jj does it

Quality

2011-06-04T11:19:00.002-04:00

My main non-writing hobby is fiber arts. I spin yarn, dye fiber, weave, and knit. Like writing, these activities tend to go in spates. I won't spin for weeks, and then I'll have a month or so where I spin for at least an hour every day. Likewise with knitting. One minute I might feel like perhaps I should sell all my yarn, and the next I hear the siren call of my stash and have to start new projects and try things out.

One thing I've noticed lately about my fiber projects is that I'm pretty forgiving of imperfections. Sure, I like it when things are perfect, but I also know that some kinds of mistakes will not really affect the finished product. Each stitch is only one of many stitches. Each thread is only one of many threads. I do my best, but I also know that I can end up with a lovely finished object even with some small errors along the way.

Some might call this laziness, but when I look at the number of fiber projects I have completed, and that I am totally happy with and proud of, I don't think that's accurate. It has more to do with striking a reasonable and realistic balance between my desire for perfection and my enjoyment of my work. True success comes from productivity. Productivity comes from enjoyment. Enjoyment comes from relaxation. Relaxation comes from not pressuring myself to be perfect.

I have resolved to apply this philosophy to my writing. I have a lot of writing projects that are stalled or that I haven't shared with others because I can see their flaws. However, I need to admit that my assessment of these flaws may be overly harsh. I need to stop letting my desire for perfection get in the way of my relaxation, enjoyment, and productivity.

Morality: The Key to the Climax?

2011-04-13T19:23:00.003-04:00

I've been stuck for some time on the climactic scene of the Airship novel. My characters are in the right place, about to uncover the big reveal and have the final showdown with the opposition. But...something just doesn't feel right. I don't know what should happen. I had an idea as I was working up to this point, but once I reached it, none of my plans seemed right. The meeting with the big bad didn't feel right. The big reveal didn't seem big enough.

So today I went through my usual process of asking myself questions about the story. I do this in Freemind. For each question I ask, I try to come up with several possible answers and follow their implications. One of the big unanswered questions in my story is how Elsie was separated from her parents as a child. The big reveal is the moment when Elsie discovers what her lost father was working on and, maybe, what happened to him. Since I was having trouble with the big reveal, I was hoping that drilling down on Elsie's parents and their motivations would get me somewhere.

So I asked, "Who were Elsie's parents?" I already knew a lot about Elsie's parents, of course; what I really wanted to get to was their motivations. The answers I started with:

Good people
Bad people

I looked at these answers for a moment and thought about how to proceed. Then I remembered a passage in 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, by Ronald B. Tobias. In his chapter on Deep Structure Tobias says "the central concept of deep structure is morality." So I wrote down "What's the morality of this book?"

This turned out to be a key question that unlocked some incredibly productive trains of thought. I listed several options for the overall moral position that the book could take, ranging from idealistic to nihilistic to purely selfish:

It's OK to desire power, as long as you are benevolent.
Power is evil by nature.
Wealth is the primary objective.
Power is morally neutral; large-scale domination is a necessary prerequisite of civilization.
Regrettably, some must suffer to serve the greater good.
The desire for power is not compatible with benevolence. One must work first and foremost for good.

As I came up with these, I found myself thinking about characters that appeared in the story. Different characters seemed to embody different viewpoints. Once I noticed this, I realized that the whole conflict of the story was nothing more nor less than the clash of these different viewpoints. It was then clear where my MC would start out on this spectrum, where she would end up, and how she had to get there.

This exercise took me a long way from my original question about the motivations of Elsie's parents, but it did answer that question, and many other unexpected ones. For example, I know that Elsie starts out at moral position number 5: some must suffer to serve the greater good. But in looking at this, I realized that the greater good wasn't really good enough, so Elsie's complacency made her unsympathetic and shallow. This gave me some ideas for changes to the setting and even some new characters. This in turn led to more revelations, until finally I knew what the climactic moment would be, where it would be, and who had to be there...all of which were totally different from my original conception.

2011-03-27T19:00:00.004-04:00

Lo, the time is passing. Did I mention that the Airship Novel is based on a short story? I'm going to submit that story to Writers of the Future this quarter.

Writing has suffered a bit due to the fact that I am doing some paid work for my old company. But it's still going on. I started an "Idea Board"; it's a bulletin board where I put up a notecard for each idea that I have for a story. The idea is to give me something to turn to whenever I need a break from a project or feel uninspired. A nice side effect is that it gives me a constant visual reminder that I do, in fact, have ideas. It also gives me a reason to hang onto those ideas and not let them slip away.

I had the startling realization the other day that I want to write some historical fiction, or maybe even some contemporary-but-extracultural fiction. I find these ideas really exciting, but also intimidating. I wish I could take a class purely on researching for fiction. One idea is set in modern Afghanistan, another in ancient Egypt, and still another in a New York City tenement circa 1900. The Afghanistan one scares me the most, but it also feels like the most important story to tell. I did a google search for "how to write a historical novel" and came upon the wonderful Historical Novelists Center, which, despite some web design issues, looks like an incredibly useful resource for all kinds of writing.

A Blurb

2011-01-25T17:05:00.003-05:00

Here's my pitch for the airship novel:

Ambitious Elsie Harrosk has run away from the lone smuggler who raised her to become an airship pilot with the all-powerful Air Alliance. The flying life is everything she dreamed until a clue about her forgotten past jeopardizes her career. Now, with the help of an escaped prisoner, she must run the gauntlet between two powerful industrial dynasties to discover the secret of her lost heritage and learn where her true allegiance lies.

On Openings

2011-01-22T14:29:00.004-05:00

NaNoWriMo finished in semi-good order, with my novel at about 39,000 words. Since then I've been adding to it much more slowly (having done basically nothing for all of December), and now we're at 42,652, a total that I'm not too thrilled about.

Continuing this story feels like swimming through cold molasses. What I'm coming up against, I think, is the lack of a firm foundation. I need to do a lot of background development in order to keep going. My protagonist, in particular, has lost a lot of her oomph. I've realized I don't know nearly enough about her or what her motivations are.

Reading over my story from the beginning, I noticed a particular weak point: the opening. The opening is when we need to learn about the character. Not every detail of her past, but at least her temperament, and why we should care about her. Looking for some inspiration in this department, I turned to my old stand-by, The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley. The book opens with the protagonist, Harry Crewe (she's female: Harry is short for Angharad) "scowling" at her glass of orange juice. Why is she scowling? The narration immediately proceeds to tell us. Here is what we learn about Harry within the first three pages of this book:

she is pragmatic ("eager to be delighted" with her new home)
she is "empty of purpose", which causes her insomnia
she is eccentric in her society (rising early, dressing herself)
she was raised privileged and is now impoverished and dependent
she wants to fit in
she has an energetic spirit, but tries to be good
she is orphaned
she dislikes being dependent on anyone
she is "a penniless blueblood of no particular beauty"
there is a little scandal in her family background, but she doesn't know the specifics
she does not care for society, nor it for her.

We also learn about the general setting, and about Harry's relationships to her brother, her late parents, and her new adoptive guardians, Charles and Amelia. By the end of chapter 1, we also know that Harry likes to read, is stubborn, is a tomboy, likes horses, has always been restless, has always longed for adventure, and is taller than all the women and most of the men around her. We learn that she was frightened but excited about her new home, and that she was sincerely interested in learning all about it when she arrived. We learn that, although she does not think of herself as attractive, a couple of her brother's soldier friends are secretly falling in love with her. We get the idea that people like her more than she gives them credit for.

So that's the opening. It is presented partly through present-time action, partly through summary, and partly through flashbacks. It's beautifully written, evocative, and engaging. Reading it now, I realize how much of the emotional impact of what follows (the arrival of the native king, Corlath, and his subsequent kidnapping of Harry) depends on what is laid out here. Right off the bat, Harry is appealing: smart, interesting, strong but vulnerable, and fundamentally incomplete. The perfect sympathetic character. You love her right away.

When I first read this book in 7th grade, I remember thinking the opening was slow, and indeed it does flout much of the conventional wisdom about how to open a narrative. There's lots of backstory, and nothing really "happens" until page 11, when Sir Charles and Jack Dedham reveal that they have been up since the wee hours in response to the news that King Corlath plans to visit them that very day. But reading it now, as an adult, I find the opening delightful. It is rich with detail and emotion. If I can come up with something half so elegant, I will be very pleased.

NaNoWriMo Day 27: Behind!

2010-11-27T13:47:00.004-05:00

Wordcount: 39167

I'm not only behind on this blog, I'm also behind on my novel! Not in too terrible a way, only 6,000 words or so. But look! Word Clouds!

It's written in the first person, so the main character, Elsie, is not very prominent. Carwyn is the sidekick/love interest. Here's a version without him:

I like that Elsie is about the same size as her two main enemies, Mr. Caspar and the Danwood family. I notice that the other major words are rather epistemic in nature. Hmm.

NaNoWriMo Day 3: doubts

2010-11-03T23:22:00.002-04:00

Wordcount: 5493

Today's words were a little slower and harder to come by. I worry that I'm losing the thread of the this character's voice. As the novel is written in the first person, it's tricky to achieve all the needed exposition. I need to work out to whom this story is being told.

The love interest/spy has been introduced. Exciting!

NaNoWriMo Day 2

2010-11-02T22:32:00.004-04:00

Wordcount: 3,452

Today was a very busy day! But I still met my wordcount obligation. I won't spend too much energy on this blog entry. I just have a few small bits of news to share.

One is that I spent the afternoon and early evening schmoozing with big-shot mathematicians and physicists. I'm not very good at this schmoozing--it's my husband's field, and I usually glaze over and lose track of the conversation pretty quickly unless some special effort is made to include me. On this particular occasion, I met the partner of a particular mathematician, who is an actual big-shot author, Marina Warner. We only spoke briefly before my husband told me she was Somebody and looked her up on Wikipedia using his phone. Anyway, she had heard I was working on writing and expressed a willingness to talk to me, but the shape of the evening didn't, in the end, permit it. This encounter caused me to reflect on how unwilling I am to discuss my writing, and how, despite the bravado I display on this blog, I actually feel very insecure about it. I found myself rehearsing in my head what I would say to her if she asked me a question.

