It's that glorious time of year again! Trees are turning, and fall is falling! Homecomings are homecoming, and little and big kids alike are putting together their scariest costumes.
How cool is Autumn, right?
More important, though, we're running rapidly up to my favorite month of the year: National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo . I'm going to assume that since you made it here, you already know what the NoWri part is all about, so here are five myths, and one important truth, about what happens in November, based on my own several years of wins now.
1. It's scary
Yeah, this one's probably true if you let it be, but NaNo doesn't have to be scary. What's there to fear? Carpal tunnel takes a while to set in. Overcaffeinating yourself as some folks do has some deleterious impacts, but that's why we also drink water in November.
Failure? Is that what you're scared of? Nah, come on. Nearly everybody I know has failed NaNo at least once. That is, of course, everyone who's even attempted it. Truth is, you can't fail it if you don't try it, so let's all go into the effort secure in the knowledge that even if we fail, we're gonna wear that badge proudly.
Think of it this way: most people fail to write a novel every single day of their lives, and the only big news is that they aren't showing any real progress toward turning that trend around. Us, though? If we fail, we'll at least have written more words than those people, right?
Drop the fear. Punt it all the way into December. You're going to write. You're going to write a lot. What you write is going to suck, because everybody's first draft always sucks. But by then you'll have accomplished something very few people do, and you'll have a draft to revise, as well.
2. It's hard
Yeah, no. I mean, everything's hard. Some days getting out of bed is hard. Drinking enough water is hard for me. But I do it, nearly every day, and you know how I accomplish it? One drink at a time.
Same approach here. I just read someone else post to the Gospel According to Facebook: "It's hard to write 1667 words a day when you work also." I totally disagree. What's hard is to do anything I don't care to do when I work also. It's hard to get laundry done when I work also. It's hard for me to waste time at a bad movie over the weekend when I work also. It's not hard for me to write, though; in fact, it's hard for me to stop writing to go to work. That's partly because I've written a lot, and I've developed a habit and an enjoyment for the magnificent sport of prose-jockeying. My message? You can, too.
Back at West Point I became quite a runner. I'd do 10 or 12 miles a day if I had time. It wasn't hard. What was hard was doing other things when I really wanted to be running. I didn't start like that at first, of course. In the beginning I'd do a mile, maybe two. Then I worked up to longer, and then longer. In each case, though, it was by taking one step, and then another, and then another. Running is like that; a few steps add up to a long distance, which over time becomes an enjoyable and healthy habit.
Treat writing the same way. This is a perfect month to limber up those "muscles," if for no other reason than you get to enjoy the wacky zany activities with everybody else. Hey, you don't have to write 1667 words. Set your goal at 10. Ten words is easy peasy, right? Then do that five times, and then do that 35 times and you've got it.
How long does it take to write 1667 words? If you say a matter of hours, I'll argue that you're overthinking it. I type upwards of 90 words a minute, and I've literally gotten my 2000 words onto the page in less than half an hour before...and not just once, either. If you don't type that fast, that's okay (though hey, this is a perfect month to practice that, too!). How fast do you type? 40? 1667 words should take you 42 minutes to type at that rate. To go more than an hour for 1667 words you have to type slower than 28 words per minute, and I've seen hunt-and-peck two-finger typists go faster than that.
"Oh, but I have to think about them first!" No, you don't. Try it. Try imagining the scene you're going to do -- heck, spend 15 minutes doing that. Then type it. Don't think. Literally, don't edit. If you misspell a word, leave it. You can fix it later. Grammar error? Fix it later. Character says something out of character? Fix it later. You're a writer now. Write. Write, for goodness sake.
Write, for your sake.
Writing's not hard. Learning to let yourself write is hard.
3. You have to be prepared
We always hit this point in late October when people start chickening out. "I only have two characters and a short situation!" So? Write that, then blow something up, and write more. Most of us started our first attempt with less than that, after all.
Look, if you don't want to write a book, then don't write a book. Find something else to do in November, and I promise I won't judge you for it (much). But if you do want to write a book, there's only one way to start: write the first word. And then, write the next one. And then eight more, and do that five times, and you'll be 50 words into the 1667 goal for the day. And here's the secret for that point: don't stop. Keep going.
It's going to suck. Stop judging. You may be able to fix it next March, and you may not. At least by that point you'll have confidence. At least by that point you'll have experience. But to get there, you have to learn to turn that part of you completely, totally, utterly off, and just write.
Write. Don't prepare. Or do prepare, I don't care; the first draft is still going to suck. But don't let not preparing be the same as not writing. Don't fuss and fumble and fume over anything.
Just...write.
4. You get something for "winning"
Know what you get for winning? You get to print out your own certificate. Yay, you. And you get a JPG you can use as your Facebook image to show your friends just how crazy you are. Oh, and you get half off of Scrivener, which is my go-to app for writing these days. That saves about twenty bucks, I think. Worth the whole month, it's not.
Nope, sorry. You don't win diddly squat when you win NaNoWriMo.
5. You get nothing for "winning"
"The only source of knowledge is experience." - Albert Einstein
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." - Oscar Wilde
"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing." - Oscar Wilde
You know, while you're busy celebrating on December 1 at your Thank Goodness It's Over party, I'm sure you're going to be terribly, horribly depressed over the diddly squat you didn't win when you verified your >50K word count at the NaNo site. Or maybe it'll be the diddly squat you didn't win when November 30th hit you in the face and you only had 23K words.
Not.
You'll have a novel, or at least part of one. And it's nobody else's novel -- it's yours. Yes, it will suck. No, it may not even be fixable. But experience is priceless.And once you build on that experience, as I did, you'll find, as I did, that initial effort is worth punting and doing a deep rewrite on. Or not. But I guarantee you, one way or another, you'll be glad you did it.
And that leads us to the one Important Truth:
It's (totally) worth it.
Hey, nobody ever said writing a novel is easy. Nobody ever said running a marathon is easy, either, and yet I've done it. Once. Just once, because I got what I needed out of that one time and I don't feel the need to do it again. Writing a novel, though, is worth doing again, and again, and again.
First is the experience, which I've already touched on. My first attempted NaNo sucked worse than any prose on the planet has ever sucked before. I'm willing to bet, especially since it can't be called, that Vogon poetry sounds better than my first effort at prose. But it's there, still, and I've wrangled it into a useful plot these ten years later, and sometime in 2017 I hope to craft a viable novel out of it.
My second novel sucked, too, but after 13 revisions and two professional editors it sucked a whole lot less. I'm actually pretty proud of it. The third sucked, too, and after nearly as many revisions and only a single professional editor, I'm afraid it's not ever going to be my best prose. And...you get the drift. Every novel I've written has taught me something about the craft of writing, though, and so I've gotten significantly better each time. Not that the first drafts don't suck, regardless!
Second is the novels themselves. Look, folks, it takes a LOT of effort to produce a readable novel. Frankly, anybody who goes into November thinking, "I'm gonna produce a readable novel in this one month" is fooling themselves. I mean, one or two probably do it, granted, but the vast majority of us mere mortals just plain suck at first drafts. For us, we need to spend months after the initial draft doing revision after revision, painstakingly roping the text into something we and others will enjoy reading. That's the part of novel-writing that people never see. I didn't, back when I was getting angry over my favorite author's not publishing books fast enough.
Editing is hard. Revising is hard. Please know that if you do this NaNo thing you're going to create something that will eat up hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of revision time, if it's even worth that. But one way or another, it's yours, and it's yours forever.
That's why NaNoWriMo is worth it, to me.
- TOSK
Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Monday, December 1, 2014
NaNoWriMo: Done
NaNoWriMo is done for another year! Woo hoo! I mean darn! I mean yay! I mean aww shucky rootbeer float!
