Achilles’ Heels

11 Feb 2013 3 Comments

by irowboat in 12 Month Reflections, February, Slightly off Kilter Tags: , , , , , ,

Some of you might be wondering why The Lady Of The Blog™ hasn’t been posting on a terribly regular basis since the end of the year.

You might think that her hands have shattered under the sheer volume of words typed; and you’d be forgiven for being wrong. After all, 650,000 words is a lot of words, in a single year. That’s more than ‘War and Peace’ (587,287 words), which took 3 years; ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (either 565,223 or 645,000 words depending on source) completed over 6 years; Les Misérables (530,982) a staggering tome over 17 years; and more than half the size of the entire Harry Potter series (1,084,170 words), which—according J.K. Rowling—took 17 years for all of the books.

The Lady Of The Blog™ would never claim that these were edited, readable, coherent, or even the slightest bit planned, but I watched her writing, through every struggle and trial, in every environment and circumstance: suffering illnesses, making a pilgrimage to San Francisco for ‘A Night Of Writing Dangerously’, completing 49,430 words in a week (an iPad is a great carrot to dangle), a third-degree burn (on her hand, no less), thousands of words lost to software glitches, whiplash, writing a guest blog for the folks behind NaNoWriMo, a birthday party, losing 10 days of writing time attending a wedding, and a friend’s death.

So why in the world—with all that stunning determination—would she slow down? Is it because car died and she had to shop for a new one? Is she busy writing up a couple short stories for an application to Clarion? Is it because she’s feverishly editing the miles and miles of sentences?

I don’t know. But everyone’s got a weakness. 650,000 words are not hers.

 

Spreading sturdy, delicious, and fresh-out-of-the-fridge butter on a stout slice of sourdough… might be.

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Guest Post: Embracing Incoherence (or, Rambling for Focus)

18 Nov 2012 2 Comments

by irowboat in I might not be in my right mind here, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo Tips, Slightly off Kilter, unsticking, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s me again, taking over so you don’t have to.

A lot has happened in the last couple weeks, but we’re now 18 days and some change into November, just a smidge past halfway. If you multiply 18 days (and some change) by the Golden Ratio (1.618, a.k.a. “Phi”, a.k.a. “ϕ”), you get 30, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. How many days hath November? Not a coincidence.

That’s right, you’re at the Golden Ratio, the perfect spiral, the only-thing-that-makes-sense part of your story. If you’ve done NaNo before, you’ve already done your math — 30,000 words are miles behind you, and the wind is blowing comfortably through your hair.

30,000 words. Sound familiar?

So not only is it the most-perfect-hardest-time in your novel, it’s also the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco. How—as a non WriMo—do I know it’s in San Francisco, you ask? Because I dropped your usual host off at the airport at a time that was not quite obscene, but also uncomfortably close to far-too-late. As I write this, she and at least one typewriter-toting maniac are snacking and binge drinking wining and dining and writing with 229 other writers.

“So how does this help me?” you ask. And just because I’m barging in here to hassle her with not-terribly-subtle notes about how far she should be, I’ll tell you.

Refocus on the goal: 50,000 words. 30 days.

Discover your story. Go faster, further. You’ll learn more about your voice. I know from watching Michelle that you’ll grow in your capacity to adapt, and everything will start coming together. It may not happen in just one NaNo, but it’s like watching the explosive delicacy and wonder of a time-lapse flower unfolding. You don’t think the Vikings reached North America by stopping and digging out their cartography kit at every glimpse of distant shoreline, do you?

What follows is actual dialogue (very lightly edited for consumption) between yours truly, and the lass who is going to strangle yours truly. Sometimes, it helps to have someone looking pointedly at the goal.

…picking up mid-conversation…

partlypixie: I’m tired of these stories I can’t end well. It started so damn well. But this month has been crazy, so I guess a coherent story on top of it all is a lot to ask of myself, eh?

irowboat: Stop whining. The point isn’t coherence. It’s 50,000 words. So knock it off.

irowboat: You’re leaping ahead into the “I’m publishing” phase. Not the discovery phase.

partlypixie: You’re so right, I really am.

irowboat: NaNo is discovery.

partlypixie: Yes

partlypixie: Thank you. That really, really helped.

irowboat: btw, that was 164 words you spent. Thought you should know.

partlypixie: Pfffft

…a couple days later…

partlypixie: With all this writing, themes are repeating so much I might as well be writing just 3 over and over. I don’t know if I have it in me to write something distinct.

irowboat: Then write something hazy and diffuse. Sounds stupid and patronizing, but I mean you just write; this is the month—of all months—where you excise every concern about what you’ll end up with. That’s what they look up to you for; that feverish, wild-eyed abandon, the acceptance and embracing of the incoherent. Readysetgo!

