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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.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Be Right Back!

October 30, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

In two days, my life is (voluntarily) going to get a lot busier.

I’ve got a lot of things to figuratively juggle; my job, my house, grad school (and lots of writing-centric homework), eating, sleeping, occasionally bathing, playing with my kittys, snuggling with my wife, drinking beer, and of course, my blog. Something in my long list of labors has to temporarily be put aside. Unfortunately, it’s something that I really enjoy but that also consumes a lot of my creative energy.

So, to all my delightful readers: I apologize if my LitLib posts throughout November are sparse. I will post weekly updates as to how far into NaNoWriMo waters I’ve waded, and some lessons learned from my daily writing sessions. I also have a few posts in the hopper that just might make an appearance in case I find myself in the middle of miraculous void of “nothing to write.”

I appreciate everyone who stops by and reads my work; you’re the ones keeping me engaged and giving me the feedback that validates my whole crazy dream. By December I’ll have a manuscript ready for edit and a lot of new experience to pass along about the creative blur that is NaNoWriMo!

Catch you all on the flip side, and all that.

Coming soon!

Craft and Draft: Thinking versus Knowing

October 16, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

The late-October NaNoWriMo runway is littered with the corpses of tens of thousands of would-be novels. Lots of these stories were cleared to fly, passed all the safety checks, but at the last minute, without warning, exploded into an awesome burst of words and pages. If we could recover the black boxes from this mangled writing-wreckage, it’d would be pretty easy to prove that the pilot (read: author) was responsible for the crash.

In my little online social circles, this time of year is made up of three definitive stances:

1) The battle criers: Those people who are feverishly looking forward to NaNo. Those people who already have their pens laid out in a perfectly perpendicular manner. Those people who can and will take time off work to make word count.

2) The wafflers: Those people who just aren’t sure. Those who think it could be fun, but don’t want to commit. Those who have a good idea that could be a great idea if it was given the chance.

3) The defeatists: Those who can’t imagine being able to write a novel in a month. Those with every excuse you’ve ever heard, and then 10 more. Those who treat writing as a novelty, not as a necessity.

I don’t need to talk to the battle criers; y’all will do your thing regardless. It’s not the defeatists I want to talk to either, most of them won’t even make the attempt, making my cheerleading nothing more than words wasted.

It’s you wafflers. You know who you are. You love to write – and are probably pretty good at it – but you haven’t given your work the time or credit it deserves. You don’t take the time to focus on your craft because you feel like it is a waste of time, in a world where you don’t really have any time to waste.

I know the feeling; you’ve got a lot of other stuff to do. Job. Kids. House. Video games. Expensive drug habit. I get it, I really do.

But if you love to write (and I mean “love” in the dirty, visceral, would-stab-a-dude to get to your keyboard, kind of way) then you are only hurting yourself. The longer you go dismissing your own passions and skill, the weaker that skill will become, until it is a shriveled up domovoi who does nothing more than languish around your psyche like an unwanted, unwashed house guest.

I’d be naive to think one little poorly proofread blog post could magically change your mind, but I still want to pass along the one little thing that helped me turn the corner with my writing and let me embrace it as something that I can and should and will do:

Don’t think that you want to write, know that you want to write. Don’t think you are a good writer, know you are.

Thinking you can do something opens a door in your mind, an hidden back entrance that allows doubt to park his U-Haul and move in permanently. Thinking you can do something sets up parameters in your mind where defeat or failure is an acceptable outcome. Thinking is for philosophers and politicians.

But knowing you can do something? Oh man. When you know what you are capable of, there is no room for doubt. He can knock at your door all he wants, but your confidence just calls the cops and has him arrested for stalking.

The great part about knowing something is that it doesn’t even have to be true at this very moment. You can know that you have the potential to write a novel that will be popular and sell, and it will set you on the course to do just that. It’s an affirmation and a reassurance all rolled up into one cozy feel good blanket of self-imposed awesomeness.

So, don’t make excuses for yourself if you really want to do NaNoWriMo.

Know you can do it, don’t just think so.

[Saying or text appropriate for a motivational poster goes here]

NaNoWriMo 2012: Rules

October 10, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

There is really only one rule for NaNoWriMo: write 50,000 words in 30 days.

