So NaNoWriMo was a bust for me this year, as I’ve given up only ten days in. Why did I wash out this year when finished in 2006?

No one to race against. One of the big motivators for me in 2006 was racing against my writing partner, Josh Curry of Maximum Geek. Josh sat out this year, preferring to spend his time doing schoolwork for his degree, like higher education is important or something. So I was pretty much going it alone, and couldn’t rely on anyone else to push me.

Lack of incentives. Other than keeping the blog going, I didn’t really have anything to reward me when I did well, nor any negative consequences if I didn’t make my quota. Again, this is where self-discipline should have kicked in, but if I had strong self-discipline, I might be fundamentally unqualified to be a writer.

And there’s one reason I thought might be factor, but I won’t use: lack of time. I’ve had time if I’d really wanted to write. In the past week, I’ve installed OneCare on both my desktop and laptop, cloned and then reconsidered the Windows 7 user interface on XP (I’ll do a writeup of this later), how to blog in OneNote, rebuilt my phone around Kinoma instead of BeyondPod and AudiblePlayer, then back to BeyondPod again, watched nearly all three seasons of "How I Met Your Mother" and found lots of other ways to waste time I could have spent writing.

Too afraid to screw up a book I care about. This is the big one. I know now why Chris Baty makes it a rule not to use pre-existing material for NaNoWriMo. I was rules-lawyering my way around that prohibition by starting an entirely new draft of Ghost Ronin, but I’ve had this story developing in my mind for damn near two decades now. I’ve done years of research for it, have the 17 chapters of the book planned out in some detail, and oddly, that very preparation is what killed me.

NaNoWriMo is based on what Anne Lamott calls “shitty first drafts,” something that no matter how much I understand the concept intellectually I can’t manage to internalize. I kept freezing up, not wanting to get anything “wrong”. While I know I have to work through this eventually if I want to ever finish anything, I doubt it’s going to happen this month. Ghost Ronin’s firm structure and abundant research and backstory will make it great for writing at my own pace, but they also served as constant roadblocks for the silly abandon that is supposed to characterize NaNoWriMo.

I’ll try again next year, and I have tentative commitment from Josh that both he and his girlfriend will be joining me. I’ll pick a story concept that I don’t already have much investment in, but one that seems exciting enough to carry me through 50,000 words. I’ll set up a system of rewards for hitting certain milestones, and try to really enjoy the ride. For now, though, I’ll keep plugging away at Ghost Ronin at my own pace and try to get it finished before Script Frenzy next spring.

I figured someting out today. The reason I’m having so much trouble keeping any momentum going on Ghost Ronin is that I’m trying so hard to do it right. So I don’t know how an ambush by terrorists on a couple of Army rangers in Basra would really go down. So what? This is NaNoWriMo! Make it up, fix it in rewrites!

Why is it so fricking hard to remember that every single November?

I’m starting to question my commitment to the cause. Haven’t gotten any writing done today, just haven’t had the time. Part of that is being so very tired from last night and needing a nap, but I could have gone home to write after work instead of going over to a friend’s to help him reflash his phone.

It’s a self-discipline problem, pure and simple. Without Josh to race against for the month, there’s really no consequence I care about if I blow off a day. I’m only hurting myself, because every day I don’t write is a day without my book, but there’s so much more to do (tomorrow is both Maximum Geek and a Broncos game, then Friday is gaming and I desperately need to get my Rock Band on after missing it last week). Right now the tentative plan is to make it up over the weekend with some 5000-7000 word marathons, but what are the odds nothing is going to pop up unexpectedly over the weekend?

And in another sense, the heat is off. I’ve been holding off on starting Ghost Ronin for months, waiting for NaNoWriMo to begin. Now that it has and I’ve started the book, why not write it at my own pace? The beginning, with Mike and Chris in Iraq, was the hard, intimidating part. Once I get get my main character blown up, I’m back into more familiar plot territory, variations on a theme I’ve been working on for two decades. I have a lot of new surprises in store for this (final?) version, but still not as scary for me as a writer as trying to write convincingly about being on the ground in Basra.

Even though I only need 774 words to stay on pace, I’m not sure I’m going to get it. The election coverage is going to be pretty much all-encompassing, unless things wrap up early.

849 words so far today, for 5,923 total. I can see what Chris Baty, founder and overlord of NaNoWriMo means about stealing time to write. I’m crazy busy today, and had to choose to sit down and write when I could easily have been doing other things on my to do list. I’m also being careful to keep writing, even if I’m rushed, until I get to a “hook” that will help me get moving the next day.

Okay, up to 5,118 words today, but mostly by cheating. Ghost Ronin is organized as a playlist. Each chapter starts with the lyrics for the song it’s based around. So today I pasted in the lyrics for each song. I also write 28 whole words of new material so I’m not a complete weasel.

Okay, I’m a complete weasel.

But I learned some amazing stuff while I was avoiding writing. I found out how to create a master document and link sub documents to it (like each chapter in say, a book), I found out why this doesn’t actually work (seemed to work at first, then somehow just turned into a hyperlink), I moved all the story notes I’d been keeping in Word into OneNote.

