Peeking Over the Shoulder of History

There was no second boom yesterday, which is probably good because I wouldn’t be able to get this post out today if there were.  DA14 is back in the black, and won’t be back around for a while, so we’ll have to wait a while for another rock to get close and get people talking about how this could be “it”.  Oh, sure, Apophis is out there, but NASA is now saying people should cool their jets on impact talk–which is a good thing, because I don’t think I could take all the bad Stargate SG-1 jokes.

On the Cold Front thing are better.  Not much better, but better.  I managed to get some sleep, but woke up in the middle of the night gasping for breath because there was fluid in my lungs that needed hacking.  This morning there have been a session or two of tremendous coughing, but my head is clear and my throat isn’t sore.  It’s progress, so I’ll stick with medication and hot fluids, and hope for the best on Monday, when . . . well, when things are suppose to be back to work normal.

The thing the cold hasn’t stopped is my writing.  Other than Tuesday night–which was Fever City and a lot of inactivity–I’ve been right at the story, getting in my thousand or so a night.  Last night I started early, because I wanted to watch Real Time at nine PM, and it was a good thing that I had, because Chapter Eleven of Suggestive Amusements has turned into a bit of a history lesson.

I’m recounting the first known moments of my muse Erin, and since she’s stating that she’s eight thousand years old, it behooves her to talk about her first charge.  Since she’s talking about the far past, that means I need to start looking around for a place where she can do her first crash, and that leads me to Mesopotamia . . .

Ah, Cradle of Civilization, why did I not pay more attention in high school.  That’s an easy one:  because the shitburg I grew up in didn’t really care much for thinking like “science” and “history”, so we were taught the basics and little else.

As I’m writing, then, I’m looking up everything I can on the civilizations that called Mesopotamia home, in particular those places that were around about 6,000 BCE.  It was a strange process, because I’ll look something up, think it looked good, start writing a bit more of Erin’s tale, then return to the research to pulled down Google Maps to find out where this site she remembered would be located were it around today.  My luck was with me, for the location of the village fit perfectly with a modern day location, so back to the story to put that little tidbit in . . .

That not only went on for about eight hundred pages, but the night before, when I was writing about Erin’s encounter with Hypatia, and her time at the Library of Alexandria, I was doing the same:  research on the fly, write with the information fresh in my brain.  It seems I’ve written much of the story this way, because when I was recounting Elektra’s life, I was hot on the maps getting a feel for the places she’d lived, schooled, and worked, before coming to Lost Wages.

Perhaps this is why the novel doesn’t feel as solid to me, because in the past I’ve performed so much of my research up front before getting into the story–but that’s not completely true, because there’s always things you go back to for reference to see if you’re doing something right.  I knew about this part of Erin’s story from long before, but never had the time to look up anything, so I’m looking up as I write.

Not exactly the sort of thing a sprinter would do:  but then, I’m not a sprinter–

I’m a writer.  And we do what we must to get the story out.

Knowing For the One

Yesterday I was hanging with my crocheting buddies (yes, I have them, stop laughing), when I get this Facebook invite from The Queen of Crocheting.  (Which reminds me, I didn’t accept it.  I better go do that, because she gets . . . upset when you don’t.)  The invite was to make sure I join all the other crocheting buddies in watching The Walking Dead, tonight, when it returns to whatever channel it’s on (I know what channel it’s on; that’s called pulling your leg).

After that, The Queen–or should I just call her Queenie?–began engaging other members of the Crocheting Empire about the show.  People started asking questions about characters, giving opinions and such, and since I was there, I started pointing out some of the differences between what’s seen on the screen, and what has come before in the graphic novels.  This inevitably led to the comment that always comes in this case:  ”There’s a book?”

Of course there is; let me tell you about it . . .

When we get right down into things, though, it turns out that I don’t watch the show.  Not that I haven’t tried:  I watched two of the first season episodes, and while well made, I couldn’t get into the story.  That’s just me; I either get caught up in things, or I pass.  It’s very rare that I fall back into things after initially dismissing them, though it has happened.

It was somewhere beyond the hour point of me laying out information for my hooking peeps (because I am totally Hufflepuff, and I was in a roleplay, my Annie and I, so bite it, Huffles Rule) that Queenie made the comment, “You know everything about the show, and yet you don’t watch it!”

