Becoming Kringle

I need to start planning my NaNoWriMo book — well, as much as I plan these things. This is what I know so far:

Name: Becoming Kringle

Genre: Romance/cozy suspense

Main Characters: Brent Oberhauser, History grad student/barista. Tall, pale with black-framed glasses; shaved bald because of premature balding; tall and thin. Looks like a young Moby.
Sunshine Walker, accountant for the philanthropic organization which hides the Secret Society of Santas. Tall, medium dark skin and braids pulled back into a neat knot at the back of her neck. Dresses neatly — professional dress on the job; slacks and shirts off duty. Seldom wears jeans.

Basic plot: There’s the A plot, which is Brent and Sunshine try to uncover blackmail against the SSS which the philanthropic organization covers. There’s a developing romance between Sunshine and Brent. The B plot is that Brent gets drawn into the SSS through having to take over some of Kris Kriegel’s (protagonist of The Kringle Conspiracy) duties.

Outline — I have three chapters but there’s no A plot there, just the romance. Big mistake.

So I have a lot of work to do here.

I don’t know what to write!

NaNoWriMo is approaching, (November 1st) and I don’t know what to write.

I’ve been in editing mode — Apocalypse is a good amount of the way done edit-wise, while I just got handed back my first novel, Gaia’s Hands, from the developmental editor. I have enough editing for the next couple months at least.

But NaNo is about writing, not editing.

I haven’t written new for a while because of my editing needs. Although I haven’t finished Whose Hearts are Mountains, there’s not enough material left to make the 50,000 word total for NaNo.

I need an idea for a new novel by November 1.

I have a couple on the back burner: the sequel to Voyageurs, where our two characters time travel to stop the end of the world due to climate change, but that doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, I feel like I’ve backed myself into a corner writing a book that obviously has a sequel. It’s not just the research I would have to do, but the fact that I don’t know if I have enough plot to support the 80,000 word minimum for whatever genre it is.

The other involves an Archetype war with hideous implications for humans. I am so far away from the Archetype universe right now that I don’t know if I can create this.

I need inspiration — help!

Muse, if you’re out there, inspire me!

Word Sprints

Word sprints help you write fast, hence the name. They may or may not have a prompt to help you with a topic to write on. They can be timed (10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour); they can be word counts (100, 200, 1000 words); they can be housed on Twitter (NaNo Word Sprints), done in groups or individually, and can even take the form of competitions.

The whole purpose of word sprints is, like NaNoWriMo, to get your words on paper. You can edit later. I may be using more word sprints this year because I’m not having as many conversations with my characters as I usually do. (I need a good amount of time at a coffeehouse this weekend with Richard to help flesh out plot and character.)

Not everyone believes in the common philosophy behind NaNo and writing sprints — that is, that the words need to get put on paper, in whatever form, before you can polish your work into a novel. This columnist is very much against NaNo, thinking it gives less talented people a license to make their friends read their bad work. (I would have welcomed her point of view had she not come off as a caustic snob who likes to piss on others’ dreams).
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Here’s the result of a ten-minute word sprint for my WIP, with the prompt of “Someone is getting thirsty”:

The next day I’d wished I’d stayed at the curious place where I had dropped off the stranger the night before. The air shimmered with the heat; I sweated until I couldn’t sweat more. My goal was to drive out of Owayee and back toward the larger highways, because everything in this heatbox looked the same — the short scrubby shrubs, the baked-mud ground pebbled with rocks of varying size, the lack of true greens and flowers. Was it simply going back the way I came? Even with a map, I wasn’t quite sure what highway I looked at.

There was a lake by where I’d dropped off the affable, enigmatic Daniel. If I could get back to the lake, I would be near water and could take shelter with the commune. They had offered me shelter, but I wanted to continue on my quest.

Of course, my compass, I thought, and grabbed it from the passenger’s seat with one hand. Of course, as luck would have it, the compass couldn’t recognize true north. I thought the commune had been true north from where I was on the road.

