 For Authors: October 19, 2005 Issue [#665] |
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This week: Edited by: phil1861
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| Creativity is a river that flows. It will either flow through us or around us. We choose to be the sluice to channel it or the rock by which it flows around. |
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To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.
- Giorgio De Chirico
The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
- W. H. Auden
We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.
- Brenda Ueland
Quotes from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
It is October and time for silly handles, the inevitable signs of fall turning the leaves, and the farewell to the summer heat. It is time for planning costumes and rehearsing for the busy holiday performance season. It is also near time for the next NaNoWriMo competition where there are no prizes, no one places or shows, and the only person to beat is the self. It is time to look long and hard at the schedule and decide if one has the gumption to complete it this time or to try it for the first time.
As of this writing I'm undecided but I tend to take a while to decide to do something and will usually make the snap judgment near to the last moment.
To the uninitiated NaNo (as it is commonly shortened for National November Write a Novel in a Month; a thirty day perseverance test to achieve the coveted 50K word mark) is a yearly celebration of the meat and potatoes of any writers craft: the writing of one word at a time. That's it. That's all. It is a word, a sentence, a paragraph, and a chapter at a time. There are no tricks, no gimmicks, and no book to be purchased on how to achieve a fifty thousand word novel in thirty days. One word gets you to one. Add another word and you've got two and so on. No kings of the written word. No high seated master author's chore. No multi-million dollar national bestselling writer's skill needed; just one word at a time.
Now, NaNo is a Steven Covey adherents dream come true. It is time management out the wazoo! It is, more artistically and writers craft speaking wise, the best tool for silencing the editor there is. Think of the editor (or critic or any one of a number of names to call it) as that part of ourselves who wants fame, fortune, and success yesterday! Add the time management and the need to keep that pushy little glitterati name in lights dreaming punk quiet and you have the ingredients to finishing NaNo. It isn't easy. The critic will be there each and every time you sit down to write to tell you that sentence didn't make any sense. The characters are sounding flat and doing stupid things. The plot is weak and would never sell. That critic needs to have a sock stuck into its mouth so that your creativity can flow and flow well in order to finish on time.
It is a thirty day exercise in tempering your writing to get into the creative flow and keep getting into that flow. And you have to do it every day without fail or face several days of really excruciating word pulling. It can be done and there are those who have pulled off ten to fifteen thousand word days; but even they will tell you it is better to put in your daily dose than to go binge writing.
What good does NaNo have for the future best seller? Don't have a clue!  But, if best selling is what you hope and dream for then you had better get with the marketing trends and pen stuff that the reading public wants to read. If you want to learn how to write as someone who can sit and let the words spill out of them in un-restricted flow then NaNo is for you. It is unfettered and ignorant of the strict rules of plot and marketability. It cares not for run-on sentences and for misspelled words. And it certainly does not consider agents and publishing houses. Those aren't the point. The point is to train the editor into silence while the story is being formed and the characters are learning to take baby steps into a world of your creation. It is allowing them to remove the shackles of sensibility and roam as they will into their own stories as they would see fit. Those other things are for later; right now you are preparing to just write and to write and to write until the goal has been reached.
Some have later sold their NaNo works so you are not totally engaging in some frivolous activity with no outcome. You will have the start or the middle of something by the ending if you complete your quest. If not, you will still have that and the freedom to work it out later on. But remember: one word at a time.
A few tips from my own experience:
Do 1,700 words a day either all at once or in spurts when you can fit it in. That will get you to 50,000 words ahead of schedule.
Make a writing schedule and hold to it like a meal or some other must do activity. Missing a day only adds to the next days burden of word count.
Thanksgiving falls at the most inopportune time for NaNo, right smack dab in the home stretch. Make sure you are accounting for not getting much done thanksgiving day unless you want to be labeled the family ogre by eschewing friends and relations to sleepily get your daily count in.
Turn your spell checker off on your word processor and resist the urge to go back and spot edit paragraphs. Word count and progress is the key. You aren't working on a Pulitzer worthy product by the end of thirty days; just get the story done and write your acceptance speech later!
