NaNoWriMo and me

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

It’s that time of year again. People on my flist are starting to talk about NaNo. Every year, it seems, November is just the wrong month for me to dive into a heavy-duty writing project. Not because of holidays or anything; for me, Thanksgiving weekend is typically just a four-day vacation where I can do as I please. But some years, life challenges (like looking for a job) have gotten in the way. In others, NaNo doesn’t work out because I’m not in a position vis-a-vis a story I’m writing to plunk out 50K new words–for example, if I’m editing a nearly-completed manuscript, it needs more words like I need swiss cheese for brains. Usually, though, I just don’t have story inside me that I can coax 50,000 words out about, not in that short a span of time.

And last year, I had just finished the final episode of my 41-episode fan fiction story on October 31st and was too tired to plunge right into NaNoWri-MoRE.

But, prior to all that, the coming of NaNo only inspired me to shrug and then grumble about how “the rules of NaNo themselves just seem a bit ridiculous to me!” Starting a new story, fresh, and pulling 50,000 words of it out of your head in thirty days like a crazed maniac? Yeah, sure; assuming you have a fruitful enough idea that can be sustained the entire month, you then spend the next year trying to figure out if there’s actually really a novel in that gobbly-gook you wrote. Word counts just don’t equal progress in my style of writing.

Well, they don’t.

But what I’ve learned over the years from my flist is that the rules of NaNo are less important than the social energy surrounding the event itself. Your friends are participating, they’re journaling about their progress and their writing process during that time, and you just want to go out and play with them. So you make NaNo your own by breaking the rules strategically. Like committing to only 30,000 words. Or writing fan fiction. Or working on a story you already started months ago. Or working on multiple stories, none of which would ever total 50,000+ words by themselves. Or just saying, “I will spend an hour a day doing nothing but plunking out new, fresh words, regardless of the actual word count.”

The year I actually “won” NaNo, I was in the middle of my lengthy fan fiction story that averaged about 14,000 words per episode, and I used NaNo to write rough drafts for three new episodes, which technically isn’t a “novel”, even of the fan-fiction variety. but between my discarded story-bits from the episodes and the three rough drafts, I “won” NaNo (and then I spent the next month doing an “un-Nano” where I trimmed down those rough drafts of their excess words into postable episodes of my fic).

This year, I have a work-in-progress original fic that is (a) in an early enough stage for word counts to help, rather than hinder, and (b) is developed enough that I have some idea what to write about, and (c) that is in dire need of me just buckling down and banging on it. Ironically, I will also be in San Francisco for Thanksgiving, so those days will be busier than usual, but I don’t see myself running around with friends and family all day long for four days straight. I could, potentially, do something NaNo-ish. Maybe not 50,000 words NaNo-ish, but something. And I kind of want to, ’cause I haven’t played NaNo for four years now.

Unamused

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

Main characters are my muses, the spark that drives my desire to write a story. One reason I have such difficult time starting a new story is I don’t know my main character well enough to feel that necessary passion for them, yet. It’s a catch-22, because you can’t feel passion for them until you start writing, and write long enough to find something in them that sparks your passion, but if you can’t write until you feel passion, well…. That’s why I have to find other ways to motivate myself to write until that passion can take over. In the case of my old novel, my early writing was simply a way to distract myself from my doctoral dissertation. That story started out as a big, fluffy soap opera with no particular plot or lead character. And then, gradually, one of the characters emerged as someone who could carry my interest in the story herself.

Different case with my fan fiction epic. I developed a passion for the character while watching a television show–an unanalyzable fascination and emotional investment that demanded I continue to tell his story when there was no more television show to tell it.

The issue with my new story is that I don’t have a muse yet to motivate me. So I rely instead on the obligation to do these weekly updates and to send them to my writing coach, whom I am paying, to be a substitute motivation. And of course, there’s also that deep down hope that I will reach a place where I am writing with passion, and the belief that I can get there if I keep pounding at it long enough.

But so far, I am un-aMused. I have all these characters, and none yet is emerging as the character that sustains my interest in the story. I suppose that, so far, none of them is emotionally screwed-up enough to be interesting. Not that I think that’s the definition of “interesting.” It’s just, looking at my own track record, that’s the sort of character that gets under my skin–infinitely vulnerable, emotionally volatile, angry, and with major parental issues. Don’t ask me why. Those are not words that describe me, just what I’m drawn to. Which…okay, let’s just skip past the psychoanalysis of yours truly.

Writing is hard

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

This week, I finally got done all that “big picture” sorting of what-happens-next ideas, and it was time to start writing again. Which I did. I plunged into the POV of a new character, someone who should be interesting and engaging, but was a little on the alien side, so the potential for discontentment with what was coming out of my fingers was high (not alien enough! Too alien!)

Shortly after plunging in, I realized there was a bit of prose I had already written for another character that suited this one better, and all writing came to a halt as I tracked it down. During the tracking, I found a lot of other old blurbs of writing that I had stored away for when and if they became useful, and realized, well, gee, I need to go through these and see if any of them match up to my list of story ideas. After all, nothing gets the writing going like already having a little something to jump off of.

So I started poking through my back-up prose, sorting what was useful and what seemed too far afield. I felt this palpable sense of relief; “Yay! I can procrastinate writing some more!”

