Mission Accomplished or Just Lazy?

Well, it's been a long time without a blog. I got busy writing my shamefully bad novel for Nanowrimo and didn't take the time to write about writing. The first draft is complete, out of order, but complete. MRF insists that I send it to a publisher which is NOT going to happen any time soon, if ever.

Life has slowed down a tiny bit and I feel like procrastinating (well, you don't want to clean out your fridge either). So I took the hour-long oddessy to remember my user name, the name of my first grade teacher, my mother's maiden name, and the name of my first pet, and at least one five-digit prime number and here I am, back in the blogger world.

Actually, I was inspired because I found a recipe for Taco Pizza on someone else's blog. What is more, it copied the pizzaria I remember! It tasted like childhood... only I never drank beer with my pizza as a kid.

I Forgot to Mention...

I have a working Title! I'm calling it The Big Heist. Why you ask?

Have you ever seen Funny Farm with Chevy Chase? Well it is about a city couple who buy a farm in Vermont or somewhere so that he can write his Great American Novel. The only problem is that it is a comedy with Chevy Chase in it. I think that he manages to write the title page and first sentence before he gets writer's block and realizes that the locals could only exist in... you got it... a Chevy Chase movie. Meanwhile, his wife writes a successful children's novel about a city squirrel that moves to the country.

There must be happy ending, but I don't remember it (I think there are ducks, but I can't be sure). In fact, I generally only come across this movie flipping channels or when I'm doing an imdb.com search for Cold Comfort Farm, but that doesn't change the fact that The Big Heist is a strangely appropriate name for my work in progress.

NaNoWriMo

Well, National Write a Novel Month is upon us. I give my thanks to MRC II for sharing that link with me. After briefly reviewing the rules I said "Why not?" After all I've to write one anyway, and if I get a certificate AND a gold star by my name, what more do I need. Plus, MRF isn't participating so I'll get to thumb my nose at her until she is finished. Not that I'd do such a thing.

There are six to eight of us participating in the office, so we have a nice support group (except our supervisor who said that she will be watching our productivity carefully). MRC II and I were trying to come up with a visual way to chart our project. We finally decided on a marble jar. Who doesn't love marble jars! Each of us will have our own color and for every 1000 words we write we get to drop in a marble.

Of course, we came up with that plan before I learned how long it took to write 1000 words...

Odd Excerpts

I was cleaning out some notebooks today and I came across something odd I had written. Three pages of a mostly blank notebook contained notes from a college business class (margin of safety/breakeven point), sketches of a two story house with a wrap-around veranda (for The Sims?), repetitions of a poem I was memorizing ("Wynken, Blynken, and Nod"), the opening paragraph of a letter to a pen-pal in Florida, a list of the people in my life that had died in the last month and half (6, including my childhood pet), a recipe for Tex-Mex Chicken Starter (great on lettuce or in a tortilla or both), and the oddest scrawl of all: "change me into Zeus' daughter."

What in the world does that mean!?

You know what, skip the novel I have outlined. I'll just write a scenario where all of those random notes are not random. It'll probably take me all 100 pages to come up with the theory. I'll use the enigmatic scrawl for a title and the book will probably involve an alien race, a government conspiracy, a time vortex, a character with Tourettes Syndrome, and a Greek goddess.

Snoopy and Bilbo Baggins on Writing

I remember a cartoon from my childhood called The Snoopy Musical. I used to watch it all of the time (it was on the same tape as Mary Poppins and a cartoon about bears cleaning a park). In this cartoon Snoopy sits on his dog house with a typewriter and starts: "It was a dark and stormy morning... No, a dark and stormy night, Night? Night. A suddenly a" something something... The song is called "The Great Writer."

I'm not complaining, but I am a little envious. After all, Snoopy could at least think up a great first line. The best I can come up with is "Once upon a time..." before I get stuck. Bilbo Baggins would say that it is none the worse for having been used before and that the important thing is to have an ending, "Books ought to have good endings." I, like Frodo, must reply that the ending "will do well, if it ever comes to that."

I can relate to Frodo, I can't see the end of my journey either. I outlined the plot of my novel this evening and when I got to the end I introduced a character. A main character. I didn't mean to, it just happened. I don't know if you know anything about writing novels, but apparently, you're not supposed to do that. Now I have to write in a sub-plot that introduces the character much earlier in the story.

(By the way, I stole my plot from another story, but let's just keep that between you and me.)

Mein Roman

I expected to spend the eight hour car ride to my grandparent's house in verbal repartee with MRF:

"Have you written your novel yet?"
"No, have you?"
"Have you started your novel yet?"
"Yes, have you?"
"Um, I started a blog about starting my novel..."
"I decided to write my novel in German."
"German!"
"I think it will be easier."
"Am I insane or does that sort of make sense?"

I'll leave it up to you to decided who said what in that unexpected turn of events. But, here is the thing, I don't read German.

There is a twisted sort of logic going on here. It is a monumental task to write a novel. Even more monumental to write a novel that someone else wants to read! However, all of the little inconsistencies, trite and predictable plot devices, and cliches will be forgiven when you write under unusual circumstances. Let's say I write an essay for a teacher. Under normal circumstances I will be marked down a grade because of my spelling and grammar. But if I wrote the same essay despite (or in spite of, you choose) a disability, misspellings and errors are forgotten because it was amazing I was able to write at all. Thus writing in German excuses her from the expectation that she will write a best seller and/or be included in high school curriculum across the globe. We will all be suitably amazed that she could write it at all.

Lucky. Wish I'd thought of that.

Character Studies

As part of my 100 day program (I think it is going to take me longer than that) I am writing character studies. Starting with my protagonist (whom I haven't named yet) I wrote about appearance, attitudes, and abilities. As I did that an amazing thing happened -- I also somehow* learned about the character's back-story and how that changed them into the person he/she is now. As the character developed a history for the world developed too. I had to answer why a person was the way they were and the answers came more readily than I imagined they would.

Here is an example of what I mean. I learned that my protagonist's father is dead so she is living with her mother and step-father. How did he die? He died violently. Who killed him and why? Soldiers killed him durring a coup d'etat. Who is in power now forming what kind of goverment/society? You'll have to read the book.

*For a detailed discription about how books and characters are created refer to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots.