NaNoWriMo 2011

Well, it's finally over.  Technically there are a few hours yet, but I finished last night, and have enjoyed the respite. ydbxmhc | National Novel Writing Month

CloudWalker is officially sleeping. NaNo's first draft is done at just over 50k words, and I'm reasonably proud of it. It needs subthread development, POV polish, stylistic revision and lots of editing, but that's stuff for the rewrite, which I won't be doing for a month or three. When I do, I expect the overall story to morph considerably, and the eventual word count to almost double.

Work is still hammering, but I've found I can still get in a couple thousand words a day if I make it a priority. My online gaming has suffered, but not as much as you might think. My twitter posts and blogging habits took a bigger hit. I hope to work them back into my schedule.

In the meantime, my wife has pointed out that this blog, while perhaps of interest to other aspiring writers, is really not very practical. I agree.

I'll be trying to come up with a new format. I have some ideas.

How the (pro)Creative Urge Changes Friendships

Creation changes your life. That holds true whether you create a book or a baby. Any new parent can tell you that having a baby means a major change in lifestyle, and that includes a change in friendships. Ditto the decision to take writing seriously.

This isn't to say parents and writers always lose old friends. It's just that your friendships will change and some will fall away. That's because most childless friends, like non-writer friends, just don't get it.

Consider a couple's first foray into parenthood. Priorities shift and resources become more scarce. Some friends resent the intrusion on your friendship and feel left out when you turn down invitations in favor of baby appointments and cuddle sessions. Some are embarrassed by your breast feeding, diaper changing, sweat pants wearing persona. A few try to ignore the changes and continue to invite you to those impromptu parties - children excluded, of course. These are also the people who'll exhaust a few minutes' patience to listen to your tales of sleeplessness only to inform you that they understand, the pup they call a "fur baby" woke them an hour early to go potty.

A few relationships will grow stronger as all parties work to maintain a place in changing lifestyles and priorities. These are the lifelong friends. You'll also make new friends, the ones who understand when you stop speaking mid sentence to stop the two year old running off the playground or insist the little one let go of the cat's tail. They think nothing of that stain on your jeans from the diaper blowout that interrupts your lunch date, though they may offer a sympathetic laugh to make sure you're aware of it.

Making your writing a priority has the same effect. Once you make the decision to get serious, you step into another world. In true bohemian style, you skip a few functions to find time to write. Deadlines loom, either self imposed or generated by the prospect of actual payment for your labors. You become that oddball with the impossible dream, yet another of those people who are writing a book.

For non literary friends, you may be a bit of an embarrassment, especially if you talk about your work in progress in front of strangers. It's like breast feeding in public. It's passe to protest, but that doesn't mean they can't roll their eyes and exchange that look with others.

Once you find some form of success, they may still have the nerve to ask a small favor to find an agent for that book they always wanted to write.

Others listen, find patience and understanding deep within and encourage you to stay connected. After all, we can't do this in a vacuum, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise. These are also the lifelong friends who'll probably stick and help us through the depression of rejection and the elation of acceptance.

Writer friends, like other parents, know your pain. They understand if you want to skip that movie because your vacation time is almost up and your deadline looms. They can talk WIPs, POV and MCs, not to mention subplots and pacing. When they are also positive champions of your work, like the old friends who cheer on your new writing efforts, they are worth more than any amount of gold.

Bottom line, don't give up on the old friendships, even as you make shiny new ones who can talk shop. Try to come out of your story and agent hunt long enough  to give them a buzz or drop them an email. Be the friend you want them to be. When a few drop by the way side because they can't see past the changes, remember the good times with fondness and wish them well.

After all, change is a part of life and relationships, the good, the bad, the past and the present. It all adds to your life experience, which can only add to your writing.

Making Time

A writer needs to write every day. I also prefer to blog once a day, and keep up with my Litopia posts, Facebook, and Twitter.

Notice that these have not all been happening lately. My day job has rudely interrupted; my family needs personal time, and as much as I love writing, they aren't going to pay for it. I do still try to get in a couple thousand words a day, though I don't always succeed.

So, accordingly, the time comes out of somewhere. Personally I need more than the normal requisite eight hours of snoozing time, so while some can come from that pool, it won't be much if I intend to maintain my health and creativity.  I've had to swear off coffee for a few days (again), as I was reaching nuclear toxicity.

