So the leaf-raking event of Sunday did me in, and by this morning I was feeling way too crappy to rear my ugly head at work. I ended up spending the day taking Airborne, Advil, Benadryl, and sleeping like crazy.
Waking up late in the afternoon, I headed out to my daughter's ballet class, since this was the one week we were allowed to observe. And before anyone is thinking that I'm some sort of kick-ass father for "going the extra mile," showing up for the class when I was sick, you should know that I actually dozed off during the class. I don't think Piper saw me, as I was tucked into a corner of the room, on the floor. (Please don't tell her.)
I'd like to think that all that sleep bought me beaucoup creative minutes with my muse tonight, but it didn't feel that way. I powered through a section tonight and got a lot of words down on paper, but I feel sometimes like I'm redefining the unofficial motto of NaNoWriMo: "Quantity before quality."
I finally, painfully, introduced the two major characters that are going to upend Walt's pretty-messed-up-already life. (In fact, what they're truly doing is righting his ship.) They come in the form of Sherry, a single mom, and Arden, her five-year-old daughter.
I've been resisting introducing Arden for the longest time. She scares me because I want her to be so . . . right. Naturally, she's going to be heavily based on my two daughters, and that's probably why I want her to be so true. I have thoroughly convinced myself that I'm going to completely botch Arden's character development. So, like so many aspects of this novel, I am praying that the editing process is going to allow me the time and ability to give the characters, the settings, the descriptions the kind of depth they deserve. (Translation: Marck is going to give everything the typically over-wordy treatment he gives everything he writes.) (This blog entry a case in point, n'est-ce pas?)
I came across these eight rules for non-fiction that Kurt Vonnegut wrote sometime back. (It would have been hard for him to do it, say, yesterday, wouldn't it?) And one of those eight rules sticks in my head as I think about editing this quickly growing behemoth: "Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action."
Gulp.
Just the thought of editing with this foremost in my mind makes me feel like this might be the most painstaking process ever.
I'm getting close to the end of the outline I had created before I started. And I'm nowhere near the end. So I've started to try to finish up an outline of the chapters/scenes remaining. I created the next three chapter outlines, and then just because it's the only other thing I knew, I created chapter 100 and wrote about the final chapter. Now I'm adding chapter 99, chapter 98, etc. I'm hoping the two trains will meet in the middle somewhere . . . and that I'll then get to go back and renumber those chapters! Because if this thing is really looking at being 100 chapters, I have a friggin' out-of-control nightmare on my hands.
Speaking of nightmares: I had a doozy last night, the kind that you wake from whimpering and looking to hold your wife tight in bed. (Laura has no recollection of this happening.) The dream stayed clear in my head when I woke up in the morning — an extremely rare occurrence. I can't find it's connection with my life. I'm wondering if this is the novel talking . . . or if this is simply the delusional nightmares of a drugged up pseudo-novelist.
13 November 2007
12 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 11: Seeds Sown for Future Endeavors?
I pounded out about a thousand words in the middle of the night last night, which would be a great thing, except that I did it while sitting next to just about the draftiest window in the house. By this morning I had a sore throat. I've been taking Airborne all day and drinking lots of tea in hopes of thwarting the cold. What I probably shoudl really be doing is getting some sleep, right? So I'll keep this entry short.
My day hours today were spent doing those typically suburban things: Piper declared today "family pancake day" (as she has declared every Sunday for the past several weeks), and I fulfilled my fatherly duties by making the bestest buttermilk pancakes ever, period. This afternoon was spent raking leaves in our backyard — a job that will need to be repeated in a week's time, since the trees are not nearly done giving up their foliage. Still needed to get one round of this in, in case a snow comes in the next several days and makes such endeavors impossible.
The thing that was really enjoyable about the leaves today was that the girls played in them for a lot of the time I was out there, jumping in my leaf piles, throwing them at each other . . . It's the first year that this has happened.
Watching the two of them, I wanted to write a new novel, one with both of them as the main characters. But I'm not sure I have the talent to make a story like that not sound too . . . precious . . . treacly . . . not sure what word I'm looking for here, but I'm betting I would have had no problem finding it twenty-four hours ago.
The funny thing about this noveling thing (at least the thing today) is that since I've started work on this novel, I've come up with ideas for two more. One is a bit of a seat-of-your-pants thriller. The other is a much more introspective piece. I've made a couple of notes on them in new Scrivener projects, in case they amount to anything. It's weird to think that I might be doing this again.
More to the point with this novel: When I got my hair cut on Saturday, the guy who cuts it agreed to do my hair (and his wife my makeup) for my photo shoot for the picture on the back cover of my novel when it's published. He also agreed to accompany me to NYC when I appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I told him he wasn't thinking big enough for my needs: I was going to encourage him to sell the salon and just come on full time as my "hair boy." He's game.
My day hours today were spent doing those typically suburban things: Piper declared today "family pancake day" (as she has declared every Sunday for the past several weeks), and I fulfilled my fatherly duties by making the bestest buttermilk pancakes ever, period. This afternoon was spent raking leaves in our backyard — a job that will need to be repeated in a week's time, since the trees are not nearly done giving up their foliage. Still needed to get one round of this in, in case a snow comes in the next several days and makes such endeavors impossible.
The thing that was really enjoyable about the leaves today was that the girls played in them for a lot of the time I was out there, jumping in my leaf piles, throwing them at each other . . . It's the first year that this has happened.
Watching the two of them, I wanted to write a new novel, one with both of them as the main characters. But I'm not sure I have the talent to make a story like that not sound too . . . precious . . . treacly . . . not sure what word I'm looking for here, but I'm betting I would have had no problem finding it twenty-four hours ago.
The funny thing about this noveling thing (at least the thing today) is that since I've started work on this novel, I've come up with ideas for two more. One is a bit of a seat-of-your-pants thriller. The other is a much more introspective piece. I've made a couple of notes on them in new Scrivener projects, in case they amount to anything. It's weird to think that I might be doing this again.
More to the point with this novel: When I got my hair cut on Saturday, the guy who cuts it agreed to do my hair (and his wife my makeup) for my photo shoot for the picture on the back cover of my novel when it's published. He also agreed to accompany me to NYC when I appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I told him he wasn't thinking big enough for my needs: I was going to encourage him to sell the salon and just come on full time as my "hair boy." He's game.
