NaNoWriMo 2010 – Day 15: Onwards if not Upwards

I won’t lie, it’s been a slog. I’m about 5k words behind where I want to be, and I thought the weekend would be my chance to catch up. I was reminded that sometimes it’s hard to just shut a door and write. Other people don’t always run on the same schedule and plans, and that’s not their fault. It just is.

I should have “put my foot down” more (which is a laughable thing to say since I’m not much of a “foot down” kind of guy) and sequestered myself off more…but I didn’t and that’s ok. I’ve got vacation starting on Friday through the Holiday week, so hopefully I can recover and get back on track. We’ll see.

Even if I’m not climbing the hill as fast as I wanted, I’m still moving forward and that’s what really counts.

NaNoWriMo 2010 – Day 7: Once more into the breach…

I lied.

I didn’t decided to write a different book…I just needed to spend a day rethinking the book I was writing. One day without writing produced two days of excellent output plus a vision for the STORY that happens in my BOOK.

This is exciting.

I’d write more about it, but I’m too busy actually writing it. I’m defiantly behind right now, but I’ll keep working hard to catch up. A couple of good days and I will be right back on track. I hope.

NaNoWriMo 2010 – Day 4: Changes

Aw Crap.

Yesterday I was writing up a bit of workshop style feedback for a friend’s first novel…and I realized I was making a mistake. Not with the feedback, but with my own manuscript.

I’ve been developing the world and backstory and characters that inhabit my manuscript for about two years…what I haven’t ever found was the villain. No antagonist. I’ve had this sort of backstory/travelogue thing going on, and I kept waiting for “the story” to happen. There’s plenty of adventure in my current story, just no opposing force. Nothing to overcome.

I’ve thought about this at length, and I realized that I’m trying to tell the wrong story. I know I will tell this story, but it needs more time to bake. So, I’ll do what every great team does on fourth-and-long, drop back and punt.

I’ve had an outline and synopsis sitting on my laptop for the last five years. It’s the story that comes before a story I’ve already written and shopped around…a story that is clearly a story that comes after the one waiting to be written.

I decided to follow my insight instead of continuing to force something I’m clearly not ready to write, and write the thing that I’ve been holding off writing for literally years. It has a villain, it has a clear story with clear impetus and clear resolution. And I think it will be a darn good book.

It also means I was basically three days behind. So this morning I started cranking, and I’ll use this weekend to catch up. I’m currently at 2850 words, and if I can do 2000 words a day this weekend, I can be close to 10k (and on track) by the start of next week. So…here’s to hoping.

And, here’s to realizing you’re on the wrong track before you get so deep you refuse to back up and start again.

NaNoWriMo 2010 – The Starting Gun

Ah, November…crisp air, apple cider, pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving Holiday, madly cramming words into a wordprocessor…

It’s NaNoWriMo time once again, and once again I’ll be trying my hand.  Last year I made a pretty meager start, and then ended up traveling on business for 3 out of four weeks in November…essentially killing my chance at doing NaNoWriMo.  This year I am expecting to be at home, at my desk, and at the grindstone for the entire time.  I have a week of vacation planned for the Thanksgiving Holidy, and grand plans to actually “win” this year.

My NaNoWriMo ID is SerialStoryteller and I’ll be tracking my stats here as well as including the occasional excerpt from the day’s work and writing about the hows and whys of writing.

It might be interesting, it might not; but I’m doing this…I’m not letting the universe hold me back.

As a friend tweeted a few weeks ago:

“A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.”

Writing Exercise – Short Story Start

So, after reading some blogs by other aspiring writers, I’ve noticed a trend to post up snippets of stuff in progress and I thought to myself  ”self, you should do that too.”  So here we go.  This is a story start I wrote up at 35,000 feet while flying home.  I wrote it without pausing over about 15 minutes.  No edits, no rewrites, no touch-ups.  This is what my storytelling drafts look like:

The city was huge beyond any reasonable way to describe it.  As far as she could see in any direction there were palaces and tenements, guildhalls and gardens, roads and parks, squares and plazas.  In the far distance she could just see the boundary wall of her home duchy, and on every side there were duchies as large as hers.  From on top of the temple bell-tower she could just see the edge of the next layer above her own, and on a perfectly clear day, you could see the floating islands that spiraled up the column of the Sun Tower where the light of day was lit each morning in its crystal lantern, and where every night the day’s white embers were banked and tended in the glass cauldron of the moon.

