What I learned from NaNoWriMo

My #Fridayflash for the week is in a state that I don't like at the moment, so I'm going to see if I can fix it for next week. In it's place I thought I would muse about some of the things I learned while participating in this year's National Novel Writing Month.

First, I will say that I did not 'win.' I only managed about 30k words, foolishly thinking that when I visited my parents I would find a way to make enough time to get a good word count each day. Instead I ended up with 150 words for the whole 5 day visit. So lesson one would be that I'm not good at writing on the road.

But on a more positive aspect, I did find that NaNoWriMo is actually a pretty good exercise in getting your butt in the chair and writing. It helped me I think to really develop some good habits about sitting down to my keyboard when I get home from work and at least getting something down on the page. Now if I can keep that up, I'm going to be quite happy with myself. I mean, sure I didn't get all 50k words, but just 500 words a day gets you 3 novels each year. And for me, that only takes about 15min to half an hour.

Which brings me to my second point. I took a fair amount of time in October going over my novel's structure so that I had a solid plot, with solid characters, solid goals, and solid well everything. So when it came down to doing the actual writing, I got to pour words out of my head and into the story without having to worry about what was coming next, because the little note card on Scrivener told me what was coming next. I had never written anything with that solid a structure before, and let me tell you that it was a joy. Plus, with a detailed outline, I was able to go through it and revise it a couple times to make sure that the story as a whole worked without having to cut out entire scenes and chapters, rewriting them all over again. Instead it was cutting out a sentence here and there. Outlining rocks.

And finally, I used Scrivener to write my NaNoWriMo novel, which was pretty cool. I learned a lot about it and will be purchasing the full version when my trial eventually runs out. It has a lot of neat tools that let me organize the story better then when I just used my own note cards for instance. I liked having everything in one place and so easy to change. So for the $40 or whatever it's going to cost me (Windows version, not sure about the Mac one quite yet) I think it's quite worth it.

I may not have gotten to 50k words, but I think I won in my own little way.

Be a Rockstar!

You're a writer, so you're probably not wearing leather pants up on a stage in front of thousands of adoring crowds as the pyrotechnics blast off, filling the arena with the haze only spent benzine fuel could create while you do your work. (I you are, well that's awesome and I want to be you.) No. You're probably sitting in your office, living room, library, or coffee shop pecking away at your keyboard...alone. So how do you become a rockstar, and why?


Rockstars are generally really good at their craft. (And yes, this can be anything...not just music anymore. A Rockstar is somebody that is really good at what they do, and they have the personality that makes it fun to be witness to their genius. They are flamboyant and even a little arrogant. They make difficult things look easy and smile when they are done like they know you're amazed.


A rockstar is a surgeon who performs delicate brain surgery while whistling "Yankee Doodle" and when they are done, they say 'it was nothing.' 


A rockstar is an athlete who makes the opposition look like fools, and when they win, their celebration is elaborate and planned, because they knew they would win.


A rockstar is a writer who spins tales of intrigue that memorize their audience while they goof off in the media (or social media) but yet they never say anything dumb...they're just fun.


What you don't see though is the surgeon spending long hours in the library or skills lab, the athlete pushing their body to the limit, or the writer sitting at they keyboard typing out lines and lines of text even when they don't want to.


A rockstar is brilliant and arrogant in the public eye, but privately, they are mad perfectionists making sure their skills are the best in the world, and they won't settle for less. They work harder than anybody else, but they don't let the world see.


Why do you want to be a rockstar and not just a 'brilliant writer?' People love rockstars and their personalities, and they sell a lot of their work. And wouldn't that be nice if you were able to sell tons of copies of your book and actually quit your dayjob? A brilliant writer might write great books, but just like a brilliant musician, if nobody reads/listens to them, does it really matter?


If a brilliant book gets published in the middle of the forest, but nobody is around to read it, is the book really brilliant?


So how do you do this? How do you become a rockstar? YOU WORK YOUR ASS OFF IN PERFECTING YOUR CRAFT. You type at your keyboard until your fingers are arthritic and then you take some Alieve and keep going. You read voraciously in and out of your genre. Fiction and Non-fiction and you become the best damn writer you can be. And once you do that, you keep doing it day in and day out.


But you must also take some time out of your day to polish your rockstar image. Get on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or your blog and smirk at the world as if you barely work at all. Poke fun of the latest Franzen novel and even belittle some of your own work by brushing off praise. Even pretend like you don't need or want it. Or perhaps you go Muhammad Ali and and proclaim yourself the greatest writer of all time...even if you don't know it yet.


"I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." Muhammad Ali


Once you are oozing with confidence because you're convinced yourself that you truly are a bad-ass , and you mix that with the hard work you have put into your craft...you just might become a rockstar and the greatest writer of all time.


