Not many people know this but I’m currently taking a writing class. It occurred to me in December that although I’ve got my English degree and technically it’s with a writing emphasis, I didn’t really ever take a creative writing course from anyone. As my friend Michael said to me this weekend, an English major makes you a good reader, but not necessarily a good writer. Not to imply that I don’t write well. I think I do blogging just fine and if you need a college essay, you could do worse than follow my advice.

My own creative output has been scattered. Little sprinkles of good stuff here and there amongst a sea of dreck. Though I can glean a great deal from the mountain of writing books out there, it would be nice to have someone who knows what their doing point you in the right direction. So I’m taking the class.

As a part of the class, you need to put a small sample of your writing up for others to critique. The teacher will then give you a big overview and some advice. So I did that.

And I got the advice. And I read the advice and got a bit depressed. Not that the teacher was wrong, hell no. He was right and pointed out a lot of the flaws that sat in the back of my head while I was writing it. I’m just curious why I didn’t do anything about it sooner, or changed my writing. I’m tormented by the fact that fixing it requires an entire rewrite. Not only that, I will have to kill off some of my favorite bits about the story.

As Faulkner said, “kill your darlings”…and it’s absolutely true in this case. I have to kill my first paragraph which I was so proud of writing. I have to rewrite the whole in a way that moves a bit better. I need to work in details I missed in the first pass, cut out details that are meaningless I initially wrote.

But it’s the right thing to do. Doing it will be difficult, but necessary. Writers do this all the time…it doesn’t get any easier though.

As I mentioned yesterday, it was the last day for NaNoWriMo to get to that 50,000 words in thirty days and I managed to sprint across the finish line yesterday at about 4:40 P.M.  Of all my previous NaNo efforts, this was probably my most scattered, most disjointed of all of the projects.  However, it was one of the more fun ones that I partook because of uncertainties I had from day to day.  I thought it would be fun to break down the month a bit and reveal a few things I found to help and also hurt my writing process.

I should point out that these are things that really strictly work or are potential pitfalls for me.  And what’s funny is that although writing is a craft that can be taught, I find that most of that advice is for connecting with the reader.  The actual physical act of getting your ass in the chair and banging out some words is strictly personal and no one way works for the majority of writers out there.

Before I get too far, thought I should put this up.

Fun, huh?  Okay, let’s get to the things that worked for me.

Stuff that worked:

1. Two lattes.  Not some slam-bang solution, but there was something different about the way I wrote between having one latte and after that second one.  My words flowed a lot better after the second latte.  There were the occasional day here and there where I did not have any type of caffeine at all.  Those days didn’t seem to work at all.  Let me draw this out for you.
   • No caffeine:  I struggle to get 500-600 words out.
   • One latte (or the equivalent):  Pretty regular to get 1200-1600 words on the page.  Not bad stuff either but not particularly inspired.  Workman like pace and words.
   • Two lattes:  Regularly get 2000+ words on the page, some of it terrible, repetitive stuff and others really inspired.  Sheer output is nice, but I’m more excited about the really nice stuff I wrote and thought had good potential.
   • More than two lattes:  C’mon, really?  Two lattes is four espresso shots and right at the limit for productivity in writing for me.  That third latte has a Jeckle and Hyde effect on me, turning mild-mannered writer into wild, crazy guy who when he’s not spending the extra energy polishing the kitchen to a shine thinks that writing long treatises on the cheeses of the world is a good idea.  Is it funny to watch?  Possibly.  Is it good for my daily writing?  Hell no.
2. Writing blocks.  Seems simple, right?  That you should have a set time that you spend writing?  I had two golden times for writing.  One was during Audrey’s nap time.  It was usually two to three hours of uninterrupted time.  If I had to do some household necessities, I could usually get them done in thirty to forty minutes, leaving the rest of the time where I could crank out words during her nap.  Not always ideal was the time when everyone went to bed, but it was still productive for me.  Of course, the night time writing sessions will curtail a bit as I am really lacking sleep now, but the nap time session stays.
3. Writing for fun.  Oh man, if I knew now what I knew then.  If I’m not writing for fun, then what the hell am I doing in the first place.  This doesn’t mean that I can’t explore things that I’m interested in or that I can’t write serious stuff, but it does mean that I need to enjoy the time I’m writing more than, say…cleaning out the fridge.  If cleaning the fridge sounds more interesting than what I am currently writing, I need to change things up.
4. Music in the background.  Minor thing, but I like having music in the background.  However, it’s dangerous to have stuff that I can sing to as it takes me out of the zone.  Instrumental stuff is good.  Classical is always a good backup if I can’t find something appropriate.
5. Deadlines.  Nothing quite puts the fear of failure in you like missing a deadline which is the beauty of NaNo.  Having hard drop dead date where you either hit the target or not motivates certain people like me.  Let me clarify that anyone who wrote even a single sentence for NaNo should be commended because it’s a wonderful step for creativity (watch for a separate post where I lambaste the naysayers who think NaNo is a bad idea).  The goal is important to me because it is a testament that deadlines work.  They work for me.  There are plenty of people they don’t work for, but that’s not the recipe for my success.
6. Family and friends supporting.  Understated in all of this is the level of support I’ve had during this year’s NaNo venture.  Not that I haven’t had support in previous years, but this year I was more vocal to those close to me that I was doing it, that they should ask me about it and that any encouragement would help me along the path.  Leading the charge was my wonderful, amazing wife, Melanie.  She consistently asked me how things were going, made it a priority for her to support me, whether that be giving me a quick ten second shoulder rub or watching Audrey at night when I was trying to write.  This would not have been possible without her support.  A good network of supportive friends and family makes a huge difference when you undertake any project and I’m damn lucky I’ve got people who believe in me and want to see me succeed.  To anyone reading this, thank you so much!

