
Now obviously that's no way to get a word count, but is it allowed? I did that in several places when I felt I didn't have the info necessary to write a part.
????
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 08:38 pm (UTC)I did find a very useful site yesterday: because I've only really played up to DPPt, I have no idea what moves introduced in BW/BW2 look like, plus I can't recall some other moves either. However, someone on Youtube has done attack showcases for all moves, grouped by type \ ^_^ /
Total wordcount: 14,887, of which 2,682 written today.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 08:51 am (UTC)It has been a good inspiration so far: a lot of resource sites have the moves described but I need to see them in action to get an idea of how to adapt them.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 11:36 pm (UTC)I have to beef it up tonight, during football because tomorrow is election day and since I didn't go out today, I have to go tomorrow.
And ohai mental health, I didn't miss you. Sigh.
Anyway. Yeah, back to the grind.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-06 05:16 am (UTC)