All Entries in the "Nanowrimo" Category

November 15- 0 hour for Nate Lowell

I was going to post something about the awesomeness that is Nathan Lowell, but then I figured I’d let him speak for himself. Congrats, Nate, you’re a true inspiration.

After the Challenge
by Nathan Lowell

Today’s Sunday, the 15th of November. People of NaNoWriMo are frantically hammering out words to beat the deadline of 50k by the end of the month. I got my 50k last night, and I owe it to the MightyMur challenge. Thank you, Mur.

When she asked me to write this guest post, my reaction was a certain level of “who? me?!”

In reality, I don’t really think of myself as having a lot to contribute to the art of writing. I’m just a guy who tells stories. I like to tell stories and I seem to have found some people who like my stories, so it works out. She suggested her readers might like to know how I beat her challenge, how I feel right now, and what’s next. So, here’s a little story with less fiction than normal.

How did I do it?

I wrote. For me, it wasn’t even a lot in terms of raw word count. Getting a new book going takes time and working in a new universe takes even more. In preparation for what I knew would be a slow start, I did some prep work in October to get ready for the writing when I could start.

First, I drew maps. I drew a lot of maps and threw most of them out. I didn’t draw them by hand, but used the GIMP and plasma clouds to form land masses and water, rivers, lakes and mountains. They were random but they suggested things to me. What would it look like to walk in that valley? How long would it take to sail up that river or across that ocean?

Second, I built a globe of the world and worked out the annual calendar. I wanted a world that was different from ours but not so different that I needed to make up a bunch of stuff. In my new world, the orbit is more elongated and the period between equinoxes is asymmetric. It’s just the world. It’s background and maybe it won’t be significant in the long run. The axial tilt is also bigger so there’s a midnight sun effect in a larger area of the world. That gives me background into the world and how it works, even before I think about people.

Third, since this was going to be a Fantasy novel, I spent some time thinking about the tropes of fantasy. What makes a classic fantasy novel? What’s the ‘elevator pitch?’ It goes something like “young person, disillusioned with life on the farm, runs away to seek a better life and stumbles on adventure that nearly kills him/her but in the end they save the world from evil and discover they can’t go home again.” Oh, and there’s magic. Nothing says fantasy like a magic. The magic is instantiated in various ways, but there has to be magic. Swords are good.

It was important to me to identify the tropes of fantasy so that I could be very deliberate in bending them. In my science fiction work, I’ve taken the tropes of space ship, hero, and universe and bent them so that the interstellar conquest is not about an air force but an airline. Kind of a “what if FedEx got the first jump drive?” idea. So, my goal was to do the same kind of thing with Fantasy. I spent days just thinking about what things I could turn upside down and still have a fantasy novel and still tell a compelling story.

So. The heroine isn’t young. Her normal life is traveling and her adventure starts when she settles down. She doesn’t save the world from evil, but she does help one little part. Along the way she learns something about herself, and I’d like to think that she teaches something about what it means to get old. At least, that’s what I think. I’m only about halfway through this tale at 50,000 words. It needs at least another 30 to be what I’d consider a novel and if it goes to 100k by the end of the month, I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed.

The writing was far from flawless. At 44,500 words I realized that the previous two days worth of work had put me in a place where I didn’t want to be. It was a ripsnorting adventure yarn smack in the middle of my story. The problem was that in NaNoWriMo – even more than usual – you don’t edit until you’re done. But unless I edited, I couldn’t finish. So I pulled 13,000 words out, managed to reuse and repurpose about 5,000 of them, but had to replace 8,000 words in the final days of the challenge. Luckily for me, it worked out or I’d be writing a very different guest post. The first readers are much happier with the revised story and so am I.

How do I feel?

Anxious. There’s a certain sense of relief – of being freed from the NaNo 50k so now I can focus on the story. Even more is the anxiety that comes with the production of any of my stories. Will it pass the so-what test?

Where do I go from here?

