NaNoWriMo

Um, not to self promote or anything but you should totally check out my profile on the nanowrimo website. And then, you know, check out the rest of the site. It is pretty sweet.

insert clever title here: The last thing you do...

...is line editing.

You know, line editing. That thing you do where you write a paragraph or two, go back over it, tweak a word or a phrase, maybe write a little more, tweak that, then get stuck, go back through everything you've written so far and tweak that. It's the thing your Inner Editor wants you to do, and it's what NaNoWriMo trains you out of doing. (Am I going to mention NaNoWriMo in every post from now until December? I just might!) You know what I'm talking about.

Well, I'm here to tell you that not only should you NEVER do what I just described, you shouldn't line edit AT ALL until EVERYTHING else is finished. And I don't just mean finishing your first draft (although that's a start). I mean, this type of editing should not happen until you've written at least two or three (or six) drafts. It shouldn't happen until the pacing of your story has been smoothed out, the scenes are all there and in order, and you're so sick of this darn thing that if you have to look at it one more time, you'll puke.

Now can you line edit? Well, no. Puke is bad. When you get to that point, stop, take a break, and come back to it when the sight of it doesn't make you queasy. If the structure is still good, NOW you can line edit. Now you can go through and tweak like you've always wanted. And then you're done. You've done the last thing. You have a novel.

Now it's time to mail it to people and get rejected a lot!

Thinking About Books: Author Edition: Patricia A. McKillip

Patricia A. McKillip is so awesome I had to make up a new category in my book reviews, just for her. "Author Edition." Sounds fancy, huh? Although, you could just as easily say the reason I made up a new category is because it was too hard to pick just one of her books to review. Because that's certainly true.

But seriously, folks, this lady is super awesome. Do you remember that post I did about Rose Daughter, in which I went on and on about the sumptuous quality of it? Well, McKillip is like that, only the word I use with her is "dream-like." That is to say, her books are full of the unexplained and fantastic, existing peacefully alongside the mundane details of real life.

McKillip strikes just the right note between vague and precise, unfocused and sharp, fantasy and reality. Her books are like an impressionist or pointillist painting. It can seem chaotic and random, yet still beautiful, but when you step back, you realize that the whole thing is a unified whole that makes perfect sense. This is not to say her books are tidy. (I can't stand tidy books.) There are plenty of loose ends once you turn the last page that you can think about the book and its world for a long time after it. And her worlds are so richly painted that, even if you couldn't point to them on a map, or even say what century they're in, you feel like you've visited a real place, and now you're back home, wondering when you can go again.

Bibliography (that I've read)

Winter Rose
Ombria in Shadow
Alphabet of Thorn
Od Magic
The Bell at Sealey Head
Fool's Run (This one is sci-fi, and different from the others. Less dream-like. But one of my favorites. In fact, if I'd gone ahead and picked just one book to review, this one might have been it. I may do so yet.)

Technology hates me

No really, it does.

I won't go into detail, because frankly it mostly involves me foaming at the mouth a lot. But suffice it to say, three separate pieces of technology have gone wrong today, and I hate to think what life would be like if I had an artificial heart.

insert clever title here: Outlines

I have always hated the idea of outlines.

They stifle creativity, I thought. They're annoying/boring/too hard to write. They don't serve any purpose.

Wrong.

I've recently learned that not only are outlines not stiflers of creativity, they are kind of necessary. Maybe you don't start off with one, but you're going to need one eventually because novels are LONG, and it's hard to keep track of stuff (especially for me). And they provide structure and guidance, which, on a big, long project such as a whole novel, is really helpful. The best part is, you don't have to follow it if you don't want to. In fact, you might not make one until you're quite a ways in.

Case in point: during my most recent project, when I finally broke down and actually wrote an outline, I was already part of the way through draft 2.5. But it made everything after it so easy I'm starting the next Nanowrimo with one. What it did was give me a roadmap. I'd always started novels with only a hazy idea of where I was going... okay, let's be real here, I'd pretty much do the noveling equivalent of closing my eyes, spinning in a circle, stopping when I got dizzy, and setting off in the direction I was facing. I almost never had an ending, and odds were against me having anything more than a sketch of a character or two, a basic setting, and maybe a conflict. I would discover the territory as I went along, and while that can be terribly exciting, it's more often boring because you can't move half the time, having no idea where you're going. I'd get stuck a lot. With an outline, on the other hand, things were much smoother, and when I did get stuck, I could just look at the outline, and be able to tell what the story needed in this spot here and now, and not have to go blindly forward and then backtrack several times. Instead of stifling my creativity, it helped inspire it.

P.S. I've heard of an extreme version of this, and I've included it mainly for your curiosity. I've never tried it, and while it sounds like it would work in theory, I think I am much too inexperienced to try it myself yet. (Also, it sounds really hard.)

NaNoWriMo!

nano nano nano nano
nano nano nano nano
WRIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(See, the Batman theme is appropriate, because I'm writing about superheroes this year... anyway, I'm just excited about NaNo!)

Oh, yes I did.