The rest is sort of nebulous, like a floating blob of guidelines that only loosely apply on a novel by novel basis. I mean, you’re not supposed to write anything before November 1. You’re not supposed to write anything you’ve had in the hopper for a while, and you’re not supposed finish anything you started a while back, and you’re not supposed to drink beer in the morning.

But these are all just suggestions really. Chris Baty isn’t going to come to your house and beat you over the head with a bag full of gerunds if you break any of the “rules.” It’s your month of writing, so I say: do whatever the hell you feel like doing.

Sure, it’s National Novel Writing Month, but if you want to write nonfiction – go for it! You want to write short stories instead of a novel? You better believe I endorse that idea. You want to finish a novel you started in college? By all means. Hell you can even just write one, 50,000 word long sentence if that’s what does it for you.

NaNo is a catalyst, a reason, a scripted event, that has one ultimate goal for us as writers: get words down on the page.

That’s it. No other secret, subtext, or hidden message for us to decipher. Just a thing that makes us write, and write a lot.

So, if you were being sheepish about NaNo because you thought you’d have to flout the rules and ruin the entire spirit of the thing, don’t sweat it. If you want to write, write. Use NaNo as a booster shot to your literary immune system.

I, for example, have been feverishly planning. If I’m going to spend 30 days writing my hands off, I feel like I should put that energy to good use.

I’ve got a traditional outline, but I also did something I’ve never done before, which turned out to be a shit load of fun.

I made a map of the world of my novel.

This isn’t complete, but it’s getting there.

What are you doing to prepare for NaNo, as per the rules, or not?

Craft and Draft: (October) 4th and Goal

October 4, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Ermahgerd, thernly verrled NerNerWriMer perst!

Ahem, blech, hrrrruugggg. Cough.

Oh my god! Thinly veiled NaNoWriMo Post!

It’s October and we all know what that means. Pumpkin ale, and raking leaves, and Cinammon Apple Yankee Candles for everyone! Oh, and NaNoWriMo 2012 starts in roughly one month. 27 days to be more accurate, or 26, really, since today halfway over.

Last time, I talked loosely about preparation. What and how and why we’re going to punish our brains throughout November. I even made some new masochistic writing friends! I’ve been spending my off-time (what little there is of it) working on the outlines for my stories and building the structure that I plan to fit them all into. It’s a steaming mess of Word docs right now, but the idea is gestating and hopefully my little bundle of literary joy will be nearly fully formed come December 1.

But today, I’m more concerned about the future. The time beyond NaNo 2012, the cosmic unknown of days and events that have only happened in our dreams. Things like NaNoWriMo are great catalysts for getting shit done, but they beg the much larger questions: why are you writing a novel and what do you plan to do once you’ve written it?

Phil (via Writer’s Codex) got me thinking about why I write, and what that means about the person I am and the person I want to be. I write partly out of catharsis, partly for fun, and partly as a manual “Save As…” function for my brain. I’ve got a lot of potent abstracts bouncing around in there, and writing makes me feel like I’ve got a way to catalog them. A Dewey decimal system for my ideas, emotions, musings, and memories, if you will.

And more importantly, I write because it makes my brain all bubbly with joy, which makes life that little bit sweeter.

The why of writing is a philosophical abstract; it’s the same as asking why some people merely like cookies and some people would commit felonies for a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip wonder. We may never know the answer. You can muse on it all day, but may never find an answer that truly satisfies your self indulgent inquiry.

It’s brain-stretching to think about why I write, but it doesn’t get me very far in terms of my craft. I prefer specifics; concrete ideas with real, undeniable answers. Something with some weight behind it, like a good machete or a loaf of stale french bread.

To that end, I’ve established goals that I constantly remind myself of to keep me on track. They are, as of today:

-Finish my masters by the end of 2013 (slated to write my thesis next fall)
-Publish my first “large work” (this could be a number of things) before I’m 30 (I’m 27 on Oct. 21)
-Update my blog (to keep my writing muscles toned) at least twice a week
-Make writing a priority over other non-mandatory things (as fun as Borderlands 2 is, it isn’t going to satiate that creative thirst)
-Enjoy the act of writing, not just the final product (because, duh)

These have kept me focused and committed, even on the days I just don’t feel like doing the Fingers-Keyboard dance. I’ve found that they work sort of like affirmations; the more I remind myself of these goals, the more I see myself moving towards completing them, and the happier I feel about being a few words closer to achieving a dream.

Our brains are crazy powerful if we let them off the leash.

