NaNoWriMo: A Significant Wordcount Event Is Imminent

(for unofficial use only)

Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security

To: All Departments & Interested Parties
RE: Literary Alert Level Tango

We have been monitoring internet traffic on sites frequented by wordsmiths, and literary agents provacateurs from the Office of Letters & Light and are reporting an uptick in chatter related to writing nonstop for a month and the hoarding of items related to same.

We can only conclude that a Significant Word-Count Event (SWCE) is imminent. All writers are advised to shelter in place or seek out the nearest library or coffee shop. During the last SWCE, over 3 billion words erupted from the nation's writers and worldwide shortages of coffee, pastries, and adjectives were reported.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

During moments of extreme literary unrest, the department advises that it can take up to thirty (30) days for emergency supplies to reach affected areas. All writers are advised to stock up on necessary supplies and foodstuffs sufficient to sustain life and word counts unaided for thirty (30) days without resupply. 

Our experts have prepared the following list of suggested supplies for all writers:

1. A comfy place to sit or stand in a place conducive to surviving 30 unbroken days of writing.
2. Coffee, tea, hot cocoa, or coffee.
3. Sustainable levels of baked goods.
4. Vegetables for when you are feeling guilty for trying to survive entirely on items 2 and 3.
5. Writing implements to fit your age, milieu, or chosen level of pretense.
6. Ink for pens, printers, copiers, goose quills (see item #5).
7. Phone numbers of out-of-area contacts willing to take late-night phone calls when you are stuck, overwhelmed, or procrastinating.
8. A padlock to secure the off-switch for the internet for most of the duration of the emergency.
9. A supportive and/or tolerant spouse, family member, roommate, significant other, good friend, complete stranger you thought you knew but turned out you didn't but who gives surprisingly good advice on dialogue.
10. A sense of humor.
11. Additional items, medications, &c. may be added as needed for the individual. Good luck and may the spirit of those who came before guide you in this time of trial.

The department will monitor the situation and report developments via the usual channels as events warrant.

See you in December.

Regards, etc.

Scott W. Perkins
Unofficial Secretary of Literary Security

Attachment: Scanned poster of this memo for sharing.

My book's published, now what? (Or: I don't know how to Author)

I know how to write. I can assemble word pictures and put you behind the eyes of a stranger. I can plot and scheme and plan and create imaginary friends. I know how to introduce you to my imaginary friends. I know how to find words and assemble them one after another with a beginning, middle, and end.  I can sit alone in a room for hours and crowd it with events and people only I can see until you read my words and then you can see them too.

These are my core skill sets.

I know how to be a writer.

I don’t know how to be an author.

That’s the first time I’ve admitted that out loud.

A lot of people think those are the same thing. They are not. They are, in many ways, diametrically opposed. I know that with a force that is sickening and gut-twisting, and it scares me.

Writing is an endeavor of inward exploration and laughing at your own jokes and falling in love with your imaginary friends as you send them on adventures. Writing is in many ways a ticket to Narnia[1].

Authoring is writing plus deadlines, hustling, selling, promotion, hype, contracts, covers, editing, contacts, networking, and not working. It’s gutting your story from 80,000 words to less than ten so you can convince someone to read it between floors on an elevator. It’s likening yourself to authors more successful, better known, and marketable because if you’re seen as being “Like Douglas Adams if he wrote Ender’s Game” you’re more likely to sell a book. To sell yourself.

And it’s hard. It’s so hard. Worse, it’s erosive to the parts of you can sit alone in rooms drinking coffee with people who aren’t there as you listen to their Munchausen-like tales of derring do. Worse, selling your book must be paired with some level of selling yourself and there's a fine line between selling your self and selling out. And where that line is no one knows. 

Selling out is like pornography: we can't define it but we know it when we see it.

I know. I know. It's the first worldiest of first world problems, and I thought… no, I was afraid that I was the only person who felt that way. And I feared it would doom my authorship to failure no matter how successfully I wrote.

This weekend at NerdCon: Stories, I sat in an auditorium as a man who is arguably the world’s reigning king of the YA novel said “In many ways, the person I am when creating the work is the opposite of the person I have to become when promoting it.”

If you came here hoping for answers, I don't have one. I think there isn't one because everyone comes at it from different directions and either finds their own way forward or doesn't. And that sucks because we want directions. But if John Green doesn't know how to answer the question or balance the erosive forces either, at least I know that I'm not alone.

And if all else fails, hell with it. I still have a ticket to Narnia.