Don't, do not, nada, nyet get half way through then decide you don't like what you've done and give up or attempt to start from scratch. That's the editor and critic talking to you. The editor and critic will get their day, but it ain’t for another thirty days. Give it a ticket to someplace boring drab and dull then tell it you don't want to see it until December.
I wrote every morning, early and before work when the house was quiet and I was at my most alert mentally. Find your most alert time and make a way to write during that time. You'd be surprised that 1,700 words a day can come in as little as forty five minutes to an hour and a half of writing time. When I figured out my schedule I also figured in days when I couldn't get up early enough and thus miss a few here and there. But, don't let too many of those days come in a row or the back log of words will begin to look daunting and impossible.
1,700 words a day is easier to envision than 5,000 in a day or more. Tackle NaNo in little daily chunks, one word at a time.
Have you succeeded in NaNo before? What did you find that worked and what didn't?
If you didn't make it the last time, what did you find you did that didn't help you on your journey?
Are you doing this for the first time? What are your thoughts and fears?
phil1861
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Found a few resources for any of you looking to get some fellow writer help. The NaNo forums on the official NaNo site are also a good resource and local NaNo’ers do run get togethers in local cities. But, here are a few local to W.com
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Question from my last NL 9/19/05
Have you come across a work that shook your world view? What was challenged and why?
Did you follow my exercise of writing down what you believe and why? What did you discover?
♥Carol♥ 
Submitted Comment:
Pookie,
My only comment is that you are right on with your narrative about truth and our world view. As a newswriter, I have come to the conclusion that truth is simply in the eye of the beholder. Knowing all the facts without bias is virtually impossible.
But, in trying to decifer "truth", the best tool we have is our instinct.
Voxxylady 
Submitted Comment:
Great subject for writers to consider. I've taken cultural classes and have researched on my own, and the biggest revelation I found was how much is left out of the history we learn in school.
For instance, we all know that Native Americans were defeated by European invaders, but do we also know that the tribes turned against each other, some siding with the Europeans, helping to cause their own defeat?
Radical feminist leaders tend to be a certain political party and we hear them railing against the other. However, it was their own party that voted against ERA. The defeat was accompanied by a large percentage of women not supporting it.
There's a theme there and a huge lesson to learn: in most cultures that have been overtaken in some way, it's often because they sold each other out, but then rant against the "invaders."
I suppose I should just do an essay about it instead of rambling here. Thanks for making us think!
spazmom
Submitted Comment:
Your newsletter made me think of a recent experience I had with thought paradigns... I teach in a computer lab at an elementary school. I have two students who come in that have the use of only one hand. In my search for a way of teaching them to type I discovered a completely different method of typing! It blew my mind to think that it had been around all this time and I hadn't known about it. I felt almost as if I'd been in a buble and had someone pop it for me. It was a strange feeling, and I almost felt betrayed by my teachers. Interesting how we view things, isn't it.
billwilcox
Submitted Comment:
Pook!
Yet another great newsletter. I wrote down what I believe in and have discovered I believe in nothing and/or no one. I am invisible to myself and only sit back and watch as the world spins madly out of control. Other than that everything's good .
gailey
Submitted Comment:
Excellent advice, Phil! Conclusions and opinions are often based on so many things that it would definitely help to know how and why we've reached the perspectives we have. Complicated as they can be sometimes, our perspectives affect nearly everything we do, including our writing. So, even beyond historical writing, your editiorial offers great advice.
In the editorial, you asked: Have you come across a work that shook your world view? What was challenged and why?. One book comes to mind ("Animal Farm") because reading it affected how I've viewed politics ever since. After reading "Animal Farm" one cannot remain naieve and trusting about the way politics and government are run.
BTW, thanks for including a link to the contest!
gailey
Strange Wulf
Submitted Comment:
I haven't read many things that changed my worldview much. I remember how I used to believe a lot of things that pretty much imploded when Rush Limbaugh first came on. He made too much sense for me to keep believing in them.
Anyway, the only work I can remember (right now) that changed my worldview was a comic strip. Now I support legalizing hemp and marajauna, because the reasons not to boil down to the same reasons to ban guns. Seriously.
Oh, and as a side note, anyone struggling with dialogue? Say it out loud. It helps me a lot. Improved quite a bit on the first try.
That's all for me. Take care.
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