Category: NaNoWriMo

  • Fanfic++

    I am a huge advocate of new writers cutting their teeth by trying out fan fiction. Fan fiction can be a great playground. For starters, so much fanfic is truly awful, so the bar is set really, really low. Whatever your fandom, somebody, somewhere, has a fanfic forum where you can, if you choose, post your work, get feedback, and cultivate a stable of beta-readers. You will be practicing foundational skills such as plot development, dialogue, character motivation, story and emotional arcs, etc., without having to do all that tedious world-building first. OK, so it’s not “original.” When you think about it, what is?

    So without further ado, I would like to thank everybody who made this year’s Nanowrimo novel possible. I stand on the shoulders of giants.

    The concept for a race of randomly and inexplicably immortal humans is lifted whole cloth from Robert Adams Horseclans books, which I purchased by the dozen in the mid-1980’s from the how-can-you-read-that-crap shelf at the used bookstore for around seventy-five cents a pop. The idea that maybe they don’t rule the world because been there, done that, hated that job, is entirely mine.

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  • Post-NaNo Stress Relief

    NaNoWriMo 2012If you read last week’s Dispatches from the Trenches, you know how NaNoWriMo turned out for me.

    In a nutshell, it didn’t. This is not to say it was a disaster. I didn’t have a meltdown. I merely realized that it wasn’t working for me.

    Instead of doing more recap of the downside of my personal experience, though, I’d like to talk about what went right.

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  • Looks Like We Made It

    Well, for somebody who burst on the scene of this year’s NaNoWriMo with the super-sekrit plan to pull a double, I damn near didn’t make the single. Considering I’d planned the whole thing as a lesson in pacing, that almost makes it a “fail.”

    But it’s not. I learned from it. I learned how far I can go before I hit overload and melt into an obstinate crankypants who spends a rebellious week watching movies all day on the Hallmark channel instead of writing. Yeah, that’s right. I did that. Shut up.

    Because then I picked myself back up and moved forward at a normal pace. So, for three out of the four weeks, I wrote every day. And for that last week, I pretty much did what I’m supposed to be doing year round, but never figured out how to do before.

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  • The Aftermath

    NaNo is over. Which… doesn’t really mean much for me.

    You may have figured this out by now, I’m sure I must have let it slip sometime during the past month, but I sat NaNo out this year. And you know what? I’m okay with that.

    I kept a full schedule with a second job involving technical writing. I spent time with friends. I watched some TV. I even read a couple of books.

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  • Wrimos are Never Alone

    I survived another NaNoWriMo: my seventh year hitting 50k, my fourth year as Municipal Liaison. I submitted my completed grammar final last night and the boyfriend and I are still on speaking terms.

    I’ve even gotten a little bit of Christmas shopping done.

    I am relieved and amazed I made it through the month. I’ve never had so much going on in November before. Not since the very first NaNo I signed up for in 2005, where I was finishing my second to last semester as an undergrad (taking 12 hours), working nearly full time hours at a job, and trying to put together grad school applications (which included studying for the GRE). That year I wrote roughly 1,000 words and then promptly and enthusiastically surrendered.

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  • Rhythm, Routine, and Ass in the Chair

    I didn’t finish.

    Let’s get that out at the start. I didn’t reach 50K. But truth be told, I’m kind of ambivalent about it. I really wanted to reach that goal, but all things considered, this was a great NaNo experience.

    As one of my fellow Café contributors, R.L. Naquin, likes to say, it was about learning to write every day. In the past, that’s been a difficult routine for me to maintain, but I feel like I finally discovered the value of it this year. If you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, every day, it starts to add up. Even the slow days count for something.

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  • Failure and other F-Words

    Did I succeed or did I fail? It is a matter of perspective. Given my course load for grad school and the responsibilities of being a single parent, I set a small goal of 25,000 words for Nanowrimo. I managed that. So success?

    It doesn’t feel like it. It was tough watching other people’s word counts climb as I spent my time writing papers on thematic conflict and duality as a literary mechanism. It felt bad not making it write-ins, being on the outside of all the inside jokes.  Failure to meet a word count is bitter pill to swallow when your girlfriend is the municipal liaison, the person whose job is to badger people about their word count. Although in fairness to her, there was no badgering.