(This was a very fun post to write, and plus, it gave me an excuse to put up a picture of Judas Priest)

Empower your writing by dumping 'feel'

There are certain words in the English language that allow writers to be lazy and end up as traps for some of us. One of my biggest offenders seems to be the word 'felt.' It's a tricky word in that it seems like it's a show type of word when you think of the sentence "Anna felt the heat of the fire." And it is better than "The fire was hot." But there is an even better way to write this.


If you say "Anna felt the heat of the fire." we get the image, but it feels removed. Felt seems to serve as a filter that bars us from the character and ironically (Yes, I think this is actually an appropriate use of the word irony), does not allow us to get a good grasp of what the character actually felt. The main reason for this is that it put's Anna as the subject of the sentence even though she does not really do anything aside from passively observe. Plus, by removing that word, it forces you as a writers to become more creative in your descriptions, and that's a mega win.


So going back to our example sentence, I removed 'felt' and had to figure out what the fire was actually doing. So since we'll say the character is standing, the heat is going to originate from the ground (assuming this is not some massive conflagration) and heats up her lower back first, making its way to her upper back. So the feeling is moving upwards, and motion is a good thing because it's active.


The next question is what do I do with the motion? I suppose I could go and use the typical phrase 'ran' as in "The heat of the fire ran up Anna's back" That's good because now instead of Anna being the subject, 'The heat of the fire' is, and it is actively doing something instead of our passive Anna.


Still, I feel (pun intended) there has to be a better word than 'ran.' Since I want to keep this simple, I'm just going to throw a yummier verb in there instead of going all metaphors and such and say "The heat of the fire crept up Anna's back." Not perfect, but for this little blog post, I think you get the idea.


So for a recap:


"The fire was hot." = Bad.
"Anna felt the heat of the fire." = Meh at best.
"The heat of the fire ran up Anna's back." = Alright.
"The heat of the fire crept up Anna's back." = Good.

"The waves of heat radiating from the fire ducked under Anna's shirt and slowly crept up her back like a pack of ninjas closing in on their target." = Well I just went and ran with this...not perfect but you get the point.


'Felt sentences' may be better than 'was' sentences, but come on, you can do better.




Please let me know if you have any better suggestions for the sentence...and can you beat my super awesome ninjas metaphor???

My first face to face critique group

This Saturday I met with my first in-person critique group and let me say boy was I nervous. We had to bring 3-5 pages of a recent piece of work with us to read out loud for the group. The night before I went over my first chapter of Bleed Well many times. I read it to my wife, who had already read a number of version of it, and just needed a little bit of encouragement. She tried to give it to me, but let's just say I'm not in danger of her being too nice to me when it comes to my work.

But after a couple good suggestions from her, I got a version that she said was passable. That was probably the best thing she as ever said about something I've written, so I was actually feeling alright.

But then in the morning I started to have my doubts again. I mean my wife, as brutally honest as she is, is not a writer. What would these people say? What would they find? I would just have to wait.

I got to the restaurant about 30min early so I could try and talk to these people before hand, but as it turns out, the it opened right when the meeting as supposed to start. Rats. What could I do now but worry about my manuscript? Luckily it was near a mall with a B&N and I killed some time there.

Once the meeting started I was again nervous, but as we introduced ourselves, I found out I wasn't the only person there who was at their first critique group. There were actually two others, and one of the women was also new to the group. That made me feel good that at least I wasn't the weird new guy there (Oh yea, I was the only guy...Flashbacks of AP English all over again)

They started reading their works and I started to fall into a good comfort zone. I heard a lot of really great things, but I felt like I was also able to give some pretty good feedback for them as well. (One of the writers though was absolutely AMAZING! If I was reading that in a bookstore, I told her, I would be at the checkout only a couple pages in).

Finally, my turn came and to my delight, they didn't tell me I was the worst writer in the world and should go to hell. Phew. They actually like it. Nobody saw anything structurally wrong and thought it was a good beginning. I did get some good feedback though on a couple lines that should probably be tweaked to make it work better, but overall I left with my ego in tact and good suggestions for my WIP.

I will be going back there for sure, because for one, I got good feedback. For two, it was nice to meet other people face to face who were writers like  me. It's a lonely hobby/profession, so face to face contact is always a good thing.

Overall it was a great experience and like every other writer says, FIND A CRITIQUE GROUP IF YOU WANT TO TAKE YOUR WORK TO THE NEXT LEVEL.

Almost Time to Submit

It's been a while since I've updated everybody on the status of my novel, and there might even be some people reading this blog that have not even heard about it yet.

Anyways, the working title is called Bleed Well. It's about a man, Fredrick, who recently moved back to his native village up in the mountains. Then, when he is walking about one morning, a deer, possessed by one of the gods, walks up to him and he starts hearing the voices of his dead parents. Fredrick freaks out and bashes the deer's skull in with a rock. This unleashes a fury of events that complicate Fredrick's life, and he must struggle to put the pieces back together.

