Let the internet tell you when I've done something productive...automatically!

Join 14,891 other followers

Email Address:

Browsing Tags lessons learned

Guest Post: “Losing” NaNoWriMo

January 9, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It’s pretty easy for me to ramble on about NaNoWriMo after two successful years. But what about those who aren’t filled with the zeal that comes with typing that 50,000th word? My friend and fellow blogger, Phillip McCollum, shares his insights about “losing” NaNoWriMo, what he learned, and why losing isn’t a bad thing in this crazy game of writing. If anyone is interested in writing a guest post for Literature and Libation, please send your ideas to literatureandlibation@gmail.com.

I’ve been convinced for a while that Oliver and I were brotherly warriors in another life, swinging swords side-by-side on the medieval battlefield and sharing flagons of ale afterwards. As soon as he mentioned a guest post, I realized his mind and my mind had already started down different paths to the same destination. Having just reached the end of NaNoWriMo with Oliver crossing the finish line, we both knew the other side of the story had to be told.

The side of the losers.

Please understand that I’m not trying to be self-deprecating here. The fact is that in order to “win” NaNoWriMo, you must have written 50,000 words toward your novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30th (according to whatever time zone you’re in, I assume). Having only completed 31,509 words by the appointed deadline, the logical conclusion is that I “lost” NaNoWriMo.

Losing doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game and anyone who tells you otherwise has a lot to learn about losing. Not only do you get to refine your game for next time, but everyone loves a comeback.

If you took part in this past NaNoWriMo, maybe you cranked out 49,999 words and just couldn’t find another that wouldn’t look like a fresh scratch across your brand new Jaguar.

Or, like me, you slammed your foot on the pedal coming out of the gate, but discovered you lacked the staying power to see things through the monotonous middle and into the finish line.

Everyone makes their own mistakes, but I’m sure we share a few generalities. I hope that sharing my lessons will resonate with you and at least get you to think about what you can do better the next time around.

Focus and Research:

I made a huge mistake here. I waited too long to think about what I was writing. I mean really think. I had a basic idea of setting, time period, historical events, and characters. I even posted a blog entry of things to research after I finished writing. I figured I could just run with the story and make up things as I went along. I had some scenes roughly drafted and ready to spit out. There would be plenty of time after the first draft to fix the small mistakes, like my ancient Egyptian priest growing frustrated with his flaky Internet service.

What I lacked was focus. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted this book to be. Historical fiction with a touch of fantasy? Fantasy loosely based in historical fact?

Without a clear cut path, I was crossing streams. As I made my way through the first set of scenes, I found myself wanting to be more accurate concerning historical events. There I was, 10,000 words in and coming to the realization that a month or two of research would have benefited me greatly.

What do you mean my antagonist wasn’t a king yet when this village was attacked? Okay, well then I guess I just need to put more focus on his father. But I don’t want to write about his father. That’s a different story than what I’m trying to tell. So now I need a new source of conflict since that battle didn’t take place. I need to research more. But I don’t have time. At a minimum, I need to get 1,667 words out tonight.

I’m sure you can imagine this situation snowballing and then realizing that while you may be writing lots of words and exercising your prose muscles (still a good thing), what you write will not be publishable because it’s a pile of scenes that mean absolutely nothing.

When scenes trump story, the whole idea of a coherent novel goes out the door.

Lessons Learned:

I need to know where I want to focus before writing. Specificity is important because it helps me prepare and keeps me on track. If I ever decide to write a book by the seat of my pants again, I’ll make sure Historical Fiction is off the table. In my opinion, that’s a genre which requires a lot of upfront research and planning.

Maintain a Timeline:

The idea of a timeline fits snuggly with my previous point. Without proper research, how can you be sure your imagination is synchronized with historical record? Call it trying to juggle too much information in the little time I had to write. Call it laziness. I never put together a timeline of events and backstory. In fact, I remember spending a couple of hours scouring the Internet for decent timeline tools, when in reality, that time could have been better spent hobbling together something in a spreadsheet. The perfection bug bit me again. I didn’t need the perfect tool, I just thought I did.

This left me completely unorganized. Things were happening when they shouldn’t have and people were making speeches long after they kicked the bucket.

For example, the idea behind my novel came from some reading I did about an Egyptian city named Naucratis. The historical figures I found myself compelled to write about, well, I’ll just say that a basic timeline would have shown they weren’t even around to see Naucratis being built. They only missed it by, oh, a few centuries.

