National Novel Writer's Month: November 2011

Last year I entered and actually accomplished the National Novel Writer's Month challenge: complete 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days.

The first time I heard of a friend of mine who had entered the contest, I thought that she was ENTIRELY INSANE. Who in their right mind could possibly manage that!? Hearing that she had worked through the 30 days wearing mostly pajamas and eating icing straight out of the tub, I began to wonder if I too could accomplish such a feat.  I was unemployed at the time and so joined the legions of ameateur writers with their caffienated beverage of choice in the 2500 words-a-day requirement (I gave myself 10 days of 'rest days' so as to not go insane.)

Some days I would speed through the assignment, but most days I would sit upstairs in my rocking chair with my cat and computer perched in my lap and stare out the window, wondering how not to make my action scene NOT seem stupid. And make sense. And fit into the plot. And not be completely pointless other than meting out 2500 words that day. And be somewhat interesting to read. All in all I would find that conjuring up that many words in a day would be as difficult as getting a cat out of a pile of warm laundry, if not knocking on impossible.

When thinking about if I would do the thing again this year, I assumed that since I'm working and so freaking busy with my job in youth ministry that I should let myself of the hook. Scoff! I'm too important for such things! 

Some saint in heaven has got it out for me about this writing thing, because he or she is really good at making me feel guilty and impractical when I find excuses to delay or eliminate writing. "How are you ever going to be the writer you want to be if you don't start now? Who cares if you have a job! Most authors HAVE to have one! When do they write? When they make enough to buy a time machine?!?!"  I get a pit in my stomach. I sigh heavily. I think about running, but realize that St. Writes-a-lot is probably in better shape.

Thanks, communion of saints.

Not that I think I'm oh so wonderful of a writer and so should grace the world - My story from last year has not been touched since.....Dec 1, 2010.  And it certainly has not gotten any better, nor have those giant chunks of missing plot been found.  I'm doing this because the only reason I've got against trying is that I think that I can't.  Or rather, that I'm afraid that I can't.  Personally, I think that's the dumbest reason in the world for anything.

So here I go, November 2011! I have absolutely NO idea what I will write about! Perhaps some of you could join me and then we could bemoan our lot in life together.  If not, I am perfectly open to ideas for plot lines, characters, etc. If it ends up being THAT good - one day I'll write your names in the "acknowlegements" section of the work.  On the first page, in bold and 76 point font.

"Yeah, that'd be awkward. Especially after that lovely eulogy."

Today I wrote my eulogy. :(

Not because I wanted to, mind you, but because I was asked to as an assignment by my official employer.  I took the wider path and wrote a short, general statement somewhat in jest. The whole time I was creating, I kept thinking "What a strange thing to be thinking about!!!"  I mean, why would I want to write what people will say about me at my funeral? (Of course, it will be New Orleans style.) I mean, is anyone ever honest in a eulogy? Hecks no! Everyone stretches the good parts of people out into lengthy, maudalin phrases, turning a man who paid his taxes into a noble patriot who's money saved homeless people from missing a few suppers, therefore, a hero. Who's going to talk about someone's bad habit of not putting the toilet seat down?

This doesn't seem to be a horrible thing in my book, however.  I tend to think it would be extremely awkward to be at a funeral where the horrible sins of a man were ousted, or even the good things read as if from a dictionary. ("Well! He ain't gettin' any deader! Back to work!")

But this left me feeling rather self-glorifying in my assignment.  I also knew that this was probably going to be an exercise in setting standards for one's life, the whole "live your life to the full" and "you only get one life" bit. So working from that I had better set my accredations high for this! No mediocrity here! "Renee saved thousands of babies from burning buildings and was assumed into Heaven, only after painting a masterpiece which contained so great a beauty that it united all the nations under one banner of politics and economy, and she significantly reduced the amount of bicycle accidents." 

Mmmmmm, no. Blasphemy, anyone? Or a Dos Equis commercial. Either way, certainly I needed to find some sort of realistic view of what I wanted my life to be, without resorting to the heart clinching "she loved Jesus with her whole heart," kind of generalities, a Messiah complex.

I ended up combining a little bit of everything I didn't want to do: sarcastic humor, touching sentimentality, and incredibly interesting cause of death. The experience, all in all, was a little bit like creating a short story.  But this one was wierd, because it needed to be grounded in a very intimate reality: me! Even though I didn't really enjoy the project, nor did I complete it with all the gusto and effort I could have, I still kinda appreciate the experience. When else will I be writing something that is not only something I'm making up as I go along, but also something that I should want to have happen to me.  Flaming motorcyle death and everything.  I had to think of what my life wants to be in the highest standards, including all the aspects that I think should be included in my own personal life.  It's not like I could settle for a boring life, or one that didn't show a scrap of what I value and love.
Hmm. 

I guess my eulogy was more significant for learning to write than anything else. Let's hear it for left field assignments!

"And They Lived Happily Ever After!"

I've been thinking a lot lately about endings. Mostly because I tried to end a short story that I've been working on for a few months now, and I stared at the page for a few blank seconds before I gave up.

