500 Words- Day 28 (NaNoWriMo Tools to Succeed)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, I hope you win. And I hope that if you don’t, you learn from it and try again next year. Writing is about learning by doing and finding out what works. 

I never went to school to learn to write. I’ve taken workshops here and there, attended conferences and seminars. I’ve studied the craft for years, reading Writer’s Digest and articles online about writing. I follow author blogs and Twitter feeds and listen to author interviews on podcasts. I’ve read good books about writing, namely Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and On Writing by Steven King. A decade of this made me a better writer, above all, writing is what made me who I am as a writer.

Everyone has a voice. In addition to the tone and inflection of their spoken words, that voice comes out in any way they communicate. A parent or teacher can tell which child drew a particular picture by a signature style, colors, subject, even the direction of the drawn lines. The same goes with writing.

Every writer has a voice that’s uniquely theirs. But it won’t begin to stand out until that writer recognizes it as their own and begins to refine it. The only way to learn it is to write. Do you want to become a better writer? By all means, study the craft, even go to school to learn to write if you can. But none of that matters without the writer actually writing things, every day if possible.

Yesterday I promised to share why I failed my first year. I had a good story idea in mind but never completed it, and it wasn’t because my laptop crashed. I think I used it as an excuse. Now what I will say is my own opinion. Others will disagree with me. Like any writer, you need to find out what works for you. But this is one reason why I succeeded the next two years. I planned to write every day.

November is a great time to write a novel if you live in part of the world that observes Daylight Saving Time. Although I think it’s a scourge and would rather we didn’t have it, Daylight Saving Time has an advantage. If you’re used to waking up at 6:00 every morning, it becomes 5:00 after the first Sunday of the month. You’re already acclimated to waking up early. Granted, that hour has to come from somewhere. You’ll be ready for bed an hour earlier each evening. What’s stopping you from going to be early?

For many people, it’s just not possible to go to bed an hour earlier. Kids, chores, even a job might prevent that. I work until 10pm most nights. But if your only reason to stay up is television, I encourage you to cut TV out for the month of November. If I got started, I could go on and on about cutting TV out entirely forever. It’s little more than passively staring at an electronic appliance.

But that’s not what I’m going on about today and I won’t go into it tomorrow. Today it’s about this: plan to write every day for as long as it takes to produce 1,667 words. That might be two hours for some of us. That might mean getting up very early. It could mean splitting the time up. But have the time set aside to do it. I failed my first year of NaNoWriMo because I thought I could just sit at the computer whenever I found the time or felt like it and work on my novel. I succeeded the next year when I made the time, woke up early and wrote for 90-120 minutes each day.

I’ve got something else to share tomorrow about writing in general

  

500 Words- Day 27 (NaNoWiMo Approaches)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     National Novel Writing Month begins in less than a week. It began years ago with a group of friends and a dare. Who could write a novel in a month? They defined a novel from book they pulled off the shelf, a short, but good book, that they estimated to be about 50,000 words. So the challenge is to write 50,000 words in one month. This year, tens of thousands will participate.

     I attended a kick-off event yesterday in San Bernardino for our local chapter of NaNoWriMo where our local representative explained what it was about. Most of the room had never done it before. People asked good questions and I enjoyed actually being in the same room with other writers.

She gave helpful advice. Most important: quantity, not quality. NaNoWriMo is not about producing a flawless manuscript worthy of publication. It’s about hammering out 50,000 words in 30 days, 1,667 words a day. Those words need to create a story. It’s all about producing those words.

Don’t edit, she said, which I knew. Then she said something I hadn’t considered, don’t delete. You may write a big section, she said, and then decide you don’t want it. Keep it as part of your word count. You wrote those words as part of the challenge, you should keep them.

I think that’s good advice for writers just starting out. I’m not sure how I feel about some the ways to pad word counts, avoiding hyphens and contractions. But NaNoWriMo allows for writers to do what works for them. I can choose not to do some things if I feel it’s wrong. I may make it harder for myself, but if that’s how I have fun writing, then so be it.

She asked who was a planner and who was a pantser. A few people knew what that meant. Planners plan their novels, pantsers write by the seat of their pants, making it up as they go. There are all kinds of planners and many lengths a writer can go to plan. 