11 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 10: Cruising On Ambrosia
A true luxury today. After my haircut, I headed over to Café Ambrosia, where I had almost two hours of uninterrupted time with the novel to get my word count back in the vicinity of being on target. It's a fairly new café in Evanston, and I'd heard someone on the NaNoWriMo boards talk about how once you checked it out, you wouldn't want to go to any other café in the area.
It's very spacious, with lots of different sitting options: The counter along the window, the counter inside, couches, comfy easy-chairs, and your traditional small-table-and-wood-chair. Which is what I opted for, along with my large caffé mocha.
First order of business: some house cleaning. It seems that in the course of these first ten days of writing, my plot and some characters (in typical fashion) have headed off in directions I hadn't expected. So rather than whip them into shape, I spent some time altering my plot outline, making it conform to where they've gone.
Then I wrote the second letter from Walt's mother to him. These were the sections of the novel I was most looking forward to, but since the loss of the notebook, these sections have become the most cumbersome to write. The letters provide the backstory to where Walt came from, what he is so desperate to escape. I don't feel like this material has come back so very well. Which is to say at all. I lumbered through the letter, but I feel like it's biding time. Maybe this is going to be fleshed out in the second draft.
One of the things I realized was that I had totally missed in my first draft of the earlier chapters was any explanation of how my main character got set up in his apartment. I mean, this first section of the story is about his starting over, so I feel I need to detail that process to some extent. So I found myself breaking a chapter into two pieces and inserting another chapter in between. And then I started writing that chapter. Of course, who should show up almost immediately in this new chapter? The female character who apparently desperately wants to sleep with Walt. (So, this rearrangement was her idea!) We'll see where that goes. I'm suspicious of her — not only her intentions for my main character, but her intentions in my novel. Still, if every character needs to want something, as Kurt Vonnegut suggests, then she has the most clearly defined want of anyone.
I ended up knocking out almost 2,000 words this afternoon. And there was this one transcendant moment when a particular song came on my iTunes: Seal's "Violet." I have no idea what happened, but in the course of that 8-1/2 minute song, over 400 words flew out of my fingers. Damn, was that nice.
I would love to get another two hours like this on Sunday, but I feel guilty about asking Laura to once again watch the kids. Especially when it feels like the house and the yard is getting crazier and crazier, and when we're hosting Thanksgiving in a mere eleven days.
It's very spacious, with lots of different sitting options: The counter along the window, the counter inside, couches, comfy easy-chairs, and your traditional small-table-and-wood-chair. Which is what I opted for, along with my large caffé mocha.
First order of business: some house cleaning. It seems that in the course of these first ten days of writing, my plot and some characters (in typical fashion) have headed off in directions I hadn't expected. So rather than whip them into shape, I spent some time altering my plot outline, making it conform to where they've gone.
Then I wrote the second letter from Walt's mother to him. These were the sections of the novel I was most looking forward to, but since the loss of the notebook, these sections have become the most cumbersome to write. The letters provide the backstory to where Walt came from, what he is so desperate to escape. I don't feel like this material has come back so very well. Which is to say at all. I lumbered through the letter, but I feel like it's biding time. Maybe this is going to be fleshed out in the second draft.
One of the things I realized was that I had totally missed in my first draft of the earlier chapters was any explanation of how my main character got set up in his apartment. I mean, this first section of the story is about his starting over, so I feel I need to detail that process to some extent. So I found myself breaking a chapter into two pieces and inserting another chapter in between. And then I started writing that chapter. Of course, who should show up almost immediately in this new chapter? The female character who apparently desperately wants to sleep with Walt. (So, this rearrangement was her idea!) We'll see where that goes. I'm suspicious of her — not only her intentions for my main character, but her intentions in my novel. Still, if every character needs to want something, as Kurt Vonnegut suggests, then she has the most clearly defined want of anyone.
I ended up knocking out almost 2,000 words this afternoon. And there was this one transcendant moment when a particular song came on my iTunes: Seal's "Violet." I have no idea what happened, but in the course of that 8-1/2 minute song, over 400 words flew out of my fingers. Damn, was that nice.
I would love to get another two hours like this on Sunday, but I feel guilty about asking Laura to once again watch the kids. Especially when it feels like the house and the yard is getting crazier and crazier, and when we're hosting Thanksgiving in a mere eleven days.
10 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 9: Games People Play
One of the things that surprised me about my process is the music situation. When I began this, I thought I'd be using a ton of instrumental music, especially some of the wonderful podcasts from Magnatune. I tried that for the first two or three nights, but then I discovered that what I need in order to write is the familiar. Or maybe variety. In any case, the music that really helps me cook is just my usual iTunes collection on "Party Shuffle." (FYI, last five artists: Joe Jackson, Frederic Chopin, Crowded House, Massive Attack, and Elliott Smith.) I had made the assumption that the lyrics were going to make it harder to write. But I should have known better: I've always favored music over the lyrics. It's easy for me to tune out the content of the words, turning the voice into just another instrument. I suppose if I ever get in a jam, though, I could just put my head back, listen for the next lyric I hear sung, and just put those words into the mouth of the nearest character.
A lot of NaNoWriMoers seem to use tricks like that: Little things that get you writing again, just keep the word count up. It's not that it sounds like cheating to me so much as a useless drill. I suppose I wouldn't mind it so much if I knew the exercise was going to be relevant to my story, but deciding all of a sudden that my character is stuck in an elevator with a German shepherd, a candy striper, and a professional poker player and spending my evening writing about that just seems like . . . well, a waste of my evening.
Besides . . . I know where this story is taking me. For some reason, I'm resisting going there.
I'm part of the Chicago team having a "word war" with the cities of Toronto and New York. It feels weird, pretending that writing is somehow a team sport. And it's not like I really have to be a team player for this game. All I have to do is keep my fingers typing. It is a little more motivation for me, knowing that for every word I type, I'm pushing up the Chicago word count. That helps keep me going a little.
