The New Project

I've been busy. I've written a couple of short stories and done a flurry of submitting - nothing yet. It's a little discouraging, but I'm not sure what to do.

I've come up with the plot of the next novel/play. When I wrote "Leif the Buddhist Viking," it was originally conceived as a play, but I had gotten the advice to write it as a novel first. It worked well as a novel, but I'm still committed to turning it into a play.

This new work is similar in that it occurs to me as a play, but I should novelize it first. The working title is "Trinity of Days," and it's about the three days that Mary spends between the time Christ is crucified and the time that he is resurrected. The themes are before and after, the Holy Trinity (which, interestingly enough, has no room for her), the stages of grief, and women and middle age. It's a lot to work into one play, but that's one of the things I like about the form. It's elastic.

I've been talking to The Pirate's parents, who are chock full of Biblical knowledge. They're giving me a ton of information - so much so that it's getting hard to decide what to include and what to leave out. I'd like to make the action of the play something that can be staged in a variety of ways. Contemporary, period, etc. We'll see.

I'm happy to have something to work from. Sometimes the ideas come thick and fast, and sometimes not at all. It's always nice to have something.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I was at work helping out with some software testing. For some reason, our software worked just fine on stationary systems, but on a laptop when you switched between one screen and another, it would consistently crash. I was getting very frustrated because this is one of those fields where I know enough to recognize a problem and not enough to fix it.

While at work, the woman who was my roommate was giving me grief. I had just bought a new phone and answering machine and had left myself a note about some expenses on top of it in my bedroom. She called me to discuss the expenses with me, which meant that she had been in my room going through my stuff. I told her that I'd talk to her about it later, but that I would be gone for the weekend. I was going to my other house. Upon finding out that I had another house, she got all bent out of shape because she felt, as my roommate, a certain entitlement to anything that was mine. Whatever.

I left work and headed to my other house. My other house was on a spit of land that was only accessible during low tide. The spit of land had trees on it, and my house was an inn in those trees. To get there I had to wait until low tide and pick my way through the rocks and then along a path into the woods. To outsiders, the house itself was only visible (but not accessible) during high tide, but to the creatures who lived there, it was just the inn.

The creatures who lived there were elves, fairies, trolls, fauns, brownies and all manner of magical creatures. My place was the only building in the whole area, and the only place where there was alway a meal cooking. The minute I walked in the door, I heard nothing but complaints from all sides. The fairies were ripe, and they were into the kind of trouble that only adolescents can get into.

See, here's the thing: a fairy is the larval form of an elf. To be specific two fairies form every elf. All fairies are twins - one good, one evil. The evil aren't so much "evil" as "mischievous." They can take any shape (because fairies are not a species, just a phase) just like elves can take any shape. There are short, troll-like elves, elves with goat's legs, human-looking elves, etc. The fairies all fly (though not all with wings) although they lose that ability when they become elves. They spend the first several years of their lives in this state of fairiness, flitting about and cavorting and learning about things by getting into things. If you have a good fairy attach itself to you, you're very lucky because they're helpful and kind and good-hearted. If you have an evil fairy, you're in for years of bad luck. You can tell when it's time for the fairies to go from larva to adult when the good ones are competent and kind and the bad ones have made enemies out of just about everybody.

There were three at the inn who were ready - a male trollish fairy, a male faunish fairy and a female humanish fairy. When I got in, everyone was screaming because the faun and the girl had ridden ponies into the drawing room and were causing a general ruckus. I came downstairs and told them that if they would put the ponies in the stable where they belonged, I would get their boxes and give them something delicious to eat. That's the trick. Fairies don't eat. It would just never occur to them. To the good ones, food preparation is a skill to learn, and to the evil ones food is another trick to play (spoiling the cheese, putting mice in the flour, etc). The minute a fairy eats a mouthful of food, the transformation begins. They turn into something that resembles a doll - hard and lifeless, but colorful. You must put the evil fairy and the good fairy together in a special wooden box that's pierced all over with holes, and put the box in the sea. In the morning, an elf will have come out of the box like a bird from an egg, and grown to its right size.

I had all six fairies lined up in front of me and had given them each a slice of bread. They hadn't even swallowed the first mouthful when they fell over, cold and brittle. I was just gathering them up and sorting them into their boxes when the dream ended.

