Wrapping It Up - Learning to Let Go by Val Hamer

Wrap it up, baby! 

When I was fifteen I filled several school notebooks with what was to become famous in my family as ‘that dreadful ‘novel’ you made us read and comment on every evening.’ The characters were vibrant, the twists ridiculous, and with a cliffhanger at the end of pretty much every page it certainly wasn’t boring. What it lacked was an ending. That wasn’t much of an issue at the time, as the project was largely a diversion from hard core studying for school finals.

Writing was to remain a marginal hobby for the next twenty five years. Two and a half decades of short story outlines, index cards noting characters for a couple of books, witty titles for things I never wrote – more litter than literary all in all! Looking back on this leads me to one conclusion: writing style reflects personality.

In my case I enjoy the journey much more than the arrival. Ideas flow easily but are rarely seen through, and while planning is a joy I tend to disengage when the event itself occurs.

I am also really, really, bad at ending things. That explains why I stayed married way after it was over, or allowed toxic friendships to pollute my life and well being. Even minor things can be a struggle. Getting off the telephone, leaving a party or exiting a fleeting conversation with an acquaintance in the street all bring some level of anxiety!

A couple of years ago I started writing again, this time for money and in the nonfiction field. I really enjoyed producing short articles, Tweets and blog comments. I had no issues at all with organizing content into a logical start, middle and end where it was necessary. Perhaps I should have been satisfied with having found my niche? Not everyone needs to produce fiction, right? But like a kid with a fresh scab I couldn’t leave my writing inadequacies alone.

Last year, attracted to the idea of a major challenge I entered NaNoWriMo. Working like a fiend on the novel produced 50,016 words of rants and raves about my life at that time. Great stress relief but no closure. Yes, I’d ‘won’, but the achievement was less about quality than about reaching a word count goal. The process was therapeutic but didn’t address my underlying issues with writing.

In some ways I wondered if this really mattered. I was enjoying the writing work that came my way, and everything else in my life was great. Then I got my M.A. thesis feedback and found I’d basically swindled myself out of a lot of extra marks because, guess what? Yep – a weak and brief conclusion had let me down. What makes it worse is that I knew the ending wasn’t great at the time, but had felt unable to make it any better. This feedback was the shock I needed to turn things around.

Facing the flaws in my writing hasn’t been easy, especially because it calls for some serious personal introspection. I’ve spent the last eleven years overseas. This kind of transient lifestyle equates to living in the present: enjoying friends, jobs and relationships without the depth of emotional commitment that brings pain when they are over. Rather than being bad at endings I’d written them out of my conscious mind altogether!

I’m still a work in progress, but there are a few writing maxims which I find help.

Embrace who you are: Your personality and circumstances drive what you write, but you can manipulate the outcome. Fiction can be the place where the ideal ending is played out.

Leave space for a sequel: That way you can tidy up the loose ends without feeling like the story is over and done forever.

Plan: This may seem obvious but it’s something I have always resisted. Knowing that there are particular things I want to cover helps keep me on track.

I took on the NaNoWriMo challenge this year with a fresh attitude. As I write this I’m at the 54% mark and on track to reach the technical goal. For me the real reward will come when words 49,999 and 50,000 truly mean ‘The End’.

Valerie Hamer is a British born global nomad. Currently living in South Korea, she blogs about life abroad, travel, culture, teaching and writing. Being active on Twitter (@Farawayhammer), maintaining a Facebook page, writing two nonfiction works of art and planning her next travel adventure make for a busy and rewarding life.

Quick Fixes for Your Plot Problems by Angela Goff

Welcome to the third week of NaNoWriMo! We've indulged in wild, literary abandonment! Hedonistic word abuse! Tangents that turn into plot development!!

It's great, isn't it? Only right now maybe it ISN'T so great. Maybe you are stuck. The how-the-heck-did-I-get-HERE??? kind of stuck.

Yep. Know that feeling well.

The problem with getting stuck in the middle of NaNo is that you're crunched for time. The whole point of NaNo is, after all, to give starry-eyed dreamers a kick in the pants so we will push on, even when we want to spin our wheels and edit, re-edit, polish and tweak Every. Single. Line.  So you barrel on, reminding yourself of that glorious finish line of 50,000 words, and that you can edit to your heart’s content come December. But sometimes you turn a corner and find yourself in a plot tangle that only gets worse the more you write.

Frustrated? Sure you are. Want to fix it? Absolutely. But since this is NaNo, the big, glossy edits come later. But take heart - there is a way to move on ---- even if you have to leave a mental "bookmark" or two for the editing process.

