commitment phobia and writing ruts 06/16/2011
Ah, well. Failed NaNo. Failed in my promise to finish the manuscript by Christmas. Going very, very slowly on the forever-rewrite. I figured out some of the reasons why it's going so slowly. The main problem is that I've had a terrible time committing to a revision plan. I've started three or four rewrites of this novel. All are wonderful in different ways. All have brilliant points and idiotic mistakes. All are incompatible with each other. And as Chesterton says, to make a choice--any choice--is to reject forever all other choices. I've been trying to choose among four different novels, and I love them all too much to reject any of them. But I think I've finally picked one. It's not perfect, but I like it. There are pieces of it I'm not willing to give up for anything, even though they're overly ambitious and difficult and I'll probably regret them. I'm committing to it--or trying to, and my rewrite is finally progressing again. And yesterday I wrote an article on the cognitive differences between typing and writing by hand, and I remembered how much I love writing by hand. It's so much slower--as if I weren't already going slowly enough!--but I write so much better, and I spend much less time staring at the blank page. So I'm attempting to finish this rewrite by hand. I have no doubt that I'll regret that more than once, and at some point I'll probably return to typing. But for now, my notebook and pen are progressing much faster than my fancy software and expensive computer. And when your writing gets stuck in a rut, you have to move forward with whatever works, right? 1 Comment NaNoWriMo, Day 9 11/09/2010
Today is the ninth day of NaNoWriMo, and I'm 6,484 words behind. What? You don't know what NaNoWriMo is? Check out the website. They call it a competition, but really it's just a big online cheering group for writers--a bunch of writers encouraging each other to write. Specifically, to finish a short novel--50,000 words. All of them written during the month of November. I've "won" NaNoWriMo twice, which means that for two Novembers in a row (2007 and 2008) I wrote 50,000 words during the month. Actually, the book I'm revising now started out as my first NaNoWriMo novel (although the new version of it has morphed so much as to be utterly unrecognizable as its original version). But I wasn't revising either of those novels--I was writing first draft, and I knew it, and I was okay with it. I was willing to throw words on the page without thinking, without revising, without trying to make them good. I never hit the delete button. And that's a great way to finish a lot of words, but, well, I know I can do that now. I don't just want to write a lot of words. I want to write a good novel. But I do need to get something down on paper first, and even though this is technically a revision, I'm changing so much that I'm also rewriting from the beginning. So I'm going to try to NaNo it. I'm going to try to catch up. In any case, I'm going to try to meet high word counts every day in November--and in December too, until this thing is done. If nothing else, I promised my sister I'd give her this manuscript as a Christmas present! Romanian poetry 10/09/2010
Unless you're Romanian, you've probably never heard of Mihai Eminescu. Which is really your loss. Eminescu was one of the last Romantic poets, and he's brilliant. And today I discovered a wonderful poem of his that I plan to use in my novel. Nothing like working a few lines of poetry into your plot to really ground a novel in its setting. Here's the poem, translated by Corneliu M. Poepescu. A Dacian's Prayer When death did not exist, nor yet eternity, Before the seed of life had first set living free, When yesterday was nothing, and time had not begun, And one included all things, and all was less than one, When sun and moon and sky, the stars, the spinning earth Were still part of the things that had not come to birth And You quite lonely stood... I ask myself with awe, Who is this mighty God we bow ourselves before. Ere yet the Gods existed already He was God And out of endless water with fire the lightning shed; He gave the Gods their reason, and joy to earth did bring, He brought to man forgiveness, and set salvation's spring. Lift up your hearts in worship, a song of praise en freeing, He is the death of dying, the primal birth of being. To him I owe my eyes that I can see the dawn, To him I owe my heart wherein is pity born; When ever I hear the tempest, I hear him pass along Midst multitude of voices raised in a holy song, And yet of his great mercy I beg still one behest: That I at last be taken to his eternal rest. Be curses on the fellow who would my praise acclaim. But blessings upon him who does my soul defame; Believe no matter whom who slanders my renown, Give power to the arm that lifts to strike me down Let him upon the earth above all others loom Who steals away the stone that lies upon my tomb. Hunted by humanity, let me my whole life fly Until I feel from weeping my very eyes are dry; Let everyone detest me no matter where I go, Until from persecution myself I do not know; Let misery and horror my heart transform to stone, That I may hate my mother, in whose love I have grown; Till hating and deceiving for me with love will vie, And I forget my suffering, and learn at last to die. Dishonoured let me perish, an outcast among men; My body less than worthy to block the gutter then, And may, o God of mercy, a crown of diamonds wear The one who gives my heart the hungry dogs to tear, While for the one who in my face does callous fling a cloud In your eternal kingdom reserve a place, o God. Thus only, gracious Father, can I requitance give That you from your great bounty vouched me the joy to live To gain eternal blessings my head I do not bow, But rather ask that you in hating compassion show. Till comes at last the evening, your breath will mine efface, And into endless nothing I go, and leave no trace. snowflake method 10/07/2010