Second, tonight we are staying in a strange huge guest-house with no heat. It is the house that my husband's workplace keeps for out-of-town visitors. We are sleeping in a vast bedroom, where I sat at the desk to write. Opening a cupboard in the desk, I found a copy of The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, a charming book that I had completely forgotten about. It's a sweet little story about a rabbit who wants to be one of the five special rabbits that are chosen to be Easter Bunnies. But she gets sidetracked and has twenty-one babies instead. However, through her wise and kind and clever handling of her many children, she proves herself worthy to be an Easter Bunny after all. Grandfather Rabbit gives her a special mission, to bring a fancy hollow diorama egg to a sick child on top of a mountain. She tries her hardest, but fails. But then Grandfather Rabbit appears to give her a pair of magic shoes, in recognition of her special bravery, and she is able to complete the mission. Hugely adorable illustrations of little rabbits wearing clothes. No point here, really, just that I was tickled to find it. The writing style is very carefree and unpretentious. My more jaded grown-up self thinks perhaps Grandfather Rabbit is meant to symbolize God, or something, but I actually don't believe this was the author's intent.

Lastly! I met some nice people at a dinner party the other night, including a fellow who curates this odd little blog: http://bosporus-star.com/blog Take a look, maybe you'll learn something

NaNoWriMo Day 1

2010-11-01T22:43:00.002-04:00

Wordcount: 2059

Well, it's the end of another November 1st, and so far, things are going swimmingly. I wrote a nice little chunk of words today, and I still feel good about where story is going.

In the absence of reader comments (le sigh!) I went for romance option number 4. I'm glad I brainstormed a few different scenarios instead of just going with the first thing that came into my head. That's a habit I'm trying to get into.

I did indeed come up with a workable outline. It's not deeply developed in terms of scene-by-scene planning, but it carries the story from beginning to end and covers the major points of conflict. I've also got a pretty good volume of supporting notes about the setting and backstory and so on, but I need to develop this further--particularly matters of setting. The magical aspect of the story is especially weak right now. I think the characters and the overall structure of the plot are the strong points.

This story was really easy to plot; I was amazed. I'm not sure if it's because I've gotten better at plotting, or if I've gotten better at coming up with plot-friendly concepts, or if I just got lucky with this particular idea.

I have been studying plot. In addition to James Scott Bell's book, which I reviewed earlier, I went through a book called Blockbuster Plots: Pure & Simple, by Martha Alderson. This is a slightly schlocky book, very focused on a particular method for charting scene-by-scene action and overall plot arc. The book is partly an advertisement for plotting templates that you can also purchase. I think the ideas on scenes would be more applicable to a first edit than in planning a first draft; indeed, the first step of her method is "make a list of all your scenes." Hmm. But one concept of hers that did stick with me is the idea of scenes that take place "above the line" and "below the line" (named for where you would draw these scenes on the ascending line of the overall plot). "Above the line" scenes are those where the antagonist is in power, and focus is on conflict. "Below the line" scenes are those where the protagonist is in power, resting, or reflecting. There may (and should) still be conflict in below-the-line scenes, but it's more about internal issues. I liked this idea, and I'm trying to consciously move above and below the line as I go along. This makes a nice rhythm, and ensures that the quiet, personal parts of the plot don't get left out (a problem I've struggled with before, especially in last year's NaNo).

But I think the overall concept for this story does lend itself to easy plotting. The original idea came from a short story I wrote about a lonely outlaw airship pilot taking in a little girl who was about to be sold into slavery. There are plenty of inherently dramatic aspects here: if he's an outlaw, then who are his enemies? Why is he a lonely outlaw? Where are the little girl's parents? Why is she being shipped to an uncertain fate in the hands of a smuggler? Also, airships! Slavery! Gasp! Wow! There is definitely drama in this world.

Brainstorming

2010-10-29T12:40:00.002-04:00

I'm working on the plot of my NaNoWriMo novel. Yes, unlike last year, I hope to have a working outline in place when I get started. I'm having a great time working on it; I have a very good feeling about this story. (Incidentally, did you notice that semicolon? I'm trying--with limited success--to be more conscious of my overuse of the em-dash in my prose. Please comment if you think I'm getting sloppy.) It's a very exciting story about a girl who goes up against a vast and ruthless commercial power in her quest to discover the key to her past. There are airships, and a little magic, and a magical airship. The bad guys are monopoly-hoarding slavery-condoning environment-destroying capitalist monsters. The good guys are brilliant humanist inventors. It's gonna be so rad.

So one of the things I need to figure out about the plot is the romantic aspect, and I thought I'd turn to you, dear readers, for your thoughts. The basic situation is that she is thrown together at the beginning of her quest with a seemingly helpful fellow who is, in reality, a spy for the enemy. But he repents, of course, and becomes a valuable companion and eventual love interest. The trick will be to have the reader and the protagonist convinced that he is, in fact, a good guy, despite his earlier betrayal, and to not end with the feeling that the protagonist (her name is Elsie) is compromising her integrity by forgiving him.

So here are some possible brief synopses of how the romantic plot could unfold. Do you like one better than another? Is one better than the rest when it comes to dramatic action? How about retaining the integrity of the characters? What do the different scenarios make you think about the characters?

1. He comes to like her bit by bit. Something happens where the chips are down, and on the verge of handing her over to the enemy, he changes his mind and saves her bacon instead. Then he confesses everything. She is hurt and angry, but over the course of their journey he has chances to prove himself, and it turns out that he had a desperate reason for kowtowing to the enemy. Eventually she comes to love and trust him in return.

2. She comes to like him, but then discovers his betrayal. Furious, she turns on him, and leaves him to fend for himself, despite his assuring her that he has a desperate reason for kowtowing to the enemy. Later he reappears in a dire moment and saves her bacon, in clear defiance of the enemy, thus proving himself, and she forgives him.

3. She comes to like him, but then discovers his betrayal. She confronts him, but they can't part ways due to circumstances. He explains that he had a desperate reason for kowtowing to the enemy. He gets more chances to prove himself, and eventually she relents.

4. She comes to like him, but then discovers his betrayal. She keeps the knowledge to herself, hoping to keep getting help out of him until the risk becomes too great. She is not really surprised that he wasn't trustworthy after all. But then he confesses it to her on his own, and she doesn't know what to do with all her mixed emotions. After finding out more about the desperate situation that forces him to kowtow to the enemy, perhaps through meeting his family or something, she forgives him and allows herself to feel the affection.

I think I'm leaning toward the last one, but I'm not sure it will fit in a 50,000 word novel--which is okay, really, since ideally the full novel would be about twice that long.

Thoughts?

New Surroundings

2010-10-13T10:46:00.003-04:00

It's late October, and you know what that means: the next installment of NaNoWriMo is right around the corner! I plan to participate again this year, and I'm torn between two options. I could finally actually write through to the end of The Other Novel, which may in fact be the only way to find out what it's really about. Or I can do what I did last year, and dive into a barely-conceptualized new project; I have an idea about a girl with a mysterious heritage who flies airships. Both are inviting.

It's been a wild few months. Darling Man and I finished out the summer in Berkeley, then came back east and set about the hairy task of finding a place to live in New York. After last year's bleak stint on Long Island, we were determined to move back into the center of the action. DM still has to commute, though, so we focused our search on the charming hamlet of Brooklyn. One illegal sublet, countless realty scams, and two tornadoes later, we have a perfectly nice place to live in oh-so-trendy Park Slope. Call me a yuppie if you want, but it's magnificent to once again live within walking distance of a grocery store, a park, and a library. We tried very hard to rent an apartment with laundry in the building. We didn't quite get that, but we came close: the ground floor of our building is a coin-op laundromat!

Of course another wonderful thing about moving to Brooklyn is that I'm now squarely in the middle of the writing and publishing universe. I've joined an excellent meetup group for Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, which is already paying off in increased motivation. I'm also looking forward to going through NaNoWriMo with the New York crowd. In contrast to the Long Island region's lackluster attendance, NYC has already had a well-attended meetup, and is planning another one for October 25th. Stoked!!

Writing-wise, I do confess that there's been a bit of a lull on the big projects, but I haven't been entirely unproductive. I wrote a nice little story for the meetup group, which I'll soon be revising based on their comments. I've also started reevaluating The Nymean Corps, and you know what? It's really not that bad. What it primarily suffers from is the obvious problem, given how I wrote it: since I didn't know how the story would end, the plot events aren't lined up in any logical way. Some of the scenes are completely redundant, while others just need to be shuffled into the correct order and have new connecting material built around them. That won't be quick, but it is doable. I've cleaned up the first couple of chapters and submitted them to the writing group for critique at our next meetup. I'll let you know how it goes!

Writing!

2010-07-18T23:52:00.002-04:00

Wordcount: 10,581

So, I'm writing. I'm trying to hold myself to 1600 words per day like I did during NaNoWriMo. Writing with a completed outline is interestingly different from writing without one. I still have moments where I don't know what to write, or I'm not sure whether the decisions I make are the right ones, but at least I know that if I accomplish the basic points, I can reach the end of the story.

I'm starting to understand what writers mean about first drafts being crappy (this is every writer's favorite piece of advice to new writers). There are some parts where I know that what I'm writing is crappy, but I know that I have to write it anyway or I'll never develop the part of the overall vision that will tell me how to make it un-crappy. I have to make myself let go and promise to notice the crappiness when I go back for revisions.

I'm also pleasantly surprised to find there are still mysteries in the story, even though I've theoretically worked it all out. Not big mysteries, thank goodness--not the kind that stop me in my tracks. Just the kind that happen when some little detail or ancillary character whispers to me, I could be important later. This is a good feeling. I feel like if I'm careful to make the world rich enough, the answers I need when I hit big questions later on will already be waiting for me.