Oops.

Lessons Learned:

All I need is a simple spreadsheet to start. One column for scene/historical event, another column for date. Something this basic would do wonders for ensuring that I’m not making a mistake such as the one illustrated above.

Plotting/Structure:

My last couple of novel attempts have gone the same way. I would begin an outline and type up brief synopses of anywhere from ten to fifteen scenes. Then I found myself anxious, so I started writing, telling myself that I could pants the rest. Well, as you now know, that was a bad idea.

I find that I have a lot of fun writing the scenes I’ve already outlined and am not concerned about whether or not I’m saying what I want to say. I know they fit into the outline I drafted. If they vary a little bit, cool, no big deal. I don’t mind tweaking my outline to accommodate.

But when I reach the end of the scenes I’ve outlined and find myself facing the blank page, somehow scrubbing the shower becomes the most important thing in the world. A few more excuses later, the guilt becomes overwhelming and I’m left with one question: Now what? I can throw some more conflict at my characters and pull some new goals out of thin air. That’ll fix them, right?

But as I’ve proven to myself over and over, chances are, it won’t.

Lessons Learned:

I need to know where I’m going and I need to put it down on paper. This gives me the confidence to write freely, knowing that I’m not just writing to write, but I’m writing toward the story goal.

Characters:

After reading that George R. R. Martin usually drafts character biographies hitting sixty to seventy pages, I proceeded to hang my head in shame.

I didn’t spend enough time fleshing out my characters before writing. I came up with basic bios, but without nearly the amount of depth they needed. Too vague. Too much on the surface.

And that’s just for the ones I made up. For the real historical figures, I should have researched them as much as possible. If my target audience includes history buffs, I can’t be loose with the facts and prevailing opinions.

Character traits are one thing, but I also found I had another problem with them. Going back and looking at my scenes, a lot of times, my POV character of the moment was a bystander. He would sit and watch the world turn, occasionally answering a question or making some absurd speech. He was lifeless automaton and would only act when I turned the crank.

Lessons Learned:

Be a lot better at fleshing out my characters. Make my characters active. People don’t want to read a novel where all the fun stuff is happening around your character.

“If you can accept losing, you can’t win.” -Vince Lombardi

Craft and Draft: Input on your Output

January 8, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

(As part of my 2013 effort to try new things, this week will be the first of a series of “theme weeks” wherein every post will be related to the same overarching topic. This week: Applying what we learned from NaNoWriMo)

We’ve all forgotten about NaNoWriMo 2012 by now, right? We’ve either buried the embarrassment that was our novel attempt in a lock box and sealed its tomb with ancient curses or moved on to other projects that are more practical and packed with pitching potential. Some of you might just be waking up with a pretty killer NaNo hangover, asking yourself, “what the hell did I just write?”

Win or lose, we’ve probably all taken a writing breather through the nog-drunken haze of the holidays, resolute on our promises to do more with a new year.

It seems like NaNoWriMo scurries off into the dark recesses of the imagination just as quickly as it flies in when you realize it’s October 25 and you have no idea what you want to write come November 1. In January, the Google traffic for “NaNoWriMo” tapers off to nearly nothing after a huge seasonal spike.The hours and words so passionately spent on those short November days become nothing but another abandoned Word doc in your “Current Projects” folder.

But now is not the time to forget NaNoWriMo. Ever smash your brain against a textbook/piece of music/mathematical formula for hours in a last-ditch, “holy-shit-the-test-is-tomorrow” attempt to memorize it? Ever notice that when you come back to study it after a break, suddenly it seems like you’ve known it your whole life?

The cognitive approach to the psychology of learning suggests that you will more easily commit things to memory (and thus improve your long-term skill set) after you’ve taken a break from whatever it is you are trying to learn.

If you want to take that stuff you learned about writing and merge it with your mortal soul so that it becomes your very nature to be a writer, now is the time to revisit what you learned in November.

So what did I learn about my own writing? Mainly stuff about how much I can write when I really make writing my focus. There were tons of other little lessons hidden in nutritional nuggets of writing-chicken, but NaNoWriMo 2012, for me, was an exercise in spewing out lots and lots and lots of words.

1. Write or write not, there is no muse

When I was a mewling undergrad, I was convinced that I could only write anything of substance when the moon was in my house, the date was numerologically significant, and Mercury was in retrograde. I’d sit and waste time doing anything other than writing, passively waiting for that moment of spontaneous writing zen to hit me. It rarely came, if ever, when I needed it.