The truth is, I am no good at ending things.  When I give talks I usually wrap up with a "Yeah, soooo, now you need to stand up and...," or someone will come to my rescue by walking across the front of the room and demand the attention of the audience.  Even in face to face conversations when explaining things I will ramble on until I can find some statement that suffices as a conclusion. Usually, it's rather lame. "And, yeah, that's all I have to say. I'm done."  And I've heard on more than one occasion that I leave a super awkward voicemail.

Bringing a story to its end seems to bewilder my poor little mind. Is this just me? I begin my approach to the last two or three sentences, when suddenly cohesive thoughts escape from me like animals from a zoo and begin beating their little limbs on every surface and peeing and skwaking so that I can no longer tell what they are supposed to be or what they ever did look like, much less am I able to catch them and strap them back into their crates....
I have a great feeling that no on understands what I just wrote.  Let me put it this way: I get to the end and cannot for the life of me think of anything else significant to say more than what just happened in the plot. I feel as if I have conveyed all the necessary information and now can not possibly need to take more of the reader's time.  If I do try to contrive some end phrase or statement, I feel as if it immediately cornifies the entire story making it suitable only for t.p., no matter how riveting the body of the work was. Like if I end it with the "moral of the story" it makes that very moral out to be superficial and fake, and the same goes if I were to divulge the mystery which I crafted from the get go. But I also can't just end the story without coming up with something and let the reader fall of the cliff following after it, nor can I just suggest that all the characters just went back to their Sunday tea without declaring some sort of purposeful statement, or look too far into the future and therefore start a whole other plot line altogether, or....or....or...
You can see where I'm going with this? The escaped animals? The poo flinging?

Most of the time in my school work I would end essays with some "inspirational" statement that basically read, "and that is that!" (cue Reading Rainbow music [Ba dah da!] and over-exaggerated wink.) For some reason my teachers and professors ate that up, or at least seemed to do. Perhaps they were as sly as the Grinch: "And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head, he got her a drink, and he sent her to bed. And when Cindy Lou Who was in bed with her cup, he crept to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!" Or in reference to the my sappy ending, gagging into their sink. I hated those endings of mine.

I've digressed... Sometimes the ending just comes all on it's own, but mostly not. I would love to learn to avoid the animal confusion.

Ideas, comments, and hurtful criticisms are welcome if you so choose to leave them in the combox. 

And because I like pictures: (Google search "wild animals loose in ohio.")

All This Nothing

I love the movie You’ve Got Mail.  Goodness, what a terrible stereotype I am, am I not?  Yes, it’s a love story.  Ugh.  And they wear muggy clothes that were popular in the 1990’s. Gross.  It quasi- copies from Pride and Prejudice and is also a remake of the 1940 film Shop Around the Corner.  Scoff.  I often get it mixed up with Sleepless in Seattle because both of the main characters are the same actors. (Not that this is no good; let’s be honest, they work well together.) Still:  frustration.

However, this movie intrigues me:  mostly because it was well written, and essentially is about two writers.  Writers who would, if not for the invention of the internet, a quirky chat-room encounter, and riches enough to purchase a then-very-expensive laptop on which to type, not be writing.  Writers who would not have known that they were authors if it were not for circumstance. 

My favorite thing about this movie is that it makes me want to write more.  A great portion of the script narrates the couple’s latest emails over screen action, and these emails consist of the character’s thoughts as they move about the day.  Their observations, their likes and dislikes, insignificant questions and personality struggles.  As the heroine Kathleen Kelly says “…mostly we talk about nothing, but all of this ‘nothing’ has meant so much more to me than so many other ‘somethings.’”

I am always taken aback when reading a great book at how little truths about life, society, and the physical universe can make a story instantly relatable – it makes the scenario visible in one’s head.  It’s like sympathy.

“Don’t you just love New York in the Fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies.”

Perhaps this is just me: but I immediately associate the briskness of Fall with the old responsibility of stocking up on paper and pencils. I can smell the Trapper-Keepers, and see the Lisa Frank zebras in front of my eyes.  Before I even knew I did this, Joe Fox put it into words. He verbalized my subconscious through his random life observations.

Sometimes, when I'm traveling mostly, I "write" in my head, with my thoughts. It's as if someone could hear my thoughts or they are being recorded by a little leprechaun scribe as I think. Occasionally, these thoughts are actually recorded and turn out to be something akin to quality writing, and sometimes that is not the case. (I.e. I go back and read it and HATE it, or I forget the genius entirely and it remains eternally lost to the abyss of brainwaves.) However, the surge of inspiration is usally based on things that I have seen before and about which I have come to some in/significant conclusion.

Isn’t that what stories eventually become,  the world from the point of view of the author, delivered in small doses of seemingly insignificant detail? Kathleen saw the caviar as a detail for beauty; Joe saw it as something to be used – but those two differences magnify the identity of the characters and what they value in life and thus for what they choose to live.

So, I like You’ve Got Mail because it inspires me to write random thoughts, and to notice tiny truths because in the end, these are the things that convey truth in stories.

What are your tiny truths?  What sort of things inspire you to write or create?