Where the knots in tales become untangled…
I recently read an article about how the average American goes for weeks without writing anything by hand. At first my brain rebelled at the idea, but, after giving it more thought, I realized that this was a reasonable assessment. Aside from the occasional Post-It note or shopping list, most folks prefer to type rather than write.
So I’m curious to know: do you prefer to write out scenes and notes by hand or with a keyboard?
It’s ironic that the three writers I look up to the most are also some of the most prolific. Mercedes Lackey has dozens upon dozens of novels. Many are collaborations, but many are not, and even collaborating takes a great deal of time and effort. Oddly enough, she started off as a writer of fanfiction and was a protegée of Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the mistresses of sci-fi and fantasy. J. Michael Straczynski writes for 10 hours a day, every day, except on his birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s. He says, “If I don’t have an assignment, I’ll write a short story, I’ll write a spec script, I’ll write a novel. I just enjoy the hell out of it.” Out of the 110 episodes comprising Babylon 5, he wrote the scripts for 92 of them, plus all of the movies. Joss Whedon has created several cult classic television shows with some of the most unique and memorable mythologies and characters. He worked on Buffy, Angel, and Firefly as writer and director during the 2002-2003 television season, and said that he only feels his best when he’s writing:
“You know, I always get cranky when I’m not writing,” Joss admits. “I’ll be mad and I don’t know why. I just feel like I’m angry with everybody and I hate everything and life is a sham. Then I’ll realize I haven’t written anything. And rewriting doesn’t count. It has to be an original script” (Havens, 158).
Every writer goes through dry spells. Some people call this phenomenon “writer’s block,” but I think writer’s block and dry spells are two different things. Writer’s block is when you are working on a story and keep hitting a brick wall. You have a scene you need to write, or an assignment to finish and you just sit and stare blankly at the screen. You want to write, but the words just don’t come.
In contrast, I think of a dry spell as a time when your very creativity dries up. It’s not that you don’t know what to write or how to write it, but rather you don’t even feel like writing.
Personally, I find dry spells far more terrifying than writer’s block.
I think humans have a tendency to name things and make up random holidays. Throughout the year you can find instances of this. Did you know that January 10th is “Peculiar People Day?” Or that October 28th is “Plush Animal Lovers’ Day?” How about August being “National Catfish Month?” A lot of these days and months have multiple names to them. Personally, I think there’s a government committee somewhere whose sole purpose is to make these things up.
At any rate, this obsession with naming led to November being called “National Novel Writing Month.” It’s rather nice having a month dedicated to the art and craft of writing, specifically novel writing, but for most people, this month passes by unnoticed. However, the Office of Letters and Light decided to create something special. They made a contest also called “National Novel Writing Month,” affectionately dubbed “NaNoWriMo” (pronounced “NAH-no-RHYME-oh”.) It challenges would-be novelists to write 50,000 words, the minimum requirement for a novel, in 30 days. There is no cash prize and there are no judges to evaluate your work.
The purpose of NaNoWriMo is to get writers to stop agonizing over perfecting each passage before moving on, to break the rut of perfectionism and procrastination that dogs the heels of authors. In order to help writers complete that first draft, the emphasis is on quantity, not quality. Now, granted, a writer could just sit down and type the same sentence over and over until they reached 50,000 words, but NaNoWriMo offers little incentive for such a path. With no cash value and no one reading your work beyond the snippets you choose to post, there is no reason not to sit down and write. All you have to enter is the number of words you wrote, and, at the end of the contest, an on-site word validator proves that yes, you actually did write that number of words. If you reach 50,000 words, you get bragging rights and the satisfaction of reaching your goal. And if you only wrote, say 30,000 words, or 20,000, or even 10,000, you still have more done now than you did at the start of November, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Continue reading “How the Office of Letters and Light helped me start (and stay) writing:”
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