Below I've listed three common plot problems that make ME stop in my tracks, especially now, when I’m so focused on my word count. I've also given my "quick fixes" that allow me to press to the end of NaNo and THEN do the hard edit.

Here goes:

Problem #1: Too Many Characters, or Too Few: These are opposite problems, and neither of them can be fixed mid-NaNo. But you can still pause long enough to see if this is the root of your problem. Don’t be afraid to do it either – determining if you’ve got a problem in this arena will save you a world of hurt later.

Quick Fix: Too few? Add in the new people as you press on, but make some kind of notation to indicate you've introduced a character that wasn't there before, but ought to have been. (I manage this by putting that character's first appearance in bright red font.)

     Too many characters? Figure out which are your weaker characters, and mentally cut them loose. This will leave your stronger characters to pick up the slack, and they will be even more dynamic and engaging because of it. But don't try to fix your earlier pages now. Wherever you are in the manuscript, hit the enter key a few times to indicate a break from previous plot details, and keep going - but with the revised set of characters. You may even need to leave yourself a clear note about who got axed. Everything up to that point will need adjusting post-NaNo.

Problem #2: Murky Plot Points: For me, a "murky plot point" is something that I haven't thought through very well, that is now turning out to be a bigger deal than I thought. In my current project, I knew I needed an underground train. I had no idea it would become so central to the story. Now I realize I need to study up on trains come December. I can’t become a Train Expert just now; but I will.

Quick Fix: When I realize I need technical jargon I just don't have yet, I'll insert some notes in parenthesis and in red (or bold, or all caps) that reminds me of what I need: For example: "Then Finn looked under the train (((and detected some serious problem that stalls the train out for the next two chapters))). Then he turned to..." etc. Since I already have a basic understanding of trains, I'll know that Finn at least needs to go for some parts, which would be conveniently located in a troublesome part of town. Plot moves on. 

Problem #3: Not Thinking Wide Enough? This is a different sort of problem. It doesn't create so much of a writer's block as a moment of realization amounting to: "Oh, CRAP I should have done this four chapters ago! Now what?" If you've hit that sort of snag, you've realized there is some key character, scene, or whole chapter that is missing from your earlier writing, and without it you don't have enough internal scaffolding to bear the weight of your story. But this is NaNo, and you want to press on to where you NOW know the story ought to go.

Quick Fix: Print out the pages you have so far, and quickly scan what you’ve written. In the margins, make plain but simple notes: “Put Anne in this scene.” Or “Needs more cowbell.” Or “’Add chapter about Marv’s POV from the Inner Sanctum”, etc. If you do this while it's fresh on your mind, you’ll not only thank yourself later, but sometimes you’ll pick up on other things that need to be added to the margin notes. (I usually sacrifice a whole evening of NaNo-ing to do this step anyway, even if I feel I’m doing well.) The trick is to not bog down here, and forget to type. Make your notes and move on.

It’s been said that “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” As writers, that is what we ought to remember as we pursue our craft. Your first pass at a rough draft – whether hastily written or no - is going to be just that: ROUGH. But if your tale is worth telling, then it’s worth telling badly - at least during the first pass.

But you’ll get it the ultimate finish line. Of course you will! Because we’re writers, and we know that rough beginnings are always the first step – but never the last.

A special education teacher by trade, Angela has been at turns a sign language interpreter, governess, world traveler, potter, sculptor and marching band groupie. She currently lives in Georgia and juggles several jobs, while assiduously carving out time for her creative pursuits.  She currently has multiple manuscripts in various stages of readiness, and plans to begin the querying process next spring. Angela is also part of a close-knit writer's group that consistently plans out dignified writer's meetings, only to have them devolve into food fights, hysterical laughter, and plans for world domination. During the rest of the week, she meets with other aspiring authors one-on-one at various coffeehouses, so as to encourage other kindred spirits while maintaining a quasi-respectable appearance to society. This is her second year to participate in NaNoWriMo. She can be found on the official site as Ringscar, on Twitter as @Angela_Goff or at her blog.

Determination by Roxanne Piskel

If there’s one thing that I took away from participating in NaNoWriMo 2010, it’s that I can overcome any obstacle when it comes to my writing.

I faced numerous challenges last year. I didn’t have a computer or internet at home, so all of my writing was done during my lunch breaks at work. I came down with bronchitis, which resulted in me falling 10,000 words behind schedule.

And, of course, I wasn’t in a situation where I could put my life on hold. I had to continue to show up for my 40-hour workweek, take care of my four-year-old son, and do all those other domestic duties to keep life running smoothly.