Back to the keyboard. I’ve got a story to finish, and then edit, and then podcast. December’s just around the corner and I’ve got a lot of non-writing things that are going to get in the way. Every word I manage to get down gets me that much closer to finding out how the story ends and I’m really looking forward to finding that out.

Why did I do it?

This wasn’t one of the questions that Mur asked, but it’s the one I’ve been asking myself for the last few weeks.

This challenge has been a real struggle for me. Kinda like calling your shot on the pool table. “This is what I’m gonna try to do and I’m telling everybody about it.” In the secret and solitary world of writing few people actually say “Ok, my next book is gonna do this, that, and another thing and I’m gonna finish it by Auguary.” I wasn’t worried about the word counts because I’ve written more in less time before. What I was worried about is writing a story that’s worthy of being podcast in December and being added to my list of titles.

That last part is yet to be realized. I’m very happy with the way the story is unfolding, and even as I’m writing this, I’m getting anxious to get back to the world and find out what happens next. I’ve got 15 days to find the end of this tale and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can. I’ve done it before, and I think I can do it again (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself by saying that).

So given all that, why?

Because NaNoWriMo is a good cause and the challenge gave me an excuse to promote NaNoWriMo just a little bit more.

It’s something bigger than just writing the next book. It’s taking part in a global event of absolutely epic proportions. It’s the chance for somebody who never thought they could write a whole novel to actually have the excuse to sit down and do it. It’s something that anybody can do, regardless of age, or skill, or background and in doing it, join a community of writers, of creators, and thinkers. If you make your 50k, and nobody ever knows but you? So what? You climbed the mountain. You looked down from the summit. You stood in the foot prints of your betters but the next one who stands there will stand in your footprints, too.

And maybe you’ll learn something about yourself, about the craft, about the world, and maybe we’ll all be better people because of it. Maybe you’ll learn the most important thing of all — that you should be writing.

Small NaNo break, Podcasts you need

I am taking a small break from NaNoWriMo this weekend. Working on two novels is taking too much out of me, and I need to finish one before I really dive into the other one. Come Monday I’ll be approx. 5k words behind. I gotta be ready to take up that slack. I’d feel bad because I’m not writing, but I am writing, just not on my NaNo novel. We’ll see if I can catch up. Wish me luck.

In other news, if you’re looking for short daily podcasts to keep you going for NaNoWriMo, then please check out the rerun of the NaNoMonkeys podcast over at The Secret Lair (we did this daily for 2006 and 2007), and also the Geek Survival Guide is doing an extremely fun daily NaNoWriMo podcast.

NaNoWriMo Reality Check

I follow a lot of agents on twitter, and apparently many of them look forward to December with trepidation. That’s when “novels” that are 50K or so, rough, unedited, and sloppy, hit their desks.

I find this unbelievable. Not that the agents dread it, and not that it happens, but that so little common sense takes hold in our frantic writing minds. So I want to go over some basic rules of publishing that may clash with the awesome positive-feeling-fest that is NaNoWriMo. Not trying to rain on parades, but consider this your umbrella for the deluge to follow.

1. 50K words is not a novel. OK, it may be a middle grade novel, or YA, and it technically is a novel by definition, but in most cases a publisher won’t look at your work if it’s not at least 80K words. So if you write 50K, you may not be done with it.
2. Write. Let it sit a week or two. Read. Rewrite. Send to First Readers. Rewrite again. Then-and only then-submit. This process will take you past December and into January or February, depending mostly on your readers. If you’re proud of this book, your baby, then make sure to wash its face and brush its hair and make sure breakfast isn’t smeared all over its shirt before you send it to school for picture day.
3. Learn how to write a good cover letter. This bit of advice was going to be, “don’t say you did NaNoWriMo in your cover letter” but I decided just to remind you about good cover letters overall. Remember- take out all pointless details regarding you, your writing process, and your book. This includes how much your mom liked it, how you are a school teacher/librarian/doctor/real estate agent, the number of children you have, how long you’ve wanted to be a writer, and any details about the actual writing of the book. It’s not necessary information, and there still is a decidedly amateur stigma around NaNoWriMo. It’s a program designed to get people writing, not to get people published. If you get published, great, but think about trying out for the Yankees because you signed up for a community baseball team last summer. Telling an agent/editor that you wrote the book really fast implies that you didn’t research, edit, or even care. And it’s true, to win at NaNoWriMo, you shouldn’t be researching, editing, or caring about the polished product — in November. That’s what editing is for. See #2.
4. Don’t let their grumbling stop you. Lastly, no one can stop you from submitting. They may grumble, but its their job to find the diamond in the rough. So you write that book, then flesh it out, then edit it, then next spring you submit it with a pro cover letter, and they may never know it was a NaNoWriMo novel unless you tell them — AFTER you’ve signed.