I answered that I’m a planner for November. I have written some things making them up as I go. It is a fun way to write, but it can be frustrating trying to stick to the storyline. While I don’t believe in writer’s block, I know that a writer might not always be able to stick to the subject for a particular time goal or deadline. Sometimes, what needs to be written will call loudly away from what the writer wants to work on.

I plan my November novels. I might think about ideas all year and as November approaches, I narrow it all down to one idea. In October I take the time to write outlines and lists of scenes. I have written autobiographies of characters in their own voice, getting to know who they are as well as their story. Last year I drove out to the desert, hours away from civilization, to camp. I sat with my notebook and pen and wrote story outlines for Sidewinder, the best story I’ve produced so far.

The first year I did NaNoWriMo I didn’t plan much. I knew what I wanted the story to be about and I knew what the main characters wanted. I didn’t finish the novel when my laptop crashed. I saved my data, but I was derailed by not having my little laptop that I had relied on for so long. Even though the family had a computer, I didn’t finish the novel that year and I know the main reason. I’ll share that tomorrow.

  

500 Words- Day 19 (Keeping a Theme)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     I get asked questions like this sometimes: What makes a book great? What’s the most important thing for a fiction book to have?

     I will see plenty of answers, some are obvious, like a good plot. Other answers say good characters. I try to always answer the same thing. What makes a story great is when the author believes in their theme. The theme is the truth that’s proved by the story. To me, the writer has to passionately believe in that truth. If they do, everything else should follow. They will take the time and make the effort to develop life-like characters and an engaging conflict to drive the plot. How this conflict is resolved says everything about who the writer is.

     The best stories that I have written are the ones that have a theme I believe in. I don’t always start with the theme, but I keep it in mind when I’m plotting. Whenever I am faced with a choice of how the story will go, I refer to the story’s theme for direction.

     I have a story idea for my November novel. A little girl is left at a mountain fortress to be raised by holograms. Okay, I had a premise and a title, The Snowdrop Princess. But what was actually going to happen in the story? How much of this was going to be based on the story I told my kids years ago? I needed a theme.

     I had some ideas for what would happen in the story. God forgive me for jumping on the dystopian genre bandwagon, but the story is in a future where the government is rebuilding after a collapse of civilization. This government wants to create a prison that’s humane, but safe. Why not have it guarded by holograms? In fact, history shows that there is a mountain fortress populated by nothing but holograms.

     I can see a complicated conflict here. It needs a lot of development still. And my theme, what truth do I believe in that I want this story to prove? What will be the DNA of this story’s structure?

     It’s times like this I wish I could take a sabbatical like last year, where I went out to the desert, scores of miles away from another human being. I had notebooks and pens and I sat and worked on Sidewinder. That turned into a pretty good first draft and it’s on its way to becoming a good novel. Is there magic in a sabbatical?

     Well, yes. But it’s just not possible this year. And while there is mojo in a sabbatical, I can dig it up elsewhere. And I did. I know my theme.

Like I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s writing, I had a story opening in mind that led me to want to write The Snowdrop Princess as my November novel. Then, two nights ago, something came to me, and now I’ve got a choice to make. I thought of a story opening I wrote a few years ago, not knowing where to take it. I thought someday I would use it for a November novel. And the other night I realized it keeps with my theme more than the other idea I had.

On a different note to anyone who reads this: Thank you for indulging me these “cliffhangers” as I end uncertainly like this so often. It’s not to draw readers back. It’s to draw me back to writing tomorrow. And thank you, too, for reading. Your support is encouraging.

  

500 Words- Day 18 (Story Development)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     I rarely rely on dreams to inspire me for stories to write, at least not my own. I have created a few stories from Prajna’s dreams, hers are awesome and she tells them in a way that inspires me. But earlier this year I woke up with an idea. It actually may not have been a dream. Rather, the idea was with me like a leg cramp first thing in the morning. But I was finally prepared and I wrote down what I had. It went something like this:

     Two figures are struggling to make their way up a mountain during a ferocious blizzard. One of them finally stops, unable to go on any further. The second one tries to stay, but is implored to go on, and finally he does. After more perilous traveling, he finally arrives at his destination. It’s really there. He goes to the door of the mountain fortress and someone comes out to him. They try to bring him in, but he refuses. Instead, he hands over what he has, and they take the child from him. Further urging to come in to the fortress, get warm, rest, are ignored. He must go back for who he left. He turns and disappears back into the storm and is never seen again.

