Tag: Writing

NaNoWriNOPE.

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You can’t swing a cat the last couple of days without hearing about NaNoWriMo.  Well, I guess that’s only true if you travel in writerly circles.  Outside literary circles the talk, I’m sure, is just more football, more Ebola, more elections, and if you’re really unlucky, the start of the Christmas season.  Down here with the writers and the would-be’s, though, it’s all NaNoWriMo all the time.

I think NaNoWriMo is awesome.  I’ve never done it, but I’ve had friends who tried.  Anything that motivates an otherwise stuck writer to unstick himself and put pen to paper, keys to screen, voice to dictaphone, is a thing that’s fighting on the side of good.

That said, I can’t personally get excited about it.

I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s my innate anti-herd mentality, my inherent distrust of groupthink.  If a lot of people are doing a thing because it’s trendy, most of the time, that alone is enough for me to not want to do that thing.  And NaNoWriMo is definitely trendy.  The website claims that over 300,000 people completed the challenge last year, to say nothing of the untold scores that fell off the wagon.  And I have a feeling that, faced with the mammoth task of slaying a 50,000 word novel, there were more than a few that fell off the wagon.

NaNoWriMo should appeal to me on every level.  It invites anybody who feels they have a story to tell to get off their donk and tell that story.  That’s a message I believe in; just look at what I’ve done with this place since I suddenly decided I had stories worth telling, oh, seven or eight months ago.  It encourages you to pour your heart and soul into a thing and work doggedly at it against all odds to get it done.  Yeah, I feel that.  It tells us that anybody — anybody — can do this writing thing, no matter what job you work at or don’t work at, no matter what demands your family makes on your time, no matter  what else you have going on in your day.  All this is relevant to my interests.

But I won’t be doing it this year.  And I probably won’t be doing it for many years to come.

I think my problem with it… no, that’s not right.  Problem is too strong a word, and I’m not here to take a bold stand against NaNoWriMo.  I think it’s awesome, as I stated above.  So, not a problem, as such.  More a misgiving, a lurking doubt.  My lurking doubt about NaNoWriMo is that it’s a gimmick.  And before I wander out onto this very tenuous, very no-actual-leg-to-stand-on branch, let me make it clear that this is just what I think for me.

When I thought about whether or not I would try for NaNoWriMo this year (and I did ponder it, briefly), I realized that it struck me as a gimmick. A potentially useful gimmick, perhaps.  A gimmick which would push me toward my goal of becoming a better and hopefully published writer, probably.  But a gimmick.  It’s imposing a ludicrous daily writing goal.  An insane deadline.  A Herculean writing task.  And if I were to fail at it, to come up short, I’d tear myself up over it.  That’s my MO, that’s what I do.  A missed deadline, a failure to produce, is crippling to me.  Insecurity about whether I’ll be able to produce is why I’m starting to stress out NOW, at the beginning of November, about whether I will in fact finish my first editing pass by the year’s end as I arbitrarily set out to do.

No, working on this edit and pushing out another short story every week and unspooling my brain on the blarg here are quite enough writing goals for November and the near future, for that matter.

I don’t need NaNoWriMo to feel like a writer.  Neither, for that mater, does anybody taking part.  But if it helps you, more power to you.  If it motivates you, then let it motivate you, and embrace the headache and the stress and the adrenaline and the frenzy of it.  I’ll just be over here, plugging away at my novel already in progress, occasionally tossing off posts about how amusing it is watching the NaNoWriMo’ers flailing around.

At any rate, if you’re NaNoWriMo’ing, go get it.  But just remember that you don’t need it.  If you’re a writer, you’re a writer without NaNoWriMo.

Time Out for Reading!

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Weird circumstances the past couple days have seriously disrupted the routine, and as a result I’m getting virtually no work done on the novel, nor am I having any particularly useful things to post about here on the blarg.

That’s partly due to the honest-to-goodness fact that my daily schedule is all screwed up and partly due to the fact that there is some heavy sharknado weighing on my mind that I am literally not allowed to discuss.  More updates in a few days when the dust settles.

However, my activities the past few days have left me with some rather large gaps during the day which I’ve had to fill using no electronic devices at all, and since I plan ahead for these eventualities, I’ve gotten to do something I haven’t enjoyed in quite some time: sit down and read.  You know, from a book.  Like in the olden times.  Pages and all.  Bookmarks.  Dog-eared pages and jotting little notes in a notebook.  (Yeah, that’s how I read, I can’t help it.)

