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.

Appetite

If you like short stories, I recommend Appetite by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.  It's about a guy who is a waiter and his adventures, if you will.  The thing I loved the most about this story is that he describes almost everything I've ever felt about work (anywhere - retail in particular, but some of it goes for the office, too).  The opening scene where the main character wants to ask for a raise is painfully vivid (in a good way).  Also, the character has a dream, but instead of faking out the reader by having something good happen and then PSYCH!! waking up, the author accurately describes a confusing jumble of memories and TV shows, and conversations that might have been.  When the character wakes up and realizes he's been asleep instead of watching TV, instead of feeling played, I think, "aww, that's happened to me too."

What bothers me about modern literary fiction in general (and what happened with this particular story also), is that sometimes nothing really happens.  There are a bunch of good characters who flash back and dream and interact, but when it comes to the ending, I'm left feeling a bit ... blah.  I will tell you that I'm totally lost when it comes to symbolism, and that might be holding me back with the genre.  Someone please clue me in: when reaching the end, am I supposed to feel something other than, "huh.  Well ... that's it, I guess"?

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.

Yes, again

Well, kiddos, that's the second one this month: Cautionarytale.com liked my rewrite and they're putting a very fictional, made up story of mine into their September edition. So check it out. Just remember: The pen is mightier than the sword.