NaNoWriMo 2011 Pep Talk #1

One of the best things about NaNoWriMo is that you get pep talks, delivered to your email, by some pretty heavyweight authors.  In that past some of those authors included, Jasper Fforde, Neil Gaiman, Piers Anthony, Kelley Armstrong, Dave Eggars and Sue Grafton.  This weeks pep talk came via Erin Morgenstern, author of "The Night Circus."  A book I've read, but not reviewed here yet.  She began the book while doing NaNoWriMo, as you'll here in the pep talk, I'll post here.  I'm putting it on here so it's easily accessible for me but also so it's easily accessible for you.  I found it quite inspiring and worthy of a read, if you're an artistic person, of any variety, we call go through the same shoots and ladders.  The creative spark, the doubt, the inspiration, the realization that what you created isn't on par with the idea you originally had and the hard work to whittle away at all the excess.  We all have the same issues....so enjoy.  :)

Dear brave, beautiful NaNoWriMo writer,

I feel a bit like I am writing this from the other side of the looking glass. I am more accustomed to being the participant and not the pep talker. Also, “pep” is a strange word. The Online Etymology Dictionary informs me that it dates from 1912 as a shortened form of “pepper” figuratively meaning spirit or energy. (“Pep talk” only dates back to 1926.) It sounds to me more like a soft drink or a nickname for a small dog. Feel free to think of this pep talk as a small dog full of spirit or energy.

I have been where you are. I suspect this might feel like someone yelling encouragement from a far dry shore, sipping a fancy-glassed drink with a little paper umbrella precariously perched atop it, waving with my free hand while you swim through icy, toe-numbing water. But I have been in that water, many times. My toes have been numb during those dismal days when even minimal wordage seems unattainable and that 50K beach is barely visible through the salt-spray surf. There are probably sharks involved in this analogy as well.

(True confession: I love analogies. I also love adverbs. There, I said it. I love adverbs so much I sometimes contemplate getting an –lytattooed behind my ear to encourage the whispering of sweet, sweet adverbs. But I digress.)

I participated in my first NaNoWriMo in 2003, after years of thinking about writing and not actually putting words down on paper. I managed around 15K before I quit.

I’m not sure why—perhaps I am determined, perhaps I am simply stubborn—but I attempted again the next year and made it to 50k. And again the year after that, and the year after that, and so on and so forth, the most recent being 2009. I have a 6/1 winning record over 7 years. I think my personal best is in the range of 80k in 27 days or something like that. The pride that comes with that winner icon is still a joy. (I particularly liked the Viking-themed year, those were good icons.) And I do so love a progress bar, that gorgeous visual representation of word count progress. I’m a visual person, so that bar helps, it really does.

2010 marked the first NaNoWriMo that I haven’t participated since that first try, and I didn’t have the time mostly because I was in the midst of my final edits for The Night Circus, which began life as a surprise tangent in NaNovel ’05 and was very roughly, sprawlingly drafted during NaNo ’06 & ’07. I am aware that this is cheating. I’m sorry. In my defense, I’m not certain it had enough plot at that point to be considered the same novel.

The circus was my variation on the wise and ancient NaNo wisdom: when in doubt, just add ninjas. I had this plodding, Edward Gorey-esque thing with mysterious figures in fur coats being mysterious and doing very little else. I got tremendously bored with it because nothing was happening so I sent the otherwise boring characters to a circus. And it worked. I ended up tossing that beginning and focusing purely on the circus. An imaginary location I created out of desperation expanded and changed and became its own story over many non-November months of revisions and more revisions and now it is all grown-up and book-shaped and published and bestselling. And it all started with NaNoWriMo.

I like to think of NaNo-ing as excavating. You uncover different things at the 30K mark than you do at 10K. Things that felt like desperate, random nonsense on page 72 (the abandoned broken pocket watch, a partially obscured tattoo, that taxidermied marmot on the mantelpiece) are suddenly important and meaningful on page 187. Everything could hinge on the fate of that marmot. Or the marmot may be a red herring. Or perhaps the marmot is just a marmot. You have to keep writing to find out.

Even if you’re an outliner, leave room for the unexpected things to sneak in. Surprises are half the fun, the spontaneous road trips through tangents and subplots. They might end up being more important than you think. And if they’re not, you can always edit them out after November. No one has to know so for now, for this glorious November, you can do whatever you please. It’s your world to create and explore and even destroy if you want.

