Nanowrimo 2008.10 and Wordstock Festival 2008

Update: I'm behind. I still consider myself in the game, but I haven't found time/energy to write for the last 4 days, and I doubt I'll get any in tomorrow. That puts me about 10,000 words behind.

I didn't write on the weekend because I was attending the fourth annual Wordstock Festival, here in Portland. Two days of writers talking about their work, and reading from their work, in eight rooms simultaneously. And about fifty booths of bookstores, publishers, writing and poetry associations, and even some authors selling their own self-published work (one woman, with a series about dragons, was offering the fourth of the series free if we bought the first three). Also a couple of groups which must exhibit at every gathering at the Convention Center: the Red Cross, and someone selling green energy.

According to the paper this morning, it was the most successful Wordstock to date. I'd guess there were 1,000 people there. In addition to the weekend thing that I attended, there was a Poetry Slam, and W. S. Merwin read another night. There was a full day of Wordstock for Teachers (how to teach writing in schools) and two full days of workshops for writers, and even a Text Ball (i.e., a dance, where attendees were encouraged to come wearing text on their person, this year under the theme "Figures of Speech").

The first day of the Festival was a charge to attend. I saw Aimee Bender and a number of others who I'll spare you (except a mention of a New Zealand author who was impressive, Rachael King). John Hodgman, of the PC-Mac ads and Jon Stewart fame, gave a funny and surprisingly well-rounded reading. He tours with a college friend, Jonathan Coulton, who is a rock singer/guitar player. They started with Coulton singing Hodgman's "Theme Song" and then Hodgman carried his dead pan of-course-I'm-smarter-than-you persona through a discussion of how dramatically his life has changed since becoming a "minor television personality" (with a requisite new Theme Song to represent it). He finished with a story from his new book -- about what his new life is like (all done tongue-in-cheek, deadpan) which was marvelous.

The next day was relatively disappointing. It started with a couple of Science Fiction readings, attended (and read by) exactly the kind of person you see being made fun of at Sci Fi conventions. I'll just say they were people who did not take a lot of trouble to personally groom, or who take a lot of trouble to groom to look different, and half of them were unintentionally androgynous. I could not identify with the authors or the listeners, and I felt bad about myself for not being able to identify with them.

William Least Heat Moon was the next disappointment. He kept not-reading from his book, instead saying that we'd have to buy it and read for ourselves, and then talking about it like an advertisement. He insisted his wife stand up and take a bow, which seems like a nice thing, except she was a handsome woman some 30 years younger than he, and it really felt like he did it to show that he had a handsome young wife, more than to give her any credit. He even said, "When I toured after Blue Highways, I had just had a divorce, so this is to prove to you that I can get and keep a wife." About that point I left his talk, disinterested and a little repelled.

The second day ended better, with a panel about getting published for the first time, and two talks by first time novelists about their truly incredible stories of getting published (one fellow, Selden Edwards, whose time-travel story, The Little Book, is basically the main thrust of the Dutton advertising dollars this fall, spent 32 years writing the novel, having it rejected repeatedly over the decades). My general take-away impression is that the chances of getting a first novel published and those of winning the lottery are about the same (but the lottery only costs a dollar and takes a couple of days of waiting) -- but the speakers were all so happy and optimistic (and relieved), that I left feeling happy and optimistic myself. Definitely a good thing.

Nanowrimo 2008.3

Third day of Nanowrimo, still in the game. I'm averaging 2100 words a day, in about two hours of writing. Given the dross I'm producing, I'm not surprised I can spit it out that fast (that works out to 17 words a minute). Still, in the dross, I'm discovering phrases or structures or plot developments I admire. Today, my favorite production was, "he liked the way a lock of curly hair always pulled out of her ponytail and rested red-brown in the pool of her collarbone," although in the momentum of the writing I finished the analogy with a sorry bit of unintentionally funny dead horse: "... like an autumn leaf in a backed up storm sewer puddle." The forward motion is all; so my character's lovely collarbone remains the image of a storm sewer plugged with hair.

I've promised myself that I can read the thing in December -- a sorry week in December that will be, forcing myself to read this.

I've gotten a couple queries about how the "write-in" went on Saturday. It went well, but that doesn't mean I actually spoke with anyone.

There were about 5 or possibly 6 of us there, including myself -- that is, there were that many people with laptops, sitting typing away. I arrived about 15 minutes late, having walked over from Girl-child's last soccer game of the season; ordered a cup of coffee and sat at a small table by myself. One woman, in a sheared haircut with intricate, colored tattoos down her arms, had a paper notebook and was writing by hand. The back side of the page she was working on was covered with drawings (an illustrated novel!). Across a large table from her was a very serious looking fellow, gaunt, in dark sunglasses (inside a fairly dark coffee shop) and a fedora, typing hard.

At another table was a genial, large fellow who had ordered a huge mocha with extra whipping cream on top, the kind of guy named "Mo", or "Kent". At a fourth table was a girl of probably 17 or so, but she looked about 12, some writing prodigy no doubt, with a laptop covered in stickers (I noticed, after some time, a "Nanowrimo" sticker, in the shape of a shield, amongst mementos of what I took to be rock bands).

The prodigy spent 10 minutes or so fixedly gazing at each of her fellow coffee drinkers. Suddenly, she jumped up and said to the gaunt man, "Nanowrimo?" He barely acknowledged her, but she picked up her stuff and moved over to his table. I thought for about 30 milliseconds of joining them, but I had an umbrella and a jacket and a backpack, the laptop and a full cup of coffee and a plate with a cookie on it -- not a negligible amount of stuff to move over one table, so I stayed put. I watched them, but didn't interact.

She must have noticed (I hadn't) that the gaunt fellow had a little folded index card on the table next to him, printed with the Nanowrimo shield, and a place to fill out: Author:_________ and Title:_____________, as well as a row of little blocks printed along the bottom. I was too far away to read his name or the title (title? I don't even have a plot, how could I have a title?!), but after about 45 minutes, the man suddenly picked up the card and blackened a couple of the little blocks at the bottom. I think they are word counts, each block counting 1500 or 2000 words. The whole time I was there, he ignored the prodigy sitting at the table with him. The tattoed lady got a phone call after half an hour and packed up her stuff and left, and he didn't even raise his head. Mr. Gaunt was letting us know he was A Serious Writer.

Like the prodigy, Kent (or Mo) spent the first fifteen minutes or so looking carefully at everyone else in the coffee shop. I would have made eye contact, but he didn't look my way when I was looking his. Then we both set to work, and I hardly registered him until he left just about the time I was thinking of leaving. We didn't exchange words at all.

When I left after about an hour and a half, I waved at Mr. Gaunt and Prodigy, and said, "See you 'round" -- she looked surprised (I think she thought she had found the only other nanowrimer in the place), and the gaunt man glanced up, but didn't seem impressed. Another laptop was arriving just as I left (someone had written that he had to work and would come late, so maybe that was him).

All in all, the silent write-in at the coffee house was good. I've thought of setting up another one, but I don't really want to deal with the social side. So instead I'm going to just go to a coffee house on my own, and pretend that everyone there with a laptop is in Nanowrimo as well. They might actually be.

Nanowrimo 2008.1

Wrote 2,460 words today. Or rather, typed 2,460 words today, all into one document, titled Nanowrimo 2008. (I'm not confident enough yet to call it "Novel" or even give it a title, as many Nanowrimer's have done, according to the website). All these words formed English sentences; the sentences do link together into generally coherent units; all the units were roughly about the same topic. Very few of the phrases am I proud of, but I have a sense of humor about the whole thing, and at least I am getting a good chuckle out of the day.

NaNoWriMo 2008

I've done it again. I've signed up for NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to complete the first rough draft of a novel in the span of 30 days. It will be a short novel, only 50,000 - 60,000 words, and necessarily not a good novel, nor an edited novel, in that time span. November was selected to be The Month because it's otherwise very busy (at least in the USA, with almost a week lost to family traditions at Thanksgiving) and because it is a short month, so the pain is curtailed.

I've tried to do it once or twice before (once "officially", once planning without actually, seriously, intending to carry through). The longest I've lasted is 2 days.

You have to write 1,666 words a day, after all, to achieve the goal. Crikey. If I can make it through one week, I will feel that I have gained over past years. My true goal is 14 days -- if I can do that (23,333 words), I'll be happy. Maybe I can even keep it going for a whole month, but I'm planning a trip to the Midwest, so I don't know if that's realistic.

Actually, when I'm in The Zone, I can easily type 1600 words in a cohesive story in an hour. I've done it. Nanowrimo is an exercise to strengthen my stamina so that I can do it more regularly than once a month or so.

So I will at least start. There is a "write-in" set up at a nearby coffee house for tomorrow afternoon (I set it up). I and at least one other person (whom I've never met -- he or she simply responded to my posting on the Nanowrimo website) will be there, ready to spew words into our laptops. I have backup plans -- a pile of index cards with plot twists and scenes on them, to be added and worked into the plot as needed when the ideas dry up (e.g., "Space aliens land in a nearby park" or "Enter: Destructive Dog" or "Enter: Cute baby"). I am prepared to write badly and baldly and wordily, in honor of reaching that goal.

Wish me luck!