Thoughts on NaNoWriMo 2012

We may be in the heat of summer right now, but in just a few months we'll be coming up fast on the first of November and the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I haven't figured out yet what I'll be doing writing-wise during that month. Last year I wrote the first draft of a YA time-travel fantasy "Adrift." I have yet to get back to doing a second draft of it.

I'd said earlier in the year that I didn't want to work on a new novel project without making an effort to see "Adrift" through to further drafts. On the one hand, I wonder if "Adrift" is even salvageable -- I'd only been back to writing several months when I wrote that draft and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had major flaws. On the other hand, that feels like sort of a cop-out -- an excuse to leave something undone.

Sunday Links: June 3rd, 2012 Edition

I'm not going to include #storyeachnight comments this week since I haven't done a good job of keeping up with reading a new story on a regular basis the past two weeks. However, I'm looking to try to get back in the habit of doing so -- maybe that should have been one of my monthly goals! -- and I intend to add that back into the Sunday mix next week.

Below are links which I've come across since my most recent Sunday Links post (two weeks ago) which I think could be of use to fellow writers. Have you come across any particularly interesting links in the last week or so? I'd be interested to see them!

Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: February 19, 2012 Edition

As I mentioned last week, one routine I've picked up recently is reading a short story every day/night and tweeting about it under the #storyeachnight hashtag. I'm going to list the stories along with whatever comments I made about them on Twitter and any other thoughts that come to mind here in my weekly link roundpost post. Below are this week's stories:

2/12 - "Love Story" by Eric Frank Russell from MICROCOSMIC TALES. A general laments the impact of relationships on interstellar troop movements.
2/13 - "The Cat From Hell" by Stephen King from JUST AFTER SUNSET. A corker of a horror story about a dying man, a hitman & the titular cat. (* My favorite of the week.)
2/14 - "Angie" by Ed Gorman from FAVORITE KILLS. Crime story with an "Oh, gosh, please don't go there." climax.
2/15 - "Who Dealt?" from THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF RING LARDNER. Interesting monologue piece with an apparently clueless main character.
2/16 - "Sales Pitch" by Philip K. Dick from THE GOLDEN MAN. A satire of advertising and home conveniences gone mad.
2/17 - "This House Was Never a Castle" by Aaron Polson from issue 14 of Shimmer. A setting-drenched piece with children trying to make their way through a dangerous world.
2/18 - "The Dingus" by Gregory Frost from SUPERNATURAL NOIR. A good horror/mystery story about an ex-trainer trying to determine how a boxer he had once trained ended up dead. I'm really psyched about this Ellen Datlow-edited collection; very glad that my wife picked it up for me for my birthday!

And now, here are this week's writing-related links that I found interesting and worth sharing...

Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: February 12, 2012 Edition

I'm still working on adjusting to my new blogging schedule of Monday, Thursday, Sunday after having done Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday for several months. It sort of feels weird only writing up one mid-week blog post. I'm going to give it a while, though, and see how I feel about it after a couple of months.

One routine I've picked up recently is reading a short story every day/night and tweeting about it. Nicole Cushing has been doing this on the #storyeachnight hashtag for quite a few months. Here are the stories I read this week along with the comments I made on them.


2/5 - "Exit Interview" by Lynne Heitman from BOSTON NOIR: Office/gender politics & a hostage situation.
2/6 - "Cellmate" by Theodore Sturgeon from an old paperback of E PLURIBUS UNICORN
2/7 - "Fever Dream" from THE VINTAGE BRADBURY: Child realizes a danger no one else sees. Some chilling aspects. But it also felt a bit dated and not just because it had a doctor making house calls. "Fever Dream" & last night's "Cellmate" were both late-40s Weird Tales stories. I felt that Sturgeon's held up better.
2/8 - "Night Nurse" by Harry Shannon from FAVORITE KILLS: A nightmarish trip to a hospital for the MC in this story.
2/9 - "Mrs. Hatcher's Evaluation" by James Van Pelt from 3/12 Asimov's. Fun story,very critical of modern education theory
2/10 - "The Secret of the City of Gold" by Ron Goulart from the 1-2/12 issue of F&SF. It featured series character Harry Challenge, seems to have been intended to evoke the feel of old (old) school pulp fiction. I think I tend to be more forgiving of originals than pastiches & this didn't strike me as a terribly amusing pastiche.
2/11 - "Scrap Dragon" by Naomi Kritzer from the 1-2/12 F&SF. A fairy tale or bedtime story with LOTS of..."editorial" suggestions by the "listener." Quite enjoyable; it put a smile on my face.