Yup, that’s me.  Little Miss Know It All.  I’ve always been this way.

I’ve made my feelings about zombies known on this blog, so it should come as no shock that, right off the bat, I wouldn’t be into the show.  The thing is, that doesn’t mean I don’t respect the original story.  And in respecting the story, I’ve wanted to find out as much about it as I can.  Robert Kirkman’s story is brilliant in its bleakness of society totally gone to hell, and not looking as if it’s ever going to climb out of the pit into which it’s fallen.  The characters seem real, the situations bleak, the violence real–oh, yeah.  There are also zombies.

I’m like this with a lot of situations.  I’ll find myself getting interested in something, and then I start my research.  I find as much as I can, then look for more.  If nothing else, I’ll find some reservoir of data I can latch onto and use that as my philosopher’s stone to help transmit knowledge from it to me.

Then I store it away, ready to use it when I least expect to bring it out–like, when my crocheting buddies start talkin’ zombies.  No, please, stop laughing . . .

Is this a good thing or bad?  Am I the sort of people who just like to have this information around so I can show off?  Or does it serve a greater purpose?  For as Queenie said, were it not for me, she might not have gotten into The Walking Dead as much as has.

Hey, if I help stir someone’s imagination in any way, I’ve helped the greater good.  That’s good enough for me.

Getting the Right Wrong

As a kidlette I read a lot.  Since I was reading at an adult comprehension level when I was seven, there was very little Dick and Jane in my life, and a lot more Hell at 50 Fathoms, which I read at least a dozen times before getting out of the 6^th Grade.

The one genre I was into, however, was science fiction.  I got my hands on most of the Golden Age authors and bought their books, read them cover to cover again and again, and went looking for more.  There was something awe inspiring to live in that time and know your book store would soon carry the new Clarke, the new Asimov, the new Heinlein, the new Ellison . . .

There was something that the writers back then spoke of when talking about science fiction and fantasy.  It was known that some of the things they wrote about were, perhaps, going to never come about.  There were items and subjects and characters that might not ever be anything but words on the page.  And they knew this, because–hey, writers, we make stuff up, right?

The trick, they said, was to follow your internal logic, and to keep your rules consistent.  If your technology could only do A, B, and C, you damn well better not have it do E at some point.  As David Gerrold once point out, if you write your story so that people can only use their right hands, then you damn well better now have the hero save the day at the end of the story by using their left hand.  Anything that plays hard and loose with your internal logic, that violates your rules and laws, it cheating that would make Lance Armstrong say, “Dude!” while giving you the stink eye.

When you’re writing anything–not just science fiction, but anything that requires some “facts” to come into play–it’s always best to do your research and make certain when you’re setting up your premise, you are working with something that not only makes sense,  but is also something that can’t be taken as complete bullshit.  Given what we know about space flight these days, it’s difficult–if not impossible–to write a story about some kids cobbling a rocket together in an abandoned field and flying it into orbit.  Oh, sure, you can adjust the rules of your universe and all that, but you best make certain that is spelled out so people don’t scratch their heads and go, “Huh?”

I’m in a few groups on Facebook where I hear and see about new novels and stories from people like me, writers who hope this will be our job one day.  I saw something like that the other day:  a new book, by someone I know.  I’m checking out the blurb, and right off the bat, I see something stated as a major plot point–

That is totally, scientifically wrong.

Now, I do things with time travel and faster than light space drives.  I can hand wave with the best of them, and I always try to keep my facts straight when I do this.  If my ships go this fast, I find out the distances between two stars and calculate travel times.  That’s how you do things.  When you’re stating as fact something that can be fact checked on any number of databases as all sorts of wrong, you’ve pretty much ruined the story for me–and probably for a number of readers as well.

Your stories live and die by facts and rules.  Create your rules based upon the first, and never violate the later.

Otherwise, you could find yourself becoming the Next Big Internet Meme.

 

Evenings at the Imagination College

Another chapter started, and another thousand words burned through pretty well.  I won’t say quickly, because it still took about ninety minutes to get to my nightly quota.  Part of that was from being tired as hell, and part of it came from . . .

Well, looking things up.

