How NaNoWriMo Helped Me Love My Old Novel Again

Dear readers and raptors,

NANOWRIMO 2012 IS OVER, AND I HAVE 50,000 WORDS!!!

*confetti*

Four years in a row! Holy cow, how the time does fly, and gosh, I’m really proud of myself for pulling this off on top of schoolwork and extracurriculars. I’m also incredibly proud of all my friends who undertook this, regardless of their final wordcounts—you guys are ROCKSTARS!

But beneath all this noveling joy there lurk some things that you don’t know about me. So for this week’s Sunday blogpost (going back to my regular schedule now that NaNo is over), here’s an odd factoid:

In the weeks leading up to NaNoWriMo, I often go through a period of deep suspicion.

I don’t like to admit it to myself. I’m a little weirded out that I’m admitting it here. But basically, in realizing that I’m going to have to set aside my endless editing of Unfamiliar Spellings, I get kind of nervous and, dare I say it, resentful. I know I’ve committed to writing this new novel. I know I’m supposed to be worldbuilding and getting to know these characters. I know I’m supposed to sketch out ideas for plot elements so my pantsing will at least have a modicum of direction to it.

But every time I try to do this, I feel guilty, as though showing real interest in my new plot bunny is a betrayal of my work-in-progress (WIP). Out of loyalty to the intricacies of non-loc/spelling, I’m not allowed to fully appreciate the awesomeness of the holographic racehorses on Asta. The hilarious quirks of a spacefaring Shakespeare company are somehow in competition with Smeth’s sprawling cosmopolitanism. And God forbid I should love Tony and Bella and the crew of the Helen Aeris as much as I love Albert and Julia and Kozm.

All of that ridiculousness played out in 2010 and 2011, and I fully expected to encounter it again this year. Except I wasn’t counting on one thing:

By October of 2012, I was kind of sick of Unfamiliar Spellings.

Sacrilege. SACRILEGE. How could I possibly be sick of this story/world/characters?

Oh, I fought it. I didn’t want it to happen. I’d keep the document open on my desktop behind my schoolwork and poke at it from time to time. What I was refusing to recognize was that, by that point, I’d spent a good chunk of my year working on this novel—I went on an editing spree in early January before the Writer’s Digest Conference, and then a MAD PUSH of edits in February and March in order to send out queries in April, then spent a couple months querying before I stopped in order to do more edits, then got feedback from a new round of beta readers, then headdesked when I realized the extent of the new revisions I needed to make, then drew up a list of edits…

…and have been sitting on that list since the end of the summer, rereading the draft and waiting for enough free time to revise.

Anyone would be drained after that. Of course, I know the importance of taking time off before you edit, but I just couldn’t bring myself to set it aside. Even though I could feel my enthusiasm slipping away, I felt like I *should* be editing, so I kept trying.

And then came NaNo 2012. It was the latest I’d ever gotten into the month of October without knowing what I was writing. Fortunately, my fascination with my WWI/WWII class kept bleeding over into everything I did, and somehow, by 12:01 on November 1st, I had a very sketchy plot and characters.

Maybe Shadeshock wasn’t as “threatening” because it was in the same world as Unfamiliar Spellings. Maybe it was the novelty of writing historical fantasy (rather than the sci-fi of 2010 and 2011). Maybe it was the lack of prep work. Or maybe it was just that I was feeling so done with US and that there really was something special about Shadeshock. Regardless, NaNo 2012 was the first time that I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about enjoying the new novel.

I allowed myself to like the setting.

I allowed myself to like the plot.

Most important, I allowed myself to like the characters.

NaNoWriMo 2012 ended. I crossed the finish line with 50K and flying colors. And last night, I realized that in all the time I’d spent wrapped up in NaNo, I’d finally gotten enough distance that I was excited to go hang out with my old characters again.

And thus it is that, after months of angst, I love my old book again.

So hopefully, winter break will let me finally implement those edits, and maybe I’ll finish the Shadeshock draft too. For now, though, I’m off to WRITE LIKE THE WIND. (Finals, finals, finals. All the finals.)

How are you all? For those of you who did NaNo, how did things go for you? For those who didn’t, what have you been up to this month?

Oh, and though he’s been AWOL for a while, Frederick Regency Raptor would like me to let you know that he sends his greetings.