Suffice to say, life really got in the way.

But I pushed through. When I found the time, I wrote. When I noticed myself falling behind schedule, I didn’t beat myself up about it. I just pushed myself to write more words the next time so I could catch up.

Some days, I didn’t like a single word I wrote. But I pushed on. Once, I deleted an entire section of the story because I was so unhappy with it. But I pushed on. I pushed myself harder than I’ve probably ever pushed myself towards a goal.

I was determined to reach that 50,000 word goal.

And, I did it.

Somehow, by the afternoon of November 30, 2010, I wrote a 50,007 novel. And when I submitted it to the NaNoWriMo site? I felt like I had really accomplished something incredible.

And I’m going to do it again.

I’m sure I’ll face a lot of struggles this year. I have a computer at home now, an old desktop handed down from my grandmother who doesn’t need it anymore. I still don’t have internet, but I really think that would be a distraction from the writing. I’m a fully single mom this year, so most of my writing will done in the late evenings after my son has gone to bed. I might get sick again.

But I did it last year.

I can do it all again.

And it’s going to be fantastic.

Roxanne is a single mother to a 5-year-old superhero, living in the biggest little city and blogging all about her journey at Unintentionally Brilliant. Besides being a mother, an administrative assistant, and a blogger, Roxanne is also a freelance editor. Her background in editing includes working on the Sierra Nevada College literary review, editing term papers throughout college, and being nit-picky about her family's Facebook statuses. She also recently edited the e-book short story Requiring of Care, published on Smashwords by Cameron D. Garriepy. NaNoWriMo '11 will be the second year in a row that she's participated in the event. When not fully immersed in the literary and blogging worlds, she enjoys walking on curbs like they are tightropes, flying with her jacket stretched out like wings, and watching every superhero movie ever made at least twenty times in a row.

Got Block? Try a WEDGE by Janece Herrington

Well, here we are smack in the middle of NaNoWriMo 2011.  How are you doing?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve barely kept up with my daily word count, thanks to a few thousand extra words clocked in during Week One!  Thank the NaNo Gods!

Week One is honeymoon time with the whole NaNo experience.  After anticipating November 1st for months, our fingers fly over the keyboard, plots thicken up nicely, and our characters are so well developed, it’s like they’re on steroids.   Updating word counters and statuses across the Social Networking universe hourly, we want everyone know:  We’re IN it, man!  We’re DOING this thing!

We Are On FIRE!

Enter Week Two - notorious for sending Wrimos into panic mode when they realize they’ve run out of plot, and still have 30,000 words to go.  I should know.  This is my 5^th NaNo! Whether we’re Plotters or Pantsers,  Week Two is when many of us go from “FLOW” to “SLOW” faster than you can say “Is it December yet?”

Suddenly, we’re staring at blank screens, the clock is ticking, and our word count hasn’t budged in hours.  Maybe days!  We’ve used every adjective known to man (and then some) in our last paragraph, and now we’ve got - nothing.  Nada.  Zilch!

Ugh! What happened?  We were doing SO well, then without warning, our Muse goes into hiding and NaNoWriMo feels a lot more like WORK, and a lot less like fun.

WRITER’S BLOCK

Two words sure to strike fear into the heart of anyone who’s ever put word to paper.

The BAD news is, almost every writer will experience writers block at some point, and it has nothing to do with ability or desire. 

The GOOD news is – especially for us Wrimos - we’re going for PROGRESS in November, not PERFECTION.    They may not be the best words we’ve ever written, and we might type the very last word at 11:59 p.m. on November 30. But the goal here is to just FINISH, blocks be damned.

So what’s a writer to do when they hit the proverbial Block Wall?  Try the WEDGE:

WANDER away from your story for a while literally (take a walk, go for a ride, or watch a movie) and figuratively.  Suspend your original plot and try something different.  For example, your MC could step into a Time Machine and meet up with a historical figure.  Or an alien.  Whatever! Wandering may not sit well with you Plotters, but it will get you writing again.  And THAT’S the whole point.  You can always edit later. 

ENLIST help from writing prompts.  There are some great books available, as well as card decks. But you don’t have to spend money - make your own!  Cut some index cards in half, and write a word or phrase on each one.  “Take a Road Trip” “Kill off your MC”  “RUMBA!”  The point is to have fun with it!  Then shuffle the cards, pick one, and get writing! 

DRAW from real life.  Did you have lunch with a friend today?  Maybe and your squeeze got into a fight, or you just found out you’re adopted.  Real life is great fodder for word count.  Who knows?  Maybe the ‘nice guy’ that stopped to help you change a tire is really an ax welding murderer who’s looking for his next victim!