After my post about The Story of Albert and his love for The Duchess, I started thinking about that as part of a story I’d actually started putting notes to maybe a week before.  That story arose out of another idea, but it dealt with two of my characters going out to enjoy their birthday.  Yes, in my worlds, even if you are born twelve hundred years apart, you’ll share a birthday if you’re special—and if the author thinks there’s a good reason for it to happen.

As it is, given the date upon which their birthdays fall, getting them back in time to see one of the Genesis concerts held at the Lyceum in May, 1980, is something that can actually happen—and would put them in the ballroom for their birthdays.  Yeah, it’s a strange thing, because I never realized any of this when I was putting the character together twenty year ago—nor did I realize the significance of the dates, because, when I was finishing Transporting, I actually change the date of birth.

Strange, I know.

So, for the hell of it I started looking up things around that location—the theater is still there, running The Lion King pretty much non-stop—and began imagining the location in the 1980’s, with my character there wandering the streets of Westminster after the show was over.  It was a nice picture, and one that I can imagine even better once I know what the weather was like that night.  (Note:  it was cool, about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and dry.  And Sky View Café tells me the moon didn’t rise until a little after midnight, and it was just past full.)

But I had other things bothering me as well, this time for another story for the same characters.  One of them buys some land—and by “land”, I mean they end up with enough property to start their own state.  It’s stated that they land will be managed as a natural preserve, and that most of it will be open to the public, with a “small” portion that will be kept completely private as their estate.

And how “small” a portion are we talking?  A parcel eighty by one hundred kilometers—or for those not completely into the metric thing, fifty by sixty-two miles.

That’s big; it’s pretty huge, actually.  The public land is even bigger, if you can believe that.  So I started wondering:  what does that look like in today’s terms?  If I overlay those dimensions over a map, how much of, say, where I live, will this estate take up.

Answer:  a lot.

The private land would cover something like five or six counties in Northwest Indiana; we’re talking the sort of estate that only third-world dictators get to enjoy.  As for the whole estate, the natural preserve that can be visited by people if they like themselves some wilderness?  Pretty much an area the size of the state of Indiana.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to move all the people out of my home state and turn it into a park for all to enjoy.

Now I don’t have to wonder any more.

 

Storytime Metering

Three thousand words in three days.  A good start to my new story, if I may say so myself.  At this rate I could write a thirty thousand word story in a month.

That would be true if the three thousand words I wrote was spread across three chapters.  This was all in one chapter, however, and there are fifteen to go.  Which means I’m really looking at a forty-eight thousand word novel.

If I still to a rate of three thousand words per chapter.  We all know how good I am at that, right?

In my other life I program computers, or at the least design things for computers that are later used by humans to do their jobs more efficiently.  Most of the time it’s a lot of tedium; you have to analyze things very carefully, least you kluge together some System From Hell that you, the developer, has to go fix.

I don’t like fixing things that are kluged together; it drives me crazy.  I don’t like making things that are kluged together, because it means I was probably drunk when I put the system together.  Or, at the least, wished I’d been.

There is a problem with my programming work:  there’s a serious lack of creativity involved.  Oh, you might think otherwise, but after twenty-five to thirty years of doing the same shit over and over, I can say with some confidence that imagination is a very small component when it comes to designing systems for computers.

Writing is where I unleash my imagination, or at least let it run until it’s decided it needs a nap.  It’s where my creativity takes root these days, and without this outlet I’d probably sink into another morass of depression much like I suffered through for most of 2012.  Which is a frightening thing, because I wrote a hell of a lot of words, and created more than a few stories, and I found myself depressed enough that I once freaked out at work and stormed out with my brain on fire—not literally, but it felt like I was gonna go Scanners at any moment.

Even when I’m away from the analytical part of my being, it’s still there.  I can lay out a story in Scrivener and know that I’m within a chapter or two of what I’ll need to tell the story.  I can look at he layout and “guess” what it’s going to run word-wise, because my mind sees a card description and know this one will be about two thousand words, and that one will likely run about four, and that one may just hit seven thousand . . .

It’s not a gift or a curse:  it’s just the way I am.

So it’s sort of refreshing that I’m looking at my new story and I’m thinking, “Well, I may have a novel on my hands, but then . . .”  That’s because I’m only seeing the story in very broad strokes at the moment, and most of the story isn’t really coming together in a way that my others have.  It’s nebulous, the filaments floating around me, waiting for the moment when I reach out and pull them towards me so they can be twisted into a creation of my imagination.