    I don’t like watching other people succeed at something, knowing I can’t do it myself. It builds a sort of artistic jealousy that is fairly common in writing. It is generally a good thing. Your friend sells a story and you think it could have been you. Another reveals a new book cover, and it could of been you. You use it to drive you. In a race, no one tries harder than the person in second. In this case, person after person finished writing a novel, and it could have been me.

    This isn’t competition, and I am happy for everyone who made it. Happiness and jealousy are often handmaiden’s in the arts. In the end, I just have to hope that the next couple of years with writing as a secondary focus to my education will be a worthwhile sacrifice, and that the experience will make me a better writer.

    I certainly hope so. As much as I have enjoyed my classes and think I am producing good literary criticism, my creative writing is getting left behind, and I don’t like it.

    The good news is that I think what I did writing of Heaven’s Edge is promising. It has a ways to go, but I think it has a chance to be a fun book. I look forward to finishing it, even without Nanowrimo.

  • The Post-NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up (Week Ending Dec. 15)

    http://www.nanowrimo.org

    It’s December, and that means the 2012 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is officially at an end. To all the writers — both ours here at the cafe and those all over the world — who participated, this coming week will likely be one of reflection and relief.

    Now that the word sprints and write-ins are finished, it’s time for each of our writers in the Cafe to look back at the past month and take stock of what they have done. This week, our writers are going to give a post-NaNo report, summing up what this past month has meant for them.

    We hope your own NaNoWriMo experience was productive and inspiring. May your coming year be filled with more writing, editing, and — hopefully — publication!

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management

  • Wait, Where Is This Train Headed?

    Since I’d already hit my word count goals for NaNo, I decided that I wanted to finish the novel before November closed for the year. I only had a few scenes left, so its been looking good.

    Then I did a quick outline and realized that my climatic explosion isn’t actually my climax; its the Big Push that changes my character.

    Um.

    Fuck.

    I knew a lot of my draft was background stuff that would get scrapped. I knew there were gaps in the story that would need to be told. I knew that some of my characters needed more screen time. That this draft was an incomplete creature was not news to me. But looking at it last night, I realized that the explosion is what reveals to my character that there is an antagonist. Its the shit in the aftermath that really allows Johnny to forge an identity and relationships, where he’s just been running for most of the novel.

    In the beginning of November I sat down to write a story about a kid who gets humbled by his new rival and has to learn how to not be a winner.

    I’m closing November with a novel about a depressed kid who takes risks because he doesn’t value his life. He’s slowly erasing his identity, until this big explosion forces him to confront the choices he’s made.

    Well then.

    I’m calling a good month.

  • The Intermission After ‘Winning’

    Since last we met, I haven’t written one word on my NaNoWriMo novel. Not one.

    I’ve been thinking about it, working out some story problems and I sure haven’t been sitting on my hands. Instead, I went back and started editing (again!) and revising last year’s novel for passive-voice verbiage.

    Hoo boy. That’s been a LOT of work. I wrote about that on my blog on Wednesday.

    Why am I doing this? I don’t I’ve mentioned it here but I got feedback from the publisher I sent last year’s novel to ‘revise and resubmit’ it. Since I’m writing the sequel to that novel for this year’s NaNoWriMo, reaching the word count goal and then going back to edit made sense.

    Because I’m seeing a lot of things I can clean up besides just the passive stuff. And once that’s done then I can clean up the passive stuff in the current work and make everything better going forward.

    I’ll cover a lot of this in the postgame report post next week, and hopefully be able to tell you that I’ve finished the work.

    But making it to 50K was a big deal. It always is. Yes, I made it to that goal a couple hours before Christie did but only because she let me. The push between her and Ashley and me was a lot of fun and made it a good challenge to get me to that point. I might not have done it without those two working alongside me. I’m grateful for the motivation.

    So. That’s the update. Next week I’ll look back and give you my impressions of the entire month.