Kurt Vonnegut’s 12-1/2 Rules for Writing

Another StumbleUpon discovery:

So why am I still sitting here???

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I’m Ba-ack!

Well, it’s almost Christmas, and I think I promised a catch-up back in September.  That just means I haven’t changed, right?

Bryan arrived today, having finished his finals and a long work week.  We have two weeks until he goes back.  Fun time!  Christmas will be at the Peters’, some Irish friends here, and then we’re going to have a jolly time with Bryan’s big present.  Don’t know if he gets on here or not, so I’ll tell that secret after Christmas!

It’s been a crazy fall here, lots of writing.  I’m the Genealogy Feature Writer for Suite101 now, so I have a weekly genealogy article to write.  Takes a lot more time than the Writing Fiction articles!  I got my kid’s time-travel novel completely re-done and sent off to a contest, but didn’t place.  Drat.  I’ll start sending it out after the new year.  And I did NaNo again, and finished – 51,600 words!  A grown-up women’s novel this time, for a Mormon audience.  Still have a long way to go to even finish a rough draft, but it’s fun to work on.

I’ve been doing a bunch of music stuff, too.  My piano students somehow morphed from two kids and a mom last year, to six kids this year.  I’m not thrilled with two afternoons committed (Blaik says “awww”), but they’re fun.  And a couple who are really a joy to teach.  I’m also the branch music chairman, which means I do the choir for Christmas and organize the Christmas music fireside.  Being a choir director was quite an experience last year – lots of people who sing, but no men who know how to sing parts.  I was more prepared this year, so we’ve been practicing since the beginning of October.  The small groups and choir were awesome that night, but we had pianist problems and I ended up playing for a lot more than I expected!  Playing on the spur of the moment for Relief Society has made me pretty good at dropping unnecessary notes, and that came in handy. <g>

OK, that’s about it for now, catch up on such exciting things as Tim’s mission and floods in Cork coming soon.  At least sooner than six months from now!  Cheers!

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2nd Place in Flash Fiction Contest

I spent 3 days at the West Cork Literary Festival last week in Bantry.  Not a writer’s conference, per se, but I got to spend mornings working on my writing and afternoons and evenings going to readings and speakers and such.  Went to some stuff I wouldn’t have normally, which was good, bought too many books, which maybe wasn’t.  Mostly had 3 days with friends, all wrapped up in words and stories.

One of the fun things was a flash fiction contest.  They gave us the first paragraph and we had to write the rest of the story – 750 words max, including the first paragraph.  I worked on it my first morning instead of the other stories I planned on, then the three of us that went together critiqued each others, then we edited the next day and turned them in.  Results came in Friday night late, and Mandy sent a text the next morning.  Cathy won and I came in 2nd!  She said the judge read them both out, said she had them both tagged for first, then finally just had to make a choice.  So we both did the happy dance – long distance because Cathy is in Tipperary this week.

I was going to post the story here, because although I like how it came out, I didn’t know any place I could send it.  But tonight on my walk, I had some ideas to flip it around a bit and I’ll be able to send it out.  If I post it here, it’s considered published, and I don’t know that I’ll be changing enough to consider it a different story.

Take the Flash Fiction Challenge!

So I have a challenge for you.  Write a story as if you were entering the contest. Post it here as a comment (or email it to me), and I’ll e-mail you mine in return.

Here’s the first paragraph.  It’s a little clunky, but you have to include it as the opening of your story.  No more than 750 words, not counting the title (if you change it), so use the word counter on your word processor.  And have fun!

Pavel’s uncle has left him a painting in his will.  Pavel’s delighted, his uncle had many paintings, he was a connoisseur.  Pavel waits to see which one his uncle picked out especially for him.  The painting is wrapped in plain brown paper.  The courier hands it over.  “And your signature here, if you please.” Pavel sighs, takes the painting and unwraps it.

PS – I’ll give any challengers two months, until September 15th, to post their stories.  After that, if anyone else wants a copy of the story, send me a note and I’ll e-mail it to you.

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NaNoWriMo Ends

It’s official.  The November craziness of National Novel Writing Month is over.  My gray progress bar turned gradually to blue as I accumulated words, and 50,444 words later, it flashed green–I won!  Then when the validation process opened up on Nov. 25th and I uploaded my words, it turned purple with a big “WINNER!” inside it.  Hurray!

It was an exhausting month.  I set my goal at 3,000 words a day (about 12 double-spaced pages), which seemed a humongous amount to me.  There were days where the writing flowed and I did it in two sessions, and days where I kept forcing myself back to the computer again and again, plodding away until I made it.  I finished by the 22nd, as planned, but I had hoped to keep writing in snippets even while we had visitors.  I was surprised at how quickly I dropped it all when I uploaded my official count!  I wasn’t entranced with the story anymore, and had no time to think about additions and revisions, so my brain was quite ready to shut off.