So Facebook gets maybe a peek a day. Twitter maybe not even that, though I'd prefer to sit with my face in it around the clock. Obviously, this blog sometimes gets shorted.

Now here at the end of my vacation-period year I find I have too much unused time. I've arranged to carry over about a week, but the other week and half-day have to be used by 9/4. I took the half-day Tuesday and got some rest, and am taking this five Fridays.

I have so much to do around the house that I may still not get much writing done, but it's nice to think I'll get the chance.

Thanks for the Nose, Got One Already

Opinions are like noses -- we all gots one of our own.

I know you've heard it. You might even have done it yourself. Someone rides by with their music playing too loud, and a friend wonders aloud how anyone could listen to "that crap." Among my redneck friends, it's usually rap like Tupac or Will Smith. Among my black friends it's most often country, George Jones or Conway Twitty. My mom says this about Metallica and Scorpion. For my ex it was Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.

Is anyone asking what this has to do with writing?

My wife doesn't care for the sort of high, hard sci-fi I love and want to write. I'm not so much into horror, her favorite. Neither is particularly partial to romance novels, though they seem to make up more than half the publishing market.

We've all caught ourselves belittling something that doesn't interest us personally. We're trying to get out of that habit, because everything has value, and something to teach us about our craft.

Ladies and gentlemen, negative commentary is not the way to support your writerly loved ones. Don't steer them away from their interests, don't try to correct their choices to a more profitable field, and don't, please don't try to convince them that vampires are hot right now and so they should write about that. If you are an author and are making more in dependable royalties than the aspiring writer, then maybe, maybe such advice might be warranted, but don't do it unless they ask, ok?

What they need is not patronizing or formulae. What they need is encouragement, honest but constructive critiques, support, honest but constructive critiques, proofreaders, honest but constructive critiques, editors, honest but constructive critiques, approval and patience and comfort, and lest I forget to mention it, honest but constructive critiques.

Perhaps you notice a theme here.

What your writing friends need is you to hold them up, not tell them all the reasons it won't work. If you do that, you should stop calling them your friends, because you aren't acting like one.

The other thing they need is actual, realistic, but gentle and CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. That means getting off your lazy high-horse and actually reading their work, which any writer with half a brain knows is a significant investment of your time and energy that they should appreciate. It means pointing out the spelling and grammar and punctuation errors, the complicated and awkward phrasing, logical inconsistencies, any clichés, and the dull scenes where they drag on about details that don't really matter.

If you don't have time and energy for all that, it's ok; just don't ask for a free copy of the book just because you're family. If you can and do give them such support, don't be surprised if they dedicate the book to you - but don't assume they will, because maybe they promised this one to Mom. :o)

And for the record, Sabrina suggested this post, who cannot abide country music or most romance.
Her idea.

OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW!!!

I hate hard sell.

Ok, I'm as much a sucker for an interesting hook at the beginning of a book as the next guy, but...call me weird if you must...I don't want the whole book to be "exciting".

I like literary works. It doesn't get much better than Sojourner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final novel. Not much exciting happens, but the book is wonderful.  How can that be?

Yes, I do want something of interest in every chapter; in fact, on every page. It's just that "of interest" doesn't have to include explosions or cliffhangers or adolescent snits. Personally, I find really good writing to be plenty.

I hope someday to be able to write like that book. The work is subtle, but filled to the brim with anguish, joy, cruelty, insanity, loyalty, injustice, humility, and heroic sacrifice, all with no explosions.

In fact, most of the book takes place right on the single farm.  They plant orchards, and try to keep the sheep warm through the winter. The main character is a farmer who isn't very outspoken, but feeds his hogs, tills his fields, and daydreams a lot. He plays a flute. He marries the girl his older brother left behind, and they have kids. He has a buddy who's a drunk, and sometimes gypsies come set up on his property for a while. Wow! Are you excited yet?

I sat in the tub with my wife and read this book to her. We sat in the yard and read it. We read it in bed. We stopped now and then to savor the scenes, the language. We're going to use singed pages from an extra copy to decorate the house.

Then I pick up books where the writer throws me into a heated firefight, and I have to wonder why I care who wins. When it's over and I've figured out who the hero is supposed to be, there's a roaring car chase. Then a fistfight. Then the character must hide from the police, while the author narrates the deep personal relationship the character has with one of the officers by telling me "Bob had a deep personal relationship with one of the officers."