I guess this is what happens when you decide to write about a muse:

She gets very picky about how you tell her tale.

 

A Night at Ghost Beach

After fifteen days on the Crazy Train, my spreadsheet tells me I’m 83.6% complete, with 41,801 words banked.  My own stats tell me that, after looking at the average word count per chapter, I’m on pace for a 63,930 word story.

It’s a lot of numbers at the moment, but there’s a story in there.  You gotta trust me.

I knew, based upon what I was planing, that this weekend would be about the point where I’d cross the fifty thousand mark in the NaNo marathon.  When I look at last year’s stats, I cross that particular Rubicon on 14 November, when I finished the day with 51,061 words.  If I look at my numbers for the last ten days, there is a possibility I could end up at fifty thousand on Sunday night.  To do that I’ll need to probably have one three thousand word day–

If not, then I finish on Monday.  No big deal.  I can see the stadium off in the distance, so the race is almost over.

As for finishing the story?  That’s a bit trickier.

The chapter I’m working on today–and the chapter that follows–could get into some wordage.  A couple of the chapters that follow could be pretty short, and by that I mean maybe a thousand words, or so.  All that aside, I could still end up with a sixty-five thousand word story.  With a bit of editing, I could get that up to seventy, but lets get the story finished first.

For a while I’ve had this feeling that I’m not writing with the same speed and urgency as I did with last year’s NaNo.  Well, yes and no.  I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with The Muse last night–she’s still around, looking over my shoulder, rubbing my shoulders when necessary–and I’ve discovered the followed:  I’m not in a mad dash to simply throw words upon the page, but rather, I want to have it go out as a clean first draft, rather than a, “What the hell is this crap?” first draft.

My goal for NaNo was to get two thousand words a day behind me, and I’ve held to that.  There was one day when I just barely made that total, but numbers be met, and I’ll take what I wrote.  But as I told the Muse, this has also been one story where I’ve had to dive into the well and pull up research as I was writing, and unlike last year, that’s slowed me down.

Last year it was all about fantasy; this year it’s still about fantasy, but fantasy that exists in a real world wrapper, and there are names, there are weapons, there are streets, there are locations . . . hell, there’s even having to check what the stars are going to look like next year on a certain night on the other side of the world, and how one would eat pressed grilled bananas covered in sauce when your character are at the beach.

That’s where I was last night:  I have my characters waiting to see someone, they’re standing on a beach front in the city of Makassar, and I wanted to set a mood . . . so I’m looking at how the sky looked at the time, and I knew what they were going to eat, but I wasn’t certain how they’d eat it, or how it would be packaged–and therein is the need to run off and look things up.  Which I did.

So even among the writing, even with all the research, there’s work to be conducted, things to find.

And find them I do . . . that’s why I’m a writer.

The Quiet of the Roaring City

Oh, so as I go, so goes NaNo.  I figured out the cause of the headaches I’ve had the last couple of days:  coffee.  More likely, the caffeine within the coffee.  Stress + NaNo Novel + three thousand words a day = huge stress headache.

I said I’m having fun, right?  Just checking.

I’ve also noticed something else with this novel in progress:  having to check things, like your note, like a location in a city eight thousand kilometers away, is more time consuming than I could imagine.  Last year was just write, write, write.  I had terms for magic, and an idea for my Modern Stempunk Chicago.  No big deal; just crank words.

This year, I have a real city.  I have things that I need to look up.  I have hotel rooms to check.  I’m still adding a few notes here and there while writing.

Yeah, it keeps me busy.

This is the thing about setting up your story in a real location.  You want to try and get things right.  I think I have as much right in the story now as it’s ever going to get, and I’m noticing that there is now more writing than checking.  Oh, sure, I know I’m going to have to get into my timeline at one point and recheck something before writing up one chapter, but that’s not going to happen for a week, or more, so I have time to crank out the words.

I had one curious moment last night.  I was writing about how the city seemed to grow quiet around one character, and another who was speaking with them was thinking about how the first character came from a city that was much bigger than the one they were in.  Well, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking out my posterior, because someone would fact check that information at some point in the future, and . . .

Oops.  I was wrong.  The home city of the character talking about how quiet things had become, it was smaller than the city she was investigating.  Much smaller.  Maybe by a third.

