Writer at Large

I often ask myself the same question about 3/4 of the way through . . .

Well . . . another year, another successful NaNoWriMo . . .

First, some statistics:

Total word count: 55,921
Average daily word count: 1,864

This year’s personal challenge—and I always seem to end up setting myself up for one once I get started—was to write a story that was deliberately not going to be structured in chronological order in its final form.

While this did free up the muse (somewhat) to wander around to whatever scenes she liked from day to day, it did present some challenges of its own. I can see that I’m going to need to keep careful track of what happened when and to close out any half-finished sequences in time.

This year’s post-NaNoWriMo challenge (not unlike almost every other year): actually complete the novel, revise it, and submit it.

Anyone want to place any bets on any of those?

With four weeks behind me, and only two days left to go, here are my current statistics:

• Total word count: 52,941 (well ahead of target, and actually completed, if you want to get technical about it)
• Average daily word count for the week: 2,329 (a new personal best of any week for any year that I’ve participated)
• Nearly all of the sections written this week were large sequential chunks. There are a few “stragglers”, but chiefly in places where there needs to be some kind of transition between the opening and the main event of the sequence.
• I am still struggling to find an overarching plot. Most of these week was spent on (probably overly) exploring vignettes involving personal life events, so any plot itself has not moved along much. I do have a general idea for the climatic battle scene now, but need to flesh it out more.

For the remaining two days, I will probably strive to hit my personal goal of 1,800 words each day and then call it in sometime Tuesday night.

Until then . . .

The statistics at the two-week milestone (and nearly halfway point) include:

• Total word count: 36,638 (nicely pacing just ahead of target)
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,797 (just under my aspirational goal of 1,800, chiefly due to an underproductive day on Thursday)
• This week again there have been large sections written as sequential chunks.
• I’m still struggling with a plot . . . I think. And a main antagonist has not yet reared its villainous head, but I think I’m starting to arrive at a concept for one.
• Two important breakthroughs this week:
  • I have a final scene. (It came to me just minutes before I wrote this.) It provides exactly the kind of ending I wanted. It isn't the conclusion of the plot, though, so that's still an issue.
  • I understand the theme of this book now. I suspect I knew what it was all along, but had not recognized it at a conscious level. I'm not going to reveal it here, but will say that involves a societal issue that has long bothered me.

I have a handful of scenes in mind to write next week, but I have a feeling that Week Four is going to be a challenging one nonetheless. And this is definitely not a book that will be complete in 50,000 words.

The statistics at the two-week milestone (and nearly halfway point) include:

• Total word count: 24,056 (right on target, and just a few words short of my personal best for the second week)
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,511 (a bit below target due to almost no progress as expected on Tuesday through Thursday)
• Although I still plan to structure the overall novel as a series of vignettes, large sections of this week’s work have been sequential chunks.
• I still have only the vague notion of the overall plot—and almost none at all about the main antagonist.
• Even if this turns out to be the (fictional) biographical study of a superhero, it’s going to need something climatic at the end. I don’t think either a “He lived happily ever after.” or  “He died quietly in his sleep.” is quite going to work.

Here’s hoping that it all starts to come together in Week Three!

And we’re off! At the one week mark, my statistics look like this:

• Total word count: 13,479 (Looking back, that’s a new personal best for Week 1)
• I have a (working) title: Heroic Measures.
• I have several characters who are actually doing things, or starting to do things.
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,926

Although the “voice” of this novel is similar to other things I’ve written before, it is the first time that I have deliberately set things up to not be in sequence. The story is constructed as a series of vignettes in the main character’s history.

I anticipate my progress being zero (or close enough as not to matter) from Tuesday through Thursday due to work-related commitments, so my statistics next week are likely to look kind of wonky in comparison to usual. However, but plan to go into the week with a two-day buffer, so hopefully that will help.

Onward!

Yes, it’s that time of year again—the insanity that strikes right before the even greater chaos and mayhem that are the traditional winter holidays: National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days. Who in their right mind does this?

Since there are many out there who would be more than willing testify under oath that I am often not in a “right mind”, I guess this includes me. So, a preview of this year . . .

Here’s where I am so far:

• a main character
• a vague sort of concept for the story
• a world setting
• something of a storytelling timeline structure
• a few ideas for a handful of supporting and other minor characters
• some half-formed metaphors that underlay the story
• the lack of a solid plot
• the lack of a key antagonist

At this moment, I’m very concerned that there isn’t enough here to sustain through 50,000 words. If I can fill in some of the gaps quickly, though, I think it just might work.