A Tale of Empanadas and Mockingjays

So, a quick, random story that illustrates how weird I am:

As those of you who follow me on Twitter may know, this evening I went on an EXPEDITION to get myself out and about (I’d been stuck in the apartment all day). I took the subway to Greenwich Village and ended up doing a sort of gastronomical tour of Manhattan deliciousness. I ate UH-MAY-ZING falafel, then wandered a bit, then purchased ice cold grapefruit juice/soda, then wandered a bit. I finally wandered all the way to an establishment I first visited back in January when I attended the 2012 Writer’s Digest Conference. Said establishment is called Empanada Mama (and ZOMG if you live in NY and you haven’t been there, you must go, because it’s dirt-cheap and delicious and open literally 24/7, so you have no excuse).

But I digress. So back in January, I stopped in at Empanada Mama because it was recommended on Yelp as a good place to eat that wasn’t too far from the WDC12 location. There I was, sitting at one of the tiny tables, waiting for my food to come, pondering the vast amount of writing/publishing information I had acquired in the past two days, when I heard this:

 

 

Needless to say, my eyes bugged out and I did the auditory version of a double-take. I looked around at the other patrons, but nobody else seemed to have noticed it or reacted at all. Had I hallucinated? I mean, I was excited about the Hunger Games movie, but not THAT excited.

I even tweeted about it (ah, back when I was young and tender tweeted so rarely):

At any rate, I have not been back to Empanada Mama until this evening. When I arrived, I immediately pulled out my phone and asked Twitter to tweet something—anything—at me. The reason? My phone notifies me when people tweet @ or DM me. And my text ringtone?

 

 

Yup. Full circle, baby. When I got home from the WDC12 back in January, I immediately went searching to see if a Mockingjay ringtone existed. Indeed it did. It’s been my ringtone ever since. So tonight, I turned up the volume on my phone all the way, buried my nose in my book, and let the Mockingjay sing.

With any luck, some HG fan in that restaurant tonight thought s/he was hallucinating. May the odds be ever in your favor, my friend.

The Sadism of Fiction (or, What Game of Thrones Can Teach Us About Writing)

(IN CASE YOU’RE WORRIED: THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE POST)

Hello friends,

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of critiques. Some of these are for my internship. Some of them are for friends. Some of them are for random people I met on the internet. That said, I’ve been noticing a common thread in my comments to these fellow writers, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about with my own writing as well. I figured a blog post was in order.

I can hear the questions already. “Okay, but what does that have to do with Game of Thrones?” you ask. Patience, grasshoppers.

All right, so the title of this post may be exaggerating a wee bit. I don’t pretend to know everything that makes Game of Thrones such a gripping read, and likewise, what I’m about to discuss isn’t sadism in the technical sense. But I do want to point out one thing that George R. R. Martin does really, really, REALLY well:

He makes likable, interesting, flawed, human characters. And then he makes their lives suck.

Moreover, note that not only does he make problems for them right at the beginning of the story, but he makes things get worse all the time. Rarely, if ever, do things get better. Plans go awry. People turn traitor. People get angry and say things they shouldn’t. People get killed. In general, more problems crop up. The result? A 800+ page book that flies by. (Or an addictive TV show—I’m waiting to finish the book before watching it, but I hear it’s awesome.)

A similar lesson was presented to me at the Writer’s Digest Conference I attended back in January. Author and writing coach James Scott Bell explained that the best way to create conflict and suspense in fiction is this:

Give your character a goal in every scene, and then give the scene one of two outcomes. Either the character fails to achieve his/her goal, or s/he achieves it…and it makes things worse.

As I mentioned, I’ve been thinking about this because it’s an issue I’ve been seeing in the stories I’ve been critiquing. There’s just not enough bad stuff happening. Things aren’t getting worse, or they’re getting worse only occasionally, or only by slight degrees. And I understand how this happens—honestly, I do. When you spend so much time with a group of characters, you become very fond of them. Unsurprisingly, being fond of someone has a way of making you averse to hurting that person.

This is where the sadism comes in.