Mixed emotions are overflowing here.
So, remember that post two days ago? You know, the one on November 29th where I said "*yawn* I can do it, but I don't think I will, because I don't really care enough." Well, not those exact words, but close, anyway. Yeah, I did say that. Right smack in the middle of the day before the final day of NaNo, I threw in the towel.
Unfortunately--well, or fortunately, I suppose--my blog posts are shared on my web site automatically, and a couple of my fans/readers/friends/coolashellpeeps said "Oh, no you don't." They poked me, and to be honest it didn't take much to get my writerly engine going again.
Hey, when it comes to writing prose, I'm a cheap date, so to speak.
So yeah, I put 3K words onto the 6K words I'd already written that day, and added another 10K words on November 30th, and poof, I became a Winner. A rather sore-fingered Winner, but a Winner nonetheless.
I still don't really care. I got a cool graphic. Woo hoo! The prize I really wanted for winning was the cool discount on Scrivener, but since I already got that and bought the software when I won in 2012, this one is--pointless.
Well, no, it's really not pointless, come to think on it. I did get a draft done, sort of. I mean, it's not done. It's a solid story behind all the writing, and it's going to be well over 50K words when I label the draft as actually done. In fact, it's going to be well over double that, and likely triple that. So, yeah, I still have a lot of prose to fill in.
But you know what? It's started. It's ended, too. The skeleton of the plot is there, and all the people are there. The hard part's done, so yay! Go, NaNo!
A good friend (who, admittedly, I've never met, and it's just as likely we'd hate each other if we did, but hey, he's a guy whose blog posts I like) wrote a post lining out exactly how I feel about it, and what to do about that as well. I'm not gonna repeat it, of course, in part because you're here to read my writing, not his, and also because I'm scared he could send his penmonkeys out after me for copyright infringement, or something.
Anyway, go read it here: Chuck Wendig's beautiful but NSFW piece on why NaNoWriMo doesn't matter
(I do have to quote one line of his: "Because now it’s NaEdYoShi month — National Edit Your Shit Month." Isn't that beautiful? Brought a tear to my eye, it did.)
Now, once you're done with that, here was my response in one of the NaNo groups I'm in:
I--I gotta stop for a while, man. No, not stop writing, I mean stop drafting. I have 2007's NaNoLoser, 2012's NaNoWiener, 2013's NaNoWiener, and now 2014's NaNoWiener, in addition to two other drafts, sitting on my stinking hard drive (yes, and backed up in Google Docs) waiting on my tender slash-and-crash revision love. Even Scrivener is looking at me like "you better slow down, man."
So, yeah. The reason I've only put out one book this year is that I've written and revised and worked on other projects, but you can plan on this spring bringing two, if not three or four, new Stephen H. King novels to market.
Yay!
Anyway, for those who just won NaNo--congrats! For those who didn't make it to 50K words--congrats! 'Cause, right now, what matters is that you wrote something in November. Awesome work, all!
- TOSK
Mixed emotions are overflowing here.
So, remember that post two days ago? You know, the one on November 29th where I said "*yawn* I can do it, but I don't think I will, because I don't really care enough." Well, not those exact words, but close, anyway. Yeah, I did say that. Right smack in the middle of the day before the final day of NaNo, I threw in the towel.
Unfortunately--well, or fortunately, I suppose--my blog posts are shared on my web site automatically, and a couple of my fans/readers/friends/coolashellpeeps said "Oh, no you don't." They poked me, and to be honest it didn't take much to get my writerly engine going again.
Hey, when it comes to writing prose, I'm a cheap date, so to speak.
So yeah, I put 3K words onto the 6K words I'd already written that day, and added another 10K words on November 30th, and poof, I became a Winner. A rather sore-fingered Winner, but a Winner nonetheless.
I still don't really care. I got a cool graphic. Woo hoo! The prize I really wanted for winning was the cool discount on Scrivener, but since I already got that and bought the software when I won in 2012, this one is--pointless.
Well, no, it's really not pointless, come to think on it. I did get a draft done, sort of. I mean, it's not done. It's a solid story behind all the writing, and it's going to be well over 50K words when I label the draft as actually done. In fact, it's going to be well over double that, and likely triple that. So, yeah, I still have a lot of prose to fill in.
But you know what? It's started. It's ended, too. The skeleton of the plot is there, and all the people are there. The hard part's done, so yay! Go, NaNo!
A good friend (who, admittedly, I've never met, and it's just as likely we'd hate each other if we did, but hey, he's a guy whose blog posts I like) wrote a post lining out exactly how I feel about it, and what to do about that as well. I'm not gonna repeat it, of course, in part because you're here to read my writing, not his, and also because I'm scared he could send his penmonkeys out after me for copyright infringement, or something.
Anyway, go read it here: Chuck Wendig's beautiful but NSFW piece on why NaNoWriMo doesn't matter
(I do have to quote one line of his: "Because now it’s NaEdYoShi month — National Edit Your Shit Month." Isn't that beautiful? Brought a tear to my eye, it did.)
Now, once you're done with that, here was my response in one of the NaNo groups I'm in:
I--I gotta stop for a while, man. No, not stop writing, I mean stop drafting. I have 2007's NaNoLoser, 2012's NaNoWiener, 2013's NaNoWiener, and now 2014's NaNoWiener, in addition to two other drafts, sitting on my stinking hard drive (yes, and backed up in Google Docs) waiting on my tender slash-and-crash revision love. Even Scrivener is looking at me like "you better slow down, man."
So, yeah. The reason I've only put out one book this year is that I've written and revised and worked on other projects, but you can plan on this spring bringing two, if not three or four, new Stephen H. King novels to market.
Yay!
Anyway, for those who just won NaNo--congrats! For those who didn't make it to 50K words--congrats! 'Cause, right now, what matters is that you wrote something in November. Awesome work, all!
- TOSK
Saturday, November 29, 2014
NaNoWriMo - November 29th and Counting
Yay, NaNoWriMo is almost over!
Oh, crap--that means NaNoWriMo is almost over.
Yes, I know that sounded redundant, but those of you who've done this extreme writing sport will get the difference.
And nope, I'm probably not going to win NaNo this year.
I mean, look, I know I could. Win it, that is. I'm currently at 37K words, ish, I can probably write 13K words in a single day; heck, I've written 15K words in a single day before. So with a long, long day tomorrow of blasting through words, I could win.
That, or I could cheat. See, I used to teach software tricks for a living. Back when it was Excel 5, I could show you how to get into the flight simulator. Or, was it a maze? I can't recall any more, and any copies of that software have long since been relegated to the trash heap. But yeah, I used to know all the tricks, and even today I know most of them.
Microsoft Word has something ready-made for the NaNo'er who wants to win no matter what. It's the randomizer function. Back in the old days, it used to give you x number of "The quick brown fox jumps over..." sentences in y number of paragraphs, which generates a crapton of words in mere moments. Later they changed it to create a bunch of Latin wordsmut, but these days it's just boring Help tutorial words. It's still x number of sentences in y number of paragraphs, though, and the command looks like this:
=rand(x,y)
G'head, try it. Open a blank document and type it in there, only replacing x and y with numbers. Turns out I need an x of 25 and a y of 30 to finish my NaNoNovel right now. In fact, with an x of 100 and a y of 100, I can get over 200K words, composed in about 30 seconds. Woo hoo! A whole novel, written in 14 keystrokes (fifteen, technically, since we should count the pressing of the Enter key after).
How's that for automation, eh?
Only, it's not a story. It's just words. They're not fun to read. There's really no reason to even waste the bits on my computer, much less pages on a printer, on drivel like that. So yeah, just--.
No.
I'm simply not gonna do it.
