Thought of the day...

"And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life."*
-William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

*Note: Be ye pregnant or suckling thy young, consult ye thy midwife ere you assay a regimen of Merriment or Mirth. Useth ye only as thou art directed. Void where it might be circumscribed by the Queen's wishes or edict of the privy council.  Claims of longevity have been neither evaluated nor verified by Her Majesty, her health ministry or the FDA.  Frameth your mind at thine own risk.  Do not frame your mind whilst operating heavy equipment such as a catapult or printing press.  Some studies performed by the grumpiest of scientists indicate grumpy people are more highly evolved.

Writers In Real Life :: Cue the writing montage!

It sounds so easy.  Think up some characters, give them something to do and when they're done, write "The End" and then pack it up, send it off to the publishers and wait for your royalty cheque.  I think there's supposed to be a couple of bottles of scotch consumed in there somewhere, but really, hi diddly dee...it's Castle's life for me. 

If only it could be like that.

Writing is hard work.  It's a job.  And like any other job, there are moments when the clock ticks perceptibly slower and you take as many coffee breaks as you can manage without getting fired.  Only because you work for yourself, you'd have to let yourself go... and if you do, you end up playing video games in your pajamas.

That's when those two bottles of scotch I mentioned appear and then disappear, I think.

Let's blame Hollywood.  They're always a good go-to when blame must be levied.  There are simply too many TV shows and movies where - when it comes time to write a story - the actual writing is a montage of quick cuts of typing like the wind or otherwise looking like you've not a care in the world between the moment the paper is rolled under the platent and the moment you rip it out and throw it aside.  Too much Castle and Murder She Wrote, not enough... actually I can't think of any television shows that display writers as just trying to get through the day. 

Movies are a bit better, but there's still far too many uplifting tales about writers almost flippantly turning out reams of amazing stories with the flick of a pen and the stern but loving teacher spouting writer's aphorisms.  "Write what you know!"  they cry and off the students gallumphing go to become bestsellers.  There's too many Finding Forresters and not enough Wonder Boys where Grady Trip stumbles through the movie in a drugged stupor because he can't think of an ending.

These movies and television shows are written by writers... you'd think they'd know better. Face it, there's not nearly enough Misery in these stories.

Not that I'm advocating that we all get kidnapped by rabid fans, nor that we all become become dissolute wordsmiths, wandering drunkenly from our bottle of scotch to our typewriter.  Nor do I think that all television shows should join Stephen King's seemingly bottomless oeuvre of  "Writers have a hard enough lot that I can write endless reams of horror novels about it."  But I do wonder where this meme of writer-as-wealthy gad about comes from.

Maybe we should be blaming Fitzgerald and his lot instead.

Honestly, I like most of these movies and television shows that I'm griping about.  Castle is mental popcorn and a heckuva lot of fun to watch.  And while I'm sure that there are authors out there like Castle and the rest, I'm equally certain that they are few and very very far between.

The problem with those depictions of writers is that it makes me feel a little odd sometimes to be sitting in front of the keyboard when I should be out there "whooping it up" (as my grandmother would say).  But books are the damndest things.  In order for them to come into existence, some poor schmuck has to sit down and write them.

As Peter DeVries famously said, the worst part about being a writer is the paperwork.

Books don't happen accidentally, scribbled on napkins while being chauffeured from one posh shindig to the next.  At least not novels worth the reading.  Writing a novel-length story is an act of will.  It takes an almost fanatical devotion to the language and the ability to ignore distractions like video games, the internet, books you'd rather be reading, other things you'd rather be writing, and also the aforementioned scotch.

So... in a sort anti-NaNoWriMo pep talk I say this: If you want a life of swanky parties and adulation from the masses, become a musician or an actor.  Good luck to you.  Break a leg and all that.   (Or you can do what I do and maintain friendships with actors and musicians so you'll get invited to their parties... but I digress.)

Writing is about telling your friends and family to leave you alone for extended periods so you can swill coffee and put words on a page.  On the bright side, rarely does it require you to hire a band or a DJ or a caterer and the cleanup usually amounts to washing a few coffee cups.