If you’re even the vaguest hint like me, the temptation is there every moment to edit that sentence just a little – not even trying to perfect it, just nudge it a little to let it make sense. Well, since you were foolish enough to stop in and check this out, you get the same care and watering I give as the stern WriMo wrangler (with a heart of cogs and fables): Stop fussing with it.

Every time your cursor goes up, you could be writing the next word. Every time your hand touches your mouse, you can only write words that are missing half the good vowels or common consonants.

If you’re even sort of close to hitting the 1667-word-a-day pace, that 30,000-word wall is the perfect (yes, I’m being self-referential) time to give up on your outline, ignore your urge to flip to your notes document to jot miscellanea (PROTIP: just write your notes in your story); the perfect time to give in, grab hold of every errant thought, and—with all your writerly might—bind them together like an army of Lovecraftian, madness-inducing, literary horrors.

Embrace them now. Remember this is National Novel Writing Month.

Going insane, losing hair/sleep/relationships, sorting out the gibberish – that’s what National Novel Editing Month is for.

(These 756 words were brought to you by the word ‘rambling’.)

Magic, do as you will

11 Nov 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in I might not be in my right mind here, NaNoWriMo, Slightly off Kilter Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wanted this to be another inspirational blog post. I did. I wanted to sit down and write something that would lift up the spirits of all my fellow NaNoWriMo participants.

But I also am having difficulty myself, and I don't want to do the disservice of making this all look easy.

It isn't. Writing this much is a lot of work. It takes dedication and sleep deprivation and giving up activities, and it takes a certain kind of magic in us that sparks creativity.

I'm feeling exhausted, that bone-deep-hit-the-bottom-of-my-creative-well kind of exhaustion. I feel like a magician who has lost his way, doomed to a fate of never finding the right story every again.

Yesterday, I passed 20,000 words on my first novel of the month. I'm putting it aside for now. It's time to start the next novel, the second for November.

And I am drawing that oh-so-terrible blank; my magic isn't working.

I've written 10 novels, eleven since last November. I am afraid that I have no ideas left, no creativity in me. I'm run dry, aren't I? How can I not be?

I'm frightened that I'm a wizard with no more magic tricks, no more stories left to tell.

What I need is to come back to myself for a moment, to reach within and find the next idea, to stop worrying about if I will make it or if I'm writing something good. I need to return to myself and be the writer I am, the person who never says die and who doesn't care what happens as long as the words come.

In the book (and movie) The Last Unicorn, the magician Schmendrick is a man who was so bad at being a wizard, his instructor cursed him to immortality until he could finally perform real magic. He walks the earth for hundreds of years, until finally something so important is at stake, that he gives himself up and says,

“Magic, do as you will.”

And it works, not in any way he could have imagined or controlled, but it works. Just like writing works and just like NaNoWriMo works. I just need to give myself over to it, and to let go of what I expect.

Okay. Time to begin again. Magic, do as you will…

 

Nine Down, Three (four) to Go! Or, what it is like to write 16,000 words in a day.

01 Oct 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in September, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There is no other way to say this: September was a bitch.

It didn't come smoothly, despite finding regular writing times every week, and despite my efforts to not fall behind. But I did. Again.

On the bright side, I only had 16,000 words left on the last day of the month instead of the 20,000 on the last day of August. It may not seem like a large difference, but when the last hours of the month are slipping past and the haze of so much to do hangs like one of those cartoon clouds that only hover over the gloomy character in the scene, raining only on their heads, every little advantage counts.

And in case any of you are wondering what it feels like to write somewhere around 20,000 words in a day, it feels like an absolute blur. It usually begins well, with lots of hope and the words all making sense. And then in the middle, it begins to feel like carrying a weight that is just a few pounds too heavy to carry uphill very far, and you're sure that if you can just get a running start you could get to the top before your arms give out, then it will all be downhill from there.

So you hurry. And as you hurry, you realize that the story is not coming together as readily as you hoped, that you are getting nowhere very quickly. In fact, hurrying seems to have slowed you down. So you decide you are hungry, you need chocolate and dinner and maybe a few gallons of alcohol.

