Jumping on the Bandwagon for NaNoWriMo

Everybody is chattering about National Novel Writing Month this month, since this is it, and why should I be any different?

My advice on how to approach it and how to get through it is the same as my advice for anything involving writing: Do Whatever Works.

Now, the first thing to remember about NaNo is that it isn't a job. It isn't something you have to do, even if you've signed up for it. The purpose of it is to encourage you to sit down and disconnect your inner editor and just write as freely as you can. There isn't a "right" way or a "wrong" way. As far as I'm concerned, there is no "cheating", since the only "prize" is the words you write. Are you starting with a project you got stuck on halfway through? Go ahead! Do you have a detailed outline already? Fine! Do you want to turn a series of unrelated short stories into a coherent storyline? Sounds awesome! Do you have a vague idea and want to use NaNo to rough out a detailed outline? I'm like, "Cheat, schmeat--just write!"

NaNo should be a pleasure and a joy. If it isn't, shrug it off. Maybe it doesn't work for you. November might be a little lonely, while lots of people are all NaNo, NaNo, NaNo, but so what? If that's not the way you roll, set yourself another goal for November:

Friend: I've written 24,000 words so far this month!

You: I've organized my Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes and made out a shopping list.

Come December, they'll have a rough draft, a caffeine crash AND they'll be heading into the Christmas crush, and you'll have your recipes organized and your shopping list made.

If you do NaNo, don't let it become a contest between you and your buddies. It's tempting to feel pressured to write faster, write more words, and that's kind of the point. But if the pressure feels uncomfortable or unpleasant, unplug yourself from that. There's no law that says you have to post your word count publicly. Your words aren't anybody else's words; they're your words.

NaNo is a chance to dedicate some time each day to writing, which you may or may not do anyway. It gives you some leverage with loved ones who may not think to grant you that time ordinarily, a chance to say, "No, I can't do that. I'm doing NaNo, and I pledged to write 1,670 words every day."

People who don't write tend to be impressed by numbers, and they'll go, "Oh! That's a lot of words! I'd better let you get to it, then." That's one thing NaNo can do for you.

NaNo can encourage you to let go and throw yourself through the story without worrying if it hangs together. If you can't do that (and I can't), maybe it can encourage you to throw yourself a little farther into the story than you are and see if it comes together or sparks some ideas for farther along. I write 250 words at a time. That's just the way I roll.

Marian Allen is the author of EEL'S REVERENCE, a fantasy published by Echelon Press.

Vanquishing Villains

While walking in the desert today, I saw a dead rattlesnake. I hesitated to take a photo, not wanting to memorialize death, but it was so beautiful lying there, that I went ahead and snapped an image of it. Although it looked vibrant, as if it were sleeping, I could see that it had been run over. This made me think how even such a fearsome creature as that Mojave green rattler had enemies, though its four-wheeled killer was one it could not even imagine.

And so it is with a story’s villain.

For a hero to overcome her nemesis, she has to come at the villain from a different direction, not go at the villain from his position of strength. If the villain is the strongest person in the world, he cannot be vanquished by the second strongest person, but he can be vanquished by intelligence, perhaps even middling intelligence. If the villain is strong and smart, he can be vanquished by a determination to win at all costs. If the villain is smart, strong, and equally determined, he can be vanquished by esoteric knowledge, something the villain cannot even imagine.

My NaNoWriMo project has no villain. My poor character has to deal with her husband’s death, the loss of her home, the loss of her daughter’s respect. Since he had been the focus of her life, his death left her unfocused. Moreover, she finds out he is not who she thought he was, so to find out who she’s been all those years, she has to find out who he was. I’m wondering if her way out of this conundrum is to do or be something she’s never thought of before, something that until now has been unimaginable to her. Like what? I don’t know, but it will give me a direction to follow.

What about your characters? Do you have a hero/villain situation? What special strengths does your villain have? What special strengths does your hero have?

A Possibility of Something Wonderful

I have never seen the point of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I always figured that those who wanted to write wrote and those who didn’t write didn’t really want to. I used to be in the first category, and gradually slipped into the second. After the past couple of years of editing, promoting my books, and blogging, I lost the habit of novel writing. Apparently, I don’t really want to write the books I want to write, otherwise I would have been writing them.

Thinking that perhaps there is a book I want to write that I don’t know I want to write, I signed up for NaNo. The theory is that if you churn out the words without worrying about what you are writing, perhaps “you’ll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and an ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you’d never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.” At least that’s what the NaNo people say.

