A NaNoWriMo Retrospective: the horror that was 2006

First of all, I knew I was in a bad spot when moving into a new house coincided with the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. I started off okay and stayed ahead of the curve for the first week, despite not having an internet connection with which to update my word count. The graph of my daily word counts that the site generates is misleading at best. After that first week, though, something happened.

I don't know what it was. It wasn't quite the chaos of the move. It was partly the exhaustion of the move and partly not being able to get into my novel like I normally do. Even last year, when I was ranting about how much I hated Pale, I could get into the characters and get something out of them. For some reason, I was never really able to connect to any of the characters in One Thousand Holes, which is akin to me having a writer's block. When I did begin to feel a connection to some of the characters (Rowan, Cyrus and their pet unicorn, Bruno), they weren't supposed to be part of the novel in the first place. I put them there because I needed more to work with. They gave me subplots and smut, but it still wasn't enough.

I realized somewhere around 40k that I had a 35k story and that I was pushing it to limits it didn't want to reach. I also realize now what I did wrong. I should have told the entire saga of Shiva's life, which is something I've always wanted to do anyway. That's at least 100k. This last little piece has no business being 50,075 words long. None at all.

It especially has no business having that ending. I passed the ending I had in mind and knew I had to keep going, so I started writing as badly as possible. I had the characters realize that in order to save the world, they would have to essentially blow themselves up. Once they did that, and survived, they realized that they had done more damage than they meant to. In order to save the world, they had to have sex. Then they saved the world too well, and after a number of years of glorious peace and fucking, they bring a bit of chaos back by, you guessed it, having sex. While the last five thousand words or so are horrid as far as the story I was trying to tell, I found it interesting to attempt to be writing a creation myth. I've been reading a book of Native American folk tales, and that style of storytelling seems to have heavily influenced the end of One Thousand Holes. I still disavow all knowledge of its existence, but I'll keep that idea in mind for future reference.

In five years, I have learned a lot. Not necessairily about writing but about myself as a writer and what kinds of things make writing a joy for me. I had the most fun the very first year I ever did NaNoWriMo. So next year, I will probably go back to that. I might pick up one of the several things I've started just to get the feel of the idea down. I might not. I don't know yet. But I do know that I am not going to plan anything at all. If something occurs to me in May, I'll start working on it then. In November, I will adhere to the theory of spontaneous plot generation. I might come up with a title, a character, a beginning, an ending, but I'm going to leave the bulk of it to chance. Because that's fun. Agonizing over it is not.

Here We Go Again

It's that time of year. Time for National Novel Writing Month to gear up. This year, I've decided to approach it a little differently. While I've enjoyed the get togethers and such, I'm just not up for the social interaction this year. So I've created a novel specific user name and have not posted in the forums, although I've glanced through them. Just nothing there for me any more. November is really just an excuse to write something. Not like I need an excuse, but generally speaking, I need a kick in the ass by this time of year.

This year's novel (almost a WIP but not quite) is One Thousand Holes. It's the story of a man called Shiva who is insane attempting to get some tiny thread of his mind back in place. He's in this condition because of his powers. It started when his mother died in a car wreck (he was in the car, too) and he started seeing spirits. From there, he got more powerful -- learning to read minds, control minds, break things with a mere touch and all kinds of other nutty, impossible things, all with the encouragement of his imaginary friend, Pete. Pete isn't exactly an imaginary friend. It's just that no one else can see him or knows he's there. At some point, Shiva meets a man named Timothy. Timothy offers to teach Shiva how to control his abilities. Shiva reluctantly agrees, as it quickly becomes obvious that there are pepole in the world who don't appreciate Shiva's abilities. Well, things progress, and Timothy is soon driven mad by Shiva's power and his unwillingness to use it to its full potential. Shiva is very aware that doing so would be dangerous, but Timothy sees only the lure of absolute power. Timothy murders Shiva's wife and tries to murder Shiva but fails. Five years later, Shiva tracks Timothy down and gets revenge. Within weeks of the resolution of that conflict, Shiva vanishes, leaving Pete behind. Three years later, with everyone believing Shiva's dead, Shiva falls out of the sky. But there are problems. His body is full of holes -- one thousand of them, to be exact. And he has no memory of his past. He seems to know things in bits and pieces, but for the most part, it's gone. His reappearance gets the attention of a number of people, some who'll be good for him and some who won't be. These include Pete, Penelope Rain (Shiva's lover), Kelso Brandon (a federal agent with powers similar to Shiva's), Timothy and the Black Hands (the group responsible for Shiva's fall). There will be others who take notice and lots of little things to play with. Fun stuff.