That's a pretty crappy little blurb, but I didn't quite want to just post what I have for my query letter. Perhaps later.

So where I'm at right now is I'm finishing up the second-to-last revisions, while I do the final polish on some of the earlier chapters. (I do my edits in waves that allows me to work on 3 or 4 different parts of the novel at the same time) At the rate I'm going, I should be done with everything by the middle of April (dependent on the beta readers) and then I'll start submitting to agents.

I already have my afore mentioned query letter mostly done, and I've got a pretty large chapter by chapter summary that I'm eventually going to work into a 5, 3, and 1 page synopsis.

That's what's going on with my novel. Hopefully it is well received once it goes out, and I'll try to blog more on the status as I get closer to this exciting time!

Keep the Creativity Flowing

Some quick and (as always) free advice while you’re out editing your WIP. Make sure you make time to write something new.

This is crucial for any writer, but especially a novelist. As I’ve found, you can spend many months on the editing process; and if I find myself ignoring my advice, my edits start to get dull. Why is this? I’m not writing.

Writing something new keeps those creative juices flowing. It’s almost like creativity is a muscle. If you exercise and train it a lot, it will get stronger. But as soon as you neglect it, take it out of training, it will start to regress. The cure for that is to make sure you have a project you can work on while you are editing.

If you’re a novelist, then have another novel that you are working on. Before you sit down with your red pen, take 20, 30 min or so and just type away. You will find that not only will you have another novel done pretty quickly, but you will also be all warmed up for your edits! It’s a win win.

So, I need to make sure I keep heeding my own advice, and hopefully it will work for you as well.

Tell me, what experiences do you have with writing while you are mired in stacks of edits? Does it seem to help you?

I'm Putting my Foot Down

I’ve been very busy lately polishing my current WIP novel, Bleed Well. I think I’m on about the 7th revision right now, and I’ve come to the realization that I will never ever be completely happy with it. I think that I need to put my foot down and say I’m done.

As writers, we have to know that we will never be perfect, and chasing perfection will just take you further and further away from your audience. To grow and become better, we don’t need to constantly go back and forth as to whether or not to keep that adverb or that line of dialogue. We need to get it to a point where we can live with it, and then let it sink or swim on its own merits.

A short story I recently read, “In the Reign of Harad IV” by Steven Millhauser in the April 10, 2006 issue of the New Yorker. It’s about an artist that strives for perfection, and while eventually he reaches a point where he is satisfied with himself, he has lost his audience, respect, and any type of productive career. Basically chasing perfection is a fool’s errand.

So in that spirit I encourage all of you to put down that red pen and evaluate your work, not on if it’s perfect, but on if you think you have reached a level of professionalism that would leave you satisfied.

Friday Flash: “Duel”

You stare at the man across from you and push your thumb over the safety of your gun. You can see in his eyes the disappointment of not taking you out earlier upon hearing the click. A bead of sweat rolls down your forehead and into your eyebrow; you feel that it will soon drop down into your eye.

The metal of the gun is getting warmer in your hands, and you feel a diamond pattern from the handle, impressing itself into your palm. The trigger slides back as you squeeze your fingers, keeping it right on the threshold between life and death.

Over to your side you see a small group of people lying on the bank’s marble floor. They have their hands on their heads and look at you with large, pleading, eyes. One woman in particular catches your eye. She’s wearing a business suit and looks at you, stares into your eyes with her head cocked to the side. You feel a pain in your stomach as you look at them lying there without any control of their fate. It all rests with you and the other man.

Your attention comes back to the man in front of you. He is shaking ever so slightly. You notice that he too has some sweat running down his face. Streams of moisture wet his cheeks. He glances over to the people on the ground, and you begin thinking. How dare you. Those are my people. You have no right to look at them.

His head snaps back to you and he steadies his gun, pointing it right at your head. You raise yours, close one eye, and stare through the sights. You aim for his forehead; at this range you couldn’t miss. You can smell the remnants of old gun powder and steel emanating from the gun, and the bead of sweat in your eyebrow starts to form a droplet.

“Put down your gun and everybody here goes home safe.” The man says. “That’s what you want right?”

You take a step towards the man.

“Stay back!”

You take another step forward.

“Stay back I said!”

The man turns his eyes to the people lying on the floor. The droplet of sweat drops into your eye and you pull the trigger. Everything is quiet for a moment. The gunshot sounded like it was miles away and everything seems to move in slow motion. You lower your hands and look at the gun, a small wisp of smoke dances out of the barrel.

You over at the man and see him lying on the ground in a pool of blood. You turn towards the woman with the business suit. She is still on the floor. She’s balling.

