Book Report for January

One of my goals for this year is to read a new book on writing every month. I just finished Janet Evanovich’s turn, How I Write.

Several things attracted me to this book when I was browsing in the library – for one, it’s a thin book. Quick reads = good. The other - as a wanna-be, I’m naturally drawn to anything I can get from the pros that describes their process, as though I can absorb a bit of their good fortune through the pages and apply it to my own writing life.

I’ve never read Evanovich before but knew the name. The main thing that struck me was her personality, which comes across as fun and self-depreciating. It also helps keep the material light and moving forward.

Anyone that’s been doing this for any significant amount of time will find some of the material almost elementary. For instance, nearly an entire chapter is devoted to describing the different PoVs and when/how to employ them. No real harm, I just skipped over these sections.

For me, the strength of this book was the chapter on characterization, and reading the excerpts from her Plum series. Simply put, Evanovich is a master of characterization, and anyone who needs to grow in this area (read: anyone doing fiction work) should take a look at her techniques.

Worth a read? Yes

Worth a purchase? Nah – pickup a copy at your local library and thank me later.

On a side note, Evanovich picked up at least one regular reader out of this. No, not me – I’m more of a Fantasy/Sci-Fi guy, with a liberal dose of King/Koontz. My wife, however, is an avid reader of character-driven thrillers, and this is right up her alley.

2009 Goals- Bigger & Better

It’s a new year, and in that spirit, it’s time for some new writing-related goals. I’m a big believer in setting goals and, more specifically, in writing those goals down. There is something tangible about putting your thoughts down on paper, and if nothing else, having them staring back at me guilts me into paying them mind.

Here’s my focus for 2009. You’ll notice some repeats from last year (shakes fist). You may also notice that, despite generally missing on my goals last year, I actually have more goals this year.

More, you say?

Yes, Yoda. I can feel the Force. I’m ready.

Too old. Yes, he is too old to begin the training.

I’m not afraid.

You should be…

Put a sock in it, muppet. Here’s the list, with dates… I’ll be updating this list periodically as new / cool contests and anthologies pop up.

1. Enter the Spectra Pulse Short Fiction contest. Deadline is Jan 31.
2. Submit to WotF every quarter… March 31, June 30, Sept 30, Dec 31.
3. Enter the Jim Baen’s Memorial contest. Deadline April 1.
4. Enter the Parsec contest. Deadline April 15.
5. Complete the first draft of my novel (from NaNo ‘08) by May 1.
6. Complete NaNoWriMo 2009 by Nov 30.
7. Shop novel to agents by Dec 1.
8. Sell 4 short stories by Dec 31.
9. Complete second novel (first draft) by Dec 31.

Though not strictly writing-based, here are some of my other goals for 2009:

• blog once a week
• complete a crafting exercise (and post here) once a week
• write 5000 words / week
• online presence: participate in forums (WotF, Zeotrope, Hatrack)
• critique one story / week (critters)
• read one writing-related book / month

2008 Goals - Recap

Another year is in the books… another year wasted. Sorta.

2008 brought my first (and only) writing cred, but it’s not much to write home about… a non-publication Honorable Mention in WotF is great for a day, but really means nothing.

My goals for 2008 were as follows… included in blue is how I landed on meeting them:

1. Submit to WotF for every quarter. Update: only met this by 50%, submitting for the first two quarters of 2008, but posting no-shows for the final two. On a good note, my HM came from only my second submission, but on a downer, I let two chances to improve on that performance go by. Boo. I could go into excuses, but I’ll spare you the gory details.
2. Complete the NaNoWriMo challenge. Update: sorta, kinda. Call it 50%. I ended the month of November with ~48k words of my novel written. But, I realized I was only about halfway through the story. The point of NaNo is to complete a novel… oops.
3. Sell a short. Update: nope. :(

All-in-all, I fell like 2008 was fairly successful. I fell short on a couple of things, but also hit some other milestones. I currently have 7 stories making the rounds. I passed 250k total words written since I started on this crazy ride a few years back. I took two online writing classes and did some work-shopping.

Am I disappointed? Sure – the WotF goal especially stings. But, I’m happy, and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

NaNoWriMo 2008 - Recap

So the 2008 NaNoWriMo Edition is in the books.

I didn't make the goal of 50,000, crapping out at about 47,000. In the end, some of my delays early on cost me, and on the final day it was obvious that only a Herculean effort would get me to 50,000. Which I wasn't against, but the other thing that dawned on me was that I was at least another 10-15,000 words from getting to The End.

So, given that I wasn't going to actually get to those magical words, I decided to try to keep my pace of 1500-2000 words/day and complete the novel sometime in mid December.

Here's a chart showing where I left off:

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with my progress, though I am bummed that I am not yet finished.