In particular, I’m sinking myself into the second in a series by Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book.  The series in question is the Thursday Next series, which follows the titular heroine (a literary detective) as she gallivants in and out of various works of fiction, some renowned, others reviled, in pursuit of her duties tracking unauthorized changes to priceless manuscripts and verifying the authenticity of lost works of Shakespeare.

Now, “literary detective” is a job title which immediately makes me want to fall asleep, but these books are just flat out fun.  They detail a fantastically well-imagined alternate reality in which, to name just a few key differences, ownership of the Crimean peninsula is still in dispute, long-extinct animals have been genetically resequenced as household pets (Thursday keeps an adorable and rare second-sequence dodo bird, Pickwick, in her home), and Gravity Tubes allow anybody to travel to anywhere in the world in the space of just over forty minutes.  If that sounds whimsical, rest assured that I’ve only just slipped you the tip of the taco.  Fforde weaves the details of this fantastical world so thoroughly into his narrative that I never find myself questioning how things work; rather, I bounce happily along for the ride.  In fact, the alacrity and gusto and sometimes the offhanded way in which he creates the tiniest of details in this world is so charming and effective that it makes me feel woefully inadequate as a writer.

To wit, this passage from page 112 of Lost in a Good Book:

“Looping” was a slang term for Closed Loop Temporal Field Containment.  They popped the criminal in an eight-minute repetitive time loop for five, ten, twenty years.  Usually it was a Laundromat, doctor’s waiting room or bus stop, and your presence often caused time to slow down for others near the loop.  Your body aged but never needed sustenance.  It was cruel and unnatural — yet cheap and required no bars, guards, or food.

He tosses off this explanation like sluicing water off the hood of a freshly waxed car, deftly weaving the callous cruelty of the monstrous corporation together with the unfathomable scientific capabilities of the universe and, oh, just for fun, offers a clever explanation for why we always sit around checking our watches (sharknado, I just dated myself) or rather our cell phones in waiting rooms.  And he does this every three or four pages.

I’m not here today to offer a review of the entire book, let alone the series.  I haven’t yet reached the point in the book where somebody does get Looped, though it’s not necessarily an eventuality I expect.  It’s simply one example out of hundreds that detail the possibilities of an alternate universe that plays fast and loose with the laws of physics.  Fforde is also unrelentingly British and has that delightfully dry wit, so the books scratch that Douglas Adams itch that seems so untameable.  (Untameable?  Untamable?  Spellcheck doesn’t like either option.)

In short, if you’re a bookish sort, you should be reading Thursday Next.  Possibly you could read Thursday Next on Thursday next.  (I think the man must have been chuckling sideways at himself with just about every character name in the thing.)  And no, it’s not a particularly new series — Good Book came out in 2002 — but who cares?  It’s brilliant and clever and whimsical and ridiculous all at once.

The last several books I’ve read have been so heavy and dark and drear that these books have felt like a much-needed B12 shot.  Anybody else out there reading books that make you laugh?

Things Writers Need — The Hemingwrite

Pavowski4 Comments

I’ve just seen a thing.

I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m very much of two minds.

I’ve had my say about typewriters before.  I think they’re cute and quaint and entirely impractical for any writer to be using to do any real writing in the — and I say this with no irony whatsoever, except for the implicit  — modern era.  I stand by that wholeheartedly.  When you consider the gamut of writing devices, a machine that uses paper, has no means to erase or edit on the fly, and that cannot multitask in any way, shape, or form, is simply an inferior alternative to any device which can, you know, backspace, or fit in your pocket, or at least your carry-on.

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s a certain romantic nostalgia about typewriters.  The sounds they make as you click away at their keys are soothing and hypnotic — much more so than the impersonal muffled thumps that issue from the plastic construction of a laptop or a multi-function bluetooth keyboard.  And, you know, the greats wrote on typewriters, or something like that.  So there’s hero emulation thrown in there to boot.  I see the draw, even if it doesn’t measure up to even the flimsiest of word processors.

But then tonight, I see this.  The Hemingwrite.

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It’s a word processor stuffed into the body of a typewriter analog.  It syncs wirelessly and automatically with backup services like google docs and Evernote (which I love).  It has weeks and weeks of battery life.  It’s about the size of a very large book, or a very small chessboard.  It’s adorable.  And all it lets you do is write.