The Cost of Productivity

This weekend, I missed an event I had really been looking forward to. My friend Cliff had invited a bunch of us up to his place to watch a movie and hang out, and I had promised to make it.

In the meantime, half of the family has had the same creeping crud that's going around. The Pirate has a rattling cough, and the Baby Goddess has a perpetually runny nose and no energy. This means that I spend my time doing a very few things: working, taking care of someone who is not me, sleeping or editing. I've been utterly heads-down on my editing such that although I had announced my inability to complete Nanoedmo this year, it's the 13th and I've got something in the neighborhood of 27 hours under my belt. I've done some re-writing, some re-arranging, some cutting and a lot of reading out loud.

Saturday I spent the day running around, and got home late in the afternoon and started my editing. I didn't even remember my date at Cliff's house until this evening, and when I remembered it I broke down in tears. My harp needs a new low A string, I need to work out more and I owe about fifty thousand people phone calls or emails. And none of those things is probably going to happen before I finish this draft of my novel.

Will my friends forgive me? I'm sure they will. It's not like they've never done it. Can I forgive myself? I don't know. I've trained myself to think that I'm a superwoman and can do everything, but that's not true. What it's come down to is this: I'm angry at myself for focusing so completely on the priorities I set myself. It's stupid, I know, but there it is.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I am with a scouting mission of five. We've tracked signals to a particular small planet, but we can't decode the signals or tell who they're aimed at.

We land in an area composed mainly of swamps (a class N planet). There appears to be no animal life more evolved than small plants, and there is one structure. It's a three-story house-looking structure covered over with something resembling white ivy and caulking. My particular mission is to find and disable to signal's source. Three will find the person/persons manning this signaling station, the last is the radio who keeps communication with our ship, parked on the other side of the sun from this planet in synchronous orbit (SOP - it keeps our troop carrier hidden until we need them).

I've discovered that the signal source is organic - it's the white webbing that covers the house. It's like an organic web of signal processing and accelerating synapses grown over an artificial structure. By following the whole down to its root, I can knock out the signal. This is why our scans found nothing - it's another organic structure in the middle of a wealth of organic structures.

In the meantime our people have discovered the man stationed here. There is only one, since there is no machinery to maintain. We have found out from whom he is getting his information, but we don't know for whom his broadcasts are specifically intentioned. The fact that it's a broadcast rather than a beamed signal is disturbing. The man gets away, and our troop carrier follows him.

He's gone to an inhabited class M planet, and since his propulsion system is superior to ours, he gets there long before we do. By the time we get there and locate his signal again, he has already constructed a wooden building and begun the process of growing the communication web over it. The tendrils are still young and small, though, so their signal is too weak to leave the planet's atmosphere. However, our scans show that thousands of his troops are in the vicinity.

My advance team of five goes to the planet to find him. Three are out doing recon, radio is with me, and I'm at the structure scraping the new communication lines off the building. We look out over a grassy field next to the house. It's the size of five or six football fields, covered in picnic blankets and umbrellas where the inhabitants of the area are having a public festival. They are getting up onto a stage at one end and taking turns singing for the crowd. Beyond them, in the very tall grass, we can make out the soldiers from the other side. They are just sitting there, waiting for us.

We make our way into the crowd. We've done this before. We talk to the people in charge, telling them that we're just here to purchase supplies, that we don't want to interfere with them in any way. These people are friendly and offer to share their picnic with us. This works to our advantage. Our troops work their way into the crowd, keeping one eye on the soldiers in the tall grass off to one side. In case of attack, our soldiers will be able to rush to one side, keeping the civilians out of the line of fire.

The waiting is the worst part. We sit there for hours, trying to be friendly and interact with the people on this planet, wondering why the enemy is just sitting there. We have the advantage at the beginning of the battle, since several hundred yards separate us and our weapons are all either pulse or projectile, good at longer distances. Their weapons are also based on that white organic goo and are only good at close range, but are more deadly since the white goo sticks and then sends tendrils under the armor. We don't want to rush into a trap, but the waiting is tense.

My job is done. I get into my short-range ship to head back to the troop carrier where I can analyze the white goop and its communication tendrils. As I am leaving the planet's atmosphere, I encounter something else disconcerting. There are single soldiers in individual carriers - hundreds of them - scattered in high orbit. Their carriers are like space bicycles - good only for carrying one person to and from a craft in orbit. They carry only a couple of hours' worth of oxygen and can't hold any cargo at all. The most a person would be able to carry is the gear they were wearing and perhaps a hand weapon.