In this time of writers making YouTube videos and keeping blogs and Facebook pages and whatnot, it's amazing that anyone doesn't know this already, but writing is a job. You have to show up every day and sit down and write actual words on an actual page.

Either it's your profession (and you treat it that way) or it's not and never will be.

This, I think is the great value of NaNoWriMo for the working novelist and the publishing industry in general. Hundreds of thousands of people are learning each and every November that novels don't occur randomly in nature.  It's not a swirl of cocktail parties and gala openings, it's a lonely, difficult slog through the dictionary in hopes that you'll reach the other end and look back to see a coherent story behind you.  And looking back at what you've accomplished makes the effort worth the journey.

So this is my NaNoWriMo pep talk for the publishing industry and all the naysayers out there among the professional novelists. I think that this event which celebrates the act of writing also serves the purpose of reinvigorating in the minds of all the people who participate, an appreciation for the novel as an art form.  Especially those who drop out halfway through.

So take heart professionals and amateurs alike.  Monday marks the halfway point.  And when the novel is done - or at least the first draft - that is when you get to party.  Don't forget to put out a bucket of pens and those all-important cocktail napkins in case inspiration should strike your guests.

My NaNoWriMo Pep Talk

I haven't been asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month.  But writing something no one asked you to write is really the point of NaNoWriMo, isn't it?  So in the spirit of the month, I'll be doing it anyway.

At this point, you'll have become aware of several things (if you weren't already):

1. Inspiration isn't enough...Writing is work. Sometimes, it is hard work.  Hollywood has done writers a great disservice by painting our lives in bright colors and swirling montages of inspired geniuses whipping paper out of a typewriter.  Sometimes, it can be like that.  Sometimes the muse wanders past, humming her little tune and you get to hum along. But not always, and often the muse is nowhere to be found.
   
   The fact is that what makes a writer isn't writing on the days when the muses are singing, what makes you a Writer is showing up to put words on a page even when she isn't.
   
   
2. No one cares that you're writing a novel. Well... almost no one.  They did at first.  At the beginning of the novel-writing process everyone you know is rooting for you, cheering you on.  By the halfway point, they've mostly forgotten that you're doing it, and ere the end, wishing you'd just shut up about it and finish the damn thing already.  Writing is a lonely profession.  All the parties and writer's conferences and coffee shops in the world won't change the fact that in the end it's just you and a blinking cursor. 
   
   This is how the writer's critique group came into being.  Writer's communities, Twitter's #amwriting hash tag, message boards (like those on the NaNoWriMo site, when it's working), blogs like this one, and all the many ways to share your mid-noveling angst with other writers.   This month is meant to show you many things about novel-writing, one key element is the value of knowing other writers.
   
   Don't worry, I still want to hear about your novel.
   
   
3. Characters don't always do as they're told.Characters are like children.  You made them, but you can't always make them do what you want them to when you want them to do it.  Though in this case, it's not because they have their own volition or live in their own parallel dimension from which you are simply taking dictation (though it may feel that way at times: See point 1) but because they are the sum of what you've put into them and they must use that to react to the story you plopped them down in the middle of.  The fears, prejudices, education and quirks you gave them will dictate how they react to events.  Sometimes, this internal logic will not be what you originally thought it would be.
   
   Go with it.  The goal is to get the story told in the most natural sequence of events you can imagine.  Sometimes this means letting the internal logic of your characters guide you.  That's why you created them.  Be proud of them and let them tell your story.
   
   
4. Middles suck.  Beginning a story's relatively easy, ending one is easier; but getting from one to the other? Aye, there's the rub...  The middle part of your story is where it's easiest to get lost.  If you have to write down "And Then Something Funny Happens" (ATSFH) and go on to the next scene, do it. 
   
   Take a run at it and bull through.  It's a first draft, it doesn't have to be pretty.  Momentum is the only way to push through the middle and get to the really fun bit where everything goes to hell and your hero swoops in to save the National Peanut Putter Reserve from the terrorists.  (Or everyone is overcome by the ennui of a peanut butterless world and succumbs to the ineffability of jam, depending on what sort of novel you're writing.)
   

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November.  Thirty days! I might as well have quoted Lewis Carroll and said "We're all mad here!"