It’s not pure sadism. You don’t have to enjoy causing your characters pain and suffering. But regardless of whether you’re writing a high-tech thriller or a quiet work of nuanced literary fiction, the same basic idea applies: make life suck. Because (let’s be honest here) peace and contentment are boring. They just are. Much as we may want them in our own lives, in fiction, we don’t want to read about them. So throw a monkey wrench in your character’s plans. Let someone flunk a test. Have someone get stood up by a date. Make someone fall unexpectedly ill. Cause a car accident. Kill off a character or two. Even small things add up if you do it right. Force your characters to cope and/or to actively pursue solutions to their problems.

“But what about romance and fun times with friends and awesome days?” you ask. “Do the characters have to be unhappy all the time and forever?”

To which the answer is: of course not. You can’t have nonstop bad stuff happening—you have to give your characters breathing time, even if those breathing moments aren’t exactly happy. But if you’re going to have happy moments, I think it’s important to be aware of where you place them. Imagine your story as a piece of music. Moments of high tension and stress are fortes. Moments of low tension and stress are pianos. I’m all for crescendos and decrescendos between highs and lows, but there’s also something to be gained from a sudden change in dynamics (i.e. fortepiano and pianoforte). If you put a happy/peaceful/chilled-out moment right before a stressful one, the stress is going to come across just that much more strongly because we’ll see it contrasted with the happiness of the previous scene. Many great writers do this masterfully, and while it’s not something you have to do, it’s certainly something to keep in mind. (Also, check out this awesome video on structure!)

The final part of this is something I mentioned back at the beginning. It’s so obvious that I’m not sure it needs saying, but I figure it can’t hurt: the more interesting your characters are, the more we’re going to care when bad things happen to them. One of the things that I think is brilliant about Game of Thrones so far is that none of the characters are heroes. They’re just not. Oh, there are certainly likable characters—but the fact that they’re likable does not mean they’re lucky. They have flaws. They make mistakes, and those mistakes have big consequences. These people are not special snowflakes. There is no promise that the bad stuff that happens to them will all work out in the end. Things that get broken stay broken. People that die stay dead.*

So, in summary:

1. Write interesting characters.

2. Make their lives suck.

3. Give them goals.

4. Thwart them as they try to achieve said goals.

5. When they do have moments of success or peace or happiness, contrast those with stressful events.

I’m going back to reading Game of Thrones now. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for my first-ever book review here on the blog. I’ll be reviewing Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys (Scholastic, September 2012). I just finished it tonight on the subway home, and wow…it was awesome.

Until then, toodles!

* Moreover, as far as I can tell, there is no authorial morality at work in Game of Thrones. Compare and contrast this with a story like Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter series, there is a clear hero. No matter how many bad things happen to him, we know this hero’s suffering will not be in vain, because Harry has J.K. Rowling’s morality on his side. We know he’s the good guy. We know he’s supposed to win. Eddard Stark, on the other hand, is also a morally-upstanding person—and that does not make him in any way immune to the problems of the world. His virtue is a personal brand of morality unique to him (and his family to some extent). It is not guaranteed to triumph in the end. His suffering may well be in vain. This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with Harry Potter! I just think it’s interesting to note this distinction; it’s a bit like the difference between Plot Armor and Anyone Can Die.

Writers Digest Conference 2012, Part II (or, How Do You Pitch a Peculiar Parrot?)

When we left off last time, we were standing on the brink of the terrifying/exciting WDC Pitch Slam. But if you haven’t already heard me gush about this in person, you may be wondering, “What is a pitch slam, and what makes it so cool/scary?”

I can answer the second question in two words: literary agents.

A quick blurb about agents, for those of you who may not be familiar with who they are and why they are important: in my humble opinion, agents are invaluable in the modern publishing world (unless you happen to be a particularly business-and-publishing-law-savvy writer). An agent is an author’s advocate, business partner, friend, and (often) editor all rolled into one. Agents sell your work to editors, negotiate your contracts, and try to get you the best advance possible. In the olden days, agents were more optional than they are today, and they are still optional, but I think their value far outweighs their cost (i.e. 15% of an author’s profits). These days, many publishers won’t accept unagented submissions, and unlike the vast majority of authors, agents have the chance to cultivate relationships with many different editors at many different publishing houses. Good agents are dedicated to their clients and know the publishing industry like the back of their hands. Wouldn’t you want to have someone like that on your side?

