William Tiernan's excellent coverage of The National Novel Writing Month has, sadly, come to a close. If you haven't gotten a chance to read his month long journey, read through his previous posts to get a feel for the narrative arc, or so to speak. Be sure to leave your closing comments as well!

Dear Agent,

Guess what? I did it. I really did it. I just finished my first NaNo! Yeeehaaw for me! High fives all around! 51,987 words, with 8,453 coming on the final day. What can I say, I finish strong. 
What’s that? Oh yeah, my book. Well, it’s hard to describe. It’s titled, A Political Romance: A NaNo Project. It’s a political thriller with a sleazy romance twist. But enough about plot. Let’s talk marketing platform. The fact that it’s a NaNo project will make my book jump off the shelf. Who wouldn’t want to read a novel that was produced in just 30 days? A NaNo is a true testament to the writer-at-work.  People will see it like the reality television of books. Plus, minimal editing for you and the publisher you sell it to; it’s supposed to be “rough,” right? Plus, the nature of the project will allow you and me to get on an annual plan. Rest assured, every December 1 you’re going to have my new NaNo in your Inbox.  Nothing like a little consistency in a turbulent profession.

Sincerely,

NaNo A. NaNo – NaNo Master
 
Do use your NaNo as a springboard

You’ve worked hard on your NaNo, but do remember it’s not a novel. At least not yet. Your NaNo will be best treated as a glorified outline, the draft before the draft before the first draft before second draft before the third draft before the final manuscript. It will be like J.K. Rowling’s napkin notes of Harry Potter; or the blueprints of the Eiffel Tower; or the bill that becomes a law; or Peter Parker before the spider bite; or the …

Okay, you get the point. For those who finished the journey, pat yourself on the back, tuck your NaNo away, and let the thing mini-hibernate. Break it out in a week and study it carefully.  Show it to a trusted colleague. Mine the nuggets. Pitch the garbage. Rewrite. Revise. Create a workable first draft. And so on and so on until your NaNo has evolved into a polished manuscript you can pitch with confidence. When you land that agent, the mania of NaNoWriMo will have been worth it.    

Thanks for following along this month. How many words did you end with? What’s your title? Genre? Tagline?
 
See you next year!

William
 

 

I am ecstatic for the holidays. Not because I love giving or receiving gifts or the parties or even the slacked-off work schedule. (Okay, maybe the latter.) I heart the silly season for the drama. I can’t wait to hear about the person who dirty-danced with their boss at the holiday party. The uncle who went MIA on Christmas, but actually just got drunk and fell asleep under his bed. The family politics revved up for yet another holiday drag race. This is entertainment. This is fodder for future stories, a time to gather material for the long winter ahead.

Here’s my contribution. Feel free to add yours in the comments area below.

When I was 15, my family spent Christmas on Cape Cod. We’d just come off a harrowing year abroad and were split it up a bit—my oldest brother at college, another brother at boarding school on account of a wild streak, me at home with my mother while my father traveled too much for work. The holiday was something of a reunion. When we arrived at the house, we discovered a newly finished home that partially blocked our view of a pond. In particular there was a tree on the new home’s property that—should it disappear—would radically improve our vista. 

After dinner on Christmas Eve, I found my oldest brother and my father in the basement oiling up a chainsaw. They were both drinking beers. When I joined them I was handed a beer, which I immediately guzzled. Then another, which I also downed. Finally, my middle brother joined us. He too had a beer in his hand, not his first. Save my dad, none of us were of legal drinking age.

Outside, it had begun to snow. We marched out from the garage, a phalanx of the family men on the way to our neighbor’s yard to cut down his tree. The area was mostly vacation homes, which meant our neighbor was not around. Most of the surrounding houses were also dark. I remember walking past the kitchen window and seeing my mother cleaning dishes. She looked up, smiled and waved approvingly. Her three sons, each with beers in hand, and her husband who had a beer and a chainsaw, were heading into the dark snowy night to cut down a massive tree on someone else’s property. And she was cool with it.
 
