I’m paddling away on my novel for Camp NaNoWriMo!
Current word count is 16,239! At this rate, I’ll make 50,000 by May 11. So, I have a hell of a lot more paddling to do :(
Tag: fiction
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(photo from omtimes.com; Sphinx pose)
“Take a deep breath, stretch, and sigh it all out!” I love hearing these words from my yoga teacher near the end of our yoga practice. My body by then–after a series of vinyasas, sun salutations, and (failed) attempts at crow pose, to name a few–is warm, loose, and calm. Much like my head feels now after reaching 10,000 words in my novel for Camp NaNoWriMo ;)
Of course, I’ve lost some ground and my new expected end date at this pace is May 30. But tomorrow (Saturday) is the Camp NaNoWriMo marathon and I plan to participate. In fact, I’ll be writing tonight since my husband will be out so maybe I can bump up my projections and get myself a better footing for finishing on time.
In the meantime, I’m counting my blessings for slow-running SQL queries. As millions of data records are being recoded, categorized, and/or linked, I can take the dead time to write a chapter or two on my iPad. Life is good.
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I didn’t think I would have it in me to write today. Last night (or rather this morning) I was up until 1 AM. Fortunately I had the day off work, but I kept napping and we had “stuff” to do so I didn’t get to writing again until late. I thought for sure I would blow it off and lose ground. Many thanks to my fellow bloggers who have been encouraging me: I thought about them as I sat down to give it another go. Now I am up to 8,538 words with an expected finish date of May 18 if I keep at this rate. Oh, but I won’t. I WILL finish my 50k at the end of April. I’ll make it happen, even if it means the kitties have to wait a bit longer for their meals :)
(She looks like she can afford to wait, doesn’t she?)
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The road trip is over. I’m home and, although exhausted from all the driving, was willing to suffer more fanny fatigue for the sake of Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve now completed 6,080 words, almost 3,000 more since my last post. At this rate, I will make my 50k mark by May 28. However, if I write 1,830 words a day, I’ll finish end of this month.
Some might say that should be easy. Just write, even if it’s garbage, it’s the number of words that count. We write during NaNoWriMo; we edit later. But I’m thinking (and not terribly clearly at the moment), that the more my novel makes sense now, the less editing (or interpreting) I’ll need to do later. Of course, I have yet to edit the novel I wrote in November. Truth be told, I didn’t even finish it. I wrote over 50,000 words, and then abruptly stopped. What I thought was a few days’ break has now been a few months’ break.
But, gee, I’ve never had two novels in the cooker before. I’ve always been a short-story writer. While I love to read novels, I’ve always distrusted my ability to sustain an interest in writing novel-length stories. I find that very interesting: I love the slower pace of novels (at least the ones I read) where settings and characters come alive, where the novelist takes the time to describe the smell of snow or the main character’s fondness for cream sherry. But when I try to write like that, the voice at the back of head is practically screaming “Boring!” But that’s the beauty of NaNoWriMo (Camp or otherwise): The deadline helps me ignore that annoying voice.
So, I’ll try to persevere. Maybe I’ll even finish this novel.
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Spoiler Alert! I am a huge fan of Louise Penny, author of the Inspector Gamache series and in the following post, I talk about her most recent novel. If you have not yet read it, then you may not want to read my post since I give too much away. This is an abridged letter I wrote to Ms. Penny after finishing A Beautiful Mystery.
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Dear Ms. Penny,
I have loved your Inspector Gamache series since first listening to Still Life from Audible.com two-and-a-half years ago. You are a master at blending the standard structure of a mystery with the philosophical underpinnings of a literary novel. I deeply admire your skill in character development as well as plot formation. Since I listen to your novels, I’ve been able to “whip” through them while driving to work or knitting or taking walks. I’ve just finished A Beautiful Mystery and now I have that long wait ahead of me until the next novel.
I am writing to you after some careful reflection and a long talk with one of my closest friends, who is also a great fan of yours. I found A Beautiful Mystery troubling in a few ways that I want to share with you. It’s a testament to your writing that Inspector Gamache and Beauvoir have gotten under my skin to the point where I felt strongly affected by this last novel.