It’s little things of that nature that will kill you.  Sure, I could have checked that in my edit, but I’m not like that.  Also, there was the possibility that had I left that incorrect reference in, it would have snowballed had I used it again.  And again.  And another time . . .

You see the problem:  try to get it as right the first time.  Do the editing you need, but keep writing.  Keep pushing forward.

That’s what I’m doing today.  I’ve almost finished Part One of my NaNo Novel 2012, and getting three or four thousand word in today will likely do just that.  I’m not quite at the same levels for production I had last year, but I’m doing well.  I’m doing a few checks on word count versus the number of chapters in the novel, and I see that I’m coming up short on the count, but I know there are going to be a few chapters that are going to run long, and a couple that could hit eight thousand words each.  Once those are in place, I won’t have to worry about making my counts–either for the NaNo Fifty Thousand, or getting the story over the sixty thousand I need.

Right now it’s quiet in the city.  Give it time; that’s going to end.  Oh, and I have the perfect music today:  The Who–Thirty Years of Maximum R&B.  The full box set, five hours of music.

That should keep me and my green demons busy for a while.

Getting to the Future Without the Past

One day, sixteen hours until NaNo gets going, and people are starting to feel the pressure.  Or, I believe they are, because the comments are beginning to come fast and furious, asking things like, “What are you going to do?” or, “Do you have names for your characters?”  It’s all fun and games until you actually have to start writing, is that it?

Some people are jumping about with ideas that are coming from nowhere.  A few of these ideas are dealing with something often called “Future History”, and involve a lot of “what ifs?” that can’t be answered easily.  In particular, some of the ideas deal with things happening three thousand or more years down the line, which means you’re going to have to do some major research, and head scratching, if you want to come up with an idea that doesn’t suck sour air.

But that doesn’t stop some people.  That doesn’t stop them from taking what we have “now”, and saying something like, “Hey, what if everyone started dropping bombs on everyone?”  (Place pinkie in corner of mouth.)  “But–three thousand years from now!”  Oh, yeah:  that’s going to work.  Just take what we have now and dress everyone like an extra from “Logan’s Run”.  I mean, that’s how it’s done, right?

Wrong.

To put it bluntly, creating future history is a bitch.  I’ve done a bit with another set of stories, and I’m dreaming up one now. And while I can say that I’ve done a bit of homework so that my worlds seem realistic, I can’t say with any certainty that they’d hold up as anything but fantasy.  But I’ve at least given my world some thought, and I’ve tried to make it fit into the realm of possible.

Far too many people, however, begin pulling ideas out of their asses, and putting a different outfit on a well-worn idea won’t make it look any different.  If it’s a bad or ill-conceived idea at the start, it’s going to be a bad one in the end, and no amount of editing short of a rewrite is going to fix your story.

There is nothing wrong with this–if this is what you want to write.  Hey, some people enjoy writing things that don’t make sense.  And this is not to say that I’m completely correct.  One can take historical stories like The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and use that for inspiration for your future world.  The Project Rho site has a very good write-up on the development of future history, and this is something one should read again and again if you’re going to try setting your space opera off in the future.

But if you have no intention of learning anything, and feel you can keep America pretty much as if after several millennia have passed, you’ll probably have your women flying about in bra brassiere space suits, too.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, other than you’ll end up looking like a complete idiot–and people like me will come along and tell you what a doof you appear.

To put it bluntly, science fiction fans are hell.  After Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld was published, engineering students from MIT wrote papers about how his fictional creation was unstable.  Not impossible, mind you:  from an engineering standpoint, the Ringworld was nothing more than a self-supporting suspension bridge, a modified version of a Dyson Ring, which had been discussed in some circles before.  But there was instability inherent in the structure  and it was this instability that led Niven to use this as a major plot point in the sequel, The Ringworld Engineers.  Had this point not been addressed eventually, Niven–who has had a great deal of experience creating future history–would have come off looking like some hack from the 1930′s.

Creating any kind of future or alternate history involves some work.  Maybe you can get away with some basic ideas in a first story, and then expand upon those ideas in later stories.  But even then, you better have your chops down pretty pat, and be ready to defend your position, or you’ll get walked upon with heavy boots.  And not being able to defend your position does not mean running away, then asking other people the same questions, certain that they know as little as you about creating a new world, so they’ll tell you things like, “Oh, America wouldn’t attack first–it’s their policy never to start a first strike”–and you never feel a sense of shame believing this comment, because you believe that in three thousand years not one freakin’ think about the county’s first-strike policies will evar change . . .