As I do every Sunday, I've gathered together links I've liked/gotten something out of from things I've read this week. Here are this week's links...

Emily Casey Interview

Emily Casey recently released her debut novel, The Fairy Tale Trap. It's the first in a projected series featuring Ivy Thorn. Emily's doing a blog tour along with the release of the book and I'm pleased to be able to present an interview with her as part of the tour.

Michael Haynes: From looking at your website, I see that The Fairy Tale Trap is the first novel you've released. You mention some other works including one that's in "a drawer somewhere" -- is this the first novel that you have written to completion?
Emily Casey: The Fairy Tale Trap is the fourth book I've completed. The earlier books were the practice I needed to find my writing voice and style, and learn a few things about the craft. "The drawer somewhere" is a folder on my computer of old fiction. :)

Sunday Links: January 15, 2012 Edition

Somehow I have managed to keep forgetting to share a bit of good news. I've had a poem accepted for publication in an issue later this year of Bete Noire. I was very pleased to get this acceptance as this was a little piece that's gotten good reception in the past but just not found a home. Now, it has!

A new market has opened today for people interested in writing science fiction and fantasy. It's Goldfish Grimm's Spicy Fiction Sushi; it's a token-paying market but a pretty decent "token" at $10 for flash and $25 for longer stories.

I've been struggling a bit with the writing this week. I think it's partly been that a couple of the pieces I'm working on right now are ones that I feel are going to need some rather major revisions after their first drafts and I just haven't really been able to get into a "groove" with them. I know that can happen from time to time, but it would sure be nice to sit down one day soon and crank out a couple thousand easy-feeling words...

I hope that the writing week has been treating everyone well, and that the coming week is even better!

Now, for some links!

Sunday Links: December 11, 2011 Edition

I got the second of my "Write 1/Sub 1" stories for the month out earlier this week. It was a short one, an entry into Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine's monthly "Mysterious Photograph" contest. I've been working on a couple of other stories this week, too, though so I've gotten quite a few new words written. I also went back and took a final pass through one of the stories I'd done preliminary drafts on pre-NaNo and got it out on submission.

A quick blog announcement, I'm planning to take a brief hiatus from posting over the Christmas weekend. So that will mean no Dissecting the Short Story post on 12/23, no Sunday Links on 12/25, and no Monday post on 12/26. I'll have Wednesday posts on both 12/21 (though it won't be a DtSS preview, naturally) and 12/28. And, of course, if I have a burning desire to share something between the 21st and 28th, I may pop on long enough to put up a quick post.

And now, on to the links...

Four Things NaNoWriMo Has Taught Me (So Far)

Monday afternoon I passed the 25,000 word mark and then some on my NaNoWriMo project. So, I'm more than halfway to "winning" NaNoWriMo with 50,000 words for my work in progress. This is now by a fairly large margin the longest thing I've ever written. Before a couple of months ago, my longest ever work was a short story (more technically perhaps a novelette) of just under 10,000 words. I got about 18-20,000 words into a novel project in late-summer/early-fall before I stalled out on it for the time being.

Still, the longest completed work of mine remains that 10,000-ish word story. At this point, I'm estimating that the novel I'm working on, which I currently am calling "Adrift," will end up around 60,000 words. So by that measure I still have more than 50% of the work to go on the first draft. It's a daunting task, but I'm encouraged by the progress that I've made so far.

Thinking about the last two weeks' worth of writing, here are four things I've learned about my own creative process as a result of NaNoWriMo along with some comments on how other writers might look into the same aspects of their process.

