Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Day 1, part the second: Kick-off

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It turns out that writers can be something of an introverted bunch despite our exhibitionist tendencies. We went to the North Dayton NaNoWriMo kick-off tonight. Needless to say, my anti-social self was dreading the thought of meeting other people I’d never met, but not to worry, we all pretty much just sat down and started writing.

Frankly, I like it better that way. Sure, it might be nice to eventually get to know some of these people, but at the moment it was just better to sit there and write.

And write I did, finishing up 6,845 words for the day. That seems like a mighty fine kick-off to me.

DLH

NaNoWriMo Preview: Don’t be afraid to write crap

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If you’re writing for perfection, you’re writing to fail. Perfection is what editing is for.

While writing is a different process for every writer, my style seems to be to create first drafts that are more like skeletal remains (premains?) that finished works. They’re a lot like a T-101 from the movie the Terminator, a shiny mechanical skeleton devoid of form or personality, a caricature of what I want my story to be.

In other words, its crap, and it will need a lot of work before it becomes the story I intended.

Thomas Edison famously said both “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work” and that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Those same ideas apply to writing.

Sure, all of us writers want to experience the ecstasy of the moment of creation. I think, to a degree, that’s what we all strive at writing for, yet we cannot ignore that, in some way, writing is a job that we have accepted. Jobs are hard work, and work doesn’t always turn out the way we want it to, especially when the work is creative.

The secret to succeeding at writing is to just write it, knowing full well you’ll probably have to go back and write it again. And again. And again.

That’s OK. It happens to everyone.

Recently, a researcher discovered that Jane Austin’s work benefited as much from her creative efforts as it did from the efforts of a good editor, which is unfortunate because most people have believed the fiction perpetrated by her brother after her death that her novels sprang from her pen complete. Unfortunately, the fiction that good writers are somehow able to produce perfect, complete work without effort has infected writers continuously since those heady days where every artist was a great master.

The reality is something entirely different. Most writers have to craft their stories the same way potters or sculptors craft clay. Most writers write something, then add to it, take away from it, wad it up and throw it in the trash, then dig it out and add and take away some more. That’s the natural process of writing, and again, that’s OK.

What’s most important, especially if you’re just starting as a writer, is that you’re writing at all. Start with quantity first. The quality will eventually come.

DLH

NaNoWriMo Preview: Finding the ending

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I think one of the most challenging aspects of writing, especially with fiction, is finding how a story will end.

I’ve found that most writers can find beginnings and middles, but most of us find the endings to be elusive. I suspect that this elusivity comes from the fact that the ending of a story often contains the answer to the question “why?”.

For me at least, the end of a story explains why the characters went through all of these things from the characters’ point of view. The ending represents the point, the conclusion to all of the events that proceeded it. It doesn’t even have to be a happy ending for these reasons to be true, but the need for explanation is still there.

While I am writing a story, knowing the ending serves as a kind of lighthouse for the writing process. Knowing the ending helps guide me through the story, especially at parts where it wants to meander or get lost. In a lot of ways, knowing the ending is what helps me generate the beginning and the middle.

Of course, finding the ending can be easier said than done, which is why I think so many writers struggle with the idea, and thereby with writing complete works themselves. I think the solution to this problem is to engage in the active thinking I referred to before when I wrote about how to find ideas.

Very often, I find that the stories that I write that succeed the best are the ones I’ve thought about the most, and in doing that thinking, I discover that I inevitably have to deal with the question of “why is this happening at all?”. Once I deal with that question, the rest of the story seems to flow from that answer.

DLH

NaNoWriMo Preview: Finding the story

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One of the questions people who don’t write yet tend to ask people who are already writing is, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Frankly, there is no answer to that question because the process is different for every writer and, at least for me, different for every idea. While I can’t answer that question directly, I can answer it tangentially, and partly by issuing a challenge.

I think one of the things that differentiates people who write from people who don’t is a specific kind of world view. People who write, in my experience, tend to pay a lot of attention to what is going on in the world around them and tend to be–this is even true with fiction writers–realists and pragmatists. I think the source of a lot of writers’ ideas tend to be events happening around them changed through the filter of their own creativity.

Writers tend to achieve this state of realism and pragmatism by being deeply connected to the events of history and of their own times. Writers tend to be the most voracious readers, tend to be deeply involved in politics of one sort or another, and tend to be willing to learn just about anything that happens to come along. In my experience, it is not unusual to find writers who are also engaged in a dozen other pursuits unrelated to writing.

This connectedness serves as the engine for creativity, constantly exposing the writer to new thoughts, new ideas, and new ways of doing things. Inevitably, these new things will periodically create an idea strong enough that it becomes the basis for something the writer will write, mostly because that’s what writers tend to do with such ideas.

So, if you want to find your own ideas, the first step is to get connected. I probably spend 3 t0 4 hours everyday just reading through my regular cycle of weblogs, news sources, and social media connections, and that does not include the books I am reading. Because of the amazing tool of social media, I conduct dozens of conversations a day about things that catch my attention.

I’m guessing, because I’ve never really kept track, that this behavior is good for at least a couple of new ideas a week. Now, most of those ideas die young due to disinterest or lack of follow-through, but I probably commit at least 3 or 4  ideas to some more formal status every month. That’s 36 to 48 ideas a year. Of course, most of those ideas won’t go much further, but a few of them will, and those few ideas that do move forward is what writing is all about.

For a new writer, I recommend carrying a notebook around. Granted, you can use a smartphone or a tablet, but I find that writing ideas by hand adds an extra level of intimacy for new writers that helps them see how their ideas come into being and how they can develop them. Down the road, every writer develops different styles for developing ideas, but everyone has to start somewhere, and the notebook works for a lot of people.

Once a new writer has some ideas captured, he has to think about them. By thinking about them, I mean actively mulling them over in his head kind of thinking. I find that this idea of active thinking is one of the hardest things for most modern people to comprehend and achieve. Most people don’t actively think about things. They feel. They react. They don’t think. If you want to write, you have to learn to think, actively and intensively and extensively. I have sometimes been accused of being lazy or distracted, and I can assure you that what I was doing during those times was thinking.

Finally, once a new writer has developed an idea by thinking about it, he has to act on it, but that action does not have to be good. I can assure you that most of my idea development is crap, but within that crap are the gems from which good stories will come. Frankly, if a writer never puts out the crap, he never gets the gems either.

So, at the end of all of it, I guess ideas come from life and being connected to it. From there, ideas are what the writer does with them.

DLH