IT’S MARCH MADNESS TIME!

 

I wonder if there is such a thing as a literary masochist. There is a group of writers who tweet under the hashtag #wipmadness and spend all of March frantically dredging up words with which to reach writing goals during that span of thirty-one days. It’s something like a spring version of NaNoWriMo. Not only have they done it before, they’re about to do it again.  They’re crazy!

This is where I admit I’m one of them.

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Last March I committed myself to participate in Seekerville’s Speedbo as well as March Madness and I did NaNoWriMo in November. I should have been committed myself, period! It was frazzling! I’m not sure I’m up for it again this year, and yet… and yet….

Life doesn’t skid to a stop just because I want to focus on writing my way through a month of days. To meet my oh-so-public goals means eeking out writing moments in between all the other ordinary daily demands. When I stop to think about it, I realize that’s a normal occurrence for most published writers. (If you doubt me, check out Jessica Keller’s guest post yesterday on the Seekerville blog.) If I haven’t the discipline to pursue my own proclaimed goals how can I expect to meet editorial commitments and deadlines if and when my publishing dream becomes a reality?

Talked my way right into that trap, didn’t I?

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So yes, today is the first day of thirty-one where I will settle down to work on specific March Madness goals. I’ve evaluated my resources, however, and decided it isn’t realistic to tackle both #wipmadness and Speedbo this year. I’ll sit in the stands, however, and cheer my fellow Seekervillians onward towards their goals, as I busily keep up with my own scribblings. Each Friday I’ll report here on my success (or lack of it – honesty is an important part of accountability).

Check in at Denise Jaden’s blog today if you also have writing goals to reach and would like to join our determined little band, or just leave a comment if you prefer the role of encourager. That’s an important job, too.

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It’s coming: a new month… a new season… a time of preparation

Yesterday was the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday we begin again. Advent – advenio, “to come to” – is a four week period when we prepare for the coming of the Christ. We prepare for his birth at Christmas, his coming into our lives, and his eventual Second Coming.

For many, this preparation also means getting organized for the December 25th celebration… gift purchases, food preparation, home decoration. My hubby has put up outside Christmas lights already, although he won’t turn them on until this weekend. I can hardly wait! I love the special holiday lights that sparkle through December nights. But none of them can equal the glory of God’s light.

This was sunrise a couple weeks ago while we were at our Cariboo cabin.

I began my NaNoWriMo month of writing there, pulling out my laptop every morning soon after dawn when the men left for their day of hunting. Without my usual daily distractions I accumulated words in excess of the daily average and returned home to post over 18,000 words on Day #10. Since then… well, let’s just say I haven’t quite maintained that average.

November 30th, and its conclusion of NaNoWriMo, is creeping steadily closer. I may or may not complete 50,000 words by then, but I will have made significant progress on the first draft of a new novel. I will be ready to change my focus from intense writing to a more normal pace which will give me time to also concentrate on Advent.

I love all the different preparations that will come with the new month. The house will have evergreen boughs and twinkling lights, and the fragrance of sugar cookies and shortbread. There will be family and friends visiting, special music playing, and wrapped presents under a tree. I hope there will be a little snow, too, although I know better than to count on it.

And there will also be time — time to ponder the coming miracle of God’s personal Christmas gift to the world, to me. Oh, the wonder of it!

What’s your favourite part of this season of preparation?

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The Missing Bits

It’s not fair! I went on a personal writing retreat and while I was gone, all the lovely fall colours that had barely begun to emerge before I left, arrived and departed again.

In late October, for instance, the leaves of our ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese Maple tree were their usual deep burgundy. While my back was turned, they turned… and fell. All that glorious colour is now merely a blood red puddle on the ground. I missed the best part of the show.

While I was pushing to craft my draft novel for NaNoWriMo, I had no thought for what might be happening back in my garden at home.  When I returned, it was a shock to discover a gap between what was, and what now is.

And as I read over parts of my budding manuscript I recognize a familiar truth: there are gaps in my storytelling, too. While I know what happened, my readers are not being given the privilege of seeing those rich details for themselves. They’re still in my head. Mundane bits can be skipped over, but there are some happenings that should be captured in the narrative to add spectacular colour to the story.

I may be back from my offline writing retreat but I still have almost three weeks of NaNoWriMo writing to do. When December arrives I’ll be doing major revisions on the new story that’s currently obsessing me, and I’ll remember the bare trees and all those leaves on the ground. My revisions will include the addition of missing details and description.

(A click will enlarge for a closer look.)

What kind of details do you think readers want to see? What kind would they prefer to skip over?

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“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about,
he may omit things that he knows.
The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to
only one ninth of it being above water.” 

