On NaNoWriMo and Cutting the Fat

During a previous NaNoWriMo, I became incredibly ill during the second week.  It was never diagnosed, despite multiple trips to the doctor.  However, I suspect I had contracted mono, due to the fatigue that was ever-present for 2-3 months after.  I continued writing during the illness, attempting to power through the exhaustion and malaise, but most of what I wrote ended up being unusable.  I realized this when I sat down to edit over the summer.

I had written many extended scenes full of fun details and quirky dialogue, but all those words, line after line, served only to introduce one idea or a brief event.  Better to cut to the chase, fit that single idea or event into the story another way.

Farewell, 10,000 words or more...

Those chapters are now trimmed from the novel, to be included on my website as bonus content. I hope my readers will enjoy these "deleted scenes" that take them beyond the novel, further into the lives of Dek Sundowner, Mer Pampero, and Shanna Tramontane, even if the storytelling did not push the plot forward enough to remain in the final draft.

What do you do with the scenes you excise from your work? Re-purpose them elsewhere? Say goodbye and banish them to the trash forever? Tell me what you like to do.

Remember, tough but tender is an editor's love,
Ren D.

Music Moves the Savage Writer

I'll be the first to admit it--I was never someone who could listen to music all day, while studying, while working, while waiting around--I found it far too distracting.

Nevertheless, music is a convenient writer's tool. For the small cost of a few megabytes on your laptop or mp3 player, it's always at hand. It can transport you to a different place or a different time. It can block out extraneous noises by playing different noises in your ear. (I guess.) My doctoral dissertation soundtrack consisted of 17 songs on one CD, which I played on an endless loop while I was drudging away underground (basement lab). I even thanked "die neue deutsche Härte" band OOMPH! in my dissertation acknowledgements.

Would I have been able to block out the loud phone conversations that echoed from the office next door without my music? Maybe, but it was certainly easier with the beautiful, husky voice of OOMPH! frontman Dero Goi in my ears. "Jede Nacht genau der selbe Traum...such mich tief im Abgrund deines Traums, ich liege sechs Fuss tiefer...du suchst mich doch ich bin längst am Ziel..."

Ah...

Ahem. Yes, music is more than art, noise, or a diversion, if you're a writer. While working on The Fracture of a Dream, I sometimes struggled to see the world through the eyes of my characters. The character of Mer Pampero posed a problem, especially. Once just an average woman, she's embittered by the life she's led--rational, most of the time, a mother and wife fiercely protecting her family--but nevertheless filled with built-up resentment and hate. Of all of my characters, she was the one I could characterize the most easily, yet she remained the one whose thoughts I least understood.

I started using music as a way of getting inside her head, of finding her voice. Using the same song every time I wrote her dialogue helped me stay consistent for her character. But, no spoilers! I can't tell you what her song is. Eventually, I began ferreting out perfect songs for each of the protagonists.

Have you read The Fracture of a Dream? What do you think? Which songs best embody Dek Sundowner, Shanna Tramontane, and Mer Pampero? And if you're a writer, how do you use music in your own work? Leave your suggestions below!

Tune in next time,
Ren D. ;)

When We Click

First of all, I have to confess that Camp NaNoWriMo was a spectacular failure this time around.  I somehow thought I could revise my manuscript, take online courses, see friends and family, and job-hunt in earnest while traveling for almost five weeks.

I make myself laugh.  None of that happened in April.  I barely slept.  As usual, I made myself ill.

But you know what did happen?  I found the time to read a few books on my to-read list.

Click, by Ori and Rom Brafman, was among one of my stacks, and much like their book Sway, the narrative was both interesting and highly readable.  Great storytelling job.  Click deals with that special sort of "magic" we encounter -- whether it's an unexpected love connection, a number of complicated factors coming together just so perfectly all at random, or even just the feeling of being "in the zone" while working on a project.

The idea is fascinating, of course.  You probably aren't aware of this, but there's something you use every day that's the product of one of the "clicks" discussed in the book.  Can you guess what it is?