The thing I still feel pretty nervous about is the setting. A really cool setting can take a so-so story and make it completely enchanting. My setting doesn't feel really cool to me yet--it feels like a basic rehash of the standard generic medieval-flavored setting. A D&D campaign could happen here without even needing a special rulebook. I do have some ideas for how to make the setting cooler...but I'm also having trouble finding ways to reveal the coolness, which means there's a risk that the characters and story aren't actually being shaped by the setting the way they should be. So, gotta work on that.

The Bath Scene in Fantasy Novels

2010-07-14T01:40:00.005-04:00

(There are SPOILERS below for Magic's Price, The Blue Sword, Sabriel and Luck in the Shadows)

As I stand on the verge of writing one myself, I'm giving some thought to the ubiquitous fantasy novel bath scene. The bathing scene is a perfectly standard part of novels that tell the story of a character settling into a new life. The bath seems to signal a moment of transition from an old life into a new one.

As a weak example, take the novels of Mercedes Lackey. There's probably at least one bath scene in every single one--some are transitional, others merely comforting. Talia is introduced to the baths on her first day at Haven, with their convenient copper boiler full of pre-heated water. Vanyel also gets a number of baths, most notably his introduction to the Tayledras hot springs when Savil first transports him to their domain, which signifies the beginning of his healing process. Apart from their function in the plot, the bath scenes illustrate the level of technology--and even luxury--present in the setting. They also make a convenient backdrop for scenes of personal reflection, and they evoke the comforts of home. They also, just occasionally, give the characters a chance to check each other out in the nude.

Another weak example is the bath scene at Crickhollow in The Fellowship of the Ring. Crickhollow is the hobbits' last stop before leaving the shire, and the bath is a last moment of carefree intimacy before they leave the lands they know for good.

But there is a widespread version of the bath scene that has three main elements in common. One, as in the above examples, the bath falls at a point of transition between an old and a new life for the bather. Two, there are servants who want to help the bather, but the bather rejects, or tries to reject, their attentions. Three, the bather's old clothes are whisked away, to be replaced with unexpectedly fine but distressingly unfamiliar new clothes.

For an example of this type, we can turn to Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, in which Harry gets not one, but two baths. First, after being kidnapped by the king, she clashes with the well-meaning male bath attendants in Corlaths' traveling camp. Her dressing gown is taken away, and Damarian clothing is provided. She feels vulnerable in the new clothes because they are so light and simple compared to her culture's Victorian-style garb. Later, when she has won the Laprun trials, she is bathed yet again at Corlath's palace. This time she is offered only female attendants, but still feels childish when they brush out her hair. She is again given new clothes for the state dinner, on which occasion she is made one of Corlath's riders--again, a change in status, from an honored abductee to a person of importance. The titular character in Beauty also gets a bath before having dinner with the Beast for the first time. Invisible servants attend her. She tries to resist them, but they are insistent. They present her with a series of overly revealing gowns before she accepts one that she finds suitable.

In Sabriel, by Garth Nix, Sabriel flees her life as a student in the New Kingdom to go after her missing father in the Old Kingdom. When she arrives at his house, she is forcefully bathed by attendants in the form of "sendings", beings that are made of magic and have no other corporeal form. She protests that she is quite old enough to bathe herself. After the bath, she is dressed in the uniform of the Abhorsen--her father's office, which she must now take up on her own.

Another example of this type occurs in Lynn Flewelling's Luck in the Shadows. Alec has grown up a wandering hunter. The other principle character, Seregil, rescues him from torture in a dungeon, then takes him away to the big city, offering to take him on as an apprentice in the ways of spying and thieving. Their first stop in the capital is the Oreska House, home of wizards, one of whom is Seregil's mentor and employer. Alec, who would just as soon stay dirty, is ordered to bathe. Servants attend him, but he resists on grounds of modesty, as well as discomfort with the whole idea of being served by other people. Afterward, he receives fresh new clothes suitable for a young nobleman.

Scenes of this sort serve a few utilitarian purposes in addition to marking a lifestyle transition. For one, the appearance of the new clothing gives the author a chance to describe what people wear in a way that flows naturally into the narrative. These scenes also give the author a chance to build sympathy for the protagonist. Few modern readers can be expected to welcome the idea of being bathed by servants, so the character's resistance helps establish them as a person close to the reader's world, set apart from the foreign-seeming norms of the fantasy environment. It also helps show the character's humility and heroic temperament as, rather than welcoming the servility of others, they are determined to look after themselves. The lack of bath attendants in the Mercedes Lackey scenes could be seen as indicative of the egalitarian and independent culture of the Heralds and the Tayledras. There are some exceptions to this pattern (the bath scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has none of these elements), but overall the bath scene appears to be a useful tool for moving a character into a life.

What are your favorite bath scenes? Do they fit this pattern, or not?

Victory and a Book Review

2010-06-30T15:04:00.004-04:00

I've finished a workable version of the outline.

Everything from the previous version is now on the right side of the mindmap, all folded up. The stuff on the left is the outline: a prologue and three acts, divided into about 35 "chapters" (though we'll see if these end up being the final chapter divisions), and a paragraph about each chapter.

All of this has come together in just about three days, which surprised me. I had a major breakthrough, which was precipitated by a simple piece of good fortune: I read the right book. This book is Plot and Structure, by James Scott Bell. I have another book by Bell, The Art of War for Writers. I like the style of that book, but felt that it was lacking in concrete technical advice. Plot and Structure definitely fills that gap. Within hours of opening it, I could feel everything starting to click into place. What's more, I felt energized--reading this book showed me that I had almost all the right elements in place, if I could only get them arranged. Then the book provided concrete, actionable advice about how achieve this, and I could hardly wait to sit down and work! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone working on a novel.

Perhaps the most useful section of the book is the part that covers common "plot patterns" such as a revenge, love, the quest, adventure, and so on. I knew my story had some of these elements, but this section had great tips about how these kinds of plots actually move. Also, it solved a problem I was struggling with: one of my characters just didn't want to be part of the action. I knew I needed all my characters to have strong desires in order to drive the plot--could this reclusiveness count as a desire, and if so, how could it provide enough energy to drive any action? As it turns out, there is a classic plot known as "one apart". I've certainly read this type of story, but could never quite "get" what was going on. Now I get it: the loner wants to do his own thing. In act two, circumstances conspire to draw him into action against his will. At the end, he must choose whether to act. Then he either re-engages with society, or retreats forever. Aha! I don't know why this wasn't obvious. I knew the question of whether to "engage" would be a driving conflict, but seeing it laid out in print let me know that I really could use this structure--it gave me permission. And there is more than enough action in his friends' parts of the story tempt my poor little introverted mystic into getting involved.

Another good piece of advice in Bell's book is to create a "stakes outline". Ask yourself, what bad things can happen to my lead character? Make a list of these, and then order them from bad to worst. Now you can look to this list as you work on generating rising conflict in Act 2: as the story goes on, the mishaps get closer and closer to the character's worst nightmares. I found this surprisingly fun to do. Imagining how my characters would react to the worst case scenario taught me what they're really made of, what they care about, and where they have hidden reserves of strength. It also gave me great ideas about where conflict could come from.

The last thing this book prompted me to do was to abandon my multi-threaded outline (that scheme for filling out subplots that I detailed in my last post). I'm still glad I did that to the level of laying out the subplots, but breaking it down to "scenes" was too much. Putting everything together into a single act-by-act chronological outline let me see that many points I had thought would need a whole scene could actually be covered in brief, as short beats in the main action scenes. It all seemed to fall magically together. My next step is to write!

ETA: Just noticed that I quit my job one year ago today.

Getting Specific

2010-06-16T20:26:00.004-04:00

Here's what I'm currently doing to create the outline for The Other Novel (this novel is really starting to need a title, isn't it?).

I've listed all of the stories within the overarching story: there's a romance, a mystery, two competing succession plots, and some other stuff. For each of these, I've then outlined the general story arc for that plot: how it begins, develops, and resolves. Up to this point I have completed my first attempt. I'm now in the midst of the penultimate step: specifying the actual scenes that are needed for each of these story-chunks to take place. This is the right-most branch of the outline, and when I say specific, I mean specific. Each item contains complete instructions for writing the scene: where it takes place, who is in it, what happens and how.

I am still using Freemind to lay out the outline visually. Here's a picture. (I know the text itself isn't visible; this is just to give you an idea of how it's organized.)

The uppermost first-level node on the right is the sub-plots node. The bluish nodes in the far upper right are the actual scenes that I have worked out in detail, and the outline will be finished when all of the branches of the sub-plots node terminate in at lease one scene (or as many as needed). In addition to this outline, this diagram includes various pieces of brainstorming, notes about the setting, and color-coded notes about the purpose of different scenes, extra details, unanswered questions, etc.

Each level of this process has required a different way of thinking about the story. As I listed out the sub-plots, I found that I had to think hard about the over-arching themes of the story. As I then filled in the story for each sub-plot, I noticed areas where there was not going to be sufficient suspense or interest, meaning that other sub-plots had to be added or further elaborated to fill in the gaps. Now that I'm working on the individual scenes, I have to get into the guts of things. I'm working out details of the setting, supporting characters, and the nitty-gritty specifics of how the characters carry out their schemes.

The very last step will be to put the scenes in order, making explicit the interleaving of all the subplots.

Is this how pros do it? Probably not. Obviously, I'm still figuring out what method of plotting a novel works for me. If this method seems overly technical or hyper-analytical...well, maybe I find that comforting. I don't think I could do this at all without breaking it down into smaller and smaller questions.

Outlining

2010-06-11T19:13:00.002-04:00

I am outlining. Oh boy, I am outlining so hard. I've done a lot, but there's a lot more to do.

I must keep myself going with the thought of my reward, which will be Fast Writing.

Outlining. I am doing it.

Doldrums

2010-06-04T14:46:00.005-04:00

Oh my. February was a long time ago. The intervening months have included a lot of distractions and a huge dip in my motivation. I keep plotting and re-plotting and finding new things to be dissatisfied with. I keep shuffling nodes around in Freemind, which is a balm to my guilty conscience, but doesn't result in any real work getting done.

