Adventures In Novellaing, Um, Novellating? Writing A Novella? Darn.

So it is National Novel Writing Month. I chickened out of it last year, rationalizing that I wanted to focus on writing short stories that I could try to submit for publication. All well and good, but I still haven't submitted, although I have a couple pieces just about ready to go. This year, then, I decided to do it. But then I forgot all about it until November 1st, so I went into the project with no plan.

On the surface, this was a good thing, because I could just start writing and playing and seeing what happened, and hopefully cross the 50000 word threshold with something that superficially resembled a plot. To make it totally liberated, I decided to write a fantasy story, ala George R. R. Martin, since I just recently finished A Dance With Dragons. I had an intriguing opening dream sequence, and a troubled protagonist with a haunted past that included a monastery. Monasteries are gold when it comes to fantasy stories.

But then the trouble came after the first few days. I wasn't able to write much due to a frenzy at work, thanks to the National Bank Transfer movement that saw a massive surge of inquiries and applications for membership with the credit union. And then when I did write, all that happened was that the hero had a bad dream, looked out the window, and then ran through city streets until he got to the gate. I tried to inject some soldiers going door to door, but it all fell flat. It was like Myst, in that the character was just walking around, looking around. I never did get the hang of Myst. I was never much of one for computer games that I couldn't win easily.

So I decided to go back to the old tried-and-true method of writing about obsessions, such as my obsession with why someone acted they way they did that one time. After all, no one is really going to read this, so I might as well use it as a repository for psychological speculation. Now, all of a sudden, I cranked out 1500 words in just a couple of hours.

Encouraging stuff. I'm sure there is a profound lesson here when it comes to the mysteries of writing, but I'm not sure I have time to explore it as of yet. On to 50,000 words!

The Road Just Traveled By

2011 is off to a great start. So far, I am undefeated on the following Wii games for the year: Just Dance 2, Jeopardy, and Wii Sports Bowling. So while I am riding high on a wave of accomplishments, let's see how I lived up to my last year's resolutions.

Last April, I wrote a list of belated resolutions for writing and travel goals and posted it as a blog in order to hold myself to their pursuit by making their existence public knowledge. Everyone was fascinated, of course, and their happiness increased immensely as a result. In the spirit of advancing my goals for myself, I'm not going to wait until April of this year to make new resolutions. Instead, it's time for a quick review of how I measured up, and then an updated list of what to pursue next. To keep it interesting, perhaps I'll add some thoughts as to the viability of resolutions for humanity, and what it means that we drive ourselves for self-improvement. Or perhaps not.

Here's the list, as written last year, with the results I know you've been eagerly anticipating.

1) WRITING

a) Within the next six months, I will take a class on technical writing or copy-editing.
i) In October, I did take a one day class through City College of San Francisco's Adult Education Program on an Introduction to Copy Editing/Proofreading. There were only two of us in the class, but it was a useful discussion with a professional free-lance editor about the business--apparently there is a network of copy-editors in the Bay Area with meetings and everything, although he didn't specify if there are also neat decoder rings or secret symbols.
ii) On a somewhat unrelated note, I took a five week class on an Introduction to Short Fiction, through the same program though City College. That leads us to:

b) I will write two short stories within the next two months.
i) Success! Mostly. I wrote a short piece of flash fiction for a magazine contest that promptly vanished into the ether of all such pieces. The second story I wrote wasn't within the two month time frame, and isn't not finished, but I did produce two drafts of a story in the Short Fiction class that I feel have a core of possibility to them and will continue to polish.

c) I will continue to maintain topic-focused blogs at least every other day.
i) I have not strictly adhered to this schedule, but then again, no one is paying me to do so, and I do feel like I have produced a decent amount of writing.

d) I will research careers in editing and publishing.
i) I've not really pursued this with much gusto. The class on copyediting/proofreading was interesting, but I wasn't seriously considering following up on it at the time. I signed up for the class because the class sounded intriguing and I like working with words. However, now that questions of marriage and buying homes and other such big thoughts are taking on a more tangible character, I'm feeling more driven to look into this. I've found a website that seems to allow you to apply for free-lance writing work, which could be good side work and an introduction to that world.

