Tell Them What They've Won...

So, I got to validate my "win" on Nanowrimo. And I won my first Nanowrimo!
Aside from having the novel, I do feel a greater degree of comfort in knowing that I can write fiction and do a decent job of it, a job that "would not make someone vomit" to quote Nanowrimo creator Chris Baty. And then some. I think that the prose I have written would actually be salvageable in some form, if I chose to do so.

In the mean time, I am determined to not let the new-found confidence erode. If I keep writing, I should improve? Right?

I don't know. I think of writing in terms of jogging. When I had a healthy (5 miles, 4x/week) exercise routine, I felt brilliant. Never mind the 8-10 minute times I think I was putting up. I was no athlete compared to Olympic runners or even compared to the H.S. track kid I tutored (according to him). But I was doing it.

Persistence may never turn me into a Faulkner, but it will, I am confident, pay off. If I get better at writing and have fun doing it, I win. If I get published, I win bigger. If, by some slim chance, I evidence a degree of mastery, I win bigger still.

In any case, I am glad I participated. That will be enough for now.

The Next Thing

I have already started working. For this story--I intend it to be a short story--I will be outlining more, planning more. I want to know who the people are who have arrived on my frozen little world, and why. More importantly, I want to discover from this information what sort of conflict they will experience, and whether it will be of their own making or caused by something else. Anyway, while this completed novel cools, I find myself inspired to keep writing, in the vague hope that practice makes , if not perfect, then better.

The End

Today at around 4:30, if memory serves, I hit 50,020 words and wrote the last sentence of my first draft of "Nine-Pins."

I have realized a while ago that the title of my novel has grown increasingly inadequate, since the image of the game has nothing to do with the novel any longer. I have left it alone, for now, because it is the flag under which I set sail, and I would hate to change colors at the last minute.

I made a 9000 or so word push to the finish today. I felt the need to finish. I had an ending in mind, and the aftermath of that ending made the last 2000-3000 words of the book.

As to whether the experience has been satisfying, I have to answer 'yes.' Learning how to sustain a novel over ninety-one pages and remember to incorporate at least something of who the characters are, who they were, where they are physically (i.e. the setting) and internally, is a dynamic undertaking.

Some of this tale, I tried to plot out in advance. I have to confess I did not look much at that outline after writing the first few days. After the first week, I set the novel outline aside, and hit a second and third week where I had to figure out who these people really are. The mess of a situation that I had thought of for my characters only carried me through the first week.

That week was largely automatic, pre-programmed, and necessary to establish what had happened. When my characters had long dialogues about what they were doing, or long internal monologues about what to do next, I realized that I was discovery writing and that I would have to heavily edit the middle section of my book as a result.

I was listening to the characters, not in some odd way where I actually believed that my characters were real, but in the sense that I was listening to what I had to say about who they were, what they wanted, what they would and would not do.

My friend pointed out that the characters do whatever I want them to do. That, I believe, was the problem that occupied me for the better part of the first two and a half weeks. It helped me immensely to let the characters discuss with each other what they knew, what they thought about that information, and what they planned to do about it. Otherwise, the possibilities were literally endless. I had to decide who these people were.

A large part of that was making them do things, I suppose, but it was a balance between moving the plot and characters in a direction and letting them move around and try to figure out what they were doing.

In any case, some surprises came out of the writing process, but these surprises also fit the book well. Even the ending of the book, where one of the characters is celebrating a birthday caught me off-guard, but fit with the ending I had planned. Because I had devised an idea of where I wanted to end up, my writing did the rest. I found ways to arrive there, even though the ways were not the ways I had originally planned.

I had latitude within a bigger structure to move around and arrive where I needed to.

Yesterday, on the eve of finishing, I realized how I would miss the process of writing, and how I wanted to continue it. Now, after having written over 9000 words today, I think I will step away from the keyboard for a few days.

However, like with practicing a musical instrument, a sport, or any other skilled activity, I do not want to stay away too long for fear of losing touch, getting out of practice. I do not want to return to this current novel right away.

I think moving to something radically different will allow my mind to decompress, to invent different characters.

The dark side of finishing today was the concept of word wars. I did want to race my friends to the finish, but not in an ugly way. We declared a sort of understanding that the competition was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I have a cool, if scattered, writing group.

