Fine by me. I love October. In North Japan it means School Festivals. All the schools display their handiwork, but even level and school has a different flair. At my techie school, it's jaw-dropping the things these kids make. I mean, a go-kart, really? At junior high there are speeches and a singing contest. And at primary school, it's a day full of cute little plays. Today, the 6th graders did a play they wrote themselves, and it was amazing. Not only because the content rocked, or because a kid beat-boxed (I know, right?), but because two 'random' bits from an early scene were vital to the end of the play.
This ties into the other reason I love October. The countdown to November.
For writers, November is Nanowrimo. If you haven't heard about it before, here's a quick synopsis. You write a novel in November. Pretty simple, huh? They count a novel as 50,000 words. And the only real rules are that you start a new story in November and write 50,000 words of it before November 30. It's not absolutely required that you finish the work, but it is recommended.
I haven't written anything significant since last year, but nano is the one time of year I refuse to ignore my writer soul. If you're a nano-er, or you're interested in joining up, come find me, My user name is muchlanguage.
Enjoy October guys, and be prepared for November. If you're into nano, then...
It's October! Which means next month is November! WOO!!! HOO!!!
Okay. Now that I've used my yearly exclamation mark quota (as if that will stop me, MUAHAHAHA) let me explain to those of you who are confused.
November is nanowrimo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's international these days, but Innowrimo sounds like a disease so they suck with 'nano'. Nanowrimo is a novel-writing challenge. 50,000 words. 30 days. The principle, according to founder Chris Baty's book NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM is that the only thing standing between you and your novel is a deadline.
I'm a firm believer in 'to each his own' so I won't swear that nano is the best thing ever for EVERY writer. But it is the best thing to happen to ME.
I got this fuzzy idea about novel-writing sometime in my teen years. (Thank God that computer crashed. My novel attempts were painful.) The furthest I got on my novelling path pre-Nano was 15,000 words. I've already mentioned that my attention bounces around like a kangaroo on Speed. When I came to Japan, a French Canadian friend of mine introduced me to Nano. Who would have thought that all the way out in backabush Iwate, Japan there'd be 4 English speakers jumping into a writing challenge?
So I wrote and wrote and wrote. Sometime around the 20th, I took a break, and lost several days time. And then wrote insane amounts for the last dew days to 'win' within minutes of the 11.59 November 30th deadline. Even after 3 successful nano's, that's still my M.O. Last year was particularly bad. I missed the start for no particularly reason. Then I caught up, and fell behind again by Nov 7. I wrote 14,000 words on the final day. lol.
Why do I love Nano?
1. Commitment is not my thing. I get bored spending 3 years in the same country. There's no way a first draft is going to hold my attention for months and months.
2. It's more exciting to figure it out as I go. I do a minimum of plotting. Every nano, I jump in with some characters, a few traits, and a premise. If I know too much about my characters, the bore me. I need to get to know them the same way I get to know real people, by hanging out with them. If I study them from notes like a history textbook, they feel just about as interesting. Ditto for plot and everything else.
3. The support system is amazing. If you spend a lot of time in the publishing blogosphere and Twitter, then you know the amazing network that is the writers world. Now imagine that sort of network 24 hours a day with forums. SWOON.
4. I started out with nano. This blog exists because of nano. That's where I first heard mention of Nathan Bransford, and hanging on his blog is what made me start this blog with writing as one of it's focal points. As a result of this blog and the people I met through it, I decided to go for publication- not in a whimsical, some day sort of way, but in a 'I have to do this or it will break my soul' way. Nano will always hold a special place in my heart for being the thing that converted me.
But there is one reason that I love nano, above all the other reasons.
I have NEVER COMPLETED a first draft outside nano.
If you, like me, want to write, but have never been succesful at staying committed to a novel - or you have a premise that you'd like to develop no strings attached - or you just like to jump in head, feet or bum first - come join us.
Hey guys. Today, we're going to switch it up and do Two for Tuesday. Because there are 2 big things on my calendar, every year on November 30th.
#1 It's the Independence Day of my beautiful country, Barbados, nicknamed Bim, or Little England.
Who would imagine 166 square miles would go that far? Yes, 166 suqare miles. Probably smaller than your town.
Still, we've got an incredible list of accomplishments for an itty-bitty rock with no natural resources. (Okay, we have 2 ounces of oil. But just 2 ounces.)
We grafted the grapefruit. Say thank you.
We invented rum. Alcoholics the world over praise our existence.
We've produced a slew of international singers: Jaicko (Oh yeah), Livvi Franc (I'm That B*tch), Shontelle (The Americans among us might know her song, Battle Cry, which features clips of Obama speeches) and of course, Rihanna. (Remember how I said it was small? I went to school with Shontelle and my brother went to school with Rihanna. Yeah, that kind of small.)
We're the '5th most literate' country in the world. (Although it's hard to judge because they automatically assign a rate of 99.0 to some countries which have good rates for a long time.)
