For the past few weeks I have felt the need to justify my excitement about NaNoWriMo this year. Part of this is due to the recruiting I have tried to do and part is because I recently thought about how different my life is this year compared to last year. Those of you who know me will acknowledge that I can be a ball of complete eagerness pretty frequently, but in this case I have legitimate, heartfelt reasons why participating in NaNo is important to me. So I decided to make a list of why this November shindig matters. And since it is my turn to blog, you get to read it. Aren’t you lucky??
1) The people. Seriously, you are all amazing. I have made some of the coolest friends ever through this whole shenanigan and cannot believe that a year ago at this time I did not know any of you at all. It’s scary, in a way, to think that getting involved brought me such strong friendships with people I most likely would have never met. Along with that is the community we have created- I know for a fact that those of us who were involved last year intend to draw others in this year. Hopefully that will grow each year until we are an unstoppable Army of Awesomeness.
2) The ability to be bad at something. I am, admittedly, not a detail oriented person. At. All. Not even a little. Things that some people do out of habit take me a long time since I have to direct all my spastic energy towards them. NaNo allows you to write without worrying about detail. You have this opportunity to be creative with no limits. This is your excuse to be whatever you can be for the sake of art and creative expression. It’s like on “The Magic Schoolbus,” when Miss Frizzle always says “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” THAT is what NaNoWriMo is about. We have to make mistakes before we can turn them in to something really magical.
3) The chance to do something amazing. How many people can say they wrote a novel? Granted you may not admit that the novel was something you flew through in a caffeine induced state after getting less than 2 hours of sleep each night, but still. It’s bragging rights and the opportunity to accomplish something that many people say they want to do but never take a chance on. I know that writing is not for everyone, but some people get that flicker in their eyes when you talk about finishing your first novel or starting on a new story. Those are the people that need NaNo so they can see just how attainable this goal truly is.
4) A way out. Everyone needs some kind of creative release or stress relief. Many of us choose to lose ourselves in a good book, but there is something even more awesome about getting lost in a world you are creating. It’s an escape that involves no money, risk, or danger (though murdering your characters does tap in to those sadistic urges so you should be careful.) NaNo brought me to a place where I was able to get out of my own way and just enjoy creating.
5) Pure Enjoyment. Think about the last time you honestly enjoyed writing something. Maybe it was an email to a person you could not wait to type. Maybe you got to write a note to a friend after they did something kind for you. Maybe it was a post-it note with "I love you" scrawled in ink that was tucked in to your child's lunch box or husband's coat pocket. What makes NaNo so much more enjoyable is that you not only have your own happiness in working through a project but you get to live vicariously through other people’s enjoyment. Last year I had more fun rooting for others as they finished than I did completing my own novel. The heart and energy that goes into this project inspires me to continue to grow.
So, what are you waiting for? Go to nanowrimo.org and sign up. Try it out. Get involved. What can you lose? Some time, possibly a little sanity, and a few bucks between Starbucks write-ins and donations to the local region... but you will gain so much more in personal satisfaction.
-Liz
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
I have no idea how important this post will be later…
Let’s face it, I don’t have the worst commute in the world. Four miles across town isn’t anything to complain about. And yet, with each passing day, traffic around here seems more and more like it has been specifically choreographed to annoy me in the most precise manner possible, like a laser-guided headache narrowing in on the very behavior that drives me up the wall.
So to distract myself from being annoyed on the road, I recently found myself thinking about things that annoy me about reading books. (No, there’s no reason you should expect to understand the jump. Welcome to my brain.) I’d wager that anybody who has written a fair amount, and probably lots of people who haven’t, start picking up on certain things that authors do that, for no obvious reason, grate at them every time. I’m not talking about occasionally mixing up “its” and “it’s” or “your” and “you’re” or something. That doesn’t happen very often in published books anyway, being more of an online or magazine/newspaper problem. Grating and annoying, of course, but I’m talking more about things people do with their actual writing.
In the book I’m currently reading, the author plays the same general trick on a couple of different occasions. (I won’t name names; it’s not important, and there’s no reason to dis on what might be someone else’s favorite book.) You can generalize all of them as the “they had no idea yet but…” line.
I’m sure you’ve seen it before. Things are okay, there have been a few pages of exposition or maybe the team has just pulled off their mission and are heading out, hanging up the phone, walking out the door, or otherwise doing something perfectly normal and uneventful. And that step forward probably saved his life. Cue the explosion, gunshot, car crash, or blast of magic. (Followed, at least half the time, by the end of the chapter.)
