What I've learned from NaNoWriMo (so far)

It can’t be this easy, I keep thinking as I type word after word after word. I watch my daily word counts fly by. Even on days I don’t write—and they are rare—I’m still catching up and making my word count on a regular basis.

I think back to my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), 7—or was it 8—years ago. Feverish, marathon typing sessions. A bundle of nerves and sore wrists.

What changed? Maturity? Medication (I’ve always been ADD, but have only been on medication for the past 5 years)? Mahalo? The writing at the people-powered search engine was a trial by fire—multiple daily deadlines, and pressure to produce at a prodigious rate. Nine months of daily word counts that were, come to think of it, pretty close to the 1,667 words a day average that NaNo demands.

I’m sure that all of those things have helped. But there are a few other strategies I’ve identified that have helped make this year’s NaNo so smooth.

1. Be Prepared.
I went with a novel idea that I’d come up with many years ago. In fact, it’s basically a reboot of my original NaNo concept from my first time through. A few of the main characters, personality traits, and plots remained the same, but I never went back to my original notes, only thoughts I had had about the story between then and now.

Also, remembering my plot struggles from before, I made sure to take several days in October—mostly during bus rides and in the shower—to think about plot and characters, where they might go, and what they might do. This made it a lot easier for me to write during November. And I continued to use little blocks of time, that were not long enough to get much writing done, to think about plot and what might happen next. As a result, I wasn’t running out of plot nearly as much as last time.

2. Have Fun!
I made sure to use a novel idea that was interesting and engaging for me, and made sure that, whether my writing was good or bad, I was having fun while writing. If that meant that a character did something silly, or I had a random aside describing the character’s dinner, or I inserted a graphic sex scene (pun intended), then I’d do it. Sure, a lot of this won’t survive any edits or rewrites, but a lot will. In fact, me having fun caused a major character to spontaneously appear out of nowhere—a character that helped solve a major plot problem in my novel.

Fun also meant that I could not be anxious about things. I couldn’t worry about my stock clichés, spelling errors, or inconsistencies in the plot if I were focused on having fun. I can always fix problems if and when I edit it.

3.Find time to write, every day.
I made it a goal to write on a daily basis, and to change my lifestyle to make it easy to find opportunities to write. That included having a pen-and-paper in my purse at all times, writing on my lunch hour, and begging my husband to let me lug around his huge laptop on a recent vacation so I could write on the train and before bed. As a result, I found out which writing times worked best for me, and I only missed three, maybe four days of writing (so far).

4. When in doubt, summarize.
If there was a place in the novel where I got stuck, I simply summarized the basics of what I wanted to happen, then moved on. Like if I needed details on something I didn’t have, or I wasn’t sure how the heroes would get out of a tough scrape (though I knew they would). I know the basic points of what I want to happen, but the details are sketchy. For those scenes, I am doing either some basic narration, or I am just putting in a placeholder paragraph of summary. I may go back to clean those paragraphs up before the end of November, or, I may leave them until I revise.

5.Use shame and social networking.
I don’t use the NaNo forums much, but I do use the “Buddies” system there. I see how my nano friends are doing. Those who are ahead of me, or are close to my word count, it spurs my competitive edge. Those who are behind me, it makes me want to give them pep talks and help spur them on to greater things. And, to be honest, I get a bit of schadenfreude knowing that I’m doing better than them.

I also use sites like Facebook and Twitter (mostly Twitter) to keep friends who aren’t writers updated on my NaNo status. My tweeps will often reply back with short notes of encouragement, and just putting it out there makes me feel more productive.

Even with all these strategies, I’m not out of the woods yet. I’ve got 20,000 more words to go As an old English major (and an Old English major), I know that hubris is a dangerous thing. So I guess that strategy #6 and #7 are “stay humble,” and “keep writing.”

And now, if you’ll excuse me…

Calvin and Hypatia boarded the train bound for Chicago. He was wearing his new hair and face…

Thank you, Rhianna

Rhianna's ABC Interview with Diane Saywer

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7223

For those who care to read my previous thoughts on the subject, you can find them here.

Pessimism, positive thinking, and horse poop

I was reminded recently how much I hate the following anecdote. It goes, more or less like this:


A little boy is given a pile of poop as a gift. Instead of being sad, he is gleeful and starts playing in the scat. When asked why, he says "With this much poop there's got to be a pony somewhere!"

Cute story. But back in the day, when I was much, much (much) younger, this story always gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have always thought it a horrible motivator, because this logic makes no sense.