Writing is hard. It’s always hard. Editing a written draft is tedious, composing a first draft is like coaxing blood from your pores and dribbling it on the page (who was it that said something like that once?) It’s a magic moment when the words flow freely, or, alternatively, when you are ridiculously pleased with the words you’ve produced. But it has happened to me enough times I keep chasing that feeling like an addict.

‘Tis a pity…

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 32 Comments

…the Star Trek series Enterprise was cancelled. It actually started to become interesting in its fourth season, to become the show I’d wanted to watch when it first aired. The prequel; the show that actually paid attention to its future canon and told the story about the first days of Starfleet and the founding of the Federation, and tread those already sketched-out paths in imaginative ways that couldn’t be predicted (their take on how the Klingons lost their forehead ridges for a while, ribbing off the human Eugenics Wars? Inspired, because it was so, so in character for the Klingons).

I suppose it was a show that was doomed to failure from the beginning. You can’t explore strange new worlds and seek out new civilizations when your characters are just getting to know species that to the audience are familiar faces. You either have to take the story far afield into alien species we don’t understand why we never heard of before (which they did a lot of, for three years), or write that prequel that could fall so quickly into predictability.

In the end, I didn’t watch the show because I didn’t bond personally with any of the characters. There was no one who intrigued me, or got under my skin. And so many of the early plots seemed warmed over [insert TOS/TNG/DSN/Voy episode here].

I finally got done catching up on the entire series on Netflix. Now to figure out what to catch up on next.

POD and self publishing

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

Still working on pulling together my ideas on forthcoming plot events and wrapping my brain cells around who my characters are. However, I did spend a couple almost entire days on the new story this week, which put me ahead of the game on this part of process.

Last weekend, I went to one of those traveling lecturer seminars at Changing Hands bookstore. This one was a guy with a background in the publishing industry who was talking about alternatives to traditional publishing, specifically, self-publishing, which, as it turns out, is different than print-on-demand publishers. He was actually pretty down on POD, saying that bookstores in general see POD labels on books as a warning of sign of the book’s lack of quality and are therefore hesitant to stock them.

Changing Hands is one of those indies that’s willing to give self-published and POD books from local authors a go for a limited time, but of course, that all depends on your marketing strategy, getting people to seek out such a book, either before they get to the bookstore or while they’re standing there staring at a bunch of book spines on the shelf. If it sells, CH won’t yank it off their shelves in a month.

The lecturer also talked about self-publishing as a step to attracting the attention of agents and publishers (again, this only really works with good self-marketing strategies upfront). One of things he mentioned, though, was that publishers usually don’t want to deal with writers who don’t have a lot of future book ideas under their belt. They like to have writers under contract, producing. So I think I am on the right track with planning out my new story as a number of separate novels. I have yet to figure out exactly how, since at this point I am still getting to know my “story world”, but I know I am in the right ballpark with my plans.

Time flies when you’re having fun

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

Ten years ago today, there was a heat wave in San Francisco. 103 degrees when I went for a stroll through the Haight district during my lunch break (this is a city that sends out “heat advisories” for 79 degrees). I’d been toying with an idea that was being pushed by several email correspondents who were readers of my website, All Things Philosophical on BtVS and AtS. They wanted to meet each other to discuss the show at deeper levels than could be found on other discussion boards they frequented.

So I did the research and set up one of those canned forums and the folks that came to hang there did the rest.

It’s been quite a ride. Thanks for making it fabulous, guys! Looking forward to this weekend.

I write too much

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

I write too much. This is one my biggest flaws as a writer, and cutting things down becomes one of my biggest (and most tedious) chores. This is the lesson I learned (and am still working my way out of) in my old novel, and the thing I have been trying so hard to avoid in my new one.

Maybe too much. I wanted to try to stick to just a few character points of view (like, oh say, four), rather than ten, like my old novel. I think showing a peripheral character’s POV on a situation can really shed light on the situation and showing a peripheral character’s POV on the main characters can really give depth to the main characters. The problem that arises is that when you write from a third person subjective stance and want to enter the head of a peripheral character, you have put “padding” around their thoughts with scene-setting and action.

In other words, you have to increase your word count exponentially for each new perspective you bring in.

That paid off beautifully in my first novel, although it made the length prohibitive for publishing. And I’ve been trying to avoid doing it in writing this new one from scratch.

Except for the part where I’m finding that I can’t avoid it, at least not upfront. I don’t know the overall situation in my new novel well enough yet to do that. I am finding it extremely useful to add in new scenes (::ca-ching::, ::ca-ching:: word-count register adding up those words) from the POV of characters whose POV I have no intention of leaving in in the final draft, just to understand their motives.

And it’s necessary that I do this. I am discovering all sorts of interesting things about the characters whose only purpose in the story is to make things more complicated for my main characters. I am discovering their motives, and *why* they are making my character’s lives more complicated, and in the end, when their POV scenes drop back out, I will have a richer story for it.

But right now, for right now, it’s giving me a bit of anxiety. Because I’m editing my old novel at the same time I’m writing my new one, and the goal in the first case is to cut out words (>36,000 at last count), while the goal in the second case is to write my brains out until a story starts emerging.

It’s no wonder sometimes I put the computer away and escape to paint brushes and power tools.