A Rebuttal

I've read a few articles like this since the beginning of November: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-gresko/national-novel-writing-mo_b_781313.html

If you don't want to read the article, I'll sum up: A number of people find no value in National Novel Writing Month because at the end of the month, people are not left with a quality product. If your aim is to write crap, why do it?

It's not untrue, but it's a shallow way of thinking about the real goal (at least to me).

1) Practice makes perfect

Go on. Draw it.

Even if you know you're not going to sketch a masterpiece, you  might sit in a park and draw that squirrel over there anyway. Sometimes we do things because we like to. Even if (like me) you want to be a professional writer, any chunk of time I designate for writing is good practice for later, and I might end up with something that turns out well.

2) Mad Skills
By the time I heard about NaNoWriMo for the first time, I loved writing, but I had never gotten to the end of a novel. I'd started and thrown away dozens. NaNoWriMo claimed that not only had a few people written 50,000 words in one month, but thousands of people did it every year. As as challenge to myself, I jumped in, convinced it wasn't possible since every idea I'd ever had fizzled after no more than 20,000 words.

"Silence your inner editor," the website said. That made me as uneasy as the wordcount. After finishing the first chapter of a novel, one of my favorite parts was going back and touching it up. But then I kept working on the first chapter and never progressed. So I tried it. I wrote an outline to help with the time restriction, and on November 1st, started with chapter one. I made plenty of mistakes, but decided to plow through and fix it later.

Every writer has a different method for getting things done. What I learned from NaNoWriMo is what works for me, and I might not have figured it out on my own. Though you will not end up with an industry-ready manuscript at the end of the month (I'm still editing the first novel I did in a month), you will learn things, get a lot of practice, establish a writing routine, and (hopefully) have a good time.

NaNoWriMo Eve!

Alright, you guys, it's NaNoWriMo Eve. If I lived in Australia, I'd be furiously writing right now. But to be honest, when we reach 12am Eastern Time, I'll probably be asleep because November 1st also marks the official end of my vacation.

My novel this year will deal with a time-delayed murder and a possible ghost. It'll also be my first story set in Philadelphia.

While I should have been working on my outline for this coming month, I've been trying to get Awake edited (my Wrimo project from last year - only 2/3rds through it). I'd like to say it's going well, but I guess I'm having my doubts. Regardless, writing helps me escape other stuff, so I've already accomplished something very big for myself.

Keep an eye on the wordcount widget to your right and chart my progress. Feel free to cheer/laugh as needed.

humph.

Apparently, blogging isn't a priority of mine.

I have been editing a lot, blah blah blah. I'm also living in my little dream world, designing my future home in Europe. *

Also got hooked on a German band called ich + ich


So there went most of my day. Not sure what the creepy clown is doing in this video, but it's a nice song.

I have been reading. I gave up on The Girl Who Played With Fire because it was pretty confusing with all the Swedish names and places (and then it got started with drug people and and lesbianism, and most importantly, I couldn't figure out where the guy was going with all of it). Then I ran across this parody from The New Yorker, and it addressed most of my complaints.
More enjoyable, and just as exotic, is Miyuki Miyabe's The Sleeping Dragon. Her images are very real - like when the characters are outside in a typhoon. Without being redundant, she reminds the reader just how drenched everyone is.

Finally working on part 2 of Awake, and I'm having probably too much fun writing about an office environment. Grievances will be aired - but any resemblance to any persons, places, or events, living or dead, blah blah. Feels extremely good to get this stuff out in a "safe" environment. Not that I'm writing about personal experiences. NO! All fiction.



*note to self: figure out how to live in Europe.

craziness!

Though my brain is pretty numb at the moment, I've been inching my way through The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage)by Stieg Larsson. So far, it's very entertaining - a nice way to relax. Only about 80 pages through, though, so that's not really enough to give a review.

My writer's group probably hates me because I've been falling woefully behind on critiquing (hi Lisas!). (Of course, I say "hate" in the exaggerated sense; they're very nice people.) And while I'm not doing any corrections on the novel of mine they're currently reading (The Silent Treatment), I have been making meager progress on Awake. Trying very hard to get it polished (well, second draft, at least) for my Nanowrimo CreateSpace prize, but editing 400 pages in a month looks daunting, especially since it's taken me 5 months to edit 80. (Let's just say there are portions of the story that have to be rewritten since I banged out 120,000 words in a month. Yeah. Some of it is insane babbling because I was crazed by the contest. Happens to us all, I guess.)

Speaking of Nanowrimo, it's June now, and I'm starting to get bummed that I don't have an idea for something to write this November. Usually, I'd be sketching out my outline right about now. Maybe I'll pants it this year.



P.S. This is Smitten, who likes to sit on the back of my chair while I'm writing.

Author Reading

So this is new for me. I've been listening to a lot of author readings through podcasts (as an effort to make my work day not make me want to shoot myself in the face*), but I haven't taken advantage of the opportunities to see these very authors in person.