My problem this year will be time. Time is not going to be on my side this year. The move is scheduled for the end of October/early November, and there will, of course, be the insanity of unpacking afterwards. I've got no expectations this time around. This is my fifth year. I won't feel bad if I don't hit the mark (at least I don't think I will), but knowing me, I'll hit 50k and more and still get everything done with the move. Why? Because I'm insane. And I like it that way.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Fan Fiction: What Not to Do

When it comes to fan fiction, I've got mixed emotions. So much of the works you find on the net are horrid. Not only do the writers do things to and with the characters that are outside of the original ideas, but across the board, fanfic has nothing to do with homage. In my mind, fanfic ought to be something the writer does because he loves the world and the characters, not just because it'd be great to write about two characters having sex who ought not to have sex. Ever. I've written fanfic myself, but in each case, it was because the characters I was watching (these were anime based) got into my head so much that they began to tell stories there. So I think it's an okay thing to do, even when done poorly. It's a great way to exerice writing skills, and it's far more difficult to write someone else's characters than your own. However, the sheer volume of bad stuff and just plain wrong stuff makes me cringe a bit. Either way, it's always stuff to be taken with a grain of salt.

This is not to mention the legal issues involved. When you write fanfic, you are working with ideas, settings and characters that are not, legally, yours. By law, this means you cannot in anyway profit from the work you create. Copyright can be tricky, sure, and these days, it's getting even trickier. It's kinda hard to prove ownership of intellectual property. You've got titles for cars, receipts for DVDs and so on. But how do you prove that you own a fictional character? For the most part, you put a little circled c on the stuff, and it's all good. Because everyone knows what the little circled c means, right? Right, everyone? Well, apparently, there's a growing legion of fanfic writers who don't get it.

Very recently, a woman decided to sell her Star Wars fanfic on Amazon and B&N. (some strong language in the comments to that link, if you are easily offended by foul language) Okay, no one's going to argue that she wrote the book. But on the other hand, I don't think anyone's going to argue that Lucasfilms doesn't hold the copyright on all things Star Wars. She says it's only for friends and family. Well, why on Tatooine is it for sale to the whole world on the internet? Apparently, once Lucasfilms heard about this, they swooped down on this lady real hard. It gets worse. Read the comments. It seems that she's rewriting the very first Star Wars flick and not very well. One helpful commenter posts a paragraph from the book. Many comments follow about the wretchedness of the story. I wasn't brave enough at this late hour after a few drinks to follow any of the links to the .pdf file. That kind of courage comes only from a keg consumed with no outside assistance.

This kind of shit bothers me. Many people, readers, editors, publishers and writers alike, already have a low opinion of fanfic. This kind of stupidity makes it worse. People also have low opinions of POD companies, but this makes it worse also. I understand all sides, but here's the letter of the law. You cannot profit from someone else's stuff. It's that simple. By selling your fanfic in any form, you are profiting and therefore breaking the law. If you want to put it on your website for free, that shouldn't be a problem. However, if said owner comes across it and asks for its removal, you ought to comply. Because it's their stuff.