These troops aren't in a formation. They can't be waiting to be called to the surface - they're too scattered. They can't be waiting to intercept anything coming from the planet - they're not armed. As I pass them (they don't appear to notice my small craft) they are making noises and gestures amongst themselves that indicate that they are a suicide squad. They are there to perform one mission that will take them out along with their target. I just don't know what their target is. Capturing any of them is no good. That soldier would be dead before I got him/her on my ship.

As I head back to my ship, I wonder whether there is a plan of attack that is so subtle and insidious that we're not seeing it, or whether these are the last, desperate moves of this particular enemy. I don't know how the overall battle is going. I'm not privy to that. I only know that I'm still alive, my people are still alive, and that we've been victorious through more than one battle. What I've seen so far - the broadcast signals, the low-tech weapons, the scattered attacks, all look like desperation.

I don't know what this war is for.

Things Sighted, My First Day's Editing

Yesterday, on my way to the grocery store, I was behind a truck that had the following painted on a board attached to its camper shell: "His MOMMY (the Virgin Mother) called him Ye-SHU-ah <-Hebrew. The English translation is Jesus.

I desperately wanted to talk to this person, but it's just not feasible in a car. Oh well.

I spent about an hour editing last night. Got the first 30-ish pages done. Took out many little awkwardnesses, added a little bit. I realized that I refered several times to events that I never went on to include, and I really should include them in order to make the whole thing a little more believable. I know, it's comedy, but still.

Hopefully, I can get another couple of hours in tonight. I know that I should be spending an hour and 40 minutes a day, but that's a tall order in one shot. Perhaps I should be getting up early and spending some time on this. Wow. You know I'm desperate when I propose getting up early.

National Novel Editing Month

Tomorrow begins National Novel Editing Month. I've got my novel all set to go, I've committed to showing up to public events.

I haven't gotten as much done as I'd like to have, but I couldn't tell you why. After the whole let down with the agents, I just lost momentum. I'm sure it happens to other people all the time, but that's cold comfort. I know that I should just stay on the horse, ride it out and keep working, but it's hard. I'm pretty unmotivated by the whole thing.

I need to dust a few things off and shove them the hell out of the house. The only thing that makes it all worthwhile is that I do have stuff out there, on people's desks.

I've bought the new "Writers' Market Guide to Literary Agents," and from what they're saying, I'm on the right track. It's just such a goddamn LONG track.

New Year, New Goals

We're nearly at the end of the first week of the New Year, and there's no time like the present for looking at what we mean to accomplish this year in terms of writing.

In my last post (done nearly a month ago now), I outlined some of the goals I had. Which of them have I accomplished?

I have bought the new Writers' Market and a postal scale.
I have submitted Ressurection to one market.
I have begun the Aurelia Mudlark novel.
I have started sketching my first short for the year.

I'm now up to six out of eleven agent rejections, so we'll see where that goes. I have submitted my novel to another contest, and we'll also see what comes of that.

It's good to be a writer. I love the process of sitting down and creating something that moves people. But if you want to be a writer for a living, you can't stop there. You have to take off the creative hat and put on the business hat at some point. I found that I need to devote at least 25% of my time to the business part of things, or it's just not worth it. I need to make copies, put together packages, look up markets, attend conferences, etc.

I think this year is going to be my year.

My Post-Nano Goals

Every December, I take stock of my writing output and formulate my goals for the coming year. It's sort of like New Year's Resolutions, but a month early and with the prospect of great rewards. Here are my goals:

1. Re-read "Sven" and re-work in play form
2. Submit "Resurrection" and "Temple in a Teapot" to at least 6 markets each or until accepted
3. Write at least 1 new short per quarter
4. Re-work the last 2 chapters of "Mitos"
5. Write "Cuckoo Bee" as a play
6. Buy new Writer's Market
7. Buy postal scale
8. Write the "Aurelia Mudlark" novel

Okay, I think that's enough to last me until November. That's two plays, four shorts and a novel. NO SWEAT!

And you? What are YOUR goals?

What Happens After You're Done?

I've been done with my novel for more than a week now. Crossed the 50,000 word mark on the 20th and decided not to punish myself and my family by keeping up my 2,500 word a day pace. So...what have I been up to?

