Precedent Setting

I have now successfully established a precedent for this year's NaNo. I woke up at 4:55 with the intent to write.

Did I write?

A bit.

Did I pay bills? Check the sports scores from the night before? Check on my home warranty?

A bit.

But the waking up precedent is there. The writing precedent will follow.

I did write some. I am still writing 2009's (or is it 2010's) NaNo entry. I'm a quarter way through it and still writing. With each new scene I write I am reminded why this year's entry needs to be different (as I wrote here). I'm having to write stuff out of whole cloth. It's as if my work on the entry doesn't matter at all. None of the writing made it over to this draft. What was the point of writing it if none of the writing stays? I could have just written a good outline and gotten more out of it.

Still, as my grandfather used to sing, "you got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. Inbetween" . . . so in that spirit . . . I woke up and wrote for an hour.

NaNo Goals

I know when National Novel Writing Month is getting near cause I get so many (tongue in cheek) calls from my brother about it.

But, in an effort to make this year's experience more worthwhile, I'm doing a couple of new things. First, I'm reading a book about writing a book in a month by Reader's Digest. I hope that Miss Schmidt's Book in a Month, which is really closer to a workbook than a book book, will make the work I produce a closer draft to the finished product than what I've produced in the past. I find that on 25% or less of what I've written in previous years actually makes it through the re-writing process. Those are not acceptable losses.

Secondly, I'm setting some goals. Based on a website I found on personal goal setting, I intend to provide the following goals:

1. State each goal as a positive statement - I will knock out 80,000 words during the month of November by writing approximately 3000 words a day during that month. They will all be toward the specific goal of writing the novel I've outlined during the previous months in my workbook on Book in a Month. In order to find the time I need to write I will wake up 6 out of every 7 mornings at 5 AM to write for atleast one hour on nothing but my NaNo writing. 
2. Be precise - Okay, so not 3000 words, more like 2666.666667 a day.
3. Set priorities – During November, waking up to write takes precedence over working for SEAL PT and sleeping. You have one day out of every seven to sleep in or work in the park. 
4. Write goals down – Done
5. Set performance goals, not outcome goals – Performance goal = 3000 words a day. Outcome goal = write a blockbuster novel.

Onward and upward to NaNo Victory!

Another First Line

Despite the move that has forced me off of this blog, I have still been reading. Here's another first line from the past couple of weeks.

It would be so easy to kill you while you sleep.” He rolls onto his side and faces his wife, tangling his fingers in her hair. Her face is shrouded in a dried blue mask; an antiaging beauty product that has begun to peel. The moonlight peeking through the bedroom curtains makes her look already dead. He wonders if other people look at their partners at night, peacefully dozing, and imagine killing them. “I have a knife.” He brushes his fingertips along her hairline. “I keep it under the bed.” Her lips part and she snores softly. So ugly, especially for a model. All capped teeth and streaked hair. He wedges his hand between the mattress and box spring and pulls out the knife. It has a large wooden handle, disproportionate to the thin, finely honed blade. A fillet knife. He places it against his wife’s neck, gently.

Konrath, J.A - Bloody Mary

Although Konrath can be unnecessarily visceral and over the top in describing murders, particularly bloody murders, he does grab the readers attention with his first line.

Back to Re-Posting The Kill Zone

There is a fun article on The Kill Zone today about time management, something I need to do a better job of based on my inability to keep to my posting schedule. There are a couple of snippets that spoke to me. First:

Never before have we had so many options. It’s an exciting era, but it’s also utterly time consuming. Who has free time when we can publish our entire body of works through various formats, and spend hours on the social networks promoting them?

Now add the "full time job with travel and three kiddos" plus "move" and you have my life at the moment. No excuse though particularly with NaNo coming up.

Then there is this on setting goals, again, something I'll need to use more aggressively in the coming months.

Establishing priorities is paramount. When I’m in a writing phase, I set myself a daily quota of five pages a day. That’s my minimum, and I have to be at least halfway through before I’m permitted to peek at my email via Microsoft Outlook. I have to be finished before going online. This is the only way to get your writing done. Do it first before anything else intrudes.

Not a bad article by Miss Cohen. Always good for a refresher on how to balance a Writing Life."

Sorry

Sorry that I've taken some time off, but I've been busy moving. But! I'm back on the band-wagon and getting prepped for this year's Nano.

But before we get onto that, I have a first line.

I WAS ARRESTED IN ENO’S DINER. AT TWELVE O’CLOCK. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.

Child, Lee - Killing Floor 

Again, I say that these Reacher novels are modern day Louis L'Amour dime store novels. Having finished this second one, I'm standing behind that statement.

Where Else . . .

I'm back at the airport, ergo I have some time to update the blog, but have little time to provide much more that just that . . . an update.

That being said, this is an update on spectacular creative writing. My brother sent me this link (here) before, but I didn't post it. Not only is it funny, but I think it is an example of outstanding creative writing. The style, the subject matter, the media, all terrific. Well worth the jump and the read.

I'm Not At Much Risk

I received a terrific email from a distant cousin, who I seem to remember from meetings at my grandparents old apartment, and I am quite pleased to re-post her link.

