Faltering

Uh oh. I had my first day of not making my writing numbers. The dashboard lets me know when I've hit my writing word minimums for the day. The minimum is 1667 a day. Yesterday, for the first time so far, I didn't make it. I only wrote 700.

I woke up. I just didn't write. I've been waking up every morning. I am awake now. I hope to double my output today so that I can make up for yesterday. The problem . . . I've hit a bit of a wall. The writing isn't as good. The story isn't coming quite as easily.

The good thing is that I have an outline. I'm going to go right back to my outline and write from that. No need to waste time wondering what to write next, or where I'm going. Not with my road map.

So despite not hitting the mark yesterday, I am pressing on.

The Importance of Getting It Right

I'm posting a link to an article about the best newspaper corrections. I wasn't going to, but then I read this one and felt compelled to post it for anyone to read:

“Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously reported that original Dolphin Johnny Holmes had been an insurance salesman in Raleigh, NC, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and lost the money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular homicide but acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on George Wilson. Each of these items was erroneous material published inadvertently. He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, did not win the lottery, neither he nor his mother was charged or involved in any way with a vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson. The Herald regrets the errors.”

Miami Herald, 1986

I don't believe it. I think my next stop will be Snopes to see if its true. Or perhaps they got two different stories mixed up and accidentally put the wrong man's name in the wrong story. Either way, here is the link to the others.

Haven't Done This Before . . .

I haven't done this before, but I'm going to promote this link that my NaNo liaison, and more notably, my critique group organizer, Lindsey, has posted to NaNo's website.

This could be the most in depth series of links I've ever seen, and the image above is only a subset of the whole. In it are links to character name generators, lists of names by country, world mapping applications, Pixar's rules for storytelling, plotting applications, and more. I'm amazed by all the links that are there.

Again, I'm promoting this blog on NaNo's forums so I hope that this series of links, which can also be found on the forum, can help some of my fellow NaNo writers.

Although the first line didn't grab me (see here) at least not as much as other Forsyth first lines (here) I will say that I liked the kill list almost as much as I liked some of the earlier Forsyth novels.

One of my favorite novels is The Dogs of War. This one was just as to the point and factual and reads like a primer on project management rather than a thriller. Not quite as good as The Dogs of War, but better than others.

The Pathfinders went back to their base at Colchester and resumed their careers. 

Ove Carlsson made a complete recovery and studied for a master’s degree in business administration. He joined his father’s company, but he never went back to sea. 

Ariel became famous in his tiny and, to most people, incomprehensible world when he invented a firewall that even he could not penetrate. His system was widely adopted by banks, defense contractors and government departments. On the Tracker’s advice, he acquired a shrewd and honest business manager, who secured him royalty contracts that made him comfortably off. 

His parents were able to move to a bigger house set in its own grounds, but he still lived with them and hated going out. 

Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson, aka Jamie Jackson, aka the Tracker, served out his time, retired from the Corps, married a very comely widow and set up a company delivering personal security for the ultra-wealthy traveling abroad. It made him a good living, but he never went back to Somalia.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Kill List 

That last last last line made me remember this little video I saw about a former sergeant I got to work with and run with in RIP, Sergeant Struecker. If you know anything about the Battle of Mogadishu, it's worth the nine minutes to watch.

Day Four and All Is Well

So, I'm on day four and so far I'm doing well. Not great, but well. I'm at 10,206 at the present time and the day is still not yet complete. I might get up to 11,000 by the end of the day. However based on the graph I'm still ahead of schedule.

What I really like, much more than the graph, is the dashboard next to the graph on my novel stats page.

I like the fact that it shows when I'm done writing for the day. The little bar, the second from the bottom changes from blue to green and boom, then I'm done for the day. I keep that in the green and I'm golden.

I love the fact that Octorber's outlining has helped so much. My ten key scenes have really helped me stay on track. I knock out the scene, realize that there is another subsidiary scene then knock that out. Instead of getting side tracked and staying on that secondary scene I get back to the ten key scenes and I'm back on track again. I love that.