Good luck with that story.  I’m certain your hard drive will keep it warm for years to come.

Bricking Out the World

Three days, seventeen hours, and thirty-two minutes, and the world of people who like to write turns to their version of a padded room.  I think that was what my dreams were discussing last night, where I seemed to be alternating lives between a stunt person in a very low-budget movie, and working in a company where no one really cared about me, and I was allowed to wander about all day, wondering what it was I actually do . . . no, wait:  that last is real life.  I even saw someone I work with in the dream, though they wouldn’t speak to me.

That wasn’t very nice of her.  Oh, well.  Time to move on.

I’m already seeing the stress in the Facebook groups, among the people who are scrambling to get some semblance of order to whatever passes for notes for their upcoming NaNo opus.  I don’t want to say some of these people will, by 10 November, end up like Miss Happy Rainbow Girl to the right, bemoaning the fact that Writin’ is Hard Work, and if it wasn’t for the cat begging to be fed and petted every four hours, I’d have made my one-six-six-six words a day, durrrrr–but that will happen.  Hell, it might happen to me.  I can’t say.

But it won’t happen because I’m not ready.

As I’ve said more than a few times, having everything set up and ready to go before you see 12:01 AM, 1 November, pop up on your computer, it probably one of the better ideas you could ever have before word one goes into you story.  It saves on the Head-Meet-Desk feelings that will come about, oh, about 8 PM, 1 November.

If you are trying to write about something that is out of the norm–like space opera, worlds of magic, vampire stories where the main characters don’t act like hormone-driven fifteen year old kids, but rather, you know, vampires–then you gotta get your world building chops down.  I did this for my NaNo Novel 2011, where I was developing a world that was modern day, but which used magic for a lot of things.  I had wizards and witches, sorcerers and sorceresses, a demoness, and a lesbian vampire who didn’t act like a Lego block.  But most of all, I had the people who laid down the rules for these preternatural people running around my different Chicago, and I had magic–

Which meant I needed to figure out how to work said magic.

The biggest thing about world building is that you have to keep things consistent.  If you decide that people can fly simply by sprinkling fairy dust on your butt, then you are not going to fly if you snort said fairy dust down like a line of Mr. Heisenberg’s Finest Product.  More than likely your head will explode, Scanners-style, because snorting fairy dust should be sort of like inhaling a kilo of pure China White.  Fly or die, baby.  Your choice.

This is the sort of thing you have you hammer out if you’re going with something that might not be the same as the world in which we exist.  You might even need it for our world.  I think it was David Gerrold who once commented that if the rules of your world say the main character can’t use their left hand, at the end of your story, you can’t have them save the day by using their left hand.  That’s not just lazy writing:  it’s dishonest as hell, and calls you, the author, out as little more than an unimaginative hack.  It’s a rule breaker, and in these days of Internet flame wars over things as insignificant as whether or not George Lucas did rape your childhood, any rule breakers in your story are going to get you pillared in short order.

World building doesn’t have to be a long process.  Have a few notes ready, maybe a visual aid or two to keep you on track.  Remember words and phrases that are important, remember how things work.  Little differences are going to make all the difference when it comes to getting your story close to believable.  A story is only as strong as the world in which is resides, and if you have a weak foundation, you’ll probably have a weak story.  That doesn’t always happen, but the odd aren’t always ever in your favor, folks.

Then again, sometimes NaNo is an experience that is suppose to be fun and games.  Maybe you shouldn’t take it too seriously.  Maybe you should just write with all abandon, and not worry if what you’re producing is worth a damn . . .

Naw!

There You Are With Your Pants Off

The Clock on the NaNoWriMo Wall says there are 11 Days, 15 Hours, 23 Minutes, and some change, before the Insanity Begins and the Crazy Train pulls out of the station.  I’ve my ticket, more or less, and I’m looking for a seat–maybe next to someone who won’t look over my shoulder every two minutes and ask me what I’m working on.

If you wander into the NaNoWriMo groups on Facebook, there are the normal questions:  are you writing this year?  Do you have any idea about what you’re going to write?  Are you looking for buddies?  And, the Grand Old Question, so to speak:  are you doing any planing for your novel, or are you just winging it?