I think a lovely example of how this should work is a short Haibane Renmei inspired piece by Mega Tokyo writer and artist Fred Gallegher. He used his own characters, but the setting was unmistakably from the anime series. While the publisher, DC Comics, didn't think this was really a problem, Fred took it upon himself to rework the story into something totally his own out of respect for the creator of the series. A reworked version will be published in the upcoming fourth volume of Mega Tokyo, and I, for one, can't wait to see it. I enjoyed the story in its initial format. A more fleshed out version should be awesome. This is how a real writer handles that kind of situation.

The moral of the story is this. Don't be afraid to write your fanfic, even if it's horrible, slash, Mary Sue fanfic. Look at it as exercise for your own original worlds and characters. Put it on a website. DO NOT charge people for a copy of it. Once you cross the line from sharing to selling, you're infringing on someone's copyright. If you're interested, say, in writing Star Wars fiction, go take a look at some of the books that are being published. Find out who the publisher is. Find out what you need to do to submit something to them and do that. I don't want to see fanfic get such a bad name that the mere mention of having done a fan work will warrent blacklisting. Same thing with POD. Although any POD worth its salt has policies against publishing fanfic (Lulu does), I'm not sure how they police it. Both these things are like the Force. There's a good side and a dark side. It's sad that we don't hear about these things when they are used for good. It's also sad that the addage of any publicity is good publicity. One commenter mentioned the fact that the book in question was outselling a lot of original work. Train wreck mentality, I know. People, train wrecks are bad fpr you.

The Only True Happiness This Way Lies

I am a closet Buddhist. I long for the freedom that detachment from material possessions would give me, yet I covet my belongings. I adore each and every book I own and know that should I lose them all in a fire or something, I would be devastated. But why? They are only books. I have read them. I have gotten out of them what I will get, and they are not irreplaceable, except for the couple books of poetry signed by poets who read at college. It's a difficult thing, probably the most troublesom concept in Buddhism for one who has grown up in the material-oriented western world.

Having had a mildly awful cold the last several days which has left me drained the way severe colds seem incapable of, I decided that today, I was escaping my house-bound state no matter what. I had the pretense of an errand to run, so there. I went to the bank and then on to the bookstore.

Bookstores are solace, yet every trip leaves me wondering about my work as a writer. I glance at the titles of books that are "new in paperback." These are some of the silliest titles I've ever heard, and they're all "a novel." You know what I mean. Barney's Last Stand, a novel. Murder Mystery, a novel. Sisters of Saints, a novel. Of course, those are all made up, but you see the trend. It was not The Grapes of Wrath, a novel. Nor was it Carrie, a novel. Or Dracula, a novel. The only time you need to tell me what the book is is when it's a book of short stories or something. I can generally tell when the book I'm holding is a novel or some other fictional creature. How dumb do they think people really are? I contemplate my own titles in this context. Seven Breaths, a novel. Once, a novel. Pale, a novel. It doesn't sound right to me. Although I notice this less in the sci-fi/fantasy section, which is likely where my books would end up. Still, I don't like it.

Another thing I don't like is the fact that Anne Rice's books are in the literature section. They do not belong there. They belong in horror. Vampires count as horror. These days, her writing itself is a horror. Curiosity led me to pick up her book about Jesus and scan the first few pages. The style is immature at best, not the work of someone who's been writing as long as she has. If you read a particular author long enough, you see subtle changes in style as the writer learns his craft (and a writer is always learning his craft). Rice appears to have regressed. As to the content of the Jesus story, I can't comment. The writing was enough to make me less than curious about that part.

I discovered that Rushdie has a new book out. This brings me joy. The world of fiction is a better place with his writing in it. Also read through the first few pages of a book called Across the Nightengale Floor. A neat book, it seems. Can't remember the writer's first name. Starts with an L. Hearn I think the last name is. Anyway, that's on my list to get as soon as I whittle down my stack, which is a task I'm not doing well with.