Now that I’ve been writing a lot more (and I think being a little older/maturer helps, too) I realize there is no magical, semi-divine fate watching over the collective flock of writers. It’s just me and my keyboard and you and your keyboard and them and their keyboards. Acknowledging that you are actively responsible for your work will lead to you actually writing, not sitting around waiting to be ready to write.

I’ve used this analogy before, but writing is like working out. Some days you’ll be so amped and well rested that you want to go out and run 30 miles or lift all the weights in the gym so many times that you won’t be able to put a shirt on the next day. Other days you might embody an exceptionally lethargic sloth, and would rather sit around in your pajama pants eating an entire block of Stilton blue cheese rather than move. The same goes for your writing. You’ll have good days and bad. Discipline keeps you writing, even when you’re not feeling it.

When you finally get over the idea of waiting for inspiration, you should see your productivity leap dramatically, like some sort of pole vaulter on crystal meth.

2. Proper prior planning…

…prevents writer’s block or any other crippling afflictions. If I find myself struggling to write something, it’s probably because I haven’t thought it through. The short stories I wrote for NaNoWriMo were all at least roughly outlined, so that I knew where I was going, if only on a basic level. If I started to write a story and the words just wouldn’t come zooming out of my fingers, I moved onto another story that did come naturally.

I took that slamming of the mind-brakes as a clue that whatever idea I had wasn’t fully baked. Gooey, choclately proto-story came out on the toothpick I shoved it into the middle of the idea. It needed more time in the oven. It needed some love and attention from me before it would be something I could write without a period of painful labor.

It is really easy to come up with an idea that is so exciting and packed to the veritable brim with potential that you think it will just write itself. And that does happen, sometimes. But for the vast majority of your work, be it fiction or nonfiction, time to grow and evolve and develop naturally will result in a much more compelling, easier to write product.

The next time you face the wall of a white blank page or an unjumpable hurdle in your story, stop and think if you’ve thought enough. There is a reason you’re struggling, and that reason could be that your mind isn’t ready for that part of the story. Move to a different part of the story, or another project all together. No one said you had to write the story in chronological order, after all (Alice McDermott wrote the National Book Award winning Charming Billy in a pretty random order, if that gives you hope).

When you plan ahead and have fresh from the oven idea-brownies, you’ll find that you can write a lot more, more quickly, and with greater ease.

3. Another time and place

Many successful authors describe their schedules as these perfect things with perfect crystalline structure, that they have perfected to the point of…perfection. Wake up at 6:00, drink 8 ounces of French press brewed espresso blend, write for three hours on the current book project before moving on to social media and smaller projects. Spend the afternoon editing and researching.

My schedule, in comparison, is about as consistent as paranoid schizophrenia. Wake up at 6:28? 7:14? 7:30? 8:03? Try to write, realize I’m barely conscious without caffeine. Go into the office. Drink a lot of bad, free coffee. Power through the jitters. Write something random; probably whatever I left open on my laptop the night before. Make it through the day without dying.

But the point is I try to have a schedule. I make writing a priority in my day, even if my day itself is a mess of incoherent events that are loosely glued into the shape of a life/job. Even on my busiest days in the office, I carve out thirty minutes to write something, if only a part of a blog post or notes on an idea I had that day.

I see a lot of people say they want to do something, but then they never make it a priority. They will talk about doing that thing a lot, but then let it get lost in the maze of TV, work stress, and other sundry distractions. Talking is not doing. If you really want to start seeing an increase in the amount you create, make creating one of the most important things you do in the day.

Other things in your life may suffer, initially. But as you get better at managing your time, you also get better at realizing just how much time you waste on things that don’t bring you any satisfaction. I’m not advocating some sort of Utopian life free of all distractions. I’m advocating making the best of the 745,094 hours you’re given on this planet (on average).

Bump writing up your list of things you need to do today, and you’ll start seeing just how much you can write.

“It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?”
― Henry David Thoreau

NaNoWriMo 2012: 28 Days Later

November 28, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Phew. I was just writing, and this is crazy, but if I write ~3500 words by Friday, I might hit 50,000 maybe.

I can’t believe I just did that. I’m so sorry, everyone everywhere.