Thanks to my two active friends. I would not have finished without a lot of encouragement and advice about what works for them.

I'll be back to this blog on a weekly basis, if anyone is reading it. It helps to think about what I did and am doing while writing.

This is a log of that.

Anyway, signing off. Thanks for reading.

Asking Intelligent Questions

I have read in numerous books about strategies for character behavior.

James Frey suggests making a list of possible behaviors that characters could take when faced with any given dilemma.

Noah Lukeman writes about writing down situations that would set a character up for a "peak" situation or a really negative experience.

The folks at "Writing Excuses" most recently discuss where authors get their ideas, proposing that asking the right questions about fiction.

As a teacher, I teach students strategies for reading, specifically what sort of questions they should be asking about what they are reading. I find that my questions as an experienced reader are fundamentally different than the questions my students ask.

Every author I have encountered who dispenses writing advice says to read voluminously.

I have heard from some NaNoWriMo friends that they do not know how to get their story where they want it to go or that the story has veered off in a direction different from what they expected, perhaps even different from what they had hoped. I am confident they will keep on track.

If I can play diagnostician of my NaNo experience so far, I have had trouble identifying exactly who my characters are. If I knew this more precisely, I would know what was within the characters' range of possible behaviors that they might to. Because I am still discovering who these people I have brought to the page are, I am not sure what they are capable of. Could she run a marathon, could he bring himself to quit his job, and so on.

For some of my characters, I know the answers to these questions.

So, to summarize, there is knowledge about my characters and then there is knowledge about technique.

Technical knowledge is something that can be gleaned from other reading. This is the sort of thing that it is too little too late to do a whole lot about during NaNoWriMo. Chris Batty has suggested watching a T.V. show or movie and taking note of the pacing, dialogue, and plot revelations during the show and seeing if you can apply this to your novel. I suppose this is as concise of a crash course in technique that you can get. Well, that and the earlier posts in this blog.

I am reading Lord of the Flies and Out of the Silent Planet currently during NaNoWriMo. So far my novel has not turned into either of those books, but it is a fascinating exercise to read a novel with the eyes of a novelist, specifically.

Anyway,

I have an hour to go during which I would like to shower and write about 1000 words. We'll see which wins the upper hand.

Sins of Ommission

Follower/Reader feedback session--particularly if you are currently novel-writing.

I confess to the following chronic problems that I discovered while speed-writing for NaNoWriMo:

I leave out the setting too much, especially during word-sprints.
Characters engage in routine actions, such as sipping coffee, to complement their conversations.
My understanding of characters is developing as I write, rather than the scenario where I already know who these people are.

Hazy settings, incomplete character sketches, uneven dialogue. I feel like Nietzsche's quote about poets is a good approximation of what I have (gleefully) done: "And which of us poets has not adulterated [rendered impure, bastardized] his wine? Some poisonous mishmash has gone on in our cellars."

Nietzsche continues:
"[Poets] are to me not pure enough. They cloud all their waters that these might appear deep."

I am learning how to make this work. It is exciting. I can see what will need to change and have some inkling of how my scenes and characters will need to be fleshed out before they actually have the depth I desire.

Nietzsche might approve of one thing, the fact that I am learning by trying: "trying and questioning has been all my progress [lit. 'going']:- and truly one must learn to answer to such questioning."

My trip to NaNo-land has been exploratory and the discoveries have been as giddy as the realizations about how much I must hone my craft have been sobering. I leave the honing for another time. Someone should start NaNoReMo (Revision Month). I wonder how many people could face their creation come January. For me, that has been the ultimate goal.

In November, I plan to have a blast making that poison mishmash in the basement of my mind. But eventually, I want to show others what I have done without being accused of simply muddying my waters to appear deep. NaNoReMo seems an important continuation of what I started in NaNoWriMo. Revising my creation says to me that I was not in it for the short sprint, just to say that I technically wrote a novel and tick it off a bucket list (though there is not a thing wrong with that).

Even if this novel is not salvageable, eventually, I hope to write one that is. When I do, I intend to salvage it, taking what I learned during the poisonous mishmash stage and applying it to creating a work of art. My little NaNo group keeps me going, and I hope that, when we arrive at 50,000, we'll coast for a month on our laurels, and then look at our writing with a critical eye. Whatever happens, I will come away from writing with a better appreciation of what goes into novel-writing.