My new writing goals are to write a two short stories and/or three poems a month, and to actually submit them.


2) TRAVEL

a) I will set up a separate savings account for travel, into which I will put 1/2 of all my deposits to savings accounts.
i) Done. This was perhaps too easy a step to really be considered a completed resolution. But then again, I hadn't done it before I wrote it down as a goal.

b) I will travel to Mexico this year.
i) This didn't happen last year. But I have bought tickets for the first week of March, so that's a good sign. I'll be going out in a lagoon, in a small boat, with the chance to see whales. That plan speaks for itself, I think.

c) I will travel to Toronto this year.
i) Done! My new passport was put to use, and other than Toronto's decision to shut down a major expressway out of the city on the very weekend we were traveling there, it was a lovely trip.

d) I will travel to New York City in the next three years.
e) I will go back to Europe in the next five years.
i) These last two are still long-term goals, yet to be planned, so I will not comment on them here. I simply include them again so I don't forget about them. That would be embarrassing.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results. I didn't get everything completed fully, but as everyone knows, anyone who fully lives up to every single aspect of their resolutions is just showing off.

Writing: The Prequel

First, can I just say to all the Firefly fans out there that I hope you got to see this week's episode of Castle? The rumors were true. So gloriously true.

Castle is a fun show anyway. Yes, I said it. Get in there and watch it so it will stay on the air so I can keep watching it. It's brilliant. Imagine Nathan Fillion saying lines such as "He didn't just murder [so and so], he also murdered the English language." Balm to the English Literature major in my soul.

Speaking of writing and writers, November is lurching up from behind the dark side of Halloween, and with it comes the burden/challenge/opportunity/death trap of writing a 50000 word novella with some sort of coherence and meaning.

I won the first year, then fell short by a few thousand (or ten thousand) adjectives, nouns, plot twists, feasible characters with dynamic motivations, etc., etc., each of the last two years. So I'm trying to prepare by doing some writing exercises and reading a book about screenwriting for tips on character development. And so far, no coherent ideas are grasping me by the brain, but I'm hopeful.

Here's the interesting first exercise I tried: the point was to take eight questions from the book and write down the first responses that came to mind.

1) When was your main character happiest?
Drinking in the pubs in a rainy seaside town in Wales with fellow students, or walking along the shore, when everything was simple and sheltered

2) What talent would your main character most like to have?
Ninja skills, or the ability to play beautiful music

3) If your main character could change one thing about him or herself, what would it be?
His nose

4) What does your main character consider to be his or her greatest achievement?
Publishing a poem on the Internet about a parade of Aryan sympathizers

5) What is your main character’s most treasured possession?
Pristine copy of The Beatles’ The White Album

6) What is your main character’s greatest extravagance?
DVD collections

7) When does your main character lie?
When he is thinking thoughts that he thinks should not be popular.

8) What is your main character’s greatest regret?
Failed friendship with someone in rough straits, whom he left behind.

I looked at these answers and thought, "Hmm." Then I turned the page in the book, and it asked, "Did anything surprise you?"

No, nothing really surprised me, except the part about the nose. I don't know where that came from. But all the others, even the ones that aren't true, per se, come from my real life, so that, according to the book, means that I am trying to control the character too much.

My first reaction was What character? I didn't actually have anyone in mind. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I was supposed to picture someone first. Anyway, I tried it twice more, with mixed results. I'll keep doing stuff like this, and hopefully something will bubble to the surface by November 1st.

I can always write 'the' 50000 times and call it avant-garde, I suppose.

Juliet, Juliet, Wherefore Art Thou Naked?

It was a cold and foggy holiday afternoon, a sharp wind from off-shore nudging Vaughn and me bit by bit, over and over, up the side of the dunes as we walked along Ocean Beach, white mocha and pumpkin spice latte in hands, gusts of sand sweeping over and into our shoes, waiting to be deposited in large mounds on the floor of the N Judah, much as the seeds of flowers propagate themselves by coating the legs of bees. Every so often, we would notice that we were walking at a distinct tilt and regain the flat sand, only to once more be guided by fate, or the wind, rather. Fate and the wind are rather similar to the naked eye, you see.