Keep writing. That is your focus, nothing more.

Oh, and:

ISBW #135 – NaNoWriMo Extravaganzaaaaa – Baty, Lowell, Wilson interviews

• 00:00:07 ISBW #135
• 00:01:27 Happy NaNoWriMo! Special episode: three interviews, no feedback. Mur is still editing as well as NaNo-ing, and trying to pace herself to avoid early November burnout. You are invited to be Mur’s NaNoWriMo buddy, but it make take her some time to return the favor. [You are also invited to be my writing buddy! I'm not as popular as Mur, so I'll probably be able to "friend" you back a little faster. -Carrie.]
• 00:03:58 Promo: P.G. Holyfield and Tabitha Grace Smith of Angel Between the Lines write short stories for each other’s podcasts. On Nov. 16, 2009, download P.G.’s Exit Strategy at Stories from Wolfram & Hart, and on Nov. 18, 2009, at 9:30 EST, visit Stickam.com to view the live video recording of Tabz’s story for Tales of Children, Love’s Sacrificial Song.
• 00:06:06 Interview with author Nathan Lowell of the Solar Clipper series – 6 books written in 2  years.
• 00:24:01 Promo: J.C. Hutchins & the print debut of 7th Son Descent – serialized novel, audiobook, and other content also available online.
• 00:25:40 Interview: David Niall Wilson author of Vintage Soul – novel originated as a 2005 NaNoWriMo project. Register to read this year’s NaNoWriMo read-along book, The Heart of a Dragon , and be David’s NaNoWriMo buddy
• 00:38:38 Promo: Jon Armstrong and Underland Press present Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch listen to an interview with the author at If You’re Just Joining Us
• 00:39:48 Interview: Chris Baty, creator of NaNoWriMo (don’t forget to check out the NaNo Video podcasts).

Show notes provided by Carrie Kei Heim Binas.

NaNoWriMo – it’s on

November 1-

Status- Well, October didn’t go as planned. I allowed the manuscript edits of Project Underground to intimidate me so I didn’t start till late in the month. And once I started, various hiccups during the last week, not to mention planned AFK time for Halloween and our 11 year anniversary, derailed what work I had going on. So Project Underground is not complete. I’m halfway through Chapter 9 of 27. Yeah. Suck. It is my priority, still. Thus, PFK2 is the stepchild here, the afterthought. But I can’t ignore it entirely, as I have a war going on with Nate Lowell for him to do NaNo in 15 days, so if I don’t do NaNo in 30, I’m going to look pretty damn lame.

So two projects at once! Am I set up for failure? I don’t know. I won’t know till I stop this blogging and start with the writing, now, will I?

(Oh- PFK2? Not outlined. I think the title of this podcast should change to “Do as I say, not as I do.” *sigh*)

Anyway. I’m going to try to figure out how to get an ISBW NaNo community going, so let’s start here with leaving a comment with your user ID for NaNoWriMo. Do this only if you want me and other ISBW people to add you as a buddy. I’m going to try to slog through and add everyone on my buddy list.

Username- mightymur UserID- 141415

Next on ISBW- the NaNo special with three interviews from different NaNo enthusiasts!

Playing For Keeps 2- No Take Backs