I wish I could think of cool, witty things to say. I want to mix you each the beverages of your choice, cocktails or sodas or tea or foam-topped espresso drinks that all magically maintain perfect drinking temperature. Bring you truffles or tira misu or chocolate-covered popcorn and give you wrist massages while whispering these encouraging, fortune-cookie bits of wisdom-esque whatnot garnered in my years of NaNo-ing:

Never delete anything. If you can’t stand to look at it, change the font to white and keep going.

If possible, get a running start. It gives you flexibility for later in the month when you desperately need to do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while.

Do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while. Take a walk, go to a museum, do yoga, paint your toenails, spin around in circles. Shake your brain up so the ideas can move around.

Backup. Frequently. Flash drives are your friends. Also, I hear you can store things on clouds now but I’m not sure how that works. It sounds very whimsical, though, and I am a fan of whimsy.

Take risks. (Microsoft Word wanted to autocorrect that to “Take care.” Clearly, Word does not understand NaNoWriMo. Also, this is why I normally write in Scrivener. Scrivener would never suggest such a thing.)

When in doubt, just add ninjas. (Ninjas do not need to be actual ninjas.) (But they can be.)

Let yourself be surprised.

I wish you happy, daring writing laced with surprises. Have fun. Bonne chance.

Erin Morgenstern

Twisted Ghosts

I'm busy writing my ghost story of a novel "Grey House" and realize that I only have a beginning and a middle.  Granted these are two major stepping stones in order to find my way to the end but do you need an end to have the first two?  Confusing, I know.  Let me explain.  It's common ,and by common I mean a couple people in a room somewhere once posted it on the internet and now it's gone viral,  knowledge that for a mystery novel that you should have an end game in sight.  That it's a good idea to know the ending so you can leave clues along the way.  A ghost story is like a mystery novel, in that it requires clues or hints along the way.

I wonder if movies like "The Sixth Sense" or "The Others" have changed the game of ghost stories.  Is that big dramatic twist at the end necessary for the ride to be worth it?

In every story there's 'ah ha' moments, that's a given.  I still have a story to tell, I just don't have the great revelation at the end to tie it all together in a nice movie sort of way.  Granted there's still a lot of writing between now and when I'm at the end so anything's possible.  I'm only 7,000 words into what I hope turns out to be 60,000, or so.

What say you, my faithful readers...ur...reader, is a twist the new normal for ghost stories?

PS - thought of this, thought it was funny (it's late, my time, 12:30, ya'll, give me a break)  "You got your twist in my ghost story."  "No way, you got your ghost story in my twist!"

Anne Vs. Stephenie

A feud broke out this week.  Perhaps you didn't hear about it, what with Cain Vs. Perry going on.  Unfortunately this feud has the potential to change the world in which we live in such huge, drastic, proportions.  It all comes down to who's vampires rock more.

I'm not even going to voice an opinion here and you shouldn't have to ask what my answer would be.  Do I want sparkling vampires or vampires that will turn their own mothers or children into blood suckers?

For me, watching this has been quite fun.  Seeing authors wage mini wars on each other is very entertaining.  But, in all honesty, Stephenie Meyer is taking a lot of flack, these days.

Here's what Stephen King has to say....here (hint, it's not positive)

Here's Anne's view....here (obviously, not good)

I read the first book, in the Twilight series, on word of mouth, from friends, long before the movies came out or the Twilight phenom reached fever pitch.  I believe that what Stephen King says is true, "She can't write worth a darn." but it's her ideas that keep the people coming back.  Say what you will but she's tapped into something that has some resonance. I don't get it, most of my friends don't get it, but certainly the people forking over their money for the books and movies 'do' get it.

I just almost wish she would have called them something else, other than Vampires.  Sure they drink blood and have everlasting life but that's pretty much where the similarities end.  While even Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, chose to learn and expand his horizons, as each day repeated.  These 'Vampires' in Twilight choose to stay in high school.  Huuuuuwhaaaaat?  All of eternity poised before you and you want to learn how to skip gym class for the fiftieth year in a row?

Of course, the thing is, without this idea, hundred year old Vampires in school, how would they ever meet our sixteen year old, and get her preggo with a vampire baby, before finally corrupting her further and, eventually, making her sparkle, as well.

Ultimately popular authors have always taken the hit for being popular.