And then you can get started again.

So you take a long break and hope that in the back of your mind you are solving the problems of the little world you have created, and you hope that you can remember all the name of the characters you introduced to flesh out the ending.

And as the night comes to a close, as the end becomes clear, you realize that it is all lost. You can't go on, there is nothing left to write, the story is dead,band you are stupid for letting it all get like this. You shut down the word processor and you close the computer and walk away. Sad, but with the absolute knowledge that you cannot finish, so why even try.

You go to the kitchen for some of that chocolate. And liquor. And you catch a fragment of story as it passes through your head, just a small glimmer of hope that there might be an actual ending after all, a single element to finally tie the mess together.

And you think of all the people you have told about what you are doing. And how they all believe in you.

So you pour another drink. A big one. And make a cup of coffee, even though it is now very late. And then get a bowl of peanut m&ms.

(Or if you are as lucky as I am, you have an amazing significant other to do these things for you, and friends who will remind you that “You've got this.” And these people hover next to you with with encouragement and tough love, like a runner with her coach following her along the sidelines, keeping her feet moving.)

And you open that word processor again, and you decide that as long as you finish before dawn the next day, you will count this as a win, even though there is an excruciating 8,000 words left to go. And every one of them feels like breathing through a straw with an asthma attack.

The alcohol helps. Until it makes you sleepy.

That's okay. You have coffee for this. It'll wake you back up, even if it is cold now.

The story jitters along, sparked by that little stroke of insight that happened in the kitchen. You long ago gave up on remembering all the characters' names, and have settled for things like “kind old guy,” and “suitor seven” to keep the characters straight. Your fingers start to feel vaguely numb, and your brain, if you could see it, would resemble some kind of terrible jello dish. The kind with carrots and marshmallows in it.*

This is your brain on too many words.

The last thousand words happen at long last in a burst of completion, if not speed. And there is exhilaration somewhere beneath a swaddling of fatigue as the word count arrives at 50,000, and then, miraculously, stretches a little bit beyond, just to wrap things up neatly.

You know, for when you get to edit the mess you just left for yourself.

But another day. Because now, you need to sleep. It's a good thing you have alcohol because your mind is chattering like a squirrel having a manic episode, and you wish it could have been so verbose only half an hour ago. Tell it to shush. Brush your teeth. Remember to tell Facebook, or twitter, or at least the cat that you have just performed a miracle.

And sleep. Sleep well.

Tomorrow, you'll write again.

 

*Forgive me for this. I did grow up in Utah.

 

Month Six Reflections: The Mourning Period

03 Jul 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in I might not be in my right mind here, July Tags: , , , , ,

I found this several places today, and it just… fits. Only, for me, it’s a mourning period between writing novels. I don’t really know what anyone expects, but I imagine that it should be a relief to let go of the last project, to move on to a fresh story after a day or celebration for yet another novel written.

But I discover, as the year goes on, that instead I tend to have a day or several of melancholy. I feel sad, grumpy, mournful. I’m not done, I think. Those characters and I, we went through a war zone together (and the stories I tend to write, that’s actual war zones); the characters and I argued, we lived with each other, and we told a story together. Sometimes, we yelled and screamed and couldn’t find a way to go on, and then we would, and we went amazing places.

I fall in love with my characters. We just go through so much together in one month. It gets hard to let go, I want to dive back in. (Reading fiction books, I have been known to close a book, turn it over and start again, just to have it not end yet.)

And last month, after a grueling 12,000 words that last day, my characters and I created a special bond. I still dream about them, and I miss writing them, even though they posed the biggest challenge to me yet. I find myself listening to absurd amounts of Adele and feeling wistful, even sometimes wanting to burst out in tears, and then I start to laugh at my capacity for useless drama, and I press the repeat on my iPod for Adele’s playlist.

It takes me a few days to move on and get writing again.

I don’t know if there is much to be learned from this. I just know it happens, and as I become a better writer with each novel, the characters are born more fully-formed from my skull and the plots are much more elaborate, and it only takes me deeper in, takes up more of my thoughts and dreams. And it gets harder to extract myself from one world and move on to another.

I find myself envious of those who are out there working on one novel, who have all the time in the world to spend with their characters, falling in love with them, giving them quirks and baggage to work around, love stories to blunder through, evil things to slay, funny ideas to have. I’ll be there eventually, I know. And really, I would not trade what I am doing now for any experience in Earth. But, I look forward to being able to spend quality time with one story and see it through.

