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Nanowrimo Update: Adrift

November 22, 2010

Adrift

Another  busy work week begins and my Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novel is seriously adrift.  Fulfilling the word count (50,000) by the end of November will likely be possible.   As any follower of this blog has probably guessed, I’m pretty good at quickly typing words.

Getting the story right, getting A story,is more difficult.

On my last update, I complained about the plot problem of arranging for  “California Girl” (who was not truly from California but has been staying in LA) to meet up with my other crew of characters traveling through Nevada.

Everything was happening too slowly.   The Nevada crew was not getting to LA fast enough to have their crisis there.

The bigger issue is that I haven’t been sure of the connection between the two sets of characters  even as I’ve danced between the two stories, writing them in one manuscript, in typical Gemini indecisiveness.  (Sorry, to you decisive Geminis.)

What to do?  I couldn’t just leave California Girl eating corn dogs on Venice Beach.

After a long walk below a clear sky, it became clear to me that California Girl was just going to have to be in Nevada; and since I couldn’t think of a reason for her to run off there, she’d have to be there all along; be, in other words, “Nevada Girl” right from the start.

(At least, I thought this had become clear.  The sky is a bit cloudy today.)

In the meantime, my Nevada crew has also stalled.   I am at the point of writing endless dialogue, thoughts, internal connections–something that would be Woolfian if I did it better–even as they race to an ambulance!

Maybe it’s a good thing I have to get back to other work today.

If these characters can’t make up their mind where they are or what they are doing, let them just stew for a while!  See if I care!  (Ah….good question.)

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Nanowrimo Update: The Quandary of the Corn Dog

November 21, 2010

Corn Dog?

Agh!  Everything changes.

Especially when you are writing a novel in a month.

Which brings me to being a Gemini (the sign of the twins, twins encapsulated in a single person).  I do not particularly believe in astrology as a means of foretelling the future–at least not since the big stock market crash in 2007 which was totally NOT foreseen by Jonathan Cainer.   Nonetheless, I have always found myself to be an absolute down-to-the-bone Gemini:  quick, shallow, communicative, changeable, inveterately bi-tasking.

The propensity to do two things at once is reflected consistently in my fiction writing.  Almost every manuscript I’ve ever written, whether for children or adults, tends to be told in two voices, the perspective of two characters.  I can’t somehow stick to one track; as a result, I’ve grown to like the kind of interchange that two different points of view, or even stories, provides.

But when you are writing a novel without much of a plan, and with limited imagination, this kind of structure can be a problem.  In my current nanowrimo manuscript, for example, one of my two subplots has become quite a bit more compelling than the other.  I just haven’t quite gotten the gist of the other one yet:  who are these people?  What are they doing with each other?

They started out in a suburban house in Sherman Oaks, California (part of LA).  The swimming pool went green; one decided to leave, the other tied her to a chair.  She has escaped now to a motel in Venice Beach.

But this move to Venice Beach really is too early in terms of the other subplot–that’s the crew traveling through Nevada, troubled by modern art (among other things.)

So what now?  While California girl is in Venice, she has to DO something.  She can’t just sit there awaiting the arrival of characters she’s never even met!  And, btw, I realized today, she is also  going to need a whole different past, and a whole different vocation, a basic remodeling.

So, once more, now what?  Do I just forget about California girl for a while, give up my typical back and forth, and focus on the guys in Nevada?  Do I go back and re-write California girl’s whole first half, move everything forward (or backward)?    This makes a certain sense, but would probably require me to give up whatever unconscious structure has happened in the initial writing.

Alternatively, do I come up with something new and exciting for California Girl to do right now?  At the moment, all I’ve been able to come up with is the eating of corn dogs.

(In case, you don’t know, these are hot dogs on a stick, dipped into corn meal, deep fried.)

Not somehow enough.

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Nanowrimo – Back to the Notebooks (Have Pen Will Elephant)

November 18, 2010

You can write in a notebook in the bath.

For all my hoopla yesterday about finally returning to the computer to write my Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) novel, I have succombed to the notebook again.

Writing in a notebook is just so comfortable.  Especially when you are tired.  (Which you can get in National Novel Writing Month.)

The pen flows, the bathwater flows, even on your pillow–there’s a kind of low-energy creativity that can be managed with pen and ink that is just not available with a computer.

You can write in your notebook even when you're very tired.

Sometimes you are so tired you don't even recognize your own...errr...handwriting.

Categories: elephants, Nanowrimo
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Nanowrimo (Back on the Computer!)