Apart from the whole holiday thing (made easier by the fact that both girls were out of town for this holiday, leaving the Pirate and I to fend for ourselves), I have been doing a whole lot of NO WRITING. I haven't edited anything. I've barely updated my blogs. If you count all the words I write on a daily basis for work (yes, I write for money), in email, updating my blogs and for actual fiction content, my normal output in November approaches 10,000 words a day. But for the past week, it's been more like 2 or 3 thousand words a day, which is negligible by comparison.

But I have been reading, and let me tell you something - if there's anything that's as important to writers as actually developing the discipline to sit down and write, it's reading. Novels, short stories, news articles, magazines. It's all important. Pay attention as you read to descriptions that are particularly moving or surprising. If something makes you happy, sad or angry, dissect it. Find out how that author was able to manipulate you into feeling what s/he wanted you to feel. If you find something particularly bad, dissect what was so awful about it, and don't ever do it yourself.

I tend to read a lot of magazines, mostly The New Yorker. It has some amazing fiction that has informed my own fiction for quite a while, now. There are things about New Yorker fiction I do not like, and I'm hyper aware of that in my own work. I look at the words and mull over the choices that someone else made and think about how I would do it. I notice how a lot of the stories in The New Yorker have a sort of sameness about them. Part of this is editorial choice - the New Yorker audience is young and hip and experimental, but let's not lose our heads, right?

Find a magazine or book or newspaper whose style you like, and figure out what about it appeals to you. The thing is not to make your fiction sound like their style, but to know how to create mood, to influence, to illustrate.

Crossing Over with Aoibheall

As of last night, I've officially crossed over the 50,000 word mark. I could have done it Friday, but I made a conscious decision that since I can't even validate my word count until Thursday, there was no need to keep flogging myself.

Unless I really wanted to.

Now, I've finished 50,000 words. What am I going to do next? I think I'm going to finish the novel. There are two scenes left to write that will probably add up to a total of about 7,000 words. And then, I don't know. Sure, I've said I'm going to take some time off, but the truth of the matter is that while my intentions are good, I'm not capable of just not writing at all.

But the thing is, during the month of November, I've continued to write down my ideas and generate characters and plots for my next projects, so it's not like I'm at a loss.

In the meantime, though, I think I'm going to stand here with a whole bunch of other people at the finish line, cheering on those who are still slogging through it. GO TEAM!!

Lies, Damned Lies and My Blog

It has now been suggested by a commenter that I have been "economical with the truth" when presenting my stories about my prodigious literary output.

I can assure you that, while I am a fiction writer, this particular blog is nothing but a bald, factual account of my writing process. There are, of course, things that don't fit within the scope of a "my process" description, and now I realize that by leaving them out, I am painting myself as a writer with the energy and drive of a chihuahua on crank.

Here are some "how I do it" sorts of things:

1. My kitchen floor would grab your socks off.
I have not folded laundry, completely finished doing the dishes or mopped the kitchen floor since late October. These are things that, in the normal course of life, I do regularly. But not in November during the big push.

2. I am not (despite what I would like my boss to think) a critical member of my work team.
I am a tech writer. My job at meetings is to take better notes than the engineers (which I can do with one brain lobe tied behind my back) and to offer witty and acerbic commentary where appropriate. My boss knows that I can multitask well enough to both take notes and write my novel, and is fully aware that I am doing so. But I am important enough that my boss supports my literary efforts (winning literary awards goes a long way toward validating one's street cred) and wants to keep me working for him. He's not hung up that I'm not listening to every single blah blah blah about aligning the debenture to maximize phalangeal output. This is why I keep this job.

3. I am not superhuman. This does take a personal toll.
I recently went through a bout of depression that was fairly severe. I questioned a lot of my decisions, including whether to keep participating in Nanowrimo. I ultimately decided to continue, but other things went by the wayside.

4. Restaurants exist for the same reason that frozen dinners do, and there's nothing wrong with cereal for dinner.
My husband and I normally love to cook, but during November, we do it less. The crock pot is our friend, and my 12-year-old budding cook loves the chance to stretch her cooking wings by making the family dinner at least once a week.