1. I have a limit. For me, this is about 4,000 words in a writing session. Once I've gotten that much written, which probably means about 3-4 hours straight of composing (along with the occasional Twitter break and suchlike), I'm done. I feel tired, I feel unfocused, and I don't want to write another word. Even if I'm in the middle of a key scene, I have to take a break. I suspect that most writers have some similar limits, though I also know there are some who can write many more words in a session. The important lesson here for me is that trying something like "The 3 Day Novel" probably isn't even worth considering for me. I'd be miserable when I was done. The other key takeaway for me is that I can't let myself fall too far behind in NaNoWriMo this year or any other because I'd only be up to so much "catching up."
2. I work well when I have a plan. Yes, it's the famous "plotter" versus "pantser" discussion. I'm now firmly convinced that I'm a plotter. That doesn't mean that I don't end up going down paths I didn't originally expect in my writing. There have been several developments in my NaNo project that I either didn't expect or that presented themselves in an unplanned way (even if the development itself was planned). Granted, I've still got a lot further to go, but with my 2200 or so words of notes that I made in October (perfectly "legal" for NaNo) I feel much more confident about the path forward. The important thing for other writers here would be to be aware of what writing style works best for you. If you are sure you're a pantser, you probably aren't going to be happy plotting. If you're like me, and are sure you like plotting, don't go off willy-nilly into a long project and expect it to work out well.
3. Having a support group is important to me. In fairness, I had already sort of learned this before NaNoWriMo, but it's become even more obvious during these last two weeks. There are people on Twitter who I have done multiple word-sprints with throughout the month to-date. We've frequently sought each other out to see if we were available to urge each other on. I've had some very productive sessions during these word-sprints.
4. It's okay to not fill in all the blanks right away. I tend to write in a very linear fashion, starting at the beginning of the text and ending at the completion. Here, there have been several times it made sense for me to make a note about something I would want to research in more detail later and move on. These weren't things that had an impact on the plot where I would be likely to have a problem if my research led me to an unpleasant surprise, and it let me keep moving forward with the first draft. Would I advise doing this with a key plot point? No. But if it's a bit of period "texture" detail, I think it's just fine to make a note about what you want to research and move on.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year or have you done it in the past? What has it taught you?

Sunday Links: October 9, 2011 Edition

We're now down to just over three weeks until NaNoWriMo starts. The NaNo site is supposed to be re-launching with an updated version tomorrow (October 10th). So once that is live, it should be worth popping over to check out the changes if you're participating this year.

I'd be interested to know what sort of prep work any of my readers who are planning to do NaNo are doing. I know that some people do absolutely no prep at all and other people have detailed outlines, character descriptions, etc. in advance. 

Now for this week's links!

Sunday Links: September 18, 2011 Edition

Time to revisit the past week. It's seen me dive into writing a novel in addition to continuing work on my short fiction. The upcoming week has me a bit concerned. I'm on a good roll with my Seinfeld Chain (up to 17 days as of last night) but the next five days I'm going to be in training for my day job nearly 12 hours a day when you include transit time. Will I end up using a Mulligan? I hope not.

I came across some great blog posts around the internet this week, and I'm happy to present them past the jump. I hope everyone had a good week and has a great week this coming week.

Stretching Out

In the last six weeks I've written first drafts of 16 stories ranging in length from 200 words to about 5500 words. Many of these have gone through revisions and/or Beta and are out to markets. I'm thrilled with the volume of writing I've gotten done, but I'm also running into a situation where I'm starting to feel like I'm doing some serious juggling. Several of my stories have sat in first draft now for 1-2 weeks without me revisiting them for a second draft. This is due to a combination of factors. One is that I'm spending time doing revisions of slightly older stories based on feedback from Beta crit partners. The other is that with my goal of having 500 news words every day and with the fact that my average story length is about 2000 words, I'm producing at least two new stories a week. Finally, just the process of submitting all these stories is taking a non-trivial chunk of time.

The longest story I've ever written is just under 10,000 words. When I first started investigating being published -- around 1990 -- the common wisdom was that novelettes and novellas were next-to-impossible to sell for non-established writers. That might be a bit less true today if you consider self-publishing options. But, for now, I'm still primarily interested in following the "traditional" publishing route. I'm interested in learning about self-publishing, but not ready to jump into those waters yet.

I've already planned to do NaNoWriMo in November. But I've got two novel ideas and I'm feeling the itch to try to start diving in to one of them sooner than that. Starting on one of these would let me keep working on writing every day while not adding to my backlog of short stories. I could still write a short if the mood struck me. In fact, I'll probably try to do that to make sure I don't let the short story muscles I've been building up recently get flabby. Looking at themed issues and anthologies seems like a possible way to keep myself using those skills.

On the one hand, it's an exciting thought, tackling something new. On the other hand, it's scary. A novel is a big project representing a lot of time commitment. The thought of spending all that time on something that possibly no one but my Betas would ever read is unsettling. But I think I'm going to take the plunge.

I'd love any advice from people who have gone through that shift of writing shorts to writing novels. Naturally, I'll keep everyone posted on my progress. My plan at the moment is to do some preliminary work over the next few days (while getting my 500 words in on other tasks) and start Chapter 1 by the middle of next week.

OK, I've said it. Now I just have to trust in myself and let peer pressure help keep me "honest" to what I've decided I want to do.