There were the good things.  Time to visit the other side of the fence.

Stuff that absolutely did not help:

1. The internet.  ”Oh really?” I hear you say.  Oh man, you have no idea.  Sure, it’s great for research and it keeps me informed and in touch with the world.  Sometimes it keeps me too in touch with the world.  I can’t count how many hours that were intended for writing that went up in smoke because I had email, Twitter and five tabs up in Chrome.  It is so easy for me to distracted by the internet.  The most writing I got done was when I shut down the browser, closed email and made sure that Twitter clients were no where to be found.
2. Not getting enough sleep.  Not really surprising.  The hardest part of this wasn’t with going to bed too late, it was the next morning when I had to get up and focus.  As a writer, I need to be awake enough so that I can concentrate on writing and still have the ability to let my mind wander while doing so.  The stuff I wrote when I was tired was boring, and boring writing is not inspiring.  When I could really let my creativity flow and just immerse myself is when the words really came out and when my best writing happened.
3. Not reading enough.  Sounds weird because it’s an investment of time, but I need to read more when I’m writing.  It’s a bit dangerous because sometimes the writing I’m doing can be influenced by what I’m reading, but overall, it let’s me explore things I wouldn’t have considered before.  And again, we’re talking first draft and not finished product.  Not reading kept some of the ideas stale and made for boring writing.
4. Planning too much or not planning at all.  There’s a sweet spot to be hit here.  I can write with no planning, but it doesn’t work that well for longer works.  I need a certain level of planning, but too much stifles what I’m trying to do, not enough has me doing things like scrambling for names and places to invent.
5. Striving for perfection.  Most of my revising I do when I’m writing.  In fact, that last sentence was revised as I was composing it.  I do go through the blogs and try a couple of sweeps to see what I can fix and tighten up, but I also do a fair amount of it while in process.  I’ll be chugging along and suddenly decide that something doesn’t work for me anymore.  Along comes the delete key taking out anywhere from a word to a whole section of writing.  Doesn’t really help the first draft nature of the writing.  This year I really tried to just get everything down.  Even as I was writing, I knew I was putting up long paragraphs of meaningless exposition, repeating myself over and over in sections and having vast sections of characters not actually doing anything but talking, usually about things not related to what was happening in the story.  I kept most of it this year.  I expect that if I ever get to editing this stuff (as I’m not confident that the stories are worth preserving), large swaths of words will be sliced away.
6. Not having a writing routine.  I finally developed something resembling a writing routine toward the end of this month, but if asked, I have no real writing space carved out in my house.  I have no set time each day where I hop down to a coffee shop and type away on the computer.  As of late, my routine became write at the kitchen table during the day and on the couch in the family room at night.  It’s not really ideal but it did the trick this time.  Of all the things that might be the easiest to fix, this might be it.  It wouldn’t take too much either, but I’ll likely save it for a post-holidays project.