I hear that people also have mini-word wars at some of the meet-ups and write-ins. "Who can type the most words in the next ten minutes — go!" That kind of thing. I wonder how I'd do in that kind of stressful situation. Probably freeze up.
I miss my notebook. I miss all my little moments I had jotted in there.
Okay. Back to the sidewalk where I left Walt and Miguel, a little drunk, and about to witness a near-fatal car accident. Yee ha!
A lot of NaNoWriMoers seem to use tricks like that: Little things that get you writing again, just keep the word count up. It's not that it sounds like cheating to me so much as a useless drill. I suppose I wouldn't mind it so much if I knew the exercise was going to be relevant to my story, but deciding all of a sudden that my character is stuck in an elevator with a German shepherd, a candy striper, and a professional poker player and spending my evening writing about that just seems like . . . well, a waste of my evening.
Besides . . . I know where this story is taking me. For some reason, I'm resisting going there.
I'm part of the Chicago team having a "word war" with the cities of Toronto and New York. It feels weird, pretending that writing is somehow a team sport. And it's not like I really have to be a team player for this game. All I have to do is keep my fingers typing. It is a little more motivation for me, knowing that for every word I type, I'm pushing up the Chicago word count. That helps keep me going a little.
I hear that people also have mini-word wars at some of the meet-ups and write-ins. "Who can type the most words in the next ten minutes — go!" That kind of thing. I wonder how I'd do in that kind of stressful situation. Probably freeze up.
I miss my notebook. I miss all my little moments I had jotted in there.
Okay. Back to the sidewalk where I left Walt and Miguel, a little drunk, and about to witness a near-fatal car accident. Yee ha!
09 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 8: The Words Get Heavier, My Arms Get Tired
I'm trying not to worry too much about my word count dropping below the target for the first time. We are coming into a weekend here, and there's a chance I might be able to do some catch-up on Sunday at a café somewhere.
And it's not lost on me that today is the first day of Week 2, apparently widely known to be the most difficult week of NaNoWriMo. It's the week you learn to hate your novel, you're tempted to kill off characters, and you consider how nice it would be to just go to bed at 10 p.m. rather than stay up. (Actually, I never feel like going to bed at 10.)
My problem is that I'm stuck with my main character just about to head into this important, story-changing moment . . . and I'm resisting it. I'm scared to write it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm scared to face up to something he's going to face?
I've got to just bear down and push ahead. Just keep putting one word in front of the other.
And it's not lost on me that today is the first day of Week 2, apparently widely known to be the most difficult week of NaNoWriMo. It's the week you learn to hate your novel, you're tempted to kill off characters, and you consider how nice it would be to just go to bed at 10 p.m. rather than stay up. (Actually, I never feel like going to bed at 10.)
My problem is that I'm stuck with my main character just about to head into this important, story-changing moment . . . and I'm resisting it. I'm scared to write it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm scared to face up to something he's going to face?
I've got to just bear down and push ahead. Just keep putting one word in front of the other.
08 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 7: The Importance of Not-Writing Time
I'm suspecting that everything I wrote tonight might not make it into the next draft of the novel. It involved an art installation in the backyard of a very rich couple's home, and an enormous fight between the man and his mistress. But I felt the whole timie I was writing this that I was biding time, afraid of the next scene, which I know is going to be a major event in the novel that gets things rolling: a hit-and-run accident during which my main character saves the life of a three-year-old girl.
But here it is, 1:00 a.m., and I have a majorly stressful day at work tomorrow. So I'm going to resist the urge to make it all the way to the hit-and-run and leave that for tomorrow. Undoubtedly I'll have some new ideas on how to approach things when next I sit down.
I see all sorts of great ideas come to my head in the hours that I'm not writing. This is hardly a revelation — he same was once true of my songwdriting as well. The brain seems to continue to work on the puzzles and hang-ups in the story long after the computer has been shut down. I've found that my morning shower seems to be a particularly creative time. For instance, after going to bed last night with the sneaking feeling that I absolutely despised the job my main character just got, I discovered in the shower that the hit-and-run would spell the end of that job for him. Voila — I won't have to keep writing about that.
I'm really feeling the need to complete the outline for this story that I had started back in October. I feel things getting a little out of my control, which is probably great for word count, but isn't going to do much when I have to go back and edit the behemoth. Another reason for the outline: I find that I look forward to the next day's writing when I have a vague idea what I'll be writing about. And since I'm quickly approaching the end of the portion of the outline I created, I may soon be in no-man's-land. I need my outline to stay at least a few chapters ahead of me.
But here it is, 1:00 a.m., and I have a majorly stressful day at work tomorrow. So I'm going to resist the urge to make it all the way to the hit-and-run and leave that for tomorrow. Undoubtedly I'll have some new ideas on how to approach things when next I sit down.
I see all sorts of great ideas come to my head in the hours that I'm not writing. This is hardly a revelation — he same was once true of my songwdriting as well. The brain seems to continue to work on the puzzles and hang-ups in the story long after the computer has been shut down. I've found that my morning shower seems to be a particularly creative time. For instance, after going to bed last night with the sneaking feeling that I absolutely despised the job my main character just got, I discovered in the shower that the hit-and-run would spell the end of that job for him. Voila — I won't have to keep writing about that.
I'm really feeling the need to complete the outline for this story that I had started back in October. I feel things getting a little out of my control, which is probably great for word count, but isn't going to do much when I have to go back and edit the behemoth. Another reason for the outline: I find that I look forward to the next day's writing when I have a vague idea what I'll be writing about. And since I'm quickly approaching the end of the portion of the outline I created, I may soon be in no-man's-land. I need my outline to stay at least a few chapters ahead of me.
07 November 2007
NaNoWrimo, Day 6: Into Five Figures!
Just broke the 10,000-word mark a few minutes ago.
Biggest surprise so far: How little the Internet has distracted me during my writing periods.
Second biggest surprise: How much life distractions have gotten in the way. For instance, that heating problem that we were having starting last night? That didn't get resolved until 3:30 the next afternoon. Such a stupid, niggling little problem that kept me from really finding my groove. Little things like this seem to crop up all the time. They're there every day, I'm sure, but during this month, it's all especially noticeable.
