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Well, I've survived (again) the first week of NaNoWriMo. And instead of writing, here I am writing about writing because, I find, more than even a great excuse to make mad progress on a single piece, NaNoWriMo has taught me a lot about myself as a writer.
This year, instead of writing a carefully nurtured idea as I'd intended--and as I'd done in years past--I embarked on a story barely conceptualized that I dreamed up while watching a family fantasy movie one afternoon. Aside from a month spent visualizing scenes to the music of Celtic Legend and Pan's Labyrinth, I did no pre-writing, no characterization exercises, and didn't even sketch a map until Day One. I suppose this is NaNo in its rawest--and perhaps intended--form, and in the past, I've been very much a spontaneous writer who'd sooner just do it then waste my time (and impetus) on a lot of that other crap.
It's been going ... okay. I've been getting a steady word count each day with a mean average of 2263 words per day. But at the same time, the story isn't coming as easily or as quickly as usual. Every word feels very deliberate; every scene carefully contrived. And I didn't do any pre-writing?!
I've noticed that I tend to write in three styles. There are the stories created with reckless abandon: When I start them, I have no idea where they will end or how they will get there. These usually start with characters rather than plots; personalities that stand out boldly in my mind so that tossing them together in a scenario feels more like getting to sit back and watch what happens than doing any work. Not surprisingly, Another Man's Cage was one such story. The characters of AMC were clearer in my mind than any other aspect of the story upon starting it.
Then there are the stories that center on a mood, theme, or feeling of some sort. Cirque Sanguine (flocked) was one of these; Return to Me is a fanfic example of the same. I had in mind the feeling I wanted to create in my readers. Usually, writing these sorts of stories requires very deep concentration from me and absolute immersion into the story. Usually, these stories are written in one or two sittings in manic bursts of word count. It's quite an intense experience. (But not one particularly conducive to novel-writing.)
Finally, there are those that are more carefully planned plot-wise, where I know what is going to happen even if in a vague sense. Last year, I described this as "feeling like I am crossing a river by leaping rock to rock. Though I do still occasionally stop to play in the water," and I think this conveys the experience well. And whereas the character- and mood-driven stories often feel like they just happen, these more careful, plotted stories happen very deliberately and take a lot of thought. I'm often reluctant to indulge in too many flights because I don't know how this will affect where I end up or how it might mar the pacing.
I think I'm safe in saying that the last kind of stories tend to be the most draining for me. I won't even say "the least fun" because the Green Knight Story (flocked) certainly fit this bill, and I had a great time with it. (Of course, a lot of this was because of the style and the language, which a wordsmith like me can't help but love. An excuse to put together complex, archaic sentences without worry about being labeled overwrought or purplish? That doesn't happen every day!)
And the current story--despite being largely unplanned--is proceeding in a similar manner as well. It's probably been the toughest story I've written as of yet. And I keep asking: why? This idea seized me from the start and I still love it, but it's not coming as naturally as most of my stories have in the past.
(And part of me always wonders: can readers feel the difference in my writing? I worry that they can. But at the same time, writing in a flight has its problems too--authorial indulgence, if you will--and tends to result in long non sequiturs that delight me as an author while totally destroying the pacing (or utterly boring) the reader. Perhaps, then, this method of writing--while more difficult and, yes, largely less fun for me as an author--results in better stories for my readers.)
I have my theories on why this one is so difficult. First of all, to recap the summary: Once upon a time, William lost himself in the joys of writing fantasy ... and nearly lost everything else due to his obsession. With reluctance, he abandoned his world. But, sixteen years later, the world has come back to him in the form of two characters who deliver the message that their world is in peril, and they have been sent to William to devise a solution. As he becomes immersed again in fantasy, the messengers find themselves struggling in a modern world that they cannot understand, where conflicts take a vastly different shape than those that can be solved at the point of a sword.