Now, I have my feelings on doing my prep work and research (which is known in the business as a Plotter, as in, “I’m plotting everything out”), so I know where I sit in these conversations.  I’ve said many times that I’m not big on making everything up as I go along (which is known in the business as a Pantser, as in, “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here!”)–though with my last two stories, I books my tickets on Pantser Airlines, and I’m not having a bad time of it.

But for a novel?  Particularly some eye-gouging insanity for a moment in–I’m sorry, I mean Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon . . . when you’re getting set up for something like this, it’s my opinion that you need to be like Torchwood, which is to say, ready.  ’Course, we saw how that worked for them . . .

See, most people think NaNoWriMo is like this:

Pretty rock, very peaceful feelings, the numbers look as if they may have come right out of Middle Earth.  Oh, yeah, this is my serendipity.  I’m gonna rock the world with my imagination.

Then there’s the reality:

It’s this living-on-the-edge of disaster, world-coming-to-an-end, ass-churning feeling that stays with you for thirty days and nights that you aren’t getting you words count!

Really, either is the truth, but you can usually find a middle ground that will make you feel better about what you’re going–or going to do, or, at the least, whine about on Facebook when you realize that you need a name for a middle character who seems to have popped up out of nowhere, and now what are you going to do?

I have several friends who are into making everything up as they go along.  I don’t mind, because that’s them, and I’m me, and everyone has their own way to rock their writing world.  They know I prep like a crazy person, but I don’t get all up in their face about it, because they know how they work, and how I work.  You do what you do to get the words out.

But they are never the sort of people who are Pantsers on Fire–

Allow me to explain.

Even people I know who Pants get ready for NaNoWriMo.  It’s a novel, people, and to just whip things out and start flinging them about–well, that might work in a public bathroom, but it tends to get you into trouble when you’re trying to write a novel that suppose to be coherent.  You know about coherent, right?  You want something you can read that won’t require you having already been driven mad by the Necronomincon.

There are always folks, however, who won’t prep even if their life depended upon it.  They’ll have a million excuses:  I don’t want to feel inhibited; I don’t want to feel as if I’m working; I’ve too many plot bunnies in my head–in which case you need to call Animal Control, or get better meds.  Or the one comment I’ve seen pop up here and there:  too much plotting and planning turns your work unimaginative and formulaic, and I’m not the sort of person who wants to write that!

And good for you!  Don’t worry, I’ll be watching the group on Saturday, 3 November, to see if you’re a member of Occupy NaNoWriMo Help!, looking for the name of a character who is going to become your bad guy’s second cousin’s forth nephew’s college roommate, and asking for someone to help you out.  And this year, I might just help people out.

Seriously, you write a novel at your own risk.  It’s not an easy task; I know, this will end up being the fifth novel I’ve either written in the last year, with four finished, and two out on The Submission Trail.  You want to wing it for fifty thousand words in thirty day?  Cool, baby:  go for it.  I would be the last person who would tell you not to give it a try.

Though, when you wake up one morning and find your Muse holding a Glock 19 to the back of your head (much like the illustration to the right), mumbling in a Joker-like voice that there will be two thousand words, or your brains, on the monitor before the sun sets, and you’re stuck for a town, any town, in the middle of Empty Cornfield, Nebraska, I might not throw out a name for you to use, but there’s a good chance I’ll be shaking my head a little, thinking, “There, for the name of a town in the middle of nowhere, a novel was lost.”

Who said NaNoWriMo isn’t a spectator sport?

Bound by Time and Web

I crawled out of bed with my NaNo Novel 2012 on my mind.  Yes, I’m like that.  I wake up and I’m thinking story.  I’ve done stranger things, so having something like this rolling about in my head at 5:30 AM isn’t that unusual a thing.

What was on your mind, you say?  Time.  Time and a line, really.

When I began prepping for my NaNo Experience, I started with a time line.  From there I went to note, and from there I’ll go to writing.  Natural order of progression, right?  You start at A and go to B, and onward.

Not so fast, I say.  I’m a wibbly wobbly timey whimey sort of person, so a normal progression of cause to effect doesn’t always work for me.  Sometimes the cause becomes the effect, but from there I have to go back to another cause before I find all the effect I require.

