Finishing NaNoWriMo 2013, or "What I've Learned From Last Time"

Last year, this time, I was a touch over a week done with NaNoWriMo. I hit the 50,000 word mark with relative and quick ease, and then quickly and unceremoniously wrote the rest of the book.

I loved the experience of NaNoWriMo and winning for the first time. As for the book, I didn't love it. I didn't even really like it, though I certainly didn't hate it. I let the book just sit there. While I like some of the ideas in it, I'm not sure I wrote a book that I could muster any real passion for. I wrote it partially as a joke, mostly to make fun of Twilight and vampire fiction in general.

But, anymore, that's like kicking a dead horse. And, while many of us still mock Twilight for all of its problems, the relevance of doing so has diminished a lot. That book will probably never see the editor's eye, much less the light of day.

Heading into November, this time, I wanted to approach with a subject that I would stay passionate about. About a week before NaNo began, I completely abandoned that and decided to base the book around a woman I know in real life, who angered me. You see, this woman is into her 40's, but still acts like a high school student. She is manipulative, insecure, says bad things about people behind her back, and butts into business that is not her own.

I created a character that was loosely inspired by this woman. I should have known that it would lead to problems.

The first three days of November also coincided with the National Film Challenge. So, day one, before we got the info we needed to make our short film, I pumped out as many words as I possibly could. It was a decent enough start.

After the film challenge, I put all my focus on the book. Tentatively titled "The Tastemaker", I hit 16,000 words after a week, and felt like I was in cruise control. But then, I hit a wall. Not the dreaded Week 2 wall that so many run into during NaNoWriMo.

This was a wall of apathy, but I ran into it far earlier than I did with the vampire novel. At least with the vampire novel, I could keep writing based on injecting action scenes whenever things slowed down.

But with "Tastemaker", a light-hearted and sweet rom-com type story, I was out of my element. My stories are usually bleak, dark, and filled with bad things happening to already damaged people. "Tastemaker" was about two people trying to find love against the machinations of a nosy shrew. Simple. Not bleak. Was actually kind of sweet.

Not something I generally write.

So, at 16k words in, I had a decision to make. Continue writing a story that was rapidly degenerating into a petty reflection of my feelings towards a real life individual, or cut my losses and try to catch up with a different?

Many people told me to keep the word count from the previous story. Just add it to whatever new novel I started.

I couldn't do that. If I was going to start over, I was going to really start over.

And so, reaching into notes of various characters that I created in the past but have never had a story they could call home, I began writing my new novel. And instead of hitting the ground running and burning through word count and material quickly and viciously, I kept a far steadier pace.

Last year was about power writing. This year was about methodical, even-handed writing where I made consciously important decisions for the book before writing. Through all of that, even with being a week behind, I managed to win NaNoWriMo. What's more, the book has a lot of material still left to cover. All I can say about that is that I'm in love with the book more than I ever could be with Tastemaker or the vampire story.

And I think I'm becoming a writer who prefers method to speed. Even with my slower approach, I was pumping out 2,000 words a day, on average, with many days coming in far more. But every word felt better. Every sentence was far more lovingly crafted than either of the other two books. Yes, I will still need to do revisions on this novel, but everything was so much better and so much more thought out.

I think this will be my new writing style. Even where I found problems in the narrative, I was finding them while writing, as opposed to figuring it out after. I immediately knew, being so in touch with both story and character, what I would fix on my second, third, and fourth passes on the novel. It's helped me with my fear of future drafts.

This NaNoWriMo was far better than last year's. Not only did I still finish when I had to start over, but I also found myself passionate about this project.

Another lesson here; for the sake of the legal system and your sanity, only ever take traits from people in your life when writing. Don't try to model a fictional character after a real person with the intent of writing revenge fiction. It's unsatisfying and ultimately petty. And is a quick way to ruin your story.

To those who hate NaNoWriMo and the people who participate....

I have found that the people who hate NaNoWriMo are petty, little people who are struggling with jealousy in the worst way.

Now, I'm not talking about people who have no interest in NaNoWriMo or don't think it will fit their writing style. Those individuals generally don't insult the people who do like NaNoWriMo. They have simply come to the conclusion that it is not for them. Perfectly fine. Perfectly rational.

But for those who argue the event is a waste of time, or that it's some sort of vanity project, or that it's stupid, the consistent trait among those hateful persons is that they are jealous.

Why be jealous? Is it because you don't think you can do it?

Well, I have an idea. Next year, in November, let me know. And we'll accept you with wide open arms. To do what? To write. Why not try it?