It looks like much of what I love about WriteMonkey (my drafting software of choice) literally crammed into a box that lets you write without the distractions of the wily internet and whatever apps you have chiming and sucking your life away.  And my Id-Writer stops slavering, looks out through the bars of his cage toward this unassuming little box, and ponders.

I can’t decide if I love or hate this idea.

The pendulum swings in favor of this thing initially.  It’s undoubtedly brilliant.  There are, I have no doubt, scads of writers and would-be writers, their heads clouded with that romantic image of Hemingway bent over a buzzing machine, the keys clattering into the night, who will happily throw money at the manufacturers of this thing just for the chance to ape the greats while still maintaining the creature comforts of cloud backups and wireless syncing.  The Hemingwrite website, which has only been up for a few months, overtly states that the creators are overwhelmed by the response already, and they’re not even past the prototyping phases yet.  This thing is going to sell like crazy to people wanting one for themselves, let alone as gifts for the writerly types out there.

But is it necessary?  I mean, my laptop automatically backs up my work as I write and is just as portable as this little gadget.  It also allows me to browse the web, watch movies, play games, and you know, anything else you can do with a fully-powered computer.  For that matter, it allows me — with the use of the proper programs — to have the same uninterrupted, distraction-free writing experience that the Hemingwrite seeks to provide, minus of course the vaguely romantic notion of typing on a typewriter that’s not really a typewriter.

But there’s something to that, isn’t there?  The feel of creating on something that’s not a do-it-all magic box.  They say you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have (though that’s perhaps a bad idea if you’re a businessman who wants to be an ice fisher), and doesn’t this gizmo allow you to advertise to the world that “I AM A WRITER” in a way that no simple laptop can?  And isn’t writing all about being in the proper mindset to create?  By extension, then, if this tool helps you, in any small way, to get a little bit closer to the zone, isn’t it worth the trouble?

And then my pendulum swings the other way again, because don’t I — don’t we, as Americans (make no mistake, this is for Americans, much as I hate the “we as fill-in-the-blank” construction) — have enough stuff already?  Part of the romance of writing (and I’m overusing the word “romance” in this little entry, I now realize, but fargo it, it cuts both ways) is the simplicity of it.  From the blank screen, the blank page, the flashing cursor on the screen, I craft worlds and people and plots and MacGuffins and really wild things.  If I’m a writer, I already have a computer or laptop to help me do those things.  Do I need another thing on my desk to help me do the same things?  I’m not sure I do.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t.  I have enough of a headache working on two different computers in two different settings; I can only imagine the frustration of getting all keyed-in and in love with this little machine and then having to haul it back and forth from home to work.  And then forgetting it and having to work on my laptop anyway.  Or finding room for it on my already cluttered desks.  And justifying to myself and my wife the existence of this thing which doesn’t really do anything for me that the stuff I already had isn’t capable of doing.

Then again, it looks like they’ll offer it in Georgia Bulldog Red.

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I think it’s a fascinating little thing.  I’m sure it will help writers if only in a Placebo Effect, I’m-becoming-a-better-writer-because-I-feel-like-a-writer kind of way.  But the more I think about it, the more it feels like too much novelty, not enough practicality.  I think I’d love to test-drive one, but I definitely can’t see buying one for myself, unless, when they finally get around to selling these things, the price tag ends up in the realm of the ridiculously low.  Based on the hype around this thing, though, I’d be shocked if it goes for less than $80, and I even think that might be optimistic on my part.

What do you think?  Am I being too harsh on the little Hemingwrite, which for all intents and purposes hasn’t even been born yet?

Losing it

Pavowski2 Comments

For every thing I’ve done right on this first-time-writing-a-novel thing, I feel I’ve done two or three things wrong.  I work at it most every day, but I don’t always work organized.  I take notes as I work, but those notes are not always coherent or even helpful.  I read tons of writing advice, and sometimes I read so much writing advice I overthink when I should just be writing.

This week, the biggest writing sin yet.  Except if I’m honest, it’s not a this week, it’s more a past-couple-of-weeks thing.

I lost my editing notebook.

My editing process is twofold.  Rather, it was twofold.  I kept notes in the margins of the text as I worked, especially writing down things which were too big to tackle while I’m trying to work quickly through the draft or things I wasn’t sure how to fix.  I also kept my notebook handy, writing down a running list of general things which needed fixing in the novel as a whole; continuity issues, missing elements, character arcs, and a running outline of the book.

