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Excerpt From A NaNoWriMo Notebook

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

** This happened in November but it fits so perfectly with my current mood that I decided to post it today.**

It was a fine day, although just before I started work on my novel the cat got out of the yard and I ended up with sixteen bandages and a lot of bleeding. Nothing too horrific, just lots of scratches and some annoying flaps of skin, but I am now pleased to know that I am the sort of person who can have four bandaids on one hand and still write almost 3,000 words. It was actually really satisfying, I must say.

That brings to mind a Neil Gaiman quote that I hope serves you as well as it has me:

“When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Finish the damn story. You’ll be happy you did.

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Writing…

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on February 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

photo by Benimoto on Flickr

photo by Benimoto on Flickr

I’m writing. How’s it going? Not bad, considering. Ann Patchett has a terrific essay called The Getaway Car. One particularly telling passage details her view of writing. While the work is in her head it is perfect, she says, a beautiful, multi-dimensional butterfly in the most magical and vibrant colors. The problem with bringing the story into being is that she has to take that gorgeous creature and smash it onto a black and white page, a two-dimensional and wholly inadequate representation of the original.

It made me laugh and want to cry because I know exactly what she means.

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Making the Most of Rejection

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on January 28, 2013| 2 Comments »

I am relatively new to fiction writing. I submitted my first story in 2011 and have been fortunate enough to have some success publishing since. That said, I have also had an awful lot of rejections. Here’s the thing: I’m an academic. Ok, not anymore, but once upon a time. Getting a Ph.D. was terrific but did a number on my writing. What was I left with? Verbiage. Semi-colons. Colons. And commas, lots and lots of commas. Ever heard of a tale titled “An In-Depth Analysis of One Woman’s Experience with Conflict, Work, and Marriage: A Speculative Analysis of Gender Roles, Cross-Generational Attitudes, and Female-Centered Power Struggles in Medieval Europe”? No, because it’s a lot easier to just say “Cinderella.”

No matter what your background, writing for others is awash with rejection. I dare say that even writers like Ken Liu and John Scalzi have been rejected a time or two. The good news is that it’s not all bad. I’ve got a piece on blazing your own trail, and the potential usefulness of rejection in that process, over at the Clarion Foundation today. If you’re interested in ways to make even this potentially unpleasant experience work for you, check it out.

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NaNo Update

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on November 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

50,624 words.

That is all!

/crawls off to collapse in a corner somewhere, then remembers all the other work she has to do; feels pretty terrific anyway:)

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Good NaNo News: Finally Back at Par

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , on November 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

photo by Shayan (USA) on Flickr

I swear, I’ve felt like Tiger Woods* these last few days. I couldn’t get to par on my NanoWriMo word count to save my life. Too much going on, yes, but perhaps more importantly, my story engine hadn’t kicked in yet. You know what I mean, it’s that point when things really start happening. The bad guy comes out of the woodwork, the building collapses, the Galaxicon ice worm wriggles into the away team member’s pancreas and stows away on the ship. Like that.

Note to self: next time forget about setting up the story. Do that later, some time when you aren’t ridiculous numbers of words behind schedule. Instead, go straight to the meaty stuff.

Focusing on the action makes writing so much easier. My best day so far this month was 2,800 words before today, but this morning I managed almost 5,000. Because today I got to blow up a ship. A space ship. With my main characters on it.

Good times.

* For all I know Tiger is back on top again, but last time I stumbled on golf news he wasn’t doing particularly well. Still, Tiger is a global icon, and even if you (like me) are essentially uninterested in golf, you probably still get the golf tie. Feel free to tell me how out of touch I am in this department.

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It’s That Time Again

Posted in Writing, tagged , on November 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

NaNoWriMo Badge

It’s November 1st, and when I woke up this morning I realized that it is also Day One of National Novel Writing Month. Oh yeah, I thought, it’s time to write a novel. Right.

It’s a crap month for it. Forget Thanksgiving and international travel and all the usual work and life-related distractions, we’ve got a lot going on right now and some of it is challenging. So I’m busy, distracted, tired, and in no way ready to write a book in a month on top of everything else.

I’ve “won” NaNo before so it’s not like I have much to prove. I could skip a year and the world wouldn’t end.

…

And that’s exactly why I’m going to do it. It may not be the best work I’ve ever done or the longest, but I will do it. One of the most important requirements of being a writer is to, well, write. The discipline required to consistently put words down on the page is what trips up a lot of people, what sometimes trips me up, and this is a perfect opportunity to use an external constraint (a month-long deadline) to support internal goals. It’s said that “performance is a function of expectations” and NaNoWriMo is a terrific example of that in action.

So here goes. And hey, what she said:

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”

– Nora Roberts

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Creativity, Minus the “Obligatory” Crazy

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , on October 12, 2012| 1 Comment »

I stumbled on this TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert yesterday and loved her characterization of creative genius as something that we encounter, rather than have (or, more devastatingly, do not). Sure, it could be considered a cop-out, but any idea that can help artists move forward while avoiding the pitfalls of despair seems like a good thing. Also? She’s funny.

 

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Fun with Words

Posted in Writing, tagged on August 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Now this is fascinating:) If you’ve ever wanted to chart word usage and speculate on how it reflects societal transformation, that is… and you know you do!

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SF Canada

Posted in Writing, tagged on August 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’m happy to announce that today I became a member of SF Canada, Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals. Because I like to speculate, and sometimes I do it in print.

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ShoStoWriMo, or, Possible Evidence That I Am a Crazy Person

Posted in Writing, tagged , on June 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I am one of those people who saddles up in November to draft a novel, in a month, with NaNoWriMo. It’s a terrific way to circumvent all those annoyingly reasonable excuses for doing other, much more practical things, like laundry and work that actually pays. I’ve done it for two years now and (looks aside modestly) won both times. All that means, of course, is that I’ve managed to pump out a surprising amount of text in a surprisingly short time. As someone who sometimes over-thinks their writing (do I really need that comma?), I liked that. I liked it so much, in fact, that I decided to run my own version of the challenge in May, for short stories.

Short Story Writing Month, a.k.a. ShoStoWriMo
— The goal? To draft a lot of short stories. Thirty stories. In a month.
— The rules: No rules, just writing. Ok, I decided to cut myself some slack and only write on workdays, but whatever works, right?

How did it go? Quite well, actually. Nothing like impossible goals, caffeine-fueled enthusiasm, and a complete lack of editorial criticism to finish a draft.

Final tally, or, was it worth it?
— 16 short stories
— 12 short shorts
— 2 poems
— total word count: 33,523

Would I recommend this exercise? Definitely. Obviously, I’ve still got lots of editing work to do, but I’m not looking at a blank page anymore. Awesome. And while NaNoWriMo is satisfying, there’s something truly terrific about starting and finishing a draft in a single day.

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