Not a big deal, right? Actually, no, in this example it really isn’t a big deal. It may be even less of a deal when you consider this particular book is written in the first person. I’ve only done shorter bits of first-person writing, and so I don’t have enough experience to say, but it seems reasonable to think of such things as being a natural part of the narrative style.
But where it starts bugging me is when it happens over and over again. I don’t impose any hard and fast rules as to how many times any given writing trick or plot accelerator can be used, beyond which they’re all bad. Instead I have a simple “noticification threshold” which says, basically, that if I start to notice it, it’s too much. As soon as I think to myself, “oh, he/she did it again,” then that becomes one time too many. It knocks me right out of the story.
Now, for the record, I like this book. Clearly, occasional random things like this don’t permanently ruin the story for me. It’s more like a record skipping (everybody knows what that is, right?) during a good piece of music; it jars you out of the experience for a second, but then you’re back in to it again and all is well.
Maybe that means that whatever these things are (Writing tricks? Shortcuts? Normal things no one else ever notices but I do because I’m a fiendishly hyperobservant read-o-tron?) they don’t detract from a well written, enjoyable story. I can believe that. For example, compare this book series to another popular (I assume?) fantasy series from a few years back, in which the author repeatedly used the same kind of things (“She had no idea how important that would come to be later on.”) over and over and over and over again. (It seemed.) I didn’t much care for that story at all, and as it went on I groaned every time I kept seeing the same basic phrases. (“If he had only known how much he’d pay for that later, he would have never agreed.” Stuff like that. Over. And over. And over again.) In that case, it was a story I had long since stopped being crazy about in the first place, and so each and every instance of that stuck out like a sore thumb. Now it’s one of the key things I remember about those books. Not, I think, something that an author sets out to be remembered for.
My single strongest memory of another book is of its hilarious inaccuracies. In this case, the book claimed to be in the hard SF genre, which I had been trying to venture in to for the first time by choosing a few well reviewed samples of then-recent novels. Maybe most of the biotech topics it covered were portrayed accurately; I don’t have the knowledge to judge. But when the author (through one character’s dialogue) gives such laughingly wrong descriptions of how computers store numbers, well, I really can’t summon up a lot of faith in the more complicated science they discuss afterward. Again, I seriously doubt the author would enjoy knowing that I remember that particular dialogue more prominently than anything else in his story, but there it is. As before, I ended up not being a big fan of this particular book, so the faults stand out.
Does every writer do something like this? Or, perhaps more importantly, does every reader have something that bothers them? Maybe someone reading this is, at this very moment, pounding their fists against the desk because it drives them bonkers when people use a ton of parenthetical comments in they’re writing. (Just be thankful I don’t know how to put footnotes in the blog!) At least I’ve gone an entire post—so far—without using em dashes. I usually use those a lot. Oh wait, there I went and ruined it.
Did you see what else I did there? Does it bother you?
With NaNo coming up insanely soon now, I’m going to have to dust off all the writing tricks I’ve picked up over the years, because every single one of them will probably be essential if I want to reach 50,000 words on time. It’s also nearly certain that some of them are on someone else’s list of things that annoy the heck out of them when they read. We know it isn’t always a dealbreaker, though. If a story keeps you glued to it from cover to cover and you can’t wait to read it again, who cares if there are one or two spots that make you cringe when you get to them? If the story sucks, and it’s a slog just to finish it, would fixing those occasional spots have made any difference?
Maybe I’m more persnickety when I read than most people. Everybody has their quirky pet peeves, things that just drive them nuts, and they don’t have to have a reason. But if the story is good then that probably won’t matter, and that’s why I probably won’t be drastically changing my writing style any time soon. If my writing sucks, then at least it’ll suck the way I meant it to.
On the other hand, if I do catch myself writing “reaching down to pick up that penny probably saved his life” then I really should try to come up with another way of putting it.
—Jason
So to distract myself from being annoyed on the road, I recently found myself thinking about things that annoy me about reading books. (No, there’s no reason you should expect to understand the jump. Welcome to my brain.) I’d wager that anybody who has written a fair amount, and probably lots of people who haven’t, start picking up on certain things that authors do that, for no obvious reason, grate at them every time. I’m not talking about occasionally mixing up “its” and “it’s” or “your” and “you’re” or something. That doesn’t happen very often in published books anyway, being more of an online or magazine/newspaper problem. Grating and annoying, of course, but I’m talking more about things people do with their actual writing.