I wonder what kind of melancholy I’ll have if any of these novels are published. Will I look on, sad that I no longer have anything to teach these people born of my heart and head, that they are all grown up and ready to be seen and lived through by whomever likes the publisher’s choice of dust jacket?

It’ll probably be like a funeral for me. A happy, overly dramatic, all-consuming funeral.

I hope Adele comes out with a new album by then.

 

Mid-May Catching Up with Facehuggers

16 May 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in I might not be in my right mind here, May Tags: , , , , , ,

Day Sixteen: Not enough of 50,000

I have been writing. I promise.

But… Remember how I keep picking at that novel from January? How I keep working on it in my down time?

Yeah… It has posessed my brain completely now. I am stuck on the characters and who they are and what the story is evolving into, and the atmosphere, and well, you get the idea. It has my head wrapped up in it like a facehugger from the Alien movies.

Yep, just like that.

And I know I should be writing this months novel. I mean, it’s freaking public and everything, and part of the goal for this year, so I think about this a long time – trying to write that novel, and I get a good idea and open up a file to get started.

Yep, just like that.

Then the facehugger thing happens all over again and next thing I know 2,000 words have sprung from my chest (see what I did there?) and it’s two in the morning and half a bottle of wine has disappeared. It’s like a torrid affair with characters I’m not supposed to be seeing anymore, but I just can’t quit.

I have written somewhere around 25,000 words of that novel, rewritten, to be precise. The facehugger novel.

And the other novel? Yeah, ummmm… I have a lot of writing to do.

A. Lot.

I have despaired to irowboat several times now that I think the blog was a bad idea and how awful it all is and what was I thinking. You know, the usual artistic angst crap. He told me to shut up and write, which was just about what I really needed to hear, even if it made me want to punch him in the nose.

And frankly, I might have done it if he wasn’t one of the few people I know who could totally kick my ass. And then, he’d sit my bruised ass and me attached to it back in front of the keys and tell me to shut up and write. (Ok, he might give me an ice pack and cup of coffee too.)

I’m not stopping. No matter how much more sexy the other project is. And it’s kinda sexy.

Ahem.

I guess this is good practice for November and writing two novels in a month. There, see? It’s not falling behind, it’s training up for the big event. Yeah, that’s it. Not a facehugging novel of doom, but practice.

Sure. Why not.

 

A Mad Idea

04 May 2012 2 Comments

by PartlyPixie in I might not be in my right mind here, May Tags: , , , ,

Day Four: Unknown of 50,000 words

We’ve all heard the advice to write what you know.

Less common is the advice to write what you want to know. This is the school of thoughts tend to subscribe to, and I’ve been finding that when I learn something in the course of writing it sticks in my memory so much more easily (if only I’d been writing horror stories while studying human anatomy, I might actually remember some of it).

So I thought, maybe this month, I’d try writing to find out about things I want to know more about. Simple things. Like blogging. And because it’s finally spring here in Utah, cleaning.

I’ll spare you how I got to my final conclusion, but needless to say I’ve begun writing a novel in blog format from the point of view of a faerie learning to live life (clean, cook, work, etc) without the help of magic, and she’s decided to blog about it as a self help guide for others in a similar situation. Of course, there is more to the plot than that, but we’ll just have to see where that leads.

Then I thought: well, if it’s in blog format… Why don’t I just make a blog? Register the domain and write and respond to comments and all that jazz. The whole novel will be online for all to see my shitty shitty first drafts.

It’s a stupid idea.

Mad.

Seriously daft.

I just posted the first installment at domesticatedpixie.wordpress.com.

Feel free to play along. I’d love to have comments from other “faeries” and such. It’s a pretty wide open world I’m writing in.

P.S. And a quick confession: I have actually written somewhere around 7,000 words this month, but they have been on another unrelated project. I like to pretend that this is me training for writing two novels in November, but that is only a half truth. In honesty, I cannot seem to put my January novel down. Ok, I feel better now.

Writing Induced Insanity with Cat

26 Apr 2012 2 Comments

by PartlyPixie in April, I might not be in my right mind here Tags: , , ,

Day Twenty Six: 37,202 of 50,000 words

Yes, this is a zombie post.