Well, I sure do. Which is why I found myself standing in line in front of one last weekend.

For those of you who haven’t heard, here’s how the WDC Pitch Slam works:

• On the second day of the conference, over 60 literary agents show up and sit at tables around the perimeter of a room (well, several big rooms).
• Writers at the conference are invited to line up in front of an agent they like.
• When the slam begins, each writer has 90 seconds to pitch his/her novel to the agent.
• The agent then has 90 seconds to respond. An agent’s response can be anything from a polite rejection (“Sorry, it doesn’t sound quite right for me”) to a request to see part of the manuscript (“Go ahead and send me a query letter and the first 25 pages”) to a request for a full (“Sounds great! Send me the whole manuscript!”), as well as any advice or general thoughts about the pitch or novel.
• A bell goes off when the three-minute session is up, and the writer moves on to the next agent.
• Wash, rinse, and repeat as many times as you can in the space of three hours.

As for what constitutes a pitch, the pitch itself is basically the short synopsis you read on the back cover of a novel—your book’s trailer, if you will. The whole point is to entice someone to read the book. And when you’re fishing for an agent, whether through a query letter or a face-to-face pitch, that’s all you really want: to hook ‘em.

The issue that I constantly run up against with my query letter (and pitch) is that when you condense my novel down to its basic elements…it’s kind of ridiculous. I mean, if Unfamiliar Spellings were strictly comedic, it would be a heck of a lot easier for me to pitch: “Magical accident, girl gets turned into a parrot, crazy hijinks ensue! Hahaha!” And don’t get me wrong, the book does have comedic elements, because you can’t have something that bizarre happen without it being funny too. But the book itself isn’t hilarious. It’s not Terry Pratchett or Jasper Fforde. So when I talk about it to people in real life, I often end up doing so with an embarrassed smile and shrug (or I preface my explanation by warning the listener that it’s a bizarre premise). People rarely know what to make of it, and most seem worried that they’ll upset me if they laugh (they won’t)—so it’s awkward, embarrassed smiles all around.

Needless to say, if the idea of pitching a novel to an agent weren’t hard enough, pitching this novel to an agent was probably harder than pitching either of my other novels would have been. And I thought I was nervous before the conference itself? That was nothing to how nervous I became in the two hours leading up to the Pitch Slam.

The slam started at 2:00 PM, and when lunchtime rolled around, it was really only the encouragement of the other writers at my table that got me to eat half a sandwich, a corner of my brownie, and part of an apple. I was jittery, motormouthed, and practically nauseated with anxiety. Sitting at the table with my new writing buddies (nothing brings people together like shared ordeals), we went back and forth practicing our pitches, offering critique and suggestions.

Finally, one hour before the slam, I lost the ability to focus on anything other than my impending doom. I, and many of the other writers, took to the hallways of the NY Sheraton Hotel to practice our pitches. Most of us fell into one of two camps: either we sat huddled over pieces of paper and silently mouthed the words of our pitch, or we paced in circles and talked to the air like crazy people. Occasionally, small clusters would gather in order for people to practice pitching to one another, but for the most part all that could be heard was the low murmur of voices and the shuffling of feet.

A brief timeline of what ensued:

30 minutes. Nervousnervousnervous. Listened to some other writers’ pitches and practiced my own, then psyched myself out by nailing it and worrying I wouldn’t be able to do it again.

20 minutes. Found myself pitching over and over to my reflection in a fire extinguisher’s glass case (do I really have “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS” tattooed on my forehead?).

10 minutes. Stomach = Olympic gymnast. Rode the elevator down to the pitch rooms with a boy who perplexed me by pointing to the city and state listed on my name tag and asking me where that state was located (turns out he was Canadian).

5 minutes. We queued up outside the pitching rooms.

And then the doors opened and the lines formed in front of the agents and the timer started and we were off.

The first pitch was terrifying. My theatre training was invaluable in terms of helping me keep the (approximate) appearance of calm, but I remember trying to jot something down afterwards and not being able to write legibly because my hands were shaking so badly. Thankfully, every agent I pitched to was quite nice and down-to-earth. And unlike theatre auditions, where one shot is all you’ve got, I was able to pitch over and over again and in doing so, I discovered that while the first is indeed the worst (experience-wise), the second is certainly better (if not the best). Basically, it gets easier. And for me, the third did turn out to be the one with the treasure chest. In order, my pitch responses looked like this:

1. Request: partial
2. Request: partial
3. Request: full manuscript
4. Polite rejection
5. Request: partial
6. Request: partial

I was stunned.