That's not to say my story isn't worth finishing, mind you. It's a pretty awesome story, with a pretty awesome protagonist who's going through some pretty horrible stuff right now as I write one of the pivotal chapters. I'm really enjoying writing this, to tell the truth.
The thing is, there's plenty I can blame my not winning NaNoWriMo on. Most of it is external, too. But you know what? The only person who really cares whether I win NaNo or not is me, anyway. Those who read my books don't care; they just (generally) want me to get more out there to read as quickly as possible. Which is, I have to add real quickly, part of why I stopped blogging so much--I've been focusing on getting drafts done.
But this manuscript takes some effort, and some research, and some harsh emotional trauma, to finish. I was in tears a little earlier, in fact, writing about--well, no plot spoilers here. Later, when you read the book, you'll know it when you see it.
So, sorry, but I probably won't be a 2014 NaNoWriMo winner.
Ah, well. You're really going to like this story, anyway.
- TOSK
Oh, crap--that means NaNoWriMo is almost over.
Yes, I know that sounded redundant, but those of you who've done this extreme writing sport will get the difference.
And nope, I'm probably not going to win NaNo this year.
I mean, look, I know I could. Win it, that is. I'm currently at 37K words, ish, I can probably write 13K words in a single day; heck, I've written 15K words in a single day before. So with a long, long day tomorrow of blasting through words, I could win.
That, or I could cheat. See, I used to teach software tricks for a living. Back when it was Excel 5, I could show you how to get into the flight simulator. Or, was it a maze? I can't recall any more, and any copies of that software have long since been relegated to the trash heap. But yeah, I used to know all the tricks, and even today I know most of them.
Microsoft Word has something ready-made for the NaNo'er who wants to win no matter what. It's the randomizer function. Back in the old days, it used to give you x number of "The quick brown fox jumps over..." sentences in y number of paragraphs, which generates a crapton of words in mere moments. Later they changed it to create a bunch of Latin wordsmut, but these days it's just boring Help tutorial words. It's still x number of sentences in y number of paragraphs, though, and the command looks like this:
=rand(x,y)
G'head, try it. Open a blank document and type it in there, only replacing x and y with numbers. Turns out I need an x of 25 and a y of 30 to finish my NaNoNovel right now. In fact, with an x of 100 and a y of 100, I can get over 200K words, composed in about 30 seconds. Woo hoo! A whole novel, written in 14 keystrokes (fifteen, technically, since we should count the pressing of the Enter key after).
How's that for automation, eh?
Only, it's not a story. It's just words. They're not fun to read. There's really no reason to even waste the bits on my computer, much less pages on a printer, on drivel like that. So yeah, just--.
No.
I'm simply not gonna do it.
That's not to say my story isn't worth finishing, mind you. It's a pretty awesome story, with a pretty awesome protagonist who's going through some pretty horrible stuff right now as I write one of the pivotal chapters. I'm really enjoying writing this, to tell the truth.
The thing is, there's plenty I can blame my not winning NaNoWriMo on. Most of it is external, too. But you know what? The only person who really cares whether I win NaNo or not is me, anyway. Those who read my books don't care; they just (generally) want me to get more out there to read as quickly as possible. Which is, I have to add real quickly, part of why I stopped blogging so much--I've been focusing on getting drafts done.
But this manuscript takes some effort, and some research, and some harsh emotional trauma, to finish. I was in tears a little earlier, in fact, writing about--well, no plot spoilers here. Later, when you read the book, you'll know it when you see it.
So, sorry, but I probably won't be a 2014 NaNoWriMo winner.
Ah, well. You're really going to like this story, anyway.
- TOSK
Saturday, November 1, 2014
NaNoWriMo: More On Plotting
More on plotting....
Or is that moron plotting? C'mon, go with me here....
As I sit ready for an explosion of Trick-or-Treaters to come by, and also checking regularly to see my classmates' pictures on Facebook as they all (but me) enjoy the 25th reunion of The West Point Class of 1989, I can't help but think on past and future and present and plotting and--well, stuff.
See, the reason I'm not there is that I haven't yet found another job after my position was eliminated last spring. I've come awfully close. I've turned down a couple that weren't good fits. I've taken one, briefly, that I should'a turned down. I have things working--irons in the fire, so to speak--and I'm thinking my situation is about to change. It just didn't change in time to make the reunion.
Ah, well, there's always Facebook, right?
Through the (seemingly) countless job interviews, though, it's been interesting how many times I've been asked questions beginning with "Why did you...." Why did I leave Alaska? Why did I leave Biloxi after only a year? Why did I go to Richmond? Why did I approach a retention problem the way I did? Why would a college think that laying off an Academic Dean was a good idea?
I have to come up with an answer that is truthful while still being positive and upbeat and professional. I can't, in other words, say what I'd like to say sometimes: "Well, I made what was, in retrospect, a dumb-ass move."
Actually, I can. I did, in fact, once when I was feeling overly tired. Not in those specific words, but it was about that level of humph. And, as you can imagine, it went over like an audible expulsion of human gaseous waste during a religious ceremony. *sigh*
But it happens, and it happens to everybody. We all do stuff--in our personal lives as well as our professional lives--that, later on, would be rather tough to explain in a positive, professional manner in a job interview. Right?
I've said other dumb things, too. I nearly had one position; I'd already interviewed with a couple of recruiters, several executives, and others, and was on my very last interview, talking to the guy who was going to be my future boss. Only, I had an absolutely craptastical morning, and wasn't at my top game, and (insert any other excuse you'll grace me with here), and he asked me what I did to relieve stress. Now, I could've truthfully answered all sorts of ways. I take my family on walks in the park. I listen to music. I play computer games. I write. And I actually did say: "Well, I write." That wasn't the most targeted response, since the guy I was talking to was more of an athletic sort, but it would've been fine if I hadn't added, "I like to write so that I can kill people."
The silence that ensued was absolutely chilling.
Now, wait a sec--this is something we writers joke about all the time. Somebody ticks us off, they're going to get killed off in our next writing session. You just have to expect that, if you do something to make a writer angry. You won't feel any effects, of course; it's pure stress relief for the fiction writer. After all, it is, in fact, only fiction.
That said, writers shouldn't ever talk about that outside of writing circles. Especially not on a job interview, where the guy at the other end of the phone is immediately going to put you in the bin with Freddy Krueger. Bad, bad, bad TOSK....
No, I didn't get that job; it was filled by "another candidate." Probably one who didn't admit to writing for the purpose of killing people, I'd say. Life is like that sometimes, right?
So what does this have to do with plotting? Well, see, I've always had this problem. I'm writing along, and my main character really needs to do something stupid to advance the plot line, and I don't want to do it. It's stupid, after all. Who does stupid stuff? Who blurts stupid stuff out at the wrong time?
Oh, right--I do.
I do it all the time.
Why, then, wouldn't main characters behave just as stupidly as I have on my worst days?
I--um--well, I just don't know.
- TOSK
Or is that moron plotting? C'mon, go with me here....
As I sit ready for an explosion of Trick-or-Treaters to come by, and also checking regularly to see my classmates' pictures on Facebook as they all (but me) enjoy the 25th reunion of The West Point Class of 1989, I can't help but think on past and future and present and plotting and--well, stuff.
See, the reason I'm not there is that I haven't yet found another job after my position was eliminated last spring. I've come awfully close. I've turned down a couple that weren't good fits. I've taken one, briefly, that I should'a turned down. I have things working--irons in the fire, so to speak--and I'm thinking my situation is about to change. It just didn't change in time to make the reunion.
Ah, well, there's always Facebook, right?