A few days ago, I went to see Jennifer Weiner at the Reading Terminal Market. She gave us all wine, cheese, and chocolate (really, what more can you want?). After talking to us as though we were all long-time friends, she read an excerpt from her upcoming book "Fly Away Home", and took our questions. Of course, I wanted to ask something thoughtful, helpful for myself and everyone else. Alas, my brain doesn't work that way, so I asked something that had pretty much already been answered. Everyone else thought well on their feet.

Well worth the experience, so I'll make more of an effort to see other authors too (especially with the library doing as many events as they do).

*added for dramatic effect.  come on, people!




Editing for myself has (unfortunately) been dragging. I've enlisted the help of a few fellow writers to read what I'm working on and give me the kick in the pants I need. Thanks everyone!!

I'll also be taking full advantage of Starbucks' Frappuccino Happy Hour this afternoon and work on my story in a comfortable, distraction-free place (and who can say no to a Frappuccino?).

accountability

Looks like I'm having a hard time keeping myself on the editing track.  That might be because I have no deadlines.  If any of you lovely readers are interested, I can send you a serialized version of my current novel (Awake).  The first ten or so chapters are finished (i.e. edited and readable), while the rest of the story is finished, but unpolished.

If you're interested, leave me a comment, or send me an email to awakenovel (at ) g m a i l (dot) com (don't want the spam-bots to get me!).

No Loafing

I haven't been getting as far as I wanted to with the novel.  It's April, and I've been finished with the first draft since, what, January?  At the latest?  I've got to say I have my work cut out for me: in addition to cutting nearly 30,000 words, I'm having to smooth out some seriously rough text (including some wooden characters).

My biggest problem is finding better stuff to do on my computer than edit (damn this wireless internet connection!).  Now I have 62 quality pages (as in, all the junk has been taken out, I've smoothed it over, and run it through autocrit), and 407 to go.

Also, happy Easter, everyone.  Christ is risen!

25,000 words removed

The first novel (in recent times) I finished and thought was decent totaled about 25,000 words.  It was a mystery -- decent one, if you ask me, but because of its stunted growth, I couldn't find a home for it except in a corner of my hard drive.  I can't bring myself to recycle the character names (although a few of the story elements have seeped into other stories), so maybe I'm not done with it yet.  Maybe I'll re-write it into something longer, or maybe once I've got a novel or two in the "S" section at Barnes and Noble, someone will be interested in publishing this novella.

Awake didn't share that story's fate (at least not yet).  Back a few blog posts, you'll see that I ended the novel at a grand total of 120,000 words (which is too long for a first-time novelist to get picked up by anyone), but let's face it: in a first draft, a good 10 - 20% of the text is crap.  So far, I've read through the entire story (parts of it were painful), and trimmed a lot of useless word-padding.  Starting at the beginning again, I'm steamrolling the entire thing, taking out unnecessary paragraphs and re-wording almost everything else.  So far, the words I've cut from this novel equals about 25,000 words.  If you remember from one paragraph above, thats about enough room to write a completely separate story.

So far, the edit is going well.  The characters are showing me how they feel rather than me having to say it, so reading through a newly polished chapter is giving me guilty feelings of glee, enjoying my own work.  Of course, for the past 2 days, I've had plenty of time to edit because the city has been shut down by piles of snow.

Besides writing, I've been working my way through Denise Mina's Garnethill, which is a good read so far (I'm about 3/4 finished).  Stylistically, I'm not enjoying the omniscient point of view, but hey -- she's not trying to cater to me.   For me, it's the ending that really matters, so here's hoping it goes alright.

Also, who isn't interested in the final season of Lost?  I'm pretty excited about it, especially since I can't predict what's going to happen.  It's either going to end really well, or it's going to be the biggest letdown ever.

Refining my query letter

After reading such blogs as Miss Snark and the query section on the Nanowrimo forums, I'm overhauling my query letter so that it can go find me an agent.  Not much else to say about it, but as it's taking up the majority of my evening, I thought I'd mention it.

I've also removed about ten thousand words from the novel I wrote in November.  Yes, it's a lot, but a whole lot more are going to come out before I'm finished with it.  (Also, I'd like to apologize if any of the people I emailed my first draft to are reading this blog: parts of the novel are painful, aren't they.  It's very wordy.  It's very "tell-y".)

But I'm having a good time, and I can't wait to go back through my story to smooth it out -- to make it actually GOOD.  All in good time.

Back to work

Today was unbelievably good in terms of getting my butt in gear and getting some work done on Exchange.  If you follow me on Facebook, you've already read about the coffee shop I went to this morning and enjoyed.  I mean, the sign out front said "Gingerbread Frappe" ... how could I not go in?  I might just be off Starbucks forever now ... so delicious ...

And because I wrote the first draft of Exchange back at the beginning of this year, I was listening to different music than I listen to these days (changes with the season, sort of), I had to go back to that music to get "into character".  Lots of German synth-pop.  I forgot how much I love Peter Heppner.

