Category: Harshly Critical

NaNoWriMo 501 — Salvage the Story

November 21st. NaNoWriMo ends in 9 days. And since you’re either unemployed, or your job gives you two weeks off for Thanksgiving (like everyone else), you’re well poised to race downhill to an easy finish. That’s if you’re competent, able to finish things you start (unlike anyone else).

On that note, for your edification: here are the top five reasons people don’t hit the 50,000 mark:

  1. Children
  2. Employment
  3. Smallpox
  4. Accidental death or dismemberment
  5. Running out of writing gas / Creative engine failure.

That last reason is an absolute sham.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I’m stuck. I have thousands of words to go, but I’m literally, definitively, assuredly stuck. I feel like I ran the novel in a ditch and I can’t get it towed. Is it too late for me to salvage it?

—Breeann Foxton, Beaverton, Ore. 

(Note: NaNoWriMo is short for Narcissistic Nonsense Writing Motivation or something like that. Simple premise: write a “novel” of fifty-thousand words within the month of November. The prize? Fifty-thousand dollars. In the competition’s 196-year history, only three have claimed the prize.)

It’s never too late. Only too soon. I could spin up a whole blog post on the bad practices and habits that fashion failures such as you. I mean, yours. I’m not going to assume that you’re not writing because your kids got in the way or your month-long sabbatical was cut short. No, I’ll try to suggest the things that get the gas back in the tank, get the motor started once again.

1. Write the ending.

Unless you’re recovering from a lobotomy (and somehow writing a novel?), you probably had the ending in mind when you started this thing. Go ahead and write it. You won’t like it. You’ll work backward to fix it. (Editor’s note: This is, in a sense, how I finished my first novel. I went back afterward and put in a peach of a chapter to tie things together.)

2. Rewrite the beginning. 

Daring or draining? Both. You only get so much out of a marathon when you rocket to a start with a sprint. Nice work, hotshot, beating the pack for the first thirty minutes, then careening off to the sidelines, yakking your guts on a hapless water holder. You’re a more mature writer: go back, start the way you meant to. Build different. Let that seep into the vacant crevasses of the work.

3. Materialize that idea you’ve been holding back.

I don’t always bet the farm and the barnyard pals, but when I do, I’d bet that you brewed a semi-decent idea within the stew that became your novel. There’s always some gem of a notion held back, something you want to weave into the fabric. Break out the loom and do it. Save the story.

4. Compare what you think you wrote with what you wrote.

A step of risk, to be sure, as you won’t be towing or pushing the ditched car. You’ll be inspecting it, thigh-deep in mud, wrapping your head around the problem, then the solution. And your novel? Memory taints everything for better or for worse. Go back and read. Don’t skim. That’s when you let memory do more work than it should. Read. There are always lumps in the dough that you don’t see at eye’s first glance. Get the hands in there, press it out. What slosh you penned in fervent madness may stand to use some finer fleshing out in lucid focus.

5. Loan a camel.

There’s a Bedouin parable of a man who bequeathed 23 camels to his three sons, willing that the eldest receive half of the camels, then to the second son, a third, and to the youngest, an eighth. Being mathematically inclined, they worked out the proper solution, but the youngest objected to having the camels vivisected.

Along comes a merchant who hears of their dilemma. He loans them a camel, saying it’ll help sort out the matter. With 24 camels, they divvy it up without needing to divvy up a camel. One half (12), one third (8), and one eighth (3). One camel left over to pay back the merchant. Easy. Those crafty Bedouins, I tell you. You know they founded Bed, Bath, and Beyond, right?

Stories stall when you don’t have enough camels in the caravan to tote a complete narrative. Loan that twenty-fourth camel. Whether it’s a dark side to a character, a burgeoning romance, or some furtive plot point in the subcurrents of the narrative — find something missing that wasn’t missing in the first place. It may be a keeper, you never know. If it isn’t, send that camel back and loan another one.

What do you use to get the narrative out of the ditch and save your story?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and probed for more NaNoWriMo nectar during the month.

Say No More

You know what they say: if you can’t say anything nice, then you’d better shut up.

And in writing, if you can’t say anything but “say,” then you should listen to what we have to tell you.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I cringe every time I see dialogue written by lesser writers. It’s like “he said, she said” in the worst kind of way. Say, said, says, saying, like there’s nothing more to be said about SAID. But when I try to write without using “say,” it gets more difficult as it goes on. There’s got to be a better way to change it up without sounding redundant or intentionally constrained.

—Torey Lewis, Irvine, Calif.

I’ll break protocol and begin by quoting Oxford intellectual Right Said Fred’s glorious exposition on the subject:

“I’m too sexy to continue employing ‘said’ as an indication of the conveyance of communication. With viable options manifestly promulgated, one should deign to refrain. Replied. Uttered. Responded. Insisted. Noted. Mentioned. ‘Say’ no more.”

Well put, Mr. Said Fred.

You’re missing the point if you feel your dialogue has to be adulterated and fornicated by such verbal markers. Any verbal markers. Regardless of how cleverly you vary them; that’s still making the same mistake, but with style. Sure, you want to differentiate who speaks what, but a writer worth his silt will ensure that he’s not writing himself into a snare like that. Take, for instance, this gem of a barf-trigger:

“I’m pregnant,” he said. “And I’m the father.”