You'll be surprised that you will have something to say in the world of writing. That you will be able to write a novel. And, when the end of the month rolls around, whether you have written 50k words or maybe even less, you'll have found that NaNoWriMo has been something you never expected it to be; an important part of your life.

Kevin Smith talked about how the world was filled with "Why?" and that you need to surround yourself with people who will say, "Why not?"

If you find yourself questioning why someone would do NaNoWriMo, it's time to take a step back and really ask yourself why you're not supporting this or the person. Is it personal bias? Do you really support the arts?

Instead of, "Why are you doing NaNoWriMo? That's stupid." it should be "Why not give it a go?"

I'll be the one asking, "Why not?" at every turn, even if you've called me stupid for my love of National Novel Writing Month.

Anger is a funny thing

I don't know what drove me to be so annoyed at everything today. I hate that. A bunch of little things, I guess. I'm not seeing my kids these holidays. Nothing for it, unfortunately. Money is tight and you have to do what you have to do.

So, I'm not really mad about that. Just sad. I miss my kids.

Had a long conversation, online, with an old friend. And something about his insecurities just annoyed me. This has been part of a long trend of getting annoyed way too easily by people. I don't want to be that person. And it's not everyone who is annoying. Just select people.

In one case, I feel bad because this poor person is really enthusiastic. Does not deserve my ire one bit. So, in that situation, I simply ignore this individual.

Another person who has been bothering me is someone that I, blissfully, don't have to spend any time with. This person is belittling friends of mine, going on about how stupid NaNoWriMo is (a few of my friends, my girlfriend, and I are all involved in NaNo), and is generally obnoxious with their opinions. (If you've noticed that I've not been using pronouns, this is on purpose. Save for my old friend, but he'll never read this crap anyway.)

I don't know. I don't want to feel this anger. Between cursing the luck of a former friend who has done a million percent less work than my friend Nick and I have done, to wishing things could just turn around, I'm unhappy. I mean, I'm happy in the general sense. I'm not depressed. I hate people who throw that word around.

But I am unhappy. Maybe unsatisfied is a better word. I wish I could get a movie project off the ground. I wish I knew how to market my books. I wish I could figure it out. But, if it were so easy, everyone would do it.

I won't stop writing. I won't stop trying. At the very least, it's my art. And I can't ever stop.

1k word sprint for October 2nd, 2013

(Word sprints are a way I get ready to write. I like to write a thousand words as quickly as possible. I do nothing with these little pieces of writing. They just get the mind going. They are usually incoherent messes, filled with bad grammar, poor word choice, and errors galore. But that's okay. The point is to get the brain working.)

“If you have to throw up, there's a bag in front of you,” the man in the white lab coat said. He said it like he was trying to reassure me, but in reality, he sounded less reassuring and more forced. In fact, he seemed disappointed somehow, like I was his child and I had just done something really bad.

Of course, I had done something bad. And I suppose he had every right to be less than happy with me given the current situation we were in. I should have drank more water, not a liter of diet soda. I should have eaten something more than lo mein. I should really keep myself in better health in general. But as I don't tend to really think about my body or my long term future, I found myself in this situation, a needle sticking out of my arm, my mind fuzzy, and nausea embracing me with this sickly hug.

Before that day, I never donated plasma. Donate is the wrong word. Donate implies you're just giving your plasma away. And I wasn't. I was selling it. Perfectly legitimate business transaction. People need plasma. Companies like this one will buy your plasma and sell it to hospitals and the like.

You can make money. And you are helping a lovely cause. It's all great.

Unless you don't drink enough water or take care of your body. And then you find yourself in trouble.

At first, I thought the nausea that swept over me was because I might just be more afraid of needles than I would have liked to admit to myself. But then the sensation kept growing and I felt lightheaded. One of the attendants dressed in nurse's scrubs walked by and asked if I was okay.

I don't think I spoke. I don't remember saying anything. But I did shake my head in the negative, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by two other people in scrubs and the aforementioned man in the white lab coat, with his very serious expression, one that could make anyone feel like they've let their father down.

Funny thing is I was already good at letting my father down. So I've seen that look a million times before. When I wrecked my car having only just had it for three days. The look. Getting kicked out of college after my father made a huge donation to the school to help ensure my successful acceptance into said school. The look. The time I committed tax fraud. The look.

Now, you might be questioning my integrity as a human being. Fair enough. I'm not the greatest of guys. I'll admit to that right up front. But I'm still a human being, yeah? I have needs. I have wants and desires. I have to eat. I have to sleep. I have to piss.

All that stuff.