I'm sorry, but I don't want every scene in a book trying to tweak my adrenalin.  There must be pacing. There must be contrast. Too much becomes just the 7:15 train rattling my dishes, and eventually I don't even notice anymore.

What I want is an elegant turn of phrase that brings me up short and makes me realize what a character is feeling.

Pick up any of the classics. Open it at random to a few different pages. You'll likely hit some dialogue, some worldbuilding narrative, a tense scene of conflict. It's not always fever pitch.

You can't evoke real emotions in the reader until you get them to care about the characters. Ideally, a good book should hook the readers in the first page, and then reel them in as it progresses. If they aren't willing to read a few pages to develop a little rapport, then they are going to be limited to schlock.

So my job is to generate a good opening that doesn't read like a screaming infomercial, and follow it up with sympathy, depth and feeling.  That's a tall order.

Guess I'd better get back to writing.

Never Forget

Her name was Connie.  We were sixteen. I carried her photo for years.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and in many ways is still the standard against which I judge everything I see, and not just women.  Her smile was light and warmth, a flower direct from God to brighten this dreary world. Her giggle was soft and sensual, reminding us that it's good to be alive. Her adorable little button nose, her perfect skin, those deep, dark eyes that never seemed without a hint of mocking yet almost-innocent laughter...

Her birthday is December 12th. Her phone number, back before Alabama had another area code, was 2541. I can recite all ten digits with little hesitation, even now, thirty years later. I still remember the little scrap of paper torn from the edge of a notebook sheet with my kindergarden-ish scrawl of unevenly sized numbers; I carried it in my wallet for over a decade. I took it out now and then to feel the worn grain of the paper, and stared at the smearing graphite when nothing else could express my frustration.

I'd known her since we were twelve and the boys had tried to save the girls from wild dogs in the woods at camp, and she'd scornfully told us the howling was farmers' dogs nearby. We'd met at church social skates for years. At another camp at sixteen, we were the oldest there, and a natural couple. She told me I was handsome, funny. She told me how she got the scar on her breastbone running for the bus with a pencil in grammar school. We played footsie under the tables. I collected a bouquet of wildflowers for her off the lake, in a camp john-boat.

When that magical week was over and we were about to leave, I folded her into my arms and held her, standing in the sunlight on the lawn, and I heard someone say "I love you." It took me a moment to realize the voice had been mine.

Understand that this wasn't news to me; I had already discussed it with my best bud, who helped me collect the flowers.  It was just a stupid thing to say. She hardly knew me; yes, a week at camp had been fun, and yes, I knew I was head over heels, but I wasn't silly enough to expect she would be.  You have to give these things time. I knew that, but some prankster in the back of my throat just had to push out the phrase that was doing pirouettes in my brain.

She looked up at me like a deer caught in the headlights. I do remember that moment, though having played it over and over for three decades has likely distorted it a little. Even so, I don't delude myself into thinking it was a sweet smile, or a look of relief.  She was shocked.

But what she said was "I love you, too."

Now, why would she say that? Maybe, because it was true?

Well, yeah, maybe. But also maybe because it was the standard reflex response when you don't know what else to do at that rather awkward moment, when you're just hugging the fellow who has made a fun week away from normal life feel a little magical, and you want to enjoy it for a few more moments and maybe express some genuine gratitude before you get back to your your real life, with a boyfriend and whatever else. I don't blame her for what she did to me with that moment of careless confusion. It was an accident.

I still have letters I never sent. Don't get me wrong, I sent scores. I called. I even convinced her to go out to dinner with me once, but there comes a point when you need to take a hint; beyond that, a suitor becomes a stalker. She didn't return my calls and letters. I poured my heart into those reams of notebook paper, but I don't know if she read them. Eventually, I stopped harassing her with them and saved the postage, but I couldn't stop writing them. Pathetically impassioned please are still just pathetic when the recipient is merely annoyed.

She never knew the tears I wept across my grandmother's lap for the love I wasn't allowed to give her. She never knew the hearts I broke because mine was no longer mine to give. She had a baby, got married, probably went on to a normal life. I wonder if she ever even realized what she missed.

As Wesley said in The Princess Bride, "This is True Love. You think this happens every day?"