November 16, 2010

Eyes still a little sore, but back on the computer (also on the elephant)

Back to typing my Nanowrimo novel on the computer rather than only writing in a notebook.  This is a tremendous relief.

A kind of obstacle had formed in my brain–that I could not go back to writing the novel on the computer until I had typed up the forty or fifty pages I had scribbled in my notebook.  But this morning, I finally got myself back to writing on the computer again, simply picking up from my handwritten portion.

Don’t get me wrong.  I very much like notebooks.  Ink has a unique flow.

Ink has a unique flow.

But typing up a very scribbled draft that you don’t have time to edit is pretty stomach-churning.  (Maybe “sickening” is a better word–”churn” has drama; robotic typing is dull dull dull.)

The problem is that an exercise like National Novel Writing Month requires stamina.  This stamina rarely comes simply from discipline.  (Otherwise, you’d probably be the kind of person who puts all their focus on their day job.)

At least a part of the stamina is maintained by faith–faith in one’s self, but, more importantly, faith that the activity is somehow fun.

The invention, the engagement, usually qualifies.  Typing words you have already written, in contrast, is like watching a video of yourself at a party at which you were more than a teeny bit over-exuberant.  (Or worse, completely spiritless.)    Either way, it’s way better the first time around.

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Week Begins With Both Bang and Whimper (i.e. Towed Car)

November 15, 2010

Cars, like nature, abhor a vacuum.

My work week (and third Nanowrimo week) started with both bang and whimper.

Lesson of the day:  there is no such thing (and I repeat, no such thing) as an unrestricted legal parking space in New York City, i.e. no sign is a bad sign.

Did you get that all you forever-hopeful types who think that maybe the City just “forgot” to post a “no parking” sign, that maybe you lucked out for a change?

Woe to you justice-minded souls who believe that the NYPD couldn’t possibly give you a ticket, much less tow you, in such circumstances.

Did you not realize that the absence of a visible sign means that the open parking space in front of you, even if framed by other parked cars (which appear to be made of steel and/or aluminum or some metallic polymer) is in fact an illusion?

Did you not understand that the space is only there in the sense of a void, a vacuum, a black hole, as, in other words, an absence of space?  And that if you drive your car into this void/vacuum/black hole, it will vanish into the alternate universe that lurks around the edges of New York life (i.e. Pier 76 located at 38th Street and 12th Avenue).

Yes, the car can be reconjured.  But that trick will not be performed for free.

(BTW, Nanowrimo novel could be going better; there’s nothing like a car–even a rental car– towed from a space that you now just knew was not legal–for interrupting “flow”.)

Categories: Nanowrimo, New York City
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My Nanowrimo Manuscript (Thus Far) – Pearl Is Not Excited

November 11, 2010

Okay, so most people who know Pearl consider her a very mellow dog.  She’s also quite old.  (I’ve been saying 13 1/2 but I realized the other day that she is actually 14 1/2.)

Even so, her reaction to my Nanowrimo manuscript is disconcerting.

(Music by Jerome Kern, Lyrics by Dorothy Field, Sung by Fred Astaire, romantic elements–in the manuscript–by ManicDDaily.)

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Michele Bachmann, Nanowrimo Novel Writing, Practical Mathematics

November 10, 2010

Insisting on Credibility?

One of my hardest obstacles in writing fiction is credibility.  I get completely mired in questions of believability.    (You should have seen how I suffered over the talking dog in one book, till Pearl, my bichon, assured me that it really was okay.)

I have to constantly remind myself that I’m writing a story; that, in other words, it needs drama, to re-adjust the normal daily percentages of humdrum and startling.

I am trying to get over this tendency in my current nanowrimo novel.  (Why, for example, have one of my protagonists just leave a sketchy boyfriend, if, on the way to the door, he can grab her and tie her up?)

(Sigh, It’s hard.)  In the last couple of days, however, I’ve encountered a new teacher:  Michele Bachmann!

Obama’s trip to India, she proclaims, wild- and wide-eyed, is costing taxpayers $200 million a day!  (Maybe, she goes on, he should consider videoconferencing.)

I wondered how she could believe what she was saying.  But then it occurred to me that rather than illustrating the art of fiction, Bachmann might truly be an illustration of the deterioration in practical mathematics.

