Writing about writing

That’s it! With a whole day to spare, I managed to finish my NaNo book! I seriously couldn’t feel better about myself right now, not only did I manage the starting 50.000 words goal, I managed to do all 26 chapters, reaching a whopping 133.558 words in total! Now I’m going to read through the whole damned thing, add and deduct where needed be, and then I’m declaring it done. This means I will be posting it here soon enough, and this time I’m just going to upload the whole damned piece at the same time.

I feel kind of confident about it, for the first time ever, I actually feel like I’ve written something genuinely good. It might be delusions of sleep deprivation and caffeine poisoning speaking, but seriously, I think I did well. I cried a lot, but I also managed to do just what I wanted to do, and the ending turned out better than I expected. I’m happy, I’m so fucking happy right now, even if I am terribly tired, over worked and looking forward to my vacation.

I’m listening to Andy Black, Kuba Oms, Marianas Trench and many more; smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol free apple wine. Soon enough I’ll get to that reading, but right now, I just want to sit back and do this for a little while. I have done nothing but write for the past month, I think I deserve a moment to just sit and feel good about myself.

At the same time, I feel a little sad that the project is over. Some things you just don’t want to end, and this is definitely one of them, I could have written about these characters for all eternity and without ever growing sick of them. Oh Michael Mayhem, you really went and did a number on me.

Speaking of, I changed the title in the very last minute! I have this old tattoo (well actually it’s part of a much bigger tattoo), that says, “We dream about surviving”. And trust me, nothing could fit this book any better than those words, so that’s what I ended up naming it, instead of “Murder Michael Mayhem”. After I switched a chapter around (which made me have to rewrite the whole damned thing, but that’s another story entirely), it didn’t quite fit anymore. “We dream about surviving” does, in fact, I couldn’t come up with anything more appropriate for those words. I always thought I was going to make that into a book some day, and there it is, all done and in a month none the less.

It still feels bittersweet, but you know… All good things come to an end, and this one… Well, this one was definitely good. I’ve learned a lot through writing this, the main one being: Don’t ever write that many words a day ever again. Or well, at least not until next November. I also learned that writing a first-person narrative is what I should do, it really works well for me. Sure, it limits some things, but I really love writing that way. Present tense is definitely a go to too, it gives me something I’ve never had before, as I’ve only ever written in third-person past tense before. Odd how I switched that completely around, but I learn well from trial and error.

Now for my vacation, I simply can’t wait! Me and my best friend have tons of plans, watching all kinds of Christmas shit, playing video games, drawing, painting, you name it we got it! I think it was yesterday when I realized that one of the many inspirations to my NaNo book was a painting I did, so yeah, definitely going to do more of that! I’ve got these huge wooden boards lying around, taking up half my living room really, and I’m going to cover them in digital artwork, just painting till I drop!

Speaking of best friend, she just texted me, and now I’m going to go hang out with her, and celebrate my huge victory!

It’s borderline insane, but I would literally rather do my dishes than write the ending of my NaNo novel. In fact I am, right now there’s a bunch of dishes soaking in the sink, and writing this blog post is just another method of procrastination. I’m listening to new music, I’m lying in bed, I’m watching Adventure Time, anything really, to push the ending away. Now I have written a lot of depressive shit in my day, but nothing quite as bad as this. I fell in love with my characters, but unfortunately, things doesn’t work out well for them. I try not to think too much about it, but once in a while, I’ll just sit staring blankly off into space, and it’s the only thing I can think about. I’m a sensitive guy, you know, I cry about a lot of fictional shit. Yet have I to manage sitting through the entire “The Fountain” without crying. It’s a movie, look it up if you want to have a seriously bad day.

I’ve discovered that writing – to me – is really just a creative way of self-torture. I manage to make myself depressed every single time I work on something big, every single fucking time, I manage to go all in on the sad stuff. This one is particularly bad, I really wish I didn’t have to write this ending, if anything, I’ve tried wrapping it into something happy quite a few times, without any kind of success. If something starts bad, it ends bad, that’s just the way it works with classic tragedies. Why oh why can’t I just write fucking comedy for once? Well, not this time at least, I hate it, but it has to end badly.

Once in a while I wish I hadn’t used this for NaNo. It’s long, I’ve already passed 120.000 words, I could have stretched it across at least three or four months if it hadn’t been for my NaNo obsession. Then again, it’s like a band aid. You can hope it falls off on its own, but in the end you’re going to have to pull at the damned thing, and the longer you wait, the more it just hurts like a motherfucker. Might as well do what you set out to do, and get rid of it in a month.

Except for NaNo and my many, very deliberate ways of not finishing, nothing is really going on in my life. There’s NaNo, and that’s about it. I have little to no social life, I survive on coffee and cigarettes, I stay indoors because I can’t stand being around other people, and I feel like crying all the time. Fucking depressing really. I doubt I’ll leave the apartment before December 1st, at its earliest. I just can’t fucking deal.

I would put in an anecdote about a guy I’ve had a crush on for the past eight or nine years, who might just come and visit me soon, when for once, both of us are single. Then again, that might actually go and make this blog post just the slightest bit of uplifting, and that certainly ain’t what I’m aiming for here. So fuck off, I’m just gonna go sob over the dishes.

