Talking Out Of Turn

I was encouraged by Matt Gumm to post a little bit on how I was able to kick out 50,000 words in a month last year. Being the king of unasked-for advice, it was especially nice to actually have somebody ask for a little bit, and I will be happy to oblige.

Technology will save us

First, make it easy to write. Always have something handy. In this day and age you can get a workable laptop used for less than $500; it’s not the latest and greatest but you could get something good enough and cheap enough that you could even afford to get a decent battery. Even better, as far as technology saving us, I can highly recommend the AlphaSmart NEO. I absolutely love mine, and right now they’re less than $220, I hear. I don’t think most PDAs will work well enough for this; the average person needs a full keyboard to generate word count. If worse comes to worse then pencil and paper will do, but you will have to account for the time to retype all of it; Good old NaNo doesn’t care one lick about non-digital representations of language. In the end it’s all about automated word count.

Second, as far as your real word processor, make it something that works for you, not against you. Lots of people are loving WriteRoom and things like that; the best cross-platform free gratis implementation of this idea, as far as I am aware, is JDarkRoom. Emacs is almost a bad choice for me in this case, because I am too easily distracted by all the things I can do under the hood, and I end up tinkering rather than plowing the text. But I can do a full-screen no-menus org-mode frame and be OK. Org-mode is good as well because I can have an outline of characters, plot, etc. and link it in pretty quickly, or consult it and then get it out of the way before I decide I also want to check my email, or Twitter feed, or whatever while I’m stopped. More on distractions in a moment.

Having said that about your text editor, I also highly recommend offsite backups, and Google Docs works as well for this as anything. I cut and pasted all my text into Google Docs twice a day (or whenever I generated something like another thousand words of text). It has revision control so you can fall back. It’s someplace else, so you could lose your laptop or NEO or whatever and still be in good shape. Use something else if you prefer; a lot of people hate Google, and some have good reasons and some don’t. But make sure you are at least emailing your documents, on a twice-daily basis, to some online email account somewhere which you can’t lose. If you fear for that one, add another one. It will be worth it for the peace of mind, especially if you’re a paranoid backup guy like I am (sometimes). Email them to a friend who won’t read them as a last resort.

Seven habits of high word-count generators

Gosh, I hate titles like that, don’t you?

1. Don’t consult the plot outline more than once or twice a day.
2. Keep the names of characters and places on a 3×5 card or in a window you can pull forward whenever you need it.
3. Don’t fear to spend some time daydreaming about what your character would do in this or that situation, even if it’s irrelevant. If you find yourself playing out dialogue or internal monologue, though, then start typing! Mark it in your text editor with something like “:ASIDE:” or something that will get your attention when you’re editing in a month or a year, so you can pull it out and massage it someplace else.
4. If you know that your plot is taking a hard turn that you didn’t anticipate, roll with it. Just keep writing. Let the wave carry you. If it is really killing you that you’re diverging from your outline, then make a deal with yourself that, the first moment you get bored of writing, you will come back and review and see if this is a plot development that you like or not. It is worth fifteen minutes or even (once or twice in November) an hour or two to brainstorm about how you’re going to fix a derailed plot, if it generates good words.
5. Leave your mistakes in, even the thousand-word bad plot mistakes that you may have discovered in our last “habit.” If you clear 50,000 words early then you can excise this mistake and replace it. Sometimes (more often than I care to admit), you will find that you come back to the mistake in six months and it’s more compelling than the stuff you planned to write.
6. If you’re a schedule-oriented person, who gets things done by the clock, then you need to set aside time for this. If you’re not, then don’t suddenly decide that you’re going to change how you live your life, and do NaNoWriMo this year. It won’t work, and you’ll end up (a) not changing how you live, and (b) not getting out the word count. Make a decision now: either you’re going to become personally organized this month, or you’re going to write a novel. You don’t get to do both. I envy those of you who have already gotten things organized; you’re ahead of us. But the rest of you should wait until December or January to break out the Day-Planners and Franklin-Covey memorabilia. So, if you’re not the scheduling type, then it is all the more important that you decide to carry your laptop, NEO, or notebook with you wherever you go. Keep it in the car if you can’t take it into work (November, for most of us in the US, is a cold month, so it probably won’t melt out there, but for most of us it won’t freeze either). But carry a memo pad in your pocket or some 3×5s for continued note-taking.
7. Use your downtime, when you can’t write, to plan. Save your plot development and character thoughts for times when you can’t whale (wail?) on the keyboard.

One more thing for this category that isn’t a habit so much as a tip: don’t obsess over whether you’re on track for the month. I did over 10,000 words on the last day, 30 November, last year. I plan to do better this year, but I won’t freak out if I don’t. You may miss a day or two; that’s OK, if you just write and don’t worry you can do a few 2K-3K days and cover for a multitude (OK, maybe not a multitude) of off-days.