1 Easy - Peter Heppner

Anyway, without any distractions, I was able to get back into my "zen" place and smooth out a few pages. 14 pages done (altogether ... I probably did 5 today)!  150 to go ...

Telling ... too much telling!

::sigh::
Since I've been working on my outline for so long, I'm super used to throwing ideas out and arranging them, not in making them sound good.  Now I'm working on Exchange, and I'm having to slowly break out of that.

Lots of revisions using AutoCrit.  Love that website.

I kinda missed these characters.  Hopefully, in revisiting them, I'll get another idea for them and write something else in the spring.  I guess every writer goes through this, but I'm a little afraid of running out of ideas.

Exchange

For those of you who read and loved The Silent Treatment (pictured to the right in printed book form), I wrote another "episode" back in February, featuring the same basic characters.  This is sort of my answer to Nancy Drew.

Since I finished up with my mammoth outline for Awake (which I'll be doing the first draft for in November ... but you already knew that), I needed something to occupy my time.  Exchange has been happily sitting in my "novels" folder for quite a few months now, and I figure it's about time to get it polished up and send it out to work.

A Physical Copy

Who would have thought I'd be so excited about a single, physical copy of my story ... looking like a real live book? It's a good thickness (as you can see from the previous post, where I have it between other, "officially" published books by authors I enjoy), and it's got my name on the cover. What could be better?

(I guess what could be better is if I found this same book at Barnes and Noble or on the NY bestseller list. ... maybe later.)

Even though I've read the darn thing about 50 times by now (because of the extensive editing I put it through in just a short time), opening the cover and sneaking out a few paragraphs is more enjoyable than I thought it would be.

Even though the above-mentioned project has come to an end, I still have two other stories (at least) in various stages of done-ness. One is a sequel (or second in a series) to The Silent Treatment, using the same main characters, but moving them to Germany (because who wouldn't want to go to Germany??), and kidnapping one of them. What is a mystery series without a good kidnap? This story is in its rough draft stage, and I haven't looked at it since February.

The second project is a rewrite of something I've been messing around with for the better part of a decade. Though I've "written" the story TWICE now, it's again in its outline stage. Each time it gets better ... I have high hopes for the third try. It follows five people who wake up in a locked museum. If I told you any more, I'd have to kill you. All I can say is that from the time the characters wake up to the time the mystery is finally resolved, I'm hoping to leave my dear readers with a "wow, that was ... wild" feeling. In a good way.

Every time I re-work the story (which I've titled Awake, since first the characters physically wake up, but then they become conscious of what they've actually experienced), I realize it goes a lot further than I thought. Either this novel is what's going to make me famous, or it's complete crap that won't ever see the light of day. I guess we'll find out!

Submitting Fiction

That time has come again. I've written a novel, edited it, got my mom to read it, got a few friends of mine to say, "I'm too busy to read it, but I promise I will", and now I'm querying literary agents.

I've also taken advantage of NaNoWriMo and CreateSpace's free proof copy offer, so I should be seeing a paperback of The Silent Treatment in the mail in a little while. Even though it's just for me and won't actually be on sale, it's quite exciting. I'll be able to put it on my bookshelf in the "S" section.

<-- like this!

Editing again

I may have written the complete text in a month, but it'll take me the rest of the year to edit it into something palatable for another human being to digest. But that's the point of the first draft: just get it onto the page and worry about it later.

What started out as a little over fifty-thousand words has dwindled down to just under forty-thousand. Where did my ten-thousand words go?? Apparently, some fluff got into my text, but I'm sure those ten-thousand will be back as I'm fleshing out stuff like "They all looked afraid" into something a bit more literary. I really can't wait to have some people read it, but it'll probably be a while before it's dressed enough to go out in public.

As I work on my project and do other things, it's so easy for me to liken novel writing to normal every-day things. Like cooking, for example. When I want to make something, I get out the recipe (the outline), drag all the ingredients out of the fridge (the initial scenes). Then, I get rid of the stuff I don't need (plastic bags, inedible greens -- editing). I measure, mix, arrange (polish), and cook. When the finished food product comes out of the oven, it looks nothing like the scattered ingredients on my counter, but those bags and bottles and smatterings of flour were necessary for the finished product.

Again!

At last, my second publication is out! Read A Similar Fate here.

I've been working on my next big project, sketching out characters and plots. I've had to recycle a previous novel I worked on a few years ago. I was so excited about it then, working on it every single day (to the dismay of my family members who wanted to use the computer as much as I did). But when I re-read it, I found myself cringing way too much. Even when I tried to edit it I realized it would take a complete overhaul to make it readable (and then I remembered all the people I subjected it to ... ugh).

So, an overhaul is what it needs, that's what it got. I changed the angle of the narrative, started it basically at the end instead of the beginning, and scrapped all the characters.