There isn’t space here to finish the story, but the highlight was that the tree almost fell on me. But the truly harrowing part was getting rid of the body, so to speak. The tree was in a ravine and we had to cut it up and roll the massive logs up a hill, which quickly got slick and muddy. When we lost control of the larger logs they’d careen back down the hill towards where my father was cutting the tree into pieces. How no one got seriously hurt that night will forever be a mystery to me. We did, however, succeed. We had our view back.
 
As for the neighbor, well, he was never terribly friendly towards us after that.

This week’s question: Do you find the holidays a fertile time for stories? Care to share one?

John Meils is currently finishing a first novel, tentatively titled The Warring House. He has written for Elle, Men’s Health, and MyTango.com, among others.

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To learn more about him, visit johnmeils.com.

 

At this point in NaNoWriMo I’m tempted to say that process is more important than product. That the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. That the hard work invested to reach the finish line is more important than actually crossing it. That 25.9 miles is the same as 26.2. That Thanksgiving week is a time to shelve NaNos for turkey and mash potatoes.   

Well, screw all that. If we’d signed up for 31,003 words of sparkling prose we would have, well, signed up for a writing class. Instead we chose the NaNo – a 50,000+ word hyper novel that promises to be so messy, mystifying, and grammatical and structurally challenged our own grandmothers won’t praise it. Good for us. Let’s finish this thing off. 

I’m giving NaNo thanks this Thanksgiving week. Two days off work; multiple family members in town, which means multiple babysitting options; and endless chicken salad sandwiches, yam casseroles, and my mother-in-law’s famous “Cherry Squares.” What’s not to like from a NaNo perspective?  Especially when you’ve got less than a week to go and you’re still behind in the word count.

One issue that’s held me back this past week is research. Almost every novel requires some level of research, and my NaNo is no exception. I’m trying to figure out if a kid can sue his parents for release of custody because they've made him obese. And if so, what the trial might look and sounds like. My Internet research and badgering of lawyer friends has yielded little expertise. And without expertise, I’ve been hesitant to write a few key legal scenes. Then I remembered The Most Important Rule in the History of Important NaNo Rules: Keep writing! So I plowed through the scenes as I imagined they would happen, and took comfort in the fact they could be authenticated at a later date. Like, December.

All of this leads to this week’s NaNo questions:

Does your NaNo require research? If so, how are you balancing research with writing?

• Where does your NaNo stand?


• Is your Thanksgiving week going to hold you back or push you through? Black Friday shopping or writing? Or both?


• And of course, what are you eating on Thursday?

 

It's time to announce the winners of our current bi-weekly writing challenge. If you're new to the challenges (or to WEbook) these are short writing exercises geared towards helping authors improve a specific aspect of their craft and promote a healthy discourse between contestants.

Note that we will be taking a hiatus on these challenges for the holiday season. We love doing them, but we also love eating turkey, opening presents, and munching on candy canes. Look for new challenges in 2011.

First, the #1 winner and honorable recipient of a PageToFame coupon AND a Starbucks Giftcard:

Protest by galanham

And the other winners, who get a PageToFame coupon!

Grammar 'Rules' by PennyPritchard
Arrival by shigirl 

Congratulations!

And, as we take a break from the challenges for a while, we'd like to thank everyone who has submitted an entry over the past year. We couldn't do these challenges without you, and it's been a great pleasure of ours to read through your creative entries.  

Before you go, be sure to read galanham's winning entry:

Protest

See Spot run.

Tommy loathed the assignment. The class had to write a narrative containing one adjective and one adverb. How one accomplished the task, Tommy could not decide. Adjectives added color to life. Without adverbs there was no enthusiasm. That was what Tommy believed. 

See Spot jump.

What could he inscribe? An account about a dog? A yarn about running? A fairy-tale to amuse children? He wrote dreams and desires. These day-dreams wove color and excitement. Hope was not a story with one adjective and one adverb.