We are a developed country, according to the World Bank. Even though there are lots of countries with outrank us for size, we are the most developed island in the Caribbean region.
Oh, and we're the 2009 World Champions of Segway Polo. (I wouldn't know it was a sport if we didn't win it.)
Recently the BBC did a feature on the only sport invented in Barbados, road tennis. It was hilarious. A tourist was learning how to play, and the teacher kept saying gems like:
"You're embarassing me as a teacher." And when she asks advice, "Hit de ball!"
Watch the clip, hear the accent and see the Bajan charm, here. :)
I'll leave the topic before I really get into swing. Barbadians (Bajans) are rumoured to be arrogant by the rest of the Caribbean. But it's not really arrogance, it's just that BARBADOS ROCKS!
Of course, that's not the only fab on November 30th.
It's the last day of Nano, too.
I was way, way behind on Nano. I told myself on Thursday that I'd be good if I could squeeze out 5,000 words, because I know Fridays are pretty near impossible to do anything but exist on, and I was scheduled to travel on the weekend. I actually wrote about 2,000 words on Thursday, and maybe 1,000 all weekend.
Leaving me with almost 14,000 words to write on Monday and Tuesday.
Still doable.
If I wrote a single word on Monday. Which I didn't.
And I gave up. Around Week 3 of Nano you hear things like, 'it's great that you got this far,' and 'that's 20,000 words you didn't have before.' I believe it and agree.
But not for me. Not winning = fail.
Yet, when I was staring down the double barrel of the failure yesterday morning, and realising that Nano had slipped beyond my grasp, it occured to me that sometimes you fail, in order to win. Have you ever given up something now to have something better later? It's just like that. And I had a whole post planned.
And then I came to work. And it was test day. 8 hours of sitting at my desk, while the kids do tests in their classrooms. And I hadn't brought a book. And all the other teachers were using their internet cables. (I don't have dedicated internet at this school. I have to highjack one.)
8 hours of not being required to do anything but sit at my desk, with nothing but a computer with no internet.
If that's not a hint that I should be writing, I don't know what is.
So I wrote.
I knocked off a little over 8,000 words.
Then I went home, exhausted. Still contemplating giving up. And I found out I was a Critterpalooza winner. And you can't win a prize on a writers' site and then not write. So I knocked off 2.5 K. And then I went by my neighbour's house and watched an episode of Beverley Hillbillies and had a glass of red.
Came back at 10. 2 hours. 3,000 words.
I did it. Even though my story ran out at 48,988 words- the last 1000 words aren't pretty.
I finished. With 8 minutes to spare. 13,800 words in one day. Frankly, I'm surprised I'm capable of coherent thought. Or maybe I'm not. :)
Congratulations to all the other Wrimos out there.
And thank you to everyone here for believing in me. You are so fabulicious. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Unless you have athritis. Then you can pat the front. Or something.
I mentioned this in passing on Monday, but I thought it was worth dealing with head on.
The writer/reader community is so immensely supportive 99% of the time, that sometimes I forget that it's not always like that. I don't know what it was like last November, since I'd just started this blog, and had not yet discovered writer, reader and agent bloggers. But this year, it seems like everybody loves or hates nano. And there are quite a few, on either side, who are all but calling the other side idiots.
WHY I WRITE NANOWRIMO
Hi, my name is Claire and I can't commit.
Well, maybe can't is too strong a word. But commitment for me involves feeling like I want to jump off a cliff 19 days out of 20. I do not mean this figuratively.
In the last 10 years, I've lived in 3 countries. In my lifetime, I've visited 17, and 12 US states. It took 2 colleges and 6 years to do my bachelor's degree, and then just barely. I've worked in 9 jobs in 6 different fields in the last 12 years. In my school days, I was the master of the 4 month relationship. In fact, I had 3 relationships that ended at 4 months 20 days. (hmmm...)
Blame it on what you will: being bipolar, being ENFP, being a Sagittarius, etc. At the end of the day the important thing is this: either I do something fast and furious, I let the tide carry me through it, or I don't do it at all.
I want to write books. Having twenty 10,000 word starts is really not an option, and you can't really drift along in writing. So it's nano or nothing. Even if there was no nano, that would be my only choice for writing.
You know I swear by my nano.
But does that mean you should do it, too? Not unless it's for you, for whatever reason.
Writing is subjective. If it wasn't, every book ever published would be a bestseller. There would be a scientific way to determine what was great in a novel, and no publishing company would ever take on anything else. The fact that there are bestsellers and prizewinners that we don't like, proves the subjectivity of this business.
Yet, somehow, some people are missing the subjectivity of the writing process.
I have friends who plot everything down to every single time the character blows his/her nose. There are others who start with nothing more than a name and a premise. And there are a tons of others in between these extremes.
For some people the beauty of each word used is the most important thing. For others, the story matters most.