So far I can honestly say that this is the best NaNo both in terms of content written and words written per day that I've been through yet. Here's to it staying that way. I can also say that I almost didn't do this NaNo. I was on the verge of passing when I heard a buddy from my writing group say that each year she does NaNo and each year the writing gets worse and worse (paraphrasing) so that all she's left with is a huge jumble. I can relate. I have had the same experience. Additionally the process of going through that jumble and rewriting, editing, and unjumbling it is not fun.

So far the jumble is far far away and I hope it remains that way. Glad I didn't listen. Hope she didn't either.

Not a Bad Start

Where have I been the past few days? Working on my outline. Where have I been today? Working on my novel! And it's not a bad start.

Loyal readers will remember that last year I gave updates on a semi-regular basis on my progress to 60K. If you want to go back and see those updates, for the past few years in fact, you can here.

Based on the metrics on NaNo I need to write 1667 words a day to get to 60K at the end of the month. Today, day one, I hit 2244. I'm ahead of schedule. Let's hope I stay that way.

Just Doesn't Grab Me

Sorry, this one just doesn't resonate with me. It seems like he's back-slid from the last few first lines I've cataloged in this space (here and here).

In the dark and secret heart of Washington, there is a short and very covert list. It contains the names of terrorists who have been deemed so dangerous to the United States, her citizens and interests, that they have been condemned to death without any attempt at arrest, trial or any due process. It is called the kill list.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Kill List 

It is just so trite and to the point. For some reason as I read it I thought about a fourth grader trying to write a novel and emulating his favorite thriller authors. Not a fitting first line for such a terrific author and what is turning out to be such a good book.

Since We're on the Subject

As NaNo is right around the corner, and as we've been discussing opening lines and scenes these past few posts (here and here), I thought that posting this from The Write Life seemed apropos.

The Worst Way to Begin Your Novel Advice from Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino gives some terrific bullet points for authors from the literary agent's point of view. Some of them are things most of us have seen and heard and dislike on our own.

“A sci-fi novel that spends the first two pages describing the strange landscape.”
- Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

or

“A cheesy hook drives me nuts. They say ‘Open with a hook!’ to grab the reader. That’s true, but there’s a fine line between an intriguing hook and one that’s just silly. An example of a silly hook would be opening with a line of overtly sexual dialogue.”

- Daniel Lazar, Writers House

Both of these are terrific in my view but the one that stopped me cold came up regarding too much flowery prose, if only cause it intersected so well with my own series of posts on descriptions of mornings (here).

“The [adjective] [adjective] sun rose in the [adjective] [adjective] sky, shedding its [adjective] light across the [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] land.”
- Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

It's so close to Roger Lawrence's comment on my post Doubter's Take Note:

It's because mornings are so much more vital. After you've said, "the evening sun cast an ochre smear over the dying sky", or something like that; what more is there to say.

Some of These Are Spot On for Comedies

When I saw the link to 33 Of The Most Hilariously Terrible First Sentences In Literature History by Nico Lang and realized how well it intersected with the series of blog posts I've had here over the past few days, there was no way I couldn't post it.

It's well worth reading. Some of them are really quite good if the rest of the book is meant to be funny. I chose four of my favorites just as an amuse-bouche to help you decide to click the above link and invest the five minutes it takes to read them. Hearing about what sex after fifty is like with Rachel makes the return on the investment well worthwhile.

She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.

Chris Wieloch

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.

Rephah Berg

As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows.

David Pepper

Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking.

Dan Winters

Again,  . . . well worth the time. Definitely adding this post to the series.

Daddy's Disgusting Book Title

This caught my attention. Lit Reactor has an article up by Christopher Schulz called Founder of Book Genome Project Calls Self-Publishing A Literary "Darknet" that is interesting in terms of understanding how meta-data is hindering the ability to truly know what genre's and types of books are being self-published and how that is similar to the Darknet.

But that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was the description of one of these self-published books that Schulz references the fact that the article he is referencing references "a particularly unsettling trend of incest and bestiality books that enter the marketplace completely unchecked." To prove the point he brings up Daddy's Invisible Condom (I'm not linking to it) and at least has this positive aspect of that book "On the plus side, books such as these don't seem to sell well."

(Original image from Digital Book World (DBW) - http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/the-literary-darknet-of-independent-publishing/)

It's an interesting few minutes read and the article it references too is worthwhile for anyone interested in self-publishing and the trends among the self-publishing ranks.