Piper has been asking about the book a lot. Driving her to school Monday morning, I gave her an idea of the plot in very broad brushstrokes, not allowing for too much specificity since my story involves a certain amount of dealing with the myth of St. Nicholas. She tells me she wants to help me with the story. She is, in ways she doesn't know, and probably won't until she's older and reads it . . . if she reads it.
Last night, she came in from ballet class and I was on the computer, pounding out a couple hundred words before dinner.
"Is that you book?" she asked, all excited.
"Yes."
"Can I see it?"
"Sure!" I said, and I turned the computer toward her. The change in her expression was not imperceptible. All there was to see was a lot of words on a white page.
"Oh," she monotoned. Translation: Your book is boring. And off she ran to taunt her little sister.
Biggest surprise so far: How little the Internet has distracted me during my writing periods.
Second biggest surprise: How much life distractions have gotten in the way. For instance, that heating problem that we were having starting last night? That didn't get resolved until 3:30 the next afternoon. Such a stupid, niggling little problem that kept me from really finding my groove. Little things like this seem to crop up all the time. They're there every day, I'm sure, but during this month, it's all especially noticeable.
Piper has been asking about the book a lot. Driving her to school Monday morning, I gave her an idea of the plot in very broad brushstrokes, not allowing for too much specificity since my story involves a certain amount of dealing with the myth of St. Nicholas. She tells me she wants to help me with the story. She is, in ways she doesn't know, and probably won't until she's older and reads it . . . if she reads it.
Last night, she came in from ballet class and I was on the computer, pounding out a couple hundred words before dinner.
"Is that you book?" she asked, all excited.
"Yes."
"Can I see it?"
"Sure!" I said, and I turned the computer toward her. The change in her expression was not imperceptible. All there was to see was a lot of words on a white page.
"Oh," she monotoned. Translation: Your book is boring. And off she ran to taunt her little sister.
06 November 2007
NaNoWrimo, Day 5: Cold
Someone who read my entry yesterday about the (still) missing notebook copped the right attitude: Snap out of it. Anything that was in there can be re-created, or made better.
Yes, and no. From my years of songwriting, I know that countless ideas were lost to the ether because they weren't recorded either on my mini-cassette recorder (hey, it was the '90s) or into one of my countless "idea books." I learned to deal with that early on, realizing that I was always going to have more ideas to replace the old ones. I didn't mind that so much when it came to four-minute pop songs. It feels very different to me when it's the goddamn novel.
But hey, point taken: I'm snapping out of it, slowly. By tonight, I was feeling a little bit of eagerness to write again, even though I wasn't sure what the next section would look like. As it turns out, I'm finding a little more speed to the story: In the course of some 1,300 words, I got Walt an apartment, a quick tour of his new neighborhood, and though he doesn't know it yet, he just met the woman he's going to fall in love with.
I probably could have gotten a lot more written, but the fact is that I'm a little uncomfortable and I'm going to bed. You see, the heat has gone out in our home. I spent a lot of time tonight troubleshooting the thermostat and determining that wasn't the problem, and then relighting the pilot light a couple of times and determining that wasn't it either. The thermostat is telling the heater to turn on. It's just that the heat isn't doing it.
So the temperature inside is currently 65 degrees and outside it's 38, heading toward 33. We have a call in to the heating guys, and they'll be calling first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Laura is hunkered down with Piper and I'll be bringing Zuzu into our bed to make sure everyone's warm for the night. Maybe I'll surprise the girls with a fire in the fireplace in the morning. Oh wait — that will actually suck heat from the rest of the house, won't it? Oh well. We'll figure out something in the morning.
Anyway, I decided to only break through today's quota and call it a night. I keep hoping to have one or two of those amazing 3,000-word days I hear about, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm not worried, but it would be nice to build a bit of a buffer in there for the occasional rainy day . . . or in our case, snowy day. When the heat, you know, goes out again.
Yes, and no. From my years of songwriting, I know that countless ideas were lost to the ether because they weren't recorded either on my mini-cassette recorder (hey, it was the '90s) or into one of my countless "idea books." I learned to deal with that early on, realizing that I was always going to have more ideas to replace the old ones. I didn't mind that so much when it came to four-minute pop songs. It feels very different to me when it's the goddamn novel.
But hey, point taken: I'm snapping out of it, slowly. By tonight, I was feeling a little bit of eagerness to write again, even though I wasn't sure what the next section would look like. As it turns out, I'm finding a little more speed to the story: In the course of some 1,300 words, I got Walt an apartment, a quick tour of his new neighborhood, and though he doesn't know it yet, he just met the woman he's going to fall in love with.
I probably could have gotten a lot more written, but the fact is that I'm a little uncomfortable and I'm going to bed. You see, the heat has gone out in our home. I spent a lot of time tonight troubleshooting the thermostat and determining that wasn't the problem, and then relighting the pilot light a couple of times and determining that wasn't it either. The thermostat is telling the heater to turn on. It's just that the heat isn't doing it.
So the temperature inside is currently 65 degrees and outside it's 38, heading toward 33. We have a call in to the heating guys, and they'll be calling first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Laura is hunkered down with Piper and I'll be bringing Zuzu into our bed to make sure everyone's warm for the night. Maybe I'll surprise the girls with a fire in the fireplace in the morning. Oh wait — that will actually suck heat from the rest of the house, won't it? Oh well. We'll figure out something in the morning.
Anyway, I decided to only break through today's quota and call it a night. I keep hoping to have one or two of those amazing 3,000-word days I hear about, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm not worried, but it would be nice to build a bit of a buffer in there for the occasional rainy day . . . or in our case, snowy day. When the heat, you know, goes out again.
05 November 2007
NaNoWrimo, Day 4: Work in the Face of Adversity
I had such high hopes for today: a relatively free schedule, a supportive family willing to let me go for some time this afternoon, and a real desire to get to the next section of the novel.
The one commitment on the schedule today was a birthday brunch celebration for my mother-in-law. This promised to be a joyous occasion with family and friends, with great food and conversation. Perhaps there might even be some inspiration for the novel!