I’ve always been a slow writer -- never been able to write 1,000 words in a day let alone the 1,670 words I’ll need to write to achieve my goal. The last time I tried writing for word count rather than content, I talked to my hero but didn’t add a single word to my poor work-in-pause. (see Pat Bertram Introduces Chip, the Hero of Her Work-in-Pause, a Whimsically Ironic Apocalyptic Novel (Part I) and Pat Bertram Introduces Chip, the Hero of her Work-in-Pause, a Whimsically Ironic Apocalyptic Novel (Part II))

I won’t be adding to an existing book this time. (The above mentioned WIP is still paused.) I’ll be trying to write from scratch, following any idea no matter how silly, since there won’t be time to think of alternatives. The way I figure, I haven’t a thing to lose since I haven’t been writing anyway. At the very least, by doing NaNo, I will get into the habit of writing again. I’ll probably have fodder for several blog posts. But possibly, just possibly, I’ll come up with something wonderful.

Interview with Meredith Holmes, author of Unseelie

One of my first independent reviewers, Christina Whitcher, is now the PR coordinator for a small speculative fiction publishing company called Drollerie Press, and she recently contacted me about one of her authors. Meredith Holmes lives and writes mostly in Southeast Texas. Unseelie is her first published novel and she hopes there's many more to come.

Today I'm interviewing Meredith about her debut novel, an urban fantasy/romance titled Unseelie.

1. Meredith, welcome to The Write Type. First, how did Unseelie get started?

Unseelie began as an exercise for NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). A local shop had a display of greeting cards including one with this absolutely beautiful faerie prince on the front and the image just stuck with me so when it came time for NaNoWriMo, I began by writing about this prince, whom I decided was named Cadfael (from an old word meaning "battle prince"). Alfhild came soon after, and the story just grew around the characters.

2. Did you research mythology and legends before writing Unseelie or did you make a lot of it up as you went?

Most of Unseelie was researched in terms of mythological origins of names (I have a "thing" for names!) and stories about ancient heroes and the like but some of it was made from whole cloth or "inspired" by old legends. Take Jenny Greenteeth, for example: in the legends, she's nothing like the character of the same name in Unseelie outside of a few key similarities. Characters like Alfhild and Cadfael aren't based on any historical or legendary characters pre se but I was definitely inspired by some ancient stories when creating them!

3. Is Unseelie a romance?

Yep, but that's not the sole focus--there's a war, conflict between humans and supernaturals, self-discovery... It's pretty complex!

4. Did your background prepare you for writing or is it something that just "happened"?

I never went to school for creative writing though I did consider it! I was always making up stories about imaginary friends as a kid and later writing them down, at the encouragement of my mother and grandmother. I remember making little books at my grandma's house, stapling them together to "bind" them and giving them to my grandparents for the bookshelf! Writing just grew out of that early fantasy life and the support of my mom and maternal grandmother.

5. What's your next project?

Other than finishing grad school? I have several stories in the works right now but the one in the home-stretch is the first of a trilogy about demons and some pretty ancient alliances that carry into the modern world. It's another supernatural-romance story but much different in tone and characters than Unseelie. It's more of a mystery than not but it's definitely supernatural romance.

6. You work on more than one story at once then?

Definitely. I get ideas and have to start writing them out before I lose them. Some authors keep notebooks of plot ideas or characters, I keep files on my hard drive (backed up to the moon and back--I'm super careful about that!). I have snippets of stories, some all the way up to their fifth and sixth chapter, waiting in the wings. I tend to work on the story whose characters are most insistent on getting written first.

7. How does writing impact your life outside of the process?

Oh, it's pretty much in every aspect of my life. If I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it and it's become a very big part of my life. It's gone from me poking at a NaNoWriMo story to getting published by Drollerie Press. Unseelie is my first book (I've had short stories in ezines before, and they are now on Drollerie) so of course I was really excited during the entire process. Now that Unseelie is out and available since December on Drollerie's site, Mobipocket and Fictionwise, the excitement is still there but it's getting spread out to my WIPs as well because now I know what it's like!

Links:
http://www.meredithholmes.com/
http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18_41
Email Meredith at: meri.holmes (at ) gmail (dot) com

Thank you again, Meredith, for sharing your inspiring journey with us. I wish you the best in success! ~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author of Whale Song