Using a new writer's tool

This year YT will be trying out some new tools and techniques to stay organized and on track. One tool that looks like a sure thing is yWriter3, novel writing software created by a real novelist. It's free, oriented toward scenes and characters, and reasonably compatible with other word processors. It has several nice features that look like they were inspired by NaNoWriMo: progress toward daily word count, storyboards, places for scene summaries and goal-conflict-resolution notes.

YT will have more to say about yWriter as the month progresses.

Novel Blurb 2007

Since this has been posted on the NaNoWriMo Michigan regional forum, why not here? Here are the vague mumblings of the previous post, crafted into a polished elevator pitch. GTC is starting to take shape.

GENRE: Satire

WORKING TITLE: Grand Theft Cambridge

BLURB: During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, new companies using the Internet to get big fast were followed by companies that did just enough to go through the motions of success. Carter Hayes and his handpicked MBA buddies at E-Style have a foolproof business plan: do a little work to make their software "shopping assistant" real enough to get noticed by big retailers, then ride their stock options to riches when some big, old-line company opens its wallet. What they don't realize is that all the other E-Stylers have their own extra plans, from Suresh and Ganesh, their tame MIT engineers, to Leticia Tamara, the admin who takes a lot of notes, to financial angel Silvio, who runs his venture capital business out of a strip club.

* * *

Okay, YT admits this is cribbed somewhat from The Producers, Microserfs and all of those "new ways of doing business" books from the era that turned out to be completely wrong. But, hey, anything this author can dream up won't be nearly as bizarre as stuff that actually happened.

Countdown to Year Four

I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers,
are about as good one day as the next, hangovers apart.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

So, dear readers, all three of you... Yours Truly is foolish enough to try NaNoWriMo yet again, and this blog will serve yet again as a collection bin for asides, random thoughts, off topic rants and general musings about the fine art of creative writing.

Read back a couple of posts to the Year Three Introduction. It stands, as is, for this year, too.

YT has given a lot of thought to the Year Two novel, or rather how it could be turned into a real novel with such niceties as three-dimensional characters, believable dialog and properly paced plot. It makes sense but still needs a better Act Three. The gizmo novel from Year Three is banished to the bottomest of bottom drawers, more like a lead-lined crypt. YT guesses it is possible to write fiction too close to real life, something he found he has no stomach for, all things considered. But that's the past and sometime future.

This year's idea was going to be a satire about who decided when the turn of the century should be held. But a chance remark on an e-mail list gave YT an even better idea. Flash back to the heady days of the dot-com boom. Some companies made their founders outrageously rich on the promise of a revolutionary product, the merest whisper of sweet buzzwords in the ears of big money that wanted to be glamorous no matter what. So what if the entrepreneurs weren't the only ones looking to ride the boom for their own purposes? Voila, YT gives his kind readers Grand Theft Cambridge.

Oh, yeah, about plot... Years One, Two and especially Three ran out of steam eventually because of lack of thinking through a plot. It's fine for the characters to have adventures, but eventually they have to stop milling around and actually go somewhere. The stream of consciousness that is NaNo needs to run in a deeper channel. So this year October is YT's private NaNoPlotMo: one plot point per day, thirty plus an epilogue idea by the end of the month.

Yeah, yeah, it's not supposed to mean anything besides letting loose the Inner Temperamental Artist, but you know what? YT is just a tad bit enamoured of the notion he can write better than some published author, somewhere. Okay, better than Kristen Haring -- that's an easy hurdle to jump. Heh. So November will either confirm this crazy notion or deliver a message from Mundane Reality. Either way, Thursday, November 1, can't come too soon!

Year Three Fizzle, Year Two Redux

Well, that was a bust... YT got to 3,200 words in a few, futile sessions. Excuses? Stress at work, attempts to relieve stress by satirizing work in the novel, Responsibility Junkie not caged with Inner Editor for the month of November, instead sucking away all spare time that should have been spent on the novel. The list goes on much farther than YT's readers -- all three of you! -- would really care about. And the novel sounded so promising before the fact!

No matter. Thanks to the wonders of Linux and science fiction, YT has got some feedback on the Year Two novel. Good feedback, more than the author expected and perhaps a little different from what his friendly critics intended. Our old friend Lena may have some life left in her after all. YT tried to tack something on in front of the terrific first sentence he'd devised. It didn't work. But YT realized the novel would have to change in some of its approach to the reader. Also, the arc of Lena's personal journey became much clearer. YT knows what she must leave behind to become more fully human. And the author now has a terrific second sentence.

