NaNo! WE WON'T GO!

{Courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

 

BREAK THE CHAINS OF WORD QUOTAS!

 

EMBRACE THE FREEDOM OF SURFING YOUR MUSE

WITHOUT RESTRAINT!

 

Sometimes we get stuck in our writing.  To bull forward in the race for word quotas does not help.

 

When you have made a wrong turn, going faster only gets you more lost.

 

No. 

 

You must stop and reflect where you took that wrong turn in your prose. 

 

As with cars caught in muddy ruts:

sometimes to go forward, you must go back, get on firm ground again, and then go forward.

 

All this takes time.  But that is all right.  The magic takes time to steep in your mind, deepening in its meaning and value.

 

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling one brushstroke at a time.  That is how you will write a great novel.

 

Candilynn Fite has her UNDER THE RADAR WRITING MONTH:

http://cfitewrite.blogspot.com/2013/10/unranowrimo-anyone-for-those-of-us-not.html

 

"During my self-proclaimed UnRaNoWriMo,

I'm going to just write.

Every day. For however long / short I desire.

I want to love the project at the end of November, not fear it.

I want something I can handle when it comes time for revisions.

I don't want to end up with a blah, blah, blah, just-get-er-done disaster like I have in the past two years

 

Don't get me wrong, I admire all the NaNo'ers out there! You go, writers!
It's just not my cup of tea. Or coffee."

I, too, admire the persistence of the writers in NaNo.  I just feel sad at seeing them waste a month while learning bad writing habits.

Sometimes I get a bullying or "In-Crowd" vibe from some NaNo-ers that email me or whose blogs I wander upon.

"You're not doing NaNo?  Why ever not?  Everybody's doing it.  Well, those of us who are serious about writing that is."

I get it.  It's fun to participate in something that a lot of kindred spirits are doing.  I just see a lot of bad habits being ingrained into unsuspecting friends.

But I am not going to be bullied or shamed into participating into what I see as a reinforcement of bad writing patterns.

So I have instituted the "NaNo! WE WON'T GO!" movement to coincide with Candilynn Fite's UNDER THE RADAR MONTH.

Something those of you for whom NaNo is not your "cup of tea" can join and feel good about your decision not to NaNo.

I already have been told:

"Oh, but it's a good thing to get pushed into daily writing."

 

 

Really?  Anybody have to direct you to the dinner table?  No, because hunger did it for you.  If you don't have that hunger driving you to write, you're not a writer.

 

 

"Oh, but it's great to compare with friends on my progress."

 

 

That's what FACEBOOK is for.  Writing is a lonely quest to put your story in the best prose, best telling of it as you can.

 

 

"I do the NaNo events so that I can get a first draft."

 

 

A first draft of what? 

 

A hastily conceived, hurriedly slapped together caricature of a story idea that might actually have been a classic if you gave it reasoned, careful thought?  To carefully mull over the plot twists and the plot foreshadowings takes time.  It takes time to distill a cliched idea into a surprising turn of one on its ear.

 

 

"I want to put my writing first for a month."

 

 

Life is a harsh mistress.  It hits you out of left field with a sucker punch when you can least afford it.  Make it a habit to write daily, even if you have to get up an hour early or stay up 30 minutes later.  (The extra half hour in the morning is to wake up!)

 

 

"The goal is to have the experience of trying. It's a creative exercise that can teach you a lot about what you're capable of. The forums provide you help and guidance."

 

 

Really?  All right.  Try on your own.  What you accomplish by yourself means more.  Ever see anything done by committee that swelled your heart with pride? 

 

There are great text books out there by authors who have written bestsellers for years not just pro's at telling you how to write one.

 

 Never doubt that I am your friend. 

And friends will tell you the truth even if it is not a popular one. 

Stay the course with your dream, my friends. 

Sail straight and true,

with your eye on the distant shores

of touching and evocative prose.

ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES? Insecure Writers Support

To be a poet and not know the trade,

To be a lover and repel all women;

Twin ironies by which great saints are made,

The agonizing pincer-jaws of heaven.

—“Sanctity,” by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, who died on this day in 1967;

the poem surfaced in the news when read by Russell Crowe when he accepted his BAFTA award for the movie A Beautiful Mind.

(We pause for this interruption:

Denise Covey has written an engrossing post on passion in writing and mentioning my contest, whose deadline has been extended to July 15th:
http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/insecure-writers-support-group-writing.html?showComment=1341330695538#c7336558677541535224)


Many of you poured your creative energies into a month-long gauntlet of a June version of NaNo.

In that time did you create something worthwhile or just throw together the lumber of your minds in a hodge-podge of slapped together verbs and nouns?

A month is a long time to spend on words that were not distilled and carefully crafted according to a thought-out blueprint.

Would you buy a house built without a blueprint?

We write, as Van Gogh painted, with little indication that we will ever be appreciated. He, himself, never felt appreciated in his lifetime.

Very few of us who are not published in our lifetimes will ever be "discovered" after our death.

So are we wasting our time?

C. S. Lewis was born on this day in 1898 in Belfast.

When young Jack was six, the Lewis family moved to a large house which his father, a solicitor, had built on the outskirts of the city.

In Surprised by Joy, his 1955 autobiography, Lewis describes the new family home as “less a house than a city,” and fertile ground:

"I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles.

Also, of endless books….

There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcases on the landing,

books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic….

Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. "

Before long, and partly to compensate for having lost his only brother to boarding school, Lewis turned from reader to writer.

At a desk his parents had made for him, in “the little end room” of the attic, he began to write and illustrate stories of “dressed animals and knights-in-armour” —

tales of “chivalrous mice and rabbits who rode out in complete mail to kill not giants but cats.”

Soon the knightly bunnies needed a home and a past, and Lewis turned “from romancing to historiography.”

He created “Animal-Land,” complete with maps and family sagas, and situated it on an island near the Himalayas, to be proximate to his brother’s India-Land.

"My brother rapidly invented the principal steamship routes" betweeen the two countries; eventually, the two worlds merged into “Boxen,” now published as the Lewis-world that predates Narnia.

Those stories never saw print in his lifetime.

Were they a waste? Are our dreams? I think you know the answer to that.

The pursuit of dreams is never wasted. If the dreams never seem to come to pass, the journey has been one of magic and renewal --

the renewal of that intangible, but essential, human element :

our soul.

A dream discarded never leaves us. It slowly decomposes in the attic of our being, slowly poisoning our zest for life.

To nuture and cherish a dream is to have perpetual Spring in our hearts.

We may be Don Quixote, never vanguishing the windmill but somehow the stronger and truer for the effort.

And to end with a nod to an old friend of mine :

Mark Twain's seventieth birthday celebration was held on this day in 1905 at New York’s Delmonico’s Restaurant.

One hundred and seventy-five of Twain’s distinguished friends were there, to HEAR WHY HE LIVED SO LONG

(the headline in the NY Times report of the occasion), and to take home a foot-high plaster bust of the author.

In his speech, Twain attributed his health and longevity to several hard-earned (and oft-repeated) principles —

"to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with," and

"never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake."
***
END OF DAYS IS STILL #7 ON AMAZON'S BEST SELLERS FOR TUATHA DE DANANN!

THESE ARE THE LAST TWO DAYS FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. AUTOGRAPH AND A BOOK AUTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL WHELAN! JUST REVIEW END OF DAYS or DO A POST ON IT!!
***
Here is a bit of the ghost of George Bernard Shaw's introduction to Victor Standish's latest narrated adventure, THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT:

"I hasten to protest at the outset that I have no personal knowledge of the incorrigible Super-tramp who wrote this amazing book.

If he is to be encouraged and approved, then British morality is a mockery, British respectability an imposture, and British industry a vice. Perhaps they are: I have always kept an open mind on the subject…."

ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES?

To be a poet and not know the trade,
To be a lover and repel all women;
Twin ironies by which great saints are made,
The agonizing pincer-jaws of heaven.

—“Sanctity,” by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, who died on this day in 1967;

the poem surfaced in the news when read by Russell Crowe when he accepted his BAFTA award for the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Many of us poured our creative energies into a month-long gauntlet called NaNo.

In that time did we create something worthwhile or just throw together the lumber of our minds in a hodge-podge of slapped together verbs and nouns?

A month is a long time to spend on words that were not distilled and carefully crafted according to a thought-out blueprint. Would you buy a house built without a blueprint?

We write, as Van Gogh painted, with little indication that we will ever be appreciated. He, himself, never felt appreciated in his lifetime. Very few of us who are not published in our lifetimes will ever be "discovered" after our death.

So are we wasting our time?

C. S. Lewis was born on this day in 1898 in Belfast. When young Jack was six, the Lewis family moved to a large house which his father, a solicitor, had built on the outskirts of the city.

In Surprised by Joy, his 1955 autobiography, Lewis describes the new family home as “less a house than a city,” and fertile ground:

"I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles.

Also, of endless books…. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcases on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic….

Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. "

Before long, and partly to compensate for having lost his only brother to boarding school, Lewis turned from reader to writer.

At a desk his parents had made for him, in “the little end room” of the attic, he began to write and illustrate stories of “dressed animals and knights-in-armour” — tales of “chivalrous mice and rabbits who rode out in complete mail to kill not giants but cats.”

Soon the knightly bunnies needed a home and a past, and Lewis turned “from romancing to historiography.” He created “Animal-Land,” complete with maps and family sagas, and situated it on an island near the Himalayas, to be proximate to his brother’s India-Land.

"My brother rapidly invented the principal steamship routes" betweeen the two countries; eventually, the two worlds merged into “Boxen,” now published as the Lewis-world that predates Narnia.

Those stories never saw print in his lifetime.

Were they a waste? Are our dreams? I think you know the answer to that.

The pursuit of dreams is never wasted. If the dreams never seem to come to pass, the journey has been one of magic and renewal --

the renewal of that intangible, but essential, human element : our soul. A dream discarded never leaves us. It slowly decomposes in the attic of our being, slowly poisoning our zest for life.

A dream nutured and cherished is to have perpetual Spring in our hearts. We may be Don Quixote, never vanguishing the windmill but somehow the stronger and truer for the effort.

And to end with a nod to an old friend of mine :

Mark Twain's seventieth birthday celebration was held on this day in 1905 at New York’s Delmonico’s Restaurant. One hundred and seventy-five of Twain’s distinguished friends were there, to HEAR WHY HE LIVED SO LONG

(the headline in the NY Times report of the occasion), and to take home a foot-high plaster bust of the author.

In his speech, Twain attributed his health and longevity to several hard-earned (and oft-repeated) principles — "to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with," and "never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake."
***