Alas, the enjoyment of the afternoon was almost undone by a restaurant's terrible service. Due to a long wait for a table and a much, much longer wait for the food that we ordered, not to mention terrible communication by the waitstaff, we did not escape the restaurant until three hours after our arrival. Besides leaving a slightly bad taste in our mouths, the extended brunch ended up meaning that there would be no time for me to escape the house and write today.
But this turn of events was not the really devastating event of the day.
Since late September, I have been carrying a small spiralbound notebook with me, used exclusively for the purpose of capturing my random neural firings about this book. Over the course of that month — and especially in the week before November 1st — I had worked out character sketches on five main characters, mapped out many scenes and "moments" that I knew had to happen, and — most importantly — laid out the foundations for the backstory on which the whole novel is carried.
And after searching in every place I can possibly imagine (including a latenight trip to my workplace to ransack my office), I am sad to announce that this book of ideas is lost.
It's hard to describe how debilitating this has been to my psyche. Tonight was the night my writing would begin to reinvent an ancient, worldwide tradition. My map to this reinvention was in the pages of this book. Without it, I found myself moping, even resisting beginning to write.
I will forge on. And I will continue to look for the missing notebook. But it's hard to shake the feeling that important pieces to this puzzle have been permanently lost. My writing tonight — a letter from my main character's mother — was the most importan section I've written so far, and it felt very uninspired. It's hard to tell if the writing is really that weak or if everything right now is colored by my darkened state of mind.
Let us hope the notebook makes a reappearance soon. And that Day 5 is more positive than the mess that was today.
The one commitment on the schedule today was a birthday brunch celebration for my mother-in-law. This promised to be a joyous occasion with family and friends, with great food and conversation. Perhaps there might even be some inspiration for the novel!
Alas, the enjoyment of the afternoon was almost undone by a restaurant's terrible service. Due to a long wait for a table and a much, much longer wait for the food that we ordered, not to mention terrible communication by the waitstaff, we did not escape the restaurant until three hours after our arrival. Besides leaving a slightly bad taste in our mouths, the extended brunch ended up meaning that there would be no time for me to escape the house and write today.
But this turn of events was not the really devastating event of the day.
Since late September, I have been carrying a small spiralbound notebook with me, used exclusively for the purpose of capturing my random neural firings about this book. Over the course of that month — and especially in the week before November 1st — I had worked out character sketches on five main characters, mapped out many scenes and "moments" that I knew had to happen, and — most importantly — laid out the foundations for the backstory on which the whole novel is carried.
And after searching in every place I can possibly imagine (including a latenight trip to my workplace to ransack my office), I am sad to announce that this book of ideas is lost.
It's hard to describe how debilitating this has been to my psyche. Tonight was the night my writing would begin to reinvent an ancient, worldwide tradition. My map to this reinvention was in the pages of this book. Without it, I found myself moping, even resisting beginning to write.
I will forge on. And I will continue to look for the missing notebook. But it's hard to shake the feeling that important pieces to this puzzle have been permanently lost. My writing tonight — a letter from my main character's mother — was the most importan section I've written so far, and it felt very uninspired. It's hard to tell if the writing is really that weak or if everything right now is colored by my darkened state of mind.
Let us hope the notebook makes a reappearance soon. And that Day 5 is more positive than the mess that was today.
04 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 3: No Panic Allowed
Okay, so things didn't go so well last night. I got myself up to around 4,000 words before kicking off for the night, but I would have liked to have been closer to 5,000. And here it is just after midnight a day later and I've only closed in on 5,000 now. Not terrible, right? I mean, I'm less than 100 words off quota. Except that I had hoped to be far ahead of quota during the "honeymoon" period.
The problem is this: I've gotten Walt (my main character) sitting at a dinner with a family . . . and for most of a day I wasn't sure what they were going to talk about. So I had this primo writing time after I got Zuzu to sleep and before Laura and Piper came back from the 3-D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas when I could have cranked out major words. And I ended up writing "around" my story. Biding my time.
It wasn't until Piper was asleep, Laura was by my side, and we watched an episode of Pushing Daisies that I figured out the two things that would go on at this dinner: 1) Walt's buddy's wife will press him on his history, which he will be typically reluctant to share; and 2) The seeds will be sown for an adulterous relationship between said wife and Walt.
This latter item took me quite by surprise, and may be the first sign of what Chris Baty and many others have talked about in the past: characters deciding to do things "on their own," without your necessarily willing it. Since I immediately created this female character as someone who did not sign up for the conservative Christian marriage she has found herself in, it would make sense that she is profoundly unhappy . . . and that Walt's appearance in their household makes possible a dalliance that she was likely to be doing someday soon anyway.
I had found myself resisting working sex into the story, thinking that was just "too easy" to go there. But that's just silly. An affair can be handled in very adult (read: grown-up) ways. I can keep titillation to a minimum — with the full knowledge that the very word affair carries a pretty high titillation factor.
I'm going to have a couple of hours tomorrow at a local café to pound out some words. Hopefully I can make some gains on my word count then.
The problem is this: I've gotten Walt (my main character) sitting at a dinner with a family . . . and for most of a day I wasn't sure what they were going to talk about. So I had this primo writing time after I got Zuzu to sleep and before Laura and Piper came back from the 3-D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas when I could have cranked out major words. And I ended up writing "around" my story. Biding my time.
It wasn't until Piper was asleep, Laura was by my side, and we watched an episode of Pushing Daisies that I figured out the two things that would go on at this dinner: 1) Walt's buddy's wife will press him on his history, which he will be typically reluctant to share; and 2) The seeds will be sown for an adulterous relationship between said wife and Walt.
This latter item took me quite by surprise, and may be the first sign of what Chris Baty and many others have talked about in the past: characters deciding to do things "on their own," without your necessarily willing it. Since I immediately created this female character as someone who did not sign up for the conservative Christian marriage she has found herself in, it would make sense that she is profoundly unhappy . . . and that Walt's appearance in their household makes possible a dalliance that she was likely to be doing someday soon anyway.
I had found myself resisting working sex into the story, thinking that was just "too easy" to go there. But that's just silly. An affair can be handled in very adult (read: grown-up) ways. I can keep titillation to a minimum — with the full knowledge that the very word affair carries a pretty high titillation factor.