As usual, if you care to, you can monitor my progress here. Weekly updates will be posted as always.

There seems to be a general public perception that writing—or almost any artistic endeavor for that matter—is not work.

I’ve often wondered why this is. Is it because the odds of being “successful” at it seems so remote? It is because people who are not artists do not understand the efforts and skills involved in producing a piece of quality work? Does it stem from a sense of personal jealousy from people unwilling to take the same risks themselves? Or it is because, at some level, it involves a certain level of “make believe”, so it cannot be real work?

For any given detractor, the real answer (or answers) probably might be any one of these, a combination of any of them, or even some reasoning entirely different.

I have found, generally, that almost any attempt at explanation, at describing the process and effort required to produce a creative piece of work (and notice the word choice there—work), tends to be met with skepticism or disdain, rarely with admiration. The attitude often changes if we can produce some sort of proof that we have actually been published or otherwise recognized for our efforts, but there seems to be little regard or consideration while we are in the process of creation. During that time, it feels as though we are treated as a dilettante, a grownup playing at childish things that we should have long put away.

Working at one’s art requires time, commitment, and energy—any or all of which can often be in short supply while we try to keep the mortgage/rent paid, food on the table, our families clothed, and our employers reasonably content. Even those of us fortunate enough to have among our circles of acquaintances other artists who understand, the wider chorus of voices around us provide little support for our creative endeavors. Most often, some kind of lip service is offered up, but in the end it rarely takes the form of anything tangible or material.

What is the answer, I wonder? How do we get our society to respect and truly support its artists? By this, I mean the ones struggle to make it happen, not the ones who walk the red carpets at the Academy Awards (and other) ceremonies who are publically and financially well-rewarded for their efforts. (I do not mean to imply that they are not worthy as well, but I have wondered how many artwork exhibits or small press publishers might be funded by the cost of the clothing worn to those events alone.)

Is it that what the public wants is glitz and glamour? That the hard-working writer who dutifully and expertly writes their page or two a day, gets published in a few thousand copies, is simply not interesting enough because they lack a good publicity agent? That if you’re not on Oprah or publically placed in rehab or involved in some vaguely notorious scandal, you’re not worthy of the title of “successful artist”?

It’s a strange and baffling world out there . . . Maybe it is really is as they say: Truth is stranger than fiction.

Let me begin by expressing my gratitude where rightfully due: to Laureen for (strongly) recommending this book, and to Holly for loaning me a copy until I could get home to purchase my own.

I’ve needed a good, swift kick in the proverbial pants, writing-wise, of late. My inner editor has been screaming loud and long. And, when she hasn’t been screaming, she’s taken to whispering vague (but still demoralizing) bits of criticism in my mind’s ear. (One of these days I really need to figure out whether my muse and inner editor are related, hero and arch-villain, or two disparate personalities within the same being. But that’s a discovery to pursue at a later time.)

This little book was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. (Yeah, yeah, I can see you nodding smugly over there…) I was so moved by what I found within its pages that, while reading it during a recent plane flight, I actually dug my notebook out of my onboard luggage and completed the first three exercises and nearly all of the fourth.

Let me say this about the book so far. The chapters are short, the writing personable and personal—and to the point, and the lessons based on experience are dead-on. This one definitely looks like a keeper, and one that I will likely return to whenever the muse and editor are deadlocked.

In recent conversations with other writers, I hear concerns that, as they’re working on a new piece for the first time, what they’re writing isn’t good enough, they aren’t sure they have the characterizations right—various worries like that. My stock answer is usually, “That’s what second drafts are for.”

About the same time, I overheard other some conversations between students about how much effort writing is, that two pages—or four or six or eight or ten or however many—is a lot to have to write. (Personally, I think I would barely break a sweat having to write a two-page paper, other than from the effort of keeping it down to two pages in length, but that’s a whole other topic.)

Both of these together got me thinking about how far we’ve come—for good or bad—over the years in terms of the tools we have to get words onto paper. Back in the days before affordable word processors (staying within the timeframe of the last century or so), writers worked on typewriters—lucky or wealthy ones used electric ones, but that really only provided the chief advantages of speed and reduced effort to press key to paper. Correcting errors—and writing those off-handedly referenced second drafts—required actually retyping of the actual pages. Editing, insertion, and deletions of large chunks of text was something writers saved until the last moment, because it could mean typing many, many pages to bring the page numbering back into alignment. Writing was work.