I had not come to the conference with any expectation that I would get a positive response, much less that anyone would want to read pages. The word I ended up using to describe how I felt (when speaking to my dad on the phone afterwards) was poleaxed. I was also exhausted. Having been in fight-or-flight mode for the previous five hours, I ended up sitting in the hotel lobby for an hour and a half after the end of the slam, flopped in a chair, trying to pull the scattered pieces of myself back into something that vaguely resembled an “Ari”.

In the end, I didn’t get to feel delighted about the requests until later in the day when I recounted the whole experience for some friends and they got all excited on my behalf. And it was exciting. At the very least, it showed me that my pitch (which is basically my query letter) worked well enough to make some people curious about the book, and that’s a valuable thing to know. Of course, now I find myself embroiled in editing because I want the manuscript to be the best it can be before I send it to anyone (just because you think your book is done before you get to the conference doesn’t mean that it is). *pretends to shake fist at Don Maass and other awesome conference speakers* But we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

So there you have it! The story of the Pitch Slam, in the words of a Fuzzy Mango. For the moment this is the last of my posts solely about WDC, but I’m sure I’ll be mentioning the stuff I learned there for a while, so it’s certainly not the last you’ll hear of it. But if you’re a writer and you’re interested in some more detailed info, you should definitely check out this post and this post by my new writer-friend Julia for a great summary of some of the panels and talks we attended (do yourself a favor and click on the second link to go read her notes on the talk by Don Maass—seriously).

Also, in totally unrelated news, Fred wants me to show you this picture that he found. Because it’s beautiful and because James Gurney is AWESOME.

Until we meet again, dear readers and raptors,
Ari

Writers Digest Conference 2012, Part I (or, Little Mango Goes to the Big City)

OHMIGOSHYOUGUYS.

I have news. Quite a bit. So first of all, let’s get some basic facts out of the way:

1. As you may know, last weekend, I attended the Writers Digest Conference 2012 in New York City.

2. While I was there, I learned a lot (but not alot) about both writing and publishing.

3. I also pitched my novel to real-life, honest-to-God literary agents. 

Frankly, given how much I have to say about each of those items, they each deserve their own blog post. But I’m going to try to condense things down to just two posts. So without further ado, I present WDC: Part I:

Going to New York City for a writing conference is obviously a big deal, but honestly, you could take out the writing conference bit and I would still be excited, because going in to “the City” is a big enough event in and of itself in my humble little life. Some highlights from my time there:

• I got to visit some friends, namely my buddies Jason (who kindly let me crash in his guest room) and Arden, and got to meet some awesome new people.
• I got to use the subway—which, for a country-mouse like me, is still something of a novelty (“Wait, people use this every day? It’s like getting to ride a theme-park ride to work!”).
• I got to eat expensive (but yummy!) food at nice restaurants. #mmm #deliciousempanadasandhotcocoa #sogoodyoumakemehallucinate?
• I got to amuse myself by people-watching everywhere I went. (New York is like one big airport terminal in that respect.)
• OH! And I got to enjoy seeing the city shut down during a “blizzard” on Saturday. I realize that’s not really a normal thing to find humor in, but the fact of the matter was that…well…

*leans in and whispers*

You see, there just wasn’t very much snow. Not much snow at all. The city simply isn’t equipped to deal with snowfall, which is why it becomes such a big deal, but…still. I had to laugh when I stepped outside the hotel and saw the very modest accumulation of white fluff that had prevented several agents from attending the WDC. (I was reminded of Garrison Keillor’s song on the subject.)

As for the conference itself…I’m still processing everything I learned there. It was one heck of a ride, and I took copious notes (if only school were always this interesting!). Below are a few highlights:

Writing the 21st Century Novel

This was, hands down, one of my favorite talks at the conference. Literary agent Don Maass started out by discussing a trend that he sees in current publishing (and one that has been highlighted by the recession): the books that people are willing to spend their hard-earned cash on are those that don’t really fall strictly into one genre or another. Rather, they are stories that cross genre lines and blend multiple genres—but above all, they are high-impact. They cause readers to feel strongly. And that means writing emotional truth in an honest, personal way, no matter where you think you fall on the “literary vs. commercial” spectrum.