For a while I even toyed with the idea of skipping the coming-of-age part of my story and moving straight into the more interesting sequel. I find myself constantly comparing my work to other books, and I get really hung up on trying to avoid stepping into what I see as other people's territory. A coming of age story involving magic? Watch out for Harry Potter cliches! A story where religious authority is the enemy of intellectual freedom? Don't rehash The Golden Compass! An urban setting peopled by decadent nobles? Watch out, you might write Sword's Point! And like a shadow over all hangs The Name of the Wind.

So I'm working through all that.

In personal news, this summer brings a change of setting. DM and I have abandoned Long Island for the moment, and are subletting an apartment in Berkeley until early August. It's so wonderful to be around our friends again, and to be able to eat the food we like! I've been taking pictures of the food, in fact. Here are some examples.

Pizza at the Cheeseboard!

Delicious fresh vegetables!

Mexican food at Cancun!!

Cupcakes at Love at First Bite!

Samosas at Vik's!

Mysterious candied fruit confection...at Vik's!

OK GO! at Maker Faire! (Ok, I know, this isn't food. But still!)

And this doesn't even include Gregoire, or when my mom took us to lunch at Chez Panisse. Oh dang. I love this place.

Still Writing, Lessons Learned

2010-02-22T17:05:00.009-05:00

Since officially halting work on Nymean Corps (at least for the time being), I've been working pretty steadily on the Other Novel. The other novel doesn't have a name yet--the working title is just the names of the two main characters. Since I felt that the problem with Nymean Corps was that I didn't plot it carefully enough, I've been very meticulously plotting out the other novel.

I've been thinking about this story for several years, and it's now been through several major convulsions. It began as a perfectly innocent Mary Sue fanfic, never shared with anyone. Despite its fanfictional nature, all the characters and the plot were my own, and I was actually pretty pleased with where it went. I decided to erase the bits that weren't mine and try to make something real out of it. As you might expect, this took some doing--setting determines story to a larger degree than you might think, at least in the fantasy genre. Nonetheless, I kept working at it--deities were erased, whole cultures obliterated. Side characters appeared with new cultural trappings. Systems of government, religion, and magic rose and fell. Those side characters developed relationships among themselves, places in the social order. Without her original goddess-given mission and totally rad powers, Mary Sue dwindled into a mere artifact of her former self, almost disappearing entirely. The one-time supporting cast was now running the show.

It was probably about four years ago that I began this process, and only a few months ago that I started working on it consistently, with a break for Nymean Corps in November and December. NaNoWriMo taught me a huge amount about the kind of problems I'd need to address as I planned out my novel, and since then I've been working on those problems and reading up on ways to solve them. At this point, I feel that my plotting odyssey is almost done. Here are a few useful advices, gathered from here and there, that are keeping me going right now:

The Three Act Structure: Act one, introduce characters and set up conflicts. The first major plot point propels us into act two, which is constructed as a series of crises with rising emotional stakes, culminating in The Climax. Following the climax is, of course, the denoument, where everything shakes down and things get arranged for the sequel. This structure, particularly the escalating climaxes of the second act, has proven very useful in getting me unstuck in the plotting department. I can lay out what bits of story are needed for each crisis to occur, and then assemble these bits into scenes.
Scenes: It is helpful to think of the story in terms of discrete scenes. I make sure I have a scene for each of the plot-bits required to build each crisis. Many scenes can advance toward two or more crises.
The Black Moment: This is the moment preceding The Climax, when things are at their very worst. Some of the most helpful advice I read was to make the Black Moment the first step in crafting the plot. If you know just how bad things are supposed to be, you can then construct the series of minor crises needed to get to that point. In my story's Black Moment, the princess is believed to be dead, the bad guy is about to become king, and the good guy is in prison, in danger of being killed before he can resolve the awful misunderstanding with his best friend!
Themes. Themes are useful things. I thought originally that a theme would arise naturally from my story, but I now realize that, as a writer, I need a theme to act as my compass. What makes the good guys good and the bad guys bad? What tells me the right way to have the characters solve a problem? What makes the final resolution satisfying? It's the theme!
Being dramatic. For some reason, this is hard for me. It always has been. In Dungeons and Dragons, I used to always come up with characters that had no particular drama to them. Wouldn't want to compose the dreaded Mary Sue, after all. You know, he's just a regular soldier who happens to be at the tavern that day. Very frustrating for DMs. Somehow I've always felt that it would stretch the bounds of credibility for me to give my characters exciting and dramatic back-stories. I mean, how many people in real life get to be the secret lost heirs of something awesome? Not many! These days I'm getting it through my thick skull that a hero in an escapist fantasy had damn well better be special--the specialer the better.
Motivation and Conflict. This is part of being dramatic. I tend to like stories where characters have conflict thrust upon them. In The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley, Harry Crew doesn't want to be kidnapped by an exotic king for mysterious purposes, but that's what happens to her. My mistake, all along, was to think this meant that she didn't want anything in particular at all. But she does have a motivation, a desire: she wants to fit into the mold of her society, to do and be something useful and satisfying. She is thwarted in this by the social position (a "charity case", her brother's responsibility) imposed on her by her father's death. The emotional kernel of the book is her desire to find her niche, to understand who she is, to be accepted by her society. The end of the book is satisfying because she gets what she has so desired, only in a form she doesn't expect. At this point, I've written and re-written the opening scenes of my story enough times to realize that momentum will quickly fail without a hefty dose of desire, starting right at the beginning.
Outlining Software: Right now I'm using Freemind. I've also tried Storymill, pen and paper, and the much praised index card method. So far Freemind is the best. Right now I'm working on an arrangement where I have two parallel outlines: the plot outline and the scene outline. The plot outline lists the three acts, and what happens in each. Most importantly, it lists the crises that occur in Act II, and those plot bits that build up to each crisis. The scene outline lists, of course, scenes, and notes which of the plot bits fits into each scene. The scene outline is the actual step-by-step recipe for writing the book, listing chunks of text in the order in which they need to appear.
Synopsis First. Internet advice-givers are divided on this point, but I'm ready to advocate writing the synopsis before the novel, rather than the other way around. Of course, if one plans to use the synopsis to sell the novel, one will have to revise it after the writing is through. But I found that writing a fairly detailed, several-page synopsis was immensely helpful in revealing the strengths and weaknesses of my story. This exercise is like telling the novel in bed-time story format: it includes all the major plot points, and all the motivation and exposition that is necessary to make the story go. It takes you through all the emotional ups and downs of the novel in a much smaller number of words.

At this point, I've followed all my steps and written a first draft of the synopsis. This was enough to reveal some deficiencies (especially in the motivation department), which I'm now in the process of correcting. By tomorrow I expect to embark on a second draft of the synopsis. I think (fingers crossed) that should be enough to let me resume writing at NaNoWriMo-like speeds, this time with a much firmer foundation.

Musical Soapbox Part I: Realism

2010-01-24T20:15:00.009-05:00

So, here's the update. I wrote a new (and very good) prologue for the Nymean Corps story, and I outlined about half of the book on index cards. But when I went to take a shot at the existing scenes that I wanted re-write, I realized something: I am really bored of these characters. I don't care about them right now, and I don't think anyone else will either. It would be nice to power through and do a second draft...but it would also be nice to work on something I enjoy for a little while. My mind has drifted back to the characters I was playing with in the Other Novel--the one I was thinking about before NaNo--and I've found that I really do care about them and am excited to tell their story. So I've been writing away on that for the last several days and am really enjoying myself. Will I ever go back to the Nymean Corps? Maybe. But it's also possible that my NaNo project is destined to go down in history simply as my first big lesson in how not to write a novel. If that happens, I won't cry--at least I didn't spend much more than a month on it.

For the feature of today's entry, I am going to review the new Magnetic Fields album, Realism. I hope I never gave the impression that this blog was going to be consistent in its theme. I know you don't really come here for music reviews even so, but, since it's my blog, I can do what I want.

The album, overall, is...short! 33.3 minutes. There are 13 tracks, but most are under three minutes in length. To be fair, this is about par for the course: Charm of the Highway Strip is only 33.2 minutes, and Holiday is only 36.3. Still, I always get excited about a new Stephin Merritt album, and the fact that the album is only the length of an episode of The Simpsons (counting commercials) is a little bit of a let-down. But, if this is what it takes to get the music to me, I can take it.

Enough bitching, let's talk about the music. So, I admit that I am pretty much undispleasable when it comes to Stephin Merritt. Even in his strangest, most strident, Experimental-Music-Love kind of moods, I like to think that I get what he's doing. When I'm by myself, I never skip a song on 69 Love Songs. I even like his theatrical side projects--in fact, some tracks from Orphan of Zhao can literally make me cry. Having said all that, let me say this: Realism is fantastic, and I think even a less indiscriminate fangirl than I would agree. The songs return to some of the classic sound and feel that have been largely missing on the last couple of Magnetic Fields albums.

The album is, like all of them, a concept album. Merritt's stated concept for this album is 70's orchestral and/or psychedelic folk. It is also intended as a sister record to 2008's Distortion. Where Distortion was supposed to be a loud record, Realism is meant to be a quiet record (although in fact it is a good deal more layered and catchy than the 2004 offering, i). Where Distortion's cover art featured a universal-symbol-style silhouette of a male on a jarring hot pink background, Realism shows a skirted figure on recycled brown paper. But Stephin Merritt is a tricky fellow, and there are many clues that we should not take "realism" at face value. The CD booklet is actually white gloss paper printed with an image of crinkled brown stock. We ask ourselves, how is a bathroom-symbol of a woman any less distorted than one of a man? Is music that is distorted in its production really more unreal than a digital reproduction of "acoustic" music? Conundra abound! The album is also presented, according to Merritt, in a "variety show" format, I suppose meaning that, although it's a concept album, we should not expect a consistent tone across the songs. As on 69 Love Songs, the variety of different sounds and feelings keeps the album from fading into the background, so that each individual track has a little punch of its own.