See Spot leashed.

Mutiny rose in Tommy’s chest. The mission was a restriction of freedom. He would smother. His creativity would suffocate. But Tommy had an inspiration. He would tell a story about one adjective and one adverb. His chronicle would shine. He would shine.

Tommy began to write. His words streaked across the sheet. They left a trail of chaos, a wildly protesting legend of furious determination.

See Spot fly. 

We're just past the halfway point of the NaNo. How is everyone doing? Feeling the burn? Gotten that second wind yet? We hope so. William Tiernan's blog coverage of NaNo continues, let's see how he's doing...

Because my NaNo’s a YA novel, this month I’m mining for one gem in particular: momentum. So I’m reading John Green’s Looking for Alaska, a recommendation from a literary agent as an example of a perfectly paced YA novel. Good recommendation. It’s not an “action” book, but each hard-hitting sequence drives the plot forward at a relentless pace. No stage directions.  No superfluous character traits. No tedious information drops. Just sustained momentum. (And great writing.) I’ve been amazed (and inspired) by how much happens on each page.

I’m trying to reproduce “Alaska’s” momentum in my NaNo. Every time I start to get bogged down I say to myself: Get to the point and move on. (If I’m able to successfully “move on” I reward myself with a Reese’s or a Corona, depending on the time of day, and then keep moving on.) The strategy seems to be paying off. My NaNo’s a sequel to a YA book I spent a year writing. And so far I’m liking the NaNo better. (So much for a writing process of endless editing and rewriting and no alcohol). I may think differently come December 1, but still, it feels good to just write. And write fast. I remember reading somewhere that Stephen King writes his novels in about three months. Considering their average length, maybe there’s something to be said for the expeditiousness of NaNoWriMo. No matter what genre you’re working on this month, focusing on momentum and pacing might get you to the finish not just faster, but better.

Coincidentally, Alaska’s title character offers an interesting take on reaching the finish line – on the nostalgia of imagining the future as she calls it: “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” Hmmm? If the future is 50,000 words, and the labyrinth is your NaNo, then maybe there’s only one way out: Get to the point and move on!

NaNo questions for this week: What are you reading this month? What authors do you look to for writing gems? What gems are you incorporating into your NaNo?

NaNo word count: 22,576. Still behind, but gaining momentum.

—William

 

We regret to inform everyone that reading The Pumpkin Challenge submissions has reduced the WEbook editorial staff into a group of tear-soaked and fear-addled children. Thus, they were unable to choose winners for this challenge.

.....

Just kidding!

But seriously, these were some scary, sick, and twisted submissions. Which, of course, is exactly what we asked for. So thanks!

Here are the winners. Read at your own discretion, as a few of them are on the graphic side of things. 

No Trespassing by DaisyBug
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown by FinneanNilson
My Pretty Pumpkin Pet by fairyfan

Honorable Mention 

Schrodinger's Pumpkin by jgbarr

Congratulations to all the winners! You will receive your PageToFame coupons shortly.

The Single Adjective/Adverb Challenge is still open for submission through Monday, November 15. It seems like many regulars have passed on this challenge (we had you pegged for adverb sympathizers from the start), so we’re resorting to bribery. The #1 winner of this writing contest will receive both a PageToFame coupon AND a $10 Starbucks Gift Card. All other winners will still get their standard P2F ‘pon. We hope everyone decides to accept our bribe.

Have a great weekend!

—WEbook  

William Tiernan's blog coverage of NaNoWriMo continues! If you're new to the series, catch up on his novel writing marathon so far.

I considered switching topics. Then by some small twist of NaNoWriMo fate I read Brian’s post about point of view. And it hit me: my NaNo’s plot was fine; what had crippled it was perspective. The story focuses on a girl and a boy who play equally important roles. So I chose to write in the 3^rd person, hoping to give each kid the proper attention. Bad move. No matter how hard I tried last week, I couldn’t get inside their heads. They felt aloof. Stagnant. Boring. If they were boring to me, I thought, imagine how a reader would feel?

