NaNo 2015: The Power of Intention

Over five years ago, a friend and I came up with a list of twenty wishes and then we made dream sheets for each wish.  When my beautiful 20 foot 1963 Avion office trailer was delivered in September, I checked item #15 off that list.  I pulled the little dream notebook I'd made out and moved that decorated page to done.  I still have those things I can't control in my notebook--getting my novel published is one of those things and I've decided that two of the things on that list don't really matter to me in the same way now, so I'm letting them go.  

But just a little over five years ago, I set some powerful intentions. I've made most of them (call me Fairy Godmother if you will) come true for myself.  

I've finished yoga teacher training. I've competed in road races. I've backpacked for miles and miles.  I've also written hundreds of poems (and published quite a few), finished three novels, a poetic memoir, and two self-help/memoir books that are uncategorizable.  I've done a lot of other things, too.  

And I have my beautiful trailer all ready in my backyard to give me solitude, a large second screen for writing, and a hot pot for making tea and coffee.  

The woman I was is envious of the woman I am now (especially the trailer part--over twenty years in the dreaming, squeal).  I still have a lot of work to do, but those things that I set out to do with intention and dedication, I've done. 

Now, I'm ready to check another thing off.  The novel I'm writing this November isn't on my list, but it's another step towards that published book.  I'm still headed towards some of those other goals, and I've let go of one or two of them and replaced them with other things. I'm still dreaming.

So, what do you intend.  Will you let yourself picture that little bar at the bottom of the word processor that says you've written 50,000 words?  Will you give yourself the time to meet your intentions?  Will you join me in making (y)our own wishes and dreams come true? 

 I intend to finish this novel, though I don't quite feel ready to begin it. I hope you'll join me. 

Plotter/Pantser/Writer

In the back of The Shepherd's Crown, I found an interesting bit about who Pratchett wrote, so I've been exploring this a little further today and found this interesting interview. In case you think he's a total pantser, in other interviews he talks about how those first 15-20,000 words are the pivotal scenes in the story and that he then goes back and fills in. Oh, and as someone who loves to work with wood, the Carpentry School of Writing works for me. 

Q: I'd like to talk a bit about the practical side of being a writer. You've said you are from the Carpentry School of Writing. And you think it's very important that writers work on their craft. Could you expand on that a bit? 

Terry Pratchett: Okay. I have to say that I change the metaphor about once a week. But it may help if I give you an idea of how I go about writing. 

I'm about 10,000 words into my next book. Do I know what it is about? Yes, I do know what it is about, it's just that I'm not telling myself. I can see bits of the story and I know the story is there. This is what I call draft zero. This is private. No one ever, ever gets to see draft zero. This is the draft that you write to tell yourself what the story is. Someone asked me recently how to guard against writing on auto-pilot. I responded that writing on auto-pilot is very, very important! I sit there and I bash the stuff out. I don't edit -- I let it flow. The important thing is that the next day I sit down and edit like crazy. But for the first month or so of writing a book I try to get the creative side of the mind to get it down there on the page. Later on I get the analytical side to come along and chop the work into decent lengths, edit it and knock it into the right kind of shape. Everyone finds their own way of doing things. I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree. At this stage in the book, I know a little about how I want to start. I know some of the things that I want to do on the way. I think I know how I want it to end. This is enough. The thing now is to get as much down as possible. If necessary, I will write the ending fairly early on in the process. Now that ending may not turn out to be the real ending by the time that I have finished. But I will write down now what I think the conclusion of the book is going to be. It's all a technique, not to get over writer's block, but to get 15,000 or 20,000 words of text under my belt. When you've got that text down, then you can work on it. Then you start giving yourself ideas. 

From an interview with Terry Pratchett from April 2000. http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/apr00/a-conversation-with-terry-pratchett-4001

"NaNo's coming soon.  I'm starting to think about it," my faithful, trusty, six-year, started-in-NaNo writing partner replied. Of course, Sarah from Headquarters has been in touch, and I woke up this morning thinking about my project for this year.  But having someone else say to me, "It's almost NaNo" made it real in a way that emails and morning thoughts hasn't. 

This morning at 7 AM  I settled into my hard chair at my local coffee shop for my regular Sunday writing date.  I asked our usual question: What are you working on today?

"NaNo's coming soon.  I'm starting to think about it," my faithful, trusty, six-year, started-in-NaNo writing partner replied.

I didn't say it, but I thought, "Eek."

Of course, Sarah from Headquarters has been in touch, and I woke up this morning thinking about my project for this year.  But having someone else say to me, "It's almost NaNo" made it real in a way that emails and morning thoughts hasn't.  It's almost November.  

To be fair, not really.  There are nearly two months left.  But it is time to decide which project I'll work on--Medieval mystery or the third book in the Knowing series.  And once I've decided, I'll need to start planning.  I'm a planster (planner + pantser).  I make some plans but don't marry them. My project can develop with a clear outline, but I can diverge from that outline where I need to.  