First off, what kind of pile of poop is so incredibly big that it can hide an entire horse? Either a ginormous pile, or a very small pony, and both are unlikely scenarios.

Second of all, just because there's poop doesn't mean a pony is nearby. It means a pony was nearby. But the pony could have just as well rode off. The little boy may be happy now, but soon enough, he'll be sorely disappointed. And that makes my inner child cry.

Now, the thing is, there are certainly ways to spin this story so that the little boy comes out on top of the heap, so to speak.

1. If the boy is a gardener, he's got a wonderful fertilizer for his fruits and vegetables.
2. If he's not a gardener, but he has entrepreneurial spirit, he can package and sell the horse poop to others who are.
3. If he's just fallen off of a horse, the horse poop, though uncomfortable, could cushion his fall.

And so on.

I just wish that motivational peoples would be a little more realistic when they tell this type of story. With a little bit of creative thinking, the story can be turned into something realistic and motivating. Because otherwise, if you're someone who is into critical thinking, or has a pessimistic/realistic worldview, this story's not gonna sway them.

Brief thoughts on Michael Jackson

I can't not dance to Thriller.

Everytime I hear it, I wait with embarrassed anticipation through the 30 second, atmospheric laden opening, for those first synthesizer chords, hoping I can stop myself from popping my hip to the side and throwing my arms up in the air (maybe grabbing my crotch), but knowing I won't.

My first "real" album was Thriller on vinyl, had an ill-concieved perm in elementary school that made me look like him, won a local adio contest for impersonating him by singing "Beat It."

I never idolized him, never went to one of his concerts, and I didn't quite know how to reconcile his later image with his Thriller heyday. I felt guilty sometimes enjoying his music because of his alleged crimes, felt guilty about passing judgement on an uber-superstar who no one, least of all me, could really ever know as a human being.

As such, I can't really mourn him. We see "famous" people every day, they are saturated into our culture, but they aren't real to us, though they may seem so. They're like someone from a history book, or are like a piece of furniture in a room. Something part of the landscape but not really interacting with it.

I don't mean to minimize the pain his family is going through right now. Death is always tragic, and especially when it comes unexpectly and to one so young.

But the best I can do for him is to dance. Which is what I've been doing all along.

Buffy Movie Fail

Reports surfaced today that the owners of the Buffy franchise are seriously considering a reboot/reimagining of the valley-girl slayer in big-budget movie form.

Nope, not Joss Whedon. Fran Rubel Kuzui, who bought the rights to make the first Buffy movie in 1992.

At last accounts, none of the cast from the movie or the TV series, nor Joss himself, would be involved with the project.

Now, I'll admit up front that I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan, and so I had a pretty negative emotional reaction when I first heard the news. However, I'm putting that aside for this post. After all, there have been some great franchize reboots recently that many people scoffed at but that came off well. I'm thinking Lord of the Rings here, and, of course, Star Trek.

However, allow me to take off my "Joss Whedon is my Master Now" T-shirt and analyze the numerous other reasons why this is a bad move.

1. Too early for a reboot. The Buffy series has only been off the air for seven years. Admittedly, things are getting rebooted earlier and earlier--Hulk had 5 years between its first and second movies, but Hulk had a few things going for it. One, the second movie was only partially a reboot. Sure, different characters, timeline, continuity, but the second movie did not retell the origin story. Also, the Hulk has a huge fanbase apart from any film adaptation.

2. Alienating the audience. The majority of Buffy's success is inextricably linked with Joss Whedon. I know I said that I wasn't going to be a fangirl, but hear me out. He wrote the first movie (even though he wasn't involved with it much beyond that) and he pretty much created the universe of the television series. The things that people love about Buffy--the mix of humor and drama, the snappy one-liners, the character development, that's all Joss. Everything I've heard from the reboot is that they're going darker and bigger in scope. I believe that a large number of Buffy fans are, not necesarily Joss Whedon fans, but fans of the campy side. A Buffy apart from this is not going to appeal to the same fans that the other Buffy prodcuts have.

3. Tabula rasa. The success or failure of this new Buffy movie hinges on the quality of the people picked to create it. Yes, the premise of Buffy leaves a ton of room to do lots of different things. Each generation, a girl is born who has superpowers and fights vampires. Beyond that, it's a blank canvas. A huge canvas. My worry is that the canvas will be too big for all but the most talented individuals to wield successfully.

If you ask me? The Kuzuis should forget the whole "Buffy" thing and get behind Joss to produce his Goners movie. It's a similar premise--girl gets strong and fights the monsters--and it has the potential to be a lot darker than the Buffyverse, such as it is.

