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

Another StumbleUpon discovery:

So why am I still sitting here???

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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)
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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.
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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*
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Children’s poems off to a contest

I subscribe to Children’s Writer, a newsletter for, well, children’s writers.  They have two contests a year, and the most recent one was for a set of children’s poems.  I write children’s fiction, and sometimes try my hand at non-fiction, but have never done poetry.

So I noodled a few ideas in my head, preschool-oriented, and came up with three short humorous (I hope) rhymes.  One called “Bunny Ears” about tying knots instead of bows; one called “All By Myself” about choosing clothes for school, and one called “Jelly Jamboree” with smears of jelly everywhere.   I don’t know if they’re worth anything, but it was fun.

Worked on fine-tuning meter and word choice with my critique group, and they’re off to the contest.  Won’t know results until June or July, but wish me luck!

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Welcome to Jennifer Jensen’s blog!

This is a big experiment for me, but one I’ve been thinking about for quite a while.  I’m not sure where to start.  I want to record some of what we’re experiencing right now, preparing to move from the United States to Ireland, plus some of my writing projects.  Undoubtedly some family stuff will show up, too, but I don’t want to get too personal.   

It snowed again last night, but I hoping spring will show herself sometime soon, even if it’s just for a peek.  I’m desperate to walk outside again, in between sorting out what we’re taking, what we’re storing, and what needs to go to Goodwill.

Today includes wrapping up my look-ups for the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness requests, and writing two articles for Suite101, getting boxes to put books in, and possibly sorting through old videotapes.  Wish me luck!

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