Through the (seemingly) countless job interviews, though, it's been interesting how many times I've been asked questions beginning with "Why did you...." Why did I leave Alaska? Why did I leave Biloxi after only a year? Why did I go to Richmond? Why did I approach a retention problem the way I did? Why would a college think that laying off an Academic Dean was a good idea?
I have to come up with an answer that is truthful while still being positive and upbeat and professional. I can't, in other words, say what I'd like to say sometimes: "Well, I made what was, in retrospect, a dumb-ass move."
Actually, I can. I did, in fact, once when I was feeling overly tired. Not in those specific words, but it was about that level of humph. And, as you can imagine, it went over like an audible expulsion of human gaseous waste during a religious ceremony. *sigh*
But it happens, and it happens to everybody. We all do stuff--in our personal lives as well as our professional lives--that, later on, would be rather tough to explain in a positive, professional manner in a job interview. Right?
I've said other dumb things, too. I nearly had one position; I'd already interviewed with a couple of recruiters, several executives, and others, and was on my very last interview, talking to the guy who was going to be my future boss. Only, I had an absolutely craptastical morning, and wasn't at my top game, and (insert any other excuse you'll grace me with here), and he asked me what I did to relieve stress. Now, I could've truthfully answered all sorts of ways. I take my family on walks in the park. I listen to music. I play computer games. I write. And I actually did say: "Well, I write." That wasn't the most targeted response, since the guy I was talking to was more of an athletic sort, but it would've been fine if I hadn't added, "I like to write so that I can kill people."
The silence that ensued was absolutely chilling.
Now, wait a sec--this is something we writers joke about all the time. Somebody ticks us off, they're going to get killed off in our next writing session. You just have to expect that, if you do something to make a writer angry. You won't feel any effects, of course; it's pure stress relief for the fiction writer. After all, it is, in fact, only fiction.
That said, writers shouldn't ever talk about that outside of writing circles. Especially not on a job interview, where the guy at the other end of the phone is immediately going to put you in the bin with Freddy Krueger. Bad, bad, bad TOSK....
No, I didn't get that job; it was filled by "another candidate." Probably one who didn't admit to writing for the purpose of killing people, I'd say. Life is like that sometimes, right?
So what does this have to do with plotting? Well, see, I've always had this problem. I'm writing along, and my main character really needs to do something stupid to advance the plot line, and I don't want to do it. It's stupid, after all. Who does stupid stuff? Who blurts stupid stuff out at the wrong time?
Oh, right--I do.
I do it all the time.
Why, then, wouldn't main characters behave just as stupidly as I have on my worst days?
I--um--well, I just don't know.
- TOSK
Thursday, October 30, 2014
NaNoWriMo: Blowing Stuff Up
"Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!" - Folk verse
This November 5th, I plan to blow something up in honor of Guy Fawkes Day.
It should be pointed out, for all the FBI web-crawling butt-munching spiders out there, that I'm a writer. Nothing will actually, physically go boom, I promise.
No, nothing will actually explode. In the prose I'll be composing, however, it shall, and big time. To quote one of my favorite movies of all time, "big badda-boom!"
You see, November is, as I'm sure all of you who've read my blog (or any other writer's blog, probably) recently already know, National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo, for short. NaNo, for shorter. Holy-cow-this-crap-is-insane Month, once we get to about Week 3.
And I'm'a gonna do it. It'll be my fourth experience, and (hopefully) my third win. If you're in there, look for me under the nickname skingcharter.
Why do I do NaNo?To get a book ready to be sent to agents in December, of course As I learned after the first experience, the result is way too crappy of a draft to send anywhere, but at least it's a novel draft done and ready to be revised later, and that's crucial to my desire to put out two books per year. It also helps me focus myself and build the writer's discipline and techniques that make me better at the craft.
I've long ago given up on the "No plot? No problem!" approach espoused by Baty et al. Not that that direction doesn't work for some, but it doesn't work for me. I've learned that, for me, the key to finishing is to start with a fairly elaborate plan. Sure, it changes along the way, and that's part of the fun of writing, but if I at least have a road map, I can follow along through the construction and the explosions.
Which brings me to my favorite topic: blowing stuff up. I actually only rarely do that in the writings that you'll read, because it rarely happens in my stories. But one of the tricks I learned early on in writing is that if you get stuck, blow something up and have the characters react to it. You can always (and I do) delete it after the draft is done, but at least it gets action started. Granted, I've had to do it a lot less since I've developed my own outlining method, but it's still there, and it's still useful.
And I'm'a gonna do it on November 5th, just in honor of GF Day.
Who knows? Maybe some day you'll be enjoying a novel by Stephen H. King titled Life With Bacon, reach a scene early on where something on the farm goes ka-boom!, and know that that's the part I wrote on November 5th, 2014, and that I left it in there.
It'll be just our secret, okay?
By the way--today is October 30th. That's two days till NaNo. If you're going to do an outline for your work, it's about time to get that part of preparation done. If you're going to learn to use Scrivener, now's the time. Because it's coming, and it's coming soon. Can you feel the excitement?
Oh, hey, side note: my last blog about NaNo, I commented negatively about self-pubbing your NaNo project in December because, as I said, it's going to suck too much. I figured you all knew me by now and know that I'm self-pubbed, myself, but I was wrong. For everyone's sake, let me clarify: I wasn't dissing self-pubbing your wonderfully revised and edited book, not at all. I was only dissing self-pubbing crap.
That said: Enjoy!
- TOSK
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!" - Folk verse
This November 5th, I plan to blow something up in honor of Guy Fawkes Day.
It should be pointed out, for all the FBI web-crawling butt-munching spiders out there, that I'm a writer. Nothing will actually, physically go boom, I promise.
No, nothing will actually explode. In the prose I'll be composing, however, it shall, and big time. To quote one of my favorite movies of all time, "big badda-boom!"
You see, November is, as I'm sure all of you who've read my blog (or any other writer's blog, probably) recently already know, National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo, for short. NaNo, for shorter. Holy-cow-this-crap-is-insane Month, once we get to about Week 3.
And I'm'a gonna do it. It'll be my fourth experience, and (hopefully) my third win. If you're in there, look for me under the nickname skingcharter.
Why do I do NaNo?
I've long ago given up on the "No plot? No problem!" approach espoused by Baty et al. Not that that direction doesn't work for some, but it doesn't work for me. I've learned that, for me, the key to finishing is to start with a fairly elaborate plan. Sure, it changes along the way, and that's part of the fun of writing, but if I at least have a road map, I can follow along through the construction and the explosions.
Which brings me to my favorite topic: blowing stuff up. I actually only rarely do that in the writings that you'll read, because it rarely happens in my stories. But one of the tricks I learned early on in writing is that if you get stuck, blow something up and have the characters react to it. You can always (and I do) delete it after the draft is done, but at least it gets action started. Granted, I've had to do it a lot less since I've developed my own outlining method, but it's still there, and it's still useful.
And I'm'a gonna do it on November 5th, just in honor of GF Day.
Who knows? Maybe some day you'll be enjoying a novel by Stephen H. King titled Life With Bacon, reach a scene early on where something on the farm goes ka-boom!, and know that that's the part I wrote on November 5th, 2014, and that I left it in there.
It'll be just our secret, okay?
By the way--today is October 30th. That's two days till NaNo. If you're going to do an outline for your work, it's about time to get that part of preparation done. If you're going to learn to use Scrivener, now's the time. Because it's coming, and it's coming soon. Can you feel the excitement?
Oh, hey, side note: my last blog about NaNo, I commented negatively about self-pubbing your NaNo project in December because, as I said, it's going to suck too much. I figured you all knew me by now and know that I'm self-pubbed, myself, but I was wrong. For everyone's sake, let me clarify: I wasn't dissing self-pubbing your wonderfully revised and edited book, not at all. I was only dissing self-pubbing crap.
