Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, November 04, 2004
More on NaNoWriMo
Both of my novel projects for NaNoWriMo have passed the 8,000 word mark, so I am slightly ahead of the writing schedule. Hooray!
There's a whole lot of whining going on over at the NaNoWriMo forums. People are losing interest in their characters, or the plots have gone haywire, or the plots have died outright. Some of the contestants speak in terms of coming to terms with characters or coaxing them to speak, etc.
Writing is like martial arts. Whiners usually don't do well. While I think the NaNoWriMo contest is a lot of fun and a great opportunity to mix with imaginative and original people from around the world, I am starting to see that writing---even if you dress it up as a lot of fun---is simply hard work. Just like martial arts.
When I was in the training hall, we understood that the motion picture concept of martial arts is just a fantasy. The diligent practice of any martial art is simply hard, often tedious, labor. Great, thrilling fights and the settling of scores or the rescue of the helpless from danger may happen once or twice in a lifetime. More often, the student focuses on specific tasks, figures out the best way to accomodate his or her body to the technique itself (like a roundhosue kick, or even a punch), and then drills, drills, drills. I spent years on the punch, learning to relax rather than tense, learning to transmit the force all the way from the ground up rather than "muscling" it from my shoulder. For two hours at a time, I would punch into a light heavy bag, lost to everything else but the task at hand, concentrating on ease, lightness, and proper breathing, while the bag rocked back and forth.
This is writing. You can try to make it as fun as possible, but there's a point where the writer simply labors, where whining is counter-productive, where problems in the story require diligent attention and a resourceful solution.
To write effectively for 30 days straight, start with a plan, an outline. You may veer from the outline as you write and create variations on the plot as you go, but at the very least a general roadmap will keep you moving in the desired direction.
Keep clear the distinction between the world you have crafted and the real world. Recognize that using imagination to write a story (while enjoying the imaginative world) is constructive and propels you forward in your writing. But wallowing in a fantasy about the characters you have created slows you down and confuses the task at hand (writing). I cringe when writers coyly talk about their characters as though the characters were controlling the story. It's like martial artists thinking they can do the stuff on wires that actors do. A successful character has to be very real and lifelike to the writer, a genuine person, but that genuine person has to remain in the bubble of the imaginary world, with the writer clearly and consciously keeping the character consistent and believable.
Make the story matter to you. Getting bored with your own story is a really bad sign. If it bores you, it will bore everbody else. If you suddenly find your own story boring, go back to the beginning of your thought process and re-establish the original reason that the idea intrigued you. Most stories that we decide to write have an initial fascination for us that is well founded, but we can lose that initial point of interest as we try to develop it. If you've gone off on a wrong path, retrace your steps back to what initially intrigued you and start again.
Lose sight of the self. That's really where the discipline comes in, both in martial arts and writing. The self must diminish so that the object being developed can be fully developed. But that's another topic for another day.
Both of my novel projects for NaNoWriMo have passed the 8,000 word mark, so I am slightly ahead of the writing schedule. Hooray!
There's a whole lot of whining going on over at the NaNoWriMo forums. People are losing interest in their characters, or the plots have gone haywire, or the plots have died outright. Some of the contestants speak in terms of coming to terms with characters or coaxing them to speak, etc.
Writing is like martial arts. Whiners usually don't do well. While I think the NaNoWriMo contest is a lot of fun and a great opportunity to mix with imaginative and original people from around the world, I am starting to see that writing---even if you dress it up as a lot of fun---is simply hard work. Just like martial arts.
When I was in the training hall, we understood that the motion picture concept of martial arts is just a fantasy. The diligent practice of any martial art is simply hard, often tedious, labor. Great, thrilling fights and the settling of scores or the rescue of the helpless from danger may happen once or twice in a lifetime. More often, the student focuses on specific tasks, figures out the best way to accomodate his or her body to the technique itself (like a roundhosue kick, or even a punch), and then drills, drills, drills. I spent years on the punch, learning to relax rather than tense, learning to transmit the force all the way from the ground up rather than "muscling" it from my shoulder. For two hours at a time, I would punch into a light heavy bag, lost to everything else but the task at hand, concentrating on ease, lightness, and proper breathing, while the bag rocked back and forth.
This is writing. You can try to make it as fun as possible, but there's a point where the writer simply labors, where whining is counter-productive, where problems in the story require diligent attention and a resourceful solution.
To write effectively for 30 days straight, start with a plan, an outline. You may veer from the outline as you write and create variations on the plot as you go, but at the very least a general roadmap will keep you moving in the desired direction.
Keep clear the distinction between the world you have crafted and the real world. Recognize that using imagination to write a story (while enjoying the imaginative world) is constructive and propels you forward in your writing. But wallowing in a fantasy about the characters you have created slows you down and confuses the task at hand (writing). I cringe when writers coyly talk about their characters as though the characters were controlling the story. It's like martial artists thinking they can do the stuff on wires that actors do. A successful character has to be very real and lifelike to the writer, a genuine person, but that genuine person has to remain in the bubble of the imaginary world, with the writer clearly and consciously keeping the character consistent and believable.
Make the story matter to you. Getting bored with your own story is a really bad sign. If it bores you, it will bore everbody else. If you suddenly find your own story boring, go back to the beginning of your thought process and re-establish the original reason that the idea intrigued you. Most stories that we decide to write have an initial fascination for us that is well founded, but we can lose that initial point of interest as we try to develop it. If you've gone off on a wrong path, retrace your steps back to what initially intrigued you and start again.
Lose sight of the self. That's really where the discipline comes in, both in martial arts and writing. The self must diminish so that the object being developed can be fully developed. But that's another topic for another day.