I'm trying something different for reworking my revision. It seems silly to call it revision when you're rewriting an entire novel from scratch, but I figure I'm keeping some of the characters, most of the themes, and a few of the plot points, so that qualifies it as a second draft. In any case, I'm discovering, rather to my surprise, that I prefer planning ahead to seat-of-the-pants writing. Armed with that knowledge, I'm really trying to do the snowflake method for the first time. It's not much help for coming up with ideas--Holly Lisle's wonderful methods are much more useful for that--but it's good for organizing, and for getting ideas and choices down on paper gradually. So far it seems to be working. I think. I finally finished the first scene. I've been trying to write better quality than, well, first draft, since I know I can finish a first draft but I've never really gotten past the first draft before. It's fun and I'm learning a lot by writing differently. But it's slow, slow, slow. And now I'm developing an addiction to blogs like this. This woman stopped blogging THREE YEARS AGO, but her archives are so incredibly brilliant, useful, and funny that I can't stop reading. I've read about a year and a half worth of her blog archives over the past week. Her crap-o-meters are gold for writers. Thank goodness she's not still blogging, or I'd never be able to stop. I've been reading a book called Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver, mostly because they happened to have it at my library. It's a basic book on writing fiction with mostly familiar advice, but every once in a while it comes out with a real gem that surprises me. Yesterday, for instance, I was reading about the difference between novels and short stories--something that interests me since I can't seem to write short stories to save my life, but at the same time I struggle with making novels long enough. So what's the difference, according to Cleaver? Length, of course. Scope, theme, conflict, blah blah blah--forget all that, he says. The difference between novels and short stories is characters. Novels have more characters. After about half a second of thinking about this, I realized what a brilliant approach it is. Reading more about the way he uses this made it even more brilliant. Because, of course, adding characters multiplies the number of scenes you can have exponentially, simply because you can switch around which characters are in a scene. A with B, then A with C, then A with D, then B with C, then B with D, then C with D, and A and B and C without D, then A and C and D without B...you get the idea. The coolest part about this is that you can trick your left brain into thinking it's getting part of the creative action. Go through your characters and figure out which ones haven't interacted with each other yet, and then decide whether they should. Ultimately it's really the same question you're asking that you're always asking when plotting: what else can go wrong? But by focusing that question on new interactions between existing characters--and new characters, if necessary--you're giving yourself a whole new approach to it. I, of course, immediately realized a whole bunch of scenes I've left out of my novel that I definitely need to have. I don't have a single scene between the love interest and the sidekick. Not one. And come on--there's so much potential there. What about the sidekick and the antagonist? Nothing! And heck, even the love interest and the antagonist hardly have any scenes--in fact, I don't think they have any without the protagonist there too. Off to make note cards... Fun with alternative history 09/19/2010
Today I'm moving the boundary between Romania and Hungary (sorry, Cluj-Napoca, but you're Kolozsvar again), studying the history of Baia Mare--oops, I mean Nagybanya--and creating a mining accident. Alternative history is so much fun. Did you know that cyanide is regularly used in gold mining? Wouldn't it be great if I could work that into my mining accident? But it's not dramatic enough. All the cyanide spills I can find were ecological disasters, not instant ones. Water poisoning and destruction of ecosystems, not miner deaths. Sorry to sound so callous. But I gotta have the threat of instant death hanging over my characters. Writers are evil people. So, it's either an explosion or a roof collapse. Much more dramatic. Ceausescu poetry 09/19/2010
Here's a fun tidbit I just learned about Communist Romania. Like many dictators, Ceausescu believed that his people loved him--and his followers went to a great deal of trouble to make sure his illusion wasn't shattered. They held festivals where he was praised as the great leader--often in "folkloric" songs or poetry. But there was a bit of a problem, apparently, with writing poems about Ceausescu. To put it simply, nothing in Romanian rhymes with Ceausescu. This might not have been so much of a challenge for English-speaking poets, who are used to near-rhymes and rhymes that only work with a country accent, or a British accent. We're good at this sort of thing. But Romanian is a Latin language, which means it has a built-in easy rhyme for almost everything--same endings to all feminine nouns, you know, or singular first person verbs, or whatever. And not so many irregular endings either, which makes it easier. So Romanian poets were pretty stumped by this Ceausescu thing. I guess they came up with solutions similar to the ones we use in English--using words that almost rhyme, and words that are accepted to rhyme even though they don't quite, and changing words a bit so they do rhyme. Anyway. Even communist poets are creative. The really wonderfully absurd part about all this, though, is that they made it into a book. A Ceausescu rhyming dictionary, if you will. A list of words that rhyme with Ceausescu. Or that rhyme close enough, anyway. This book, apparently, was given to party members when they were promoted. Can you imagine even a communist being excited by this gift? Wow. Just what I always wanted. A list of words that don't rhyme. And I'm not even a poet. Over the past week or so I've been researching more than rewriting. The setting of my novel was a recent addition in the revision process, and putting a fantasy novel into a real place and time in history necessitates some research--even if it is a place where I've lived before. It's not like I lived in Romania under Ceausescu, and a lot had changed when I was there. So I've been reading some great books (my favorite right now is The Hole in the Flag by Andrei Codrescu), learning about the history of Romania in 1989 and the events of the real revolution. I'm trying to get as much as I can into the mindset of Romanians of the time. And, of course, that will also mean getting into the mindset of a communist--because not all of my characters are good guys. So today, when I saw some men handing out propaganda fliers for the American Communist Party at the East Atlanta Strut festival, I actually wanted one. Of course, getting one wasn't hard, since they were handing them to everyone. All my friends were obviously uncomfortable, not sure how to politely refuse the paper but reluctant even to touch it. As though the words might make their hands dirty. I, on the other hand, accepted it eagerly and immediately started reading it. One of my friends looked at me sidelong, a bit discomfited by my eagerness. "This will be great for my novel," I told her, and she looked relieved. I skimmed through it eagerly, looking for catch phrases and ideas that might help my story. Later, I was still reading it when I saw a police officer walk by. He looked at me suspiciously as he passed, and for a minute I felt afraid. But no, this is America, not Romania in 1989. We have free speech here. Nobody's going to arrest me or even start spying on me for reading anything I want. I didn't even need to defend myself, to explain to him that my interest was purely academic. But I'll probably get a bit more defensive and explanatory about my research if I ever start writing crime thrillers. |
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