Friends

I think I'd be happier about an All Email Submissions Issue. That would actually address one of the criticisms, and not discriminate against any one group (people who submit on paper can also submit online, I promise), and would be interesting: would quality drop, as has been claimed? Would the workload become untenable, as has also been claimed? Even better, email with numerical codes so that authorial gender was unknown, as in the famous orchestra experiment. I would submit to that so fast.

Current Mood:

amused

justbeast

Jeff did a piece called How to Write a Novel in Two Months a little while back, and when I read it, I smiled, because I’ve run that race, too. I wanted to post my thoughts on speed-writing, as I have many—and now, through the power of bloggery, I can put my essay right next to his! It’s like some kind of crazy magic. And because Jeff nailed a lot of the nitty-gritty, things, I can just blather. Best of both worlds!

So here’s the thing–I am a fast writer. I think this is a skill I developed in college, a combination of stress and a vital part of my personality: I am incredibly lazy.

Because I am incredibly lazy, it is very easy to convince me not to work, since I don’t want to work anyway. Which led to an abnormal number of papers completed the night before they were due…and then the early morning hours before they were due, then the not so early morning hours*…And if even once I had failed to turn in a paper, failed to churn out twenty pages on gender anxiety in Gawain and the Green Knight, if I had even once failed to get an A, I think I would have rethought my methods and come to some sort of conclusion about work ethics.

Didn’t happen.

So what my brain learned was not what it should have learned, namely that this sort of thing is about as risky and dumb as huffing whipped cream canisters. My brain learned that there was no deadline it couldn’t meet.

This is a dangerous thing for a brain to know, and I recommend failure to meet deadlines to everyone. Human behavior means doing something until it doesn’t work. This sort of thing still works for me. I do not expect it to work forever, and frankly, it giveth and it taketh. You get the work done fast, but your body is shredded and you end up with the interpersonal grace of Gollum on a meth binge.

But you’re not going to listen to these warnings.

The 30 days is an arbitrary number–it is kind of an absolute minimum for me**. I haven’t pushed myself to see just how fast I can turn out a novel, but I don’t trust myself with less than 30 days. I’m not crazy. Obviously, Nanowrimo influences that number (50k in a month, at something like 1400 words a day, is not actually very hard if you’re a fast hand at the keyboard and don’t have a day job) and now it can be told that I did Nanowrimo in 2002…sort of. See, those were heady days. I was 23. I was all balls-out and brazen and come-here-world-I’m-gonna-take-a-bite-out-of-you.

You know, totally different than now.

So I just did it on my own in early October (at the same Rhode Island Starbucks where Tobias Buckell started his first novel, as we discovered this summer) and I clocked in at a lot less than 30 days. The result? The beginning of my career, and how I met Jeff.

The key, really, is to never learn you can fail.

I really enjoy timed writing–with deadline from without (editor) or within (online project, personal goal, etc). I think it’s because I enjoy obstructions. Things created within boundaries, where the boundaries become part of the object, creativity fueled by restriction. It lights me up inside–your mileage may, of course, vary. This is not how I write every novel–it took me six years to write The Orphan’s Tales. As I said, I don’t recommend this: first of all, no one will think you can have possibly produced anything good in that time, because time spent = quality, obviously, and no other factors come into play. Second of all, you absolutely have to play by this first rule. No exceptions, no hall passes.

Rule #1: Be a Genius

Guys, I cannot stress this enough. See Kerouac’s Belief and Technique for Modern Writing. Rule #29? You Are a Genius All the Time. (Yes, I have that list nailed above my desk.)

I don’t care what kind of writer you are. I don’t care how many rejections you’ve had, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. For 30 days, you are a genius. Everything that flows from your fingers is pure light. You do not have the luxury of not being a genius–not being a genius is laziness and sloth and you just can’t tolerate that shit right now.

Writing this fast is an act of unadulterated, stupid, blind faith. Faith in yourself, in your voice, in your story, in your sheer ability. If your faith falters, you lose time. In my experience, if you’re working on a 30 day cycle, you can afford to lose maybe three days (non-consecutive, if you lose three straight days you’ll never recover) to self-doubt, internal criticism, and not being a genius. More than that and you’re running up against words-per-minute, and when you get down to it, typing speed is actually a big factor. Us Millenials who grew up in chat rooms have generally fabulous-fleet skillz, but seriously, this is no time for long-hand.

