NaNoWriMo — How did it go?

I jumped deep into National Novel Writing Month this year. I had an idea during the summer for a book, and somewhere around late September, I decided to make it my NaNoMo project.

The idea: to write a parody of the bestseller Fifty Shades of Gray, but to do it better.

The goal: 50,000 words by the end of November.

The process: I participated in some of the social aspects of NaNoMo, but didn’t actually do all that much other than write the story as furiously as I could.

• Before November 1, I wrote a background piece, describing the characters and outlining the plot. 

I logged into my account on the NaNoWriMo site and updated my word count daily.

I read some of the mail that came into the account, but I realized soon that I did not need the “pep talks.” I was motivated.

I attended one “write off” event at a café in my town: a bunch of NaNoWriMo participants gathered in the coffee shop with our computers (iPad 2 in my case) and wrote 1,667.7 words in a couple of hours. I felt quite out of place — I was by far the oldest one there. Most of the others were first- and second-year university students, and most were writing fan fiction, science-fiction or fantasy. I was the only one doing a parody. Still, I exceeded my goal, and in two and a half hours, cranked out a little over 2,000 words.

Every day, and I mean EVERY DAY, I wrote more than 1,667 words. A couple of times, I did over 3,000 words per day. What a feeling that is!

Results: One Shade of Red

• I hit 50,000 words more than a week ahead of schedule — November 22. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a complete novel. As of writing this on November 30, I’m sitting at 64,000 words or so and still have not reached the end. I have an outline for the conclusion, and yes, there’s room for a sequel. But there is no way I’m going to write a trilogy about this.
• I think my basic story is better than Fifty Shades. I have more realistic characters:

o My narrator/protagonist is a naive virgin, but there’s a reason for that: he has had a girlfriend, the “girl next door” type, since childhood, and she is fervently attached to the concept of virginity until marriage.

o His wealthy sexual mentor, Alexis Rosse, is young, but not as unbelievably young as Christian Gray: she’s 30 or 31 (a lady never tells, or so my mother used to say — actually, she still says that), and she made her fortune the old-fashioned way: she married into it.

• I also have what I like to tell myself is a better writing style than EL James, but I’ll let the audience judge that — after I finish rewriting and editing.

Work to do: I’ve exceeded the word count required for “success” in NaNoMo, but I have to flesh out the conclusion. And then, I’ll have to do at least one rewrite before turning it over to a beta reader or two and an editor. In other words, there’s at least two months more work to finish this off.

Would I do it again? I don’t think I’ll go to another “write off” event, but I would not turn down an after-party.

Something like NaNoMo is a great motivational exercise for a writer. It’s so easy to procrastinate writing a novel —you can always tell yourself that you’re waiting for inspiration or that there are other things to do. And there’s a little something called life that seems to get in the way of writing novels.

I enjoyed National Novel Writing Month this year. I think I’ll do it again next year. But I’m not going to wait for it: I’m going to continue writing every day, and get as many stories out of my brain and onto the computer screen as possible.

How many of you participated in NaNoMo or NaNoWriMo 2012? Did you succeed?

Writing tips: What is style?

Creative Commons: dbdbrobot

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing style lately. Actually, I’ve thought a lot about it for a long time — as long as I’ve been writing, which is most of my life.

I find that my response to a book or to a writer, no matter what the subject is, depends a lot on style. I like an author who is original, who does not just try to copy a best-seller or the current trend in books you can pick up at the drug store.

But there is also something else that determines how well I like a story, something about the way the writer uses language.

I’ll give you an example: Margaret Atwood is generally accepted as one of today’s greatest writers. She has written a great many books in of a range of types — I am trying to avoid using the word “style” in different ways here — and, it could be argued, in different genres. Alias Grace could be called “historical fiction,” set in 19th century Upper Canada and based loosely on real events. The Handmaid’s Tale is a set in a dystopian future and, while it doesn’t have a lot of sci-fi tropes, it won the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction.

Atwood is both accomplished and unarguably a master of the writing craft, but while she writes about many different subjects, there is something about her manner of writing that puts me off a little. The only word I can use to describe it is heavy. Her writing is heavy — I don’t read it quickly or easily; on the other hand, I can’t put it down once I start, either.

One writer whose style I really admire is Mark Helprin’s, particularly in his Winter’s Tale, a fantasy set in New York City. In addition to his ability to meld fantastic elements, humour and action into a setting simultaneously believable and fantastic, Helprin also manages to be very descriptive as well as economical with prose. It’s as good an example of magical realism as any I’ve ever read.

But what is it that determines the style? Word choice? Sentence length? Description? Active voice? Those are just a few items in the writer’s toolbox. Also critical are creating realistic, believable and interesting characters, pacing, mixing action and pathos and so much more.

The accepted good

There is a tension between popularity and what is accepted as “good writing” by the publishers and the leading literary critics of any time.

For instance, today, “good” writing is usually characterized by lean prose, active voice, realistic dialogue and sparse description. Writing coaches keep advising us to avoid adverbs in favour of more precise verbs, except when it comes to describing dialogue. We should only use “said,” and not try to change that around with “exclaimed,” or “replied.”

Crime novelist Elmore Leonard came out with ’s 10 rules of writing a couple of years ago; he admitted that he was at least a little facetious at the time, but now he says he seriously believes them. Okay. And Leonard is a great writer, and changed the literary world, and sells zillions of copies, okay, okay — but is he the arbiter of the English language, now? What if something happens in a sudden way? Elmore, what is wrong with the word “suddenly”?

The exemplars of great writing are still supposed to be Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I love their work, but again — should we all try to emulate their styles?

On the other side of that tension is writing that flies in the face of those rules, yet sells millions of copies. The current target of criticism is EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Here’s a passage:

I watch José open the bottle of champagne. He’s tall, and in his jeans and T-shirt, he’s all shoulders and muscles, tanned skin, dark hair, and burning dark eyes.

Descriptive, yes. Also clichéd — it’s been done so many times. “Burning dark eyes”? While we can all imagine what those must look like, couldn’t the author have thought of something original?

And yet, millions of readers ate that up, burning eyes and all. Did the burning eyes cause heartburn, I wonder?

Description

Writing coaches also tell us not to use too much description. Hemingway and Fitzgerald did not describe what their protagonists looked like. Okay, but Dashiel Hammet did.

Efficiency is the goal!
(Photo: The Pug Father/Creative Commons )

I agree that too much description can get in the way of the story. There is a lot of material for people to read, that communication of any kind must compete for an audience’s attention with so much more material than there ever was before, so we writers should always try to get as much information across as efficiently as possible — fewer words, more information. I get that.

But we do need to describe some things, some times. And occasionally, an adverb is the best way to do that. See?

Who says so?

I cannot answer all these questions myself, so I am inviting other talented independent writers to weigh in. What is good style? How do they describe their own style? They’ll be appearing on this blog over the next couple of weeks. My first guest will be Roger Eschbacher, author of middle-grade fantasy Dragonfriend: Leonard the Great, Book 1.

So watch this space, and leave lots of comments and questions for the guests, please. Maybe we can finally determine exactly what writing style is, after all.