We are now halfway through November, and I’m still pushing persistently forward through NaNo. I’ve reached 78.000+ and I haven’t even updated my word count of the day. It’s hard, but I’m a stubborn little bugger, and I strive to keep my average at around 5K. So far I’ve had one slip-up day, where I only wrote about 3.500, but yesterday I fought a hard battle to get it back up there. I’m a little proud of myself, actually, and I’m starting to believe that I’ll make it on time, and getting through November without dying and/or killing someone who isn’t fictional.

Killing off fictional characters is a dream come through though. Never in my entire life have I written something as violent as “Murder Michael Mayhem”, it’s insane. Once in a while I have to stop, think about how fucked up I am, and then continue with another murder. The massive amounts of sex-scenes just adds to it, I know for certain that this book belongs in the Extreme Graphic Content category.

Back when I wrote my first sex scene, about a year ago, I thought I’d die from embarrassment, and spend half the time just walking in circles (literally, I got up off the chair, and paced around the living room). I’ve gotten better though, not just in regards to content, but also handling it. Yes, it will take everything out of me to post it online, but then again, I like those scenes and I think they fit in quite nicely where I placed them. So far I’ve got maybe four or five sex scenes throughout the book, and my bet is there will be more. Not sure though, but it seems a little unlikely that I won’t cram in more.

As some may have noticed, I have removed “Swaying Between Worlds”. While I’ve been writing “Murder Michael Mayhem”, I’ve caught on to maybe 8.000.000 flaws and mistakes in “Swaying Between Worlds”, and as such, I’m going to rewrite the whole damned thing. I still think the basic idea is good, I just made too many fuck ups, for me to keep posting it in its current state. I’ve made myself a wanna be schedule, that has no dates or deadlines, just things I want to do, and what order I want to do them in.

• First I’m going to get through November, and hopefully, finish “Murder Michael Mayhem” on time.
• Second I’m going to take a well-deserved vacation, hopefully I’ll be able to relax for a week, not glancing at anything writing-related.
• Third I’m considering trying to write a story for one of the many sci-fi magazines out there. Not entirely sure about that one yet though, but I might.
• Fourth I’m going to throw all my energy into making new notes and basically rebuild everything that has to do with “Swaying Between Worlds”.
• And then finally, I’ll begin the actual writing of “Swaying Between Worlds”, all over again.

I’m looking forward to all of that, as stressful as it is to do this NaNo thing, I truly love writing the book, and I hope I get to finish it on time. Writing a short story, something I hardly ever do, sounds like a lot of fun, a challenge in its own. Diving back into “Swaying Between Worlds”, even if it does mean redoing the whole damned thing, sounds like yet another dream come true. And I guess the whole vacation concept won’t be too bad either. I think I’ll need it, if anything, I think I’ll just sleep through most of it.

But for now, all my focus goes to “Murder Michael Mayhem”. I’m closing in on the depressing part, which is killing me softly, but that’s just the way it’s got to be. Not everything can be kittens and candy, sometimes shit just goes down, and everything fucks up.

I think that’s all for now, I better go get dressed now, and go for my usual midday walk.

I guess it really is time to give an update on the whole NaNo experience, something I probably should have done days ago, but I simply haven’t had the time to do. Why no time? Well because of NaNo of course! I am a horrible overachiever, and as such, I have set myself some highly unrealistic goals, that will surely be the end of me. Never the less, here I am, trying to fit in a little blog post right in the middle of dying due to stress.

When I started planning, it came out no less than 26 chapters. Therefore I obviously set myself the goal of doing a chapter a day, giving me little wiggle-room near the end, and still be done with the entire novel on time. Now in the last book I wrote, the chapters were roughly 4000-4500 words long. With “Murder Michael Mayhem”? Not so much. If anything they are scoring around 5500-6000(!!!) words per chapter, which is a fuck load to do every single day. Trust me when I say, I’m going to need that wiggle-room. Apparently bloody murder, gay sex scenes, plot and character development takes up a fucking lot of words! Who would have thought?!

Now if I keep this up, the book will come out way above 100.000 words. That is… A lot. What I thought would be this nice little side-project, grew into an outright monster, but I love it! I love this story so fucking much, it breaks my heart from time to time (and that’ll only get worse), but I really think it’s worth the trouble. It’s only November 9th, and already I’m closing in on 50.000 words. In fact, with the rate I’m going, I’ll get there tomorrow. In 9 days I have written exactly 44.763 words. Wow. I cannot believe it.

On the other hand, I have no school, no job, and close to no social life. My brain turns to mush at least once a day, where I have to force myself away from the computer, go for a walk and get some fresh air. And when I get back? Well I sit down and I write some more. Of course I do. I’m obsessed with reaching this insane goal, and I really think I can do it. Sometimes I simply stop understanding words, like it’s complete gibberish, and I might as well be trying to write a novel in Russian. It’s almost surreal, this is by far the hardest task I have ever taken upon myself, but fuck I love it! If nothing gets in my way, I’ll definitely be doing NaNo again next year, and the year after that, and you probably get where I’m going with this.

My advice to anyone wishing to do NaNo though? Well, don’t do what I do. What I do is borderline insane, and cannot be recommended to anyone. I survive off caffeine and nicotine, I sleep as little as I can get away with, and I barely leave the apartment. It’s not a healthy way of doing anything, so if you should ever do NaNo, don’t do it like this. Seriously. It might turn out incredibly rewarding to me, to have written an entire (really long) novel in 30 days, but still… It’s really not very healthy.

Now though, it’s past my bedtime. At least if I want to catch just a little amount of sleep, before getting up early, and repeat the entire process. Work, work, fuck damn it, I love my work!