So to all my fellow NaNo’ers: Beyond why you write, what are your goals for your writing? Do you do it just to keep the legions of brain-demons at a sword’s length, or are you striving for a taste of validation via large-scale publishing? Are you writing to get that mega-huge, sprawling idea into something more tangible, or just for the personal challenge of the whole thing?

Whatever your reasons, setting goals will help. Without a goal, you can never score.

“My goal is to be the first cat to complete a jigsaw puzzle. Or steal all of the pieces and hide them under the bed. Either way.”

NaNoWriMoFreOPreBlo

September 17, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Or, as I like to call it: “National Novel Writing Month Freak Out Preparatory Blog”

After this week, and the next week, there are only four weeks left until NaNoWriMo! Time to officially start freaking out, if you’re into that kind of thing.

I participated in my first NaNoWriMo last year, and found the experience pretty interesting. I played by all of the traditional rules, writing every day, lusting after that tasty goal of 50,000 words in ~30 days. While I didn’t attend any local writing meet-ups, or really work within any writing community to speak of, I still found the entire event a great catalyst to plain getting shit done.

I’m going to play again this year, despite having even more on my plate than last year. I wrote nearly 80,000 words last year (ok, some of those came post December 1, but it was in the same fit of writing), which is more fiction than I wrote in the other 11 months combined (I don’t keep track of how much nonfiction I write, for whatever reason).

This year, I’m going to break from tradition, and write a collection of short stories. It’s the same idea in principle, words into stories into a book, it’s just a bunch of smaller narratives instead of one big, epic one.

I also hope to be part of a bigger community this year. If anyone wants to get in on some hot, word on word NaNo action, my handle is: OliverGray14 (my profile picture is the same as my twitter acount, me in a sweet bowler hat)

To prepare, I’ve already outlined the basics of the stories, as well as the plot lines and characters for each. I’ve also started mentally getting into “shitload of writing everyday mode” which involves finger stretching exercises and building my caffeine tolerance. I still need to figure out if my stories are all going to tie together, or if they are going to be stand alone.

Is anyone else out there doing NaNo this year? If so, are you preparing yet, or am I just freakishly proactive?

NaNoWriMo is no place for a pony, even one so brave as Bill.

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.

Three Shall be the Count…

November 22, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

…No more, no less. Five is right out.

And so we wrap up week three of NaNoWriMo. As I announced in my last post, technically, I’ve already won. That hasn’t stopped me though; in fact, it hasn’t even slowed me.

I’m up to fifty-five thousand, one hundred and twelve words. One hundred and thirty-six pages. Twenty-seven chapters. One betrayal, one death. More of the latter coming.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Hail the Outline: herald of all things good and organizational

Yes, I’m still talking about outlining. I never thought I’d say this: the outline is the most important thing you can do for you writing (at least from my perspective). I don’t know how many times I’ve gone back to it, revised it, loved it, yelled at it. It’s reciprocated and been very flexible with my constant mental flux. It is the glue that holds my novel together. Without it, it would be a jumbled mess of disjointed scenes. I can’t imagine how anyone writes anything of length without an outline.

2. NaNoWriMo is a social event, which can be good and bad

Tiffany pointed out that a lot of people participate in NaNo for the social aspect. A community of people doing the same thing, working towards the same goal. I like the concept; people getting together is cool. But when the content you’ve written on the forums outweighs the content of your novel 30:1, you’ve kind of missed the point. I spent about 15 minutes looking at the NaNo forums and decided to never go back. There are plenty of distractions in this world without you actively participating in a distraction created by the thing you’re trying to avoid being distracted from. Or something. Keeping a small group of people who are interested in your writing enough to provide feedback is the perfect level of social interaction.

3. While we’re talking about distractions

I’m a pretty busy dude. I work full time, I’m on a business proposal team, half of a wedding planning team, half of a home owning team, I’m a cat-dad, I try to fix everything that doesn’t work, I like to read, play instruments, exercise, and play games. This month, I changed almost none of my habits. Despite that, I met my goal, and I met it early.

Distractions are bullshit. Bullshit you make up to avoid doing something you really don’t want to do. If you find yourself preferring Fark or FailBlog or FPSs over writing, you probably don’t really like writing as much as you think (or have convinced yourself) you do. If you love to do it (and get a thrill from writing a great scene that ties in well), you’ll make writing one of those things you actively want to spent time on, not the other way around.