The sun made occasional stabs at breaking through the off-shore cloud banks, angling shafts of light down to the wind-capped and much-ruffled Pacific, the water chasing and luring the sanderlings in turn.

It was the sort of day in San Francisco where I saw a house at 19th and Judah flying a Jolly Roger at half-mast, apparently in mourning for some pirate who has recently walked the plank, and where the Muni driver on the N Judah, while on break before starting his next run, advised Vaughn and me and two British tourists that we couldn't board the N from the otherwise-deserted ramp where we were standing, because that was an accessible-fare-only ramp, but instead we must walk one block west and wait for him there.

It was a day in which we conversed about the various ways in which real life has slapped us in the face of late, sometimes a gentle affectionate pat to make us pay attention, at other times a great big smack. It's been a time of contemplation for us both. Which brings me to the latest novel I've been reading, Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked.

If you're going to review a book, the world expects you to have something profound to say about it. Well, that's just so expected that I feel obliged to buck the trend, so all I'm going to say specifically about the book is that I am enjoying it quite a bit, which is not unusual because I really like Nick Hornby's perspective on the world. Plus, it is hard to go wrong with a book that has the word 'naked' in the title. Such a great word, you know?

So what I'm going to write about instead is what reading this novel is making me think about myself. That's something I'm much more qualified to write about.

I think what I like best about Hornby's novels is how well he does at creating characters to whom I can relate. In High Fidelity, About A Boy, and in the new novel, the characters seem real, flaws and all, but all coming from the same sort of perspective on the world that I have.

In other words, he writes about pop culture and what people like and how they relate to the things they like. And I like things, so it's like he's writing the novels just for me, which is quite flattering, frankly.

This book in particular is making me look at the development of characters in fiction. I've been thinking for months about fiction writing, because National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us, and because I keep telling my girlfriend that I want to write fiction. Yet I keep not writing fiction, because I don't trust my ideas. And I don't take a fiction writing class, because, well, I'm not sure why.

Here's the thing that I seem to be realizing now, some realization triggered by the book, even though I already knew it intellectually: to make a character seem real and interesting for a story, you have to put that character in an uncomfortable situation, where they might not be completely sympathetic. And I think this might be the root of my writer's block. Most of my characters tend to come from my own experiences, and therefore tend to look a lot like me. I'm naturally disinclined to write about a version of me with certain flaws, especially because it might make me realize that I actually have some flaws in real life. I want to make a completely controlled world that ends well for my avatar, which I am aware would make for a dull and insipid story.

But this can't be a real excuse for not writing if I really want to write. I can find much better excuses from somewhere else.

Anyway, the point is, you have to put a character in crisis. I've always been operating on the theory that you have to develop characters first and then let them play, as it were. The trouble is finding a good crisis for a character that isn't lifted directly out of my own life. And that's where I run into trouble, and where I feel like I am working with a narrow perspective on the writing process. Is it better to define a crisis and then develop characters out of that crisis? Is it better to come up with a great technological or social change and then breed characters from that world?

At this point, I have no idea and just need to brainstorm. But Nick Hornby gives me hope, because the problems and characters he create seem to be characters that I could theoretically know in real life. Plus, the book is just a damned fun and quick read.

Narrating a World Into Being

Tonight I finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman, another novel in the recent string of novels I've polished off, a sudden resurgence of reading productivity of late that has swallowed up a bit of Star Wars brain candy, You Suck! by Christopher Moore, Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami, and The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time by Mark Haddon. Something has rekindled the love of narrative in me, which might have had something to do with the five hour flight either side of the trip to Hawaii, which allowed me to put large dents in Kafka and American Gods.

There is something doubly creative about a good work of fiction, which is why, in my opinion, the novel is always going to be better than a movie adaptation; the reader engaged with the novel creates in his own head the world invoked by the narrative. It feels substantial.