This story, then, involves half a modern-life component and half a fantasy world component. The fantasy world component has been great fun for me so far. It's the modern-life that's difficult. I am reminded of why I stopped writing mainstream fiction in favor of speculative fiction. For me, writing is an escape from beltway traffic and political headlines and all that rot ... and this story embraces these aspects of modern life, to a degree, from the point-of-view of characters for whom our world is a fantasy land. It's not that I feel challenged as a writer to describe our world but just that I have very little motivation to do so. Of course, it's essential to the storyline that I do so.
Secondly, because the two stories occur simultaneously, side-by-side, I do have to be careful not to go on any lengthy flights that would cause one half to become very far ahead of the other. And since I lack an outline, I'm pacing this in my mind and weighing each chapter against the other as to what has happened, what needs to happen, and how the story will evolve in parallel from there. It's an experiment of sorts: outline-writing without the outline!
Lastly--and perhaps silliest of all--I prefer to write in present-tense first person. This story is in past-tense third-person limited. And I find this challenging, to get into the minds of my characters the way I can when the story feels immediate, like a scene unfolding before me (versus a scene unfolded, remembered, and now written down as an outside observer).
But all of these things are challenges. And while I've gotten comfortable with experimenting with different voices over the last year, I need to get more comfortable with different tenses and PoVs as well. I've long recognized my weakness as a writer that I tend to write only in present-tense first person. And this works fine for most of my stories, but won't work for all. So I count this as an experiment that--even if not successful--will at least serve as a good opportunity to practice.
Here's the graph for Week One (words written per day) with the pink line representing the mean average for the week:
Week Two is going to look more jagged since I didn't get any words Saturday or Sunday on account of social engagements.
Last year's graph for Weeks One and Two is here.
This year, instead of writing a carefully nurtured idea as I'd intended--and as I'd done in years past--I embarked on a story barely conceptualized that I dreamed up while watching a family fantasy movie one afternoon. Aside from a month spent visualizing scenes to the music of Celtic Legend and Pan's Labyrinth, I did no pre-writing, no characterization exercises, and didn't even sketch a map until Day One. I suppose this is NaNo in its rawest--and perhaps intended--form, and in the past, I've been very much a spontaneous writer who'd sooner just do it then waste my time (and impetus) on a lot of that other crap.
It's been going ... okay. I've been getting a steady word count each day with a mean average of 2263 words per day. But at the same time, the story isn't coming as easily or as quickly as usual. Every word feels very deliberate; every scene carefully contrived. And I didn't do any pre-writing?!
I've noticed that I tend to write in three styles. There are the stories created with reckless abandon: When I start them, I have no idea where they will end or how they will get there. These usually start with characters rather than plots; personalities that stand out boldly in my mind so that tossing them together in a scenario feels more like getting to sit back and watch what happens than doing any work. Not surprisingly, Another Man's Cage was one such story. The characters of AMC were clearer in my mind than any other aspect of the story upon starting it.
Then there are the stories that center on a mood, theme, or feeling of some sort. Cirque Sanguine (flocked) was one of these; Return to Me is a fanfic example of the same. I had in mind the feeling I wanted to create in my readers. Usually, writing these sorts of stories requires very deep concentration from me and absolute immersion into the story. Usually, these stories are written in one or two sittings in manic bursts of word count. It's quite an intense experience. (But not one particularly conducive to novel-writing.)
Finally, there are those that are more carefully planned plot-wise, where I know what is going to happen even if in a vague sense. Last year, I described this as "feeling like I am crossing a river by leaping rock to rock. Though I do still occasionally stop to play in the water," and I think this conveys the experience well. And whereas the character- and mood-driven stories often feel like they just happen, these more careful, plotted stories happen very deliberately and take a lot of thought. I'm often reluctant to indulge in too many flights because I don't know how this will affect where I end up or how it might mar the pacing.
I think I'm safe in saying that the last kind of stories tend to be the most draining for me. I won't even say "the least fun" because the Green Knight Story (flocked) certainly fit this bill, and I had a great time with it. (Of course, a lot of this was because of the style and the language, which a wordsmith like me can't help but love. An excuse to put together complex, archaic sentences without worry about being labeled overwrought or purplish? That doesn't happen every day!)