My own writing has been spotty. I've concentrated a lot on Once. It's getting close to a conclusion, but I have a feeling that I'm being deceived there. I've started the last episode of the series I was working on but haven't had the inclination to work on it. I'll try to remedy that this week. The odd little love story I was working on paused inexplicably in the middle of a smutty scene. Because I realized, in the middle of this scene, that the story is almost over. This scene will give rise to the thing that will make Jack run away from the relationship. He cannot be comfortable with it nor can he completely forget the lover who's no longer there, even though he doesn't remember any more than the lover's name. I'm surprised by this story. Over all, I really like it. One day, I'll finish it.

Speaking of finishing. The Lulu book project is in a state of doneness I hadn't expected to reach until June or later. Now to finish the actual editing ... getting excited about this.

It is now 1:38 AM. I have to be at work in less than seven hours, which means I should spend some of the next five and a half to six hours sleeping. Or I could read that annoying little love story over to see how I wanna go about finishing it off ...

It's Been a Long Time, Now I'm Coming Back Home

It's not that I haven't had time to draft the handwritten interview with Once. I just haven't done it. There are many things I haven't done that I need to do. There are many reasons for this. Blocks chief among them. Certain characters stealing center stage being another. And the fact that this little birdie ain't right in the head right now. But I'll be working on that. The thing about that is that I don't think I'll ever be totally normal. I know my brain's a strange thing. I know that I'll always be the strange bird, but there's no reason a strange bird has to be unwell. I don't know if this means meds. I haven't had my first session yet. We'll just have to see.

One of the things that has always worried me about getting counseling and using anti depressants or anti anxiety meds is that my creative cycles are pretty much hermetically sealed to my emotional cycles. I don't think that taking something like Lexapro would render me unable to create, but I wonder how easy it will be. I don't create well when depressed. Depression typically grows around a block and becomes a block. It's the upswing, the manic phase of my cycle, where the work gets done. I've always worried that balancing this tightrope act of emotions won't be exactly condusive to the way I create. Meaning that the depression won't dredge up the ideas and the manic won't be energetic enough for the work. Do you have to be unbalanced to be creative?

Some of our greatest writers and artists have been, for lack of a better phrase, fucking nuts. Poe, Van Gogh, Hemmingway, Plath. To name a few. And there are other who seem remarkably stable and normal, like Gaiman or Rowling. I'm pretty sure that all creative types are odd in some way. We see, hear or feel things that other people can't. This is why we create. But what's the difference between those brilliant unbalanced artists and the "normal" ones? I wouldn't buy that better art comes from the nutcases. Good, better and best are all subjective terms when it comes to art and literature. Do we want to measure it by success then? The crazies tend to be more successful after death. It's society's morbid fascination with things like that. They say oh, this writer committed suicide in a truly bizarre and sick way; let's read all her books now to find out why! It strikes me as odd and unfair that this happens. A good enough writer should be able to have success in life. But I'm just rambling here, not making any points that can be scientifically supported, just general observations on the way back up from a low point that's been very low indeed. When I have to say to someone that I don't feel I've been myself lately, something's wrong. All my friends who hit age 30 before me warned me that the warranty would run out, that biological breakdown would begin. For me, it's not my body that seems to be breaking. And it's not worrying about getting older on my part. I could care less how old I am. It's not something I have control over. But bodies change as they age. Brain chemicals, hormones, all that changes and can affect not just the body but the mind as well. My mother, in her 50s now and dealing with menopause, is a perfect example of how all this crap is connected.

There isn't anything I can do but wait and see. I don't expect to be told that, after one session with a therapist, I need to be medicated. It'll take time for her to reach that conclusion, but by then, I'll have a better understanding of where I stand in the mental health department, which is likely at the front of the line for the not-quite-insane-but-damn-close.

When it comes to blues music, my husband likes to say that a blues singer oughta be unhappy because it's not blues if it's happy. He likes to extend this to all creative work. I wonder how much truth is in it.

This is not what I meant to go on about, but there it is. We'll just have to wait and see.