It is here that one can find a parallel between reading a novel and following a sports season. And this leads me to a dilemma: I have lost the main protagonist for the upcoming English Premiership season, as Newcastle United were relegated.

Why were they my favorite? For the simple reason that they were Alan Shearer's hometown and final club. Why was Alan Shearer the key to my allegiance? I'm not sure, but when I first saw televised Premiership football, I saw Shearer playing for Blackburn Rovers, and he made an impression on me, much like a totem from the Pacific Northwest might if it showed up unexpectedly in your living room one day.

There's no real rhyme or reason to it: I have no geographical affiliation with Newcastle, other than passing by the city on the train from London to Edinburgh on our family vacation in 2008, and geographical affiliation is really the most sensible basis for sports fan allegiance--if there can be said to be anything sensible about sports fanaticism. And even the path of the talisman, that of Alan Shearer, if he had ended up playing for a different team, Chelsea or Manchester United, I might have cheered for them; more on this question in a separate blog, as I won't torture the non-sports-fanatics with a breakdown of my quest for a new favorite team.

But here's the best metaphor I can find: the football season with Newcastle not playing in the Premiership will be like reading a Sherlock Holmes story without Sherlock Holmes in it: sure, stuff might happen, but it just won't feel the same. It feels wrong.

Bear in mind that as I have no real stake in the matter, my British friends who actually cheer for various football teams have good reason to consider me an impostor, but oh well.

The point is, for a narrative to work as best as it might, you need a filter, a viewpoint that pervades the entire work and that appeals to the reader. For instance, following one sports team establishes a stake in the results of what unfolds on the playing field; this is why I enjoy writing about the baseball games I'm attending this year.

Establishing this filter is key to writing fiction successfully, I suspect, and it may be why I have such a problem writing fiction. So, an experiment. I have an actual blog on which I post many of the same entries I post on LiveJournal; I think I ought to narrow the focus of my blog, or separate the blog into multiple blogs to handle the different subjects that appeal to me: pop culture, sports, reading, etc. The more precise the voice in each blog, the better the chance of developing a readership, perhaps, or learning how to tell a coherent story.

On the other hand, I could be completely wrong about everything ever.

Hmm.

What We Live For . . .

is not an endless torrent of calls, one caller with a thousand names and twenty-odd requests, hours of doing the same thing that might help the members, but doesn't feel like it is building anything permanent. It doesn't feel productive; it doesn't feel creative.

I'm caught in this state of mind where I am feeling less than productive, not in the sense of not getting work done, but in a more general sense. It's hard to pinpoint the root cause of this dissatisfaction. I believe in the principles of credit unions, but right now, even knowing how important money is to this society, and therefore knowing that what I do helps the members, that doesn't feel like enough. I think I'm really starting to feel the first cracks in the illusion of immortality, not just in the sense of growing old or not, but in the sense of life staying constant, with the same people populating the same roles and functions that orbit my perception of the universe.

My life is a good one, with many fulfilling and rich aspects: a girlfriend I've been dating 66% longer than my last (and okay, first) girlfriend; good friends who live near, some who are moving nearer; family; the city of San Francisco, the ocean, wildflowers on Mount Diablo, the redwood grove in Golden Gate Park. Nevertheless, I need to do something; I'm just not sure what 'doing something' means.

Up to now, of course, I have defined 'doing something' as writing, which may or may not hold true for the rest of my life, but it is a good foundation.

Writing. I would love to say that I write profound stuff that takes the blank page of the reader's soul, crumples it up, then flattens it back out as best one can, leaving the page almost the same as before, but with interesting crinkles of nuance and feeling. Or something much less pompous of an image.

I've been trying for some time to write short stories on a set schedule, but it does not appear to be happening. I apply pressure where it isn't needed. So for now, I'm going to start simply, a resolution to write 250 words a day. No further guidelines, no demands for brilliance.

We'll see where that goes. In the meantime, I've finished my writing requirement for today. Time to listen to the rest of the Giants game on the radio.