I’d prefer to have this thing all nicely packaged and bundled into 50,000 words of finished product, but time and responsibility have a tendency to gang up on my good intentions and leave them broken and bloody in some dirty alley. Looks like I’ll be writing all the way up to and across the finish line this year.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Transcribe, transpose: I found a hidden cache of words that I had been hoarding in my little brown notebook, almost subconsciously. I had been scribbling notes, scenes, dialogue, ideas, and other literary detritus whenever I was away from my computer, and when I sat down to type it all up, I found I had nearly 4800 words in there! Sure, they were an incoherent mess of the very rawest of my brain oozlings, but they were words. Words in pursuit of the novel. And those count.

The double plus mega awesome advantage of transcribing notes from one medium to another is that you get a chance to do quick edits and fill out points you missed in your hasty penning. I even came up with a whole new idea for another story, just from some random thing I had drawn (it was like a mushroom-tiger-dragon-monstrosity-thing)!

2. Get up, get out: No joke, 16 of my 20 original short story ideas came to me while I was out wandering the world, experiencing the electromagnetic spectrum, interacting with other beings, living and inanimate. One came from noticing how a meeting presenter kept walking in front of the projector and the text from the PowerPoint slide looked like a tattoo on his forehead. Another came from watching some obscenely large rats run from cover to cover scavenging for food at the fountain in Dupont Circle. One even came from a late-night session of Borderlands 2 (who said video games never taught us anything).

It can be hard to come up with vivid, living ideas in the vacuum of your writing cave, so don’t make it any harder on yourself. Get out there. Check shit out. Ask questions. Drive across that bridge. Take note when something or someone or some concept bothers you. Take a picture of that weird flower or bush that totally looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But don’t sit around in your pajamas trying to force the creativity to spontaneously explode inside your skull. Go get stimulated by some stimuli.

3. The word count doesn’t really matter, the ideas do: One of the reasons I’ve managed to keep up this month is because I’m masochistic and uber-competitive (even with myself). If I commit to something, the idea of failing to do that thing is worse than any other situation I can imagine, thus I tend to get it done, somehow someway. It’s either totally awesome and effective or terrible and unhealthy.

But really, it doesn’t matter if I or you or anyone makes the word count. It’s not like someone busts into our homes on December 1 and confiscates all of our computers and notebooks and pens and tiny scraps of pencil lead that could possibly be used to write. The ideas, thoughts, introspection, and other mine-able literary gold is what makes this month so great. It’s an opportunity for you to expand your brain, learn about some stuff you’d never even heard of, and hopefully learn about yourself as a result. It’s a chance to commit to something bigger than the right now, and work towards a real, tangible goal. It’s a chance to break the monotony of the perfunctory and think about exciting worlds where anything can happen, and heroes are real. It’s a chance to wring some satisfaction out of life, and remind yourself that you are creative and hardworking and really freakin’ love words.

So if you didn’t make 50,000, no big deal. If you came up with some great ideas, or even one pretty good idea, I’d say that’s a NaNoWriMo well spent. You’ve got plenty of time to write it all down, unless you are currently on fire or being chased by an ornery velociraptor. Take what you’ve learned this month about how and when and what and why you write, and store that in your database under “stuff that will make me a better writer.”

Writing drink of choice this week: Magic Hat Heart of Darkness Stout

This is a weird but compelling beer. It almost looks purple in the glass, just on the edges where light pierces the blackness of the body. It tastes choclately and heavy, sort of what you’d expect people from a SteamPunk novel would drink out of gas-powered beer steins or something. It lingers on your tongue for a while, making it a great “I’m in a pensive mood tonight” beer.

Is that weather vane a dragon or a fish or a fishdragon?

NaNoWriMo 2012 – Blackjack

November 21, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

21 days down, 35124 words down. 9 days left, 14876 words left.

I’ve finally brought my count back above par via a steady, wordy weekend and a few extremely productive “waiting for your wife after work” sessions. I’ve finished (and I use the term very, very loosely) 14 of my planned 20 stories, but also came up with ideas for 6 more stories while I was writing the others. Brains are weird sprawling idea farms, just waiting for the thresher of your imagination to come through and harvest all that nutritious mind-wheat.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Sometimes, distractions are good: I’ve been overloaded with school work and work work, to the point where I was finding it difficult to mentally upshift to my creative gears quickly enough to get any NaNoing done. So instead of smashing my head against my laminate desk, I decided to try and use the mindset I was already in to write something. The end result was one story that is highly technical with lots of science and numbers due to dominant left brain thinking (brought on by my day job), and another that is almost a long form prose poem completely made of right brain ramblings (from working on a school assignment).