The individual songs are, to my ear, a mix of old and new sounds. Some tunes hearken back to early Magnetic Fields albums, some sound a bit like 69 Love Songs, and some actually sound more like recent side projects than anything Merritt has done with the band. The instrumentation is indeed on the acoustic side, but it is put together with that knack of Merritt's that makes it sound unlike anything else. Or maybe it's just the assortment: sitar, ukulele, harp, flugelhorn, autoharp, flute, leaves (yes leaves), something that sounds like a hammer dulcimer, and I don't know what else. If there is a musical element that is especially folky on this album, I'd say it's the extensive use of vocal harmony and unison singing. This has cropped up here and there in the past, but here it's used on several tracks and sounds more like two or three people singing together than like a lead with backup vocals. The subject matter of the songs is nothing new, nor are they more (or less) autobiographical than previous efforts. As usual, some of them are heartwrenching, others are silly, and all are at least a little bit sardonic.

As with the past two albums, the quality of the songwriting has been criticized for not being up to the standard of 69 Love Songs. I always find this surprising, since the quality on that album is actually quite uneven. I think that in any assortment of 69 songs by Stephin Merritt, there will be a few standouts and a few duds. 69 Love Songs does contain some of the very best love songs ever written, but so do other albums. On recent albums, "Too Drunk to Dream", "I Don't Believe You", "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend", "I'll Dream Alone" and "Drive On Driver" are all among Merritt's best tunes. Realism also has its share of great tracks. The opening track, "You Must be Out of Your Mind", is a perfect embodiment of the Magnetic Fields' style, with rollicking, multi-layered instrumentation, sadistically witty yet oddly heartfelt lyrics, and a hauntingly melodic chorus. Another high point is the fourth track, "I Don't Know What to Say," which, with it's sitar, autoharp, and mallet percussion, sounds like nothing so much as a tribute to '70s crooner Donovan. "Always Already Gone" is another fine track; Shirley Simms' ethereal, deadpan vocals bring Merritt's signature sense of detachment to the sad lyrics and gentle melody. "Better Things" is a cryptic track, which Merritt called in concert a "sarcastic paen to sincerity". I find it oddly captivating. And the closing track, "From a Sinking Boat" is an atmospheric and genuinely sad tune that would have fit well on Merritt's brilliant tribute to Lemony Snickett, the Gothic Archies' Tragic Treasury.

There are a few duds on this album: "Interlude", "The Dolls' Tea Party", "Everything is One Big Christmas Tree", and especially "Painted Flower" are pointlessly twee, verging on irritating. And yet, I still catch myself singing along with them. These tunes lean more in the direction of Merritt's work for the stage, especially considering the extensive use of the toy piano in the instrumentation. A young Angela Lansbury could have sung these songs without batting an eye.

The rest of the tracks fall in the middle. They are catchy enough, but seem light and hastily made. In this category, I'd place "We Are Having a Hootenanny", "Walk a Lonely Road", "Seduced and Abandoned", and the climactic "Dada Polka". "Seduced" is another stagey tune, saved from total blandness by Merritt's always enjoyable take on baroque instrumentation. "Hootenanny" and "Dada Polka" are both tributes to late-60's psychedelic-surf flicks, with manic beats and cultishly inviting lyrics. "Walk A Lonely Road" is a rather uninteresting story about a little boy vampire who meets a little girl vampire, and again, the male/female duet feels like something from the stage...sort of a Gothic version of "Islands in the Stream".

So, is it a perfect album? No, not by a long shot. It's not revolutionary territory for the Magnetic Fields, but it does take them in some new directions while assuring us that they still know how to do what they do best. To me, it feels like Merritt is in the middle of an experimental stage: moving away from the band's classic sound, but not yet quite sure what the sound of the new period will be.

Editation

2010-01-02T15:18:00.004-05:00

First, I have an update on Peppermint Pie. I was at Magnolia Bakery in NYC the other day, and they serve something they call "Peppermint Icebox Cake". Here's a recipe for a non-peppermint version: http://www.flickr.com/photos/irea/1464217951/ Obviously, this is simply my own Peppermint Pie without marshmallows or nuts, and in a sort of stacked trifle form instead of a rectangular pan. Also, this place pretty much rocks. I actually went there for the cupcakes, but when I saw them, I thought they didn't look as good as the banana cake with chocolate buttercream. Also, their banana pudding is simply overwhelming.

Then there's the novel.

In the last few days I've finally started re-reading and editing it. Good lord, it's terrible! I thought I would start the editing process by reading it once through and noting the parts that I thought were particularly strong--you know, as a morale booster. It turns out there are not many such parts. I was most dismayed to find that the parts I remembered most fondly are in fact among the dullest sections. I really need to tighten up my scene-by-scene writing. Apparently something is supposed to "happen" in every scene. Who writes these crazy rules anyway?

On the bright side, I now have a much clearer idea of the story's background, the important themes, and what's going on with the individual characters. I know the psychological process that they have to go through to get them from the beginning of the story to the end. I know (sort of) what they have at stake.

I've also decided to add another POV character: Midama, the Sacagawea figure (am I spelling that differently every time?). It turns out (wait for it!) that she's really a princess, and she needs our two Captains to break the curse that holds her betrothed, the rightful king, prisoner, so that the kingdom can thrive once more. I know that's not very original, but the whole point is that the Captains stumble into a fairytale, and fairytales, by their nature, are not very original. Anyway, I think it will be useful to have her point of view in play, so that the reader can know what's going on even when the captains don't. (Also more points of view means more words, and with the amount that I'll be cutting out, that's definitely a good thing).

Another thing that's coming to light in this reading is all the research that I need to do. What would be expected of an army officer on an expedition like this? What would the division of labor be like? What kind of Enlightenment-esque ideas might be floating around in Farrowell's brain? What would their boat be like? What kind of supplies would they have? What positions would the crew members hold, and what would their skills be? What would the expedition do if they needed to repair their boat? How often would they hunt and camp? And, the mother of all questions that plague the quest-writer: how many miles can they go in a day?

But perhaps the biggest question facing me is: where do I start? Should I write a detailed outline? Should I jump into some new prose and see where it takes me? Should I do the research? Should I write down a bunch of random factoids on index cards? Should I cross out everything I don't like in the first draft? Man, I just don't know.

Cold White Blanket

2009-12-20T21:34:00.005-05:00

It snowed here! This is my first snow since the year I lived in Yosemite. I like it, for now--I'm cozy and warm in my house, and everything is quiet and beautiful outside. I also spun and knitted myself a cowl.

The snow made for a good chance to see some pretty Christmas lights. One of the standard displays around here is this one. Instead of strings of lights, an electric candle is placed in each window. This looks great on old colonial-style houses with many small, uniform windows. The picture below shows a pretty one. There's also a guy in town who got some horrid dim bluish candles--the house looks more haunted than merry.

This is just a pretty one. Is it too arrogant of me to think this looks a bit like Magritte's Dominion of Light?

Or maybe it's just the lamppost.

Grand Finale, and a Holiday Treat

2009-12-17T11:42:00.004-05:00

I finished the novel today! The final wordcount for the first draft is 53,647. I wrote the big finish, but I really skimped on the denoument. I figure I'll come back and re-do it in the second draft when I have a better idea of what needs to be denoued. I'm pretty satisfied with the ending, though--to my surprise, I managed to come up with something that actually tied together many of the random events and characters from the rest of the book in a way that kind of makes sense. Now I just need to go back to the beginning and try to make the ending seem more inevitable. That should be fun. I might work on something else in the meantime, though.

For now, here's a recipe of mine that was discussed at length on Facebook today. It's an old family favorite, passed down from my grandma who probably got it out of a magazine in the fifties. This is the sort of dish that you either love or hate. Personally, I love it. Some say it tastes like toothpaste, but they are wrong. I'll give you the traditional version first, then the gourmet version after.

Candy-Cane Pie (aka Peppermint Pie)

Crust:

1 pkg (9 oz) Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers (could easily substitute chocolate graham crackers, Oreos, etc, but you want a fairly dark cocoa taste)
1/2 cup butter, melted

Crush the cookies using a hammer, rolling pin, or food processor. Mix with the melted butter and press into the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan.

Filling:

1 pint heavy whipping cream
12 candy canes, crushed
4 cups miniature marshmallows
1 cup pecans, broken up by hand

Whip the cream until quite stiff. Fold in the other ingredients.

Note: It's best if the candy canes aren't totally pulverized--it's nice to have some little crunchy bits in the finished product. Be sure to use red candy canes, or green candy canes, but don't use candy canes that are colored both red and green, as this will make an unpleasant brown color. You can also use starlight mints if you can't find good candy canes.

Spread the filling evenly over the crust. Refrigerate, preferably overnight.

I'll be straight with you--this makes a scary-looking dish. It's a delicate shade of pink, studded with little marshmallows. Some people might think they are too good for it. To make them feel better, I offer the following variation, which I haven't tried, but I'm sure it would be great.

Gourmet Candy-Cane Pie

As above, except halve the recipe for the filling. Instead of the 9x13 pan, use two nine-inch round pie pans. Press the crust in the bottom and up the sides of the pan, as if making a graham cracker crust. Chill the crusts until firm.

Meanwhile, prepare your favorite recipe for dark chocolate ganache. This normally involves bringing some cream to a boil, then stirring in quite a lot of high-quality dark chocolate. After the ganache cools slightly, spread a thin layer over the chilled crusts. Then fill the crusts with the peppermint filling. Then top each pie with about 1/4 inch of poured ganache. Chill. Garnish with a mint leaf.

Diversions

2009-12-14T20:01:00.003-05:00

OK, so now that NaNoWriMo is over, you may be wondering how I pass the time.

Well, I've been going places:

Knitting stuff (mostly socks):

And cooking:

Soon I'll get back to writing, but for now I'm enjoying the break.

My blog needs a new name. Any suggestions?

After

2009-12-03T15:38:00.003-05:00

Well, it was fun writing 50,000 words in 30 days, but now what? The glamour and companionship of NaNoWriMo is at an end.

I didn't write a word for the past two days. Instead, I mostly knitted. I also wasted ample time on the internet. Oh, and I also attended the local NaNoWriMo "TGIO" party at this crazy giant arcade-burger-palace called Dave and Busters. Once again it was a very small event, but pleasant enough.

