As always, my fingers hate typing out NaNoWriMo. It’s as hard to type as it is fun to say. Maybe I should make a macro for it or something.
On Day 1 I started work on The Capitol Dome. It’s about a dome-like object that appears in The Ellipse (the park near The White House made famous in The Day the Earth Stood Still, as that’s where the ship lands). I managed 253 words (out of a daily goal of 1667) before sputtering to an end for the evening.
Today I scrapped the whole thing and started over by co-opting a short story I wrote a few years back called “The Dream of the Buckford County Church”. With a slightly altered title I feel this can be expanded to a full length novel. The best part, though, is it will be a freaky and fun thing to work on, just what I need for a NaNoWriMo project. I’ll probably know by the weekend if this is going to work or not but I am cautiously optimistic, a marked improvement from the rain clouds hovering over me earlier this evening.
I now have a (at the moment rather spartan) Smashwords profile. What is Smashwords? Allow me to quote:
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.
Much like the fellow in this Quarter to Three thread, I am planning on submitting some of my short stories (and ultimately bundling them into a collection at some point), some for free, some for a very modest cost, all in an effort to get my writing out there. I’ve imposed a deadline of one week (!) to get the first two stories out — both are already written, they just need to be fine-tuned and formatted. One will be gratis, the other likely to sell for the princely sum of 99 cents.
I shall report back with my success or lack thereof in due time.
This is one of those ‘may be embarrassing to look back a year later’ posts.
Today I began the second draft of my novel, The Ferry. It was written as part of National Novel Writing Month in November 2009 and you can see the play-by-play on its fevered creation in this thread on the Quarter to the Three forums. In 21 days I wrote a complete short novel — 50,810 words in total. It had started out as a short story back in 1993 that outgrew its short story status before eventually being abandoned. Over the years I revisited it, trying to get it steaming along again, one time even switching it from its first person narrative to third person but I could never figure out where to go with it and so it remained unfinished.
The ‘just for fun’ approach of NaNoWriMo took the pressure off, as I briefly recount in this blog post written the day after completing it.
The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience.
Ho ho!
And so tonight, after a number of false starts, I begin the second draft. My marginal goal is to have the second draft done before NaNoWriMo 2011 begins. That gives me four months. I vow to update on this come October 31st!
2010 was a moribund year for me as far as writing went. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month, the writing group fell apart and my output slowed and then pretty much stopped for most of the year.
I’ve vowed to make 2011 the start of my writing renewal and part of that has been taking the writing group and exercises and moving them off a couple of scattered subforums and onto their own website, thenwrite.com. I’m hoping it will keep me and the other participants inspired and excited about putting words to page (and screen).
Just kidding! This blog post is entirely self-contained. Once you get to the end of it you will have complete closure and no need to read a follow-up post to find out how it all ends.
Sometimes I think I am the only person out there who prefers to read novels that begin and end in the same volume instead of being laid out over the course of 10 books and 10,000 pages, half of which are probably unnecessary. Maybe this is why I read so little fantasy. Or maybe I just hate elves. Or I’m simply jealous because Steven Erikson can write hundreds of pounds of books per year and I can only manage maybe half a pound at best.
September was a pretty lousy month, weather-wise, being one of the ten soggiest on record. More positively, the first day of October was sunny and summer-like. It’s partly cloudy today but I may yet get proper closure on summer before The Dark Times (ie. winter) arrive.
I also plan on writing more regularly this month as I gear up for National Novel Writing Month in November, so more inane blog posts shall be on their way. Hooray!
The last time I wrote poetry was when I was made to as part of a creative writing course I took in college back in 1989. This is a good thing because I’ve never been very good at writing poetry. I think this is for a couple of reasons. First, I see myself as a more meat and potatoes kind of writer and such a style does not lend itself to the carefully chosen wordplay of poems. Second, I’m too impatient to go through the process of carefully choosing individual words and weighing them in the context of a poem, which may also explain why I’m a meat and potatoes kind of writer to begin with.
I have looked over a few poems that I wrote back then and am putting them up here for public appraisal/mockery. I may rewrite them to show what I’d change if I was still writing poetry today.
Snake in the pond
Gently, go then
and swim in the
pond
Do not float or not move
There be snakes
in the pond
They are green
and yellow and black
and very pretty
You remember laughter
and scream
It’s in your trunks now
Gales of laughter
Swim with the colors
Slither and dive
You were so young then
You’ll never swim here
again
The Ride (number one)
The crowd waits in the rain
Umbrellas blossomed like black flowers
Gathered as if for a funeral
They wait for the familiar lights
He sees the lights and watches
as they resolve into the shape of the bus
Ritually, the umbrellas fold up
and the people move, not unlike
the poor and huddled masses, he thinks.
Everyone wants to be first
He is swept through the crush of bodies
into the smothering warmth
The smell of damp clothes and musty hair
mingled with an old woman’s odor
(two or three liters, perhaps)
is unavoidable as he inches down the aisle,
a cow in a cattlecar.
Clinging to a metal bar, umbrella soaking into
his side,
he gulps as a titanic shape approaches,
fold upon fold rippling through the trenchcoat
like waves on a rising ocean
He grimaces and is pressed
like luncheon meat as the
woman docks, staring out the window
with a pre-determined expression
He cannot see the window
It is too warm and the
fluorescent lights are
too harsh
The bus moves,
taking him on the most
exciting journey of his life.
Again.
After swearing I’d never do another time travel story, I went ahead and did one anyway for the May 2010 writing exercise. You can check out all the exercises in this thread. My submission is my third story featuring the superhero group Chicago 8, not to be confused with the Chicago 7 or Chicago’s 8th album (I think they got up to 47 or so).
I buy two magazines regularly: Runner’s World and Writer’s Digest. Maybe I just like magazines with apostrophes in the titles. I’ll admit having an incredibly hot guy on the cover of Runner’s World helped persuade me to take a look at the first issue I picked up but I’ve been buying it regularly since (the covers alternate male and female). It’s somewhat surprising how much can be written about an activity that consists entirely of just putting one foot ahead of the other and repeating.
Writer’s Digest is a magazine I’ve been buying on and off for many years but now that I’m writing more I can actually try employing some of their techniques and suggestions. Note: do not ever subscribe to their online newsletter. They spam your inbox like crazy trying to sell you seminars, books and probably Writer’s Digest widgets and toilet paper. I routinely archive without reading so I should probably unsubscribe at some point.
I will occasionally buy other writing or health magazines and the odd issue of Asimov’s of Fantasy & Science Fiction. What I don’t buy anymore are computer magazines (pretty much replaced by the web) and gaming magazines (also pretty much replaced by the web and most have died, besides). I lament several magazines I used to buy that went defunct a long time ago, notably The Twilight Zone magazine (which published excellent short fiction) and Marvel Illustrated, best described as “Heavy Metal without the breast obsession”. Okay, I sometimes also bought Heavy Metal because where else could you read stories where people rode astride giant penises like the sandworms of Arrakis? I also miss Omni. I wish there was still a good general interest science magazine around (no, Discover doesn’t quite do it). Mad magazine is one of the few I genuinely outgrew without even being conscious of it. They probably lost their gestalt when they began putting in real ads to pay the bills, anyway. That’s my cynical take and I’m stickin’ to tingit!
On Saturday, November 21st (last night as I write this) I finished my novel for National Novel Writing Month. The Ferry is now a 50,810 word novel and the first I’ve actually finished. On reflection I am a little amazed I actually wrote a novel from beginning to end in just three weeks. The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience. Once I get the second draft down and have a few people take a look-see at it, I’ll tackle the other novel that’s been rattling around in my head for the last decade or so.
