Novels

Countdown to NaNoWriMo

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National Novel Writing Month begins in just under nine hours where I live, but it’s already kicked off in other parts of the world. For those who don’t know, National Novel Writing Month–or NaNoWriMo–is a pure fun project where you write a 50,000-word novel draft in thirty days. You “win” by reaching at least 50,000 words on or before 2359 on November 30. You can download web badges, get pep talks by video, enjoy local write-ins, and generally have a good time writing.

The Office of Letters and Light is the non-profit that sponsors NaNoWriMo to highlight the art and craft of writing and to raise money for school programs to encourage kids to write.

An excuse to write and donating to a great cause, and NaNoWriMo lives up to its tag line: “Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon!”

Many writers have turned their NaNoWriMo novels into published work–after editing and revising, of course. Some, unfortunately, have self-published their work immediately after writing and omitting the key steps of editing and revising, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact it’s very liberating to sit down and just write for writing’s sake for thirty days, knowing revising and editing can wait for a calmer time.

I almost didn’t participate this year because I’m prepping two other manuscripts–one for a contest and one to publish in December–but I managed to get both MSS ready ahead of schedule, despite having a cold.

So, I’ll have leftover Hallowe’en candy for snacks, plenty of coffee, a fully charged laptop, and an idea I came up with back in the spring that I can now flesh out. I’ll crank Sat Radio or my iPod up to full volume and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.

And I’ll write, and it’ll be fun, until the end of the day and the word counter hasn’t hit 1,667. (To get to 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to write at least 1,667 words per day.) Plus, I’ll be an election officer on November 6, so no writing that day, unless it’s all over quickly and the poll numbers add up.

If you’ve never NaNoWriMo’ed before, give it a try. It’s never too late to subject yourself to such exquisite torture.

 

The Dark and Stormy Nights of First Lines

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This past Friday evening, when something called a “derecho” blew through the mid-Atlantic, “It was a dark and stormy night” would have been an apt title.

How’s that for a first line? Would you read on after reading that? Well, obviously, you are, so….

As writers we’re taught everything has to be a hook–from that twenty-five-word “elevator pitch” to a first line that grabs the reader and forces him or her to read the rest. The first line, especially when you’re submitting your work, has to be something that catches the reader’s or agent’s eye, something that will stop him or her from tossing your manuscript on the slush pile.

A first line can be versatile. It can be dialogue or straight prose. If you’re James Joyce, it can be inarticulate. If you’re Charles Dickens, it can almost tell a story on its own. If you’re Toni Morrison, it can take your breath away.

In some ways, as we edit and revise, we neglect our first lines, until we get feedback that says, “You know, the first line just didn’t grab me.” Grab. That’s the key word. That first line has to both be a “stopper”–something that makes the reader stop and ponder–and inspiring–something that compels the reader to read the next line, and the next, and the next. It’s not so easy as it seems.

The first line that tops many a list of “best’s” is “Call me Ishmael,” from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Short, to the point, imperative tense–you call me Ishmael. Now, had this not been required reading, I’m not sure if that line alone would have made me read further, but I’m glad I did.

This post was inspired, in part, by coming across the American Book Review’s “100 Best First Lines from Novels.” These first lines have done their work well because as I scanned the list of best first lines and recognized books I’ve read (I was surprised how many), the rest of the book came quickly to mind.

I saw “It was a pleasure to burn.” and remembered just how Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 impacted me when I read it as a teen. I loved books, so a world where books were burned because they were obsolete was one I had to explore.

I saw “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” and remembered exactly how difficult it was to work my way through Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce. This was another required read, but I had hoped to explore my Irish side with it. Oh, well.

I saw “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” and remembered the only Hemingway work I could stomach, The Old Man and The Sea. I remembered I felt as if I were in the boat with the Old Man and felt his frustration as he futilely beat away the sharks from his magnificent catch.

My personal favorite first line is “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Bet you didn’t see that coming, did ya?) I have read and re-read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice many times, and each time that first line makes me smile in anticipation of what is to come.

Close behind Austen is another Brit, George Orwell, with “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” 1984, more than anything, shaped my political views. The first independent clause in this first line bears a striking resemblance to the “dark and stormy night” opening you’re supposed to avoid. Likely, if Orwell had put the period after April, few would have read on. It’s the second clause that’s the hook, the grabber: “…and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Six simple words that tell you dystopia is about to follow. Pretty masterful.

Taking a look at that 100 Best First Lines list is instructive because the examples run the gamut from modern literature to a few centuries past. You can see the evolution of the first line, and, believe me, what was a grabber in the eighteenth century is very different from something modern. And yet, the same. All in all, it will renew your love of language, but, more importantly, it will make you focus on your first lines to make certain they “hook.”

What’s your favorite first line from a novel or short story? Have you tried to imitate it? What makes you want to read more?

(By the way, American Book Review also has a list of best last lines of novels. Another post, perhaps?)