Then today I felt like getting into it again. After all, I'm really supposed to be writing all the time, right? So today I wrote about 1900 words, and my guys are on the brink of the final bump in their adventure. I even kind of know what it's going to be. It's amazing how talking to Darling Man can get my stuck wheels turning--it only takes a second. A couple of weeks ago, I said to him, "what should happen to complicate my story?" And he, not knowing any details of the plot at that moment, said "doppelganger." It was perfect! A doppelganger was exactly what I needed. Then yesterday he asked me how the story was going to end. I sighed. I said I didn't know. I said that it was going to take place in the ruins of the royal city, and it should be an act of assimilation. Then I said "maybe I should have them wake up the king." That was literally the whole conversation, but, you know, I think that's exactly what's going to happen. They're going to wake up the king. The land is a wilderness because, in DM's words, "the king is not in session." Why didn't I see it before?

Today I also went to the library (I rode my bike there!) and got a couple of books. I got Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (her real name), which was recommended by the NaNoWriMo people, and I also got Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. No doubt you have heard of this one. I got it because someone told me that O'Brian deals well with having two heroes. I'm also curious to see how he manages the rest of the crew, since that has been a problem for me. Also, I guess some people apparently think this is a good book, or something.

Day 30: A winner is me!

2009-11-30T13:43:00.001-05:00

I hit 50,000 words today! Yes!

I still have to finsih the story, though. I think it will take about 5,000 more words, give or take.

Day 28: So close!

2009-11-28T21:58:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 46574
Minimum: 46548

Wow, the end is so close I can taste it! Or maybe that's the kale I had for dinner...but anyway.

Today I made the mistake of reading some novel-writing and -selling advice. Why do I do this? It nearly always makes me feel like I'm doing it wrong. Today's culprit was this description of the Snowflake Method, which I have heard a little about before. It actually sounds okay, and I have tried using some elements of it in the past, but on this particular day it kind of got me down to read about all this intense "planning" and "knowing-what's-going-to-happen" that some people apparently indulge in. Ah well. On with the show.

I also today picked names for all the surviving members of the expedition. As a little treat to myself, I used Tilden's "The Football Players" as inspiration for a few of the names. I googled the phrase "womble hopper hall" and found this nice little blog entry that helpfully lists the names found on the statue's plinth. It also exactly describes the charms of this particular inscription.

Although I've made my target, I'll be writing more tonight whilst Darling Man plays Ocarina of Time on the Wii. We're back home from the in-laws' house, but tomorrow we're going into NYC to have brunch and loiter in certain neighborhoods, with an eye toward their attractiveness as potential places to live. Sounds like a pretty busy day.

Day 25: Reunited

2009-11-25T14:42:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 43426
Minimum: 43100

We're at the in-laws' house for Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: I got my charger back! I'm writing on the MacBook once again. Ahh, feels so good.

When I got all my writing of the past week pasted back into the main document, I discovered I had more words than I thought! Score! I'm not one hundred percent sure how this happened, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'm delighted to get a little break during this busy time. Speaking of busy times, tomorrow is the one day this month I have officially set aside for not writing. Maybe I'll still write a tiny bit, but I bet not.

43,000 words! I can hardly believe it. If push came to shove, I could probably finish this off in a day! Looking at where the story is, though, it's going to take a lot more than 7,000 words to get to the end. Right now I'm struggling with the question of how/whether to incorporate the remaining troops into the rest of the story. On the final edit I think I may make the expeditionary party smaller from the beginning, and give more personal attention to each of the men. Right now they're just this big vague entity, "the men". I think I'm going to arbitrarily cut down the number for the rest of the story so that I can have a more coherent questing party.

I'm starting to feel that the story will end a bit differently than I originally thought. The plan all along has been to have the party get knocked off one by one, until at the end it's just the two main guys standing alone in a final, fatal situation. But it turns out I don't naturally go in that direction when given the choice. I like to see people succeed and feel happy. Maybe there's hope for this mission yet.

Day Twenty-Three: Thanks!

2009-11-23T22:53:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 40225
Minimum: 39652

Since Thanksgiving is coming up and I probably won't have a chance to update between now and then, I just want to send a big THANK YOU to all you have let me know that you're following along and rooting for me! It helps A LOT.

I went to a NaNoWriMo write-in this evening, about an hour west of where I live. Two other ladies showed up. One of them writes "for reals"--her NaNo of last year sold! It's a romance novel. I think the title is "Enchanted Cowboy"? She showed us the cover art on her phone. I would link to it, but her website has apparently exceeded its bandwidth.

Here's a concept: Networking. Apparently there is a big writers' conference near here in March. maybe I should go.

Day Twenty-Two: Vision

2009-11-22T18:41:00.001-05:00

Wordcount: 38430
Minimum: 37928

I can't believe we're heading into week four of NaNoWriMo! A month is really not that long a time. Oddly enough, it also now seems to me that 50,000 words is not that many words. Of the many things I'm learning from this exercise, perhaps the most worthwhile is simply this: I can actually do it. I can do it without that much agony.

Don't get me wrong--I have basically no other responsibilities right now, and that has certainly made it much, much easier. But I think that even with a busier life, I could do almost this much...maybe sometimes it would take me two days to do what I currently do in one, but if I wrote every day, it would still build up pretty fast. And since my life currently isn't busier, that probably means I should set a more ambitious goal for next time so I don't start wallowing in hubris.

Yesterday an interesting thing happened. I was just writing merrily along, describing how Captain Pitt was recovering from being hit on the head by a villager disguised as Captain Farrowell (long story). Captain Farrowell was looking at Captain Pitt and thinking, gosh, he's looking better but he's still pretty pale, and Captain Pitt was smiling wryly at something, when suddenly--forcefully--I saw Captain Pitt's face. Really saw it. Sure, I knew what he looked like before--eye color, hair color, approximate height and build--but I couldn't have picked him out in a crowd. Now I could. We're talking teeth-shape, eyelash color, adam' s apple, not just the color of his eyes but how big they are and how far apart. I now know exactly who I'm writing about. Then he called Captain Farrowell "Captain F", which I really hadn't planned.

This is a very good sign. This isn't the first time I've seen a character's face, but it's the first time in this project. Usually I don't get that level of sight unless I've spent a lot of hours daydreaming about a character that I really, really like. I take the fact that Captain Pitt has solidified in this way as a sign that this is really going somewhere, that he's responding well to my efforts to give him things to do and thoughts of his own. It's odd that Pitt came first, because, as I noted earlier, I've spilled a lot more ink over Farrowell, but in a way Pitt may actually be a more interesting character. Farrowell is a little more of a caricature right now. Sometimes his words sound to me like bad imitation Jane Austen. But having that mask to turn to has made him an easier character to write about. So, I suppose my work is not done where he's concerned.

In other news, Darling Man's computer won't boot. I had to write at the library today, which was good in a way, because there are no twisty-ties or spinny chairs or three-legged tin elephant piggy banks at the library. I just have to survive like this until we go back to the in-laws' house for Thanksgiving, and I can get my Macbook charger back.

Day Twenty: Yes!

2009-11-20T12:45:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 34765
Minimum: 34480

My story is really starting to cook, if I do say so myself! Yesterday and today's sessions have brought forth lots of great developments. For one thing, it turns out that the group of "natives" that my guys have been dealing with have an origin story of being expelled from a city as punishment for their religious practices. Is this a real city, or a metaphor for heaven? If it's real, does it still exist? Only time will tell! This information is interesting enough to give the expedition something to look for besides a way across the Nymean Tract, which was frankly a pretty boring goal. Also, Farrowell, Pitt, and Midama (the cagey Sacagawea figure) are now hopelessly separated from the troops and are going to have to thrash about on their own for a while, which is great because having thirty men in the background takes a lot of verbal maintenance and greatly inhibits the interactions of the MCs.

I was less distractable today. I was only distracted by food, tea, a Q-tip (clean one--did you know can spin string from the cotton on a Q-tip?), and a very large oak leaf that I noticed on the porch.

Seriously, it was a really big leaf.

See?

Day Nineteen: Home again.

2009-11-19T14:27:00.005-05:00

Wordcount: 33031
Minimum: 32756

Now that I'm home from my giant trip to Berkeley, writing seems surprisingly more difficult. Sure, I wrote over 3000 words yesterday, but that was to make up for my mishap of the day before, and I was propelled by urgency. Today the urgency was gone, and I sat at Darling Man's computer being distracted by every little thing. Here are some of the things that distracted me:

Food
The internet
Pair of binoculars
Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America
Three-legged tin elephant piggy bank
Laser pointer
The Goldberg Variations
Squeezie hand exerciser thing
Box set of His and Her Circumstances
Spinny chair
Twisty-tie

Yep...I'm home again.

Day 18: Disaster!!

2009-11-18T13:52:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 30182
Minimum: 31032

I'm not done writing for the day, but I wanted to give an update.

The last few days (days 14, 15, and 16) I have been on track with writing but have not been able to update this blog. In particular, day 15 I spent on planes and in airports, traveling back to Boston from Berkeley. Day 16 I spent kicking around in Boston and then driving to western MA to pick up my cat from my in-laws. (I got to walk down the Infinite Corridor at MIT--I was there once before in a text adventure!) So far, so good--plenty of time in transit means plenty of time to write!

Then, on Day 17, disaster struck! My computer hadn't charged up completely the night before, I think due to a problem with the electrical outlet, so I was only able to write about 600 words in the car. No big deal, I thought, I'll just write the rest when we get home. But then when I got home, I quickly realized that I had somehow failed to pack up my computer charger! Oh no! How am I supposed to work on my novel with no battery in my laptop? There was just enough juice left for me to send the file to myself on Gmail, but that was all. This made Day 17 my first day of sub-par wordcount. Total bummer.

But, it's not the end of the world. Darling Man got his cranky desktop computer working for me to use, and it turns out I can also get online at the library. Since the file is just in rtf format, and I've sent it to myself through gmail, I can easily just open it up on any computer using Google Docs. Consider this my plug for Google Docs--it saved my NaNo and my neck!

(On the downside, I'm finding Google Docs gets pretty bogged down with the large size of my file. Apparently 30,000 words is kind of a lot! I ended up starting a new document for the day's writing.)