That mystery aside, Click got me thinking about those special people we have in our lives -- the ones we take a shine to right away, the ones we know will be our best friends as soon as we meet.  These are the friends we can fill hours with, chatting away, the ones we trust with our spare keys and secrets, the ones with whom we can pick up where we left off after years of separation, no discomfort or reacclimatization needed.  (Don't worry; I'm going somewhere with this.)

We are our best selves, our most unguarded, authentic selves when we are with these people.  And, in our writing?  When our characters are with someone with whom they click...that's when our readers (and we, as writers) get a dose of who they are, really.  Their unfiltered personalities, their motivations, their anxieties, their dreams -- all these vibrancies can come through, if you get these characters together with the right person.

Many people act differently or speak differently, according to the situation they're in or the people they are with.  (These social chameleons are generally known as high self-monitors, in case you're interested.  They're always managing the impressions they leave behind.)  This behavior is perfectly natural.  It can make for a confusing character, however, when you're developing your protagonist.  How can your readers get a good sense of who the character is, without needing you to tell them directly?

Get your character into a good click situation.  Then, just let go.  Whoever your protag is, just let that personality flow out onto the paper.

Ren D.

Let It Grab You...Then Use It

There are certainly moments when I just don't feel like writing, or when I don't feel like writing a particular chapter or scene.

I let my mood grab me and work on the scene I'm the most excited about at the time or the scene where the atmosphere or tension most fits what I am experiencing in real life.  There's always editing later.  I'd rather have the words, the thoughts, the feelings flowing because I'm in that place or in that mindset at the moment than have my fingers stuttering, trying to squeeze incongruent words out on the computer keyboard.

This doesn't mean what I do doesn't require imagination.  It always does -- and I enjoy making things up rather than drawing from my personal experiences.  It's not interesting to write strictly about myself or the people I know.  However, using my current environment or feelings helps make the writing meaningful to me.  Just in case no one else enjoys my work, at least I know I do.

Ren D.

Do I Really Have to Do Research?

Why wouldn't you?  Research enriches your story.  The details provide color.  I don't want my characters to sound exactly like me.  I don't want their whole world to be composed of the limited extent of my own existence.

I like to learn.  I like to fill my head with interesting tidbits and research factoids.

I don't write to educate, really.  The Fracture of a Dream, for instance, is not a textbook or a science book, even though the characters' motivations and behavior are often based on existing empirical research.  No, I don't feel like I became a lecturer at any point.  However, I do want information in the book to be based on facts when possible.

There were some parts of the book that I didn't want to research in depth, particularly the medical and legal aspects.  I knew there were too many ways to get it wrong, and as I said before, I wasn't writing a textbook.

Aside from that, those details were not the focus of the book, and I didn't want to detract from the characters and their relationships in an attempt to be completely factually accurate.  Thus, I left things unsaid -- they may happen behind the scenes and are only referenced in conversations with other characters -- or vague.  Dek Sundowner is not a doctor, psychologist, or lawyer, for example, so his understanding of matters from those professions is very basic anyway.

Not researching those areas deeply is not a problem, in my opinion.  Other details, however -- technology of historical time periods, the sensation or taste of a particular dish, the names of types of flowers or animals -- those can be important.  I think they take the story to a new level of reality.

This is why you'll probably never see one of my characters drinking coffee.  I refuse to do any research on that beverage.  ;)

That's my two cents.  What about you, fellow writers?  How do you approach research for your works of fiction?

Rendy "Research" Diller

But Those Distractions Are So...Shiny...

Focus, focus, focus!

While writing, it's so easy to pop open your web browser to "look up a word" or "do some fact-checking" and then, hours later, you find yourself still reading your Twitter feed, 'Like'ing things on Facebook, or lost in an endless maze of Wikipedia entries (darn them for linking to so many other enticing entries!)...where did the time go?

I'm not even going to get into the research on distraction.

Okay, fine, I will.  Just one article -- read this study on how checking Facebook even just once within a 15-minute period was enough to derail student productivity.

I'm easily distracted.  Even Microsoft Word is too distracting for me!  All those things to click on across the top?  Writing with my text surrounded by those huge margins, or trying to read anything that's double-spaced?  I can't do it!  Something about the empty space makes me lose my focus.