That said: Enjoy!
- TOSK
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
7 Lies We Tell About NaNoWriMo
I know--two days in a row here. But hey, I have loads of job applications to get out, and writing a blog post sounds like a whole lot more fun than revising my cover letter forty times.
Still, I just finished reading another writer's post about "7 Lies" we tell about NaNo. She made them all positive, singing the praise of this little exercise that so many of us have warped ourselves into.
I'm'a gonna present the other side....
Nope. And I really mean this, so listen--er, read--closely. No, it's not fun, fun, fun. Writing is work. I love doing it, not because I love, as Douglas Adams once famously put it, staring at a piece of paper until my forehead bleeds, but because I love the finished product. Well, okay, I do like seeing the bit of linguistic art take shape, then become refined, and finally start singing to me as I read it. Sitting down each day to get my word count, though? Not. Fun. It's just not, really. Trust me.
It's certainly do-able. But not 50K words. No, what you need to do is write a certain number per day. Fifty thousand is--well, I've heard tales, spoken mostly in whispered reverence and in the dark of the night, that it's been done in a day or a weekend, but man, is that superhuman Flash-like writing. Let's just assume you're neither superhuman nor Flash, okay? Don't try it. Instead, write a certain number per day.
Now, 50K divided by 30 is 1,667. With, of course, a little rounding error, but go with me. You won't want to stick to that, though, in part because of the counting issue I'll get to soon, but also because there will be some days when the dog will feel sick and the baby will barf on your favorite chair and the washing machine will quit working and--well, and so on. Some days, trust me, you won't write at all. I hit that point in the third week, usually. That's why I always go for 2,500. That number, if I hit it consistently, isn't a great deal more than 1,700, and yet it allows me to slack off for 10 days.
But here's the deal: you have to do it. When writing is fun, and fast, and the words are flowing, you have to hit your word count (and even go beyond on those days). When it's not fun, and it's slow, and the creativity is murky, you have to hit your word count.
Two tricks: first, don't stop at the end of a scene. Instead, write on past that into the beginning of the next scene. That allows easier pickup the next session. Second: if stuck, blow something up. It might not work with your plot, but you can always edit it out later. Besides, plot transition points are all about challenges, and what's more challenging than a great big explosion, right?
Chris Baty started this little zinger with his book "No Plot? No Problem!" It's a good book, really, about how to get your word count up, and the basic idea that you could start a book off with no real idea where it was going to go sounded really good to me, too, till I'd done it a few times. My initial NaNo--a failure--was a careening space opera with humans vs. bugs, but because I had no plot when I started it veered right off toward being Yet Another Ender's Game. I still believe I was doing the world a favor by giving up at what I've come to learn is the fairly standard quitting point of 27,000 words.
Granted, I was creating something that had goodness to it. The one friend I sent the draft portion to loved it and begged me to finish. I now have a plot for it, and it's in my "to be finished" pile. Still, at that time, I was doing the best thing for everybody by quitting.
I mentioned "a few." Both Cataclysm and Ascension were written without plotting. In fact, as I originally imagined it, Ascension was gonna be the third book, with the series ending on--well, no. That book only has one plot arc in it, and I'm not gonna spoil it.
So--yeah. I'm not saying you can't create something beautiful without a plan. Stephen King (the other one) reportedly does it all the time. Several people in the groups I'm in swear by it. But it's hard, and I suspect if you did an actual study on it you'd find a minority who succeed that way. You might be one--? Best, though, if you're doing this the first time and actually want to succeed, that you try starting with a plan.
Now, I'm not going to knock Microsoft Word here. I've made a lot of money over the years teaching people how to jazz up perfectly good documents using that bit of software. I have some good friends who still swear by it. Heck, I used it to write my first three novels. I still use it for short stories, in fact.
Now, though? I'm a Scrivener fan--a big, big Scrivener fan (hey, easy on the weight jokes!) I tried it a few years ago for the new NaNo effort and I haven't looked back since.
There's three specific reasons I'll recommend NaNo'ers use it. First, if you're a fan of outlining, it makes that very, very easy. No longer do you have to keep two separate documents open--though you can!--instead, you can keep the outline in a separate text. You can even leave it in there the whole time, and just not compile it into the final document.
Second, there's the word count thing. 50K words is near impossible to write, but 1.7K words isn't, as I already pointed out. You do it each day, and you win. Scrivener has a nice little tool that tracks both overall word count and session word count, and for that it's priceless.
Third is the scrolling relief. The thing I hated most about writing a novel in Word was scrolling hither and yon to discover stuff I'd forgotten, and you no longer have to do that with the "Texts" feature of Scrivener.
Fourth--yeah, I know I said three, but I just thought of something else--you can't afford not to try it now. It's free at: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.php. Download it and give it a try, I'd recommend. Then if you don't like it, no harm, no foul. If you do, then at the end you get a 50% discount. Yes, you have to win NaNo to get that discount (otherwise it's just 20%), but who goes into NaNo to lose, right?
The thing is, Scrivener isn't difficult to use at all. It does, however, use different terminology from other document creation apps. That makes sense, too; I mean, let's face it, the act of putting letters and spaces and punctuation all down on a "page" in the right order isn't complicated, right? But different software packages use different terminology. The software designers probably have different ways to think of the process, after all--if they didn't, they wouldn't write the software in the first place. Meanwhile, the software designers' lawyers probably insist upon working hard to avoid copyright infringement.
So all that said, a) get your free copy, b) tell yourself it's not hard to use, and c) invest some time before November 1st going through the tutorials to learn the terminology.
No, it's not.
Fifty thousand words isn't even fifty thousand words, actually. For my first NaNo win, I stopped right at 50,000, proud as heck of myself, typed "THE END" jubilantly, and exported that sucker straight to Word. Only, then Word told me it was a little smaller than Scrivener had--well, you know how size is subjective and all *ahem*. So I beefed up the final scene with a bunch of "he blustered and she cried loudly and so on and so forth" kind of crap, knowing I'd delete it when I edited the document, and exported it again. Nope, 49,800, Microsoft's champion word-counters said. So I added another few hundred pretty boring words, and exported again. Okay, Word finally said. It gave me a word count down on the status bar of 50,005. Yay!
Ecstatically, I uploaded the document into the NaNoWriMo site's Novel Verification form. Sorry, it said! You only have 49,800 words, so nyah nyah nyah and write more and come back later, you loser! Well, it didn't really say all that, but by that point I was thinking it.
I did eventually get to over 50K words with all three counters, but that prompted me to go look at how words are counted. Fact is, nobody really counts them, in part because some things are rather subjectively identified as words/not-words. Some apps count spaces and divide by a number they think is close to accurate. Some use a more sophisticated algorithm regarding the number of characters and the number of spaces and so forth. Publishers just look at the number of pages and multiply by 250.
But who cares, right?
Have you ever read a book and thought, "Well, that was a great 89,500 words. I just wish the author would've given it the additional 500 words it needed"? No, I haven't either. Baty et al. looked at the question of "what is a novel" and decided that 50K was the right number to use, and in my opinion, it is pretty good. It's not long enough for most genres, but it does represent the minimum for the smallest genres, so that's a nice start. It also represents the normal dividing line between what's considered a "novella" and a novel. Finally, it's well past the normal quitting range of 27K words.
That said, my first series ended up all between 88K and 100K words, and Prophecy weighs in even longer. One common criticism of the first three books, too, is that they're too simple--not enough additional plots. So yeah, longer is better. *ahem*
Bottom line: if you're looking at this 50K piece of words as an actual novel length effort, I hate to break the news to you, but it's not. It's a great start toward one, but it's not there yet.
Yes, I admit, I actually thought this once upon a time.