Which brings me to my  father-in-law;  he is about to be 100 years old.  One of his many admirable qualities is a strong grasp of the mathematical properties of the physical world–he is an incredible judge of distances, surface areas, cubic footage, weight, density, and all the combinations of the above.  When he says 120 square feet or 13 fluid ounces, he knows exactly what he’s talking about.  Part of his skill at estimation results from growing up in a time where this kind of physical understanding was included in one’s education, part may result from a preternatural cleverness–whatever the reason, the ability to make reliable estimates seems to have declined in the modern world (and not just among contractors.)   This decline has in turn led to a gullibility about numbers.  People who don’t bother, or can’t, estimate realistically, readily accept all kinds of crazy figures.

And now we have Michele Bachmann!  Mistress of the Art of fiction?  Drama queen?  Mathematical nitwit?

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Nanowrimo – Week 2 – Coasting Through the Bogs (Baths)

November 9, 2010

Would-be Coasting (Notice Book Is Read Rather Than Written)

Nanowrimo organizers warn that the second week of Nanowrimo is especially hard, the exuberance of the first week draining, the adrenalin of the oncoming finish not quite kicking in.

I figured these warnings didn’t apply to me;  after all. my first week wasn’t exactly exuberant.  No, now that I finally had my story, I would coast.

But when I got home from work last night, I had all kinds of non-coasting activities to attend do.

An idea for a blog!  Sure, I wasn’t going to actually write one, but get Pearl to help me.  That shouldn’t take long.  (Ahem.)

Then, well, I should really keep on exercising.  Since country music figures in the novel, I’d dance!  To Dolly Parton!  (Downloading some was a snap.)

OMG–look at you, Pearl!   Yes, it’s a bit cold tonight, but it’s not getting warmer.

Bathwater was run.  No point in a bath without a trim.

Then (I’m not completely heartless) came an hour of holding a shivering Pearl in a down parker next to a heater.

It was getting very late now, and I realized that the time for coasting was sliding down a very slippery slope.)

I would take my notebook into the bath.  (This is one of the best features of sore computer eyes.)

Oops, had to clean the tub.

Okay, so, I told myself, if you are not going to coast, you can at least be workmanlike.  (It’s true that maybe the bath is not the most workmanlike writing studio, but I did have an extra towel handy.)

I set down to writing the scene I had in mind.  Only the country music had put a bunch of other scenes in my mind.  Scenes from further along.

I set down to writing the scene that was supposed to come next.  Only I just couldn’t bear to write that scene–a kind of dinner party–and jumped straight to the after-party late night confrontation between an ancillary villain and one of my female protagonists.  I was going to fit some good (ancillary) character to help her out, not because I felt the young woman needed to be helped so much but because I had a great idea for a snipy kind of line that one of these ancillary characters might use against the villain.  (It involved the Dia Foundation!)

And finally set pen to page.  Only, as I wrote the scene, the dialogue was incredibly sweet, too sweet for the villain.

A couple pages in, I converted him to to one of my male protagonists. an important good guy.   (Who, unfortunately, would not refer to Dia.)

Oh well.

In the meantime, Pearl parked under the down parka, having had enough of Week 2.

And it's only Monday!

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Doing Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) Off the Computer – Writing by hand…errr… paw…

November 8, 2010

 

 

It can be hard to write in a notebook, once you've gotten used to a computer.

But it really can be done if you put your mind to it,

and sink in your teeth.

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Nanowrimo Eyes (i.e. Sore)

November 7, 2010

Oops!

All computer and more computer makes Jill have very sore eyes.

My nanowrimo collation of words (I don’t think it can be called a novel at this point) has passed the 18,000 mark (about 75 pages) but it is unfortunately what my mother-in-law would call a cold collation (a platter of cold slices–meat, cheese, tomato.)

In other words, there’s not much cooking yet.  (I started out with plenty of potboiling despair, but that was mainly venting in “fiction” and I don’t think I can actually use it.)

Still, there is, at least, a framework for characters and a story that I had never thought about before.  (Granted, anyone reading it may think:  aren’t these exactly like the characters in every single thing you write?  But I’ll reply, genuinely astonished, “really?”)

Although it is a mere framework, I comfort myself with thoughts of Obama’s health care legislation–that, at least, it’s something to hang things on–or from.  (Sorry, I’m a huge Obama fan, as followers know– what I mean is that at least it’s a start and that, sigh, you do what you can.)

Unfortunately, my right eye has now revolted.  (I type this wearing sunglasses.)

What is to be done?

A notebook and pen truly are suitable alternatives to a computer.  Granted, most people (i.e. me) hate typing up their scratchings, but people have used these implements for a very long time, producing wonders.

Agh.

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