And I need to start living in that world, or at least be ready to live in that world.  If I choose to do the third of my Knowing series, then this October would be a good time to work some more on the Seeing revisions.  If I choose to live in Medival France, then October will be full of translations and research.  Even when I approached my novels by the seat of my pants, I needed this immersion before November to help get me ready to dive right into 1667 words a day.  So, it's time to think about making some decisions.  

I have a lot to keep me busy.  But I'll set the pot full of ideas on that back burner and turn the gas on low so that it can start to bubble away.  

What are you doing to get ready?  What can we here as your MLs or on the NaNoWriMo site do to help. 

See you in November.

Writer’s Tips from the 30A Songwriter Festival

Ahh, I just got back from a beautiful five days in south Walton County, Florida.  My toes still have sand between them.

I went to research the setting of my draft novel Blown Away. And Jason Isbell, Graham Nash and many more amazing songwriters were scheduled to perform at the 30A festival.  Since the panhandle of Florida is where I grew up,  I decided it was time for a visit. 

I’m so glad I went.  I compiled some great notes. I saw old friends. My traveling companion was amazing, and the music was inspiring.

As I thought about the advice the performers shared with fellow songwriters, I realized it was great writing advice, no matter the genre.  I’ll share some of it here.

Jason Isbell shared the funniest writing advice.   At 21, when he started writing songs, not much had happened to him. He said that instead of writing about his life, he wrote about the lives of family members who had pulled him aside at reunions and told him stories with the caveat that he should never tell anyone. Isbell’s songs--dramatic monologues in the voices of the deep south--are a testament to the success of his advice to write other people’s stories when your own aren’t interesting enough.

The Grahams, a husband-wife duo out of Nashville, shared inadvertent writing advice during their set when they talked about the genesis of their last two albums.  Last year, the Grahams spent time travelling the Mississippi, living part of the time on a houseboat and listening to the stories of locals up and down the river.  Their album Riverman’s Daughter was culled from those travels.  This year, they're headed out on the rails. Their nomadic nature appeals to me, and their songs are beautiful. Using locations and faces as inspiration for songs, poems, and stories is great writing advice, you can find more discussion of using places as inspiration in Richard Hugo's brilliant book of essays The Triggering Town.

Graham Nash’s set was full of great writing inspiration.  Unlike Isbell and The Grahams, Nash’s songs come from small everyday moments of intense attention—whether that small moment is a bet with someone about writing a song before he leaves or shopping for a vase with Joni Mitchell. Nash’s songs crystalize the everyday into moments of beauty. 

Though it could be taken as pedantic in the worst way, the artwork at the top of the post also contains good advice, especially since the genre fiction I’m working on has very particular sets of expections or “wants” from publishers and readers.  I’d like to remember to tell true, authentic stories that will meet my reader’s need instead of writing stories based on formulas and perceived expectations.

I think my one-off book set in Grayton Beach is about to become a series. That way I'll have a reason to travel to NW Florida every year for inspiration at the 30A Songwriter's Festival. 

NaNoWriMo: How to Win

Being one of the last kids picked for kickball in elementary school still looms large in my psyche, so this notion of winning makes me a little uncomfortable.

I know you won’t be able to get the winner’s badge for your social media feeds if you haven’t written 50,000 words, but I believe that there are more ways to win NaNo than by reaching 50,000 words in November. 

If you’ve written this month, you’ve won. You’ve written more words than you might have otherwise, even if you haven’t met the 50,000 goal. You sat down and you wrote, even while life tried to pull you away.  Maybe you wrote a little every day, maybe you sat down for a few marathon sessions.  Doesn’t matter.  You started to build some BIC (butt in chair) practice. 

If you’ve made time for writing in your life, you’ve won. You’ve started a writing habit.  The habit might be a few hundred words every day or 5,000 words every weekend.  Either way, it’s those habits that make successful writers.  I didn’t take that writing habit into the rest of the year until after my third NaNo win, but each NaNo that came before allowed me to practice until it stuck.

If you’ve met other writers, you’ve won.  Maybe you’ve only met them online, but you’ve become aware of other people, not too different from you, who make time for what matters.  My writing tribe sustains me through NaNo and beyond. Many of them I met with just to write, but our relationships have blossomed into the most beautiful friendships of my life.  They write, so it encourages me to write.  After the first year of NaNo write-ins informally organized in Yellow Springs four years ago, one writer friend and I continued to write once a week.  We’ve continued that practice and invited more writers to share it, throughout the last four years. 

You’ve made some time, maybe a little, maybe a lot, for your dreams.  Perhaps that’s the biggest win of all, creating a little space, a little opening for what you really want to do.  You wanted to write a novel, you made time for it, and whether you’ve hit 8,000 words or 80,000, that space you’ve made can be nourished so that there is room in your life every day, all year long, for what you most want. 