In the book I’m currently reading, the author plays the same general trick on a couple of different occasions. (I won’t name names; it’s not important, and there’s no reason to dis on what might be someone else’s favorite book.) You can generalize all of them as the “they had no idea yet but…” line.
I’m sure you’ve seen it before. Things are okay, there have been a few pages of exposition or maybe the team has just pulled off their mission and are heading out, hanging up the phone, walking out the door, or otherwise doing something perfectly normal and uneventful. And that step forward probably saved his life. Cue the explosion, gunshot, car crash, or blast of magic. (Followed, at least half the time, by the end of the chapter.)
Not a big deal, right? Actually, no, in this example it really isn’t a big deal. It may be even less of a deal when you consider this particular book is written in the first person. I’ve only done shorter bits of first-person writing, and so I don’t have enough experience to say, but it seems reasonable to think of such things as being a natural part of the narrative style.
But where it starts bugging me is when it happens over and over again. I don’t impose any hard and fast rules as to how many times any given writing trick or plot accelerator can be used, beyond which they’re all bad. Instead I have a simple “noticification threshold” which says, basically, that if I start to notice it, it’s too much. As soon as I think to myself, “oh, he/she did it again,” then that becomes one time too many. It knocks me right out of the story.
Now, for the record, I like this book. Clearly, occasional random things like this don’t permanently ruin the story for me. It’s more like a record skipping (everybody knows what that is, right?) during a good piece of music; it jars you out of the experience for a second, but then you’re back in to it again and all is well.
Maybe that means that whatever these things are (Writing tricks? Shortcuts? Normal things no one else ever notices but I do because I’m a fiendishly hyperobservant read-o-tron?) they don’t detract from a well written, enjoyable story. I can believe that. For example, compare this book series to another popular (I assume?) fantasy series from a few years back, in which the author repeatedly used the same kind of things (“She had no idea how important that would come to be later on.”) over and over and over and over again. (It seemed.) I didn’t much care for that story at all, and as it went on I groaned every time I kept seeing the same basic phrases. (“If he had only known how much he’d pay for that later, he would have never agreed.” Stuff like that. Over. And over. And over again.) In that case, it was a story I had long since stopped being crazy about in the first place, and so each and every instance of that stuck out like a sore thumb. Now it’s one of the key things I remember about those books. Not, I think, something that an author sets out to be remembered for.
My single strongest memory of another book is of its hilarious inaccuracies. In this case, the book claimed to be in the hard SF genre, which I had been trying to venture in to for the first time by choosing a few well reviewed samples of then-recent novels. Maybe most of the biotech topics it covered were portrayed accurately; I don’t have the knowledge to judge. But when the author (through one character’s dialogue) gives such laughingly wrong descriptions of how computers store numbers, well, I really can’t summon up a lot of faith in the more complicated science they discuss afterward. Again, I seriously doubt the author would enjoy knowing that I remember that particular dialogue more prominently than anything else in his story, but there it is. As before, I ended up not being a big fan of this particular book, so the faults stand out.
Does every writer do something like this? Or, perhaps more importantly, does every reader have something that bothers them? Maybe someone reading this is, at this very moment, pounding their fists against the desk because it drives them bonkers when people use a ton of parenthetical comments in they’re writing. (Just be thankful I don’t know how to put footnotes in the blog!) At least I’ve gone an entire post—so far—without using em dashes. I usually use those a lot. Oh wait, there I went and ruined it.
Did you see what else I did there? Does it bother you?
With NaNo coming up insanely soon now, I’m going to have to dust off all the writing tricks I’ve picked up over the years, because every single one of them will probably be essential if I want to reach 50,000 words on time. It’s also nearly certain that some of them are on someone else’s list of things that annoy the heck out of them when they read. We know it isn’t always a dealbreaker, though. If a story keeps you glued to it from cover to cover and you can’t wait to read it again, who cares if there are one or two spots that make you cringe when you get to them? If the story sucks, and it’s a slog just to finish it, would fixing those occasional spots have made any difference?
Maybe I’m more persnickety when I read than most people. Everybody has their quirky pet peeves, things that just drive them nuts, and they don’t have to have a reason. But if the story is good then that probably won’t matter, and that’s why I probably won’t be drastically changing my writing style any time soon. If my writing sucks, then at least it’ll suck the way I meant it to.