And it's not like I ever killed anyone. Well, before that day. But we'll get to that later. Reality is, this run in with the plasma donation place was just the beginning to what would be a long and ultimately painful, unhappy day.

I mean, some good came of all of this. Some. I think. I hope. But again, there's so much to get to. And I'm not used to telling people stories. In spite of everything, I'm still a pretty shy person. Been that way my whole life.

I don't know what it is, really. My dad. He ain't shy. The man can talk to anyone and convince them of anything. He doesn't pull punches either, my dad. He coulda called Richard Nixon that he was, in fact, a crook, right to ol' Tricky Dick's face. And Nixon would just embrace my father and thank him for his consideration.

Because my dad is the kind of person with a power that very few people have. It's a kind of people power. I think in times where countries gathered up real big armies and invaded other countries, built empires and shit like that, my dad would have been the guy leading the army.

He was like Napoleon, you know? Or all those other guys. I don't know all their names, because I didn't pay real good attention in school. Sort of jerked off most of the time. But you probably figured that when I said I got kicked out of the college that my father pushed to get me into.

Fact is, I'm nothing like my old man. He has direction in his life. Me, I can't get even get pricked with a fucking needle without my body turning to shit.

“Sir. If you feel the need to vomit, the bag is right in front of you,” the doctor guy said again. I don't know if he was a doctor. I don't really know how these places work. I just know that when I looked at my chest, there was a bag laying on it.

I was on my back, see, hooked up to this machine. They said something, when they first pricked me and started pulling out my blood, something to do with my blood going in this bowl inside the machine, and the machine spinning it so fast that it made the plasma stuff pull apart from the blood cells. Or something like that. I don't know. It's all Greek, as they say.

Well, suddenly, once I wasn't doing so well, we had one of the nurse-looking people clamping these plastic, vice things on the tube that was coming out of me, and getting ready to pull the needle out.

Another was holding the bag up to my mouth in case I spewed. And there were probably other things going on too, but my memory is a little fuzzy on the whole deal.

Last time I try to give plasma. It seemed promising. I need the money. What with my father cutting me off and all.

Seriously. For the first time in my life, on that lovely little day, I had nowhere to fall back on. No job possibilities, no skills or talents, nothing I could use. I wasn't good at anything. I couldn't talk to people very well. Something my father taught me when I was growing up was that people who weren't good at many things but had excellent speaking and communication skills could always compensate for a lack of ability, or education, or even connections, connections being the thing that my father always said were the most important.

Being able to talk your way out of anything was why politicians were the way they were, and why they were in charge.

Serial Novel - Prologue

PROLOGUE

The creak of the rocking chair didn't bother Gwen Holcomb anymore. As she sat on the couch, she ignored the sound and stared at but not really reading the book in her hands. The chair had been making that awful sound on its own for the past forty years. No sense in getting nervous about it now.

But tonight was different in many ways. Gwen knew this. Gwen dreaded this.

Still, she put any creeping, horrible thoughts out of her mind and tried to focus on something outside of her internal fears and the external ambiance of the evening. The atmosphere almost felt afraid. The air quivered with the nervous anticipation that something was coming. Something terrible.

Gwen cleared her mind, doing everything she could to think of nothing. Nothing at all. Because only nothing could keep her from dreading the horror that was inexorably marching toward her. Such a quiet evening to be pondering such horrible ideas.

Gwen looked up from her book to the window across the living room, thinking she might have heard a noise from that direction. After several minutes of staring at the window, however, the only noise in the room was the constant creak of the rocking chair, which was still moving on its own. She returned to the book, still not having read a word of it, and realized she was holding her breath.

She exhaled, but almost as though it were a premonitory response to her sudden relief, the room instantly fell to an awful chill, her escaping breath misting, dissipating visibly as it left her lips.

“I'm not ready,” Gwen pleaded. As though it was giving an angry reply, the room began to shake, old pictures on the wall began to vibrate, and the air grew from chilled menace to a threatening and frightening aura.

“You have no choice,” an unhappily familiar voice announced. “You've run out of time.”

Gwen closed her eyes, for she knew who would be arriving shortly. Knew what would be arriving.

Serial Novel - The Why

Why am I writing a free serial novel?

Because I want to. That's really the only answer. I have a story idea, I like it, I've outlined it, and I'd like to present it to everyone. And I thought it would be fun to present the novel in much the same way as Dickens did in days long gone; as a serial.