I drank the last dregs of water from my jug, remembering that I’d filled two five-gallon water bags from the commune’s reservoir. They had been generous. Mari, the leader, had smiled at me and said, “We have plenty more where that came from, Annie.” I felt like crying as the nausea hit me. Then I felt the truck shimmy as my front right tire ripped from the rim.

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Is this a first draft? Yes. Upon reexamining it, I know it’s going to take some more filling in, and some wordsmithing. I use “of course” two times consecutively to start sentences. I don’t like “true greens and flowers” as a phrase, exactly, because it brings to mind lettuces rather than vibrant green hues. “There was a lake” should read “I recalled there was a lake”. Her recall of the commune could be slightly more descriptive.

But that was 25 words a minute on something I hadn’t thought about five minutes before.

I’m okay with that.

NaNos — your first draft (with footnotes!)

Dear NaNos (and other readers):

The first draft is not the time to polish your manuscript, or second-guess your ideas or get judgy* about your writing. You can do that later, after you’ve gotten 50,000 or so words on the page**. The first draft is the place to get your ideas on the page — whether that is fleshing out an outline (planner) or channeling creative spirit without constraint (pantser***).

You will be tempted to thoroughly read what you write. Don’t do so — keep writing the words. Keep letting the ideas flow. Don’t censor yourself when you write at first draft point — welcome the plot absurdities and scenery-chewing, the mystical subways and talking trees****. You have plenty of time later to decide whether to keep them or not*****.

The 50,000 word first draft is not to make you a novelist. It’s to make your future as a novelist possible through helping you break through the psychological barrier that makes you think you’re not a novelist******.

So go for it! It might change your life!*******

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Footnotes:

* although colloquial, I like this word better than “judgmental” simply because of the sound of it.

** this is not actually the length most novels should be for the market. It is, however, the winning number of words for NaNoWriMo.

*** as in “flying by the seat of your pants”.

**** oops, I’m the one with the mystical subways, not you. You know what I mean, though.

***** hint: If they detract from the plot and character, get rid of them.

****** NaNoWriMo has loopholes one can exploit if one doesn’t want to write a novel. There’s all sorts of other projects one can undertake — a script, an autobiography, historical fiction …

******* or maybe not. But it’s worth trying.

PS: For those prepping for NaNo, and for my friends: The Voice of Doubt

This week’s NaNo prep email says:

This week, figure out what you think your main obstacle to NaNoWriMo success will be. Once you’ve identified the obstacle, come up with a three-bullet-point plan to overcome that hump.

My main obstacle is myself — or, more specifically, The Voice of Doubt.

I suspect there are many Voices of Doubt out there.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, “You can’t possibly write 50,000 words in a month” because you never have before. You will — if not now, someday. Just keep the good work up.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, “This stuff you’re writing is garbage.” It’s a first draft — it exists to get the shape of the novel out on paper. You’ll refine it later in edits.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, “Your plot is so stupid.” I have one word for you: Sharknado. Feel better?

My Voice of Doubt says, “Why bother? You’ll never get published.” Every day, I get better and better, closer and closer.

What is your Voice of Doubt? Take away some of its power and make it merely a voice of doubt. Contradict it, or agree with it and turn it around: “Maybe I haven’t had a novel published yet, but I’ve had several academic journals published, and I’ve published a couple personal essays in liberal religious journals. And I have 28 readers on my blog!”

(And I still want to know who you are!)

Prepping the Next Story Part 1

I will be writing for NaNoWriMo this November. I think I explained this phenomenon before, so jump to the next paragraph if you’ve read this before: NaNoWriMo is a worldwide writing committment, where the participants commit to 50,000 words — which is well on the way to finishing a novel. In thirty days, 50,000 words equals 1,667 a day.

I started participating in NaNoWriMo because I’ve been known to easily abandon hobbies and free time activities. It runs in the family — my mother had an attic full of bolts of material, often purchased on sale, and scraps of velveteen and brocade that she planned to use someday for a Project. Mom’s projects, like mine, were never small, and like me, Mom expected to start a project at expert status. As an illustration, the scrapbook for my wedding sits unfinished, and Richard and I just celebrated our tenth anniversary.