4. The writing environment is important

I know a lot of people like to work in the same physical location: a coffee shop, a home office, a table at a local park. There’s method to this madness. The same, comfortable situation gets me in the right mental state and reminds me where I’m going with my story. It’s the same effect as listening to music while studying, or visualizing your performance in a sport before you actually play. Your mind builds associations with your environment, which leads to you quickly getting into the right state of mind. We’re all creatures of comfort; use that to your advantage.

5. Don’t wait for a muse, or inspiration, or a moment of magic

Years ago, I bought into the concept of “the muse”; the magical fairy that flies into your brain and defibrillates the creative part of your mind at random. I used to rely on this fickle mistress in college, hoping she’d show up sometime between when my papers were assigned and when they were due.

As I’ve gotten more comfortable with my wordology, I’ve found that the muse is fake. Like Mr. Peanut and Topcat. You are your own inspiration. The more you write, the more you’ll write. Go ahead, try it. It really works.

With one week left, I’m going to try and finish my first draft. From there, I get to enter the wonderful mystical realm of self-editing. I’m guessing it’s going to be more Tartarus than Elysium.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers!

Somehow, Mr.Peanut's astigmatism switched eyes in the mid-1930s.

Victory!?

November 18, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

Six minutes ago, I hit 50,031 words in my novel.

As per the “rules” of NaNoWriMo, I win! I won. Victory. Agapai!

But I’m not even close to finished. To stop now would be to leave the novel in utero indefinitely. Claiming victory now would be like enrolling my child in school while he was just a cluster of gooey cells; a confused little zygote.

It’s just a baby, unsure of it’s own identity. I can’t just leave it to die in the woods, scared and being chased by bears! I must guide him, and arm him with a torch and pointed stick. I must raise the child I have created and give him purpose.

As per my outline, I have seven chapters left. At ~2500 words a chapter, that is still another 17,500 words! So much left to say; a climax to hit; plot points to resolve; motivations to reveal; comeuppance to dole out.

There is so much fun and potential left in this story, the only admirable thing to do is finish it.

End? No, the journey doesn’t end here.

A wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He finishes his writing precisely when he means to.

Deuce(s)

November 15, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

Today marks week two (2!) of NaNoWrimo.

My total word count, including some pre-writing, is: 40,277. That’s 102 pages single spacing in word, for all you MS Office jockeys.

I tend to write about ~2500 words a day, with a low of zero and a high of ~4800.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Writing Breeds Writing

I find that when I get to writing, it takes about 15 minutes to turn the spigot to “full.” Once it’s there, no one can stop the torrent. My fiancee can attest to my being late to pick her up on account of writing that last bit of a chapter. It’s the best kind of addictive.

2. Outlining is Still Important, if Not More Important

I said this last week, and I’ll say it again: outline your story before you start. I wrote the first four chapters “pantser” style and floundered, not knowing where to go. With an outline, I’m never lost. It takes all of an hour to do, and is more valuable than you’ll ever realize (until you do it).

3. Skip a Chapter

Got a chapter you have to write, but it’s just not coming to you? Skip that shit! Move onto the next, exciting and fresh chapter. I’ve done this 4-5 times now, and always find that after some time away from the story, the content for the chapter I skipped just appears. Keep moving forward, even if it’s not perfectly chronological.

4. Rest, Kind Souls

Take a break. Sleep. Do some other work. Eat. Drink a beer. Anything to get your mind off of your story. There comes a point (after ~4500 words) where I get sloppy and stupid. My characters sound like drunken kindergarteners. My plot becomes Hop on Pop with laser rifles. It all falls to shit. When you see this coming, step away. You can always pick it up tomorrow.

5. Until People Have Read the Draft, Shut Up

The story is amazing in your head. It’s already a NY Times bestseller, and the movie deal is just sitting in the outbox of a producer waiting for you to publish your masterpiece. I get it, I’m right there. Unfortunately, no one (except the mind goblins) live inside your head. No one gets your characters or your awesome twists, because its still just a fledgling story growing in your skull. Until you’ve got a draft for someone to read, try to shut up about the tiny nuances of every little bit of your story. For the record, I suck at this.

I should hit the allocated 50,000 sometime this week, which is pretty awesome. Looks like I might even make my goal of ~80,000 by the end of November!

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