Tagged: nanowrimo

A Little Pantsing Can’t Hurt Too Much, Right?

r-avatarMan, we are closing in on the conclusion — make that the action-packed conclusion — of Son Of Music Novel. We’re so close. The scene Kent is working on is that last big chunk of writing, although we have stubs for a few more scenes that are mostly denouement. (Also, there’s a feature of the Music Novel that recurs here, and for which we need a significant amount of text. Jen’s made an excellent start on that.)

All this adds up to a strong likelihood that our manuscript’s completion will fall during NaNoWriMo. Ah well, if our baby’s a Scorpio we’ll love it anyway.

Kent’s working from a stub that turned out to be a little light on details. It was fine up to a point, and then it got vague. The way we chose to deal with that issue (once we figured it out) was to have Kent beef things up in the stub first, rather than just winging it and going straight to prose. Either way could work, and our way we knew there was a small amount of extra writing to be done. It was tempting to see that as nonproductive and skip it, but experience has taught us that we’d end up with more rewriting if we succumbed to that temptation. Better to do a few hundred words up front, knowing they’ll never be read by anyone outside of the writing cave, than to write thousands of words thinking that they’re counting toward completion only to find that they don’t work, and then do another batch.

You might be wondering how we ran into this problem, given our fervor for a stub-based methodology. It was kind of a perfect storm. The later in the story we get, the less need for worry over derailing things. This lack of worry is great from a stress-management perspective, but it can lead to cutting corners. And as it turns out, there is a second edge to that “close to done” sword: things need to start coming together, not keep ramifying. You’re on final approach, and you have to make sure you won’t run out of runway. Another factor here is that the vague area of the stub was mostly kinetic, which makes it easily glossed over. But the action in question incorporates thematic elements and needs to cover specific beats for the character arcs. It’s not just, “make up something exciting and interesting,” it’s “do that, within all these nuanced constraints.”

It seems glaring in hindsight, but until the prose was well underway we thought the stub was pretty solid. Fortunately our work style involves lots of conversation and we figured out the issues without losing any ground. Kent does seem to have a Zeno’s Paradox thing going on, where each evening he manages to write half of the remaining words in his scene. Jen’s not the kind of co-author who’ll sit back and let that run its course, so one way or another that cycle will break pretty soon.

Happy Friday the Thirteenth to all our triskaidekaphobe friends! And all you triskaidekaphiles, too.

Have A Method, Or You’ll Have Madness

r-avatarMagical thinking sounds like something that would be very helpful in creative pursuits such as writing fiction. Instead, it’s the culprit behind many plot holes. Even if you work from an outline (which we recommend strenuously) — even if you use stubs — you’re not protected completely.

Stuff that looks fine from a distance can hide serious logical problems, things you sometimes don’t discover until you’re writing the scenes. A common form of this, from our experience, is when a conversation must cover certain topics (plot points) but the characters refuse to talk about those things. Didn’t they read the outline? In broad strokes it’s easy to say, “Jack and Jill chat about climate change,” but up close it might prove difficult for Jack to engage Jill on the subject because his beliefs are so radical. But that’s what makes them interesting, and the conflict here resonates with their later need to cooperate in order to survive, so you know you have to find your way through.

We’re not saying tools like outlines are worthless. Just the opposite. It’s even easier to get tangled up in problems when you have no structure to work from. Without an outline to put it in context, how would you know whether it’s worth it to chisel away at the climate change convo? How long do you have to let Jack and Jill ramble for them to get to something you can use? And whoops, Rufus is in two places at once. Fixing that means the boat chase needs to take place ten miles inland. That could be… different. Yeah. No.

Have a process, is what we’re saying. An imperfect process is better than none at all.

We’re coming up on the time of the year when aspiring writers are exhorted to just go for it. Write like a maniac. That advice has its place, but it’s not a good way to proceed if your desired end product is a salable manuscript. What is a good way? Find the right partner.

 

Bad Advice: nano edition

r-avatarTwo words: hell no.

November is upon us again, which makes this a good time to throw some shade at National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo.

Let’s agree that it’s well-intended. The idea, apparently, is that lots of people can’t have the experience of writing a novel unless a climate is set up to encourage them. It’s contained within a calendar month, so it gives you a deadline for motivation and it promises not to drag you into a bottomless pit — come December, you are released! Add a dash of gamification and hey presto, we’re writin’ some novels now!

If you’re someone who took the plunge because of NaNoWriMo, and you’ve gone on to develop your craft and you do the work, for realsies, which you might never have tried without the push that this annual event provided, congratulations. None of this is directed at you.

But if you’re less of a statistical anomaly, then NaNoWriMo has encouraged you in all the wrong ways, save one. It encourages writing without a plan. It uses word count as the sole metric of productivity. It’s the worst kind of democratization, the kind that achieves inclusion by lowering or eliminating standards. For certain definitions of “writing a novel,” anyone really can do it. So for the unserious wannabe whose sole aspiration as a writer is to claim to be one, it’s ideal. (What’s the one good thing? It demands that you write every day. [But it only cares during November.])

To write something good, don’t do it in a mad sprint between two preselected dates. Being an author requires dedication. It requires that you write every day all year. It makes you smarter, because it’s such a workout for the thinking-muscle. Set yourself some standards, and then revise them upwards every so often. Define your own schedule, with milestones and medium-range goals.

Finding motivation in the November event is fine. Giving this whole writing thing a shot during NaNo is fine — gotta start sometime. But there’s a much bigger world, and fixating on artificial deadlines and scorekeeping will keep you from reaching it.

Why We Don’t Do NaNoWriMo

As I’m sure you know, November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). There’s a whole website about it, so I won’t go into the details here. The idea is to focus on writing for one month, essentially providing an excuse to be selfish with your time.

We find though, that as a married writing team, we don’t need permission to focus on our craft. When we write we don’t have to tune out our significant other. Writing is what we do together most evenings anyway. There’s not really a way, short of taking extended vacations, for us to focus on writing more than we already do.

One aspect of NaNoWriMo that many people seem to like is the way it lets you track your progress. It’s set up to appeal to one’s vanity and competitive nature, and for many people it provides a lot of motivation. Thing is, once again, it’s something we really don’t feel the need for because our writing partnership has it built in. We’re totally vain and competitive! Plus, we have to keep each other synced up, and we each want to feel a sense of ownership in the product (and feel like we’re holding up our end) so we’re pre-motivated to keep the work flowing and share it with one another.

In a way, every month in the Skelley house is NaNoWriMo.

Do you participate in NaNoWriMo? Let us know in the comments.