5. Three words: noise cancelling headphones.
It normally takes me a little over an hour to do two thousand words. I am disciplined enough and have been doing this long enough that I can reliably work at that pace for a sustained period of time. On the other hand, I am also a person who, once my process is interrupted, takes a while to get back on track, and it takes an enormous amount of energy to sustain that kind of focus without help. Fortunately, noise cancelling headphones are a godsend. I have gone so far as to wear them WITH earplugs, meaning that I can hear absolutely nothing but the music I've chosen. This isolates me completely from anything that could distract me and cuts my writing time dramatically.

Those are my words of wisdom. Some actual, practical things that keep me writing constantly. But why? Why do I do this to myself and how can I keep up the pace? I've asked myself that a lot lately as I transition away from Nanowrimo. There have been several of us who are professional writers of one stripe or another who have realized that Nanowrimo was a miracle for us at first. We needed the motivation and the structure and the goal, but we don't need it anymore. We're now internally driven and writing all the time. We're ready for the next step. It's made me question my participation in Nano, and here are some things I've come up with:

1. Nanowrimo was the best thing that ever happened to my writing.
In the same way that college was the best thing that ever happened to my thought process. It taught me how to do it. How to plough through my blocks and get the words down. I would never have made it this far without it, and I will always be grateful. But I was graduated from college and have moved on.

2. I am the exception, not the rule.
I multitask better than anyone I know. That's just true. I am also absurdly hard working and internally driven. A lot of the time, I AM a chihuahua on crank. I realize this. But I also know that as a child, my parents constantly berated me for being "lazy," and I have always seen myself as a mostly unmotivated person. But this is important to me, and when things are important to me, I make them happen.

3. My name is not Mary Sue.
It's true, I ride a motorcycle and look pretty good doing it. I can cook and sew and write award winning novels. I'm a good singer and can be entertaining at parties. But it's also true that I cannot play a musical instrument to save my life. I have tried. I have taken lessons, submerged myself in it, and have come out on the other side untouched by talent. I am NOT good at team sports. I can't dance. I hate those parties and their loud music and crickets scare the shit out of me. I am overly emotional much of the time, and my life can be full of the most sophomoric kinds of drama. I don't pretend to be perfect. I'm not. I can't do everything.

People need to find their own reason for doing it, and recognize that you are not going to be the best at everything. Yup, it's the 19th and I've only got 4500 more words to do. Hooray for me. On the other hand, there are other people who have hit 100k+ and are still going. I can't compete with them. I don't even try.

You don't have to believe me when I say that I write 2500+ words a day, even when Nano is not in session. It will not impact my process. What you have to believe is that, if you want to, YOU can write 1,666.6 words a day and finish. This is doable.

What Does It Feel Like?

A friend pointed out an interesting thing: I am my novels.

When I was writing about the singer who courted the dancer by creating music for her, I read it out loud incessantly, trying to get people to listen to it and love me. When I wrote about the woman who had been neglected and abused all her life and left her home to live with a man who would ultimately abandon her, I felt protective of my women friends and angry on their behalf for any mistreatment the world dealt them. When I wrote about the man who fell in love with himself and died trying to possess an illusion, I withdrew from everyone around me. Now I'm writing about a woman who is putting her present in jeopardy in order to fix her past, and my home life is suffering.

On this one, I don't have any advice. I'm lucky that I'm married to an understanding person who doesn't take it all to heart. Much.

But if I really want my characters to have life and meaning, I have to be them. I have to be inside their heads and live with them and move them around. Unfortunately, I'm not terribly good at switching it on and off.

And now for something completely different...

And, for my very first (and likely only) writing update: today is Tuesday, November 16, and I am 37,693 words into my 50,000. I'm 75% finished, having written an average of 2,513 words a day (with a day job and two children). At this rate, I will write 75,360 by November 30th. I actually have a plan for that too:

The novel I'm writing now, Mary Ferguson Offered, is probably not going to be much longer than 50,000 words. So, my plan is to go straight to novel #2, which is unnamed as of right now. I am not sure which of two novels I might do first (remember - always be planning your next project) but if you'd like to have a vote in it, you can take this poll at my other blog. I won't start writing the next one until I'm done with this one, but that could be very soon.

Tips & Tricks #7: Juggling for Writers

Reading the profiles on the Nanowrimo site has been eye-opening for me. The biggest surprise has been finding out people's reasons for writing. Some people got into it just to "see if [they] could do it." Some people always wanted to write a book but didn't know how to get started.