Some people favour reading and writing great characters, some people lean towards great plots. And some aren't willing to sacrifice one for the other.
Some people will spend 8 years researching and writing a novel. Some others will crank one out in 15 days.
Maybe you write only what you know. Maybe you're writing about a country you've never visited.
What does it matter?
I don't care if your only prewriting process is standing on your head in your Wonderwoman underwear, or if you dance by the light of the moon to kill your writers' block.
Your process is only important to you.
All I care about is the awesomesauce book you'll have at the end.
Welcome to the first edition of Write on! Wednesdays (Wo!W).
I've been poking around a lot of other blogs on a myriad of themes. And I've noticed that many of them have a day of the week where they always do the same thing. I've seen Flashback Friday, This week in Publishing, and Saturday Sketch, just to name a few. So I've decided to start my own.
Since I'm an aspiring writer, I bring you Write on! Wednesday. Each Wednesday, I will present a post which relates to writing in some form or fashion.
Nano
Nanowrimo was last month. I once again participated, and like last time, procrastinated half the month away, and had to bash out several thousand (10 this time) words on the final day to win. I feel very confident about this year's nano novel. I want to add a few chapters, and then I'm going to let a friend read it and have him tell me what he thinks.
This year's project was called Fire Bearer. It turns out that it's only the Book 1 of a two part series, but I kind of expected that, since it's a fantasy/quest and they tend to run in sagas. Firebearer is a story of a people who are discriminated against for their race and their religion and how they rise up to fight it. Originally the book was supposed to follow only the firebearer, Breight Sarchu, but due to my recent obsession with the movies Crash and Snatch, it turned into an ensemble cast. An ensemble cast is one where there are several protagonists. The most famous example I can think of is the TV show Friends.
I really want to edit this book and print it. Nanowrimo offers a goodie bag to winners and it includes a bound copy of your manuscript. You can only claim the prize until June however and last year, I didn't do one ounce of editing before that date. This year, I am going to edit either Fire Bearer or last year's novel, Urban Legend, to claim the prize. That way, even if I am never published, I will have a copy of my novel sitting on my shelf.
Nathan Bransford, a professional editor and first time author recently revamped the look of his award winning blog. He also added forums. The forums focus on writing, books, securing an agent, publishing, and for the real specialists, he's even including a forum for procrastinating! :)
I want to thank Nathan for all the wonderful things he does for the industry. The forums are pure brilliance. It's a great place to take your questions to get responses from fellow writers and industry experts. Way to go NB!
November's a really tough month for me. As I posted last time, I am doing nanowrimo this month. Writing a novel in 30 days is not easy. Believe me. But it might not be so bad, if it was the only major thing I had to accomplish in November.
Aside from "literary abandon" I also have two sets of Japanese study to undertake.
First is JLPT- Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It's probably the most universally recognisable Japanese exam in the world. It's like the Japanese equivalent of TOEFL. But the test date id the first Sunday in December. So, it means I should be studying in November... Should be...
Also, the CLAIR Japanese Language course starts right around this time. CLAIR (without the E :) is the organisation that does the administration for hte JET program, among other things. Each year, it offers JETs a language course which is tailored to our needs. It's a correspondence course, they send you a book every month you mail them the answer sheet. Six tests later, you get a certificate. Or something. I wouldn't really be too sure, since I didn't send in any of the tests.
Why not? Well, they've brilliantly set it up so that the deadline for the first test is always days behind the JLPT. Then I'm forced to make the choice: should I use my non-novelling time to study for the CLAIR course, or the JLPT? Considering that it really holds no weight in the outside world and the JLPT does, JLPT won out last year. I've done about half the material this year. We'll see what happens by month end.
November is "National Novel Writing Month". It's a writer challenge that started in America, but it's now pretty much international. The challenge: write 50, 000 words in the 30 days of November. If you want to check it out, the website is www.nanowrimo.org!
I participated and won last year. Since the challenge does not specify that you have to finish the novel in November, I took the rest of the year to write the remaining 2 chapters. That's because I'm a chronic procrastinator and I lose motivation easily. If it wasn't for Nano, I probably wouldn't ever be able to complete a novel to begin with!
Last year, I wrote a novel which, up to this point, I can't even categorise. I wonder if it's so all-over-the-place because I'm scatterbrained, or if it's because it's a true-to-life story. Either way, it probably needs a lot of work before I can sell it, and I intend to sell it.
Last year's story was about a promiscuous girl and her attempt to turn her life around, set against the backdrop of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. This year, after visiting India, I was inspired to do a story about discrimination. I've gone back and forth as to whether it should be racial or religious discrimination, and even though, I've started writing, this and many other deatils, haven't been quite worked out. But God is still playing a major role in this effort, so I'm going to give him creative authority over it, and go where he pulls me.
I am from the beautiful island of Barbados, but I currently live and work on the islands of Japan. I am a lover of languages; a creative writer in my native language, English, and a speaker to various degrees of fluency of 4 others.
