My NaNoWriMo Results

December 4, 2013 2comments Announcements , , , Permalink 0
 

NaNoWriMoNow that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has officially ended and my life has transitioned back to a state of normalcy (as normal as it’s going to get with the stress of finals looming), I’ve had some time to reflect on my experiences as a first ever participant.

I have a couple disclaimers before I begin. (If you’d like to read how I ever decided to join NaNoWriMo in the first place, please click here.)

1. I edit. A lot. I could not completely divorce myself from my “Banger” ways. This past month was as “Swooper” as it gets for me. Before I began a new day, I read over my previous day’s words and revised and edited them. Whenever I finished a chapter, I spent a few days just revising and editing it. Though this put my overall word count in jeopardy, it renewed my confidence that I was headed in the right direction.

2. I also currently teach five days a week (for the first time ever in my teaching career), and it’s difficult find uninterrupted blocks of time to write while teaching, grading, and lesson planning, among my other responsibilities.

Prior to NaNoWriMo, my wife and I constructed a schedule for me to follow during the month of November that included at least three hours of writing per day, 24 writing hours per week. I wrote this on an index card and taped it to my computer as a daily reminder.

So was I able to adhere to this schedule?

Ehh… Kinda. There were days that I was unable to write due to work obligations and a peer evaluation (I’m acclimating to a new college), but my NaNoWriMo schedule forced me into a pretty regular routine, and I was a more productive writer this past month. Prior to NaNoWriMo, my best months featured about 5,000 words, or one short story.

In fact, I’m so pleased with my results that I’ve decided to create new writing schedules–new index cards–for myself whenever my schedule changes to keep up my routine. During winter break, for instance, I will follow a new routine, and during the Spring semester, I will follow another new schedule. My goal is to finish a first draft of my novel by this summer.

What did I learn?

To call yourself a writer, you have to write. NaNoWriMo encourages this through daily emails and forums and meet-ups. It essentially creates and promotes a culture of writing that is easy to adopt for the entire month. The trick is to let this momentum carry you into the rest of the year. For those of us in education, December and January should be good writing months.

Would I do it again?

Yes! Though I did not “win” by writing 50,000 words for the month, I bested my own personal record, and I’m that much closer to finishing the first draft of my novel. What more can you ask for?

 

Photo credit: Wired.com

If You Want to Be a Writer… Read! Read! Read!

November 27, 2013 0 Rules for Writing , , , Permalink 0
 

And Art Alive Still

If you want to improve your skills as a fiction writer, you need to first become a student of the craft.

In other disciplines, this is common sense. For example, aspiring basketball players might study film of Allen Iverson’s killer crossover, Tim Duncan’s post moves, or Kobe Bryant’s fallaway jump shot. It is not by mere coincidence that any of these future Hall of Fame basketball players created these moves in a vacuum. They, themselves, also studied film of their predecessors. A culture of study and application exists in the NBA.

However, when it comes to writing fiction, many beginning writers will approach the craft with the assumption that anyone can write. And to some extent, this is true. Millions of Americans have composed essays in high school or composed descriptive passages in emails. So, yes, millions of people possess the ability to write. And unlike basketball, since writing is such a solitary experience, judging the inherent quality of the writing begins (and sometimes, unfortunately, ends) with the actual writer.

But, make no mistake about it: Writing fiction is a skill. And like any skill, it requires dedication and direction to improve. This is where reading comes into play.

To be a successful writer, you need to develop an appetite for reading. Read the classics. Read your contemporaries. Read books outside of your genre. And when you finish one book, begin another.

By reading these books, you will be exposed to the “killer crossovers, post moves, and fallaway jump shots” of other successful writers.

In order to improve the ways in which you write your heart out, you need to find the time to read your heart out, too.

(I realize this might be particularly challenging during NaNoWriMo, though…)

 

Photo credit: dhammza / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Why Books Best Their Movie Counterparts

November 20, 2013 0 General Advice , , , Permalink 0
 

Never Let Me Go Movie PosterHave you ever loved–I mean, really loved–a book and been disappointed by its cinematic adaptation? For me, this occurs regularly.

For instance, I was thrilled to learn that one of my favorite novels of recent memory, Never Let Me Go, was being adapted for the big screen. However, when I did finally see British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro‘s masterpiece in the movie theater, it was disappointing.

Not that Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, or Keira Knightley had misrepresented the characters I’d loved for so long. Or that Director Mark Romanek or Screenwriter Alex Garland had failed to recreate Hailsham or “The Cottages.” (On a side note, Ishiguro had also been heavily involved throughout the making of this film, as evinced by the following clip.)

 

The major problem I had with the film is that the book’s love story and its climactic final epiphany did not resonate for me, and judging by critics’ feedback and popular opinion, I was not alone.