GUT IT OUT.  I know, I know. This one doesn’t sound sexy, but perseverance DOES pay off.   It might seem like you’ve run out of ideas, but if you’ll just stick with it, the words will come back. So what if it’s not the next Great American Novel? (NO NaNoWriMo novel is at first!)  You’ll eventually find your voice again, if you don’t give up.  Just ask Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling.

EASE UP ON YOURSELF.  No, really.  Try not to stress so much about it.  We’re going for word counts here, not trying to solve world hunger.  Just do the best you can for now.  If you write only 50 words today and not a one makes sense, so what?  Beating yourself up is a recipe for more blockage.  Try again tomorrow.  Just don’t give up!

Janece Herrington is a native Southern Californian who grew up in the 60s addicted to reading, listening to the Beach Boys, and playing “journalist on the street” in the beautiful port town of South Shores.

Mother of two and grandmother to one, Janece works full-time as the Marketing Manager for a national property management company.  She’s been blogging since 2005, and considers creative writing her ‘real job’.  Her blog is The Wild Pomegranade.

A featured contributor on SheWrites.com and WomenWriters, Women Books, Janece has published several articles on Green Home building and the upcoming Baby Boomer Retirees. She is currently working on her first novel.

Making Real Characters by Liz Holbert

Harold Crick (Stranger than Fiction) was very, very real.

(source)

I used to think one of the most refreshing things about literature is the one-ness of the characters - how they are one personality. When you and I think about ourselves we seem to be several people all at once. But I’m learning the more real you make your characters the more engaging they make your literature and the more likely they will actually surprise you.

Three ways to make real characters:

1. Make sure you know who they are. It’s important to outline your story but it's just as vital to know your characters. When the plot runs dry, real characters can carry you. Use this writing exercise to help you get to know your characters. Make a list of personal information about them: birthday, age, eye color, flaws, temperament, habits. What’s their favorite color or favorite sport? What are their favorite foods? Are they allergic to shellfish?

Now that you have a list of info, try this next exercise to really see your character in action. Imagine him or her in situations that you experience in your life. Given the choice of what to listen to on the radio during the work commute what would he choose to listen to? Now, you don’t have to painstakingly outline every character in your book. You don’t need to know the food allergies of the guy who gives your character a sandwich in chapter four.

2. Make your characters complex. Think about personality tests. No matter how many you take, you’ll find you don’t completely fit into any one mold. Neither should your characters. But create complexity carefully. Don't overdo it. You can make your characters so complex they contradict themselves. You and I may contradict ourselves frequently in real life. Though complexity is encouraged, contradiction is confusing in fiction. For example, don’t have your character tell everyone that they’re not emotional then make them cry every other chapter. As an exercise, think about complexities in the people you know and are close to. How can you work that kind of complexity into your characters?

3. Make your characters speak like real people. Listen to the way people speak. In college, a writing professor told us to sit somewhere where we could overhear a conversation and write it down word for word, pause for pause. This is an excellent practice in learning how real people talk. So many times in fiction, dialogue is totally unrealistic to real life. People say each other’s names too often and speak like they’re written rather than real people. Study the way people actually talk to each other. And be warned: don’t let people know you're writing down their conversations, especially if they’re strangers! It’s a little creepy if you think about it. Plus, people don’t tend to have realistic conversations if they know their conversations are being recorded.

So now that you’ve learned a few ways to make your characters more realistic, how can they surprise you? In my college writing class we talked about this a lot and I thought it was kind of a joke until it happened to me. I was working on a fiction book and started to make my main character do something (let’s say metaphorically it was walking down a hall). Halfway down the hall she turned the other direction, diverging from the path I originally wanted her to go. Because I knew her so well, I realized that she couldn’t do what I had planned for her to do because it was outside of the realm of her character. It’s kind of scary, but also exciting when your character takes off a whole different direction than you plan.

In a project like NaNoWriMo – your character’s ability to surprise you is vital when you’re working toward a word count. If you know him or her well enough, you can almost literally set her down on the paper and let her run around herself. Put her in a situation like going to the mall or buying a pet and see what she does! It’s kind of fun! And maybe you won’t end up using it when you revise, but it will help you even more in understanding your character.

How real are YOUR characters? Have they surprised you so far?