A surprising number have attempted it and failed, and are coming back to try again. I admire those people the most, although they confuse me just the same.

Me, I do it for the money. I would like to get my writing published and out to a wider audience. Maybe it's mercenary of me, but the reason I devote so much of my time to this is that I expect my efforts to eventually mean something.

If you want to be a writer who gets paid, though, there's a lot to do that does not involve writing.

Editing
The only people whose first drafts are perfect have sold their souls to Satan and will be paying for it in the hereafter. For the rest of us - there's editing. It's generally a good idea to put a piece aside for a few weeks. Forget about it. Lose the associations you have with it so that when you go back to it, your mind isn't automatically filling in the blanks the way it was when you wrote it. Then pick it up and read it again. Fix all those places where you had said to yourself "I'll take care of that later." All the inconsistencies, the incongruities.

Then give it to a friend. Let someone else who doesn't already know the story look at it. It's best if it's someone who can be honest with you, because chances are that they're going to say that your story is *gasp* not perfect.

The last one is one I found out sort of accidentally: read your story out loud. Even if you're alone, read it aloud. Your mouth is much smarter than you think it is and it'll make word substitutions and point out problems that your brain glossed over. It's better if you have two copies of your manuscript - one for you and one for a friend who can make note of your changes while you read.

Marketing
You've spent months building your trumpet. How silly are you if you never blow it? Get a copy of the Writers Guides to the Novel and Short Story Market and look at it. Refer to it. Mark it up and put zillions of little tape flags on it. Send off for copies of the publications that interest you, or head to the library or bookstore. Then start sending off those submissions. The very worst they can do to you is say "No," and after a while, even that doesn't hurt anymore.

Creating
If you have a piece that you think is great and you've worked hard on, by all means take a rest and enjoy the fruits of your labors. But don't let that rest be any more than five minutes. Get back to work. Keep writing. Keep generating ideas. The brain is like a muscle in that the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Every time you have a story idea, jot it down, wherever you are. When you're ready to start work on a new project, whip out your notebook and you'll have a wealth of material to choose from. Not every story is right for every market, so the more you write, the better your chances of catching on somewhere.

Ideally, you should be doing all of these things all the time. Isaac Asimov, a man with over 500 books to his credit, always had five or six projects going at once. When he ran creatively dry on one thing, he picked up another, which would often give him ideas for yet another.

You're a writer. Act like a writer!

Tips & Tricks #6: Checking Out the Competition

My first year of Nanowrimo there were 14,000 people signed up. I had a story that had been churning around in my brain for years and I felt that I finally had the bugs worked out of it. I was, as they say, at the height of my game.

And on the night of October 31, my grandmother died. I changed my plan with mere minutes to go before the writing could officially commence. I spent the first week of November either in route or actually in Phoenix attending her funeral. And writing. Every day, I wrote. I would write like a fiend every night, usually upwards of 2,500 words. I wrote while crying, I wrote while laughing, I wrote alone or surrounded by mourning family.

Then, on the 13th of November, I found out I was being laid off. I had a month to find a new job. So, I got my resume together. And I wrote.

Here's the thing: what spurred me to write like the wind was not the fact that my circumstances were bad. What spurred me to write was the fact that when one searched the Nanowrimo site, one could plainly see all the other writers out there whose word counts were...improbable. There was one that first year whose word count bar indicated 999,999 (the highest the indicator goes) but whose novel consisted of its title endlessly repeated. There were several like that, and they were at the top of the list. It was easy to say "if you're not going to take it seriously, why bother?"

I finished with over 83,000 words that year, making it into the top 20 finishers by word count.

The next year was a little different. The next year, there were 25,000 people participating, and of that 25,000, I wasn't even in the first 5,000. I did finish, but I only wrote 51,000 words. I wasn't as excited about it as I had been the year before, and my lack of excitement was worsened by the fact that I knew that practically everyone on the planet was doing better than I was.

This year, I have decided that my answer to the stiff competition is this: complete denial. I have not even LOOKED at the entire list of authors to see who's doing what. I can see the people in my local group, and some of them are ahead of me and some are behind. And it doesn't matter. This isn't a contest with anyone but myself. This year, I am not going to write until I drop because I know I don't have to. This year, I am not going to obsess about how someone in the world has written more words than I have. I am not going to blame myself if I don't spend every second writing rather than hanging out with my children and my husband. They're what counts. They love me whether or not I'm a novelist.