With her back to the Sun Tower, at the moment that morning was lit, out beyond the furthest glimpses of the furthest boundary walls, she could just make out the pink and rosy reflections on the face of the outer wall itself.  At least, that’s what she told herself.

She wondered how long it would take to walk there.  If she could see it, surely she could get there in a matter of days on nothing more extravagant than her own two feet. As children, they’d played and pretended to be great explorers like Tumblejack the wandering mechanical jester, or Brecka Bright the phoenix girl who saved the city when the dayfire wouldn’t light.  So many stories and songs about the city, she could barely remember them all.  In fact, what was odd was that she could barely remember any.

Across the City we shall go,
Travel high and travel low,
Never shall we find an end,
Where we left we come again.

That was all she could remember hearing children sing.  She couldn’t even remember singing it herself, just hearing it chanted by the little ones running between vendor stalls in the market square.

What was funny, was when I scrolled back up on my netbook, the lady sitting next to me said “I’d rather hear the story about Tumblejack or the phoenix girl” so I guess there’s just no chance I’ll write something that someone wants to read on the first try.

An evening with The Somnambulist

I have many passions in my life.  Most of them relatively simple: a fine scotch with a few drops of water to loosen the spirit’s body and nose, fine cigars with full flavor and a mild finish, my pipe and the “Holms III” tobacco blend devised by my favorite tobacconist, and books.

My passion for books is not simple…I love books.

Little books that hardly trifle the mind and are consumed like candy; Heavy books that draw you down into the deep places of the heart and soul; Surprising books that seem to be one thing and achieve loftier things all together before they finish.  I love old books.  I love old styles of storytelling.  I love things that revel in the best parts of past times, and the worst parts of the past peoples that breathe life into the pages.  And I love the fantastic; the “beyond the horizon”, “over the edge”, “the stuff of dreams and nightmares” kind of fantastic.

I’ve felt frustrated recently, that the last crop of fantastic fiction stood on the promises of prior works and forms and did very little to actually find a new voice.  While there have been many exceptions (like Gaiman and De Lint and Valente), there seems to have been an overall dearth of voices with something new to say.  While there is nothing wrong with revisiting proven styles, and capitalizing on well worn (and obviously popular) paths, there was something wearisome in the last crop of stories being offered.

“Oh, look, another vampire novel.  I wonder if that one features ghosts…why yes, yes it does.  Not-Quite-Buffy the Secret Agent/Super Hero/Vampire Slayer meets the-dark-and-brooding-embodiment-of-angst-who-might-be-but-isn’t-really-evil.  Again.”

If you’re going to create something new from the old, at least try to make something compelling.

Which brings me to my most recent read, less than an hour from my fingers; I have just closed the cover on Johnathan Barnes “The Somnambulist” and I find myself delightfully conflicted.

Enthusiastic ambivalence about a strange book…

NaNoWriMo – Day one: laughable at best.

So the prevailing wisdom is that NaNoWriMo success is best accomplished with a bold and furious start to impel one down a path of writing frenzy and consistent output. Firing the laptop up at midnight after the trick-or-treat-ers are safely home and in bed, yanking out one’s outline and prep notes, and dashing off a few thousand words over the course of the first day of NaNoWriMo.

You know, something to get the juices flowing.  Something to BUILD on.

Yeah.

My day one word count was 50.  Including title and the ever-so-narrative “Chapter 1” on it’s own line.  A grand total of two sentences.  Oh yeah!  Who rocks?  I rock!