So tomorrow, real writing. Hopefully, I’ll even finish chapter one and kill off my main character.

So here we are, day one of NaNoWriMo, and I’m already having motivation problems. I know I need to buckle down and start writing, but frankly I’m scared out of my mind. Well, technically, I’ve written 28 words so far today, so I have started. But the fear to really dive into it and start pounding out the words is daunting to say the least.

So, I’m going to have to get disciplined, and fast. In the process of writing this blog post, I’ve switched my blog-writing software from Windows Live Writer to OneNote/Word, researched how to use OneNote for blogging, switched my primary web browser from Firefox to IE8, verified that IE7pro will work with IE8…

It’s time to start writing. Writing fiction. Writing my book.

So here’s the deal. I’ve been blogging every day since relaunching JeffKirvin.net, haven’t missed one yet. I intend to keep that streak going, but for the month of November I’m going to make a little deal with myself. I will still post to the blog every day, but only after I write something for NaNoWriMo. I’m not going to hold myself to specific minimum word count, at least not yet. Just something. Even one sentence if I’m really blocked. As we get into the final two weeks, I might have to impose a word count minimum to keep me on pace to finish.

But for now, just write. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t even have to be good. But I have to write something before I post again.

Yikes.

And I’m already well behind the other wrimos out there who started promptly at midnight. The official story is that because a back muscle I pulled on Tuesday was seizing up, I skipped a friend’s Halloween party, took some muscle relaxants and went to bed early. Which is all completely true, but doesn’t quite explain why I’m writing this instread of my book.

The plan for today is to grab a shower and then head for a Village Inn halfway across town, and then write there until it’s time to go buy a Touch Pro at the adjacent Best Buy. Then probably more writing at my friendly neighborhood Chipotle while I wait for the Touch Pro to complete the initial charge.

(and yes, I’ll explain later)

From the Live Mesh blog:

Thank you for using the Live Mesh for Mobile client! For users who saw a failure to add their mobile phone to their mesh, we have deployed an updated build of Live Mesh for Mobile. You will need to download the Mobile Installer from http://m.mesh.com/install/wm6/LiveMesh.cab again.  Once you have the new installer on your phone, run it and the installed client will be upgraded to the new version. The new Mobile Live Mesh Client is version number 0.9.3424.6 (check this through Menu -> About). Now you can start Live Mesh, sign in, and you should be good to go.

Sure enough, I installed it on my Treo this morning, was able to log in and start syncing folders. Synced folders can be on internal memory or the storage card, and open up in File Explorer when you click on them. Everything is editable just like anything else on your device. By default Live Mesh syncs your device with the mesh every 30 minutes, but you can change this if you need to.

My partner in crime on Maximum Geek wasn’t so lucky, though. He was told that there were a limited number of allowed users and was unable to register his device with the service. Now does that mean there’s a limited number of people who can connect at any one time, or that there’s a user cap on this beta? Let me know in the comments if you can get it working.

On the whole, very impressed so far. This is going to help enormously with NaNoWriMo, which starts tonight at the stroke of midnight!

NaNoWriMo is just over 52 hours away as I write this. I’m incredibly excited. I’ve only done this once before, in 2006, and it was a blast. If you’ve never tried it, the point is to get as many people together around the world as possible to support each other as they each try to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. That’s only 1,668 words a day, 30 days in a row, doesn’t seem all that impossible.

It’s every bit as hard as it sounds. In ‘06 I started off strong, over 3,000 words the very first day, but I hit a wall about midway into week 2, completely blocked and miserable. I fought back, and squeaked in on the very last day, finishing with less than 51,000 words by midnight, November 30. It’s tough, but I’ve never had so much fun writing.

The great thing about NaNoWriMo is that you have to turn off all your internal filters. You just write, no time for second guessing or wondering if it’s good enough. Paradoxically, this often leads to amazing breakthroughs as your inner voice shines through without having all the magic wrung from it by your conscious filter. My ‘06 project was a Mars novel, and I wrote some amazing things that eventually I’d like to revisit and make into a publishable book (at the very least, add in all the punctuation I left out because I was typing too damn fast).

This year is Ghost Ronin, the final version of what my longtime readers have seen as In Shining Armor. I’ve changed a lot of the story, brought it kicking and screaming into the Post-Dubya 21st century, and I expect a wild ride. A nanotechnologically enhanced Army Ranger turned Zen assassin fighting to save the world. Yee ha.

And of course, because I can’t do anything the quiet, simple and easy way, in addition to making my daily word counts and holding down my day job, I’ll be blogging about the whole experience here. I don’t know if I’m going to have time to keep up the frequency of posts on technology and politics, my other two passions, but if writing’s your thing, I hope the pages of this blog will be both entertaining and instructive throughout November. And I invite you to join me. If you’ve ever thought about writing a novel, even if just to see if you can do it, this is your chance. Head on over to the official National Novel Writing Month website for all the deets, and I’ll see you back here to start the adventure in just a few days.