But that's the genius of the thing.  Thirty days is a short enough timespan that it's possible to begin, push through and finish while the muse's whistle is still hanging in the air.  Short enough that your family and friends won't grow too over-tired of hearing you complain about how hard this is.  And since the end is nigh from the outset, there's less impetus for your characters to wander off on side adventures

We are gathered here in this limited window when it seems the whole world is writing too, cheering us on long after our loved ones have started changing the subject.  Because the ultimate takeaway from this should be that you have the will to sit down and do it even when it's not easy.  That you can spend the time alone with your story, even when it's not working.  That you can create characters that will do for you, even if not the way you thought they would.  That you recognize the mass and momentum of your tale and that it will see you through this roughest of rough drafts.

And ultimately, finally, and most importantly, no one that you've ever heard of was asked to sit down and write their first novel. But they did it anyway.

-Scott

Lost Epiphanies & Cat Toys

It is not my wallet and keys that I worry about;
I will always find those things eventually.
It's the ideas that I should keep chained to my belt;
The 4 am epiphanies that would fix my story,
fix my life, fix my computer, fix my name in the stars!
Those evaporate into the velvety darkness,
Lost dreams that flutter against the windows,
Sweet escape from the grey mists of my thoughts,
Only to get caught and then eaten by the cat.
Though he never vomits the ideas on the rug.
I like to think he's keeping them for me,
Tucked away in his fur against my hour of need,
Purr and play memory, my furry little thumbdrive.
Or a girdle book, its tail tucked in my belt,
Like a medieval student of forgotten classics,
Trying to remember his Latin declensions
Felix, Felis, Feli, Felem...
Oh, but that's not right, I've more than one!
More cats and dreams and ideas and schemes,
In the dark watches when the stars are high,
And whispering cats hunt the laggard thoughts,
The next idea, the new idea, THE BIG IDEA!
Pounced and purred and knocked under the bed
For a furry dragon to sleep atop a magpie's hoard
Of dustbunnies and half-remembered dreams.

-Scott

Invisible Question Marks

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

These Are the Voices In My Head :: The Narrator

One of the reasons I like doing NaNoWriMo is that it gives me a sort of short-form method to explain the sort of decisions that lead from the initial kernel of an idea to a written story.

When I was a kid, my fabulous Great Aunt Cookie would periodically sweep into town like Mary Poppins and shower us with gifts.  On the surface -- as as far as my young mind could tell -- Aunt Cookie was the textbook maiden aunt.  She wore very proper hats and had exquisite taste* and smelled of lilacs..  it was almost as if she'd studied under the great maiden aunts of yore in an unbroken line from some ur-aunt in the depths of very stylish history.

In reality, she was also a very successful businesswoman and patron of the arts.

Because I was a kid, though, I knew her by her presents and one of the best presents she ever got us was a record player and a set of Disney storybooks that included read-along LP records.  My favorite was Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

(I warned you a long time ago I was ever so slightly nuts. 
It's not my fault if you don't take the tee shirt seriously.)

To this day, whenever a narrator speaks in a book, the voice I hear in my head is the clipped and oh-so-proper tones of Sebastian Cabot, the narrator of those records and the voice of Bagheera in The Jungle Book, another favorite of young Scottie.  Even in books where the narrator was silly, such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in my mind it is the faintly-disapproving voice of Mr. Cabot reading the part.

I wasn't very far into the preparations for Howard Carter Saves the World before I began to realize I was going to need to stand quite a bit further back from the characters than I normally do.

When I'm writing mysteries, suspense or thrillers, I usually stick to what some people call 'Limited Third Person' or 'Close Third' which means I'm writing in 3rd person, but I don't let the camera float around, but keep it following one or two characters. Furthermore, if they don't know it, the reader doesn't hear about it until the focus characters find it out. 

That's a great strategy for writing suspense.  It gives you some of the the immediacy of first-person without necessarily shackling you to viewing the whole story through your main character's eyes.  In my case, I tend to have two main characters, AJ MacLeod and Jordan Elias, so the camera follows them around more or less interchangeably as the story progresses.  The 'camera' sits just over his or her shoulder and sometimes pulls back to view the wide-angle shot.  You're not inside their head, but you don't get to see things they wouldn't notice.

