NaNoWriMo 2012

When the Writer’s Away…

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 19 Comments

I made the mistake of ignoring my novel, Phoenix Rock, this last week. It’s highly unlikely I’ll meet the word count goal of 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month. I’m going to give it a good go, though, and last night I reviewed my work thus far, so that I could get back to work on it today. Big mistake to leave my characters mid storyline. They’re pissed at me and not cooperating at all.

I left my main character, Meg, to an awkward, but happy reunion with her brother, Jamie. They were standing out on Main Street, engrossed in conversation. I peeked in last night, only to find them leading some sort of riot. They were throwing rocks through storefront windows, randomly knocking down old ladies, setting cars on fire. Apparently these people have given into violent hooliganism when left to their own devices.

“Meg, what the hell are you doing? You were supposed to be talking with Jamie about the estate property and foreshadowing the complicated relationship I intended to develop for you.”

She sneered at me. “You were making me into some sort of passive weeny. I’m not all that, mate and frankly, there was some sort of ‘Flowers in the Attic’ vibe you had going. Ew – how gross is that, you perv?”

She wrenches a purse out of a passerby’s hands. “You got food in here, lady? This wanker left me wandering on Main Street for days. I’m hungry. Aha….Altoids. Excellent.” She shoves one Altoid after another into her mouth as her eyes widen. She runs over to the fire hydrant and with superhuman strength that she has apparently endowed herself with, rips open the cover and dives, face in, to the stream of water while shrieking “It burns! It burns!”

I better track down Jamie. I spot him on the corner, relentlessly punching, oh no – the town’s esteemed lawyer, Mark Allen, who is on the ground and whimpering. Shit. How did that happen?

“Remember when you gave me that wedgie in 3rd grade and made me cry in front of everybody? Who’s crying now, you worthless prick?” Jamie shouts, stands up and lands one more kick, while Mark cowers on the ground, shielding his face.

Wow, apparently my characters’ language in my absence has, uh….developed. And there are some unforeseen issues that they needed to work out.

I’m scared to see what Sonya, the matriarch of this brood,  is up to, but I wander over to the house on Hamilton and Oak. Her front door is open. This can’t be good. I walk in – the house is still immaculate, but I can’t locate her. Then I hear scrub, scrub, sniffle…I go down the hallway and there she is, on hands and knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the tiles with a toothbrush.

I lean over and quietly ask “What’s going on, Sonya? Are you okay?”

She looks up at me, eyes crazed, mascara running haphazardly down her face. “Why, oh, why?” She wails. “You left me after that horrible confrontation with my angry daughter. You had Meg tell my live-in boyfriend that I was actually lying about still being married. You left me waiting to see my son after twenty years.” She bends to her task of tile-scrubbing again, scrubbing so hard that the bristles on the brush spread out flat and useless.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been really sick this week and couldn’t get more writing done. I promise I’ll get to it.”

“You’d better!” She shrieks. “Can’t you see what all this anxiety is doing to me? My OCD is running unchecked. My boyfriend walked out. He might have left me for good. Or he might be at the grocery store.” She stands up and grabs me by the shoulders, shaking me roughly, spittle flying out of her mouth. “For the love of god, where is he?”

I shake her off and run out of the house. I’d better locate Hal and fast. The grocery store is as good a start as any. The windows have been broken. The store has been looted. I call out. “Hal – are you in here?” I hear grunting and groaning from the back storeroom. I wonder if I should be adding some paramedics to my cast of characters.

I swing open the door. Hal is, ewwww, pants around his ankles with…who the hell is that? I haven’t introduced her into the story! I storm out and hear Hal shouting to me. I turn and he is scrambling to pull his pants up. “What?! I didn’t know how long we’d be here. I thought, hell, if we’re locked in time, I’d better have some fun.”

“Who is that woman? I didn’t write her into the story.”

Hal grins sheepishly. “Well, you’re not very far into the story. There’s a lot of characters waiting backstage. I just struck up a conversation. I was SO bored.”

I scowl at him. It still doesn’t explain the turtle tattoo on his butt, but I’m not asking. I’d better get to work, before I’m voted off the island.

Optimism: Delusion or a Force that Propels Us Forward?

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 9 Comments

I’ve been whining about being sick the last few weeks. Really, weeks – this is the flu bug that ate Detroit. It arrived on the heels of dutifully gotten flu shots, so I’m a little bitter about it. Today is my rally day. I was up half the night with a bronchial cough, my ears are ringing from cranial cavities of snot and I smell like Vicks Vapor Rub. But by golly, I’m going to get caught up on laundry and my NaNoWriMo novel and pirouette off into the sunset, flu bug soundly rousted.