I have no idea if these will stay in the collection – or if they are any good for that matter – but it taught me that state of mind doesn’t always need to be optimal to make word count.

2. Keyboard, or I’m bored: This is something I discovered last year, that has proven true again this year. The right keyboard makes ALL the difference for me. I can’t seem to get comfortable on certain makes and models, especially those that don’t have a satisfying thwack and clack when I’m writing feverishly. I can make do on my laptop, but I prefer a standalone, wired keyboard, with a scarce few bells and whistles (volume and media controls are allowed). I also for whatever reason, cannot write productively on a completely flush mounted keyboard, and don’t even try to write on a touchpad keyboard. Those things creep me out, especially with the fake tactile response.

I know, I’m weird. Whatever, I’ll just be that guy who demands a keyboard-n-mouse 20 years from now, long after the technology has been sunset, just like that weird old guy with the giant beard in your office who demands he use a typewriter for all this documents.

3. Quitting is for people who aren’t good at not quitting: I had a few times this month where I just had so many deadlines and due dates and other crap going on that I could have said, “Oliver, you gave it a good old fashioned college try, but maybe it’s just not yours this year.” But I didn’t. Because the only thing I hate more than being completely overwhelmed, is feeling like I gave up on myself. And squids. Seriously, fuck squids. Giant creepy tentacled jerks.

Giving up is easy. It’s the get-out-of-jail free card for your psyche; the “don’t worry about it champ, there’s always the next game” mentality. But it’s also lazy, and counter-productive. NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to build your confidence. You’re allowed to write whatever you want, however you want, with no real pressure or ramifications, and no one telling you what is good and what is bad. No editors sending you emails asking for drafts, no boss not-so-subtly reminding you that it is due by COB Friday.

This is your chance to prove that you can finish a project, and the conditions will never be more appropriate or forgiving. This is a chance for you to prove to yourself that you’re as awesome as you always think you are. Quitting is for people who are not-awesome. Are you not awesome? No. You are awesome. Go be awesome. Don’t quit.

Chuck Wending (of TerribleMinds) wrote a much more hilarious and inspirational post about the same idea. You should check it out.

4. Second winded: It feels great to be back above par. Sometimes the cure for your lack of productivity is to have one or two really productive days. It’s like having more energy after you get back from a really intense workout; it doesn’t really make sense, but it’s a phenomenon you should take full, sweaty advantage of.

Drink of choice: I just realized that I forgot to include my writing drink of choice last week! So here’s double duty for this week:

1. Flying Dog K-9 Winter Ale: Sweet, 7.4% ABV, slowly becoming a new winter favorite for me. Full review coming post-NaNo.
2. Rumbeard’s Rum-cider: So this isn’t exactly an original recipe, but it is something I always served to my gaming friends during the sub-30 degree months, and it’s been a hit for years. One part spiced rum (Sailor Jerry’s or Cap’t Morgans, usually) two parts apple cider, one cinnamon stick to flavor and stir, 90 seconds in the microwave. And for all those wondering, “Rumbeard” is my long standing gamer handle. I’ll tell you the story one day over some grog.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”

NaNoWriMo 2012: 14 Days of Finger Blistering Goodness

November 14, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

As you can see by my handy little widget, I’m at 21234 words. Another week of being slightly under par, but I’m not so far behind that I can’t make up the difference. I’ve been treading water. Just keeping afloat, but never really making any progress across the pool.

But! Good news abounds. I only have one large assignment left this semester, and that means my extra-NaNomular writing will no longer interfere with my sweet, sweet fiction.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Caffeine is a cruel mistress: I’m a coffee drinker. Love the stuff. Rich and dark and full of perky goodness. But too much coffee is a bad thing. It makes my brain all wimblery skimperly. Sometimes it helps get my out of a rut, other times it just makes me fidgety and unable to concentrate. Blessing and a curse and all that.

I’m learning to moderate so it isn’t such a major factor in my writing process. Trying to pour less hot liquid energy down my face, and sip more yummy green tea oh so daintily out of mug.

2. My day job really impedes on the creative process: ‘Nuff said.

3. Music can end a slump: I’ve been listening to a lot of classical and instrumental music, which seems to keep me on a track, or at least point me towards the rails. The stuff without lyrics seems to be the most powerful; no extra words of motifs trying to sneak their way into my brain via musical osmosis.