 

Eyes on the Prize

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Last week I began what I hope is the final edit on the third book in my trilogy, A Perfect Hatred. (To learn what the trilogy is about, click on the “Works in Progress” tab above.) For Books One and Two, I did all the editing on-screen, mainly because I wanted to save trees. This was even though I know I do my best editing of my own or anyone else’s work if I have a printed document and a red pen. Yeah, I came up in an age where a red pen didn’t damage your psyche; it got your attention.

For Book Three, I decided to take a different approach–print a chapter or two at a time and edit as I retype. I got the idea from a writer friend, Cliff Garstang, who had blogged about it in one of his regular “Tips for Writers” posts. Even though he recommended it and has done it to good results, he indicated doing it for a novel might be daunting. I scoffed inwardly, but I should heed my writing peers who’ve blazed the trail.

It is daunting, but it’s also working.

Somehow, I’m seeing plot holes better; I’m improving the dialogue; I’m tweaking the characters. I’d always considered this the weakest of the three books when I knew it needed to be the strongest: It’s wrapping up all the plot threads from the other two and bringing the story to the usual epic conclusion. (Just joking. A little.) I knew this was a draft that needed more “meat,” and though the usual result of a revision is cutting the fluff, I’ve found this retyping-as-revision approach has allowed me to add muscle to what was a lean frame. Since I’ve cut 150+ pages from the first two books, I think I have a little slack in the fact I’ve added fifteen pages thus far to this one.

And I’m trying to manage killing trees by reusing the second side of the paper–using 275 sheets of paper (just over half a ream) to print 550 pages. That’s double-spaced, by the way.

On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and generated 100,000+ words–or regenerated in this instance. It’s hard on the buttocks, it’s hard on the wrists and fingers, and it’s a strain on the eyes.

But I’ll end up with something better when it’s all done, something that will be more than ready to submit to agents. That’s the prize to keep the weary eyes on.

How do you edit/revise? Do you retype or print out and use a pen of any color?

Inspiration Redux

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I’ve written about inspiration in this blog before and talked about the various things that get an idea going in my head. A local writer friend of mine picks up snippets of conversations and jots them down. Maybe they’ll go verbatim in something he’s writing, or maybe they’ll inspire a whole new piece. You never know. You also never know where or when the muse decides to mess with your psyche.

This past week’s Friday Fictioneers’ story was, as are all Friday Fictioneers’ stories, inspired by a photograph. (If you click on the link in the first sentence, you’ll see the picture.) I’ve said before how amazing it is that the same picture can inspire widely different story interpretations of it. Last Friday’s picture lent itself almost universally to “body buried behind a wall” stories, and each one of them was unique. The comments on my story were all ego-strokes–yes, writers need them, too–but one person asked if it were the beginning of a longer piece.

Hmm. I hadn’t given that much thought, since I’m collecting the 100-word stories for inclusion in a fiction chapbook I’m drafting. I copied that story into the manuscript and added a counterpoint 100-word story as well. Then, I pretty much put the comment out of mind since I was about to head to Northern Virginia to get on a train to New York City.

On board the train, I was supposed to be writing a book review for an on-line magazine, but that comment about a longer piece began to nag at me, so much so I had to put the book I was reading for the review aside, pull out the Moleskine, and start making notes. By the time the N. E. Regional rolled into Penn Station in New York, I had a decent amount of notes about a possible new novel–no spies, no intrigue, no terrorists, no sci-fi; what’s up with that?

Throughout my weekend visiting friends on Long Island, I kept coming back to those notes, adding things, asking questions–and answering them–about possible characters and their motivations. I even decided it needed to take place in a town in the Shenandoah Valley very familiar to me, but I also decided that town needed to be fictional. A Google-search later, I had ten or twelve possible town names. Then, I decided that fictional town needed a fictional, private, women’s college, and another Google-search later, I had the name of the college.

I told myself that this idea would be perfect for this year’s National Novel Writing Month, but that’s not until November. I’m telling you, these characters are begging to be brought to life sooner than that.

Or perhaps it was just that a new tale needed to be told. I’ve been writing new short stories for the past two and a half years, but my primary focus has been on editing/revising the trilogy I want to submit to agents. A few weeks ago I had lamented to myself I hadn’t started a brand new novel project in several years.

So, one part suggestion from a reader, one part the desire to start a new project, add in pushy characters (I mean, really, they’re only nascent right now, but they are making themselves known in a big way.), and I’m pretty excited about this idea. Like, giddy and childlike about it. Not bad for an old broad writer.

Virginia Festival of the Book – Day Two

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My VFTB day started at noon with “Fiction: Finding Your Way,” featuring authors Ernessa Carter, Sarah Pekkanen, Lolette Kuby, and Jason Wright. The theme was novels where the protagonists run away from something.