I'm going to have a couple of hours tomorrow at a local café to pound out some words. Hopefully I can make some gains on my word count then.
03 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 2: The Reality of Excision
I'm having my first revelation about "longform writing." (I suppose I could just call it "noveling," but I'm all about using as many words as I can right now, in the name of reaching the pinnacle of 50,000 words.) When I finally went to bed last night at 2:00 a.m., I realized that while my story started with my character on a plane landing at O'Hare, I had only just gotten him to the point where he was driving away from the airport with a college buddy he hasn't seen in 20 years . . .
. . . And it took me 3,000 words just to get to that point.
It made me realize that when I finally go back to editing this epic, I am going to be excising ginormous amounts of text that simply has no purpose being there. I'm not worrying about that now, thank God. It's making me see that the true work of this is not so much the initial writing. It's not that hard to throw a lot of clay on the wheel; the real effort comes when I try to make that into something . . . beautiful? Hell, I'll be happy just to take "acceptable."
I had this whole revelation confirmed Friday afternoon when I had lunch with another NaNoWriMoer and her co-worker (who will undoubtedly do NaNoWriMo on another year). This is her fourth attempt at NaNoWriMo, and she's only "won" once. ("Winning," in NaNoWriMo terms, simply means writing 50,000 words by the 30th.) But she still has the experience of going through this, successfully or not. And she knows that what we're basically doing right now is figuring out where the hell our stories are supposed to start.
The thing I'm proud of in myself is this: I've been imagining for weeks that this story was going to start on that damn airplane. But you know what? If, during the editing process, I realize that it makes no sense to start there, I'm ready to jettison the whole scene. Hell, I'll get rid of all 3,000 words if there's a better way to do this. That may not seem like much, but I'm the kind of guy who — especially after he's envisioned something being a certain way for a long time — has a very difficult time adapting to a new reality. At least at this point I'm keeping an open mind to the possibilities of where my story will go.
Well, at midnight tonight, Susannah woke up all cheery. Laura brought her out here, and she gave me a sunny "Good morning!" despite the pitch-black evidence to the contrary outside our window. The break gave me the opportunity to update my word count. Mother and daughter have headed to bed now, and I'm hoping to get in another hour of writing before I call it in myself. I'm hoping to continue to get ahead of the game this weekend; I hear it's very necessary to survive Week Two.
. . . And it took me 3,000 words just to get to that point.
It made me realize that when I finally go back to editing this epic, I am going to be excising ginormous amounts of text that simply has no purpose being there. I'm not worrying about that now, thank God. It's making me see that the true work of this is not so much the initial writing. It's not that hard to throw a lot of clay on the wheel; the real effort comes when I try to make that into something . . . beautiful? Hell, I'll be happy just to take "acceptable."
I had this whole revelation confirmed Friday afternoon when I had lunch with another NaNoWriMoer and her co-worker (who will undoubtedly do NaNoWriMo on another year). This is her fourth attempt at NaNoWriMo, and she's only "won" once. ("Winning," in NaNoWriMo terms, simply means writing 50,000 words by the 30th.) But she still has the experience of going through this, successfully or not. And she knows that what we're basically doing right now is figuring out where the hell our stories are supposed to start.
The thing I'm proud of in myself is this: I've been imagining for weeks that this story was going to start on that damn airplane. But you know what? If, during the editing process, I realize that it makes no sense to start there, I'm ready to jettison the whole scene. Hell, I'll get rid of all 3,000 words if there's a better way to do this. That may not seem like much, but I'm the kind of guy who — especially after he's envisioned something being a certain way for a long time — has a very difficult time adapting to a new reality. At least at this point I'm keeping an open mind to the possibilities of where my story will go.
Well, at midnight tonight, Susannah woke up all cheery. Laura brought her out here, and she gave me a sunny "Good morning!" despite the pitch-black evidence to the contrary outside our window. The break gave me the opportunity to update my word count. Mother and daughter have headed to bed now, and I'm hoping to get in another hour of writing before I call it in myself. I'm hoping to continue to get ahead of the game this weekend; I hear it's very necessary to survive Week Two.
02 November 2007
NaNoWriMo, Day 1: Neither Over-Anticipation Nor Abject Fear Can Stanch the River of Words!
Standing in my front driveway last night as I handed out candy to passing princesses, superheroes, and wild animals, I began discussing NaNoWriMo with a neighbor who teaches creative writing at a nearby university. I was genuinely shocked at how excited she was about the whole NaNoWriMo idea, and about my specific novel. She was immediately pushing things off into new directions, finding cultural parallels, and generally making me feel like: Hey, maybe this idea isn't so insane after all.
I floated on the helium of that conversation for the rest of the night — even when I had a panic attack in the dimly lit semi-solitude of my youngest child's room, as I rubbed her back and she fell asleep. While my hand felt the rise and fall of her back steady into its sleeping rhythm, I began obsessing over the (perhaps not-so-)little holes that plague my plot. Like, for instance: I know what my main character doesn't want to do with his life, but what is it that he strives to do in its place? Or is his whole reason for living simply to get away from the family business? There has to be more to it than that.
I looked for escape in the waning minutes leading up to the kickoff, but not even the guilty pleasure of a nip/tuck season premiere was able to keep me from watching the clock. I finished watching at 12:03 a.m. My muse had been freed! But wait — Laura woke up and wanted help sorting through the kid's Halloween loot. Writus interruptus.
Finally, the first sentence was pounded out at 12:43 a.m. By the time I was falling asleep, I had managed 615 words. Not a terrible start, and I knew I was going to have some "bonus time" the next afternoon. It felt a little weird to be writing in my bed, only because I had envisioned the start of this being in our living room, in the giant chair (or the "Thinking Chair," as my Blues Clues-drenched children like to call it), cozied up with a cup of coffee, some "borrowed" Halloween candy, and my newly licensed copy of Scrivener (Thanks, Mom!).