And yet, I am a better man for it. I managed to love again, in a less hormonal, more mature way, but quite sincere. I got my heart broken again, smashed and ground and scattered like broadcast planting. I played hermit for a while.

And I managed to love again.  For all the teenage drama of this post, I am happily married, and raising a son we carefully decided to bring into the world, even at my age. I can still love, still trust, and still accept that my lovely, witty and charming wife is human.  She is more beautiful approaching forty than most men will ever win, better educated with a GED and unfinished degrees in writing and criminology than most college graduates, and more practical, generous, and understanding than a schmekel like me deserves.

And she writes with me.

She has her own stories; family hardships, a failed marriage, male porn under the toilet seat to make a dense man close the lid ... She understands the value of my devotion, and is patient with my cornucopia of faults.

Why would I share all this with the world?

Because I'm a writer. It's what we do - I'm just more blunt than most.  When you read my stories, you shouldn't assume that a tale of rape is a personal experience, or any more than is one of murder - but believe the emotions.  They come from a real life with actual joy and grief, and a keen and honest eye that records those feelings, those moments, for later use.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” - Robert Frost
That's what I want in the books I read. That's what I believe readers deserve from the books I write.

That's what they'll get.

Nose to the Wheel

I work a day job in cubeville, which sometimes demands all hours of the night as well.

My wife, as a full time homeschooling housewife and mom, has it even worse.

The 11yo daughter is sick and napping in front of the TV. The wife has been ill, and just got up from her nap.  The 2yo boy was up a while before her, in a foul mood. I think something bit him. He finally settled a little, when I bribed him with fortune cookie and wonton chips, which he insisted we dump out onto the table.

I've had no opportunity to unload the dishwasher for the wife, or to throw some hay to the horses, or clean the latest deposits of goose and chicken shit out of the garage, or to bring in the grazing goat in and put out the next one.  I need to clean up the pile of hay and bird droppings I swept out a couple days ago, but may not manage before dark.

Well, tomorrow's Saturday.  Maybe then.

But I do want to sit and play World of Warcraft with my wife and daughter at some point. I'd like to spend a little time with the insufficiently snuggled Great Pyr pup, who's the size of a truck but still goofy-clumsy.

Then there's this writing thing.  We try to crank out a couple thousand words each, every day. We constantly edit. She's sending me links for new agents to query. I try (I do try) to post to this blog once a day. I'm trying to read and critique the work of friends, and of strangers as well on http://critters.org.

 Let's think about this.  Generally, people need eight hours of sleep each night. I need more; being ill lately, we need even more, but lets stick with eight for the sake of argument.  I work at least eight hours a day.

(The wife is currently "playing" with the 2yo, technically 21 months, and he's calling off shapes and numbers correctly more often than not.)

So, sixteen hours of my day are gone off the top, and usually it's more like eighteen or nineteen.  Then we add in the time for basic maintenance of living. An hour for a morning shower and dress, breakfast, hay for the horses; an hour for lunch, during which I sometimes handle some emergency shopping; an hour for supper, including some time to sit and chat as a family.  There's usually a couple of hours in the evening dedicated to maybe a movie as a family, or some Warcraft, or some other activity we can do together.

Keeping track? At the very least, we've spent 23 hours of our day.  It doesn't look good for the book.

We all know those minutes and hours never fit so neatly into the given timeslots, though.  I shave out time for trips to the bathroom, and coffee breaks, and posts to this blog.  I frequently steal hours here and there by eating at my computer, or using the wife's smartphone to check Twitter in the grocery store.  

But often enough, I push the chore off and grind through a delightful hour of pulling my hair and shuffling words, knowing that tomorrow is Saturday. I'll sleep an extra hour; I'll get those chores done, unless I manage to get completely absorbed in NOT having to spend my time at my day job, and write chapters in a new book.

Tonight, I'll stay up late and write then as well.  It's the one hobby that I don't feel is a waste of time. It's the one thing I love that feels productive, and creative, and satisfying.

So maybe one of the chickens runs in the back door every time we come in. She's a tiny bantam, smaller than a fat pigeon. We give her corn in the house, which just encourages her.

And I write a few lines of blog as she clucks around my feet beneath the table, and look forward to working on editing for HUSH, and smile as I finally get up to throw hay to the horses and finish unloading the dishwasher.

See you in the bookstore.