I guess my tip about checking out the competition boils down to this: don't. Because it doesn't exist. No one can write your story. No one has your voice. Pay attention to what you're doing, sit down and write the words, and you won't need to worry.

Day 6: Hey, What Happened to YOU?

Those of you who have actually read this now (yeah, both of you) will realized that I was going along great guns for days and days, and then stopped. What happened? Did I give up writing? Am I dead?

What happened to me happens to all of us sooner or later, and it's what separates the writers from the wannabes. What happened is that my life blew up.

On Monday the first, I sat down and wrote about 2100 words. It was easy. It was fun. I was enthusiastic as all get-out. I planned to go to the write-in on Tuesday and write even more and hold myself up as a shining beacon of authorhood. Then, just before I was set to leave for work, one of the people who works for me announced she is quitting.

My world was suddenly in a tailspin. This is a person who does an amazing amount of work in our little group and her leaving is a tragedy on a grand scale. This is worthy of panic! However, I went to the write in. I was even productive, writing nearly 3,000 words.

Wednesday, I went to work and attempted to deal with the aftermath of her leaving, but I felt awful. By Wednesday night, I was fully in the grips of a stress-induced attack of the shingles, which for me is pretty debilitating (they're on my face and cause blinding headaches and the kind of pain that is normally cured by swallowing a bullet fired directly into the mouth). But I wrote anyway. Thursday I tried going into work and ended up coming home early, I felt so horrible. I couldn't do a blog entry, but I wrote anyway. Friday I never got out of bed until afternoon. But I wrote anyway.

Here's the thing: as long as I can figure out, in my blindness, in my searing pain, how to turn on the computer, I can write. It takes almost no energy to touch the keys and make them produce letters, and even if I nap between each word, I can write.

I still have to clean my house and take care of my family and figure all this work crap out, etc. But I'm not going to fall down on my words. That's too important. If you're a writer, that's what you do. Regardless of what else happens, you make the time to do the writing. Otherwise you're just another one of those whining wannabes who sits down, writes a sentence or two, and then succumbs to an attack of the vapors and just can't go on.

Writers, we're better than that. We're stronger than that. We know that the only thing that makes us writers is that we write.

Tips & Tricks #5: In the Company of Writers

During November, writers all over the world gather in little clutches to huddle together over the warm glow of lighted laptop screens. These are our most sacred rituals. These are the write ins.

Make no mistake, I'm not a gregarious person in the least. I hate everyone and wish they would leave me the hell alone. On the other hand, it must be understood that at least part of that desire is the acknowledgement that I can talk the ears off a gundar, and solitude forces me to focus on the tasks at hand.

During write-ins, however, there is a different dynamic going on. For the first half hour or so, there's the inevitable gossiping and catching up, but then people settle down and begin writing. It's inspiring to see other people in action. Some stare up at the ceiling for a few minutes, then turn their faces to the screen. Some stare fixedly at the screen, although their typing may only come in short bursts. Some stare furiously, as though they will fix the words to the page through sheer force of will, which is not far from the truth.

I always end up feeling as though I get bonus words by writing in a gathering. Like, for every 10 words I type, I get one free, upping my night's word count by ten percent. Last night, I ended up doing an extra nine hundred words for the day, which pleased me no end. I'm not saying that this will happen to you, but you never know if you don't try.

The other thing is that the people in the room serve as a handy source for opinion polling (which do you like better - sauerkraut or cotton candy?), thesaurus information that's more contextually sensitive than you can get anywhere else, and cheering section. Don't underestimate the value in that!

Write by yourself. Write in a group. Write. Now.

Tips & Tricks #4: Know When to Quit

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm not the sort of person who can pull off a Herculean all-nighter on the last day. Yes, I'm a procrastinator. Yes, I'm a rationalizer. But I'm also aware of the value of sitting down and getting it done.

Here's the value: getting to do something else.

My daily goal is 2,000 words. Most days, I beat that goal by a hundred or so words. If I meet this goal on a daily basis, I will easily make my 50,000 words in 30 days. In fact, I'll make it in 25 days. Lucky me.

But in the meantime, there's laundry to do. Children do feed. Winter in the mountains also involves lots of additional chores like bringing up wood, covering plants, finding lost mittens. The point is that while I think it's important to sit down every day and not get up until my 2,000 words are done, I think that it's equally important to GET UP after they're done.