It was quite a lesson in unexpected areas, though.  I purposefully started out without a plot, and while I discovered my characters along the way and let the story grow organically, I discovered that I needed a lot more time to ponder before I wrote.  I now have a few off-the-wall tangents in the story, most of which will be tossed out later, but there are one or two that were both interesting and relevant, and I may keep them.  I also discovered that I write easily when I’m chattering inside my character’s head, but while I may learn about my character, it sure doesn’t move the story forward.  Too much inner dialogue means someone needs to have a fight!

I’m heartily glad it’s over, but it’s time to move on to other things while this story chills until re-writing time.  And yes, I’ll probably do it again next year.  I guess I like a challenge–what else can I say?

For a bit more detail, see two posts at my Suite101 blog.

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NaNoWriMo: Idiotic Plot Twists

There are those doing NaNoWriMo strictly for the fun and challenge.  And there are those who are hoping for a workable manuscript out of it.  Both kinds of writers find “idiotic plot twists” showing up when their imaginations take over.  Here’s a sampling from a forum thread that left me rolling on the floor.

(MC = main character; MMC = male MC; FMC = female MC)
******
My MC is living in a half occupied house (one of the occupants hasn’t been seen since chapter 3) with a twelve year old girl who obviously is a nutcase and a talking bird who just emailed the MC’s mum and is a major suspect in his abduction. And he doesn’t realise anything’s wrong despite waking up in a room full of mousetraps.
******
My perfectly normal senior citizen was suddenly visited by the Chick-fil-A cows from space and taken to planet Eat Mor Chikin. She finally hijacks the space feeding trough and gets back to earth, bringing along a renegade cow that decides to eat all her daisies.
Words written on this inane scene – approx. 5,000 🙂

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My MMC is supposed to go to this coffeehouse and order a specific type of latte in order to notify his contact that he has arrived. Then out of the blue, as he’s walking into the place a person in black emerges from the shadows and follows him in. Where did he come from!? But the best is yet to come. My characters decided that there was an anime convention in the area, and the person in black? Well, he’s dressed as a ninja of course, as well as a bunch of other people in the place. And then, my MMC’s contact ends up being disguised as a ninja on top of it. Talk about random!! *sighs*
******
My characters found a duck.
No, I’m not kidding.
In a post-apocolyptic world where they have only seen a few species of animals twenty years after the world died, they found a duck. Random duck, right before the beginning of the funeral of their most important leader in history. So what did they do with said duck?
They debated eating it.
But then eventually decided to follow it back to the duck nest to see if there were more; they almost missed the funeral cause they were too busy watching the fluffy little ducklings run around all awkward-like.
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The fate of Humankind rests on a band of teenagers impressing Elves with a concert, when Elves do not recognize music as an art form. I need to have them write a song in Fidelian- the Elves’s native language- that will make them simultaneously cry and see the error of their ways by the next chapter. SO not supposed to happen. And I don’t SPEAK Fidelian, so this should be entertaining.
******
All of my characters keep wanting to have sex! They are humping like rabid bunnies! Why won’t they stop?
I plead with them, I offer them cool dialogue and all manner of magical action, but no, they ignore me and jump one another.
Next up, I’m writing a big hose…
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My MC just got rescued from slave traders by a bunch of talking moles. Why? I couldn’t tell you. Where the talking moles come from in a story where NO OTHER ANIMALS have spoken a word or been given a voice of any sort, beats me. Oh, and the moles are leading them through underground tunnels (which somehow are tall enough for two people to walk through) that somehow the slavers didn’t think to enter. I think the moles may have a whole underground civilization. My best guess is that I must have read this in some other book and my subconscious hated my plot, so decided to go with something it vaguelly remembered from childhood.
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So far, I’ve had my main characters throw rat poo at someone to escape and kill the same woman three times. Oddly enough though, it all works and fits.
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That’s nothing. I had a character once think that he was a dead guy that wants to haunt the living, so he reigns mass terror over the people, only to find out when he is jumping off the Empire State Building to scare them even further that he is actually alive.
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my sister managed to talk me into letting my character get kidnapped by a giant singing platypus… this in turn created a whole new mess of problems for where my plot was originally going…
and I missed the platypus after he left so much that I’ve created another spot for him where he gets to be the hero.. ^^;;
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Well, a former mermaid just invited herself to my MC’s ex-girlfriend’s wedding.
Also, completely a surprise to me, my MC and a couple of pretty big supporters got kidnapped by some royal guards who used to be talking bears.
I would say that this all makes sense in the context of my plot but, um, not really.
*****
Oh yes, you are not alone. I’ve decided to let my characters misbehave as there is no controlling them. They’ve stolen my plot and taken a turn of their own. I just hope they can figure out how to end the thing now. They will certainly not be getting any help from me!

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NaNoWriMo Begins!

Well, I’ve done it.  It’s not as crazy as it would have been for me to try it last year, but I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  The gist of it is to write at least 50,000 words of a novel from scratch, between November 1 and November 30.  It means turning off the internal editor and undoubtedly writing a bunch of stuff that will get thrown away upon editing later, but the initial result is to have the story down on paper.