NaNoWriMo 2011

The decision has been made to go with "Grey House" as my NaNoWriMo novel of choice, this year.

It's a little daunting since I've only, really, got the first few chapters fleshed out, in my head.  They, and I'm not sure who 'They' is, say that you're supposed to have an end game planned from the beginning, in books of this type, ghost story/mystery novels.  I have a beginning but no end.  I'm hoping an end presents itself at some point during the process.

I do know that I have a main character who I'm hoping to return to in subsequent books.  A "Bear" of a guy, big and imposing but a baby on the inside, named Aidan Whitlock.  I can see him in my head, as if I've met him, tall, at six foot six, and somewhat heavy weight, probably around 250 or so, mostly muscle but a lining of chubbiness, as well, and dark brown, almost black, head of hair that swings down into a thick beard.  As imposing, physically, as he seems he, actually, has no talent for fighting, having never had to let things get that far, and outside of lifting weights, he's not athletic, at all, either.  He's in his mid fifties and he's at a point in his life when life is of constant contemplation.  He owns a comic book shop and sublets his night time activities by lending himself out as a private investigator.  Mostly his cases contain cheating spouses and/or missing items but things are about to get a little X-Files on him.

The fun part of NaNoWriMo approaching are all the posts about how to write or how to survive November.  A couple good ones are here and here.

The thing, about writing, is, everyone has their own theory on how to do it.  If you look at most of the iconic novelists, however, you would notice that they all seemed to make the rules up, as they went along.  From Jack Kerouac to Ernest Hemingway, they all developed their own style and, even, their own punctuation.  It comes down to readability, for me, does it make sense, does the dialog sound realistic, is there a plot, all of those things.

Anyway, these are a few of my pre-NaNoWriMo thoughts, tomorrow's the big day, 1667 words a day, to keep up the 50,000 word goal.

More tomorrow.....good luck all you participants, this year. :)

Pre-Novel Thoughts

Just a couple days before NaNoWriMo begins...and the pre-novel thoughts are bubbling.

Options....

1- End of world Zombie novel feature two gay main characters, with a newborn they've adopted, trying to eek out life in a world where the zombies are the least of their concern.  Down the street the United Church of Christ has militarized their chapel and is out to recreate the world as they think it should be.  Fencing off the city, block by block, they clear and utilize the area to make their new community. (early stages of thoughts on that one, things always change once the actual writing starts.)

2- Another gay novel, my theme this year, it would seem, follows a young man, late twenties, who travels home when his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer and put on a hospice program.  He has to confront the world that he left behind, the world he ran from when he came out, relationships he left broken because he never thought he would be back.  Also, he finds, he has to confront the world he created, inside himself, after he left, when he finds love for the first time, in the nurse providing hospice to his father.

3- Mick and Ed just bought a house in Cabbage Town, the largest gay suburb in North America, or so the real estate agent has told them, and plan to turn it into a gay bed and breakfast.  When a friend, from New York, comes to stay and goes missing, while never having left their house, leaving a pool of blood in front of his bedroom closet, the little bumps in the night they had been hearing suddenly become bigger.

Those are all early ideas still.  We will see where creativity leads.

Slumming It...The Last Werewolf

This post is more about a current trend in fiction than an actual book review...but, since it's also a book review, I'll treat it accordingly.

The Last Werewolf - by Glen Duncan


Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you’d never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely.

Jake’s depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive.

Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human.

One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.


----


Audacious?  Terrifying?  No, not really.  Can't say as I was holding on to my chair much during the reading of this and that's not a complaint against the book it's a complaint against the publisher trying to sell the book.


I feel bad for publishers right now.  See, they have these literary heavy weights releasing books about Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies (oh, my).  What are they supposed to do about this?  The writers aren't tackling them as a normal horror writer would.  They're not getting their hands too dirty but just dirty enough to lend it a horror classification.  So the publishers are trying to sell books and, of course, they're doing it the only way they know how...appealing to that horror demographic, knowing full well that there's a section of 'literary' readers that aren't going to be following these authors into the trenches.


Not to send you away so early in my blog post but here's an excellent article about what I'm saying.