 

Liz Holbert (@emholbert4) is a Christian, a writer, a librarian, and a big fan of corn dogs. She believes firmly in the value of fiction and story not just as a means of escape (though that is important) but as a way to speak truth. She blogs and is currently working on a young adult novel. Her writing can be found at places like Relevant magazine online and Blogging for books from Multonomah. Two of her literary inspirations are J.D. Salinger and John Steinbeck. She holds fast to the adage: just because it’s not real doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Pyramid of Consumption by Amy Leigh Strickland

Ooo, what does this button do... (source)

Note by site-owner: Hey there WriMos! Today's guest at WRIMOS FTW! has prepared a very special surprise for us. Below is an infographic (#wheezomgsqueelovethose) made by Amy Leigh Strickland (@nimbuschick), which depicts all the things we need to sustain ourselves for the duration of NaNoWriMo.  And boy, do I relate! 

What's your NaNo pyramid like? 

Amy Leigh Strickland is a writer and teacher from Townsend, Massachusetts. She has a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Amy currently lives outside Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband  Kyle, and their terrier Apollo. You can catch her tweeting as @nimbuschick.

Just Call Me Whistleblower by Alivia Anders

(borrowed from: Just like That)

Take-out in front of the computer. 29-hour sessions involving twenty coffees and five brownies. Music so loud you can't hear anything. This is what a seasoned NaNo participant goes through every time the calendar turns to November 1st.

If you're any bit like me, the date on the calendar can be a little overwhelming, to say the least. Your friends think you go crazy (you lie and tell them you're taking the month to mourn the end of Halloween, again) your family feels neglected (so you add them to your stories so you can say you just talked to your Mom yesterday) and all sense of chores, exercise, and episodes of Grey's Anatomy go out the window (dusting the TV? What's a TV?)

But not every year for NaNo comes with the jiggery-pokery happiness of writing. I'd be lying if I said every year I did NaNo I finished early, went over my count, and came out looking like a normal person. Confession: The first year I did NaNo, I only got about 19k in. My second year was marginally better at 25k. Needless to say, I ripped out a lot of hair and lived on Coca-Cola to get that far. This was pre-writer days, where I lacked  drive, thought process, and overall sense of being. I'd like to think I've evolved a little bit since then.

This year I started my planning for NaNo around the beginning of September. My idea didn't really come in the form of a fortune cookie message, so to speak, but it did show itself to me in an unconventional way.

Imagine this: Girl tries on her favorite pair of jeans, only to see they don't fit. In fact, nothing does. Immediately she launches herself into a diet to shed the pounds, and eventually everything starts to fit again and life goes on. This is my typical yo-yo dieting idea, as I imagined was everyone's. But one day in search for a little inspiration to keep up towards my goal, I came across a website showcasing something called 'thinspiration.' A website that had hundreds of thousands of users, tons of girls and even boys posting starvation tactics and ways to stay strong to get to the point of 'pretty bones.'

The seed was planted.

It was in that moment, after hours and days and weeks of reading and backtracking these posts made by girls as young as nine, that I wanted to understand the workings of why a girl would think it's okay to starve yourself down to 70 pounds when you're healthy weight would be 120. It scared me to think that if I could find sites like this looking for healthy alternatives that anyone could find these and more like it with a few word changes in the search engine.

To me, the idea essentially spread through my mind like wildfire. What if someone followed this and fell down the slope, only to wonder how they got there in the end? Would they regret it or would they do it again? In finding something so dark, I found light within, and decided to write my NaNo project on a fictional girl in the vice of her own eating disorder. It's the first time I've ever touched something outside of my standard realm of vampires and fictional creatures with inhuman gifts, but I know it's the right thing to do.

I decided after choosing this topic to make sure it wouldn't go unheard or wasted. This year for me, it's not about winning NaNo like it's been before. Whether I win or not, the finished product of my story will be self-published with the intention to donate a proceed of each purchase to the beat, an ED foundation supporting recovering victims. To some, NaNo will be about writing bizarre things like flying pigs and talking water bottles. To me, it will be to shed light on an unmentionable topic.

Just call me the whistleblower, eagerly waiting for that calendar to change.

What are your plans for NaNo? Have you ever gone to strange places with your writing? Has a story ever made you feel both uncomfortable and eager?

Born in the middle of nowhere PA, Alivia Anders is frequently called different, insane, and a little creative. Inspired by just about anything, she began writing in 6th grade after joining a Harry Potter-inspired RPG forum. She says she loves salads, but really likes them only if they have taco meat on top. The oldest of five, she currently lives at home, enduring peak levels of insanity enough to drive a rhino to spontaneously combust. You can see her chit-chattering on twitter or plotting her evil plan at the NaNoWriMo site.