Day 13: Nomadic Typist

2009-11-13T19:39:00.005-05:00

Wordcount: 22749
Minimum: 22412

Since I'm only visiting Berkeley and don't really have a home to call my own, I've been spending a lot of my time wandering around the town looking for places to write. In case you ever find yourself in this situation, here are my reviews of the local hangouts.

Bittersweet Cafe (on southern College Ave): Nice atmosphere and delicious snacks, but a little pricey. Also, with the limited seating, you can't really in good conscience hang around there for hours and hours working on your NaNo. The coffee is excellent...they don't serve Blue Bottle there anymore, but their new house brand is almost as nice. The real draw is the assortment of gourmet chocolate-based drinks.

Semifreddi's on Claremont: The music was too much in here. Oldies. I didn't write anything. Staff a little brusque. Good sandwich.

Doe Library (on campus, head upstairs to the reading rooms, no student ID necessary): Ample seating and ample electrical outlets. Beautiful space. Excellent for getting things done, because there is no internet access (unless you are unfortunate enough to be a student), no drinks, no snacks, no music, no talking...no anything really. Please note that if you have a Mac laptop, you should bring the extra extension cord, because there isn't room for the square white adaptor thing to plug in.

People's Cafe (Shattuck Square): Ample seating and ample outlets, no distracting music. Coffee is pretty bad, pastries are nothing special. Mysterious collection comic books (several file-boxes of them, probably hundreds of issues) in storage in the bathroom. Free internet.

Berkeley Espresso (Shattuck and Hearst): Get there in the slower hours to stake out a seat near an electric outlet. Tons of people bring their laptops here. The coffee is tolerable. Snacks are nothing special, although they do have some decadent cheesecake things and the variety is good. Tends to play inoffensive classical music. Good selection of tea. Can be a little noisy. Free internet.

Fertile Grounds (Shattuck at Delware): Great coffee (Illy Espresso). The pastries are nothing special, but the falafel pita is excellent. Cute dude works there. Seating is limited and a bit uncomfortable. Never noticed any music. Rotating art exhibits. The chairs tend to be a bit too hard for prolonged writing.

Village Grounds (across the street from fertile grounds, in the coffee pun district): Haven't had the coffee, but the mint tea is pretty good. Nice morning buns, ample outlets and seating. Drawback: classic rock station playing loudly. Free internet.

Cafe Strada (College and Bancroft): Run by Cafe Roma which also runs some other cafes in town. They make a gut-scouring cafe americano that I am pretty fond of. Some of their pastries are good, in particular the apple harvest cake. Indoor seating is very limited. You can usually get a seat outside, but there are no working electrical outlets (you will see outlets, but don't be fooled, they don't work). This is my favorite place to work on a nice day.

Mo'Joe (Sacramento and Dwight): This was the site of my failed NaNo write-in. To be fair, it was raining. They have some comfy chairs and outlets. The pastry I had was very mediocre...it was a pumpkin cheesecake tart with a white dome-shaped garnish on top. I thought the white thing would be white chocolate, but it had more the consistency of a flavorless milk-based gummi. Staff didn't know what some of the items in the pastry case were. On the bright side, they served me really nice herbal tea in a personal tea-pot, one of those glass ones with the built in press. That was nice.

Au Coquelet (University and Milvia): The big draw of this place is that they're open late. Watch out for crowds on Friday and Saturday nights--this is a big venue for after-parties, especially Gaskells. Decent beverages and seating, some outlets. Some good pastries (carrot cake) and some terrible ones (anything in a tart shell). Unlike other local cafes, this place has some wine and stuff on the menu.

Brewed Awakenings (Euclid and Hearst): Lots of seats, but this place is popular, so it can fill up. Good supply of electric outlets. I had a good pastry. Tea was average. Didn't try the coffee.

In writing news, we were sent a NaNo "pep talk" likening the middle of one's novel to the middle of Australia. I can dig that.

Day 12: Ho Hum

2009-11-13T02:57:00.001-05:00

Wordcount: 20946
Minimum: 20688

Not much else to say today. Things are moving along.

Day 11: Ups and Downs

2009-11-12T01:00:00.002-05:00

Wordcount: 19003
Minimum: 18964

I didn't post yesterday, but I was on target (wordcount 17279, minimum 17240).

Yesterday the writing passed with amazing ease; I think I broke 800 words per hour. My secret? More rehashing of the earlier plot via a discussion between characters! It wasn't even gratuitous. Today I had to actually move on to the next plot point, which was slower going, although still not bad.

I think I'm having trouble with the pacing in this story. Considering I'm writing it with so little planning, this is not altogether surprising. I feel like I put a big exciting event too early in the story, and now I have to keep topping it with more and more exciting things. The upshot of this is that the ideas I had for minor encounters are not getting used.

I'm encountering a rather odd problem with the story I have chosen. So much of the magical nature of the fairytale landscape depends on the sentience of things: deer, birds, trees, fish, the wind. I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with encounters that don't involve something unexpectedly talking to my adventurers. In this environment, it rapidly becomes unbelievable that they would not simply start expecting plants and animals to talk to them. I haven't really come up with any other sorts of encounters other than dangerous beasts (which I am saving for later), and of course meeting native "tribes". What else can I include to show the fantastic nature of the landscape?

The natives are causing me a different problem. I wanted them to have kind of the feel of Tolkienian elves, except more hostile and dangerous (or at least unpredictable and alien). I've also been reluctant to make them too culturally advanced--they are still pretty primitive. So the problem with all this is that they are looking more and more like a thinly veiled (and somewhat offensive) representation of Native Americans. It turns out that if you keep nature-focused mysticism, and subtract the trappings of civilization, you end up with Noble Savages. Plus they're white. This isn't the direction I intended to go at all. I think I will need to re-write these encounters extensively.

Writing the blog entry has actually given me some ideas. I had so far been thinking of the Nymean Wilds as essentially a wilderness, inhabited only by "primitive" peoples. Maybe the fantasy element would actually come through stronger if there are cities and towers and libraries and so on. That would certainly be a shock to my explorers!

Day Nine: Productive Rehash

2009-11-10T02:45:00.005-05:00

Wordcount: 15522
Minimum: 15516

In today's story, Pitt and Farrowell continue their conversation. This ended up being pretty much just a rehash of the plot so far, in the characters' own words. This was both revealing of character, and very easy to write! I think the character development side of things should get easier after this. Also, I now feel like there is sufficient padding since the last big event that I can move on to the next big event. This is good.

In other news, I went out for dinner and drinks tonight with the coworkers I left behind in San Francisco. They are so great. We ate at a place called The Monk's Kettle, which has a simply bewildering array of beers available. I had a lamb burger, which was pretty good, though not excellent. I tried to have a blackcurrant cider, but they were out, so I had a fancy hefeweizen instead. Viva la chick beers. Anyway, it was awesome to hang out with that crew. Among them was Case, who is also, he says, doing NaNo, although his wordcount is sadly lagging. Get on it, Case-man!

Day Eight: Rounding Out

2009-11-09T02:29:00.004-05:00

Wordcount: 13900
Minimum: 13792

Okay. Writing today's words took me a long darn time. On the bright side, though, I think the writing is getting smoother. I found that, quite without meaning to, I had written my two captains into a situation where they were soaked and freezing and needed to take off their wet clothes and go to bed in their tent. Usually this type of situation can only go in one direction, but I resisted, and they ended up talking to each other instead. This was good! I've been having some trouble developing the captains as characters, and I've especially been having trouble with the relationship between them. Locking them in a tent together with nowhere to go turned out to be a good way to deal with this problem. The only problem here was that I had to think up names of cities for them to say they came from...always a time-consuming prospect.

One challenge of the story I have chosen is that there are two main characters: Captain Farrowell and Captain Pitt. (Farrowell is inspired by Meriwether Lewis, and Pitt is inspired by William Clark.) It's difficult to provide a balance between the two characters, and to know when to switch from one point of view to the other. So far, I don't think they've really been working as a team; when you look through Farrowell's eyes, it's like Pitt isn't even there, and vice versa. On top of that, I haven't thought about Pitt's background much yet, so I tend not to write from his POV as much. The result is that there is some risk of Farrowell being the hero, with Pitt as a sidekick. I need to come up with some special adventures for Pitt so that he can come into his own. The benefit of little conversation I wrote today is that it opens the door for more development of the characters' individual backgrounds. In the final draft, all of this should probably come earlier, but for now, it's something I just need to get out of the way in order to move forward with confidence.

Day Seven: The Skin of my Teeth

2009-11-07T22:56:00.002-05:00

Wordcount: 1268
Minimum: 1268

Oh my. Today was not a good day for writing. I severely underslept last night (certainly not the fault of my gracious hosts--I should have gotten up to pee, there's really no way around it). All I could do was stare at the screen. Today was also a busy day of flitting from place to place in Berkeley and meeting up with friends, so finding a coherent block of writing time was tough. But there's really no excuse--I did sit in a cafe for three straight hours. Nonetheless, when I got to the minimum wordcount, I stopped in the middle of a sentence, not knowing how it was going to end.

I don't think it's totally coincidental that this comes after a couple days of the writing going well. For the last few days I've had a strong vision of the scene I was working towards. Now that that scene is over, my life feels empty somehow, devoid of purpose. Well, not my life, only my novel. I do have more ideas for scenes I'm looking forward to writing, but now I'm back on the long slow path building toward them. I spent much of today looking for things to write about that would get me some wordcount without having to really know what's going to happen next--Captain Pitt had a dream. Maybe it was prophetic--who knows! Then the ship got caught in a big storm. Lots of action, not much plot.

Day Six: Goofing Off

2009-11-07T01:24:00.004-05:00

Wordcount: 10535
Minimum: 10344

There was a NaNoWriMo meetup this afternoon in Berkeley. I went, but only one person showed up! Perhaps due to this rather weak showing, I was not very motivated. I made my minimum, but I wrote less than on previous days, so my cushion has shrunk quite a bit. Lame. At least I broke 10,000.