When the music hits, you don’t feel any pain.

So, back to work once my brain has cooled down a little bit. How is everyone else doing?

Here is a picture of a Chincoteague pony, just because.

NaNoWriMo 2012 – 7 days (give or take a week)

November 7, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Week one down. 10,032 words, just slightly under par. But it’s not for a lack of effort.

Lessons learned:

1. Writing begets writing…to a point – I’ve always said that the more you write the more you write, but I’ve discovered the upper limit of that maxim this week. Between NaNoWriMo, 4000+ words of writing for homework, the writing I do during my nine-to-five, and various sundry activities that involve letters and words and sentences, I’ve reach critical mass. My brain has stopped processing; fiction seems fact and I’m editing stuff I’ve already edited because I can’t remember what I edited the first time around. It is a good thing to flex your muscles and stay in shape, but over training just leads to exhaustion.

If anyone you know ever says they want to do NaNo while also working full time and taking two graduate level classes, buy them a cup of coffee.

2. Practice makes perfect, or at least perfunction – I find that NaNo this year, despite new responsibilities and distractions, is actually significantly easier than last year. The writing flows more smoothly, and I have confidence that it’s OK to write some stuff that doesn’t sound perfect because I know I’ll be able to fix it in edits. It could be a side effect of so saturating myself in all things writing, or just that a success last year instilled in me some badassery and boldness, but when I do get my time to sit down and write it comes out with almost no painful forcing of my brain juices.

Once you know you can do something, doing it again becomes more an exercise in repetition than self-confidence.

3. Short Stories are @#$@% awesome – I think if I was writing a traditional novel right now, I’d be much farther behind on word count. Being able to mentally leap from story to story, at different points in time in different places in the world makes getting words down blissfully simple. If I’m not feeling the next chronological section, I’ll just go wherever my creativity flairs. It allows me to writing something despite my mood or level of fatigue and gives me freedom to loosely add to the overall world of my novel. It will probably mean a lot more consistency checking once I’m finished, but it seems a tiny tax in the bigger view of the project.

A novel made up of short stories is basically a normal novel where themes and recurrence replace direct plot.

4. Mobility is king – Given my time constraints, I’ve been finding myself writing in less than optimal places. Cramped metro seats, in 15 minute breaks during meetings, in my car waiting to pick up my wife. I’m normally such a creature of habit that I need to be at my desk to write. But this November has forced me from my comfortable blanket of habits. I’ve been whipping my laptop out at pretty much every opportunity and filled margin to margin of pages in my little notebook with hasty inken scribblings.

Always be ready to get uncomfortable when necessity rears its ugly head.

Writing drink of choice for week one: Swedish Style Glögg (one part IKEA Glögg, one part Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon, 90 seconds in the microwave. You can thank me later.)

How is everyone else doing? Making word count? Behind? Ahead? Off-track, on-track? I’d love to hear about some other experiences so far!

Simple ingredients.

Fourth and Goal

November 30, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo 2011, and I offer up the following:

I’m not sure it’s quite hit me yet that I wrote this much, towards a single end, in so short a period of time. Prior to this, 2000 words was a “long” piece for me.

As of today, I’m sitting at 55,112 words. If I averaged ~1000 words an hour, that’s 50.5 hours of straight writing. An entire billable work week of writing. Almost an entire weekend of writing, if I didn’t sleep. 50.5 episodes of the Real Housewives of New Jersey worth of writing! It’s kind of a lot when I stop and think about it.

It’s proof that it can be done. Whether it should be done…we’ll decide after a few months editing.

I didn’t write anything over the Thanksgiving break, but have been getting back into the habit now that I’m back at work. My new goal is to have the entire unedited first draft done before I leave for Arizona on the 17th of December. After that, I plan to step away from it for a while (maybe start a new project) until a point where I have forgotten what it is I have written, and can (hopefully) objectively edit.

Lessons learned in week 4:

1. Don’t pace yourself

In almost every other aspect of life, I recommend taking it easy and figuring out the next move before you blindly fire up the table saw and start installing thousands of square feet of laminate floor. Oddly specific. Anyway, when it comes to writing, I feel like the sprint approach is far better than the marathon approach. When you’re in the early passion of your story, excitedly discussing its chocolaty insides, the iron is hot: time to write. Get those weird turns-of-phrase down. Write that dialogue that is kind of insane. Have your characters blow something up. Those moments will wane as the project progresses, so write quickly, with intensity. You can always come back and scrap it if you got a little too wild one rum-fueled evening.