Fuhgeddaboudit.
For one thing, agents often close their submissions in December just because of this little myth. Here's the deal (and I say this with some experience): you're going to write your first NaNo, do a few edits in the first week of December, and because it's your first baby you'll think it's the most beautiful, most perfect pile of literary poop on the planet. You'll send it away, and the recipients will all cringe.
Trust me, you will. And trust me, they will.
Even if you did manage to write a wonderful work of art in the first draft (and near as I can tell, nobody does that) and get it to an agent who cares (and near as I can tell, none of them do) there's zero chance you could be published traditionally in that short of a time. It takes months to go through all of the acquisition and editing and workup process.
So what do many people do? Self-publish, of course.
Please, for the love of all that is holy in literature and beyond, don't do this. The crap that hits Amazon's "shelves" in December is a large part of the reason Indies are still shunned. Neither of my NaNo winning projects has been published yet, though both are in the path to being so. But it takes time, and most importantly, it takes distance.
What do you do on December 1? Give yourself a nice pat on the back, download your Winner graphic, buy (or don't, whichever) your 50% off license for Scrivener, consume whatever adult beverages (assuming you're an adult) that you use to celebrate, brag like hell on Facebook, and then--this is crucial--put the file you just finished writing away. Don't look at it again till February or March, because only distance (time-wise) will give you perspective on how "good" it is.
I say Poppycock, with a capital P, to this one. I've won twice and edited as I went each time. I often write at night, and I often get to looking the next day at the stuff I wrote last the evening before and say "this is such total crap." So I revise it. It doesn't take a whole lot of time, and it does allow me to start the day feeling better about my work. That, and it helps me get back "into" the fiction I'm creating.
That said, you shouldn't allow yourself to get mired in editing. Do a little, but only that. Whatever you do, remember that you have to hit your word count in new words put down on the "paper" that day.
Here's another thing I know from experience.
You can't wait to put up that big sign on your Facebook page, can you? "2014 NaNoWriMo Winner!" All your friends will send you virtual cards and congratulations, and the local ones will throw you a wine/beer party to celebrate, right?
Wrong.
The people in your group--you did join a local NaNoWriMo group, didn't you?--will celebrate your achievement, but only gently. There will be a whole lot more people who didn't win, after all. And hey, the logic will go, the important thing is that everybody got some writing done, right?
Yeah, you'll probably leave that party like I've left them--a little bit let down. Door prize in hand, "Winner" sticker on breast, smile no longer on face--yeah, that's how I looked.
HEY! YOU! I FRICKING WON NANOWRIMO!
*chirp* *chirp*
What you'll end up doing is a massive Facebook circle-jerk kind of thing where everybody who won will congratulate everybody else who won, while everybody who didn't will give the half-hearted "yay" from the sidelines.
Face it: nobody knows how hard it is to write 50K words except for those who've done it. And no, it's not that they're all thinking it's too easy. It's the opposite, actually; most folks are looking at you like you've just climbed Mt. Everest in your Speedos(TM) and are probably a little--um, vacant--up there somewhere. Tetched, you know. Special.
"Oh, hey, like, congrats. *yawn* You won NaNoMiWro, or whatever it is. Why don't you just walk from here to New York City in your birthday suit next, just to prove how special you are?"
That's okay. It really is. The most important thing with NaNo, in any event, and in everyone's opinion that I've sampled (admittedly, a small sample size), is that you now know you can do it. You can bust out a plot, holy/holey or no, and display the personal discipline needed to hit a word count on an ongoing basis. That's very, very cool.
It's very, very cool to you, I should say. Nobody else will care, much. Then again, why should that bother you? You did it, right?
Now, go do it.
- TOSK
Still, I just finished reading another writer's post about "7 Lies" we tell about NaNo. She made them all positive, singing the praise of this little exercise that so many of us have warped ourselves into.
I'm'a gonna present the other side....
1. Writing 50,000 words in a month is fun, fun, fun!
Nope. And I really mean this, so listen--er, read--closely. No, it's not fun, fun, fun. Writing is work. I love doing it, not because I love, as Douglas Adams once famously put it, staring at a piece of paper until my forehead bleeds, but because I love the finished product. Well, okay, I do like seeing the bit of linguistic art take shape, then become refined, and finally start singing to me as I read it. Sitting down each day to get my word count, though? Not. Fun. It's just not, really. Trust me.
It's certainly do-able. But not 50K words. No, what you need to do is write a certain number per day. Fifty thousand is--well, I've heard tales, spoken mostly in whispered reverence and in the dark of the night, that it's been done in a day or a weekend, but man, is that superhuman Flash-like writing. Let's just assume you're neither superhuman nor Flash, okay? Don't try it. Instead, write a certain number per day.
Now, 50K divided by 30 is 1,667. With, of course, a little rounding error, but go with me. You won't want to stick to that, though, in part because of the counting issue I'll get to soon, but also because there will be some days when the dog will feel sick and the baby will barf on your favorite chair and the washing machine will quit working and--well, and so on. Some days, trust me, you won't write at all. I hit that point in the third week, usually. That's why I always go for 2,500. That number, if I hit it consistently, isn't a great deal more than 1,700, and yet it allows me to slack off for 10 days.
But here's the deal: you have to do it. When writing is fun, and fast, and the words are flowing, you have to hit your word count (and even go beyond on those days). When it's not fun, and it's slow, and the creativity is murky, you have to hit your word count.
Two tricks: first, don't stop at the end of a scene. Instead, write on past that into the beginning of the next scene. That allows easier pickup the next session. Second: if stuck, blow something up. It might not work with your plot, but you can always edit it out later. Besides, plot transition points are all about challenges, and what's more challenging than a great big explosion, right?
2. You don't really need a plot
Chris Baty started this little zinger with his book "No Plot? No Problem!" It's a good book, really, about how to get your word count up, and the basic idea that you could start a book off with no real idea where it was going to go sounded really good to me, too, till I'd done it a few times. My initial NaNo--a failure--was a careening space opera with humans vs. bugs, but because I had no plot when I started it veered right off toward being Yet Another Ender's Game. I still believe I was doing the world a favor by giving up at what I've come to learn is the fairly standard quitting point of 27,000 words.
Granted, I was creating something that had goodness to it. The one friend I sent the draft portion to loved it and begged me to finish. I now have a plot for it, and it's in my "to be finished" pile. Still, at that time, I was doing the best thing for everybody by quitting.
I mentioned "a few." Both Cataclysm and Ascension were written without plotting. In fact, as I originally imagined it, Ascension was gonna be the third book, with the series ending on--well, no. That book only has one plot arc in it, and I'm not gonna spoil it.
So--yeah. I'm not saying you can't create something beautiful without a plan. Stephen King (the other one) reportedly does it all the time. Several people in the groups I'm in swear by it. But it's hard, and I suspect if you did an actual study on it you'd find a minority who succeed that way. You might be one--? Best, though, if you're doing this the first time and actually want to succeed, that you try starting with a plan.
3. Scrivener is too difficult/expensive/whatever
Now, I'm not going to knock Microsoft Word here. I've made a lot of money over the years teaching people how to jazz up perfectly good documents using that bit of software. I have some good friends who still swear by it. Heck, I used it to write my first three novels. I still use it for short stories, in fact.
Now, though? I'm a Scrivener fan--a big, big Scrivener fan (hey, easy on the weight jokes!) I tried it a few years ago for the new NaNo effort and I haven't looked back since.
There's three specific reasons I'll recommend NaNo'ers use it. First, if you're a fan of outlining, it makes that very, very easy. No longer do you have to keep two separate documents open--though you can!--instead, you can keep the outline in a separate text. You can even leave it in there the whole time, and just not compile it into the final document.