As I digest the stories from NerdCon: Stories, I'm sure the rest of my thoughts on this subject will begin to leak out. But for now, I'm content and I'm energized, and I'm afraid. 

And it's good to be a little afraid. The best things happen out on the edge of the cliff where falling is a very real possibility. Fear keeps you awake, aware, and alive.

DFTBA,
Scott

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[1]  This is one of the reasons I have so much trouble imagining writing dystopian fiction. No offense to those who do, but my wardrobe doesn’t go there because I don’t want to go there.

Nerdcon: Stories, On the importance of stories

My dad was a storyteller. I wouldn't call him a raconteur because he hated speaking to more than one person at a time, but my God could he spin a yarn. If you took a sample of my dad and examined them under a microscope, I suspect that you'd see cells sitting around telling each other stories. More than anyone I've ever known, he was made of words.

This fact made it strangely easy to put my thoughts about losing him into words. I spoke at the funeral and wrote elaborate notes to thank those who helped mom and supported us as we mourned. I couldn't begin to do that in the wake of mom's death. Partly, I think this was because it was so sudden and unexpected compared to his long fight against cancer. But for the most part, it's because stories were dad's lifeblood but mom was a creature of pure feelings.

Nevertheless, I was adrift after my dad died. I didn't stop telling stories, but they changed in ways that were perceptible to me and I was a long time coming to terms with it. I was uncomfortable with this new facet of my life and how it was manifesting in the tales I wanted to tell and how I was telling them.

What does this have to do with Nerdcon: Stories?

If you've read the acknowledgements page of Howard Carter Saves the world, you'll have seen this:

John & Hank Green don’t know it, but they and the Nerdfighters helped me through a dark time. Their efforts to encourage peace and empathy in the world and to form a support community for those who are not chosen first, kids who are mocked, scared, or live in fear of themselves are laudable and should be supported. In recognition, a portion of the author’s proceeds* from this novel will be donated to their Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. Learn more about how you too can support their efforts at fightworldsuck.org and projectforawesome.com. Don’t forget to be awesome.

When I wrote that, I had no intention of really explaining it. But events have changed around me. Of course, the death of my father was the dark time I was talking about, but I'm not sure I can fully explain the way that John and Hank helped me through it.

Being somewhat attuned to the memetic culture of the web, I'd been aware of the Vlogbrothers pretty much since they started, but only as a peripheral thing.

As a former YA bookseller, I had a lingering professional interest in John Green as the author of Looking for Alaska but I can't say honestly that I spent much time digging into the philosophical basis of his work. When my dad died, that changed and Green's message of empathy and imagining the complex lives of others suddenly sank in. The idea of telling stories as a means rather than an ends wasn't groundbreaking, but it was amazing to watch someone doing it, live on the internet.

And thus the method and mode of my storytelling changed again.

That's a profound effect to have in someone's life. Because I am a storyteller like my father before me. If you examined me under a microscope, you'd find my cells drinking coffee and trying to top one another with a funnier story. To inject a new and serious note into that conversation was shocking for me.

And over the course of their rambling conversations recorded on their YouTube channel, I was progressively, night by night, rattled me out of the funk and began charting a new course. Which led to Howard Carter.

And because I support their larger charitable mission, it's a profound effect that inspired a likeminded effort on my part.

As previously noted, Howard Carter is a very silly but pointed anti-cynical manifesto. It's about optimism, yes, but it's also about doing the hard thing. It's about trusting one generation to strive to do better than those who stood in their places the last time. It's about not shoving our duties onto the next poor sap to come along. And succeed or fail, it's about the subtle heroism of making the right choice in the face of rampant cynicism that all is for naught.

It's about planting a flag somewhere and defiantly insisting that we are not, in fact, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the previous cycle of humanity.

Whether I succeeded or not, that's where I've been. And some of you have come along for the ride.

On Thursday, I will fly to Minneapolis to attend the first ever Nerdcon: Stories. Put on by the crew that Hank Green assembled to create VidCon, the YouTube creator's conference, Nedcon is a conference/convention that's about the power of storytelling and the important nature of the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves.

Some exciting Big Names will be there, but I'm not going to meet the big names or even John and Hank. I'm going to support the mission as a volunteer and participant at the conference. Because more importantly, our stories will be there and I will be among these storytellers assembling on the Minnesota plains to discuss how stories make us human and how we can do it better.

So I'll be spending the week swimming in words and maybe I will return with a few in my teeth, reliable old dog that I am.

Have a good week, friends.

Scott
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*By the way, for the first year of publication, that percentage is half, but that's another post.