2. A good board is key

I can’t write in a notebook. I’ve tried. My handwriting is garbage, I can fit maybe 200 words on a page, and then I’m forced to retype it all later, anyway. The IT guy in me wants his hands on a keyboard. It’s how, besides my voice, my brain gets messages out into the world. I’m assuming most contemporary writers use a keyboard (my apologies to those luddite diehards out there still scribing away on typewriters/quill and paper/papyrus and alligator blood ink/rock-based cuneiform). If so, get a good one. One that is comfortable and satisfying to type on, and makes the appropriate “clacky” sounds when you strike it enthusiastically. Sounds dumb, but it made a big difference to me.

3. Read while you write

In November, I started and finished Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’d never read the book (which was based on the screen play, interestingly enough), and it was appropriately SciFi enough for me to get some ideas from as I wrote. It helped keep my setting in context, and offered a prime example of what popular, successful story telling is all about. I didn’t read any Orson Scott Card, as I thought that might be a little too close to what I was writing, and didn’t want to start accidentally emulating his style where it wasn’t appropriate. Reading helped remind me why I was writing.

4. You don’t always feel like writing

I love to write. It’s one thing that despite years of practice and attention, has not lost it’s fun and luster. There were days in November that I didn’t want to write. I was tired or my arm hurt or I really wanted to collect flowers and insect parts and mushrooms in Skyrim to make potions that did not help my character in any way. But I wrote anyway. Short of my trip to see my parents, I wrote something (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little) every single day this month. Chuck Wendig has said it many times (and way better than I ever could): Writer’s write. So if you’re not writing, you’re not a writer. If you are writing, then you are a writer. Pretty simple.

5. Don’t find time, make it

This applies to anything you want to do. Thanks to Apollo and his chariot, we all get 24 hours a day in which to do stuff. Normal folks are asleep for ~8 hours of that, leaving 16 hours. If you work full-time, that’s another 8 hours a day already spoken for. That leaves the remaining 8 hours to do everything else. Chores, social life, eating, collecting flowers and insect parts and mushroo…wait. If it matters to you, you’ll make time to do it, not just try to squeeze it in somewhere. Time management is about not wasting time. Does that hour or so of TV really help you, or could that time be better spent? Do you really need to read 15 pages of Rage Comics or a 500-comment Fark.com thread? If you can’t seem to find time to do what you supposedly want to do, maybe you should see what you’re doing with your time instead. Maybe the latter is what you want to do, and the prior is what you think you’re supposed to want to do. Deep.

The cool thing about being a human is that we can try all kinds of shit. Sports, creative arts, competitive eating, organized crime; anything you want! But the key is that pesky “want” part. Usually “want” comes with “work” which too many people seem scared of or at least very averse to. But that’s ok. I don’t play basketball because I suck at it, and I’m 5’6. If you can’t or don’t want to do the work for something, you don’t have to! You can try one of the infinite other things this crazy world has to offer.

Now that I’ve “won” I’ve got some celebratory mead to bottle.

Week the First

November 8, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

Today marks one full week of NaNoWriMo.

I’ve written 16,201 words worth of description, dialogue, exposition, technology, and other fun nonsense. I’m about ~5000 words ahead of the game, and don’t feel a slow down coming any time soon.

Some lessons learned so far:

1. Writing an outline was more important than I ever thought. All of those professors pounding the idea into my head for 4+ years were trying to help, after all. If I get lost or lose steam, I just pull up my outline (which I’ve color coded and added icons to) and suddenly my mind knows where to go next! Organization is actually helpful? I may need to revisit this notion later.

2. I love writing female characters. Who knew?

3. This whole writing-a-piece-of-substantive-length thing is 90% discipline. Imagination, art, and skill obviously count for something, but if you don’t force your fingers onto the keys to turn your insane story into words, all the creativity in the world won’t help you.

4. Painkillers (prescribed!) make for interesting metaphors.

5. I’m having a shitload of fun. Not only do I feel accomplished at the end of each day, but I get a stupid, giddy feeling when I talk about the plot and the characters, and how the plot is going to emotionally destroy the characters. Here’s to hoping I actually produce something worth reading.

To the first week of NaNoWriMo, I raise a Magner’s Irish Cider. Cheers!

Maybe I can do this whole writing for a living thing.