NaNo as art class

I want to give you the tip that helped me the most when I was about to give up. Here it comes.

When I was in high school, we had an art class in which we had to draw somebody lying on the floor, but we could neither (a) pick up our pencils once we had put the point to the paper; it all had to be one continuous line, nor (b) look at our papers at all. The guy on the floor (it was Dan Lorenz, for the couple of you who would know him) had a face that was far from nondescript; you didn’t mistake him for other people (I’m not saying he was especially handsome or ugly, but he had strong features, like his father). I had never been able to either draw a face or caricature one effectively, but when I was finished with this exercise, I looked at my paper, and I said, “wow, it’s Dan.” And it was. I showed people who weren’t in the class, and they knew it was him, too.

You see, I captured the essence of his face, because I didn’t take time to think about the structure of his face (oval, two eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, etc.), but because I was forced by the constraints of the exercise and the time allotted (less than three minutes, I’m sure) to just draw what I saw — that is, what I really saw, not how my brain interpreted it.

I believe that the key for a lot of people to writing better fiction — really great fiction that brings characters and plots to life — is to write what you are imagining, not what you think people want to read, or what you think you want to read. It’s the difference between a photograph and a Monet for some of you. For others it’s the difference between a kid’s drawing and a photograph. Whatever it is for you, I am calling on those of you who get caught up in the details to chuck ‘em, for the month. Or dwell on the details and chuck the framework. Whatever, just leave behind the thing that holds you back from word count.

Remove the interpretive grid, and let your text editor deal with the raw content of your imagination. Nobody needs to see this, and if you think you can create art, then give yourself a chance to birth it directly. You can edit it before you inflict it on us, but you might find yourself editing less, or differently, after you’ve written it down, and after you see it on paper or on the screen, than you would have edited it in your head as you recorded it the first time.

Don’t keep us from seeing the next Faulkner because you wanted to be Fitzgerald but you failed at it.

I am shocked. Shocked!

OK, one more thing, and this is for Christians (and those who are curious about our take on art):

If you really do remove the filters and the grids and write what’s in your mind, then it is going to be ugly sometimes. Sometimes it will be ugly because it isn’t fully formed in your mind; that’s OK, you can edit it, or decide that that was what you really wanted in the first place.

But sometimes it’s ugly because we are fallen creatures in a fallen world. Our hearts are wicked places and we dare not walk through them alone sometimes. But you will examine some of the darker parts of yours, if you really write what’s there. Art is a process of self-examination for the artist. Some people make a lot of money doing that sort of thing. But Christians really have to go through the wringer when they pour their hearts out on paper…

…and they see blasphemy. Covetousness. Lust. Pride. Idolatry. Things that don’t belong in someone whose life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).

You will learn more about yourself than you wanted to know. But let me encourage you to keep writing. Keep the word count up. If the process of writing this becomes a process of dredging up the old man so you can put him off, well, that’s sanctification. When the month is over, you can delete the awful thing, or you can turn mourning into joy and finish the novel with victory. That’s your choice. But let me just beg you to keep writing and hang on to those words for a little while. Don’t hang on to sin, and don’t neglect repentance if you find yourself writing things that demonstrate that you don’t have the mind of Christ. The Christian life comes first. If you put NaNo above Jesus then you need to guard yourself from that idol, brother or sister.

But if what you are writing reflects the world in which you live, well, it does. I’m not Mr. “Art for Art’s Sake” anymore, although I used to be. But there is evil, and sin, and suffering in the world. People whose eyes aren’t fixed on Jesus think that they will be fulfilled by money, sex, power, or just making themselves happy in whatever way they can. It is not wrong to write about that, although it can be wrong to write in such a way that you invite temptation into the hearts of your readers. That’s why there aren’t Christian porn flicks. But real sinners use language that does not glorify God. They desire things that do not glorify God, and sometimes what they desire must be described. Yes, we walk a fine line sometimes. But remember that what you write is between you and God, but what you release to the public is between you, God, the body of Christ, and the lost world. Don’t confuse these responsibilities! God knows what is in your heart. You can be ashamed of the sins of your heart and mind, without pretending to hide them from God.

Christians who are doing NaNo can use this as a tool for their sanctification. This happened to me last year, and it’s why nobody — not another soul — has seen my book from last year. It gave me fodder for a lot of sanctification.

Be encouraged. Write what comes from the heart, and rejoice that a merciful God knows what’s there and loves us in, through, and because of Jesus Christ.

Wow, this was over 2100 words, just writing this. Too bad I can’t count it for next month!