Third person was never in question as the POV that would be right for the Howard Carter story.  The book is going to involve a lot of actions by characters and entities and robots and aliens, not all of which would become lead characters.  I was going to need an omniscient narrator to tell the reader what was going on in the secret government bunker, the mad scientist's lab, the boy genius' room... without that guide, I feared the reader would quickly get lost.

Thankfully, in the sort of semi-humorous science fiction I wanted to explore with the Howard Carter story, there's often a narrator actually setting things up for you à la Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone or interjecting and interfering in the story as Sebastian Cabot did in my Winnie the Pooh storybooks.

I've always liked finding humorous ways to tell stories and I always sort of liked the idea that the narrator didn't entirely approve of all of the characters in the story he was telling.  Sebastian Cabot was frequently beset by the demands of Tigger and this led to the self-deprecating narrative stylings of Jim Henson and then Douglas Adams and all of those bled into the works of Christopher Moore (that specialist in the art of the unreliable narrator) and Eoin Colfer.  All of which dovetailed nicely with the mission statement I gave my wife: "If Nick Adams was written by Douglas Adams..."

Until I made this decision, Howard Carter was just a kid with some robots.  A bundle of ideas but no real story.  Sometimes you have to settle on the storyteller before you can choose the tale.

And that's as close to a definition of my "literary voice" as you're likely to get.
 
---
*  Considering I was a bit of a puddle-splashing, rocks-in-his-pockets, frogs and pollywogs kind of Huck Finn of a boy, let reassure you by saying that this was the estimation of my sister and you should take her word for it.

David Sedaris on The Daily Show

Sedaris and Jon Stewart talk writing during a Daily Show interview.  He has some fascinating things to say about using animals as visual shorthand.  As ever, Sedaris gets extra points for being both right and funny at the same time. . .

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
David Sedaris
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Scenes From a Coffee Shop :: The Writer's Life Part.. um... I've lost track

The other day I was sitting next to a couple of other writers (both published in non fiction/academic) at the coffee shop where I write most days, when I became aware that they were discussing the TV show Castle and specifically, Nathan Fillion's character, a mystery author.  Being a fan of the show, I tuned in in time to hear one of them say "I do all of those things, it's almost as if it was written by actual writers!"

Wait... what?

A bit of stammering later, it came to light that the chap speaking had meant to say 'Authors'.  And that's a fine distinction as far as it goes.  I won't embarrass him further or force him to defend his position by giving out his email address and Twitter handle, (Wait... do college professors Twitter? Maybe not.).  It certainly begs that eternal question that troubles everyone who ever put words on a page: When are you a real writer?  I mean really real.  Willing to put it on a business card real.

The easy answer is when you're making a living at it, but that leaves out a whole slew of people who are avidly putting words on paper, including a lot of well-known authors who've kept their day jobs.  You may recall that on the first day of National Novel Writing Month, the Office of Letters & Light reported 150,000 writers fed over 55 million words through their word-counting app on that one day alone.  And their website was down and unavailable for a good part of the day!

This all ties into why I had such a problem with that Salon rant.  Because it implies that the people who are already "in" are "in" and everyone else is "out" and needs to stay and consume what the hip kids darn well tell them to.  I stand opposed to that sort of cool-kid clique mentality.

But that brings us back around to the question... Are those people allowed to self-identify as Writers?

You're darn tootin.

In my not-so-humble opinion, it's about devoting yourself to the art of storytelling, to feeding our culture and keeping it alive and kicking in the mind of readers and writers everywhere.  At the end of the month, for good bad or indifferent, you wrote a novel.  Does that make you an author?  If not, then what does?

I've heard other attempts to cut this knot: professional memberships, critical reception, academic degrees... all of which are easily dispensed with by holding up significant contributions to the canon by people who don't fit those pigeon holes.  The one thing they all had in common was dedication to the art of arranging words on a page to evoke an emotion in the mind.

Being a writer is more than a profession.

So, while writers exist on a continuum like every other calling, and there are certainly laymen aplenty, I hate to hear anyone say that one variety of writer is 'real' and another is... fake?  I hardly think so.  For decades, my teachers told me JRR Tolkien and Ray Bradbury weren't real writers and their books weren't real books.  I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now.

