Taking on the #NaNoWriMo challenge? Thinky thoughts and helpful resources

Every year when people start talking about Nanowrimo, I have the same mixed feelings. I love the idea of National Novel Writing Month, which encourages aspiring authors to bite the bullet and blitz out a 50K word manuscript in 30 days, but it does bring out the angry little editor in me when people talk about submitting that NaNoWriMo ms to agents or slamming it up on Amazon without proper care and feeding.

From the NaNoWriMo web site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Here's what I love about this endeavor:

Writers learn by writing. I truly believe there is no other way to learn how to write a novel. Just do it. Yeah, baby. I applaud that approach in writing and in life. I'm up for just about anything that includes "seat-of-the-pants" in the instruction manual.

Daily ass-to-chair application is the foundation of the writing life. Thirty days of due diligence is probably going to entrench the work ethic -- or at least the habit -- and train family and friends to honor writing space and work hours.

The process is demysticated. Yes, I made that up. It's a hybrid of "domesticated" and "made un-mysterious". It takes talent and hard work to write a novel, but it's not magik or brain surgery or nuclear physics. (That said, nuclear physicists and brain surgeons usually have to hire ghost writers for their books.)

On the other hand...

Not "everyone who's thought fleetingly of writing a novel" is a novelist. 
Whenever I hear that old "everyone has a book in them" axe, I can't help but point out: Everyone has a spleen in them, too, but it takes a particular skill set to get it out, and only in rare circumstances is it a good idea to display it on a shelf.

I have fleeting thoughts of pole dancing. I have the basic physical requirements and innate sense of rhythm it takes to pole dance. I have the wherewithal to purchase necessary technology and could probably muster the will to practice pole dancing daily for 30 days, but imagining that's all it takes is an insult to dedicated professional pole dancers who work courageously and sacrifice a lot to make that their livelihood.

I think "painstaking craft" is a good thing.
We need to designate December through April as NitNoEdPro (Nitpicking Novel Editing Process), because the product of the 30-day effort is a rough draft, not a novel. There's a vast difference. That first draft is a major accomplishment. It's a huge step forward, but it's only the first of several huge steps to actually producing a finished book.

Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit."

Even if you're way more brilliant than Hemingway, and you manage to hatch golden, ready-to-pub words on the first pass, 50K words is a pretty slender manuscript. Just barely over the novella threshold. Celebrate it as a solid foundation and settle in to flog that thing with a solid structural / developmental edits -- using self-honest self-editing methods or feedback from qualified beta readers -- followed by a competent line edit and a thorough copyediting scrub before you send it off to agents or pull the trigger to self-pub.

It takes a lot of hard work -- and a lot of that pesky obsessing over quality -- to take a rough draft to the bookshelf in a way that honors the story, showcases your talent and respects the reader's time.

Bottom line: NaNoWriMo is a fantastic writing exercise. Go for that 50K! It's a great accomplishment if you see the challenge through. I can definitely see it sparking the beginning of a writing career or breathing life into an aspiring writer who's lost hope. Participants are bound to discover some things about their unique creative process. That said...

I do hope one of those discoveries is that it takes a lot more than 30 days to be a novelist.

If you've decided to rise to the Nanowrimo challenge:
Here's a helpful series from Alexandra Sokoloff's blog.
Here's a little book about my own writing/publishing adventures.
And here's a competent, trustworthy line and copy editor.

And remember the words of Frank Capra: "Do not compromise, for only the valiant can create."

Two terrific workshops happening at Beauty and the Book's Girlfriend Weekend

Perfect post-holiday excursion (and you know you'll earn it): Beauty and the Book literacy diva Kathy Patrick, founder/ goddess elect of the internationally known Pulpwood Queens book club, will host the 12th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend January 12-15.

In addition to the Author Extravaganza and Greatest Show on Earth activities, two terrific workshops are being offered:

You're invited to Kathy's house Wednesday, January 11 for a first time memoir workshop with Robert Leleux, columnist for The Texas Observer and editor of LONNY Magazine in New York. Fee includes lunch and a signed copy of Leleux's latest book, The Living End: A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting.

Stay an extra day for a voice workshop with film, television and radio voiceover artist Elaine Clark, author of There's Money Where Your Mouth Is: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Voice-Overs.

For all the information, visit the Beauty and the Book website. Hope to see you there!

NaPoMo QOTD Because Everybody Snores Sometimes. Even If They Say They Don't. They Do.

"And then we had a three-week cab guest
who snored; he broke the wilderness of our rest."
- The Gentle Snorer by Mona Van Duyn* (PoLau '92-'93)

Van Duyn did not enjoy being a PoLau. She said she would "run kicking and screaming in the opposite direction" to avoid doing it again. But I'm glad she did it once. She may just be the only poet in the history of ever (ok, not ever, but she's one of few) that didn't look to her own bouts of depression for a subject. she said that the years when she wasn't suffering were the "most real" and that's what she looks to. It's hard to write when you're in a good mood. At least, I think it is and there's enough angsty poetry in the world to sop up the ocean, so I'm incline to think I'm right. I really like that Van Duyn doesn't play into that at all.

