Blog Archives
Are You Ready to RUMBLE?
Bust out your bugspray; dust off your sleeping bag.
It’s getting to be that time again, folks!
As June dawns, so does the first yearly installment of Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’m signed up for the torture glory of roughing it through 50,000 words in a month again.
For those of you who don’t know, Camp NaNoWriMo is an offshoot of NaNoWriMo proper, a month long endeavor to pump out a novel in the 30 days of November. 50,000 words, start to finish, 1,667 words per day. NaNo proper is always in November, but last year they started summer camp. There are two sessions — one in June and one in August — and this writer is going to hit both.
I have a tradition to maintain of going at this challenge rebel-style, which is to say I’ll be working on finishing the first draft of my existing WIP. The “rules” are to start from scratch, but they’re not picky about people following them as long as you’re going second star on the right and straight on till 50k.
As is Emmie-licious, I like to put my own little twists on things. So if you’re interested in pumping up the action and injecting Camp NaNoWriMo with a little steroid syringe, get ready!
Here’s the sitch:
I watch a decent amount of TV. Right now it’s Game of Thrones and The Vampire Diaries. But every marathon on Netflix costs me writing time — so this time around, I have a solution.
Everyone has their vices. Some of us might share the Damon Salvatore vice, others might have other things that get in the way, like ironing your underwear or making snoods from angel hair pasta.
Just TRY to tell me you don’t want him to be your vice too. Even if you’re a straight male or a nun. I dare you.
Whatever it is that you like to do but that keeps you from writing, fix it in your mind.
Got it?
Okay. I give you…..
Commander Emmie’s Can-Do, Communal Camp of Creation!
Statute the First: Write 2,000 words per day.
Statute the Second: Spend at least two hours per week doing something that rejuvenates you.
Statute the Third: Earn your vices with words.
The first two are self-explanatory, so here’s what I mean with the third one. If your vices, like mine, get in the way of your writing, turn the table upside down on them. Want to polish off the last four episodes of Next Food Network Star? That’ll cost you 4,000 words.
An hour of television costs 1,000 words. Reading is GREAT, but if you’re like me, you might snuggle in between the covers of an old favorite and end up realizing four hours later that you didn’t touch your WIP today. Pay for your reading time minute for minute. Thirty minute writing sprint? Thirty minutes curled up with le book. Going out drinking with your mates tonight? Not till you hit your goal. They can sit in your living room and entertain the cats while you polish off your 2,000 words.
Want to go extra hardcore with earning your vices? I’m trying to lose some weight, which means I’m fighting my super-lazy metabolism AND the estradiol progestione I ingest each day to avoid any untimed joy bundles. If I want to see what happens in the season one finale of Vampire Diaries or the next round of The Bachelorette (I know, I know…everyone gets a guilty pleasure, right?), I have to earn it. 1,000 words for every hour AND fifteen minutes of upped heart rate, gasping for breath.
Why do I want to do this to myself?
Damn fine of you to ask, I say! Capital! Capital!
The first reason is to complete a first draft of a novel in less than two months (it’s already begun). If I hope to make a career out of my scribblings, I’m going to need to put out more than just one book every three years.
The second reason is that I really want my tattoos. And I’m not letting that happen until I’ve gotten back down to a healthy BMI and my goal weight.
The third reason is that to accomplish any goals, it takes discipline. Camp NaNoWriMo (and NaNoWriMo proper) is a writing bootcamp disguised by chunky graphics and happy fonts. I like to take it a couple steps farther because I believe in a holistic approach to life. If you’re making things happen in one area, you can make things happen in others.
So. Who’s with me?
A thin veil for thirty days of sweaty, feverish typing.
Like this:
NaNoWriMo Lessons: The Once and Future Writer
November happens only once a year, but I’m a writer all the time.
If there are any lessons I learned this month, that’s the biggie. I had this epiphany moment at Panera the other day with my writing group. It was Monday, and my next day off was Thursday, so naturally I asked if anyone would be around. The response I got was: “You mean December 1?”
I get needing some R&R after a long month of feverish writing. I do. But I sat there for a moment with only a quiet thought going through my head. I’ll be writing December 1.
Me. As depicted by StudentHack.org. Except not really me.
After writing almost 100,000 words this month (novels + blog), I don’t feel burned out. I feel somehow rejuvenated. Ready to tackle December. Ready to get my books on shelves after so long. So without further ado and sentence fragments, here’s what NaNoWriMo taught me this month.