On the other hand, if I do catch myself writing “reaching down to pick up that penny probably saved his life” then I really should try to come up with another way of putting it.
—Jason
Thursday, October 13, 2011
You want lack of focus, I'll give you lack of focus.
I honestly can't remember the last time I wrote anything recreational. It's been months, and, frankly, I'm not sure I've done anything substantial since editing my NaNovel from last season. I'm really in a slump. The worst part about it is that I have plenty of ideas; it feels like I just don't remember how to start a writing project. I feel like someone cut off my arms at my elbows or plugged my ears with wool…like a seriously necessary part of me is simply not functioning correctly.
So I've got a sort of prompt for all of us (those interested) to look into trying: Get Out. Get out of the house, out of the office, out of the yard, whatever it is you're in right now, get out of it.
A couple weeks ago, I was stuck in my house. The heat was excruciating, I was helping my brother plan his wedding, and 100% of my days was spent either in my house, my car, or some store somewhere. But then, the week after that, my family went to Colorado for a camping trip with my aunts and uncles and cousins, and we spent the week out in the cool, dry, mountain air, sleeping on mats, waking up to campfires, toasting bagels on the grill. Throughout that week, I got about three ideas for stories and one idea for NaNoWriMo this fall, and I even started expanding on them a bit. It was really helpful to change my routine a bit, just to clear my mind. It gave me a chance to refocus my creative energies and actually get something on paper.
Currently, I'm in vacation-mode: it's summer break, albeit the end, and the only functioning motivational programming is my motivation to do nothing. At every avenue I meet resistance. Pointless resistance. "Why don't I use this opportunity to pick up all the clothes off my floor so I can find my computer charger when I need it?" "Nah. I'm about to press 'Next Episode' on Star Trek: Voyager and once I've done that, there's no reason for me to get up"; "Gee, I think I should brush my teeth." "No, I'd really rather just sit here in my filth, thank"; "I should feed my dog." "She ate yesterday, the greedy git."
But starting yesterday, I hoisted myself out of that mode. I got more organized than I probably needed to, made a calendar of daily to-do lists, and started making concerted efforts to get stuff done. Lo and behold, today, I was working with my dad on making a stand for our television, and whole paragraphs of stories just came floating into my head.
Now, none of this is in and of itself a solution to my overall focus problem. And I still haven't written anything I'm proud of, and I still feel awkward and clumsy in my writing. But this is the closest I've come to getting past the weird and perpetual writer's block that I've been in lately. If you're having the same struggles as me, then I suggest you get out. It really worked as a first step for me.
Mary
So I've got a sort of prompt for all of us (those interested) to look into trying: Get Out. Get out of the house, out of the office, out of the yard, whatever it is you're in right now, get out of it.
A couple weeks ago, I was stuck in my house. The heat was excruciating, I was helping my brother plan his wedding, and 100% of my days was spent either in my house, my car, or some store somewhere. But then, the week after that, my family went to Colorado for a camping trip with my aunts and uncles and cousins, and we spent the week out in the cool, dry, mountain air, sleeping on mats, waking up to campfires, toasting bagels on the grill. Throughout that week, I got about three ideas for stories and one idea for NaNoWriMo this fall, and I even started expanding on them a bit. It was really helpful to change my routine a bit, just to clear my mind. It gave me a chance to refocus my creative energies and actually get something on paper.
Currently, I'm in vacation-mode: it's summer break, albeit the end, and the only functioning motivational programming is my motivation to do nothing. At every avenue I meet resistance. Pointless resistance. "Why don't I use this opportunity to pick up all the clothes off my floor so I can find my computer charger when I need it?" "Nah. I'm about to press 'Next Episode' on Star Trek: Voyager and once I've done that, there's no reason for me to get up"; "Gee, I think I should brush my teeth." "No, I'd really rather just sit here in my filth, thank"; "I should feed my dog." "She ate yesterday, the greedy git."
But starting yesterday, I hoisted myself out of that mode. I got more organized than I probably needed to, made a calendar of daily to-do lists, and started making concerted efforts to get stuff done. Lo and behold, today, I was working with my dad on making a stand for our television, and whole paragraphs of stories just came floating into my head.
Now, none of this is in and of itself a solution to my overall focus problem. And I still haven't written anything I'm proud of, and I still feel awkward and clumsy in my writing. But this is the closest I've come to getting past the weird and perpetual writer's block that I've been in lately. If you're having the same struggles as me, then I suggest you get out. It really worked as a first step for me.