And then he demonstrated what he meant.

“I want you all to pull out a pen and paper. (It’s a writer’s conference—there are pens and notepads everywhere.) And I want you to answer the following question: What is it you can’t say? What is the one thing that you absolutely cannot tell anyone? Because you’re afraid…because you’re ashamed…whatever it is, write it down. Now, think about your current novel. At what point does a character experience that precise feeling?”

And just like that, the air in the room was thick with shock and secrets. I don’t know how else to describe it. You could have heard a pen (or pin) drop as every novelist in the room realized that, indeed, their greatest fears and hopes were embedded in the stories they’d written. Well, I guess I can’t say for sure that everyone felt that way. But part of the feeling for me was this intense, intuitive knowledge that everyone in the room was thinking the same thing: “Holy crap. He’s right.” For my part, I felt like I’d just been smacked in the face with a pillow. I don’t write autobiographies, so I sometimes feel odd about acknowledging when I share things with my characters, but…it was a really powerful moment. I’m not going to lie: I had tears in my eyes. And all it took was Don Maass asking me, “What are you afraid of? What are your characters afraid of?” and kindly suggesting that I write it all down.

Don went on to give some other amazing advice, but I think I’ll save that for another post because this one is already getting long. Suffice it to say that I envy any writer who gets to work with this man. I have never before met someone who so clearly gets storytelling.

Ask the Editor/Ask the Agent

Both of these panels had some useful advice to offer, though my notes are much sparser because a lot of it was stuff I’d heard before. A couple of tidbits, though:

• from Holly Payne (writer/editor): “Be yourself on the page, and WRITE FROM YOUR GUT. Don’t think; just inhabit the moment with your characters.”
• from Mary Kole (agent): “When you’ve done all you can think of to do and are sick of your manuscript, put it away for TWO MONTHS. Don’t look at it. Then come back to it and do a final editing pass before sending it off.”

Conflict and Suspense

James Scott Bell is awesome. I’ve read his book before (which is great, by the way), but his talk was nevertheless very entertaining and helpful. One particularly useful technique that he used was to show us film clips and ask us to jot down every single obstacle the main character encountered. He did this with a clip of a high-energy scene from  The Fugitive in which the main character, Dr. Richard Kimble, is a man on the run after being wrongly accused of murder. Here, see if you can name all of the obstacles Kimble faces in this scene (which starts at 11:35):

We did the same thing with a more level (but nevertheless tense) clip from The Graduate, where young Benjamin Braddock grows increasingly anxious at the idea of having an affair with a married woman:

Bell used these clips to illustrate that not only is fear is a great way to maintain tension in a scene, but that any level of fear (from the life-or-death panic of Richard Kimble to the awkward nervousness of Benjamin Braddock) is useful for preventing total communication between the characters in a scene…which of course leads to more conflict (i.e. the lifeblood of fiction).

The Drive to Write

It’s no secret to most of you that I love National Novel Writing Month and am a total OLL fangirl. So it ought to come as no surprise to you that I was ridiculously excited to hear Chris Baty (the founder of NaNoWriMo) speak at the end of the conference. I was not disappointed. It was so, so worth it. Chris, who is in the midst of leaving his former life as the Executive Director for the OLL and is (as of this Monday) officially a full-time writer, shared four things he thinks it is important to pack when setting out to be a writer: a deadline, momentum, an appreciation of messes, and faith. But one of my favorite things that he said was a quote that has been attributed to any number of people (to the point where I have no clue who actually wrote it), but which I nevertheless find arresting in its truth:

“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for.”

Holy crap. Applying that kind of thinking to writing—or to any creative endeavor…I think it speaks for itself.

And my other favorite thing that Chris Baty told me?

And with that lovely bit of encouragement, I leave you for the moment. When I come back, expect juicy details about the PITCH SLAM (teaser: I did not come away empty-handed *smiles mysteriously*). In the meantime, happy writing!