Authors Notes: Yes this ending was supposed to be frustrating. I don’t know who you were exactly, or the other person. I did that on purpose (Hence the pun in the title). Actually this was a very experimental piece for me and I’ve always wanted to do something in 2nd person. I do think I did a pretty good job with this, but then again I also have a pretty big ego from time to time. Please let me know what you thought, good, bad or indifferent. Thanks.

Friday Flash: “Broken Record” Revised

There really wasn’t that much I found here that I really wanted to edit which is pretty odd for me. There were a couple word choices here and there and fixing up of some grammatical things. I probably wouldn’t have bothered even posting this since it’s so much like the original but I promised it last week, so I aim to deliver. Enjoy

Mandy stared at the crack running down the compact disk that sat on her dresser. What does this mean? She looked at her face in the smudged, silver, surface of the disk. Is this how he sees me? She turned it over and ran her fingers across the screen-printed label. It was an album of love standards by her and Jake’s favorite artist.

It was just a week ago that Jake had given this to her on their one year anniversary. It was an event significant not only on the calendar but also marked the occasion of her longest relationship. He gave it to her early that magical evening, and they listened to it on their drive to and from the restaurant. That night she went to bed, looking out of her window at the stars, thanking them for her luck.

Her fingers became rigid as they dropped the disk back onto the dresser. She sat on her bed, staring at it; her body was too stiff to do anything else. What will Jake think? He’ll think I did it on purpose. She looked at her nightstand where her phone lay next to an empty box of tissues. They had talked for two hours last night. What does this mean?

She strained her arm towards her phone then pulled it back. No, I’m not going to talk to him. Not now. I can’t. She again reached out towards the phone. I need to tell him. He deserves to know.

“Hello Jake…Yes I know, I’m sorry about last night too…Well that’s sweet of you.” She smiled as he apologized to her. She didn’t remember what they fought about. “I’m sorry for getting mad at you like that.”

Mandy turned her attention back towards her dresser, and again, her body became rigid. What will he think if he ever finds out? She walked over to the dresser and picked the disk back up, looking at her reflection. The crack split her face down the middle with the smudge blurring her left half.

“You know Jake, I really like you. You’re cute, you’re nice. But I just don’t know if this can work out…Well when you put it like that it sounds bad. I just don’t think we’re right for each other in the long-term…I just think we’re wasting each other’s time if we know it’ll never work…No I don’t care about what you think…Fine then. Goodbye.”

Mandy threw her phone to the other side of the room and laid down on her bed. She held the disk to her body as she curled up into a ball. She squeezed herself tighter to shut out the pain coming from inside her chest.The longest relationship she had ever had was over. At least he doesn’t have to know. At least he’ll never find out. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Friday Flash: “Broken Record”

This is my first stab at posting some of my raw work. I think what I’d like to do is post what I come up with for my Friday Flash (fiction between 300 – 1000 words). Now I wrote this today at lunch mainly, so it’s not going to be prefect; but that’s ok! Because next week I’ll post another raw Friday flash, and then revise this one so you can see my process. But until then, enjoy my work.


Mandy stared at the crack running down the compact disk that sat on her dresser. What does this mean? She looked at her face in the smudged, silver, surface of the disk. Is this how he sees me? She turned it over and ran her fingers across the screen-printed label. It was an album of love standards by her and Jake’s favorite artist.

It was just a week ago that Jake had given this to her on their one year anniversary. It was an event significant not only on the calendar but also marked the occasion of her longest relationship. He gave it to her early that evening, and they listened to it on their drive to and from the restaurant. It was a magical evening.

Her fingers were rigid as they dropped the disk back onto the dresser. She sat on her bed, staring at the disk; her body was too stiff to do anything else. What will Jake think? He’ll think I did it on purpose. She looked at her nightstand where her phone lay next to an empty box of tissues. They had talked for two hours last night. What does this mean?

She strained her arm towards her phone then pulled it back. No, I’m not going to talk to him. Not now. I can’t. She again reached out towards the phone. I need to tell him. He deserves to know.

“Hello Jake…Yes I know, I’m sorry about last night too…Well that’s sweet of you.” She smiled as he apologized to her. She didn’t remember what they fought about. “I’m sorry for getting mad at you like that.”

Mandy turned her attention back towards her dresser, and again her body became rigid. What will he think if he ever finds out? She walked over to the dresser and picked the disk back up, looking at her reflection again.

“You know Jake, I really like you. You’re cute, you’re nice. But I just don’t know if this can work out…Well when you put it like that it sounds bad. I just don’t think we’re right for each other in the long-term…I just think we’re wasting each other’s time if we know it’ll never work…No I don’t care about what you think…Fine then. Goodbye.”

Mandy threw her phone to the other side of the room and laid down on her bed. She held the disk as she curled up into a ball. She squeezed herself tighter to shut out the pain coming from inside her chest.The longest relationship she had ever had was over. At least he doesn’t have to know. At least he’ll never find out. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.