Ernest Hemingway
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All Hallows’ Eve

Some say All Hallows’ Eve has Christian roots, while others suggest they are Pagan. Either way, it would be hard to convince our little ones that there is anything but carved pumpkins, candy and costumes associated with their Hallowe’en traditions. As they traipse from door to door I doubt many of them  even know about the feast of All Saints.

But the children do feast… on candied apples and carmel popcorn, and a great assortment of calorie-laden goodies. (My scale will vouch for just how calorie-laden they are, too, after I indulge in the annual consumption of the leftovers!) We rarely have many youngsters find their way to our door, but that never deters me from buying a good supply (always of my favourite sweets) to have on hand “just in case” this year is the exception. I mean, it would never do not to have an adequate supply if more than the usual six arrived on my doorstep, now would it?

Tonight at midnight will mark the kick-off of the annual NaNoWriMo writing endeavour — November’s “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” in which I will once again join hundreds of thousands of other equally-crazy participants around the world as we scribble our way to the first draft of a 50,000 word novel.

It will also mark the start of another blogging hiatus for me, as I concentrate not only on my NaNo commitment but also on readying another manuscript for submission. I’ll return to posting here on November 12th. The scale will no doubt tattle about what I ate during my absence to keep my writing muse cooperative, but I don’t aim to discuss the numbers at all! Especially if trick-or-treaters are scarce around here tonight.

Happy Hallowe’en!

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Fall Changes Everything

Autumn brings changes, some of which we embrace, while others… uh, not so much. The weather is always one of the latter. Grey skies. Rain. Fog. Dark mornings. This fall a couple catastrophic events are being thrown into the mix.

The west coast of Canada experienced a magnitude 7.7 earthquake Saturday night… a big one, although miles deep and remote enough that no significant damage was done. But the newscasts are filled with interviews, information and warnings about being prepared for what might yet come.

At the same time, the eastern seaboard is bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. It’s a nasty one, likely to affect 60,000,000 Americans before it crosses into Canada on Tuesday.

Amid the beauty of fall’s changing colours, good weather and bad come and go. Even when the sun shines, fall still heralds its downward turn by flinging leaves to the ground where they’ll wait to be buried in the annual coffin of ice and snow.

I love early fall with its bronzing of trees and shrubs and crisp, bright days. But I’m not ready to face the next phase — the not-quite-winter-but-it’s-coming days of

muddied wet dog,
dead and rotting garden perennials,
and sodden everything.

Boots and rain jackets,
and bare trees
dripping drops down my neck.

The end of October is a time of desperation and I’m going to put off its changes as long as possible. Maybe now would be a good time to gather up summer’s photos and do some scrapbooking. It’s that, or start planning for my Christmas cards… and I refuse to embark on anything related to Christmas before Halloween is even over. Besides, it’s much too early to think Christmas, isn’t it? Tell me it is! Please! It’s still autumn.

Maybe I could delve into NaNoWriMo preparations — some outlining, perhaps. Not that I’ve ever been much of a story plotter, but there are all those “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” coming up very soon. I’m not sure why I put myself through this every year, but I’m registered again. How about you?

What does the end of October mean to you? Are you a seasonal optimist, or one of the gloom-and-doom types?

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Only a week until NaNoWriMo!

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Eep! November is only a week away and everyone’s talking about NaNoWriMo – the thirty-day writing marathon that I’m trying desperately to ignore. If you’re out of the loop, it’s NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, and it involves writing a complete 50,000-word novel during the month of November.

It began as a lark in 1999 with twenty-one “overcaffeinated yahoos” in the San Francisco Bay area, and year by year has exploded into a worldwide online event that in 2010 involved 200,500 participants. The story of how it happened is found here.

It’s a tortuous, and exhilarating run of madness, and it works. If your writing needs a kick-start and you’re willing to make a commitment to write at least 1,667 words a day, without editing (because there’s no time to edit – you do that when November is over), it’s great motivation.

I’ve participated four of the past five years, but this year my enthusiasm has waned before November even arrives. I have other writing on the go and want to stay focused on it. There may be 1,667 words written in a day, or there may not be. There may be more on some days, but at the moment I don’t want to be conscious of having to log in and report the numbers. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.

How about you? Will you be taking part in NaNoWriMo? What would be its advantages or disadvantages for you?

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Now What? Life After NaNoWriMo

Around the world red-eyed wrimos are looking at the numbers in awe and whispering, “I contributed words to that total.” Then they look down at their NaNo manuscript with despair and groan, “But it’s all crap!”

 

Yup, that’s the curse of taking part in NaNoWriMo. Participants worldwide wrote a total of 2,872,682,109 words in November but many of them will disappear in December with a stroke of the delete key as frantic revisions get underway. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone to peer over our shoulder and see the caliber of writing that we threw onto the page in our November 1,667-words-a-day sprint.

