Time out

 Word count: 242  Reading time: 1 min.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Jack Torrance, that creepy character in The Shining, was onto something with this thinking. He wasn’t the only one who thought that way. Sir John Lubbock said, “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.”

Today I topped 34,500 words in my NaNoWriMo novel and I felt just a little depleted. So I did the obvious: I took a break. The sun was shining, bald eagles were congregating by Harrison River (this weekend is Eagle Fest), and the open road beckoned. While I may not have added to my word count during the long drive and brisk walks around different parks, I came home with a notebook full of scribbled thoughts. Tomorrow morning I will open the novel, refreshed and playful. If there was a better way to spend this fine autumn day, I can’t think what it might have been.

What have you done to revitalize your writing recently? Do you take a break? Go to a play or maybe just watch a good movie?

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Noon: Rest From Work by Vincent Van Gogh

Magic Time

Word count: 478                  Reading time: 2 minutes

5:00 PM on Halloween afternoon I looked at the two pumpkins sitting on the kitchen counter. Should we bother to carve them? The weather was foul, not Hurricane-Sandy foul, but heavy-rain-warning-in-the-Pacific-rainforest foul. And rain it did. The downpour drowned the stereo and pounded loudly enough to suspend conversation. No trick or treaters were going to come out in this mess.

But still. Miss this holiday and it would be gone forever. So we rolled up our sleeves. When we were done, we set the two jack-o-lanterns on the front steps. Twenty minutes later our first and only callers of the night arrived: three young girls in garbage can costumes with big plastic lids for hats. I admired their tenacity and determination to celebrate one of the most fun holidays of the year. I also knew that two shining lanterns had drawn the kids to our house.

The next morning, November 1, marked the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I thought of many reasons not to participate this year:

• I only have a story idea. It’s not fleshed out. There is no timeline or well-defined story arc. It’s just a fragment.
• NaNo is hard. It takes a lot of effort and sacrifice even to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It means saying no to many things. Christmas fairs start in November. And I love Christmas fairs.
• All I’ll have at the end of will be a SFD, the start of a work, not a finished product.
• I can’t do it. It’s just not possible.

All of this, of course, is ridiculous. I’ve done NaNo for the past two years. It is a productive, intense experience. So many reasons to participate:

• All stories start with a single idea; they have to be told to find out where they are going. NaNo is the chance to capture what Anne Lamott calls the ‘down draft’, the getting down of the story. The ‘up draft’ – when the story is fixed up – comes later.
• Anything worth having is usually hard work and normally involves sacrifice.
• At the end of the process I’ll have another SFD, the important starting point for another novel.
• I can do it. I’ve done it twice before. In fact, my 2010 NaNo novel is currently under contract to Great Plains Publications. There are lots of published NaNo books.

Like Halloween, NaNoWriMo only comes once a year. A thirty day commitment isn’t forever. And if I miss it this year, I’ll have to wait twelve months to participate again. If I roll up my sleeves and finish a glowing jack-o-lantern for the front porch, who knows what fun characters might show up at the door.

How do you keep moving forward even when your psyche throws up the stop signs? How do you keep the prize of finished work in clear view?

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Photo by: Alan Bolitho, LM

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Word count: 437                                                           Reading time: 1-2 minutes 

How to get a book deal:

• write a novel
• give it to a few friends to read
• revise accordingly
• send a submission to an agent or publisher
• sign the contract.

That’s how it works for some authors and there is an entire chapter devoted to them in the book Life’s Not Fair. If you google “how to get a book deal” (over a billion hits) you’ll quickly realize how elusive a contract can be.

Four weeks ago, on a cold, grey morning that was more like January than June, my phone rang as I was coming out of the dentist. When Anita Daher said that Great Plains Publications wanted to offer me a contract on my most recently-completed YA novel (tentatively titled Lockdown), I looked up at the cloud-shrouded mountains and decided that the weather had never been finer. Two nail-biting weeks later a soft copy of the contract arrived and there was my name, Maggie Bolitho, hereinafter called the Author.

 Last week, more thrilling still, the hard copy of the contract arrived. After another read, front-to-back, I signed page 8 and returned it. Scheduled release date for the book: Spring 2014.

I wrote the SFD of Lockdown just over 18 months ago (NaNoWritMo 2010). Unlike the lucky authors who hit their stride right out of the gate, it’s taken a while for me to get this manuscript ready for prime time. My warm-up included three or four dozen short stories, two other YA novels, two adult novels, and I even experimented with futuristic Sci Fi (the less said bout that, the better). When my energy stalled, I took courses and joined online and R/L groups. I paired up with a tireless writing partner who is both forthright with her insightful critiques as well as encouraging. For over a year I worked with writing coach, Bruce McAllister, who helped me polish my work and hone my query letter to the point where it finally became market-ready. I’ve scaled stout walls over the past few years. 

So now I’m at the next bend in the road and I can see a few hurdles ahead. I’m primed and ready. I’ve been preparing for this part of the adventure for a few years now.

Where are you in your writer’s journey? Are you laying track and looking forward to pulling the entire novel together? Are you finished and revising, getting as much feedback as you can before you submit the work to the market? Or are you in the arduous process called submission, waiting for your phone call?

Maggie Bolitho, Author

Best laid plans

 Work count: 234                           Reading time: 1 min                 

Abraham Lincoln once said: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” How long he had to chop down that tree and how long he’d spend sharpening that axe varies from source to source but you get the idea.

Many creative writing experts advocate sharpening the axe before starting page one. So in January this year I took my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel and applied the snowflake method to it. Over many hours I distilled the story into a single sentence and then expanded it layer by layer. At the end of the process, character charts and spreadsheets gave me a detailed flight plan of where I was headed.

That exercise taught me one important thing: the part of my brain that imposes structure on the world is not the part of my brain that unearths the stories and finds the characters.

So I started this month’s NaNoWriMo with a character, a vague plot idea, and the determination to finish. I’m up to 34,000 words now and every time I sit down to the keyboard it’s another day in a kayak. Some days I paddle in still, boring water. The rest of the time – most the time – I’m shooting the rapids, wondering where I’m going to end up next.

How do your stories emerge? Through careful planning or by a leap into the deep end?

*** 

Photo: Joe Michl

Remember, remember - have fun in November

Word count: 197               Reading Time: 1 min.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Have you started the challenge of producing an entire, 50,000 word novel in a single month?  

I got an idea for the 2011 NaNoWriMo just last week. I was poking it with a stick when a tweet from Writer’s Digest delivered three essential questions: What is going to happen? What does the main character want? What are the turning points? Once I knew I could answer these, I took my lump of clay and waited for the starting gun.

Last year I discovered that finishing a first draft in thirty days was satisfying. However, reaching one milestone took me to another starting point. My NaNoWriMo 2010 draft took months to move to an almost-satisfactory state. I think it’s there now but I’m giving it a rest.

Am I daunted by the prospect that this novel might need the same reshaping as last year’s? A bit. Will I add thousands of new words while deleting thousands of existing ones? Definitely. Will I have fun? Absolutely. To be sure, I’ll keep Steven Pressfield’s thoughts on the fun of writing close at hand.

What’s on your potter’s wheel? Is it fun to watch it take shape?

Photo: Richard Rudisill

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National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) http://nanowrimo.org/en

Writer’s Digest – How to Prepare for NaNoWriMo http://bit.ly/rIrGX3

Steven Pressfield – Is Writing Fun? http://tinyurl.com/244jpag