Day Five: Go Speed Racer

2009-11-06T03:42:00.005-05:00

Wordcount: 9458
Minimum target: 8620

Today I had only a brief window of time available for writing. In the morning AJ and I had coffee at Bittersweet Cafe with our friend Angie. Then we met up with our friend Ariana at Earth Island Institute, where she works, and had lunch at Cancun. By that time it was 2:00, and I had plans to meet a friend in SF at 5:30, so I was a bit worried about meeting my wordcount target for the day.

Oddly enough, I not only met the target, I exceeded it by quite a bit! Since I had a cushion of about 600 words from yesterday, I only needed about 1100 today. But I managed almost 2000! Could it be that pressure makes a difference? Could it be that I'm a more efficient writer when I'm not relaxing at home? Hmm, food for thought.

To track my NaNo work, I'm using a spreadsheet template from Huckleberry Hax. It's nothing too fancy--it lists the wordcount target for each day. When you enter your actual wordcount, it calculates how many words you wrote that day, credit/debit against the minimum, percentage of 50,000, and average words per day. It's nice. It also has some color coding for the different weeks! Today I added columns to track the hours I spend writing and count average words per hour. This information should help me set reasonable goals for myself in the future. Today I increased my "credit" from 614 to 838! Yeah!

In other news, I saw Where the Wild Things Are tonight. I wasn't crazy about it.

Day Four: Learning Curve

2009-11-04T19:13:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 7512 (and counting)
Target: 6896

I'm in Berkeley now. After a delicious "waffle special" at Fatapple's, I spent the morning writing in the North Reading Room of Doe Library. The North Reading Room is so lovely--why didn't I spend more time there as a student? It's a high, vaulted room lit by ample windows and skylights. The reading tables are beautiful old oaken monstrosities, with chairs to match, and on each table are several foliate brass reading lamps, each with electrical outlets built into its base. Now I'm in a cafe with a couple of medievalists, hard at work. Well, I'm mostly hard at work, but now that I've made today's wordcount (with some words to spare, thank you), I feel justified in cruising the NaNo forums a bit, and of course posting here, which is for some reason much easier than writing a novel.

For today's featured topic, I'd like to talk about my difficulties. What's so hard about writing a novel? I can only answer for myself, but here are a couple of problems that I'm struggling with:

First and foremost, there is the obvious problem of plot. Thinking ahead, building up the path that moves the narrative logically yet suspensefully from introduction to climax, is difficult. I'm not saying this doesn't get easier with practice, but it is hard work. It just is. And when this isn't working, it creates the most difficult kind of block to work past. It makes it very hard to say anything at all.

Then there's the problem of managing dialogue. My biggest problem with dialogue is making it serve the rest of the story. My characters start talking to each other, and before you know it I find that I've forgotten where this little speech was going. Or, worse, they've said what needed to be said, but now they're trapped in a conversation that has to come to a natural end. In real life, conversations go on. There are few situations in which a conversation between normal people ends with, "well, that's all I needed to say. Goodbye." But in a story, you can't just let them stand there telling each other about what's going on with them. You have to come up with interruptions so that they can shut up and you can get on with the story.

These aren't my only problems by a long shot, but they are the only ones I have time to talk about right now. One of my guys has just done a very stupid thing, and they are about to get in really big trouble.

Words on the move

2009-11-04T02:27:00.002-05:00

Wordcount: 5788

This is a healthy 616 words above the minimum.

We flew to CA from NY today. I wrote on the plane and in the airport and on BART.

My metabolism thinks it's 3 am right now. Good night.

Day Two: No time for writing!

2009-11-02T15:11:00.005-05:00

Wordcount: 3456

Today's wordcount is just barely above the bare minimum of 3448. AJ and I are packing to go to Berkeley for two weeks, and there is much to do. My captains have just had their first uncanny encounter, but they don't yet realize how deep in trouble they are about to get.

I've settled on a name for the book, at least as a working title. It's called The Nymean Corps (rhymes with Crimean War, I suppose). I usually don't title anything I've written until it's complete, but there are certain incentives in this case. A New York design firm called Fwis will be selecting 30 NaNo novels over the course of the month to have cover art designed for them. The books are selected based on their titles and synopses, so I figured I had better get these fields filled in if I wanted to be considered. My original working title was The Journals of Farrowell and Pitt, which I like for its clear parallel with The Journals of Lewis and Clark, but I don't think it's really catchy enough. The phrase "Nymean Corps" was inspired by the name "Corps of Discovery" which was applied to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Here's the synopsis I'm using right now (from my first draft of the prologue of the novel):

As the reader is no doubt aware, the ill-fated expedition of Farrowell and Pitt is today considered one of the greatest debacles of Kortland's colonial period. Communications from the expedition slowed, then ceased over a period of just a few months. The two captains never returned from their harrowing adventure, and those few members of the expedition that did reappear remembered nothing of the experience, or were incapable of coherent speech until their deaths. Recently, thanks to better equipped expeditions via lighter-than-air craft, a significant expanse of the area now known as the Nymean Wilds has been explored, and the records of the original expedition have been recovered.

What follows is an account of the expedition gleaned from these records, including a collection of excerpts from the personal journals of Captains Farrowell and Pitt. For the complete journals, as well as other records of the expedition, the interested reader is directed to the collection of the Colonial Museum, High Street, Wallingsgate.

What do you think? Do you prefer this version of the synopsis, or do you like the summary in my last blog post better?

I'm also adding a link to my NaNo author info in the sidebar.

Kick-off Party, and What My Book is About

2009-11-01T17:26:00.003-05:00

Wordcount: 1905

I wrote about 600 words before bed last night, and the rest of them today in the morning and early afternoon. At 2:00, I realized that I was supposed to be at the Long Island regional kick-off party, so I dropped everything and went down to John Harvard's Brew Pub on route 347, near the strip mall and the real mall in Lake Grove. The party was fun--about ten other people showed up--mostly women, varied in age. I had a good time with them, sensing the kind of tribal kinship with them that has been lacking with most other Long Islanders I have met so far. I was given a goodie-bag containing two corks ("one to uncork your imagination and the other to cork securely your inner editor"), some marbles ("because if you are writing 50K words in a month you probably lost a few"), and Christmas-themed rubber duck (I didn't really get the reasoning behind the rubber duck, to be honest). There were also two fun pencils and a couple of NaNoWriMo stickers. A success all round.

As today's blog feature, I thought you might like to know what I'm writing about. The story was inspired by the journals of Lewis and Clark. Some of you have heard me rant about this before. Lewis and Clark were a pair of enlightenment gentlemen sent to find a track through the trackless wilderness of the Louisiana Purchase. They encountered the primeval American landscape in all its unspoiled beauty, and saw it all through the eyes of their culture. When they discovered a new kind of animal, they shot it. When they discovered a beautiful waterfall, they named it after the President, or after one of their lady friends back home. When the native tribes told them that grizzly bears were dangerous and difficult to kill, they scoffed, until the day when they actually encountered one and couldn't stop it with bullets. In short, they behaved like the thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant Europeans they were. (I'm not saying they were bad people--they were simply a part of the culture that made them.)

Now imagine that, instead of the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark were sent to explore the landscape of fairytales. Imagine that the wildlife is sentient, or protected by beings with the powers of demigods. Imagine that the native tribes can express their displeasure through enchantments and potent curses. Imagine that, instead of grizzlies, there are dragons. Imagine that Sacagawea is a capricious sprite with no sense of fair play. Imagine that winter is not a season, which passes, but a country, which must be passed through. That's the story I'm writing.

I won't be using the names of Lewis and Clark, but I will be relying heavily on them for inspiration. Reading the journals, one comes to think of Lewis as an erudite gentleman, enthralled with the new school of scientific thought. Clark is more a doer than a thinker, writing tersely where Lewis' prose is florid. I'll be playing with that dichotomy of character, and I'll be trying to evoke the atmosphere of Enlightment scientific endeavor. I decided not use the real Lewis and Clark, and the real America, for the simple reason that I don't think the creatures and tropes I'll be playing with belong to the American landscape. I'm not prepared (at least not for NaNoWriMo) to do justice to Native American mythoi, so, we'll be in more of a Brothers Grimm universe.

Enough about that...I could have spent this whole time writing!

Kicking off NaNoWriMo

2009-10-31T23:41:00.002-04:00

In just eighteen minutes, it will be November 1st in my time zone. When that happens, I'll be allowed to start writing the 50,000 words required to win National Novel Writing Month. People call it NaNo for short, but the smallness implied by this abbreviation is at odds with actual hugeness of the task. To get this done, I will need to write an average of 1,724 words every day, not including Thanksgiving Day. If I don't end up with any plans for Thanksgiving, then I'll be giving thanks for some extra time to spend on my novel.

Will this task be difficult? I'm not sure. I know that I can easily write a couple thousand words in just a few hours when I'm inspired. The challenge will be to stay inspired, or, failing that, to write even when I'm not inspired. NaNo guides are full of advice about how to shut off your "inner editor" and just write. Sometimes I can do that...sometimes I can't. One thing that should make it easier is that I've chosen for NaNo a story idea which I cherish somewhat less than The Novel that I have been wrestling with moths or years, depending on how you count. Working on the less developed idea will, I hope, give me freedom to write without worrying about about such trifling matters as originality, plausibility, etc.

Why am I doing this? Mostly, it's to see if I can. If I can do this, I'm hoping the memory of it will buoy me up when I start to wonder if writing is really something I should be pursuing at all. I also hope that thirty days of living with intensive writing as my first priority will jog me into a routine or ritual that I can come back to for my next writing project. If I should happen to get the beginnings of a publishable novel out of this exercise, that also would be nice.

Why am I blogging about it? A few reasons. I've wanted to start a blog for some time, and this seemed as good a milestone as any for the inaugural post. More than that, though, I want to harness the power of peer pressure to keep me on track during NaNoWriMo. Please follow this blog. I will be posting my daily wordcount here. If you notice that I'm falling behind, I invite you pester me via comment, phone, email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, Wave, or whatever way you have of reaching me. Even if you don't, knowing that you're watching will help keep me going.

Two minutes to go...