2. Tell Everyone

Make sure everyone knows what you’re doing. This will provide the heady ingredient of shame to the proceedings, and I find that shame is an enormous motivator. If you fail alone, in private, no one will ever know, and you can claim that writing a novel in 30 days is impossible, for hacks, etc, with impunity. If you post to your blog and tell all your friends, you have to admit to it if you fail. This is assuming you are not subject to the major reason for speed-writing: you have a deadline and you watched Alias reruns instead of working until the last possible second.

It’s also important that your partner and social group knows not to expect you to be anything like human for the next month. Fortunately, you’re a genius, and geniuses are never expected to conform to primate behavior standards***. Just, you know, apologize later. If you are very lucky, you might have a partner or friend who is willing to provide any combination of the following salves for your chafed genius muscles: food, quiet space/leaving you the hell alone, a clean house, inspirational backrubs, crazy-ass genius sex.

But probably not.

3. Be Crazy

Jeff said that one ought not to try for much more than a transparent style when writing at breakneck speed. I, rather predictably, disagree. If anything, I’d suspect this doesn’t work so well for complex plot than complex language, but that’s likely because I find language easier than plot. Pick what you’re best at, and make that the focus of this marathon. I rather think that no technique is better suited to beatnik-pomo-style crazy writing than this–let go of your internal editor, of the ways writing is “supposed” to be (hint: it’s not supposed to be done in 30 days), any ideas your English professors might have given you about literature, and just open your brain onto the computer. Direct flesh-to-motherboard communication. Remember, this is blind faith we’re talking about. You are St. Teresa, and you are here to be transfigured. This is radical, revolutionary trust that what you are creating is worth the world.

You may not actually end up with a novel at the end of the month. But you’ll have something. Kerouac said not to be afraid to be a crazy dumbsaint of the mind. Quite so.

4. Sacrifice Your Body

Come on, you weren’t using it anyway.

The fact is, this sort of thing is a horrific strain on your human suit. You stay up late, you eat whatever is easy, you have to ice down your wrists at the end of the day. You burn your brain out, no joke. Make time for recovery afterward. Get out of the house occasionally, to Toby and my Starbucks, or the front lawn, or a laundromat. Look up at the sky. Accept the fact that you will fall down on your household chores–which is why this sort of thing is usually a childless writer’s gig–and that several times, you will literally want to die rather than write another word. Keep going. Talk to marathon runners. Rejoice, and conquer. Die, if you have to. Then get up and get back to work.

5. Don’t Fail

You don’t have time to fail. You don’t have time for writer’s block. You don’t have time to wibble.

And if you don’t fail this time, you’ll never learn that you can fail, and every time you don’t fail, your faith in your ability to not fail will grow until one day you’ll wake up and you won’t be a failure at all. It’s kind of awesome, if you can manage it. But the key is not failing, and the key to not failing is stupid dumbfuck faith that you won’t fail. Life is circular like that.

 The reason I don’t credit Nanowrimo is not because I don’t think quality can be produced in 30 days. That would be a silly opinion, considering. It’s because they don’t think quality can be produced in 30 days. Their whole site is about producing crap and having it be okay to produce crap. It is okay. But I don’t have time to produce crap. Life is too short to produce crap. And the only way I know how to do this is to be absolutely convinced that what I’m writing is gobstoppingly amazing.

And I can only maintain that sort of conviction for short bursts. Say, 30 days.

______

*This is where being a classicist REALLY pays off. Ain’t no English class (see what I did thar?) can lick you–you know most of those tunes before you set foot in the room, and your base of knowledge is broad enough that you can sound damn smart in a number of varied fields. I in no way mean to imply that in graduate school I did the research and the composition the day the paper was due. That would be crazy.

**I’ve done the 3 Day Novel competition–they expect you to produce something like 30k words, and that’s a novella at best.

***DO NOT DRINK ALCOHOL. You are not that kind of genius.

Current Mood:

quiet

So The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making has been nominated for a Culture Geek award.