But honestly, is it even possible to recreate the depth and power of a highly internalized first person narrative into film, a medium that by its very nature portrays its characters from an outsider’s perspective, an almost omniscient point of view? I argue it isn’t.

Novels, even novels told in third person, offer readers characters’ thoughts and feelings. By reading these books, we are able to essentially inhabit the minds and hearts of these characters. We connect with their humanity.

Of course, there are exceptions to this, and I bet you can think of a few. A lot of people seem to agree that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter films are faithful representations of their novel counterparts. However, this book series has always heavily relied on its plot–its page-turning, “What happens next?” quality. Movies can easily recreate the outer appearance of theses events, especially action sequences. Jurassic Park anyone?

However, when a novel is able to successfully bear the thoughts and feelings of its narrator, bear her or his soul, no medium can compare. It is what makes the experience of reading entirely unique.

What do you think?

Until next week, write and read your heart out!

 

Photo credit: COLLIDER

Writing for Longevity

November 13, 2013 0 General Advice , , , , Permalink 0
 

Linkoping, Ostergotland, Sweden

Last week, I blogged about Kurt Vonnegut’s “Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story.” As many of you may know, Vonnegut passed away six years ago at the age of 84.

He lives on through his many works:

  1. Player Piano (1952)
  2. The Sirens of Titan (1959)
  3. Canary in a Cathouse (1961)
  4. Mother Night (1961)
  5. Cat’s Cradle (1963)
  6. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
  7. Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
  8. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
  9. Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971)
  10. Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
  11. Breakfast of Champions (1973)
  12. Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (1974)
  13. Slapstick (1976)
  14. Jailbird (1976)
  15. Palm Sunday (1981)
  16. Deadeye Dick (1982)
  17. Galapagos (1985)
  18. Bluebeard (1987)
  19. Hocus Pocus (1989)
  20. Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
  21. Timequake (1997)
  22. Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)
  23. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (2000)
  24. A Man Without a Country (2005)
  25. Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)
  26. Look at the Birdie (2009)
  27. While Mortals Sleep (2011)

To create such a body of work, it goes without saying that Vonnegut dedicated a lot of time to writing, but what might go unnoticed is the importance he placed on exercise. In an excerpt from a letter to his wife, Jane, dated September 28, 1965, he describes his daily routine:

I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not.

Similarly, another one of my favorite writers, Haruki Murakami, places a huge importance on establishing a writing routine and pairing it with exercise. In Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin writes:

By 1999, Murakami had run 16 full marathons and so completely identified himself with physical fitness that one magazine ran a 25-page spread on the connection between his running and his writing. ‘You’ve got to have physical strength and endurance,’ he said, ‘to be able to spend a year writing a novel and then another year rewriting it ten or fifteen times.’ He decided that he would live as if each day were 23 hours long, so that no matter how busy he might be, nothing would prevent him from devoting an hour to exercise. ‘Stamina and concentration are two sides of the same coin… I sit at my desk and write every day, whether it’s painful or enjoyable. I wake up at 4 a.m. and usually keep writing until after noon. I do this day after day, and eventually–it’s the same as running–I get to that spot where I know it’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

Murakami is the author of numerous books in his own right; most of them have been translated into English:

  1. Pinball, 1973 (1985)
  2. Hear the Wind Sing (1987)
  3. A Wild Sheep Chase (1989)
  4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991)
  5. Dance Dance Dance (1994)
  6. The Elephant Vanishes: Stories (1994)
  7. The Windup Bird Chronicle (1997)
  8. Norwegian Wood (2000)
  9. South of the Border, West of the Sun (2000)
  10. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (2000)
  11. Sputnik Sweetheart (2001)
  12. After the Quake: Stories (2003)
  13. Kafka on the Shore (2005)
  14. After Dark (2007)
  15. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2007)
  16. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008)
  17. 1Q84 (2011)

Take these two literary giants as primary examples.

If you hope to write for the long haul, not only do you need a writing routine, but you will also need to take care of your physical health. If you take care of your body now, you will hopefully add more years to your life, so, like Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami, you can write your heart out well into your golden years.

 

Photo credit: Swedish National Heritage Board / Foter

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story

November 6, 2013 0 Rules for Writing , , Permalink 0
 

In a earlier post, I praised Kurt Vonnegut for his skill with creating intriguing titles. His book, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, is no exception.

In it, he lists eight rules for writing a short story:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

 

Kurt VonnegutHowever, Vonnegut qualifies his list by adding that Flannery O’Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.

I hope these rules help you. Write the stuff that only you can write, the stuff that interests you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. Here’s a hilarious clip featuring Vonnegut sharing his thoughts on the shapes of stories:

 

Photo credit: mike dialect / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

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