I used to do all my writing in Notepad, but it came with the added danger of no auto-save feature.  I could lose whatever I was working on if the power went out or if my computer froze.

All the advances of the modern world, and I can't even control my Internet-checking impulses, right?  (It's called addiction.)  Finally, I looked into distraction-free writing tools and tested out a few.  I wanted one that I could carry around on my USB drive to move from computer to computer, and I wanted it to be plain and easy on the eyes.  Naturally, as a starving writer, I also wanted it to be free.

There are many similar applications out there, so be sure to research on your own.  FocusWriter is the one I currently use.  It allows for some formatting (like bold and italics), so that I don't have to search through my text later to add it in.  It also auto-saves as long as I've saved the file under a name already.  I can even set it to make clacky typewriter sounds for writing days when I feel particularly old-fashioned.

Got suggestions for me or other writers?  Let me know in the Comments field!

Ren D.

Where I've Come From on My Writer's Journey

I've been writing fiction since I was a child, inspired by the thousands of wonderful books (and their authors*) that I devoured, flying from cover to cover, book to book.

I never got to take a course in creative writing.  I just knew writing was fun, and I loved to do it.

When I was in middle school (Go Cards!) and high school (Go Vikes!), I was fairly prolific and wrote pages upon pages of adventure stories, starring my friends in quirky situations.  I wrote about calculators, people's shoes, penguins learning to cook, purple monkeys, shrunken apple heads, and much more nonsense that I don't care to admit to these days.

I even won a handful of writing contests.  They don't mean anything to anyone now, but I'll always recall them with a little pride.

It was easier back then.  I remember summer afternoons jamming out pages of dialogue, single-spaced in the smallest font possible, laughing to myself as I got my unsuspecting friends in and out of bizarre situations.  I didn't overthink every word.

My audience consisted of my friends, so I didn't understand the concept of character development.  I didn't need it -- everyone knew the characters in my stories and what they were like.

And, GUILTY, almost all of my stories were left unfinished.  I even titled one of the stories "The Unfinished Story of..." because I knew I'd never finish it, even from the start.  Either I didn't know when (or how) to end a story, or as it often happened, I started writing with enthusiasm, only for that enthusiasm to peter out as I got more involved in schoolwork.

When I began thinking seriously about a writing career, I knew I would have to stop leaving stories unfinished.  As far as I know, most people don't like to be left hanging, wondering if their books are missing the last few pages.  Thus, The Fracture of a Dream started off with an ending, and I planned the major events and timeline clearly before I began writing.

Details changed as I began the actual writing process, of course, but having the structure of a planned plot has allowed me to write the story out of order and leave parts unwritten when the details were not yet clear to me.  It's worked out very well for me, and I completely intend to model future writing projects on this one.

Ren D.

*No authors were harmed in my childhood quest to read the entire library.  Lest you think I'm a cannibal, I didn't actually devour any authors -- just their inspiring ideas!

Where Does an Aspiring Writer Even Start?

If you're like me, you've got stories you want to tell.  Cool ideas.  Fantastic characters.  Dreams of being the next (fill in the blank here).  You've eyed the spot on the bookstore shelves where your novels, impressively thick with glossy covers, will sit, waiting for your enthusiastic fans to scoop up in excitement.  You've practiced your autograph, just like so.

Maybe, like me, you've wanted to take part in NaNoWriMo for years but were never able to make the time.  (November is crunch time for many students, plus it's right before the holidays, so it is reasonably one of worst times to commit to writing about 1,500 words a day.)

Maybe you've actually taken part in it, and like me, faltered after a few days of writing here and there.  Some days it's easy to get to that required word count.  Other days, the words just aren't there.

Where is the best place to start, though?

Here's what I think.

While writing The Fracture of a Dream, I started with the end.  Specifically, I knew how the story would end, and I wrote the final scene, the final words.  As I continued writing the rest of the novel, the story developed and the characters evolved.  I had to edit the end once or twice, yes.  However, its current incarnation remains faithfully close to the original.

By starting with the end, it allowed me to pitch the characters in the correct trajectories throughout the story, already knowing what would happen to them.  It gave me a clear direction in which to proceed.

I'd absolutely advise something like this for anyone starting out.

Lia B.