"Bad hand?" asked the ghost of Mark Twain, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Bad season" he gruffed. "Damn NaNoNites are wasting a whole month vomiting out quantity not quality." "Their choice," I said, looking at a hand full of jokers I was sure Mark had double-dealt me.
F. Scott Fitzgerald sighed and sipped his champagne. "They are making a gimmick of an art form."
The ghost of Jung frowned at his own cards,
and I had a suspicion that Mark had jury-rigged another hand. Jung said,
"Perhaps it is the herd mentality which possesses mankind. It can be harmful if the individual gives into it unthinkingly." I said, "It gives stimulus to many to write each day."
Hemingway chewed his cigar.
"If you need a kick in the pants to write, you are a wannabe not a writer."
The ghost of Roger Zelazny said,
"I made myself write three times during each day and insisted on completing at least a page each sitting.
Not even close to 50,000 words a month, but I wrote a good many novels. Even won an award or two."
Hemingway snorted, "And now, you are forgotten."
Roger shook his head. "Roland still reads me." Hemingway scowled, "Roland doesn't count." "You must be talking to my past dates," I smiled
and then sighed as I drew yet another Joker for the one I discarded.
Mark ignored my dirty look and said,
"Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which your words are trying to describe.
And to do that, you must live not chain yourself to a desk!"
He lit his own cigar, saying
"I read that NaNo electronic page. Why they say: 'You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing.'
Am I the only sane person here to think 'writing a lot of crap' does not sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month,
even if it is November."
Mark shook his head.
"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. Lord, to condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence is worthy of a prize just by itself." He sighed, "Anybody can have ideas -- the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."
I said, "They say that they can go back and edit ...."
Hemingway looked like he was going to slug me.
"I have gone to their site, too. 'The world needs your novel' is their motto.
The world does not NEED badly thought-through novels. The world only needs to breathe, eat, and sleep."
Fitzgerald nodded,
"The joy of writing is not in deadlines and word counts, but in taking
time to shape your work:
to sit and let the ideas flow and then, when
they ebb away, retreat from your keyboard
until the next surge washes
new fragments of story into your head."
Jung turned to me. "What do you think, Roland."
"I believe writing is not a sprint but a marathon,
a way of life for every day of each year, not just a competition for a month. But that's just me."
Jung stroked his chin.
"I believe this competition, where word counts are paramount, forms bad writing habits.
Habits such as overusing adjectives or bloating the pages with needless description.
It
takes 28 days to form a habit, Roland, so you can see how November can become a hothouse for writing problems."
I nodded, "Many think that NaNo made writing feel achievable."
Hemingway growled,
"I put a gun to your child's head and say 'Write 50,000 words or I pull the trigger.'
You will write that many words. It is all a matter of motivation. If you do not burn to write, you are a dreamer not a writer."
Jung frowned,
"No one convinced of the worth of this contest is going to be dissuaded by your words.
Sad fact actually.
You see, if their goal is to increase creativity, this contest will not help them. Research has shown that anticipating evaluation -- even the mild stimulus of the Winner's Badge to pin on their electronic newsletter-- has a negative effect on creative performance."
Fitzgerald murmured,
"I am concerned for these NaNites. I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher
than they are prepared to pay at present.
You’ve got to sell your heart,
your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch
you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.
This
is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet
developed the tricks of interesting people on paper,
when you have none
of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have
only your emotions to sell.
This is the experience of all writers.
It was necessary for Dickens to
put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused
and starved that had haunted his whole childhood.
Ernest’s
first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he
had ever felt and known.
In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a
love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a
haemophile.
And all of this takes time to distill into just the right magical words to conjure the images in the minds of the readers.
Throwing them like dice onto the felt of the written page just will not do."
Roger nodded his head.
"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.
If you have
anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before,
you have
got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it
that nobody has ever found before,
so that the thing you have to say and
the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they
were conceived together"
Mark smiled at me. "What do you think, Roland?"
I scowled at him. "I think you've been dealing from a deck of 52 Jokers."
He blew a smoke ring at me. "That's the story of life, son. The story of life."
I believe as your round table does Roland, more in quality rather than quantity. It's the joy of writing, and the search for the best way to tell the story that's important to me. Nano isn't my way of writing, but others seem to like it. I will however try to add to my own novels daily in November. I'm a bit of a loner when writing.
Whenever I hear blogger boast of having written thousands of words on a particular day, I can hear Hemingway grumble in my head, "Yes, but were they true words?"
Every fad has its rabid supporters, but, like you (and Hemingway & Fitzgerald) I believe writing needs to be a solitary endeavor to be true and lasting.
Best of luck with your writing this month. I think I will start on the 3rd Egyptian historical fantasy (which involves H G Wells' War of the Worlds) Fun times. :-)
These past two days have killers -- literally -- I almost was killed in a freak interstate accident so I have been here even less than usual! I will tomorrow. :-)
I've never participated in NaNo--might work for some people but not for me. Ironically, I wrote a few pages today of my (long languishing) scifi novel, and just because I wanted to. Maybe I'll eventually finish the thing after all!
Dreamer. Writer. Believer in the worth of each soul I meet.
It is not so bad a thing to have been born with the gift of laughter and the knowledge that the world is mad.
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Hurricane Katrina has cast New Orleans into darkness. Predators, living and undead, close in on the helpless survivors. Can Samuel McCord and a vampire priest keep the French Quarter from being drowned in blood?
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VICTOR AND ALICE ARE BACK!
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THE RIVAL
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THE BEAR WITH 2 SHAD0WS link
Based on the stories my Lakota mother told me as a child when I was deathly ill in a freezing Detroit basement apartment. Think a Native American LORD OF THE RINGS.
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I believe as your round table does Roland, more in quality rather than quantity. It's the joy of writing, and the search for the best way to tell the story that's important to me. Nano isn't my way of writing, but others seem to like it. I will however try to add to my own novels daily in November. I'm a bit of a loner when writing.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I hear blogger boast of having written thousands of words on a particular day, I can hear Hemingway grumble in my head, "Yes, but were they true words?"
DeleteEvery fad has its rabid supporters, but, like you (and Hemingway & Fitzgerald) I believe writing needs to be a solitary endeavor to be true and lasting.
Best of luck with your writing this month. I think I will start on the 3rd Egyptian historical fantasy (which involves H G Wells' War of the Worlds) Fun times. :-)
BTW Roland, you and Hemingway's ghost might want to check out the review of For Whom the Bell Tolls if you have time on the Rainforest blog.
ReplyDeleteThese past two days have killers -- literally -- I almost was killed in a freak interstate accident so I have been here even less than usual! I will tomorrow. :-)
DeleteI've never participated in NaNo--might work for some people but not for me. Ironically, I wrote a few pages today of my (long languishing) scifi novel, and just because I wanted to. Maybe I'll eventually finish the thing after all!
ReplyDeleteWhen you try to force your muse, it often turns out dull Yuck, right?
DeleteI am so happy for you that you felt drawn to write on your scifi novel. And doing it because you want to is the best way to do a great job. :-)