Just over a week out from the end of NaNo, and I've probably managed a grand total of 1000 words. Talk about a slump. I was hoping to keep the momentum going, but several forces have conspired against me (major new responsibilities at work, Christmas shopping, and tons of snow), and I have completely petered out. Plus, I have to think the letdown is in part related to no longer having the specter of NaNo shadow over me with its persistent focus on wordcount.

The trick, now, is to get my momentum going again. What's left of December should make for an interesting time -in addition to wrapping-up the novel, I need to get my next entry for WotF complete. Doh!

Narrative Structure & Iron Man

The other day I was watching Iron Man again (the first time since I picked up the DVD) and while it lacks the visceral punch of the latest Batman epic, it is a great movie.

***SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't seen this movie yet, cease & desist now and go BUY IT. Seriously.***

I really enjoy the very beginning - you know, where Robert Downey Jr. (aka Tony Stark) is riding in the Humvee with the soldiers, blaring AC/DC's Back In Black, and charming the soldiers with small talk. Great opening, and then absolute chaos as they come under attack. Stark flees the vehicle and is summarily knocked out by shrapnel from one of his own missiles.

Fade to black...

About five minutes have passed in the movie, and then we are suddenly in full-on flashback mode. We're given the lowdown on Stark, a bit of characterization, and then the lead-up to the attack. I didn't have a stopwatch on me, but I would guess it is probably 15 minutes before we get back to "present day".

This is akin to starting a story with a page or two of action, then two chapters of backstory. Such a story would never get sold (though I wonder what the novelization of Iron Man looked like).

We've all heard the advice about avoiding flashbacks so close to the beginning of a story. It's a bit of a catch-22, as we need to start as close as possible to the action (the inciting element that kicks the whole thing off) if not in the very middle of the carnage. So what you end up with is the need to work in backstory elements over the first few chapters, piecemeal, so as not to scare the reader away.

So why is it that Hollywood, or the visual medium in general, can get away with this? This mechanism is especially popular on TV with action shows - Alias was notorious in it's use, and I've recently seen both Chuck (Love that show) and the new Christian Slater vehicle (My Own Worst Enemy) employ this technique - by showing the hero in some impossible predicament, jumping back a day or more, and then working forward to that moment in time, all the while keeping the viewer in suspense.

I have some theories on this. One is that TV and even movies can be consumed much faster than a book, or even a short story. The viewer does not have to wait as long to get resolution, to see how the seemingly at-odds elements tie together, and therefore it becomes a bit of added suspense. Also, by their very nature, the visual mediums can not get as in-depth on descriptions - characterization and setting can be shown in the sweep and pan of a camera - so they can skip to the point. In summary, it's all about speed.

But does that make it right? Does it make it good storytelling? I don't know. I think it's still a high-wire act to attempt, regardless of medium. And sometimes it comes off great - the detour in Iron Man affords us a chance to see Stark as he is - smug, smart, self-assured, womanizing, and most importantly, unaffected or uncaring of his actions upon the world. Which then sets up the great character change that first starts in the dark cave, with the car battery wired to his chest.

But I still won't be attempting this manuever in my writing.

NaNoWriMo 2008

Another November 1st, another year of NaNoWriMo.

I've been planning on participating since the end of last year's NaNo. I even had some lofty plans about outlining and doing preparation. But, funny story there...

The good news is that I didn't procrastinate in favor of other, non-writing, activities. Rather, I was polishing up a batch of short stories for submission, and never found the time. Oops.

I had a rough idea on what I wanted to write about - the premise anyway. But I was hoping to do some outlining. Now, I'm just going where my keyboard takes me.

If I can get ahead of my wordcount goal for the day, I'll carve out some time to map out where I am going. We'll see - after Day 1 I had 1668 words... the target is 1667. :D

As of this morning, I've got another 600 words, so am feeling pretty good so far.

The Race

Since getting more focused on writing, I've discovered the WotF forums, which are populated with like-minded individuals. Discussions are lively and informative.

One recent nugget I discovered is the concept of The Race, as it relates to writing. It's something that Dean Wesley Smith points to as the kicking-off point for his career and those of other successful SF/F writers such as Kevin J. Anderson and Geoff Landis. Here's a link to DWS' blog talking about it.

The basic idea is turning Heinlein's Rules of writing into something measurable, by getting points for story submissions. As DWS describes it, you get:

- one point for every short story in the mail.

- three points for every novel proposal or chapters and outline you have out. (Only three points per book, not per submission )

- eight points for every full novel manuscript you have out to market.

And though, when doing this with others, there is an inherent competition to get the high score, the real competition is with yourself. In order to get your score up, you need to write, every day. DWS advises writing and submitting a story every week.

When DWS and his contemporaries were doing this at the beginning of their careers, those in the 50 - 70 range ended up making it as writers. Those that couldn't even generate 10 points never heard of again.

I have 2 points. Nuff said.