*From The Poets Laureate Anthology, published by W.W. Norton in association with the Library of Congress. Poem copyright Mona Van Duyn.

"When I want to be a director, I write a novel." (John Irving on the craft of fiction)

The best 73 seconds of craft advice you're ever going to get.

Shavuotapalooza! (Joni's Ten Commandments For Writers)

Happy Shavuot! ‘Tis the season to celebrate the dramatic delivery of the Ten Commandments by consuming delicious dairy products! (Because the Torah nourishes us like milk, you see.) In honor of the occasion, I humbly offer…

Ten Commandments For Writers
(inspired by my hazy memories of Lutheran Catechism class)

1: Thou shalt have no other gods nor worship any graven images.
Artistic integrity uber alles. The worst mistake a writer can make is the embrace of greed or a neediness for fame. When "success" as defined by numbers is the prime objective, it pollutes every creative decision, corrupts the joy of every accomplishment, seduces us into projects we don’t belong to, and distracts us from the organic nature of our art. I don’t care if you’re writing literary fiction or catalogue copy, do it for love of language or don’t do it at all.

2: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.
Nor vainly bandy random potty-mouth verbage. Overusing profanity dulls its effect. Make every F-bomb count by reserving the word for special occasions. My dad always said (in re the use of vulgarities on the radio), “A truly creative mind has the vocabulary to express itself without needlessly offending members of the audience.”

3: Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Jesus had it right on: “God made Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.” It’s a gift, that day/hour/fifteen minutes of rest, and essential to prolonged periods of poker-hot productivity, not to mention ocular health. Slap a couple cucumber slices on those tired eyes and listen to some Enigma. Take a walk with kids, dogs, or love interests. Watch a “Top Chef” marathon. Go to bed, for crying out loud; whatever you’re staying up for isn’t worth it. Rest is sacred. We’re in a profession where there’s no such thing as “enough” until you say the word and mean it. Harlan Ellison says “Do 1000 words a day. Don’t go for more.” (I shoot for 1200-1400, but what do I know?)

4: Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth.
I suppose this should be about not neglecting the family (and it’s a good idea to look up every once in a while and make sure they haven’t relocated to South Dakota without you), but since I’m pretty much the worst daughter in the world, I’m applying this to our literary forebears. A great thing about being the mother of English majors: their required reading takes me back to revisit the classics. In addition to the Dead White Guys, there’s ancient Sappho and scripture and the riches of mythology. We also need to tear our attention away from the hottie literati who dominate the scene these days and revere the icons of our industry - Ray Bradbury, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Stephen King - commercially gigantic writers who’ve conducted themselves with class, grace, generosity, and style.

5: Thou shalt not kill.
Unless it’s essential to the plot. And if it works for the plot, thou shalt not NOT kill, even if you’ve grown attached to that character who, you know in your heart, must die. Death is part of life. Each story must have its true body count, and not one gratuitously bloated corpse more.

6: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Faithfulness and commitment to storytelling must trump the temptation to cheat with suspiciously handy Hum-Vees, wood-chippers, and other naughty little god-in-the-machine devices.

7: Thou shalt not steal.
But feel free to glean, eavesdrop, and spy on life every minute of every day. The best material isn't inside your head or the result of navel contemplation; it's all around you. Standing in line at the grocery store, hanging out in a bar on the Upper West Side, kicked back in the stands of an Astros game...stick a straw in the vast fruit smoothie of humanity and suck like a vampire.

8: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
See #s 1 and 6. Honesty is essential to all good writing, including fiction. A theatre director friend of mine used to live by motto “No bit too small, no laugh too cheap.” That might work for Comedia dell’arte, but it just doesn’t play on paper. Every character, including the less involved comers and goers—the “neighbors”, if you will—must ring true and multi-dimensional. And on an industrial level—it means giving our colleagues the benefit of the doubt. Martin Luther’s explanation of the 8th Commandment says we should “put the best construction on everything.” We work in a tough biz where gossip is gold. Let’s be kind to each other and reserve the backbiting to our morally conflicted characters.

9: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
You’re screwed if you measure your happiness by the size of someone else’s advance. This business is so random, so universally unfair, and such a capricious SOB, very few (if any) of us are ever going to get what we feel we deserve. A tremendous advantage I’ve had in the publishing industry is the fact that I did not imagine in my wildest dreams that I deserved to be part of it. My career has been a huge surprise party. This isn’t to say I’m willing to devalue my work or accept lowball wages. I’m not! Because I have huge respect for the art and craft of writing. I’m serious as a heart attack about my work. But I keep my eye on MY prize, not someone else’s.

10: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his.
Like I said above…although there is an upside to envy.

Happy Shavuot! Enjoy some cheesecake, be good, and prosper!