And a couple other little things of note, particularly some statistics that I found interesting about this years NaNo efforts.

• Final word count:  50099
• Final word count (as verified by NaNo’s web-tool):  50008 — Not sure why this always seems to happen, but the verification tool never ever matches the word count in my writing software.
• Average word count per day: 1614 — Notice this number is below the thirty day average you need to get to 50k.
• Week one word count/average per day: 13414 – 1916 words/day.
• Week two word count/average per day: 3975 – 568 words/day.
• Week three word count/average per day:  2861 – 409 words/day.
• Week four word count/average per day: 14467 – 2067 words/day.
• Final two day word count/average per day: 15291 – 7645 words/day.
• Total words blogged about NaNo 2010 in November (including this post): 5367

As you can see, weeks two and three were absolutely horrid for me, but I still eked out some words and kept working toward the goal.  The last two days seem more dramatic than they were.  I simply found bits of time during the entire day and spent it mashing out words as best I could.  If I had fifteen minutes here or there, that was usually good for 400-500 words written, which is time well spent.  Mind you, the night of the 29th, I was up until 2:30 A.M. getting words out.

Tools of the trade–what I used to write this year:

• 98% of the writing was done on my Lenovo X61s laptop.
• Writing software: Scrivner for Windows (beta).  This is my new favorite writing software.  It really worked for me.
• Backups:  Dropbox.  Loved this.  Had my Scrivner files saved directly to my Dropbox folder on my laptop, which made them instantly available pretty much anywhere I could get an internet connection, including my iPhone.
• Blogging software:  WordPress.  What you’re reading right now.  Been with them for years.

And that’s about it for the wrap up.  I do want to thank everyone who was supportive this year.  This is all leading to good things, I assure you.  NaNo has always been a great jolt of creativity that is a fun, low pressure activity that challenges people to finally get that “write a novel” item checked off of their life list.  I’ve got a list of other writing projects that I can thank NaNo for helping me germinate those ideas.

It’s now a matter of keeping the pace up.  Wish me luck.

Word count today: 0

Word count total: 13414

This blog post is a bit odd. I’m actually writing it before I’ve written any words down for today. The two reasons it’s odd is 1) I usually spend Audrey’s nap time in writing mode on the NaNo project and 2) I have far more thoughts about my blog posts after I’ve finished the writing. I know, I wrote a blog post before I had written during the day before, but that was more of a time crunch issue and not because I sensed writing issues. I’m not, per se, blocked right now, but I see the problems in the near future and I’m not entirely sure how to get around them as a writer.

In the standard story format, the main characters have been introduced as well as the primary conflict. The conflict, of course, builds over time and although there may be some minor victories here and there, the final conflict has some significant hurdles to overcome and in some cases, the problems can seem insurmountable.

My main character right now has been in a position where she has really no choices other than this one offer she’s been given. But it’s not really a bad thing. In fact, the way I’ve written it, I dare anyone to look at the choices she’s given and chose any other path. Her other life has been forceably taken away from her and the path offered to her is one she’s secretly desired all her life.

My problem: what’s the conflict here? Nothing really. No conflict, no problem, but it also means no real reason to keep reading. The story is just getting started and it seems right now there’s a moment of “happily ever after” before I’ve even introduced all of the characters.

I could try the old NaNo tricks of having someone storm into the room with a gun, or a pirate jumps in, or monkeys, something surprising and unexpected. But I know how each of those stories end already and then the main line story is completely derailed. In the simplest of story terms, I should have some sort of desire for the main character and a significant problem that prevents her from achieving this desire. I can even have it work on two levels where she has a tangible and intangible desires which would really round out the story. The intangible is easier to work with, but the tangible is easier to write about, at least it is for me–and reading that over it may sound a bit of a contradiction, but it’s true to me. Ideally, I want both, but I have to work it so that it is believable…to a point.

Really, this is a first draft and I just need to get it out of the way and see what happens, but it would be unbelievably helpful if I could find that central conflict to start driving the characters in their directions.