The strange thing about this situation is that, previously, horror writers have crossed that border on more than a few occasions without much ado.  Stephen King and a few of his stories come to mind, Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, The Green Mile.  So, I'm not sure I'm happy about how these authors, delving into Horror for the first time, are getting such accolades for their courage and kudo's for breaking down the typecast author.  I can't but feel as if they are selling out, somehow.  Literary fiction, not being the type of book one grabs just before a long flight or hospital stay, has always been the frame but not the engine of the publishers car.  After seeing Twilight and Harry Potter at the top of the best seller list, for the better part of a decade, I'm thinking, they see that money can be made from writing.  After all, in seven years J.K. Rowling went from unemployment to billionaire.  (or so the story goes)


The one thing I can be happy about is that it certainly puts the pressure on horror writers to focus more on the writing and less on the imagery.  There's a few, out there, I could name but won't, that have some fun books to read but without the idea's, pushing the novel forward, I would have given up on, long ago.


Back to the novel, at hand.  The Last Werewolf...


Beautifully written and fleshed out.  The attention to detail and world building, I thought, was meticulous.  


Currently I'm reading Zone One, a zombie tale, written by a previous lit fic heavy weight (shouldn't say previous, I'm sure he'll keep that standing) that tries too hard to keep the lit the center of attention and not the horror.  Werewolf knows where it stands.  Duncan knows that he's writing a horror novel and so makes sure to keep the story moving with action.  Where as, in Zone One, pages go with nothing but memories being described.  It's akin to listening to your grandmother tell you about what's going on in her 'Stories.'  I'll dive into Zone One, on here, when I'm done reading it.  It just makes for a good comparison, right now.


You get your Werewolves and you get your evil people, as well, which most often are the actual horror element of a horror novel, after all what's scarier than a deranged psychotic human?  Exactly.


My qualm with this book, and it's a small one, is that it starts strong, the first third is right into the story and setting up the finale.  Then, a character is introduced and it goes into sexapaloozaland (an actual word, look it up) before getting back on track and hitting the gas again, for the final third.  It's during this middle part that you can see that Duncan had an issue with just allowing the book to remain in horrorland (which, oddly enough, shares a border with sexapaloozaland).  For this middle third he throws in all the esoteric thoughts and flourishes of ideas and words that most lit/fic fans will appreciate.  For me, and I do like lit/fic, don't get me wrong, it almost made me put the book down.  It's just that, when I want a werewolf to ravage a maiden, or a brawny dude for that matter, I want it to happen, not think of happening or think of how it might happen if the world were a different place or...you get the picture.


Still, I have to recommend this book, the writing, as I said, is excellent and, in the end, Duncan pulls it off.


I guess, also in the end, if the authors are going to meet us halfway, to horrorland, then we, the reader, might want to do our part and head towards litville. (a small country known for stamps in Europe)

Return To Blog

Nanowrimo time is fast approaching, my peeps, if I may call you peeps.  This is good news and bad news.  Good news = Nanowrimo always motivates me to sit my ass down and write.  Bad news = My computer, the new laptop, not this old one I'm using now, is dead. (they say an old laptop should never have to bury it's youthful - faster processor, battery that holds a charge, power cord that doesn't spark when looked at strangely, wireless router that works - self.)

The thing about Nanowrimo is, if you don't know, that you write a novel in a month.  I've done this the past five years.

1 - Anniversary - A Zombie Tale

2 - Flotsam and Jetsam - A coming of age tale (just your regular old fiction)

3 - Wolves - Werewolves (not too original of a title but in all honesty I lost most of this novel when I upgraded         my computer to windows 7

4 - Bear Lake - A slasher murder mystery set at a lake house

5 - Golem - a vengeful mystical being on the lose killing a group of friends one by one.

Now I'm about to dive in and do it again.  As usual, a custom, tradition, if you will, I have no idea of what I'm wanting to write.  Not for lack of ideas, I've got the beginnings of about ten novels stuck in my head currently.  But the idea, notion, of Nanowrimo is to get your creative juices flowing, strike out into new, unknown, territory.  By writing something unplanned, unplotted, you fill that creative udder, hanging just under your frontal lobe, and begin milking it.

So, now maybe, you see the conundrum.  The weeks leading up to my writing a novel I'm not supposed to think about but, then, all I can do is think about it. (Did that make sense?  I didn't think so.)

So, again, what to do?

I might go back to the beginnings.

One of my first posts on this blog was about a book I had bought, "The Making of A Story", something to help me write.  I made it through a bit of it before it dropped off the radar.  Maybe it's time to break it out again.