1. I’ve written over 50,000 words in a month many times in the last couple years.
This was one of those sort of sort of “mind blown” moments. I realized that when I’m in my groove, I probably surpass that easily. It’s not all novel — a lot of it is blog or rewriting — but it gives me some hope that I can make a sustainable career out of writing. I write all the time anyway.
Mind. Blown. Like this image will do to you, thanks to memebase.com.
2. Not all NaNo writing is crap.
I got the sense from several people that when they finish NaNoWriMo, they either toss their manuscript out the window or resign themselves to spending the other eleven months of the year editing said manuscript into sensibility. In spite of that warning, I am happy with a lot of what I got done this month. I haven’t gone back and read all of it, and I’m sure there will be some “WTF” moments in there, but what I have read, I enjoy a lot. So it’s not always the case that when you’re done plowing through those 50,000 words that finding the good stuff will be like reenacting this scene from Jurassic Park.
Love Jeff Goldblum. Image property of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.
3. NaNo is a great exercise, but if that’s all the writing you put effort into during a year, it’s like spending a month at the gym in January after the holidays when February-December finds you on the sofa with a bag of Cheetos.
Want to write? You’ve gotta do it all the time. Ask any author who makes her living with words. Follow Laurell Hamilton on Twitter and see how many pages she churns out per day. If you want to be a career writer, every month will be NaNoWriMo. If you don’t, you won’t have much of a career.
4. NaNo can be what you need it to be, much like The Thing.
Maybe you need a writing colonic, and you need to just flush out 50,000 words of poo. The Almighty Poom (see above link) believes that you need to do that to get rid of the poo before you can write anything good. If November needs to be your colonic, it can be.
November can also mean you get some really good stuff done. I finished a novel and got almost 30% done with the third of my trilogy. I will need to edit, of course, but a lot of it is great.
The Thing knows how to adapt. Image property of Universal Pictures.
And finally, like I said in the opening of this blog, November happens once a year, but I am a writer all the time. In the spirit of staying on track, here’s what you can expect from me in the month of December:
December will be a month of editing and polishing. Not what I wrote for NaNo, but the first novel of my trilogy. I will be writing some posts about that process, as well as discussing the trouble spots I find and what I’m doing to fix it. There are some structural elements that need work. The rocks have gone through the tumbler, but they need a bit more help to shine.
A couple times a week, I will be adding to what I have of book three, working to seamlessly integrate the changes of book one into the existing material as well as expanding on it as I go. It’s a trilogy; I need unity and balance. My goal is to have three books that work as one — a story told in three acts, each of which also has three acts. I want to apply the structural process of a novel to the trilogy to give it solidity and cohesion.
I will also be working on my rickety little platform, trying to learn what I can and expand what I have. I suggest you check out Kristen Lamb’s blog for some awesome tips — I just bought her book We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media, so I can’t wait to start using some of her tools and tips!
Finally, I will be researching agents. I know, I know! Squee! Most of the agents I spend time researching this month will be either my top choice agents in general or specifically the agents who will be at the Writer’s Digest Conference in January. I will make sure to give you all a keyhole look into that process as well, so you can see what I’m doing if it’s new to you or bop me on the head and give me a better way if you’re a pro. (Feel free to do that second thing.)
With that, gentle viewers, I bid you farewell for today. Happy final NaNo scrambling for those so inclined, and as December beckons, write on.
Like this:
NaNoRebel Challenge — Guess Who’s Purple?
Okay, so I’m a lazy pants.
Maybe not lazy, and I’m certainly not pants, but I admit I fell behind a bit on my posts regarding NaNoWriMo. Sowwy. Still love me?
In spite of my lack of postage (return to sender), I have been chugging away at my word count, and early last week I crossed the 50,000 threshold. I forgot winning started on the 25th, and so I just now validated my words. And this is what I saw:
Look at me, my bar is purple! 
Very exciting. I also got this handy-dandy doodad for the road:
Weener! Oscar Meyer.