I decided to let my NaNo go for a 1^st person test drive. 1^st person is a comfortable voice for me, and it seems to be a good narrative match for young readers: personal, edgy, non-preachy. I just wasn’t sure which character to put behind the wheel, the boy or the girl? So I compromised on both. Kathryn Stockett wrote The Help from multiple 1^st person perspectives and look how that worked out! Why not me and my NaNo?

I got started on Saturday. I actually settled on three narrators: the boy, the girl, and a retired lawyer who will represent each of them during the story. And the words flowed. I enjoyed popping in and out of each character’s head. It kept the writing process – and hopefully the writing – fresh. I felt energized.  I’d always wanted to try a novel from multiple perspectives; the NaNo was offering the chance.

By last night I’d finished 6,000 words of Take 2. Way behind in the word count, but I’m actually excited about the process again. The most celebrated are the rehabilitated, right? My NaNo’s out of the shop after a much needed tune-up. $29.99 for a perspective change and new spark plugs. I know the next break down may be just around the corner. But for now I’m enjoying the ride.

How’s everyone else doing? Did you encounter any major or minor road blocks during Week 1? If so, how'd you overcome them? And what are your goals for Week 2?

—William 

 

In an effort to ensure that each PageToFame submission receives votes as quickly as possible, we are temporarily closing submissions to Shorts. As the final rounds of PageToFame Full-Length have opened, user activity has gravitated towards those areas.

This is great, but it has created a bit of a slow-down in Shorts ratings.

By temporarily suspending submissions to Shorts, we will allow the current entries to receive votes at a faster rate. We will monitor user behavior closely over the next few weeks, and plan to re-open Shorts submissions once things even out.

In the meantime, keep that short story nearby (maybe do a final round of edits?) and get cranking on that novel you've been putting off!

—The WEbook Team 

Some of you might remember that I was casting about in search of ideas for my next novel. Eventually, I broke through by researching the germ of an idea, which inspired a legitimate plot, characters, and a range of settings. Afterwards, I realized all I needed was a bit more research and I could sit down and begin outlining and yes, ultimately get to the beautiful slog of a first draft just in time for the start of winter (my favorite season to write).

Because one of the major plot lines of my next manuscript will take place in a South American jungle (and I live in South America), I had to go there. I had to learn about the weather, the people, the plants and animals of the rainforest. I had to see and feel the place or I couldn’t write about it competently. This is how I make my ideas come to life—I base them on real experience. Since this is only my second novel—and my first set in a locale that is, or was, completely alien to me—I am nervous. I don’t know if I can pull it off.

Moreover, I’m a little worried that I need true experiences to build my fiction. I doubt that, for Cujo, Stephen King actually got trapped in a car while a rabid, blood-thirsty Saint Bernard attempted to devour him. Or that, like in The Firm, John Grisham worked for a law practice that represented the mob and killed its partners when they tried to quit. The same goes for countless science-fiction and fantasy novels, historical fiction (not based on fact), lots of YA—hell, maybe the majority of novels are written by folks vastly more creative than me.

I did, however, get rather lucky on my trip (and am lucky for being able to take it in the first place!). On the second day in the rainforest, I was on a hike with a group and we got surrounded by a troupe of wild pigs 100 strong that felt so threatened by us our guide was sure we were about to be attacked. I met indigenous Amazonian Indians and learned about the struggles they face in maintaining their identity in a modern world. I witnessed first-hand what the destruction of the rainforest looks liked—and also how vibrant and alive a fiercely protected piece of jungle is. I saw endangered—and truly dangerous—animals, insects and plants. I got consumed by mosquitoes and sand flies while melting in the humid midday heat. I took copious notes.