Wright’s book The Wedding Letters is a sequel to The Wednesday Letters, and both books are about written letters that change people’s lives. The connection to “running away” wasn’t clear, other than the characters move away from life as they thought it was based on the information in the letters. The concept of the first book intrigued me, and I bought that instead.

Pekkanen featured two books, The Opposite of Me and Skipping a Beat. These two books deal with aspects of women’s relationships, siblings and marriage respectively. A book about women’s friendships will be out soon, and another on motherhood will follow. Her summary of Skipping a Beat, where the husband in a relationship becomes a different person as a result of a heart attack, struck a little too close to home (the becoming a different person part) and made me emotional to the point where I felt I couldn’t buy the book. The premise is intriguing, but I’m not ready for it yet.

In the age of eHarmony and Match.com it’s difficult to believe that people still write personal ads, but Kuby explores them in a book within a book. The protagonist in her novel, Writing Personals, is writing a non-fiction book about personal ads and drafts one to post herself. It sounded fascinating, but I’m waiting for the Kindle version.

Carter, who grew up in a mostly black neighborhood of St. Louis, longed for a girl, with skin darker than hers, to join her sixth grade class so her lighter-skinned classmates would no longer tease her. As an adult, Carter took that longed-for girl and made her the protagonist of 32 Candles. The portion she read was lyrical and very visual, and I bought the book because I was curious about Carter’s “Molly Ringwald ending.” The book came with a hot pink tote bag emblazoned with the book’s cover–great swag!

The next panel was “Fiction: Running from the Truth.” So, two panels with a “running from” theme. The authors on this panel were Amy Franklin-Willis, Elizabeth Nunez, David Huddle, and Robert Olmstead. I think among them they’ve won just about every literary award except the Man Booker and Pulitzer Prizes. At least, it seemed that way–a very distinguished panel. Each read from their works.

Franklin-Willis was excited to be in Charlottesville because it was a setting in her book The Lost Saints of Tennessee, but she’s never been to the city. She researched extensively on the Internet and enjoyed driving through the city and seeing the places she highlighted. Her story of a promising young man who fails everyone’s expectations for him sounded interesting, and I’ll get this for my Kindle.

Nunez, an immigrant from Trinidad, likes featuring the theme of immigration in her works. She read from her book, Boundaries, about a woman dealing with her mother’s breast cancer and wondering about the fact she doesn’t know how to love her mother. Another topic a bit too close to home, but she talked about another book, Bruised Hibiscus, which sounded intriguing, and I’ll check for that on Kindle as well.

Huddle, a dour-looking professor at Hollins University, has, in fact, a wry sense of humor. He read the opening of his book, Nothing Can Make Me Do This, which is about how a thirteen year old girl learns her beloved grandfather has a stash of porn movies. The books sounds interesting, but what he said about knowing the ending before you start a book resonated–“It’s what keeps me writing, wondering what I’ll learn from each book.”

Olmstead is an ex-pat New Englander in love with West Virginia. That love came through in his reading from The Coldest Night, about a young man from West Virginia who has, as we say in the South, no advantages. He’s in love with the daughter of a prominent man, who shows his disapproval of the relationship in a somewhat expected way. Another possibility for the Kindle.

The final panel, for me, of the day was “Fiction: Conspiracies and Obsessions.” The four panelists–Alma Katsu, Amelia Gray, Virginia Moran, and Joe Lunievicz–were some of the most fascinating writers I’ve heard speak in a long time. Each of their books uses an alternate world and varying degrees of madness.

Katsu, a former intelligence analyst, now writes books she admits are almost unclassifiable, with elements of magic, paranormal, and romance. She began writing to get her mind off an illness and “to see if I could write a novel.” The result was The Taker, which is book one of a three-book deal, a deal good enough she could quit her government job to write full time. Lucky her. I had to retire to do that. I bought The Taker for my Kindle.

Lunievicz, a fencer, started his novel on the basis of a vision–two men dueling with swords on the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Fencing is a thread through the book, but it is historical fiction surrounding the Errol Flynn movie, Captain Blood. I loved that movie as a child, and that was the deciding factor for my buying the book.

Gray’s book Threats is about a man whose wife dies and who then slowly goes mad. It also began from a vision–of a man at the top of a staircase and a woman covered in blood at the bottom. The premise was intriguing, but Gray didn’t read anything from it and rather treated the panel as an opportunity for stand-up comedy. To be fair, she wasn’t feeling well, but she didn’t convince me to buy her book.

Moran, an English teacher through and through, wrote a short story about a mathematics professor in a cabin in the Adirondacks trapped by a massive snow storm. She decided it didn’t work as a short story, but after studying Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, she began to reconsider her story. Woolf took a short story and turned it into that novel, and Moran was inspired to do the same. That unworkable short story became The Algebra of Snow, a novel, which was also her PhD dissertation. I liked the concept of taking a short story you’re disappointed in and expanding it, so I purchased this book as well.

Tomorrow, my day starts at 1000 and goes well into the evening. I can’t wait.