All of that is very exciting. That also brings me to the detail of stats. If you recall from waaaay back at the beginning of the month when we began this challenge, the goal was to average 1,500 words per day and spend at least an hour a week doing something that refuels you. So without further ado, here’s the final info:
Average words per day: 2029
Hours spent at Panera: 34+
Coffee ingested: several gallons
Panic attacks: 0
Bread bowls devoured: 2
Nights past 4 AM: 5
And in case you were wondering about what I’ve been doing to refuel lately, here’s the most recent acquisition that has occupied my time like Wall Street:
Cannot. Stop. Reading.
I had a friend who didn’t really like the second and third books, but I am really enjoying them all. So with all the elation from my bar turning purple today, I’d like to take a minute to review book one of the trilogy, The Hunger Games.
I’ve always been partial to dystopian futuristic stories. Something about them, the grit of survival, the bare-bones attitudes of the characters always sucks me in. I heard of this book a while back, but it wasn’t until I saw the trailer for the movie that it really caught my attention.
“Primrose Everdeen!”
Those are the words that snared me, and when they were followed by the cry of, “No! I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” I knew I had to get the book.
I wasn’t disappointed. That desperate, guttural cry that leaves Katniss’s throat when her sister’s name is called, condemning her to fight to the death in the 74th Annual Hunger Games against twenty-three other tributes from the country’s twelve districts was only the beginning of the story, and yet there’s so much subsumed within that moment that I was hooked.
For one thing, I am enthralled with the character of Katniss Everdeen. The trilogy is written by a woman, and the protagonist is a young woman. I’ve been yearning for something like this for quite a while — a female hero written as men have written male heroes for centuries. There are others out there, but I fiercely loved reading Katniss’s story. It resonated with me because she thinks like me. She’s pragmatic, stoic, strong, and flawed. She is rarely emotional and often gruff. While I don’t resemble her much on the outside, reading her thoughts was like reading a transcript of what goes through my head about life and its trials. She’s someone I would aspire to emulate. Her dogged determination is something to be envied, and she is a hero I think will inspire both male and female readers. She’s not over-sexualized. She’s attractive, but that’s almost never the focus of the story. The focus is her drive to protect her family and herself.
The story itself has many levels of political intrigue, nuance, and some very 1984ish doublespeak as Katniss tries to navigate a path that is fraught with traps and snares from all sides — both literally and figuratively. I think I enjoy it so much because she is flawed. She doesn’t know what she’s doing for most of it, but she keeps trying — oh, she tries. She fights. She doesn’t give up even when it seems like every step she takes brings some new terror onto her head and everyone around her has their hands on her to push her in some new direction of their choosing.
I haven’t been able to put the books down, and that is something I haven’t felt in a while. I plowed through all three in a few days in the midst of turkey, poker with the family, and a bit of an excess of port.
Katniss Everdeen. She’s already been added to my wall of heroes. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I have. This holiday season, buy someone a book — one with a binding and covers. Give someone something to hold on to.
Like this:
The Cone of Shame
After arriving in Toledo last night, my husband, mother-in-law, and I were sitting around the kitchen discussing a bizarre ladybug infestation, and somehow the conversation turned to the gnawing/scratching habits of their adorable little white dustmoppy dog named Skooter. He doesn’t actually look like a dustmop, because they groom him very well, but if he lived in the 70s and they let him grow out, he would.
Skooter doesn’t really get it when scratching or gnawing at himself is wrong, so they had to get him a cone.
Oops. Wrong species.
Here we go:
Not Skooter...but you get the point.
Anyway, after my triumph over NaNoWriMo in the wee hours of the morning (I think I told you once that I only see 6 am when sneaking up on it from behind), I had a little mini-attack of chagrin, in which I gnashed my teeth thinking, “Molli from my writing group has 134,000 words and counting! I think Kana is kicking my arse too!”
And just like that, this was me:
It burns, Precious.
Like this cat, all I felt was the burning shame of not doing more. I wanted to have 100,000 words too!
*Cou-complex-gh*
But then I realized that I work 45 hours a week. And each day this month, I have updated my blog here, no matter what was going on. I did that first before starting my NaNoWriting. I have said hello (and then some) to my husband every day. I have jealously eyeballed some trees I would like to climb without getting arrested.
Like perhaps this tree.
And I realized that all those things I was saying to myself were basically like Skooter gnawing on his bum until it is so raw they have to cone him. My cone was imaginary, and it was made out of shame. It wasn’t protecting me from myself.
Have you ever felt that way, gentle viewers? Have you ever made yourself a Cone of Shame?