I was devastated by Beauvoir’s decision to leave with the Superintendent. His agony, his self-destructiveness was nearly unbearable. I had grown so fond of Beauvoir and was thrilled at the beginning of the novel to find that he and Annie were in love. I can understand that his injuries (both physical and emotional) from the raid would leave him vulnerable to the Superintendent’s manipulations, but was it inevitable that he would leave with him? I want to beg you to tell me that he will be all right in the next novel, that he will be redeemed, that all will be resolved and then all would be right in the world, but I know you can’t tell me that, whether or not you already know his fate.
Maybe my reaction to Beauvoir’s breakdown says more about me than the novel, but I do feel so “invested” in this series. Not financially, but up until now, the novels have been an escape for me. Yes, terrible things happen, like murder, like Clara throwing Peter out, like Ruth having to give up her duck, but the murders are resolved, Clara probably needs some time away from Peter anyway, and Ruth showed she was capable of nurturing and loving by caring for the duck.
And the murders were central to the stories as well, whereas, in A Beautiful Mystery, the murder became incidental, almost unnecessary except as a vehicle for putting Gamache and Beauvoir in a closed environment where they had no choice but to face their demons in the form of the Superintendent. By the time the murder was solved, I really didn’t care any more. I would have preferred that Gamache and Beauvoir had left together, leaving the murder for the Superintendent to investigate. The murder just didn’t matter to me once Beauvoir started falling apart.
The cliff-hanger ending also left me feeling distressed. That probably sounds funny, and I do feel a bit embarrassed to admit it. Really, this is just a novel, but the characters are so true to life. Gamache is not perfect; if he was, he would have been more forthcoming with Beauvoir, addressed his anxieties instead of just ordering him about as if the raid had never happened. He is partly to blame for Beauvoir’s breakdown and it makes sense that he is.
I guess I’m really writing this because I want to understand why you chose to end the novel the way you did. I don’t think you needed a cliff-hanger. This was your 8th novel and you are such a celebrated writer that surely you know that your next novel will be a bestseller as well. Really, if Beauvoir had regained his senses and chosen to stay with Gamache, I would still be eagerly awaiting novel #9. I would just have a more happy anticipation. As it is, I’m worried, even scared, that we will lose Beauvoir entirely to the “dark side.” So I await novel #9 with some trepidation, now that I know I care (too) deeply about these characters that you have painted with such skill and love.
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If you’ve read this far and have your own thoughts on A Beautiful Mystery, please share them. I am eagerly awaiting How the Light Gets In (due to be published in August of this year), but part of me also dreads it. What does it mean when a writer, as a reader, can’t handle things going bad?
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The Saturday Evening Post has “revamped” and is looking for new fiction. With the dwindling newspaper and magazine market, this is a bold effort by the Post. Hopefully, readers will be rewarded by good, fresh writing. Click here for the Post’s submission guidelines. My thanks to fellow blogger, Georganna Hancock of A Writer’s Edge, for tweeting this truly news-worthy info. This is great news for someone who has fond memories of reading the Post when she was much much younger than she is today :-)
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Sunday’s NY Times Book Review section has a great essay by Terrence Rafferty called Shelley’s Daughters. Rafferty remarks on the irony that the “mother” of the horror novel gave birth to more sons than daughters, e.g., Poe, King, Lovecraft. And the few daughters she may claim did not always write prolifically in the genre of horror (Rafferty mentions Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to support this observation). The best part of his essay, of course, is the brief reviews he gives of contemporary women writers of horror. Don’t, however, expect to find reviews of the popular vampire novels by Laurell K. Hamilton and Stephenie Meyer: Rafferty notes that their novels “don’t appear to be concerned, as true horror, should be, with actually frightening the reader.” Rather, he comments on novels by Sara Gran, Alexandra Sokoloff, Sarah Langan, and Elizabeth Hand; writers new to me, but whose work I look forward to reading (especially, Langan whose novel The Keeper I just ordered).
Frankly, I would love to write ** good ** horror. I tried my hand at it in last year’s National Novel Writing Month and, most recently, in a short story that has been revised multiple times. But writing horror is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Anyone can write gory scenes of zombies eating humans or ghosts wielding axes and chopping off body parts; but to instill cold prickly fear in the reader requires skill and precision. I grew up addicted to horror films, mostly from Great Britain but pre-Hammer Film Productions, and the ones that always scared me the most were those that were heavy on suspense: What’s behind the door? Is the monster there? Should our hero open it? What’s behind the door?