Losing this book is driving me up the walls.  I’m so incredibly frustrated.  First of all, for losing all that work that I’ve done and will have to re-do (never mind that I won’t be able to do it the same way next time around).  Second, for the loss of momentum; I haven’t taken notes the same way elsewhere because I keep hoping the thing will turn up and I don’t want to deal with copying notes over or, god help me, keeping two notebooks.  Third, and probably worst of all, I am a jerk to myself.  I mean, a rat bastard.  The Howler Monkey of Doubt has been on a gleeful screeching bender since the book has gone missing: “YOU’RE AN IDIOT FOR LOSING IT, IT MUST NOT HAVE MATTERED TO YOU THAT MUCH, GOOD LUCK ACTUALLY GETTING PUBLISHED IF YOU CAN’T EVEN KEEP UP WITH A LOUSY NOTEBOOK HAW HAW HAW”.  Yeah, that guy always speaks in all caps, he’s as annoying as you could imagine, and he’s in my head ALL THE TIME.

I’ve tried all the tricks.  Retraced my steps.  Looked through all my bags, every drawer in every desk near any place I ever work on the novel.  Checked the cars.  Checked the floor under the desk.  Checked under the bed.  Looked in the tank on the back of the toilet.  Anywhere I might conceivably have been thumbing through the thing.  Not a sign of it.  I’ve uncovered all kinds of things I thought lost or thrown away forever — some very nice pens I thought I’d lost, a few decks of cards I used in class during my first year teaching, my old notebook I used as a soccer coach last year — but not the one thing I need.  It’s either been stolen by a malevolent authorial gremlin or maybe, JUST MAYBE, some clearer-thinking, much more level-headed version of myself hid it away, knowing I’m going about this edit all wrong.

Because make no mistake, I constantly fear that I’m doing all this writerly stuff wrong.  I drafted wrong, I’m taking notes wrong, I’m evaluating the copy wrong, I’m not reading critically enough, I’m reading too critically, I’m working too slowly through the draft, I’m not taking enough time… name it, I’ve had that spot of doubt.  Let’s not pretend I haven’t lost things that mattered before, but they always seem to turn up eventually.  I’m going on about two weeks without my notebook, and considering I was using it just about every day, it’s making less and less sense that I simply mislaid it.

I’m talking this in circles and it doesn’t help, but I can’t adequately describe the depths of my frustration with myself for losing this thing.  Granted, I could probably re-create the notes I’d taken in the book with a night or two of dedicated work, but the simple fact that it’s been lost in the first place has so disheartened me…

Ugh.  If it doesn’t show up over the weekend I’m going to have to start the stupid notebook over from scratch.

Another Dilemma, and a Writerly Question

Pavowski2 Comments

Because I like it, and because I have to scratch my own back on this project a little (because nobody else is going to do it for me) I’m posting another favorite passage of the day.  I read this and it just made me smile knowing that this sprung fully-formed from my own personal thought-box.  But the passage comes with its own problem.  Rather, it’s a problem related to the passage by dint of the fact that the passage made me realize the problem.

God, my thoughts on this thing are a trainwreck.  The problem, or rather, the dilemma, is this:

I think the book is full of scenes that are good.  At least, the book is full of scenes which are potentially good.  And I like my main characters.  I love them, in fact.  They’re ridiculous and earnest and silly and flawed and, ultimately, I hope, believable and maybe a little compelling.  My leads, in short, are great.  But as I read the work — and I recall thinking this as I was drafting the thing — I realize that some of my favorite scenes don’t directly involve my main characters.  In fact, the scene I read today is easily my favorite scene in the whole book.  Hands down.  And neither of my main characters is in it.

I’m not saying it’s the best scene in the book, but it’s certainly the one I enjoy most.  So far.  And in retrospect, considering what I remember writing toward the end of the novel, I don’t know that it gets any better than this at the moment.  And this feels wrong.

So for my fellow authors and authors-in-training out there: Is it a problem if my favorite scene in the book takes place between characters who aren’t even on the marquee?

Anyway, here’s the passage:

…for the children of the gods, these tremendous abilities are as natural as breathing, as unconscious and automatic as reaching for a pen to jot down a phone number.  Only when we discover that not only has the pen been removed, but it has been replaced with a snarling, voracious badger can we approximate the feeling that struck Calli in that moment.

 

I’m falling a little bit behind on my daily schedule for editing, but if I can keep finding gems like this along the way, maybe my Past Self can keep my Present Self motivated.