She is a new reader of this blog who started reading when I posted regarding Les Miserables. She might be our first (and only) international reader which should garner her a prize other than just a mention, but at this point does not.

All that being said, the link she sent was to The Guardian's book blogs and is titled Why is self-publishing still scorned by literary awards? The title provides enough description for me to discuss, but one of the key passages is this one:

Most literary awards are closed to self-published books. Entry criteria for the Booker prize state that "self-published books are not eligible where the author is the publisher or where a company has been specifically set up to publish that book", while the Bailey's women's prize for fiction stipulates that books must come from a "bone fide imprint".

I've noticed this too. Although I don't enter many contests anymore, having been a judge in a novel writing contest I discovered quite quickly how objective, arbitrary and distinctly unfair they are. That being said, I don't see, other than for suppressing sheer numbers of entries, why they wouldn't accept self-published books.

But, and this is the pigeon hole within which I fall, there are also award programs for ONLY self-published books.

Despite it all, thanks to our international reader for sending along a link and an interesting article that is well worth the jump and the thirty seconds it takes to read.

Got Me Thinking

This article from the weekend Review section of the WSJ got me thinking. (As a quick aside, for my 40th birthday I'm thinking of subscribing to the New York Times as well. So those of you thinking that this blog is a tad too WSJ heavy, just give it some time)

In the article, Mind & Matter: Our Unique Obsession With Rover and Fluffy, Robert Sapolsky discusses the way that we interact with pets in our lives. Its a fun little article that has very little to do with writing, but it got me thinking about my first writing, critique group. In that group there was an older gentleman, probably early to mid sixties, who was writing a book about a cadaver sniffing dog. This guy was a part of a volunteer organization that would go out and try and find lost children. It would make for interesting novels I bet. The problem was that he was writing from the point of view of the dog. It was a fiasco.

The worst part was that he refused to take any type of criticism. Not only was he wedded to the idea, but he was against making any changes in the entire book. The whole first chapter of the book describes the dog watching his owner make a cell phone call. We tried to talk him out of opening the book this way. Who wants to read about a dog's thoughts on his owner's cell phone calls. It was one of the more boring ways to start a book. Would he change it?  Nope. Not a bit.

I hope I never get so standoffish that I won't make changes. I doubt I ever will be. I think any and all writing vanity was drilled out of me when I started as a technical writer and had to turn my procedures in for editing. Those editors were ruthless. Martha, my first editor, was particularly liberal with her red pen. I remember those first few procedures came back, procedures that I thought were perfect, and they were completely reworked and red-marked. Years of that will train a fellow not to think to highly of his writing.

Then again, I sometimes wonder if the opposite reaction isn't worse. I rarely go out and promote my writing as anything other than mediocre. Even mediocre writing can be sold as spectacular. I can think of many books that I feel Toe the Line and On the Edge are better than, yet those books are nationally known while mine are still struggling out of the starting gate. Perhaps a bit of pride is a good thing to have as an author.

Still, one lesson I do know, be careful of the POV you choose. Choosing a dog? That's iffy. And as I wrote when I was a novel contest judge . . . choosing the POV of a pill? That's right out.

Could Be the Most Helpful Post Ever

This is why I like The Kill Zone so much. This is one little post asking for input on what resources indie authors most use and like. The comments are where the gold is. If you are a sometime reader, even if you're an all the time reader, of this blog, and if you are an author, it's worth a look see at the link and a review of the comments. Well worth it in fact.

On another note, there are some commentors who have written scads of recommendations for just about every single aspect of indie publishing . . . I had no idea I was doing so much. Perhaps I should stop the formatting, cover design, etc and concentrate on just writing.

Found Some Time . . . Guess Where . . .

At the airport again, so naturally I'm inspired to write a post and have the time to do so.

Today I read an article in the WSJ by Alexandra Alter about a mixed media novel. The article titled Marisha Pessl bends genres and mixes media in her new novel 'Night Film' is about a novel that mixes the conventional written word with photos, audio, illustrations and even short films.

Marisha Pessl's sprawling, 602-page literary thriller, "Night Film," opens like a typical mystery, with a body. Ashley Cordova, a 24-year-old piano prodigy and the daughter of the enigmatic, reclusive horror filmmaker Stanislas Cordova, turns up dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft in New York's Chinatown, apparently from suicide. A washed-up investigative journalist sets out to unravel the mystery of Ashley's death, and gets sucked into the cultish, underground world of fans who reenact Cordova's terrifying films.

What begins as a conventional hard-boiled crime story—a mysterious death, an investigation, a suspect at large—morphs into a twisty, genre-bending tale that alternates between crime, suspense and horror, with a supernatural element (witchcraft).

Although I find the 602-page aspect of the novel a tad daunting, the idea has merit. It's something I wanted since I first started reading on my Kindle. Bully for Miss Pessl for giving it a go.

Ms. Pessl says she was aiming to capture the way contemporary storytelling has become "a 360-degree experience" by releasing the story as layers of narrative through multiple channels, as a novel, an app, and as videos and images on websites like YouTube and Tumblr. "If someone Googles 'Cordova,' they can find tastes of his works," she says. "It adds layers of narrative."

Now I just need to get my brother to provide a reasonable story line where I can add a multimedia aspect. That being said, is it odd that I doubt I'll read it?