“How is that possible?” said Jill.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Jack said, “It must have happened after those hCG injections, I can’t explain it.”

“But I trusted you,” she said.

Aaaaand, we’re done. You can put away that airsick bag. “Said” is not your cowbell. You do not need more of it.

If you’re going to use any markers at all, make them count.

“All your base are belong to us,” he affirmed.

“i think halo is a pretty cool guy. eh kills aleins and DOESN’T AFRAID OF ANYTHING,” she declared.

“Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?” he inquired.

“No buts, cuts, coconuts, Mass, or Eucharist,” he interdicted.

The dialogue should grip your eyeballs and brand into them the patterns, the sensible ebb and flow, the cadences of well-tuned conversation. Make it good enough to stand on its own. And if you resort to using a marker, don’t prop—accentuate. Slap one of them down to slap your reader senseless with goodness, nothing less.

Enough said.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and recited within your daily Cantata Incantatis.

Block Writer’s Block

Writing is just like driving.  It takes practice, you need a license, no one else is good at it (except you, of course), and you’ll eventually have to find ways to bypass roadblocks.

Unlike writing, roadblocks in the driving experience are inevitable. Daytime construction. Collisions. Road closures. Entitled pedestrians. People who forget how to drive in the rain/snow/sun.

In the driving world, yanking the emergency brake in the middle of the highway and forgetting where you’re going would be insensible and unexplainable. That’s not a legitimate roadblock. That’s not even rational. I wouldn’t know what to call that.

But do you know what we call that in the writing world? Writer’s block.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I’m sure you’ve gotten this question before, but I’m hoping you’ll take the time to answer this for me. How do you overcome writer’s block?

—Ellen London, Hebron, Ill. 

There’s no such thing as writer’s block. Unless you’ve got legitimate issues with the frontal lobe of your cerebrum (rare) or have a telepath psionically impeding your creative abilities (also rare), then there’s no excuse. And if you do have brain issues, consult a specialist. And if you do have a telepath doing that psionic impediment deal, politely ask them to stop, or get a special kind of helmet for that.

Writer’s block is what you get when you stop thinking, stop writing, and forget how to cope with inaction. Perhaps it’s not finding the right words, losing a thread in a story, or losing interest in the endeavor. Regardless, it’s avoidable. Here are some parlor tricks that should help you skirt this inevitable roadblock that’s neither inevitable nor a roadblock.

1: Read a book.

Sure, you’re thinking “That’s not a solution!” It is a solution. To create, one must study creation.

2: Re-read what you’ve written.

Look at writer’s block as a way of backtracking and getting a feel for where you’ve come so far. Lost anything before in your real life? Retrace your steps. Same applies to writing. You find the way forward by moving backward.

3: Edit what you’ve already written.

The force of Nature could no further go, it said, “You need to go back and fix this mess.” (If you get the reference, maybe you shouldn’t be reading this blog.) There’s nothing like a natural inhibitor to continued creation when you’ve probably done it wrong for the past fifty pages or so. Inspiration has its checks, but you’re responsible for the balances.

4: Work on a new scene (part, section, whatever).

Your story should have more than one thread or at least a strand or two hanging around. Those ideas, sub-plots, and novelties you’d wanted to get to later on in the narrative? Might want to work on them at this point, as they’ll fire up the creative faculties. Consider it a detour, but don’t derail your work with these. You’ve not been given license to fool around for the sake of impetus.

5: Work on a side project.

What? Abandon the main endeavor? You bet. You’d be surprised how many ancillary works you can add to your portfolio in your detours. If you’re a writer worthy of writing, you’ll write something. If you have to re-focus that energy into something completely different, then do it. Anything’s better than slamming one’s forehead on a blank template.

6: Write a new story.

Why not? You’ve probably had another story on the back-burner or side-burner anyway. Get that one off the ground, mire yourself within, hit another impasse, and come on back to the work you left behind. Finish the task. Complete the cycle. Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be.

7: Read bad writing.

Nothing motivates hidden greatness more than exposure to unhidden lameness. When you can’t bring yourself to write, remember that many other writers somehow managed to do it. Not only did they manage to write, they managed to write poorly. Not only did they write poorly, they managed success with their poor writing. There are thousands of authors making a decent living by writing worse than you write right now. The difference? They’re writing, and you’re not. Also, they’re making more than you right now. Get to work.

8: Start over.

If you can’t bring yourself to finish it, just give it the ol’ Command+A (Control+A, if you’re still using Windows in the Age of Enlightenment), then hit that Delete key. Don’t look back. Put your failure in the past. Start something you plan to see to its completion next time.

9: Stop writing altogether.

Yes, this may be the cosmos telling you that this isn’t your thing. Why insist on persisting if writing just wasn’t what you were put on Earth for? It’s not writer’s block. It’s a guard, pleading with you to turn away from a path not meant for you. Not everyone was meant to golf like Tiger Woods, play basketball like Michael Jordan, or breathe underwater like Aquaman. There’s a reason Tiger doesn’t shoot hoops, Jordan doesn’t golf (professionally), and Aquaman doesn’t fly. They were good at what they do from the outset. They never failed. They never encountered obstacles that kept them from success. If you’re not immediately successful with this writing ordeal, it may be time to hang it up. Your destiny will thank you.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and paired with a ’59 Mouton-Rothschild.