Obviously, I’m going to update this once I’ve written some stuff down and let you know where I am. I did think it would be interesting for others to see my process, understanding pieces of the puzzle of putting a story together.

UPDATE: Yeah, so writing didn’t happen today. Part of this was my normal writing times were shot to hell today. I could also blame the intertubes being finally installed at home. However, this one is on me. It may not be a bad thing though as I gave myself time to think about what I needed to get done and actually writing this post helped me get in the right vein of thought. I used up that built in cushion from my previous times. Pressure is now on to keep up writing, get back on track again.

Word count today: 1852

Word count total: 11683

Today was broken up in two sessions as well. Worked better today as I found some very nice solutions to problems I introduced in earlier writing. Today was about getting the band together, so to speak. It more or less works.

One thing I should mention. I’m using Melanie as my first reader here. I trust her opinions and especially value her input on getting the gender issues correct. Someone asked me how I felt about having my main character female and my response was that my wife would keep my voice true. It’s turned out quite well so far.

Still pacing ahead for NaNo. Nice steady pace. Tomorrow will actually be the hardest time to find a good chunk of time to write. I’m hoping that late afternoon proves fruitful.

Word count today: 1749

Word count total: 7658

Well, shit. If I didn’t read other people’s stuff, sometimes I would be okay. But I do read a good variety, especially people whose opinion I respect.

Yesterday, when I read Cat Valente’s rant about how Steampunk is pretty awful with few exceptions, about how it’s a really undefined category of spec-fic and basic storytelling goes right out the window when someone writes a Steampunk novel, I can’t really say it made my day. Mostly because I pretty much agree with her.

When I made the decision this year to do something specifically Steampunk, it wasn’t really because I was swept up in the excitement for it. For example, when the topic for next year’s CONvergence was announced as Steampunk, my personal response was tepid at best. Yeah, pretty great for those people who spend time with costumes and the like but it doesn’t grab me like other potential topics could have. My decision this year to do Steampunk was largely to try to return to my first year NaNo form seven years ago when I inadvertantly wrote a Steampunk novel without really knowing it as I was going. It was fun, but not particularly good. And that was okay with me.

This year, the goals are different and so is the intent. I still wanted to do Steampunk, but not just crazy, action driven stuff with no characters. In fact, the whole thing was meant for me to insert societal commentary in an unfamiliar form. And I wanted to keep it light, funny. But in the back of my mind, I have doubts about the genre as Ms. Valente is right. Damning most of all is there is no definitive Steampunk work, and my offering certainly is not going to be that.

Still, what matters is the process right now. If it turns out that Steampunk doesn’t work for me, I’ll switch it mid-stream, fix it on revision. The path compells me so far, but I’m unsure of the road ahead. For me, that’s how fiction goes.

I could have wrote for more today, but I wanted to keep a bit more in the well for tomorrow. Today’s writing was almost entirely descriptive, but tomorrow will be more dialogue, something I’m much, much more comfortable with doing. I am still ahead of the curve. As of today, I am still nearly one thousand words ahead of where I should be, so it is still steady work.

Interesting thought I just had was that I should keep track of not only how many words I write for NaNo, but also at the end, how many words I blogged about NaNo. Heh, that should be a fun number.

With any luck, this is just a pre-post to my actual work I hope to do tonight. You see, things sometimes don’t quite work out the way you want and work suffers because of it.

Words done so far today: 1817
Words total: 4044

Yeah…I know. Sad thing is that I don’t really have a good excuse for this. The day itself started a bit ominously when in the event of trying to be on top of things today, I made several miscalculations.

First of all, I misinterpreted where Melanie and I need to vote today. I thought that because we haven’t had residency at our new place long enough, we wouldn’t be able to vote in the new place. Turns out residency requirements are a mere ten days, so I was wrong. Regardless, we went up to Grantsburg today to vote, only to find out we couldn’t vote in Grantsburg as we were not on their voter rolls either. Not a huge deal, but I have no idea how busy the line is going to be after people are off of work.

My second mistake was leaving my laptop back at our house. Normally, I could get by but this was also a day I needed to make some changes online and all of the information I needed was on my laptop. Over an hour was blown simply driving back, picking up my laptop back and then heading back to Grantsburg. On a very slightly positive note, I did get to put the garbage can away. One less thing to do when we get home.