Second, there's the word count thing. 50K words is near impossible to write, but 1.7K words isn't, as I already pointed out. You do it each day, and you win. Scrivener has a nice little tool that tracks both overall word count and session word count, and for that it's priceless.
Third is the scrolling relief. The thing I hated most about writing a novel in Word was scrolling hither and yon to discover stuff I'd forgotten, and you no longer have to do that with the "Texts" feature of Scrivener.
Fourth--yeah, I know I said three, but I just thought of something else--you can't afford not to try it now. It's free at: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.php. Download it and give it a try, I'd recommend. Then if you don't like it, no harm, no foul. If you do, then at the end you get a 50% discount. Yes, you have to win NaNo to get that discount (otherwise it's just 20%), but who goes into NaNo to lose, right?
The thing is, Scrivener isn't difficult to use at all. It does, however, use different terminology from other document creation apps. That makes sense, too; I mean, let's face it, the act of putting letters and spaces and punctuation all down on a "page" in the right order isn't complicated, right? But different software packages use different terminology. The software designers probably have different ways to think of the process, after all--if they didn't, they wouldn't write the software in the first place. Meanwhile, the software designers' lawyers probably insist upon working hard to avoid copyright infringement.
So all that said, a) get your free copy, b) tell yourself it's not hard to use, and c) invest some time before November 1st going through the tutorials to learn the terminology.
4. Fifty thousand words is a thing.
No, it's not.
Fifty thousand words isn't even fifty thousand words, actually. For my first NaNo win, I stopped right at 50,000, proud as heck of myself, typed "THE END" jubilantly, and exported that sucker straight to Word. Only, then Word told me it was a little smaller than Scrivener had--well, you know how size is subjective and all *ahem*. So I beefed up the final scene with a bunch of "he blustered and she cried loudly and so on and so forth" kind of crap, knowing I'd delete it when I edited the document, and exported it again. Nope, 49,800, Microsoft's champion word-counters said. So I added another few hundred pretty boring words, and exported again. Okay, Word finally said. It gave me a word count down on the status bar of 50,005. Yay!
Ecstatically, I uploaded the document into the NaNoWriMo site's Novel Verification form. Sorry, it said! You only have 49,800 words, so nyah nyah nyah and write more and come back later, you loser! Well, it didn't really say all that, but by that point I was thinking it.
I did eventually get to over 50K words with all three counters, but that prompted me to go look at how words are counted. Fact is, nobody really counts them, in part because some things are rather subjectively identified as words/not-words. Some apps count spaces and divide by a number they think is close to accurate. Some use a more sophisticated algorithm regarding the number of characters and the number of spaces and so forth. Publishers just look at the number of pages and multiply by 250.
But who cares, right?
Have you ever read a book and thought, "Well, that was a great 89,500 words. I just wish the author would've given it the additional 500 words it needed"? No, I haven't either. Baty et al. looked at the question of "what is a novel" and decided that 50K was the right number to use, and in my opinion, it is pretty good. It's not long enough for most genres, but it does represent the minimum for the smallest genres, so that's a nice start. It also represents the normal dividing line between what's considered a "novella" and a novel. Finally, it's well past the normal quitting range of 27K words.
That said, my first series ended up all between 88K and 100K words, and Prophecy weighs in even longer. One common criticism of the first three books, too, is that they're too simple--not enough additional plots. So yeah, longer is better. *ahem*
Bottom line: if you're looking at this 50K piece of words as an actual novel length effort, I hate to break the news to you, but it's not. It's a great start toward one, but it's not there yet.
5. Write in November, Query in December, Publish in January
Yes, I admit, I actually thought this once upon a time.
Fuhgeddaboudit.
For one thing, agents often close their submissions in December just because of this little myth. Here's the deal (and I say this with some experience): you're going to write your first NaNo, do a few edits in the first week of December, and because it's your first baby you'll think it's the most beautiful, most perfect pile of literary poop on the planet. You'll send it away, and the recipients will all cringe.
Trust me, you will. And trust me, they will.
Even if you did manage to write a wonderful work of art in the first draft (and near as I can tell, nobody does that) and get it to an agent who cares (and near as I can tell, none of them do) there's zero chance you could be published traditionally in that short of a time. It takes months to go through all of the acquisition and editing and workup process.
So what do many people do? Self-publish, of course.
Please, for the love of all that is holy in literature and beyond, don't do this. The crap that hits Amazon's "shelves" in December is a large part of the reason Indies are still shunned. Neither of my NaNo winning projects has been published yet, though both are in the path to being so. But it takes time, and most importantly, it takes distance.
What do you do on December 1? Give yourself a nice pat on the back, download your Winner graphic, buy (or don't, whichever) your 50% off license for Scrivener, consume whatever adult beverages (assuming you're an adult) that you use to celebrate, brag like hell on Facebook, and then--this is crucial--put the file you just finished writing away. Don't look at it again till February or March, because only distance (time-wise) will give you perspective on how "good" it is.
6. It is counterproductive to edit as you go
I say Poppycock, with a capital P, to this one. I've won twice and edited as I went each time. I often write at night, and I often get to looking the next day at the stuff I wrote last the evening before and say "this is such total crap." So I revise it. It doesn't take a whole lot of time, and it does allow me to start the day feeling better about my work. That, and it helps me get back "into" the fiction I'm creating.
That said, you shouldn't allow yourself to get mired in editing. Do a little, but only that. Whatever you do, remember that you have to hit your word count in new words put down on the "paper" that day.
7. All of your friends will be impressed
Here's another thing I know from experience.
You can't wait to put up that big sign on your Facebook page, can you? "2014 NaNoWriMo Winner!" All your friends will send you virtual cards and congratulations, and the local ones will throw you a wine/beer party to celebrate, right?
Wrong.
The people in your group--you did join a local NaNoWriMo group, didn't you?--will celebrate your achievement, but only gently. There will be a whole lot more people who didn't win, after all. And hey, the logic will go, the important thing is that everybody got some writing done, right?
Yeah, you'll probably leave that party like I've left them--a little bit let down. Door prize in hand, "Winner" sticker on breast, smile no longer on face--yeah, that's how I looked.
HEY! YOU! I FRICKING WON NANOWRIMO!
*chirp* *chirp*
What you'll end up doing is a massive Facebook circle-jerk kind of thing where everybody who won will congratulate everybody else who won, while everybody who didn't will give the half-hearted "yay" from the sidelines.
Face it: nobody knows how hard it is to write 50K words except for those who've done it. And no, it's not that they're all thinking it's too easy. It's the opposite, actually; most folks are looking at you like you've just climbed Mt. Everest in your Speedos(TM) and are probably a little--um, vacant--up there somewhere. Tetched, you know. Special.
"Oh, hey, like, congrats. *yawn* You won NaNoMiWro, or whatever it is. Why don't you just walk from here to New York City in your birthday suit next, just to prove how special you are?"
That's okay. It really is. The most important thing with NaNo, in any event, and in everyone's opinion that I've sampled (admittedly, a small sample size), is that you now know you can do it. You can bust out a plot, holy/holey or no, and display the personal discipline needed to hit a word count on an ongoing basis. That's very, very cool.
It's very, very cool to you, I should say. Nobody else will care, much. Then again, why should that bother you? You did it, right?
Now, go do it.
- TOSK
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Out Of Control
It's been a week and a half now since I last blogged -- sorry. NaNoWriMo has had me enthralled in its intensity. I've been following along the synopsis I wrote, and now I'm thinking that I'm gonna force myself to synopsize every book before I write it. Far from confining the writer as an outline does, I'm finding that having a pre-written synopsis close at hand frees the writer up to be creative while not having to craft the action plan at the same time.