Keep dreaming, keep winning, and keep in touch.  I’ll be cheering for you!

In Praise of Duotrope

My writer friends have been singing the praises of Duotrope for over a year, but I resisted.  I wasn't sending enough work out to make it useful.  It was an unneeded expense ($5 a month), and I can't even remember what other excuses I made.

But as part of my impossible things year, I decided to send my work out more often.  My old index card system of tracking poems as I sent them out seemed a little outdated, so I looked at Duotrope again.  Then my friend Becky told me that when she got work back rejected, she immediately sent it out to two more places.  Rejected again? She sent it to three.

That sounded like a great idea, and a good reason to sign up for this list of over 5,000 markets for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.  So, sign up I did.

And I'm so thankful.  It does make it easier to turn the work right around.  I have a list of favorite markets I'd like to send to, so when a poem that I'm sure is ready for printing gets rejected, I go to my favorites and send it out again, on the same day!

This morning I discovered an even better reason to love Duotrope.  On your home screen, it lists your average acceptance rate (don't know why I just noticed it today).  One rejection can send me reeling in self doubt, that's why the quick turnaround works for me.  But this is pretty sweet, too.  No way to let the negative bias take over when the statistics say this.

The $5 a month is money well spent.  Thanks Becky, thanks Lara and Debra, thanks Duotrope.

www.duotrope.com

No Way Out but Through

It must  be the beginning of week two because all day on this marathon-writing day (since I’m on a plane today for over twenty hours, it seemed a perfect plan), I’ve been battling the persistent idea that this book is stupid. My plot is stupid and slow. I’m not raising the stakes fast enough.  The characters are weak.  My writing sucks.

Ah, week two.  Since the very first time I tried NaNo and gave up during week two, this week has plagued me. That’s part of the reason I wanted to have a marathon write today, to try to kck through to the middle of the novel when it gets fun again.

I should have known that even a marathon writing day wouldn’t be able to combat the week two blues. 

If I hadn’t read Christ Baty’s No Plot, No Problem before my second try at NaNoWriMo, I fear my second try would have gone the same as the first, incomplete.  And I wouldn’t be here with you today. But Baty talks about week two and writing through.  Every year, week two has brought with it a crisis of confidence, a crisis of plot. 

Now, if you’re sailing through week two, great.  Ignore me.  But if you’ve started to tell yourself your idea is stupid.  If you’ve been tempted (and I’ve seen you on Facebook ;-)) to get rid of the beginning of your novel and start again., please take my word for it. It’s not you, it’s week two. 

So how do you get around this.

1. You write anyway.  Don’t delete anything. Don’t start over.  Remember, “The first draft of anything is [poop]

.” Hemingway said it, so it must be true.  Let  your first draft be a draft, a sad, sucky, plot-hole-ridden draft.  As Katrina Kittle says, “You can’t revise what you haven’t written,” and all stories of genius writers to the contrary, everyone revises.

2.  Show up to write-ins, virtual and in-person, and let the energy of the group carry you along.  Ignore the voice in the back of your mind that tells you that you are the only one writing a terrible book.  We’re all writing terrible books. It will take work to make them wonderful, but we’ll do that work--in January, maybe in February, maybe next summer, maybe in three years.  You are not unique in your suckitude, you are just like everyone else, writing an awful first draft.  (See 1 above.)

3.  If rereading your work brings up the desire to edit, stop rereading your work.  You need to shut that editor up.  One way to do that is to refuse to give him (or her) anything to do.

4.  Be kind to yourself.  How many words have you written so far—5,000, 10,000, 15,000.  Pat yourself on the back.  No one needs to know how awful those words are. Besides, people have made millions of dollars off awful writing.  Read the first pages of a blockbuster erotic tale recently made into a movie, and you’ll see what I mean.  You set a goal, you’re working on it, give yourself some love.  Take yourself to a movie, buy yourself a new book, go to Ghostlight Coffee in Dayton and buy a grapefruit-rosemary Italian soda and a Harvest Moon Twinkie and celebrate the fact that you had the courage to start.  That feeds the courage to continue.

5.  Whine on the boards.  Not too much, not to often, but whine a little and see how many other people join in.  Week two is tough.  I’m here to tell you though, that once you make it through week two it starts to feel better.  No, you aren’t suddenly convinced that your writing is brilliant and you should send it straight to the best editor in the business once December 1strolls around.  It isn’t; don’t. But you are convinced that you can finish this first draft. 

There’s lots of other advice out there on how to make it through week two.  Take fifteen minutes, look at the advice, then turn off the internet, set a timer for 45 minutes, and just write. Let your story take you on its ridiculous, lame, merry way. Take the next step, write the next 1,667 words.  Write through the doldrums.  Next week, the wind will pick up to blow you through the last two weeks and to victory.