     After I wrote that down, I was intrigued and grateful. Here was the start of a story. Here, perhaps could be my next November novel. So I did what I usually do, I went to work. I mean I literally went to work. My job is custodial and maintenance. I work alone most of the time setting and breaking down rooms and cleaning buildings. I listen to music, podcasts and audiobooks all the time while working and I turn ideas over in my head. I thought about the idea I had written down. Who the people were didn’t seem as important as where they arrived. What was it?

     I don’t know where I came up with the idea for holograms. I don’t usually like technology playing a big role in my stories. I think I actually had the idea of this child, a little girl, being dropped off at a fortress that had once been populated with people. Whenever someone died, and left their personality programmed in the databanks of a great computer. Eventually everyone died. There was nothing there but holograms. And this is where the child was dropped off.

I don’t know the order that things happened after that. But I was speculating about what would happen if people had the technology to build a prison that had no guards, only holograms. Holograms couldn’t be overpowered or bribed. It would be a humane alternative to solitary confinement. What if the powers that be remembered a fortress populated by what they thought were only holograms, and they decided to turn it into a prison for enemies of the state?

The ideas started to bounce around in my head like moths on a porch light. But there was still a lot of thinking and planning to do, much of it I haven’t done yet.

Then, last night, another idea came to me.

  

500 Words- Day 14 (What I'm up to)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     This is day 14 of the writing challenge I’ve chosen to undertake. I’ve been getting up around 6 and writing at least 500 words each morning, then checking in to say I’ve completed the day’s goal. Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a few new friends online who wonder who I am and what I’m up to. I thought I’d take today to explain a bit.

     I’ve been creating stories for as long as I can remember. I made up worlds with toy cars as a little kid and feel asleep telling myself stories about those worlds. Years later, I tried my hand at writing some of those stories. Though my later teen years I kept writing. I had a few science fiction stories and a lot of self-indulgent poetry.

     Being married with a family didn’t stop me from writing, but I didn’t really get a passion until my life took a dark turn with tragic loss, personal demons and struggles for redemption. Those themes tend to prevail in my writing now.

     I’ve written first drafts for three novels and one novella. I cannot shake the desire to write a memoir, but it grounds out each time I try to get into it. Something somewhere is not ready yet. Instead I’ve been focusing on the novel that I wrote a first draft of last November. This story, a space-western has the potential to go somewhere. I’ve written two drafts and edited a printed hardcopy. My next step is to write a complete new draft from the edited version, creating more of a fourth draft.

     Before I begin the next draft of Sidewinder, there are a few things I want to do. One is to write every day this month, at least 500 words. I’ve taken the opportunity to tell the backstories of some of Sidewinder’s characters. I also have a huge project coming up, something I look forward to all year.

November is National Novel Writing Month. It’s time for me to start preparing for that. I have a story in mind with a complex setting and a few characters. I have a theme in mind that I want the story to prove. Now it’s just the work of figuring out how the stories plot and conflict will do that.

I will use this venue, 500 words to do some of my preparation. I can write backstory to set the scene and create character biographies. Developed characters are a nonnegotiable for me. Even my science fiction stories are character-driven.

I won’t actually start the story until November 1^st. The first day of NaNoWriMo is always a thrill, like runners starting out from the gate. I have a clear beginning in mind and know what I’ll be writing for the first few days. After that, I’m not sure. I hope I can do some serious outlining over the next few weeks. My outlines won’t go here. I tend to handwrite my first outlines, besides, there will be spoilers.

I will, however, tell a little more about this year’s novel, perhaps tomorrow. Thanks everyone who have supported my check-ins on Lift.

To the regular readers of my Roadwalker Blog, I can’t say that ship has sailed, but it certainly ran aground months ago. I need to be here for now, thanks for understanding.