Writing horror down is not for the feint of heart.
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So, how many of you have read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga? Mr. Adiga’s novel is a headspinner for those who have always thought of India as a sacred, spiritual mecca, blessedly innocent of the worst of human kind. For the White Tiger (aka Balram, the main character), there are two Indias: one of light, and one of darkness, and the Mother Ganga flows through the India of darkness. The novel is the story of Balram’s journey from the poor abused son of a rickshaw puller to a wealthy man of tomorrow, an entrepreneur in Bangalore. The political corruption and mafia-style business dealings that Balram observes along the way are nothing new to any American who stays abreast of US news, except that this is all taking place in India, the land of Ghandi. And the corruption is so blatant, so “business as usual,” that one cannot be too surprised at the lengths to which Balram goes to secure his freedom.
Balram tells his story through letters to a Chinese dignitary, who he heard is planning to visit Bangalore. A novel of letters is not a new technique, but it takes considerable skill to pull off well. And Adiga does pull it off. He has created a story so riveting that I could barely stop reading long enough to sleep or to drive myself to work. And he created a character in Balram that I couldn’t help but want only the best for, even while he was commiting the worst of crimes. He is undereducated but astute enough to take the insult of being called “half-baked” and turn into a lofty title, thus his “autobiography of a half-baked Indian,” thus his story.
I hope Adiga wins the Booker Prize. The White Tiger is one of the most exciting stories I’ve read in a long, long time.
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Fellow blogger Chicklit provides this link to a great story by Margo Rabb, published in All-Story. Rabb provides a funny and insightful perspective on MFA programs. I’ve always had mixed feelings about MFA programs: sometimes I want to enroll in the one at my local university, and take advantage of the “connections” I might be able to make; other times I want to just hole up with my laptop and write what I want to write, damn the critics.
My opinion is colored by my own experience in a creative writing program (what my local university had before they developed an MFA program). I was ostensibly a literature major but took writing workshops because I wanted to develop my writing. So much of what I observed during the two years in that program are captured in Rabb’s story: the favoritism, the unskilled (and thus worthless) workshop critiques, the sexual games among the students, the competition.
I was lucky in that most of the students in the program treated me kindly. I had so little confidence in my writing that I obviously wasn’t a threat to any of them. I also was happily married at that time (and still am … to the same guy even) and avoided the after-class bar and bed hops. What disappointed me about the experience–and why I would loathed to attend writing workshops again–was the fact that I came out of it with no more confidence in my skill as a writer than I did going in.
Yes, I did receive praise for a couple of my stories from one of the more highly regarded workshop professors, and I even won a graduate student writing award (although that was for a literary essay, not a short story). But what has unfortunately stayed with me was the high ridicule expressed over one of my stories during one workshop, a story that had an autobiographical basis. I didn’t know how to deal with the humiliation, nor why I had to be humiliated, no matter how bad my story was. Like the narrator of Rabb’s story, I wept bitterly.
The fallibility of the workshop professor was also a disappointment. His overt favoritism toward some students sparked ill-will within the group, and his was always the “last word” in the workshops. One time I strongly argued on behalf of another student regarding a technique she had used in her story. I said it worked; he said it didn’t. His opinion squashed mine, which could have been OK if only I had been allowed to make my argument in full.
So I guess I still have some grudges–15+ years and counting. But since then (and most recently), I’ve engaged a paid writing mentor who provided criticism and support, and found myself writing more in these past three years than I had in the previous ten. I’ve also shared my stories with friends, again getting needed criticism but also much needed support. I think my former professor would consider me delusional to rely solely on the feedback of friends and paid mentors. But so what? I am writing, and I am being read, even if (at this time) by a very small group. It’s enough to sustain me and encourage me to, as one friend commands, “keep writing”!
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Happy Monday morning and welcome to another blurb on the guest bloggers for the Writer’s Resource. Today’s guest blogger–Todd Eastman–provides some great advice for using slang and accent in fiction. Here’s a taste:
“Many writers find dialogue to be one of the most difficult aspects of writing fiction. Trying to include regional accents and speech patterns and doing it incorrectly can ruin your story. On the other hand, doing it correctly can make the story seem even more authentic. There are several things you need to be careful of when using this technique in your dialogue.”
Visit Todd’s post and learn more about using slang and accent in your writing.
Marie at 1 Write Way 