But the Thinking Chair was not where it all started. You see, the night before, I was prepared to go to bed at midnight and get a full six-and-a-half hours sleep — a good night for me! — when I suddenly realized as I brushed my teeth that I had yet to carve one pumpkin. My solemn duty as a father led me to realize that I could not face my girls in the morning without a jack-o-lantern. And so I went to work, and by 1:40 a.m., I was in bed, dozing off, with a large pumpkin carved with a pirate-skull design waiting for Piper and Zuzu's eyes when they sleepily trundled down the hall the next morning.
Perhaps it was an honorable move on my part, but that carving detour really took a lot out of me for the next night, leaving me to retreat to the easy-to-sleep bedroom locale, and probably keeping my word count down at the starting gun. NaNoWriMo guru Chris Baty recommends that you resist the call to sleep and power through until you have typed all you can type. But I decided to take those words to heart the next night.
And as I said, I got the opportunity to make up for some lost ground when I had to sub in for Piper's pickup from school and take her to an appointment. "Stuck" in a waiting area for 45 minutes or so, I was able to pound out 909 more words, putting me in excellent shape to hit Day 1's quota.
Which I did, easily, while settled into the official Thinking Chair. With the assistance of Earl Grey tea, various chocolate bite-sized treats, and the music of Floratone and Katahdin's Edge, I pushed through what feels to me a rather dull set-up to what I hope will be a pretty fascinating story. Or, perhaps I'll write the life out of it and the whole damn thing will be boring! I'm sure I'll worry about that much more in the coming days. Right now I'm happy to be off to such a snappy start.
I floated on the helium of that conversation for the rest of the night — even when I had a panic attack in the dimly lit semi-solitude of my youngest child's room, as I rubbed her back and she fell asleep. While my hand felt the rise and fall of her back steady into its sleeping rhythm, I began obsessing over the (perhaps not-so-)little holes that plague my plot. Like, for instance: I know what my main character doesn't want to do with his life, but what is it that he strives to do in its place? Or is his whole reason for living simply to get away from the family business? There has to be more to it than that.
I looked for escape in the waning minutes leading up to the kickoff, but not even the guilty pleasure of a nip/tuck season premiere was able to keep me from watching the clock. I finished watching at 12:03 a.m. My muse had been freed! But wait — Laura woke up and wanted help sorting through the kid's Halloween loot. Writus interruptus.
Finally, the first sentence was pounded out at 12:43 a.m. By the time I was falling asleep, I had managed 615 words. Not a terrible start, and I knew I was going to have some "bonus time" the next afternoon. It felt a little weird to be writing in my bed, only because I had envisioned the start of this being in our living room, in the giant chair (or the "Thinking Chair," as my Blues Clues-drenched children like to call it), cozied up with a cup of coffee, some "borrowed" Halloween candy, and my newly licensed copy of Scrivener (Thanks, Mom!).
But the Thinking Chair was not where it all started. You see, the night before, I was prepared to go to bed at midnight and get a full six-and-a-half hours sleep — a good night for me! — when I suddenly realized as I brushed my teeth that I had yet to carve one pumpkin. My solemn duty as a father led me to realize that I could not face my girls in the morning without a jack-o-lantern. And so I went to work, and by 1:40 a.m., I was in bed, dozing off, with a large pumpkin carved with a pirate-skull design waiting for Piper and Zuzu's eyes when they sleepily trundled down the hall the next morning.
Perhaps it was an honorable move on my part, but that carving detour really took a lot out of me for the next night, leaving me to retreat to the easy-to-sleep bedroom locale, and probably keeping my word count down at the starting gun. NaNoWriMo guru Chris Baty recommends that you resist the call to sleep and power through until you have typed all you can type. But I decided to take those words to heart the next night.
And as I said, I got the opportunity to make up for some lost ground when I had to sub in for Piper's pickup from school and take her to an appointment. "Stuck" in a waiting area for 45 minutes or so, I was able to pound out 909 more words, putting me in excellent shape to hit Day 1's quota.
Which I did, easily, while settled into the official Thinking Chair. With the assistance of Earl Grey tea, various chocolate bite-sized treats, and the music of Floratone and Katahdin's Edge, I pushed through what feels to me a rather dull set-up to what I hope will be a pretty fascinating story. Or, perhaps I'll write the life out of it and the whole damn thing will be boring! I'm sure I'll worry about that much more in the coming days. Right now I'm happy to be off to such a snappy start.
29 October 2007
It's getting more real.
Saturday was the Chicago-area kickoff party for National Novel Writing Month. It was bizarre for me — mainly because this introvert actually attended an event where I knew not a single soul. It turned out to be a pretty cool event, if only to get the opportunity to check out the Uptown Writers Space, which I've wanted to do for some time.
I quickly gravitated toward other NaNoWriMo virgins like myself . . . or perhaps most of the people there were newbies, I'm not sure. We immediately talked about how we discovered NaNoWriMo, how difficult we thought it was going to be, how much prep (if any) we had done. I was pretty shocked to discover that, of the five people in our little chat circle, I was by far the most "prepared." Three of the others had no clue what they would be writing come midnight 11/1. One had a vague idea — basically a title — and a setting. And that was it.
I put "prepared" in quotes above because I'm not sure that it's wise to be too prepared for NaNoWriMo. By actually having some character studies and a vague plot outline, I wonder if I'm already narrowing my options, painting myself into a corner, and preparing to go blank when things don't seem to be going the way I expected. There should be no surprise that this is a metaphor for issues in my life (especially my creative life), where I have always struggled with the idea of improvising when things go pear-shaped from how I had planned it. Maybe this will be my great battle in November.
I wouldn't have been as prepared as I am if it weren't for the hour-and-a-half I spent on the El on Friday night when I headed downtown for a going-away party for a friend. (For those of you keeping score, that was two social events in a 24-hour period — a level of social involvement I don't believe I've achieved since college.) On the ride to and from downtown, with the accompaniment of 39 songs shuffling on my iPod, I got down sketches of my main character, his father, his love interest, her daughter, the daughter's best friend/unofficial guardian. I also got down on paper for the first time some of the many "moments" and scenes that have been flying inside my head.
Then, Sunday morning, when Zuzu got up insanely early, I settled her in front of Go, Diego, Go and I started outlining my plot. Half an hour later, I was petrified: while I have a beginning, middle, and end, ther are enormous gaps in between. You know, where the real stuff happens.