And the current story--despite being largely unplanned--is proceeding in a similar manner as well. It's probably been the toughest story I've written as of yet. And I keep asking: why? This idea seized me from the start and I still love it, but it's not coming as naturally as most of my stories have in the past.
(And part of me always wonders: can readers feel the difference in my writing? I worry that they can. But at the same time, writing in a flight has its problems too--authorial indulgence, if you will--and tends to result in long non sequiturs that delight me as an author while totally destroying the pacing (or utterly boring) the reader. Perhaps, then, this method of writing--while more difficult and, yes, largely less fun for me as an author--results in better stories for my readers.)
I have my theories on why this one is so difficult. First of all, to recap the summary: Once upon a time, William lost himself in the joys of writing fantasy ... and nearly lost everything else due to his obsession. With reluctance, he abandoned his world. But, sixteen years later, the world has come back to him in the form of two characters who deliver the message that their world is in peril, and they have been sent to William to devise a solution. As he becomes immersed again in fantasy, the messengers find themselves struggling in a modern world that they cannot understand, where conflicts take a vastly different shape than those that can be solved at the point of a sword.
This story, then, involves half a modern-life component and half a fantasy world component. The fantasy world component has been great fun for me so far. It's the modern-life that's difficult. I am reminded of why I stopped writing mainstream fiction in favor of speculative fiction. For me, writing is an escape from beltway traffic and political headlines and all that rot ... and this story embraces these aspects of modern life, to a degree, from the point-of-view of characters for whom our world is a fantasy land. It's not that I feel challenged as a writer to describe our world but just that I have very little motivation to do so. Of course, it's essential to the storyline that I do so.
Secondly, because the two stories occur simultaneously, side-by-side, I do have to be careful not to go on any lengthy flights that would cause one half to become very far ahead of the other. And since I lack an outline, I'm pacing this in my mind and weighing each chapter against the other as to what has happened, what needs to happen, and how the story will evolve in parallel from there. It's an experiment of sorts: outline-writing without the outline!
Lastly--and perhaps silliest of all--I prefer to write in present-tense first person. This story is in past-tense third-person limited. And I find this challenging, to get into the minds of my characters the way I can when the story feels immediate, like a scene unfolding before me (versus a scene unfolded, remembered, and now written down as an outside observer).
But all of these things are challenges. And while I've gotten comfortable with experimenting with different voices over the last year, I need to get more comfortable with different tenses and PoVs as well. I've long recognized my weakness as a writer that I tend to write only in present-tense first person. And this works fine for most of my stories, but won't work for all. So I count this as an experiment that--even if not successful--will at least serve as a good opportunity to practice.
Here's the graph for Week One (words written per day) with the pink line representing the mean average for the week:
Week Two is going to look more jagged since I didn't get any words Saturday or Sunday on account of social engagements.
Last year's graph for Weeks One and Two is here.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-14 02:06 am (UTC)But I can completely back up what you said about it being so hard to make ends meet these days. Unless you're a billionaire who owns an oil company.
Three years ago, Bobby and I moved out of our parents' houses and rented our first apartment. We were a year-and-a-half out of college and both had government employment with decent entry-level salaries. And for that first year, we pinched poor Abe till he screamed, and without the help of our families, I doubt we would have been able to do it at all.
I remember, for example, the number of fees we had to pay just to move into an apartment. Every utility or service charged us $30-50 so some dumbass could type our information into a computer.
Then, last year, living in a one-bedroom apartment, driving two Suzukis, and thinking a fifty-dollar meal at P.F. Chang's was a real treat, we owed $2000 in taxes in addition to what was taken from our checks, both of us being taxed at the highest rate allowable. Because, you know, with all those luxuries we were enjoying and all that massive income from two government employees, we deserved to be taxed so that Dick Cheney could get a tax cut and Bush could go play soldier in Iraq.