I’m finally catching up on writing this month, and it’s taking just about everything I’ve got left after even my relatively easy job. The need to keep putting words down is making me rather crazy. Well, crazier.

But, I’ve realized that I’ve neglected the blog. Petty much all month.

So hi.

How Is everyone?

Kilroy? How are you surviving your first month?

I feel like such an awful Internet neighbor. Actually, gazing out at the carpet of dandelions I’ve allowed to grow in my yard, I feel like a bad neighbor. But, yes, I’ve fallen behind on the blog completely and horribly, along with replying to comments, reading as many blogs as I would like to, and well, life.

Everything but writing is on the side right now. Because I have four days and 13,000 words left, and I’m getting tired.

I also figured out that it takes me until 30,000 words to really have a story dialed in. Every month, it’s fog and bread crumbs until I pass that threshold, then suddenly I can see what the story needs. Of course, this rule will probably be obsolete in a few months. Plenty to go.

And now I can say I posted on the blog, made my tribute to the Internet deities.

I should give them an offering.

How about a picture of my cat? The Internet loves pictures of cats, right?

There. Internet gods be appeased.

Back to writing.

Deep Thoughts, Served Late

26 Mar 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in March Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“Honey, I love you a lot, but when we go in there, try not to be so much yourself as usual, okay?”

We were standing outside of my boyfriend’s house, poised for of all things, a funeral. I was sixteen, two years before I met irowboat, and for some reason I don’t remember anything else about that night. In fact, I’m not even positive it was a funeral gathering.

But there it was – exactly what I had always been afraid people wanted from me, for me to be less me. Even they guy I thought would one day marry me felt the need to ask me to tone it down. What could that say about me?

I chose the inspiration for this week for a reason; I am scared of who I am inside of all these words I have to share and choose from, I’m frightened of the person I am uncovering within the stories I write.

It is often said that writers put some of themselves in their writing.

But I’m coming to understand that our writing can illuminate us – who we are, what questions we are begging the world to answer for us, what we love, and, most of all, what our wounds are.

When we write from those deep places (especially when we forget that we’re doing just that) then there is an unveiling, and the truer pieces of who we are can sparkle through.

I had a chance to see some parts of myself in every novel I’ve written this year so far – each one uncovers just a little more of my deeper self. Never more so than writing a novel in a week. I met some true part of myself in the mists of last fifteen thousand words written Friday night. I dove in, nose held, and stayed right there in the heat of creating and found myself in places I never dreamed I could dream.

I took my characters on a dark and twisted ride through the deepest recesses of my soul, and all of us came out changed. Particularly me.

Reading a good book can completely change our lives. It changes us because the writer was willing to stay on the dark edge of their consciousness, they were willing to dive within their depths and find their own truths to deliver to us in the form of story, in myth. They give us something that makes us know we’re lovable and human and so much greater than the sum of our parts.

This is part of our jobs as writers, to discover what lies true within ourselves, we must face what is too much of us, what we’ve let other people tell us is not okay to be or say in a funeral, at dinner, in the car on the way home from the airport. We have to be willing to write deep enough to find out that we are nothing of the person we thought we were.

This discovery of deep truths is not comfortable.

But it is wonderful. And scary. And strange.

And if reading a great story can change us, can illuminate our souls, even the smallest corner, then what must writing great stories be but this, this diving down into the unknown, do? For one thing, we can’t go on living as quite the same person as before.

It changes us.

Between the writing, up in the real world of society and social niceties, we run the risk of being so much more ourselves after finding out more about that wild thing we thought we controlled is running free.

As we write, we wake up.

And maybe, if you’re doing it right, someone will ask you be not so much yourself some day.

And when they do, smile and say, “No, thank you.”

Because you’ve earned everything you have become.

A Mad Idea…

22 Feb 2012 8 Comments

by PartlyPixie in February Tags: , , ,

So… my boyfriend has found a new way of tormenting me helping me achieve my goals. When I say something important yet perhaps crazy, he takes out his iPhone and records me repeating what I said.

So it’s on the record.

He recorded this idea I had today, so I think I’m stuck with it; I figure might as well make it official, even though it’s a long way off (thank the Gods).

Remember in my About page when I said I’d try to sneak in an extra novel?

Instead of just doing one novel during NaNoWriMo 2012, I’ll do two. One for the usual project, and one for NaNo. 

Because why make things easy, right?

And Boyfriend? You’re a bastard I love you.

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