And I’m still not sure if I can re-create the world I experienced across the breadth of a novel. More disturbing, I’m concerned that I have to, that my imagination isn’t up to the task of gathering the slack where my research ends. I’ll find out soon enough I suppose, because I plan to begin as soon as I return to the States (yes, my glamorous life abroad is coming to a thudding end in only a few days).

This week’s question is: How do you go about making your fiction “real?” Are your stories purely invented, born strictly of experience or somewhere in between?

—John 

John Meils is currently finishing a first novel, tentatively titled The Warring House. He has written for Elle, Men’s Health, and MyTango.com, among others.

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To learn more about him, visit johnmeils.com.

 

Over the past week or so, I've been reading Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris. It's a brilliant and funny novel that details the behavior of a group of advertising executives as their agency undergoes layoffs during the late 90's. 

One particularly noteworthy aspect of Then We Came to the End is it's perspective. The novel is written in first person plural (we, us, etc.) which is extremely rare in fiction, especially long form fiction. There are a few famous short stories that use this perspective—A Rose For Emily being perhaps the most famous—but it's generally avoided by writers. 

This makes sense, given how cumbersome the perspective can be. First person plural happens to fit well with Ferris's novel because the group of ad people function almost like a unified entity of gossip, fear, self-doubt, and jealousy. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice certain sections where Ferris had to strain a bit to make his chosen perspective fit the narrative. It by no means ruins the novel which, like I said, is fantastic; however, I suspect Ferris had a few "smashing-face-into-desk" type nights as he wrote Then We Came to the End.

This got me thinking about perspective in general. I think some writers have a tendency to forget that they can choose their perspective, and end up diving into whichever one feels right at the outset. This can sometimes backfire when mid-way through a short story or novel the writer realizes their ensemble cast of characters would have way more depth if they had written in 3rd, rather than 1st person.

I'm curious to hear how authors choose their perspective? Have you ever had to backtrack significantly? Do you give it a lot of thought before pen/finger hits paper/keyboard? Any perspective success stories?

 —Brian

William Tiernan's blog coverage of NaNoWriMo continues with the first official November installment! If you need to catch up on what's been covered so far, read Will's introductory post. Be sure to share your own experiences in the comments. You can also start more NaNoWriMo talk in our brand new forum!

This weekend I got some advice from a NaNoWriMo vet: write what you know, stick to a schedule, eat lots of comfort food, and skip Thanksgiving. With these in mind, here’s an overview of my 2010 NaNo.

Title: The Obesity World Series

Genre: Young Adult - Fiction

Tagline: A girl and boy join forces to fight childhood obesity with their own version of the Little League World Series.

Writing implement: Lenovo ThinkPad

Writing space: Musty green couch.

Schedule: Monday—Friday, 10 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. – novel writing. Minimum word count: 1,500/day.   Saturdays, 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. – big picture revisions. Sundays – watch football/catch up on sleep.

Inspirational quote: Those who don’t try, never look foolish.

Motto: Fast and loose.

Essentials: Wizard writing hat; leftover Halloween candy (Reese’s this year); SunChips; notepad, pen and pencil, water; iPod.

Last night I had trouble concentrating on trick-or-treating with my daughter. My mind was locked in pre-NaNo mode. Then, at 12:01 a.m. this morning, I stuffed a Reese’s in my mouth, put the iPod on shuffle, and released my pent-up novel ideas. It was like a literary throw-up: a chunky mix of opening plots points and characters and dialogue exploded through my fingertips and splattered onto my computer screen. I didn’t bother to consult my outline; I just started typing. Two hours later I’d finished Chapter 1 – 1,983 words. I quickly looked it over and decided it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever written and went to sleep happy. One day in and already ahead of schedule. If I can find a way to blow off Thanksgiving I just might make it this year.

But one day at a time, right?  How’s your Day 1 going? Tell us about your 2010 NaNo – overview, writing tool/space/schedule, inspiration, motto, and so on – and share your essentials for getting to the finish line.

—William