Today, I have shucked off my invisible Cone of Shame, written 1,408 words, and traded that cone in for something much better:
With this cone, I shall bust through word counts with mah lasers!
No more gnawing on ourselves, writers and gentle viewers. If you need a cone to make you stop, at least make it one that amplifies your lasers.
Like this:
What A Night!
Well, gentle viewers, I hit 50k.
After a massive amount of sprinting and some serious distraction in the tune of Jason Segel hosting SNL, it is done.
Sort of. Except for the not doing more part, because I still have some November left to play with. Driving to Toledo in a few hours to eat some family and play cards with turkey or something along those lines, but I won’t forget you while I’m there.
Like this:
Walking the Double Edged Sword
I got an email yesterday from the lovely blogger Kristin. She resides here, and you should check out what she has to say. Her question regarded how I juggle a full-time job (which often sends me into overtime) with writing fiction. Which made me think and ponder and consider, because it used to happen that I worked and didn’t write. And there was much gnashing of teeth.
I want this sword.
The way I look at it, when you’re not paying your bills by writing but have that insatiable chicken pox itch to commit words to paper (or screen), you step out onto a double edged sword.
On one side is a precipitous fall into financial ruin and despair, where your only good phone calls happen when it’s not a creditor who wants your soul in a jar, and where the old adage, “You can’t bleed a stone” becomes something you rattle off without thinking the second someone says the word money. Which can make things a little awkward. The other side of this sword may seem like less of a spiral into despair and ruination, and may even seem cushy and full of candy canes at first. But then you realize your soul is being sucked into a jar anyway because at the end of the day, you are so exhausted that you curl up with Ben and Jerry and double fist Red Velvet Cake and Cinnamon Buns whilst gorging on reality TV as your laptop gathers dust.
I love eating 4,000 calories in one sitting because it doesn't count when your soul's in a jar!
(The pic on the left is actually Clusterfluff ice cream, but pretend it’s Cinnamon Buns. PRETEND, I SAY!)
So what does one do when faced with this conundrum? You could go buy some more ice cream and glue your ass into a cubicle forever until your dreams turn to quarts of flaky dust, or you could quit your job and become the new poster child for starving artist-dom, but I think there can be a better way.
Jar O'Souls Has Yours!
Jobs are hard. They’re especially hard when you hate them. Such was the case for me a couple years ago. I thought teaching was what I should do, because everyone told me I should do it with my history degree. So I tried teaching special ed through a very selective alternative licensure program and didn’t write for a year. I loved my kids, but working 80 hours a week just didn’t do it for me. It’s also really hard to be a good teacher when your biological clock won’t let you sleep before 3 and when getting up early/your job/life causes massive amounts of anxiety that turn 3 into 6 and you have to just go to work and say screw sleep for another day.
Yeah, that didn’t work for me.
Then some crazy lady decided to T-bone my car, bust open the ligaments in my neck, and slam me into bed for six weeks. After some interesting physical therapy and some huge doctor bills and a lawyer (and a few instances of my left arm going numb and tingling), I decided going back to teach for another year plus grad school would be ill-advised. So I quit.
Now I use my $125,000 history degree to better serve people cocktails and beer. This has been a very, very good decision for me. I make enough money to pay my bills and go to my conference in January. And I write every day. Yep. Every day. My soul flits about my apartment and sometimes perches on my shoulder.
The point of all this is to say this: if you need a day job to pay the bills, find one that fulfills you and that you enjoy, or one that you can simply perform and then leave at work. That was what I needed. I needed a job that left me alone when I went home and didn’t come sneaking up behind me while I tried to sleep, whispering in my ear that nothing I could do would really make a difference to my kids.
So if you must work (which you probably must), it is possible to walk that sword. To pay your bills without losing your soul, and to write without collectors coming to steal it. It might take some time (took me four years) to find a way to do this, but it is possible. I don’t plan to work in the service industry forever, but for now it suits me, and sometimes it even gives me ideas. I see familiar faces every day at work, and that is something that rejuvenates me — our regulars are very kind and friendly, and they don’t really try to steal my soul. Well, Kevin might, but he’d probably give it back after playing with it for a while. He’s also the sort of valiant person who offered to fart on my tables if they gave me lip. So all in all, my work environment is pretty pleasant. And when I come home, I write.
Like this:
Happy Belated November 13th!