And there's not all the baggage of a movie, a 7-season series, a comic book, and a legion of pissed off fans.

My Toothpick Moment

I was just listening to So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, by Douglas Adams, on my ipod. There is a key scene in the book where minor character "Wonko the Sane". talks about how he decided to withdraw from society and become a hermit after he saw that there were instructions on the side of a toothpick box.

See Wikipedia reference here.

A society that needs to be told how to use a toothpick, he reasoned, is not one he wanted to be a part of.

Well, I’ve had my own toothpick moment recently. It came when I was flipping through some vegetarian cookbooks that I picked up at the library to try to figure out what the heck to do with the veggies that keep coming in from my CSA.

A little background here. I’m the type of girl who uses recipes as guidelines. For better or worse, after I’ve made something for the first time, I’ll often go off the reservation, adding more of one thing, less of another, and doing the dish from memory. Most of the time, say, for meat marinades and soups, this works fine. Other times, for, say, chocolate mousse for example (and this is purely hypothetical, I assure you), substitution is a bad idea and blows up in your face.

Hence why I’m a fruit cobbler girl, not a fruit pie girl. Pie crusts are an exact science. Cobbler topping is not.

Anyway, I’m reading this cookbook (which shall remain nameless), and on the inside front cover, there’s this disclaimer:

The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The Publisher is not responsible for your specific health and allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The Publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

What. The. Fondue.

The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written.

Seriously? Gee, thanks Big Brother! I guess I’ll just turn myself in if I have butter beans but no kidney beans.

OK, I get it that pre-packaged products need to label allergens. I'm friendly with many people with life-threatening allergies, and they say it's a lifesaver, literally. But if you are allergic to nuts, and you make a recipe that calls for nuts, isn’t that more of a suicidal streak than a legal liability?

A society that needs to be told how to use a cookbook is not one that I want to be a part of. Excuse me while I go build The Outside of the Asylum now.

No Excuse. None.

Chris Brown got charged today with assault and making threats against his girlfriend Rihanna. I was helping Mahalo to cover the Grammys when I first heard about it. It was first reported as a car accident. Rihanna and Chris are fine, the publicist said, but they’ll not make the Grammy Awards. They’ve gotten back together since he beat the shit out of her before the Grammy’s on February 8.

Sure, I should say “allegedly” here, and sure, I should be euphemistic and say “domestic violence, and sure, since she’s of age and her live is hers to live, if she’s the forgiving sort, then I should keep my mouth shut and keep my opinions to myself. I am, after all, a sporadic blogger who has no stake in the situation and who could really care less about the music of either Chris Brown or Rihanna. The Internet certainly doesn’t need another blogger adding to the noise of this already huge story.

Okay then, fine. Let me tell you another story.

A black woman with a couple of kids is staying on a friend’s couch. To say she is down on her luck is an understatement. Early in the morning, she is woken up out of a dead sleep, by her boyfriend pulling on her hair. He also slammed her head against the wall.

She was so freaked out, and disoriented, that she ran, half-clothed, out of the apartment in the middle of winter, just to get away from him.

The police were called, but she declined to press charges. No photographs, no news reports. Maybe she left him, maybe not. Maybe she’ll end up dead. That is the reality of most domestic violence.

And it’s a true story, too. I was the one who called the police. She was running, half-naked, down the street, screaming for help.

I do not fault either woman for their decisions or their situations. I feel so sorry for them that they feel like they have to stay with people who hurt them, or are too scared to do anything to prosecute those who have hurt them.

But Rihanna is lucky. Very, very lucky. Her gut instinct told her to do the right thing, even though she was not willing or able to follow through. She called the police and made sure they were waiting when she and Brown got to their destination. They were then able to record evidence, take statements and get a clear picture of what happened. Her blood in Brown’s car. Phone calls. Police reports and photos.

You see, in criminal cases, the victim does not have to want to press charges for charges to be pressed. If there’s enough evidence during the altercation, they can press charges anyway. Which is what the police did today.

Brown is lucky, too. He’s lucky that he “only” beat and bit and bruised her (according to reports). And he’s lucky Rihanna was wearing her seatbelt. Brown reportedly tried to push her out of a moving car. If she’d forgotten to buckle up, he could have succeeded. His actions could have broken her legs, her arms, her spine, her neck, could have killed her. He’s lucky he gets to apologize to a live person. Even so, Brown should be punished for his actions, and the law agrees. Whether Rihanna agrees is irrelevant.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7223

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