While some people plan as much of the plot and characters as they can, I’m starting with a very fluid idea of a character (13-y.o. girl), a setting (Oregon and horses), and several directions the story might go.  And several possible characters that may or may not be included.  I’ve probably got 3 stories worth of plot ideas, but I figure one will sort itself out to be dominant and the others will get saved for another book.

I’ve wanted to use this first chunk of Ireland writing time to get away from plot-driven stories and write one from the characters and just let it go where it wants.  Where it wants that’s interesting anyway.  But I guess I’m too goal-oriented, because I haven’t been able to make myself do much, and that’s where NaNoWriMo will help.  I hope.  Lots of fun and craziness, pushing yourself, networking with other crazy novelists, and ending up with a huge pile of pages by the end of the month.  Except I have guests coming the whole last week of November, so I only have 3 weeks!

Within the NaNo community, there’s also an “All-Ireland Word War,” a contest between the 5 provinces to see who has the highest average words per writer.  And I think 50,000 is low for that, but I’m signed up anyway.  Maybe if I hit 60K I won’t be pulling Munster down too far.  <g>  If anyone wants to check on my progress, go to my NaNo profile page.  And wish me luck!

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What is Suite101.com?

Most of you know that I’m the feature writer for “Writing Fiction” at Suite101.com.  As such, I write regular articles on that topic, but I can write about anything else I want as well.  Most recently I did a series on revising novel manuscripts:

• Revising a Novel: the Importance of Structure
• Tips on Major Character Revision
• Plot Revision for Novel Writers
• Final Draft Revision

You can also click on the box in the upper right of this page to get to my main Suite101 page.  I’ve also done some on preschool music and a few Indianapolis area attractions.  Eventually (soon, I hope), I’ll get a few articles up in the Ireland Travel section about places we’ve visited so far. But for those who want an overview of Suite101’s what and why, here’s an article from the Vancouver Sun.

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Trying again

Toward ocean (low tide) at "my spot."

Toward Kinsale

I haven’t tried to post anything since I had major problems when we first got here–every time I tried to upload pictures, it locked the computer up.  So if this works, I’ll post those as well.

Yesterday was all I imagined for being in Ireland and having time to write.  After weeks and weeks of overcast and rain, it was gloriously sunny.  Not a cloud in the sky in the morning, and then only poofy cotton balls in the afternoon.  So after my chores I went down to Charles Fort and walked the coast walk, half an hour down to Lower Cove and then the same back.  But I stuck my notebook and a water bottle in my backpack, and when I got back to a grassy area near the Fort, I sat down to do my daily writing.  The gulls argued and a motor boat rumbled faintly in the distance, but the wind was down and the tide was out, so there weren’t even any waves breaking.  Sunny, peaceful, lovely . . . and then an old guy came up from a beach-y area down the slope from me and stopped to chat.

45 minutes later, after discussion on anything from farming to fishing to the difference between Guinness and Murphy’s, he went on.  But by then my oomph to write was gone and I was suffering from “numb bum,” so I packed it in.  It was still a lovely day, and while it was overcast again today, it’s supposed to be dry for the next several.  (Although weather-forecasting is about like throwing dice here–the Atlantic changes things so fast that nobody knows.)  Here’s to sun when we can get it!

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Another Editor’s Choice Award

I just received my sixth Editor’s Choice award in Suite 101’s Writing & Publishing section.  It’s for an article called “Complex Scope of Writing a Novel: Motivation, Intimidation and the Dreaded Writer’s Block” that I posted last week.  It’s based partly on what I’ve been learning from the fiction workshop I’m taking and the freewriting I’ve been doing for the class, and partly on my six-month experience with intimidation-caused writer’s block after a major conference I went to when I was first starting out.

The Editor’s Choice Awards are given to one article in each major section each week, for an article that “exemplifies the quality content, excellent presentation, and high standard” that Suite 101 is looking for.  Good writing, hopefully, but also good content and good Search Engine Optimization so Google and others can pick it up.  SEO has been interesting to learn, and makes for very different articles and especially titles than I’ve been used to.  They’re spotlighted by a circled green checkmark wherever the article title shows up on Suite 101.  Click here if you want to read it.

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Reviewing Avi’s new book

Cool stuff happening!  Avi is a Newbery-winning children’s author, and I just got a request from his publicist asking if I would like to review his upcoming book on writing, “A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End” for Suite101.

She’s sending the review copy (it won’t be out until April), but she also asked about stats for my Writing Fiction topic at Suite101.  So I e-mailed my editor, and my topic has received 24,000 page views in the last month, 15,600 of which are mine!

And I also, at my editor’s suggestion, asked if I could interview Avi by e-mail.  Give me courage!

Edited to add:  I suppose I should put a link to the review article, “Avi Gives Advice on Writing.”  Go have a look!

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