I was just going to post this later, but I realized breaking 30000 yesterday was significant, because that is a lot of thousands. Big NaNoWriMo day today. Expect proper blog post, some overcaffeination, and migrating gaggles of words.
Like this:
Day 12
No picture tonight, but I wrote two pictures worth of words today! Over 28000 now……huzzah!
Like this:
Day 10 and Novel 2
Day 10 winds its way to a close with some fabulous news.
Elemental is finished.
During my many hours at Panera today for my Corridor Writers write-in, my word count for the novel hit 111,000, and as tomorrow is 11/11/11, I decided it was done. Just kidding. That wasn’t my reasoning, but I found that the story didn’t need another 10,000 words. More might happen in the rewrite, but for now it’s finished.
You know what that means?
That means I have written TWO WHOLE BOOKS!!!!!!!
Yeah, sorry for the spaz attack. I felt it was merited. Two whole books, and a quarter million words. Geez oh Pete’s, that sounds like a lot of words. Probably because it is.
I am now about 2,500 words into book three, going way back in time and into some nitty gritty historical urban fantasy for the prologue, which is interesting but exhausting — and torturing a character is never that fun for me. I feel bad for her. She’s a little shaky, but she will evolve. And we’ll get to see that happen.
We will also learn the back story of one of the trilogy’s major antagonists, one of the superbad baddies. And that is worth it, for sure. He will grow a sympathetic side for a time — although that time is four hundred years ago.
So here we go. Book three of three. Wish me luck.
Like this:
Watch Your Mouth
It’s going to do a trick!
Sorry. I’m just chock-full of the bad puns lately. You can smack my wrist if you must.
Well, gentle viewers, we are back to The 25 for the penultimate day! Aren’t you excited?! I sure am. Though I’m going to have to start nosing around for little tidbits to chuck my two cents at day after day. Hm.
Here’s today!
24. Language
Think of your writing as a windshield. Ill-suited words can streak and cloud your reader’s view, and just-right language can be as clarifying as a high-powered carwash. Once you have a solid draft, it’s time to consider:
- Could a different word bring even more energy or resonance to a poignant moment through sound, subtleties of meaning, or syllabic rhythm?
- Could the setting be conveyed more vividly? Is the natural world palpable?
- Is the emotional tone consistently resonant? Are there neutral words or passages that could be more charged?
- Does the language powerfully enact the action?
As you polish and prune, each piece of writing will teach you something new about what is possible. Let yourself be surprised.
—Cohen
Ah, language. Such a fickle critter. Sometimes it’s in our corner, flowing off our tongues and out of our fingertips like some kind of magical chi. Other times, it’s a monkey flinging poo at our heads. And that’s all that drips off of us. Poo.
There are times when what’s important is to simply vomit the words onto the page, like this month, where hundreds of thousands of writers feverishly slave at their notebooks (electronic or otherwise) to just get the damn things out of us. Words.
And then comes December. It’ll roll over on you like a sleeping grizzly, flinging a furry arm over your face in its hibernation, then cough bear breath — which I imagine smells something like stale sushi and digested berries — in your face to remind you that what you just vomited on the page is stinking up its den. And you’ll want to clean it up, because you’re not stupid enough to piss off a hibernating grizzly, no matter how sleepy he looks.
This one looks friendly enough.
The best way I know when my language is flinging poo instead of sparkling like magic is when my attention wanders away from the page I’m revising. Come December, I’ll be going back over my first draft with a red pen text color to mark any points in the manuscript where I see something shiny in another direction, or start pouncing light beams on my wall.
Reading aloud can also show you sticky spots. If your tongue falls out on the floor or ends up in a knot tied around your uvula, some re-wording is probably in order.
The questions posed by The 25 are very good starting points. Some others to ask yourself are:
1. Are your action scenes dragging?
2. Does your exposition drop you like a weighted body at the bottom of the sea?
3. Do your characters make themselves distinct? Pick a random (but meaningful) chunk of dialogue and stick another character’s name in the attribution. Have one of your readers read it. If they shrug at you, look over that character’s dialogue. People have verbal tics. Listen to your characters until you find theirs, then pepper their speech with them. Liberally.
4. Does your story flow from beginning to end or does it cough and mutter in fits and starts?
Language is both the poo-flinging culprit and the glorious wand-waving solution to all of those issues. So when you revise, make sure you keep that grizzly happy. Or at least bring him some honey.