I can remember typing up passages and then realizing that I wanted to add something in between and typing a separate page numbered XXa and inserting it into the stack so it would be there when I retyped the entire thing for the final draft. I can also remember reading over pages of my purported “final draft”, only to discover misspelled or missing words. Many teachers wanted clean, pristine pages and would not accept papers with handwritten corrections or smears of correction fluid. So, once more, a fresh sheet was inserted to be retyped—often so new errors could be created.

The amount of effort required to write an effort was significant. It was more than just the willingness (or insanity?) to sit before a typewriter and compose pages for hours on end, but also backspace, erase, pencil in, overtype, pause in the middle of thoughts to insert a new sheet a paper, and add new ribbons of ink (which would usually occur late on a Sunday when you discovered you had used your last one and nearly all of the stores that might the one for your typewriter was probably closed). It also meant accepting that those same pages might be retyped several times before being considered “final” and published. Sending it out for possible publication also meant that it might have to be re-typed again, but I think at that point there was sufficient financial incentive to embrace the task.

We’ve come a long way since then. And, almost unequivocally, I’m grateful.

After helping out my good friend properly motivate her muse to complete the book she had already pre-sold, she turned the tables and challenged me to actually complete a book over the next two months (finishing on October 25th as to give me a week to recuperate before NaNoWriMo 2010.

My muse immediately began belligerently defending her ability to accomplish such a feat. Since then, however, she has gone into denial. Too many ideas, she claims. Not enough time right now, she whines. None of the concepts are really good enough, she protests.

Uh huh.

Today is supposed to be Day One of this grand challenge. If it happens, you can watch it unfold here.

I guess modern artists have always known—or certainly been told by others—that the game is rigged against them. For most of us, our chief desire is to reach an audience that appreciates our work and wishes for us to produce more of it. The path to acquiring and keeping that audience can be a difficult one indeed.

Artists require feedback to know whether they have achieved their goals, reached their audience in the ways that they had intended. This can often be as great a challenge as the creation of the work itself.

I hear from many artists that they are hesitant to submit their work for professional consideration because they fear rejection. I find this a perfectly understandable reaction, for who wants to learn that the creation they have labored on for weeks or months—or even years—has been judged unsuitable for publication?

Most publishers offer their rejection in the form of a vague, legally-acceptable form letter that provides the artist with little useful information as to reason (or reasons) that their work was deemed unsuitable for publication. Was it the writing quality? Narrative style? Uninteresting characters? The purchasing editor was having a bad day?

I understand the rationale that most publishers receive more unsolicited submissions than they can reasonably respond to in a more personal and detailed manner. This has been the accepted practice for decades, but does little service to the artist.

So it comes down to persistence, with the artist repeatedly submitting their work, sometimes with modification and sometimes not, until their work is either finally accept or the artist gives up on that particular piece of work—sometimes permanently.

So, if you can, and your artist friends ask for your opinion of their work, please make at least a small effort to do so. Even terse, brutally honest is better than none at all. More often than not, it just inspires us to try harder.

I once had an instructor at the community college I attended tell me that I was very good at “synthesis”—bringing different things together into a cohesive whole. I find the same to be true of my writing: I believe my best work—certainly my best character interactions—come from the ideas and suggestions of others.

I recognize that most of my characters, particularly many of the main ones, tend to be internally focused. (What a surprise…) Their weaknesses and conflicts are usually confronted more within their minds and thoughts than through their actions and dialogue. For most readers, a little of that can go a very long way.

I am fortunate to associate with people who carry other perspectives, who can imagine characters who are more “out there” in terms of personality and character flaws. Through them, I believe my stories have become more interesting and provided opportunities for character interaction and insight that I do not think I would have achieved alone.

While my Myers-Briggs personality type might be adept at providing all of the information one might desire about the “box”, I consider myself privileged to have friends who are capable and eager to look outside it.

Is it because writing is such a solitary vice that writers struggle so with belief in their own abilities?

It occurred to me while locked in an ego battle with my muse (best summarized as: “I’m tired of writing just to entertain myself”), that while the writing process—or the creation of most art, I suppose—is generally a solitary act, it relies on some level of interaction with an audience to inform the writer whether or not they have succeeded in their intent.