Originally, I thought I'd release it as a daily thing, since I'm a few days ahead on the story, but I realized there's something about doing it daily that isn't conducive to the narrative flow of this story. So, I changed my mind to releasing larger quantities weekly. I think this will give for a more satisfying story flow, and will give the audience a chance to spend a little longer with the characters, should they so choose. Except this week, where you will get the Prologue and Chapter One today, and more on Friday. But after this first week, once a week!

The weekly release will also help me with the entire revision thing. That said, I'm sure I will make mistakes. I'm doing this without an editor, and I can only catch so much. Please, dear readers, feel free to point out oddities, errors, and all that fun stuff as you read. I would appreciate it.

At the end of all of this I will release it as a whole, still free, for everyone to download for their reading pleasure.

Now I am doing this for free, but, if you feel like supporting this and other creative endeavors of mine, I will have a donation button to the right side of the screen and one down below. It's not something I expect anyone to do, nor am I going to be upset if no one donates. I'll be writing this book no matter what. And it will be free no matter what. So please, enjoy it as it is released and I thank you all for taking a chance with it!

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two (coming soon)
Chapter Three (coming soon)
Chapter Four (coming soon)
Chapter Five (coming soon)

Why I wrote "Piggy."

"Piggy" (and yes, the quotation marks are part of the actual title) is a story that has lived with me for some time. And it has punished me for some time.

It originally saw life as a short film, or at least, an attempt at a short film. It was a short script I had written that I had wanted to direct and sort of use as my "edgy" directorial debut (at least, my directorial debut in the film world, as I had already directed several plays.)

The fact of the matter was that I wasn't ready and much of what I shot was terrible. I was helped along by several people that I have the pleasure of saying that I still work with, but all of its problems were related to me jumping in without a second look. Sometimes, I don't let planning get in the way of action, which can be a very bad thing.

But the biggest problem with the short film wasn't how badly it was shot, or how inexperienced I was. I don't regret the decision to try to make the movie. I regret what it did to me after the fact.

The subject matter of "Piggy" is something that people aren't generally comfortable with. The short film dealt specifically with the titular character, who happened to be a child molester. Having a pedophile as your lead character is something of a struggle. The film doesn't paint him necessarily as a sympathetic character, in fact quite the opposite, but having to spend even a short film's length with the guy is difficult.

I should have known better. The other problem with the film was that it has cost me opportunities to work with very talented people, and almost cost even more. Several people I still work with have told me that if they'd had a better idea  of the subject matter going into the short film, they probably would never have worked with me in the first place. Kind of heart-breaking to hear, but I guess I could see their point.

The funny thing is I've never experienced anything like what happened in the story. I'm not a victim of molestation. To the best of my knowledge, I've never really known a pedophile. I've never been around the emotions that come with that awful subject. But I felt somehow that I should write the script. Maybe it's because I'm a father and I, like any sane human being, hate pedophiles with a burning rage. But I'm not sure why I felt like I needed to get on a soap box and make a very preachy movie. One that most people would generally agree with. And those who don't... Well, I don't want to know them.

And that might have been the other part of the problem. The film didn't challenge people. It basically restated what most people felt; pedophiles are awful.

There's not really an interesting story.

For a long time, I didn't let myself think about the story. Until one night, when I wasn't exactly in the best mood, (I was actually quite annoyed with several people, and projects not taking off, and an assortment of other minor nuisances) I wrote a summary of the short film. But it wasn't really a summary. It was like a stream of conscious exercise where I wrote many of the events of the short film as prose.

I'd labeled it Chapter One, and then started working. Why? I'm not sure. But when I'd first written this chapter one, I wasn't sure where I was going next. Then, Emma James appeared to me. See, the short film never dealt with the victims. But that's the problem. We all know how bad the act is. What's it like to experience things afterward?

But, there was something else itching in my mind as I wrote what would become the second chapter. Justice, a character who is only ever referenced in the short film, is Piggy's daughter. And I realized I wanted to have her in this story.

And then it clicked. These two girls needed to meet. And I wanted to see what would happen when they did.

That was a story. Piggy was never supposed to be the most important character. But he, through his selfish, sick act would serve as the impetus for events that would irrevocably change the lives of these two girls in a way that was very fascinating to me.

I can't regret the short film. Without it, the novel doesn't exist. And of all the things I've written, I dearly love this book. I love the characters of Emma and Justice, who have become very real to me, as have all the characters in this book.

I enjoyed writing the book, with the exception of a couple of scenes involving the titular character which were difficult to write, and I will forever cherish the memory of the process.

While I'm excited to write future titles (and I might just be returning to some of these characters in the near future) this book will always hold a special place in my heart.

And if you'd like to read it, head over to its Amazon page and give it a try. Thanks!