But Chris Baty assures me (via his book) that I don't need to worry about this. I need to let that fear go, trust that the magic will happen in the middle of the night. And I'm going to trust Baty — though I have to admit that this is sounding suspiciously like the "think method" espoused in Meredith Willson's The Music Man.
I quickly gravitated toward other NaNoWriMo virgins like myself . . . or perhaps most of the people there were newbies, I'm not sure. We immediately talked about how we discovered NaNoWriMo, how difficult we thought it was going to be, how much prep (if any) we had done. I was pretty shocked to discover that, of the five people in our little chat circle, I was by far the most "prepared." Three of the others had no clue what they would be writing come midnight 11/1. One had a vague idea — basically a title — and a setting. And that was it.
I put "prepared" in quotes above because I'm not sure that it's wise to be too prepared for NaNoWriMo. By actually having some character studies and a vague plot outline, I wonder if I'm already narrowing my options, painting myself into a corner, and preparing to go blank when things don't seem to be going the way I expected. There should be no surprise that this is a metaphor for issues in my life (especially my creative life), where I have always struggled with the idea of improvising when things go pear-shaped from how I had planned it. Maybe this will be my great battle in November.
I wouldn't have been as prepared as I am if it weren't for the hour-and-a-half I spent on the El on Friday night when I headed downtown for a going-away party for a friend. (For those of you keeping score, that was two social events in a 24-hour period — a level of social involvement I don't believe I've achieved since college.) On the ride to and from downtown, with the accompaniment of 39 songs shuffling on my iPod, I got down sketches of my main character, his father, his love interest, her daughter, the daughter's best friend/unofficial guardian. I also got down on paper for the first time some of the many "moments" and scenes that have been flying inside my head.
Then, Sunday morning, when Zuzu got up insanely early, I settled her in front of Go, Diego, Go and I started outlining my plot. Half an hour later, I was petrified: while I have a beginning, middle, and end, ther are enormous gaps in between. You know, where the real stuff happens.
But Chris Baty assures me (via his book) that I don't need to worry about this. I need to let that fear go, trust that the magic will happen in the middle of the night. And I'm going to trust Baty — though I have to admit that this is sounding suspiciously like the "think method" espoused in Meredith Willson's The Music Man.
16 October 2007
So, I'm gonna write a novel.
Shortly after graduating from college, I found myself living in a rented bedroom in Hoboken, New Jersey. It would be an understatement to refer to this room as drafty. All winter long, there was a strong, dry westerly breeze blowing across the edge of my forehead I allowed to peek out from underneath too few bedcovers. No frost gathered on my windowsills only because of the complete lack of humidity. That plastic you put over windows in winter was literally blown off the window in the course of one evening. It was a barren, terrible existence, but I was 22 and willing to put up with just about anything to, you know, do "the New York thing."Out of desperation for some hope to cling to, I started writing a novel one night. It was supposed to be some sort of nouveau-romantic thing. A clarinetist in a small but relatively famous chamber ensemble in NYC. The guest conductress who comes to work with them for a yearlong residency. Clarinetist and the conductress fall for each other, and then ...
And then ...
And that's really as far as I got. That was 45 or so pages on 8-1/2 x 11, double-spaced. On a typewriter. (My roommate had a Mac (ca. 1987), but he made it clear that it was his Mac, so I was relegated to the electric Royal that had served me so ably in college.) The thing ran out of steam because I had absolutely NO idea where it was going.
By the way, it was titled The Long, Sudden-Ended Always. I leave it to you to track down the reference, just so you can fully bask in my early-20s pretentiousness.
Last February, an idea popped into my head — the first time I had an idea that I immediately knew could, or maybe had to be, a novel. I wonder who could write it, I thought. Which is a tragic testament to how far I've grown out of touch with my muse. If you're not careful, parenting can do that to ya.
Two months later, I was hanging out in a stationery store when I noticed a copy of Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! Reading the back, I discovered that Baty was the founder of National Novel Writing Month, and that there was (of course) a web site for NaNoWriMo. Which, a couple of weeks later, I visited.
I don't know exactly when "concept for novel" met "opportunity," but it took longer than it should have. (Cf. sleeping muse) But you can't get the easy stuff past me forever: I finally figured out that I was supposed to write this novel, and that November was when I'd be doing it.
The reason I'm telling you this now is one of Baty's ideas for making sure your novel will get written. In No Plot? No Problem! he writes: "Terror is the amateur novelist's best friend. Without some amount of it pushing you onward toward your goal, you're going to lose momentum and quit." So, he recommends, tell as many people as you possibly can. Not just telling — boasting.
Think about it: do you really want to be the butt of jokes every time novels are mentioned? For the rest of your life?. . . I don't either. Which is why I make a point of laying a solid foundation of bragging way before I've thought about plot or setting or character. My ultimate goal is to back yourself into a corner before the month even starts that I have no choice but to stay on course with the word count, no matter how dismally off-track my novel gets in the weeks that follow.
The goal with this project is to turn off your "inner editor." Just forge ahead. Get it down. It's much easier to mold something out of text that exists than to face that blank screen. So, starting at 12 a.m. on November 1st, I am headed toward 50,000 words, to be completed no later than 11:59 p.m. on November 30th. On the surface, this should be a slam-dunk for me: I type at a ridiculous speed and I have a fairly quick mind. Of course, in practice this will undoubtedly be a whole lot harder.
(Especially as I've already started to let the minutiae of my plot setting begin to overwhelm me. But I'll save that discussion 'til later.)
What the hell. I'm not marathoning anymore, so why not give this a shot? I can cut back on the TV watching (it's rotting my brain anyway). I've got a couple of hours every night between, oh, 11 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. or so. I've got a lot of ambient music. And Laura is cool with my escaping to cafés and libraries to vary my writing settings. It's only a month, right?
*sigh*
I'm setting myself up for disaster here, aren't I?
I hope to use this blog for notes on the experience along the way (though I'm not honestly sure how much more additional time I'll have to write). And if you look in the right gutter of this page, you'll see a meter to keep track of my progress toward word #50,000.
Cheers are acceptable. So is rubbing my nose in it if I don't succeed.
20 September 2007
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