The third thing is entirely me. I don’t know what it is, but when I’m at my in-law’s house, I just can’t seem to sit down and write. I can cruise the internet and read about a bunch of stuff which is of little importance on my laptop, but sitting my butt down during a block of free time to knock out some fiction is a herculean task. It’s not as if I’m not motivated or that I’m stuck on where I want the story to go. Not at all. But maybe it’s just the aura. And it’s something I don’t really understand as it’s about as a welcoming environment as you could possibly want, yet my fiction writing struggles here. A 500+ word blog post, no problem. Anything resembling a story, multiple levels of failure.

This is hopefully corrected tonight. I asked Melanie if I could concentrate on writing tonight, especially once Audrey goes to sleep, and she was quite encouraging. That’s why I really hope to update this tonight with a new number and further progress on NaNoWriMo. Any progress will be updated with my iPhone and two fingers, so don’t expect as long of a treatise as this post written on a laptop with both hands.

Lastly, my main goal with NaNo this year is to be constant and steady, each day a path of progress towards the development of a story. I know personally that I can do a sprint, and in fact when prodded, I can be absolutely prodigious in sheer word output. No, instead of being a sprint runner, I want to be the writing equivalent of a marathon runner. Steady, committed, and able to crank out a longer work in a not unreasonable frame of time.

As always, encouragement and gentle prodding is welcome.

UPDATED: I did manage to get some writing in today, thanks in part to my understanding wife. Totals at the top are now current. Still on track.

See that blog post title at the top there?  Nice, isn’t it?  You know exactly what it says and it introduces the topic quite directly.  No messing about.  And as a introductory point to a blog post, it serves the purpose it was meant to do.  In writing a blog post or an essay, I’d make my case, support it, argue it and let the message stand tall.  But it doesn’t work for all writing.

I’ve read a fair amount of items in the last few months, not just stories or novels, but just a big smörgåsbord of writing.  Some of it has been good, some of it…well, not so good.  The good stuff makes you reflect or realize a certain truth about the world.  The bad stuff can actually lead you to an epiphany about writing itself.  The most egregious examples of writing truths lately have been clear when the writer has a MESSAGE, not just an ordinary message they want to get across, but when the MESSAGE is the purpose of the writing in the first place.  Men and women who are normally excellent writers are not immune to writing this heavy handed as I’ve seen recently.

There’s a famous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Lancelot is trotting along when the audience hears an arrow whistle through the air then the rattle of the arrow shaft as it finds purchase in his “horse”/squire Concorde.  Concorde’s seemingly last words are “message for you, sir.”  Sometimes, that’s what it’s like when you read or watch a piece that was intended to deliver a message rather than tell a story.  It works sometimes, not often, but sometimes.

What doesn’t work is using the MESSAGE as a sledgehammer, smacking your readers in the face with it time and time again.  It can appear somewhat dishonest painting in such broad strokes that even people who would be receptive to your point of view feel uncomfortable with the presentation.  Depicting characters as real people presented only as broad representations of an idea really makes those “people” one dimensional, characters more suited to parable.

That’s why writing can be so tough sometimes.  Personally, I have a lot of strong opinions about a wide variety of things which I feel like I can address on this blog well enough.  I have a very difficult time translating those opinions to stories that I feel will be honest and ring true.  Of all of the writing styles I’ve tried, writing allegory to me is difficult as I’m never happy with the balance I reach between the characters and the ideals.

No matter how much it might gall you, if you want to deliver the message, you don’t have to hide it, but you do need to have the opposition seem competent and justifiably reasoned enough to be believable.  Cartoonishly evil bad people should probably stay in cartoons, parody and pulp writing.

If you believe the strength of your message, then you should be bold enough to present a nuanced position, complete with an honest adversarial point of view, not one that is presented as being evil for the sake of being evil.

For those of you who are interested (though I have no clue who that might be), you can track my progress here with this fancy little graphic I have here which might help. It will show my daily progress. I am sincerely hoping to put a little work in each day, although I have to admit I’m much more likely to have big days and days I just don’t do that much. My goal this year is to get it all done, working a little at a time every day. I think I can do it. Anyway, enjoy the graphic.