I’m not sure what the right answer is in achieving this. I’ve tried Creative Writing classes, but my experience has been either that most instructors and students are too caught up in what I term the “literary” qualities of stories rather than the fundamentals of just telling a good story. Only one instructor I’ve had so far has even been open to the idea of genre. (One was downright hostile about it.) The few writing groups I’ve tried has tended to turn combative or fizzle out. (Probably due to the nature of writers in general, I suspect.)

I do my best to try to create characters, universes, and situations that can lead to what I hope to interesting stories. They seem interesting to me, but I don’t plan to be the sole purchaser of my own books.

As the method acting saying goes, “What is my motivation?”

To tell a good story: certainly. To have an audience who wants more: definitely.

Maybe that’s enough. Are you out there?

I've been following this discussion for the past week or so: The Publishing Death Spiral.

I'll leave it to you to make your own judgment on the opinions espoused within, but I do find Part Three pretty much dead on. My questions are:

• How long will it take before the inevitable evolution wins out?
• And what happens to authors in the meantime until it does?

(I know there's a lot more questions to be asked, but I thought I'd start with just two...)

"I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose out of our own human weaknesses, and the drive that compels us to overcome them."

Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

If I read "post-9/11 sensibility" in one more book or movie review, I just might scream out loud. In deference to the horrific events of that—and the days that have followed--I would like to say this: We get it. As Q told Picard in "Q Who", "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires, both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

I see movies and television series being praised because they are "gritty" and "real". The recent Battlestar Galactica fell into this category. I'll grant that it made for good drama, but as a friend of mine said in one of her comments, "I don't like any of the characters; none of them is anyone I'd want to be friends with, or even live down the block from. And the universe is totally hopeless." While I don't entirely agree with her dramatic assessment, I concur with the sentiment.

When did we lose hope?

I read an article somewhere (I wish I could remember where so I could post a link to it) offering the premise that Star Trek held little relevance in our current world, even with the not-insignificant success of the recent movie. I find this opinion more than a little sad and depressing. One of the things that Star Trek, in any of its incarnations, offered was a message of hope—hope that we would find our way past our global chauvinism and tendencies toward various types of self-destruction to a future of peace and common vision.

I guess my question at the end of this rambling essay is this: Do readers and viewers still want to experience stories of a hopeful future? Or is the new common denominator a collection of vampires, paranoia, and post-apocalyptic despair? If so, I won't be writing about it.

Two days, nine pages. It almost wasn’t much of a challenge. (Note to self: Never, never, ever, say that aloud to the muse.) Actually, the story came together nicely. All the gaps were closed up. The page count was achieved.

From a story perspective, I think it’s all there. I have concerns whether it works as a standalone story (but not overly concerned, as it’s intended in be an episode in an ongoing series, I assume readers would have at least passing familiarity with the characters and existing situations).

I do think at least one additional scene needs to be added that better link the two parallel stories within it. I’m not entirely sure what it is, as so far all of the ones that have come to me feel contrived and forced. I figure I’ll deal with the issue when the time comes to novelize it.

On to the next project . . .

There’s not much to report, really.

Word count is right on track. The muse is behaving (mostly). The story is coming together (mostly).

There are surprisingly few gaps in the flow of the story compared to previous years. Nearly all of the scenes have been written in sequential order.

I have little doubt that I will hit the goal of 100 pages this year. I’ll be surprised, though, if it goes more than one or two pages over, though. But that’s okay.

Due to commitments at work, I’ve missed two days of writing. Thank goodness I kept on track and am slightly ahead on word count.

Okay, back at it for the last two days . . .

The script remains steadily on course. The muse has been generally cooperative, granting just enough to keep pace with my daily word count.

The scenes are being written mostly in sequential order. Earlier in the week, as so often happens as I’m working on a story, the final scenes came to me. This is probably not a bad thing, as it keeps me somewhat directed toward a specific dramatic goal rather than wandering all over trying to find an appropriate and satisfying ending.

Slightly more than a week to go . . .

Steady as she goes . . .

I’m two pages behind of the halfway 50-page mark, but I’m not overly concerned about it because I know what the the next 2-4 pages are.

The script is progressing steadily. I’m actually surprised that the story concept looks like it will sustain itself for the entire 100 pages. I guess it really will be a “Special 2-Hour Episode” after all.

This project has been an interesting in that it has felt much more like a well-paced marathon than the usual series of sprints that I usually experience. The story is growing steadily, characters enter and leave as needed, and it is progressing toward its end.

I’m reaching the end, though, of the mental list of scenes I had developed going into this project. Next week could be rough. We’ll see . . .