I think a lot of people sit down for 12 hours a day for the first few days, write 10,000 words, which is a great thing, but are so overwhelmed by how much it takes out of them that they can't see going on. And I can't say that I blame them. I don't have 12 hours a day for a month to do anything. Modern life just doesn't work like that.

The only way I've been able to consistently do my thing and finish is by working the day I have set before myself, and then giving myself permission to stop. Lay down the pen, shut off the laptop, step away from the blackboard.

The plus side is that when I go back to it, I have had off time to chew over ideas and figure out where my characters are and where they should be. That off time for thinking things through is valuable to me, and without it, I think that my process would take me much longer as I tried to muddle my characters through poorly conceived situations on the fly, only to have to write them back out of it again.

Hang out. Sleep. Read a magazine. Eat a meal while holding a glass of water in the other hand. Do things that don't involve writing for a little bit.

And then go back to it.

Tips & Tricks #3 - Day 1

There were a lot of people who stayed up until after midnight to begin their novel. Good on them! While I did a lot of reviewing and perfecting characters and plot points prior to midnight, I did manage to make it into bed at 11:49 p.m., and therefore didn't write a word until this morning.

And I'm not convinced that any of it is any good. See, I'm not a morning person. In my perfect life, I would wake at about 8, spend an hour washing, dressing and eating breakfast, go out and get some exercise, and then about lunchtime settle down to writing. I would work for 4-5 hours, take a break at dinner time, then work another 4-5 hours, ending my night between midnight and 1 a.m. It would be lovely if I could maintain this schedule, but alas, the rest of my household seems wedded to a more traditional schedule.

For the month of November, I attempt to have it both ways. I still have to get up each day and leave the house at 6:25 in the morning to get to work by 7, but then I also stay up until midnight or 1 every night, cutting my effective sleep by a tremendous amount. I tend to make up for it on the weekends, which generally involve the entire family tiptoeing around the house until about 10 in the morning so as not to wake me.

I can hardly wait until success steps in to make this whole ugly process much, much easier (i.e., cutting out the day job).

I have begun writing, and have amassed a whopping 551 words as of 11 this morning. I'll most likely cross my 2k word goal at this afternoon's management meeting where I intend to be completely oblivious (as soon as I'm done giving my presentation).

November has begun. My head is bowed, but unbloody.

Incipient Authorship

Tomorrow is the first official day of Nanowrimo. I'm not terribly worried. This will be my third time out, and because I do this sort of thing a lot, I'm not particularly concerned. I feel like a person who runs ten miles a day contemplating a 10k. It's just not a thing.

What, in view of what I'm hoping to accomplish, have I done to prepare myself over the past few days? Here's my list:

1. Make an outline
You may not keep to it, but at least having an outline gives you something to which you may refer when you get stuck.

2. Plan out your main characters
Give them names, birthdays, physical descriptions. I often either pick real people I know or cut out pictures of magazines so that I have a consistent description.

3. Get your time line straight
You'd be surprised how many stories fall down because they can't be placed in time. In a short story, time matters less because the action tends to take place over a short period of time, but in a longer story, there are holidays and life events that help to anchor things in time. Help anchor your story in time by having those events there.

That's it. It's not many, but each one of them can take a lot of work. I don't necessarily plot each and every one of my secondary characters, but it's certainly helpful. It's embarrassing to have a character who's called "Bob" on page 52, and "Rob" on page 79, and "Bert" on page 114, or who changes height or eye color.

Little things count, and the more you put into planning, the better your end result will be with less work.

Six Days and Counting

I had sworn off doing any sort of writing in the week before Nano, because I had just finished putting together my submission packages and wanted a break.

On the other hand, I'm terrible at "taking it easy." So, yesterday during a meeting that went more than half an hour over and included me saying exactly five sentences (one of which was "some of us will die sooner rather than later") I outlined my next endeavor.

I bought a program called "Write It Now" that enables me to keep characters, chapters, etc. together on my novel. So, now I have my outline to which I may refer throughout my process.

It's six days before 11/1, and honestly, I'm not feeling even a little bit nervous or worried about being able to make this happen. I have done it at least six times in the last three years, challenging myself in November and other times throughout the year to push my word count in order to get something done.

In that, at least, I feel like a real live actual writer. When the pressure's on, I can perform.