I keep saying that I need to put some names to invisible faces, which is true.  I have a cast of people who are not actually going to be on stage, but will be sort of the choir, so to speak.  Of course, I need names for these people, and while I have a list of names, I don’t have cooling bodies to go with those names.  So this awaits.

What crawled out of be with me, however, was the  realization that ever after I have these bodies named, there is something important–which relates to the story in a big way–that needs doing.  So, probably later today, or early this morning, I’ll be getting the name together, putting them with people, then–setting up a list.  Yes, another of my lists.  Oh, I must have, I will, yesssssss . . .

But once that’s finished, then  I’m ready.  NaNo Novel 2012 can become a real thing.  The days and nights of literary abandon await, and I’m ready to make it mine.  Or lose my mind trying.  Which won’t be that big a deal, since I lost the damn thing some time back.

There was something else on my mind as well.  No, not the remnants of a dream where I was keeping Martha Smith locked up in a bottle, and I survived a 100 story fall in a penthouse apartment, but rather something else relating to my writing.

For some time I’ve owned my own web domain.  Oh, yeah, I’m down with this thing the kids call “The Net”, and I’ve had a presence there for about three years.  Thing is, if you go looked for my URL–and, perchance, you find it–there’s nothing there.  Nothing.  Nothing!  It’s null and void of content, which does me no good, since if you’re gonna maintain a web presence, it would help if there was something to present.

I’m considering getting something back up on that domain sometime soon.  An author’s page would be good, since I could us that to set up a portal to all things me.  If and when this happens will likely not occur until after the head smacking that happens with NaNo is over.  After the strain and stress are a thing of the past, and all I need worry about is getting the story edited and published.  Maybe December would be a nice time to put my website together, and show the world all that is me.

Whether the world is ready for that event remains to be seen . . .

The Wait Demands Its Tithe

There is always a moment, after events are handled and preparations are completed, where one feels an emptiness come over them.  What to do, what should be done?  There is nothing, however, and trying to fill the time with something usually leaves you feeling like you even more empty.

Right now I’m feeling that emptiness.  The majority of my prep work for NaNo 2012 is finished, in the bag as one might say.  A few thing to puzzle over, and some street names to add to notes, but that’s it.  So it means that I have no . . . real . . . writing at the moment.

I was in this position last year.  I burned through most of the prep work for Her Demonic Majesty, and with a couple of weeks to go I had little to keep me occupied.  So what did I do?  I wrote a story.  Actually, I finished a story, because I’d started writing it near the end of September, and I finished it up before getting deep into NaNo.

What became of that story?  It was Captivate and Control, and I sold that sucker to Naughty Nights Press.

Is that what I should do now?  Get into another story, knock it out in the next two weeks, then give it a quick edit when I have nothing better to do, and send it out?  Not this time.  I spent the end of October getting Captivate and Control edited, and submitted it because I figured I had a chance to make a sale.  I was right, I did, and the rest is, as they say, history.

The thing is, I am writing other stuff at the moment.  I’ve finished up my story Replacements on another blog, and I have another that is just about to wrap up.  Those two stories–once the second is complete–amount to about twenty thousand words.  Looking at it that way, I’m not exactly sitting on my butt doing nothing.  Well, I’m sitting on my butt, but you know what I mean.

This is where writing plays with your mind.  You get tired of working on a story after a while, and you want it to finish.  You get into an edit, and it feels like it’s taking forever to get things correct.  But have nothing to do for a few days, and you get this itch to create.  You want to find something to discuss, to describe.  You want to show people another world.

It’s almost as if you’re being punished for sitting around.  If you aren’t thinking about writing, you’re writing.  And if you’re not doing that, you’re being tortured by something unseen.  Most likely it’s your conscience telling you to get your ass in gear.

(I know, I could say it’s my Muse, but she is a lovely Muse, save when I’m not doing as I should.  Then she digs the spike heels into my back.  I know, trust me.)

Tonight, I felt like I should be doing more.  I felt as if I should have busted my butt on my novel, when the reality is, I’m pretty much ready to crank out the wordage.  I’ve got a couple of weeks of downtime, and I should use it to relax, because come one minute after midnight, 1 November, I’ll put out at least five hundred words, just as I did last year, so I can get my feet wet.

I know the water will be chilly, but that feeling vanishes after you’ve put ten thousand words to your back.