Want to see what a horrible NaNoWriMo start looks like?  Here you go:

Beyond the Grip of Terra

Chapter 1

The gas-lamps were just beginning to light in the gathering dusk as the carriages rolled down the long drive to the manor house’s imposing south entrance. Footmen in tails, top hats, and gloves opened the doors and helped the occupants climb down from the coaches.

Yeah.  Not even GOOD sentences.

Editorial Notes as follows:

1) Title, not likely to actually be “Beyond the Grip of Terra” when all is said and done.

2) That fist sentence is clumsy and overwrought.  Which, given that it’s a first sentence, is an almost forgone conclusion.

3) That second sentence sucks even more.  Footmen in full livery don’t wear top hats.  Also, the flow of action is a tad confused.  While I want the implied “obviously the carriages stopped before they opened the doors” I might need to clarify that a touch.

Yep.  That’s my writing process in a nutshell.  Bad starts and continuous edits.  Rinse and repeat.

You’ve got to spend money to make money.

Three Hundred Dollars.  Three HUNDRED Dollars.  THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!

[cue loud explosion and the sound of wet flesh splattering on the ground.]

That “bang and plop” you just heard was my brain.  The three hundred dollars was the new ultra-portable netbook with full-sized keyboard I just bought.

I keep trying to tell myself that this is “an investment” but I’m having a hard time balancing “investment” against “frivolous indulgence” and I guess in some ways I’m just not quite prepared to win that battle in my head yet.

The only way to justify it to myself is to USE it.  If it increases my output, it was worth the money; if it ends up being the writing equivalent of the treadmill in the corner with my clothes hanging on it, then not so much.

As for “using it” I guess the proof needs to be in the measurable output; and this is the month for measurable output.  As some of you know, November is NaNoWriMo month, and as such, I will be participating this year.  Of course, 50,000 words is barely the first third of my outline estimate, so we’ll see how this goes.  I’ll be posting here as close to every day as possible, and I’ll be trying to get some consistent posting frequency going on MyBadPants.com as well…so here’s to hoping this new creation tool will actually help me find opportunities to create!

Stay tuned for more stories from the front lines of NaNoWriMo, some excerpts and example chapters, and then follow along as I decide where to go with this manuscript when it’s finished (even if that’s not in line with the NaNoWriMo end date).

Hopefully this will be interesting, or at least creative.

The single best source of advice. Ever.

There are literally thousands of places on the internet where you can read advice on breaking into the publishing industry. While I’m sure that many of these are wonderful (and more than half of them are just trying to scam you out of money), I honestly believe that there is absolutely NO better source of insight than the posts and comments over at Making Light.

Long ago and far away, I was a regular reader and poster to the rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan newsgroup. Of all the people who participated there, none were more insightful than TNH and PNH; mysterious acronyms who seemed to have some kind of inside scoop on the goings-on happening behind closed doors at Tor Books, Robert Jordan’s publisher.

Let me tell you about my favorite place on the internet…

New Year, New Projects

Well, it’s been more than a year since I hopped on the blogging bandwagon. Some experiments went well, some not-so-much, and some were dead before even getting off the ground. I noticed something as I went along, blogs that are great for writing personal “slice of life” vignettes aren’t really the best venue for more structured fiction.

In this new year, I would like to focus more on my writing-for-money, and less on miscellaneous moments from my personal life. I want to talk about the process of writing as a profession, about the industry of publishing, and about the best-of-the-best of the people who have already “made it” from aspiring writer to published author.

So, on this site I’ll post everything from first drafts to final submissions. I’ll talk about cover letters, questing through the dark forest of the lost looking for an agent, climbing the mountain of quicksand that is the dreaded “slushpile” of un-agented submissions, and all the tilting at windmills disguised as short story submissions. I’ll post my rejection letters (and there WILL be rejection letters), helpful comments I might receive along the way, and any successes for all to see.

If you’ve ever wanted to watch someone go the distance and try to make their dreams come true, then stay tuned. I can’t promise that I’ll end up a best selling author; but I CAN promise that I’ll wring all the gut-wrenching humor out of the attempt for all to see.