 

Mind you, some wrote novels just for the sake of saying they wrote a novel, regardless of its quality, and they’ve already put it aside, not caring to write again until next November. But for many of us there was always the intent to carry on after November 30th and revise and refine the nucleus of a worthwhile story. We’ll take time to reflect on it, and then we’ll go back to work and start chiseling away the rough stuff to find the gems within. That’s when the real work begins.

The NaNoWriMo website has a page with tips and tidbits on the post-NaNo experience, and there’s a forum called “December and Beyond” for those who want to continue sharing the journey known as NaNo afterlife.

 

Me? First I have to clean grungy bathrooms, search out coffee-stained clothes to launder, check back shelves in the fridge for furry green stuff, and generally try to catch up on all the chores that were ignored during November. Oh, yes, and maybe get some sleep and start some Christmas baking.

 

In between I’ll be back at the keyboard. I only wrote 33,286 words last month. I have a novel to finish.

What are you working on during December?

Progress of sorts…

 

One week today and it’s all over. NaNoWriMo, that is. The writing won’t be, I can guarantee that. Even if I finish this novel, there’s another simmering on the back burner, its aroma wafting through my words, teasing and tantalizing. A writer is never finished writing.

My NaNo progress has been slow so far this month. Despite writing every day, the word count continues to fall below the needed daily average. At this rate I certainly won’t make the 50,000 by month’s end, but I’m not so inclined to toss verbiage onto a page just for the sake of racing to “The End” this time.  I’m conscious of a needy protagonist that deserves more focused attention, a storyline that will wander if given half a chance, and several sneaky adjectives and adverbs just waiting to slip in from the margin if I don’t take the time to find stronger alternatives.

So it’s a slow and steady approach right now, which is why I qualify for this “Progress Badge” offered by Merit Badger… “for getting just the tiniest bit closer to where you want to be, even if you’re not sure you’ll ever make it all the way there.”

 

How about you? NaNoWriMo projects aside, are you a dash-to-the-end kind of writer or more of a slow-and-steady sort? Can you regularly chalk up 3,000-word days, or do you have to stop and ponder a lot? What kind of writer are you?

Making Better Use of My Time

 

Google Reader helps keep my blog-reading habit under control. One day I took the time to enter the URLs of my favourite blogs as ‘subscriptions’ and now I can access them all in one place. A quick glance lets me know which ones have new postings so I don’t have to waste time travelling to each bookmarked blog to check.

Sounds simple enough, but on second thought my opening sentence is misleading. Better to say that Google Reader consolidates my favourite blogs into one place. Period. Nothing really keeps my blog hopping under control except self discipline or good old lack of time. But what it does is allow me to use my blog-reading time to better advantage.

That’s how I managed to catch up on some of my favourites while taking a brief break from NaNoWriMo this morning. That’s how I discovered I’d missed two valuable posts by Rosslyn Elliott. That’s how I was inspired to create this post. I still haven’t made it back to NaNoWriMo.

Something Rosslyn said created an eureka moment – one of those ‘I knew that but she said it so much better than I could’ thoughts. In “What Makes a Novel Feel Real? – Part 1”, she suggested, “Don’t get so focused on a slamdunk pace that [you] leave out the everyday moments, the normalcy that makes the novel feel real.… I’m not saying we should never have burning buildings, but unless we balance those events with the more mundane dramas that fill most of our lives, novels feel fake.”

I’m not going to re-run her posts, but I do suggest you go read both of them. I’m heading back to Google Reader now to re-read her Part 2. Then I really have to get back to my NaNo novel. At 21,300 words I still have a long way to go, and today is already the middle of our NaNo’ing month!

To reiterate Rosslyn’s question, what does it take to make a novel feel ‘real’ to you?

Distractions

You know how it is. Good intentions get you started and then distractions interrupt. You hold out against them for a while, but eventually you figure, hey, just give in and get them out of your system.

Wednesday it was the outdoors beckoning. Welcome sunshine urged us outside. DH decided to put up the Christmas lights and I couldn’t resist a bit of long-overdue fall gardening followed by a wander down to the marsh.

Thursday morning was for Remembering, while the afternoon was for baking. In our family November 11th is also the traditional day for baking Christmas fruitcakes. You just can’t ignore a tradition.

Even when I settle down to write, distractions come peering in the window, begging for attention.

So, you see, it’s easy to rationalize why my NaNoWriMo efforts aren’t staying quite in line with the daily average required. I should be in excess of 21,600 words as I start in to write again this morning. My 17,800 fall considerably short of that.

It’s those darned distractions.

Are you a disciplined writer and make your daily word count goal without any excuses, or do distractions sometimes de-rail you? What kind of distractions tempt you the most?