NaNo changed that for me — primarily because it gave me a Big Audacious Goal. I could say “I’m going to write a 50,000 word book” to my friends and they’d say “OOOOH!” And then, having committed to the goal, I had to actually write it to save face. And then, at the end of the month, I had a book I had to take seriously and start learning how to edit — that, as you know, has taken a while. And now I have the discipline to write over and over.

This year for NaNo, I’m going to start writing the “dirty commie gypsy elves” book that I’d conceptualized twenty-five or so years ago, which has neither gypsies or elves, nor are they dirty.
How do I start?

I’ve done this before — I start with a loose outline of major plot events, which looks like this:

On the left-hand side at the top is the outline for the book. I have the chapters added, with six titled, and the first chapter with its subchapters named and visible. The cards in the middle are the synopses for each section. There are some commands at the right I will set up later.

That’s what I will be doing for the next couple of days, so that my book has some time to percolate in my mind in October after I edit another book. Wheeeeeeee!

The Concept of Leadings

A Facebook memory today reminded me that three years ago, I had not yet found a publisher or an agent. Three years later, I have not found a publisher or an agent. (That writing device you just saw deployed is called repetition, and emphasizes the point made).

I’m not going to whine here, because that just puts me in a bad mood. I don’t want to be in a bad mood. I will, however, take an opportunity to talk about my current state, which is doubt. Today, my doubt has nothing to do with my assessment of my talent and everything to do with 1) my books are not similar to previous bestsellers; 2) the market is overwhelmed as the result of mass-interest writing movements like Nanowrimo; 3) the industry looks more at what will sell than the message or even the skill of the writer, just as female pop singers have to have a certain “look”; 4) so many people write; few get published.

When I started writing, I hadn’t thought about publishing until partway through my first book when I realized that the story unfolding had themes that I thought needed to be released and read. Some of the themes were subversive (Gaia as the World-Soul) and some universal (the nature of friendship); some of the plot lines were subversive (the May-December relationship where the woman is older) and some not too unusual (the bad guys trying to burn down a food forest that two of the protagonists just planted). I just had this feeling — call it a leading — that I needed to write and to be heard.

A leading, according to the Religious Society of Friends, is a tug on the heart, a whisper from God, a feeling that This Is What I’m Supposed To Do, even if I don’t know the end result. I’m a member of the Religious Society of Friends, or what others call a Quaker. We try to keep our lives simple so that we can carve out a quiet place for our soul to hear what God wants from us. (Yes, I know, how weird.)

I have been writing because I sincerely believe that I have a leading to write. The fact that I always find a new dream snippet to write from helps me believe this. I don’t have a leading to write full-time, because I’m pretty sure God wants me to eat.

But if I have a leading to write, and nobody publishes me (I will not self-publish, because nobody will read me that way either) then what’s my leading about? Is it really there? Is it time to let go of this leading? I don’t hear that still small voice advising me right now.

Thus, I doubt.

AAAAAAAAGH! Writer’s Block!

In the last couple days, I have written six lines of my story. Normally, I write up to 2000 words/day, as when I participate in NaNoWriMo (http://nanowimo.com) or Camp Nano (campnanowrimo.org). I’ve only not won NaNoWriMo once (50,000 words) and that’s when Trump had just gotten elected. (I didn’t have the heart to write.)

I’m not sure why I struggle to write right now. The current book (working title: The Ones who Toppled the World) isn’t much more difficult than most of what I’ve written. I have a relatively good outline to plantz from. I have more time to write than I do during the school year.

This leaves me with several possibilities:

I need a kick to the imagination.
I need a vacation from writing 😕
I’m letting my discouragement get to me.
I find the current story more challenging than I’m letting on.
I’m writing in my blog too much 😜
I need a more atmospheric place to write than my couch.
I need a soundtrack to write with.
I haven’t fallen in love with my characters yet. These characters — the sardonic Grace and the analytical Ichirou; the calm and prepared Ayana and her partner, the chameleonic Greg — I’ve barely scratched their surfaces. Maybe I need to have a chat with them to get to know them better?
I’m not seeing myself as a writer lately.

Ok, I have ideas to play with now. Let’s chat sometime!