People keep saying, “You need to rest. Stop breathing on me.” I’m two sneezes away from storing Kleenex under my bra strap, if I had the energy to put on a bra. Needless to say, it ain’t pretty in The Green Study today. But – there are signs of optimism everywhere. I cleaned off my desk last night, in preparation for the day. I started catching up on my blog reading this morning and opened all the shades to let sunlight in. There is a potential for a hot shower, although that might be putting the bar pretty high.

I am the master of optimistic expectations for myself and my time. Sometimes I wonder if this is a detriment to self-esteem, since 9 times out of 10, I do not fully meet my goals. On the other hand, if I set no goals at all, would anything ever get done? People wiser than I would point out that it doesn’t have to be “either/or”, but I’ve never been adept at the middle road. My natural inclination is one of extremes. Fortunately, maturity (exhaustion) has tempered my youthful optimism. Just a bit.

Setting realistic expectations is a skill I’ve yet to fully master. Right now, I make “to do” lists like I write. I spew out whatever is in my head and then do a machete edit, cutting back until I think I have something legible and/or achievable. On occasion, I just put stars by those items that must get done. It’s a system that combines force of habit with some sense of priorities, but ofttimes is still unrealistic.

“It is the formidable character of the species to routinely seek the improbable, the difficult, even the impossible, as a source of pleasure and self-justification. Who would try to write poems, or novels, or paint pictures unless he is an optimist?”
Lionel Tiger, Anthropologist

Today’s the day, though. I will conquer the world, get caught up, write a zillion words, fold mounds of laundry that smell a lot better than I. But first, I have something marked with a star on my list for today: *Get some rest. Stop breathing on people. This, I can do.

Do you set expectations for yourself and are they realistic? This curious and snot-filled mind would love to know.

Purposeless Dialogue

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 24 Comments

I am spending an inordinate amount of time writing crap today for my first novel Phoenix Rock. I met the daily word count goal for National Novel Writing Month. That month is now in progress, so if you stick around long enough, I can bore you senseless with my writer’s angst and discussion of the “process” ad nauseum. On the other hand, it might be a nice break from my feminist chest-thumping (ow, ow) and the exploitation of my many maternal and human flaws.

There are some things that I write well. Dialogue is not one of them. I spend a lot of time trying to remember punctuation rules and a lot less time determining if the dialogue I just wrote actually has any bearing on the story. Here’s a gem I just regurgitated:

“Hey Meg – can you get me a refill?” A deep, gravelly voice called back to her through the server’s window. Lily must have run to the back, the coffee pot emptied in her absence.

“Sure John, I’ll get another pot started – leaded, right?” Meg leaned forward to see John’s tired, gray face topped off with the grungy John Deere hat.

“What other kind is there?” He shuffled back to the table, chuckling at his own joke.

Believe me when I tell you, this conversation has no relevance to the story I’m writing, except to establish that the characters are in a restaurant, which I did, by starting the paragraph with “In the restaurant”. I’m a fan of spare writing and we all know that normal everyday dialogue runs more like this:

“Hey, uh Meg – can you maybe get me a refill, if you got a moment, darling?” A deep, gravelly voice called back to her through the server’s window. Lily must have run to the back, the coffee pot emptied in her absence.

“Um, sure John, I’ll get like another pot started, okay – leaded, right?” Meg leaned forward to see John’s tired, gray face topped off with the grungy John Deere hat.

“Uh-huh. What other kind is there?” He shuffled back to the table, chuckling at his own joke.

Again, it doesn’t add to the story and is awful to read. Like, you know what I mean? So this is the challenge before me right now. How do I make spoken words count, have added value and be engaging for the reader? I know the story I’m telling – I just don’t know how to make dialogue purposeful.

Like anything else, when I am in need of knowledge, I start digging for resources. I listened to this podcast today – useful for grammar reminders while writing dialogue. There were some good tips at Writer’s Digest by Scott Francis and James Scott Bell to think about. I’m also checking in with some bloggers who post their fiction, like Pete Armetta, Nett Robbens (she writes steamy stuff, but I just read for the dialogue, really), and there are some great reminders from Rebecca at WriteRight. I am also getting a book to hone my skills when offline: Writing Great Fiction – Dialogue by Gloria Kempton, while resisting emphatically, the “also recommended” Writing Fiction for Dummies. Screw you, Amazon.

For now, John, Meg and the whole gang at Phoenix Rock will have to keep their traps shut. I’m trying to write, dammit.