The guys in the cafe are walking the same path as Mark Bowden, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, JRR Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Helen Fielding, James Joyce, Dorothy Parker, Nora Roberts, Jonathan Franzen, the people who write Castle, the NaNoWriMoers and all the rest.  Some of us will never earn a living or gain critical acclaim or even critical notice.  That's the way it goes.

Some time ago, I was on the phone with my friend Joan.  Joan lives in New York and has worked in various capacities for some of the big publishing houses and her husband still does.  At some point in the conversation she asked what I was up to and I said "Oh, still trying to be a writer..."

As I recall, there was a moment of silence on the other end of the line and then "Stop saying it like that. You've put the time in, Scott. You are a writer."  Then she offered to fly out to Seattle and kick my ass.

(Now that's a good friend.)


Our side trips may be different and we'll each get something different from the trip, but if we're willing to put our time in, then we are all pilgrims on the same road. Society's designated dreamers don't need a license, a degree or permission to dream.  Never have, never will.

You've put enough time into this that you've asked yourself the question  and this is one of those times when asking the question is the answer.

And if necessary, I can see if Joan is available to fly out and kick you in the ass.

First Day Wrapup :: Scenes From a Space Helmet

Part One: A Robot Too Far is up on the site for you to read if you've a mind to.  Just click the title and you'll be whisked away by the internet djinn.


The first day of National Novel Writing Month has drawn to a close (at least for me) here on the west coast and my total stands somewhere north of 2,500 words.  Many of my friends rested their efforts around the 5,000 mark and I wish them well.  I'm a marathoner and I have a lot of long races under my belt and an innate fear of tripping myself up by outrunning my supply lines.

Mixed metaphor, party of one?

The folks at the Office of Letters & Light (our hosts) tell us that around 150,000 of us wrote about 55 million words today.  That's astounding. No wonder the site kept crashing today! 

The first complete section/chapter of the novel is posted and I'm happy with it overall.  You'll notice a distinct difference in the tone and delivery from past items I've shared, and that's on purpose.  I wanted to just sit down and talk through my computer, tell a story to an audience of friends... which is what we're all doing really, no matter what month it happens to be.

For me, NaNoWriMo is a time to experiment, to play with words and see what they're capable of.  To build giant robots and send them tromping across Missouri cornfields or send a young man hurtling back in time.

Because this is an homage to all the great science fiction I grew up on, the field is wide open and I intend to draw from the whole panoply of what came before.  In some ways I've thrown a pile of chits emblazoned with my favorite elements of science fiction into a hat and I'm pulling them out one by one and seeing if I can make them fun, funny or just silly enough to keeping you smiling while I reach into the hat to draw the next one.

The danger is that I'll end up with a meaningless jumble, or even worse, a horrible pastiche.  Of course, the danger of walking the edge is that you'll fall off.  The threat of failure is half the fun.

In the opening scene, an escaped android, an alien invader and a secret government agency were all introduced.  A famous author and a famous physicist were mentioned and a mad scientist or two hovered around the edge of things, waiting for their cues.  Tomorrow, we meet our hero and begin to get better acquainted with his world which is very similar to ours, and yet just different enough... well, you'll see.

Believe it or not, all of this makes sense and ties together before the end.  I promise.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride!

-Scott

Cry Havoc & Loose the Dogs of NaNoWriMo...

Greetings readers.  This is your mad scientist speaking, welcoming you aboard the good ship Pages to type.  We're ready to get underway, so so I'll need you to turn off your cyborgs and blow out the pilot lights in your jetpacks for the duration of the flight.  We're charted out a fairly smooth flight this month, but reality is a pain in the butt, so it's likely we'll hit turbulence midflight.  Which we've planned for, so let's just get off the ground and see what happens.

Once again we thank you for choosing to fly with us today and we hope you enjoy your flight.  Oh yes, and when all else fails, please remember to focus on the bright red poster emblazoned on every bulkhead.

And if that fails, remember what William Shakespeare said at the top of every play: Sit down, shut up and hang on (or something like that, he might've phrased it differently).

Track my progress and read each chapter as it's written by clicking the helpful reminder from Her Mechanical Majesty found below...