For once, I've hit 30,000 words without an overwhelming feeling of being out of control, in other words.
Out of control is a bad place to be. I recall numerous times during my years up in Alaska when I suggested that any driver's training course or test should include an exercise in being out of control. It's easy in the winter -- just pick an empty parking lot that hasn't been sanded yet, get up to speed, and slam on the brakes.
Wheeeeee! *spin spin spin*
Wheeeeee! *spin spin spin*
When/if you do that, you'll experience one of two reactions. One, the one that the driver's manual claims to be the best practice, is to have your brain process the "hmm, I'm no longer in control" sensation and make sane, physics-sensitive adjustments to your driving practice. Specifically, you should either remove your foot from the accelerator/brake area or actually apply a slight acceleration, depending on how far into the skid you are (I know you don't want to hear this, but experience makes a great teacher for which option to choose there). At the same time, you should gently turn the steering wheel so that the only controllable part of the multi-thousand-pound projectile you're no longer actively piloting is aligned with its actual, physical path.
That last is, I should point out, kinda like buying "insurance" in a game of Blackjack. By the time the dealer asks if you want it, the odds are already stacked against you. There's a really good chance that the dealer has the unbeatable hand, and all you're doing with "insurance" is hoping to minimize your losses.
Same thing with steering into a skid -- the only reason we call it a "skid" as opposed to "driving" is that you're not going in any of the directions you'd prefer to be going. On a directional path such as a road, and in particular when there's other traffic around, the fact that you're in a skid means that, odds are, you're going to end up somewhere you don't wanna be, and that eventual end-up will likely be bad. Turning the wheels into the skid reduces the friction they're going through and gets them turning with the speed of the vehicle, in the hope that something miraculous happens and you, at least momentarily, regain control. At that point, if and when it happens, you're much more likely to be able to pull back into an appropriate trajectory if you've already aligned your physics with the physics of reality.
The other reaction is, I think, far more common. Granted, I have no statistics to back that claim up, but I've seen an awful lot of accidents happen in wintry conditions. That look on most peoples' faces just as they're skidding sideways through a red light? Yeah, that's not the "I'm steering into the skid and removing my foot from the accelerator" expression, is it? No, it's the "OMFG I'm skidding so now is the time to PANIC!" look.
Along with that look comes a complete aversion to the principles of physics. Instead of letting the wheels continue to roll with the car, our brains want control, and we want it NOW!, and that can only be achieved, of course, by coming to a complete stop immediately and instantaneously. Physics says it ain't gonna happen, but our brain at that panic-induced moment of craziness says that it will, and that the way to do it, of course, is to stomp on the brakes harder than the Saints stomped on the Cowboys this past weekend.
At the same time, our knuckles crack due to the extreme force we're applying to the steering wheel, making sure we have a sufficient hold on it while it -- um, doesn't do much -- and then, while we're choking the hell outta the steering wheel, we always make sure to point it in precisely the direction we wish we were going.
At the same time, our knuckles crack due to the extreme force we're applying to the steering wheel, making sure we have a sufficient hold on it while it -- um, doesn't do much -- and then, while we're choking the hell outta the steering wheel, we always make sure to point it in precisely the direction we wish we were going.
The problem? Wishful thinking ain't physics, man. But panic doesn't really care, does it?
Hey, I'm not blaming. I've been there, myself. Most of us go through the panic phase the first one or two (or dozen) times we lose control. Many of us also have strong enough psyches that we manage to forget completely about it later, as our psyche convinces our memory (and we hope our mouth convinces the police) that "nah, I didn't do anything that stupid. I controlled that skid perfectly. By the book, even."
Panic is normal, both in driving and in writing, when we lose control. That's why I've said it's so important to include that in driver's training (and probably, for that matter, in writer's training). That way we'll know how best to deal with it when it happens.
I know I had an important point to make about writing, but it was more fun talking about sliding around on the ice.
I know I had an important point to make about writing, but it was more fun talking about sliding around on the ice.
- TOSK
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Happy Birthday To Me: A NaNoWriMo Update
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy--um, yeah.
Another year older I am. I joke about being 29 for the 17th time, but frankly I don't want to go back to that age. I like being in my 40's, as I (think that I) am much smarter and more resolved than I ever was back in my 20's or 30's.
Speaking of birthday, it's my intent to spend most of it with my loved ones rather than writing today, but I still had to make some progress on the NaNo effort. I didn't post an update yesterday, because I was so busy trying to bust out as many words as possible, but the planning beforehand seems to have made a heckuva difference.
Here are my current NaNoStats (and they'll probably remain my stats through the rest of the day):
I'm glad to read about the finish date, but the fact is that I'm looking at this story to reach 90-100K rather than 50K words, so I'll still need most of November even at the pace I'm on. Frankly, I don't see how that's possible, either; 5,000 words a day while working during the week is pretty tough.
Still, I'm gonna try.
- TOSK
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy--um, yeah.
Another year older I am. I joke about being 29 for the 17th time, but frankly I don't want to go back to that age. I like being in my 40's, as I (think that I) am much smarter and more resolved than I ever was back in my 20's or 30's.
Speaking of birthday, it's my intent to spend most of it with my loved ones rather than writing today, but I still had to make some progress on the NaNo effort. I didn't post an update yesterday, because I was so busy trying to bust out as many words as possible, but the planning beforehand seems to have made a heckuva difference.
Here are my current NaNoStats (and they'll probably remain my stats through the rest of the day):
Your Average Per Day 5,259
Words Written Today 5,169
Target Word Count 50,000
Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
Total Words Written 15,777
Words Remaining 34,223
Current Day 3
Days Remaining 28
At This Rate You Will Finish On November 10, 2013
I'm glad to read about the finish date, but the fact is that I'm looking at this story to reach 90-100K rather than 50K words, so I'll still need most of November even at the pace I'm on. Frankly, I don't see how that's possible, either; 5,000 words a day while working during the week is pretty tough.
Still, I'm gonna try.
- TOSK
Friday, November 1, 2013
A Good Start
3700 words.
One day.
Not bad.
Okay, so there are some caveats to be granted. It's actually only 3699 words, truth be told. If anybody seriously objects, I can always go replace a comma with the word "and." Also, to be honest, I've been planning the first scene for the past couple of weeks, so this has been mostly just regurgitating words I've already written onto the page. Mentally, anyway.
Only, it's not that easy. I can't recall specifically what I have been planning, any of the times I've been doing it in my head. As sad as it is, though, that my memory isn't perfect, it's also a blessing to me. Specifically, I'll end up creating a better scene than any of what I've done before, just because I've done it several times already.
That said, it's November 1. I've started the NaNo effort, and I'm 3700 words into it. 46,300 words to go in the standard goal, and 86,300 words to go in my personal goal. 2000 words ahead of the normal daily quota, and 700 words ahead of my own daily quota.
Not bad by any account, right?
- TOSK
One day.
Not bad.
Okay, so there are some caveats to be granted. It's actually only 3699 words, truth be told. If anybody seriously objects, I can always go replace a comma with the word "and." Also, to be honest, I've been planning the first scene for the past couple of weeks, so this has been mostly just regurgitating words I've already written onto the page. Mentally, anyway.
Only, it's not that easy. I can't recall specifically what I have been planning, any of the times I've been doing it in my head. As sad as it is, though, that my memory isn't perfect, it's also a blessing to me. Specifically, I'll end up creating a better scene than any of what I've done before, just because I've done it several times already.
That said, it's November 1. I've started the NaNo effort, and I'm 3700 words into it. 46,300 words to go in the standard goal, and 86,300 words to go in my personal goal. 2000 words ahead of the normal daily quota, and 700 words ahead of my own daily quota.
Not bad by any account, right?
- TOSK
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