For best web fiction of the 2000s.

Alongside Dr. Horrible, The Guild, XKCD, and Girl Genius to name a few. (Mine's the only one they had to put a name next to, because, you know, everyone knows who does those others already. I can't believe I'm in that company.)

So, obviously it's not going to win.

But still! Go vote! Spread the word! You never know! Fairyland is proof that miracles happen, and awesome people banding together to put on a show can stand up there with marquee cultural icons.

Vote here.

Also: Holycrapsquee!

Current Mood:

surprised

Tomorrow I'll be with justbeast 's family watching the bells ring over the Kremlin--not how I thought I would be spending New Year ten years ago, certainly. One of the adjustments of marriage, that I've always adored New Year's but now have to spend it with in-laws. It's good, in a different way, but I miss my friends at midnight. After the big bong we'll be over at theferrett  and zoethe 's for their party--maybe they'll take pity on us and redo the countdown so I can turn the decade with friends, too? Probably not. But still. 

I remember 1999--I was in Sacramento with caudelac  and my ex-husband and a few other friends. We read poetry to each other til midnight. We ate and drank a lot and stayed up all night. I was living in San Diego at the time, just having started college there.

When I look at this decade, it's boggling how much living I crammed into it. The 90s were tame in comparison, and I was a Troubled Teen in the 90s. In the last ten years I have: lived in three different countries, six different states, traveled to eleven different countries and all but four of the fifty states, got really comfortable and able to feel at home in NYC, got married twice, wrote my first novel, graduated once and dropped out once, published twelve books, seven fiction and five poetry, fell in love, fell out of love, had the worst break up of my life (not my divorce), met the love of my life, was the loneliest I could ever be, found a tribe, met my heroes, became close friends with some of them, started blogging (in 00, so this is my ten year anniversary--Diarylanders represent!), embraced the internet, bought a house, sold a house, got divorced, reconciled with my family, lost friends, gained them, gained lovers, lost them, finally moved to the state I've wanted to live in all my life, entered so many sub-cultures I never knew existed. Found myself, really. It was the decade when I really came of age. Came into myself. Ten years ago I was a worried, harried Classics undergrad in a seriously problematic relationship that would go on another six years and dreaming of someday traveling off of the west coast of America.

I was lucky enough to be born in 1979, so the decades roughly correspond to even numbered decades in my life. The naughts were my twenties. It was fucking insane, when I think about it. Truly horrible and truly sublime. I suppose that's what 2009 was like, too, in microcosm. Parts of it were the darkest hours we've known, individually and as a couple. Parts of it were so personally difficult it took me ages to recover. But there was Palimpsest, and the train, and Fairyland, and the last quarter of the year in which I not only got married to my darling beast, but he finally found a job and we got housemates and in the midst of fear that my literary life was coming to a close, suddenly sold an adult trilogy, a YA duology, two standalones and a children's picture book. Holy roller coaster, Batman.

Obviously, would like good parts without dark hours next year, plz. But it doesn't work that way. They come together, and I can only hope the teens will be as amazing and surprising and crazed as the decade before. Because out of all that I got this life, and this life is so far beyond what I ever thought I'd be living back in 1999.

The future rules.

Current Mood:

indescribable

Many of you know that I am the Guest of Honor at ConFusion in January, along with Peter Beagle. This is my first GoH gig and I'm super excited. But the con folks are having trouble with my bio for the booklet.

So we turn to you, LJ!

This is a challenge to write the weirdest, funniest, most awesome GoH bio in these here parts. All my info is on my website and I'll answer any questions you need answered here. 500 words or less, mostly trufax. Winning entry will get glory, credit, and a present from me of their choosing: book, craft, etc.

Ready set GoH!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Ice Bear was soooo sweet. We were going out to the restaurant where we went on our first date. Unknown to me, he rented the banquet room and filled it with friends and family to watch him propose to me and then share dinner and congratulations. It was more perfect than I could ever imagine - I was so speechless I forgot to say yes until prompted! He even got several out of town friends to come in for the big moment. It was great.

I'm so excited - squee!!!!