Mary
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The genre of horror
Do any of us know how we came to the decision that we like one style or one genre over another? Is there a defining point in your life that you can discuss that indicates why you became a big fan of *blank*? Not for me. I’m a strange horror fan.
When I grew up, I read a lot of horror. One of the many things that make me proud to have the parents I have is the fact that my mother stated that I can learn whatever I learn, as long as it came from a book. When I was younger, I didn’t watch horror movies. I was strangely scared of them or not allowed to watch them in fear of what they would do to me. To this day, I’m not much in them, at least not the typical blood and gore movies, but I read horror. From simple scary stories I would get from the bookmobile geared towards children, to things way to adult for a preteen to be reading, I read my share of horror as a kid. Oddly, I wasn’t affected too much. Never woke from nightmares or had to sleep with the light on. When I did watch horror, I wasn’t fond of it. It just seemed like an excuse to splatter blood and show me the no longer inner workings of a body. That wasn’t really horror to me. The more eerie, the more mysterious does it for me.
I suppose I like the suspense, the shock, and the willies up my spine when I read horror. The safety of the fear in my book, a place I can crawl into but quickly run back out and know I’m in no danger. It was a delight to me, and possibly made me feel a little more grown up for reading what I shouldn’t be reading as a kid. As an adult (or a grown up kid as I truly am), I’ve stepped away from the horror to read other genres, write other genres, but horror on paper still has a place in my heart.
As a writer, I’ve rarely tried to write horror. Like they say about comedy, it’s hard to make someone laugh; it’s also hard to make someone scared. We are cynical people, and when you know it’s a horror story, you are anticipating the surprise which makes it harder to enjoy the surprise. Horror is part irony/twist and I’m a lover of irony, but nowadays you have to twist the twist because people are expecting a twist. I intentionally made that sentence seem confusing. =) Horror is hard to write if you’re trying to step away from just being gory and really want to shock people. Yes, the more guts and blood, possibly the more you’ll receive shock, but will you always get fear from your reader?
I am of the opinion that horror should only be for short stories. This might seem surprising to many people, but I think the short form helps to keep the suspense high and the nerves on end. When you stretch it out in a novel, you either have to many lows, relaxed moments that the reader loses the anxiety or you over saturate the story with horror that they can be desensitized and no longer fear what they should fear. This is my personal opinion, of course. When I read horror as a child, it was short stories. It actually took awhile for me to get into novels, and I’m still kind of partial to short stories over novels in all genres, but that’s for another post.
Everyone knows the usual famous horror writers. No need to mention them so I will mention some of my favorite semi-unknowns to unknowns. Because I haven’t been reading horror lately, I’m afraid I’ll have to direct you to some podcasts authors.
If you don’t know, podcasts are simple audio programs that anyone can create. They range from discussion groups, audio dramas, information pieces, to people just reading their stories. The following links are to sites with horror writers that I enjoy.
Russell Burt is like the rest of us. He has a love of writing and specifically for horror. For a couple years he was recording and posting his short stories on his blog. He also included his horror novel and later opened the doors to other writers to submit their stories (Yes, one of mine is on there. He asked for it, and I was honored, and he did a fantastic job reading it.). Sadly, he ended his blog back in 2008, but it’s still up to enjoy his past accomplishments. His final post has comprehensive links to the different areas of his stories, novel, and listener contributions. I miss Russell’s writing, but am glad I got to talk with him, and enjoy what he had to offer. I think I’ll go email him a “Hey how ya doing note.”
Pseudopod is part of a large podcasting organization that brings the stories of writers to the online audio world. There is Pseudopod for horror, Podcastle for fantasy, and Escapepod for science fiction. Stephen Eley started the whole thing but Podcastle and Pseudopod have their own teams. You will get a wide variety of horror stories here. I’m afraid I’m way, way, way behind in listening.
Though I’m behind in my listening, I would like to point out my favorite so far of their stories. This one just blew my mind and burned images into my head that pop up every now and again.
Last but not least is Phil Rossi who is probably considered one of the big wigs in the podcast world of writing. I’m behind on everything but this writer/musician has cranked out some nice horror material. Most of his recent books are free on audio if you want to take a listen.
That’s all I have for now. Nanowrimo is around the corner, and though I’m not writing horror, there should be some horrific aspects to my 2011 WIP so I will keep these writers, and my memories of horror in mind as I click away.
Jennifer
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