The other night, over my parents' house, I saw an episode of 60 Minutes where one interviewee talked about how lazy our generation is because we stay at home into our mid-20s when this used to be taboo. Bobby and I both started to rant nearly simultaneously. With prices the way they are now, we said, and salaries as low as they are, how can anyone afford to move out right after graduation? The only reason we managed it was because 1) we were a couple and hence had two incomes to contribute, 2) both had stable employment and decent income, and 3) had a lot of help from our families, who gave us secondhand furniture or took us shopping for kitchen implements. We were lucky. Most people starting out aren't that lucky.
Of course the fucking politicians do shit. (Pardon the profanity.) Why? Because we don't give them thousands in campaign contributions. Nope, we just represent the majority of their constituents, but it's not valuable to stick up for us when lending a helping hand to a billionaire gets lots of campaign contributions.
Why was shit done when BGE raised our gas and electric 70%? (Oh, they deferred it over a year. Big whoop. We're paying 70% more now.)
Why is shit being done about the fact that gas prices are over $3 a gallon in Maryland? When I started driving eight years ago, gas was $1.04 in Belair. My mom got mad at me once because I got gas in Perry Hall and paid $1.24. Six years later, it had tripled.
Why is shit being done to protect our rights as consumers, when we have to fight with banks and cell phone companies and credit card companies just to keep our own money?
If we were millionaires and lost in profits what the middle class has lost, they'd all be falling over themselves to give us tax breaks and bail us out. But we're just people and families trying to make ends meet.
So yes, I agree with you, and you're always welcome to come to my LJ and rant about whatever you'd like. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-14 02:14 am (UTC)I know I should be grateful we don't have a dictatorship-- we just watched Missing anthropology class, about the coup in Chile in the '70s, where they shot people for voicing their beliefs-- but come on. Politics are a necessary evil, & they just piss me off & depress me to no end. I seriously have no faith in the human race. It's impossible to. (Damn, that sounds emo.)
So I guess I'm screwed over if I want to try & move out.
On top of everything else, NaNo looms over me like a bad metaphor. Or something. (God, that was lame.) My story is total & utter crap, & I just find that I don't care anymore. About it or anything else. I'd almost have somebody nuke us, cause that'd end all our problems real quick, wouldn't it?
Ack, I sound angsty. Shutting up now. (We should meet somewhere. XD lolz)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-14 02:38 am (UTC)I do consider as well the conditions in other places in the world and feel lucky for the paltry problems that we face. For example, I'm sure citizens in Sudan would love to worry most about their gas and electric bill.
But I also don't think that saying, "Things suck everywhere else even more," is an excuse to let our own country go to the dogs. Which is exactly where it is going.
Also, I didn't mean to depress you all the more about how difficult it is to start life after college. I was more intending to point out that people who claim that any twenty-something who isn't living on her own must be lazy and dependent is an asshat who doesn't understand the way the world works these days. Because it seemed to me, when I was in college, so many "grown-ups" enjoyed taking every opportunity to tell me how easy I had it as a college student and how wonderful it is to be young and poor and living at home with no time and no freedom. And as an insecure college kid, I believed them, that I was deficient somehow for not being able to enjoy menial (or unpaid) work and piles of schoolwork and next to no income. I've since learned how wrong these people were, that they were idealizing what they thought college life must be like. "Oh, it's lounging on the quad in a bikini and partying and getting to do interesting things like edit the literary magazine and having nothing more pressing to worry about than a paper on the ethics of using animals in research!" Riiiiight.
Anyway, if we were to get nuked, I guarantee all the
cockroachespoliticians would survive, only they'd have more of an excuse to install more security cameras and insist on more invasive searches at every turn ("What, a cavity check to cross the street??") and be frowning at our LJ conversation right now ... in short, everything would turn to their advantage, in the end, so be careful what you wish for. ;)/depressing alarmism
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-14 02:48 pm (UTC)I'm not alarmist. Just a pessimist. :P "We're screwed" is a common phrase of mine.
...Damn politicians. I don't discriminate; I hate them all! :D:D:D
I have to go to class & am tired. Remind me again how I'm learning anything? :P ugh.