In other news, the redoubtable and talented MontiLee has Turned Pro, meaning she's (a) gotten published and (b) will continue to get published. God help us if she doesn't show up in November, because the rest of the WriMo group will be left too much in their comfort zones.

There's the nub of it. The novel only works, and the novel-writing, and the inspiration, if the writer can bravely walk away from comfort. As will Lena someday. As perhaps will the guy in Year Four's novel, who thinks he has the great idea of the century, if not the millennium.

Introduction - Year Three

Kicking off Year Three of the blog... Here's the very first posting, updated for 2006.

This is the National Novel Writing Month weblog of Wes the Bricoleur. Or, for short, NaNoWriMo and YT (yours truly). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. That's it! 1,667 words a day, every day, quality not even a consideration. Free Range Novelist chronicles my experiences during November, 2006. It will center on day-by-day writing plus some excerpts from my novel-in-progress. Maybe 10% of postings will ramble off into other topics.

The WriMo challenge is "just do it" writ large. The rush to put down 50K in 30 days strips away all pretense and inhibition. YT recommends it to any budding writer or anyone crazy enough to think he or she has some writing talent. Want the endorphins, too? Eat hot peppers while you write!

Why a blog on top of daily pages of novel to write? This is a way to let some "I-ness" out in the midst of so much "they-ness" writing in the characters' voices. If my Inner Editor gets too restless pacing in its month-long cage, it can exercise on a very short leash here.

Here are my rules for November: this blog is a place for honest observation and reflection. Like, or don't like what YT writes? Feel free to comment, all opinions are welcome. But I simply will not be bothered to get into flaming or catfights. YT hates comment spam - don't even bother. I'll write about other WriMos here, and in return expect to be fair game.

The original charter of Free Range Novelist was only a handful of words different from this, so I'll just keep going in the original spirit, but one year sadder and one year much wiser in the ways of the WriMo.

So. Here we go... enjoy November!

Forward to the 2006 novel !

But a handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty of forest. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.

~ Fiona Macleod (a.k.a. William Sharp)

So, November 1 is now 5½ weeks away, and it's time to think again of all things NaNo. First, the quote. YT watched Almost Famous last night, which qualifies by his rules as related to writing. The writer's mother quotes Goethe to Russell, the rock singer who is the man William (the protagonist) can't pin down for an interview. Hunting for the exact wording of the quote, YT came across a better one, more apt for a writer. Fiona/William was quite a character, too, making your Brico bold to be his own self when setting words to the screen.

This year's muse gave the Bricoleur an epiphany on the road - dangerous at freeway speed! In the spirit of "write what you know," YT intends to put keystrokes to a "visionary," comic tale set in a recognizable, if cockeyed, present. Let's see what comes out this time... You, all of my three readers, are welcome along for the journey.

2005 Recap

Wow, it's been a long time since the last comment. Drunkard's Leap made it to 30,169 words, and not very far through the storyline. How come? YT claims, first of all, to have horrible amounts of work piled on him, leaving too little creative "juice" to squeeze out at the end of the day. Really.

In the ten months since, the work situation hasn't gotten any easier. Stress is a part of the corporate culture now, big time. That's a topic for a whole other post.

But what else? NaNoWriMo has taught YT that a number of things have to come together for the novel to gel. Primarily, the characters have to stand up on their own two feet. Lena and her cohort could walk (avoiding real plot development!) and Jump, but they never spoke for themselves. Ah, well, the idea is still a good one, but it's time to move on. Someday, Lena, someday you'll take your big leap...

Sophomore Slacker

Your humble author has now lived through the dreaded sophomore slump, not only in word count, but in pace. The writing is going too slowly and the story is moving too slowly. Arrgh! We'll see if 50K is still do-able. At minimum it's quite a stretch now.

Word count after 21 days: 21,887

Novel Excerpt, Chapter 2

From Drunkard's Leap, Chapter 2. Lena has had an unsettling encounter in a bar that took the pleasure out of last night. Today, she has to go to work.

This time of year, on the mornings when I woke alone at 6:30, the light was crisp, inviting me into the unfolding day. Not today. I felt roughed up, dirty in yesterday’s clothes, hung over, befuddled, cranky and unsatisfied. A hot shower improved my outlook a couple of degrees, enough so I would only commit mayhem on the streets, not manslaughter. Breakfast moved me a few steps closer to human. In my clean work outfit, I might pass for relatively harmless.

I walked the blocks to the train station briskly. No Warden came in sight, nor any train, so I ducked in to the coffee outlet to grab a go-cup. I clipped on my pass, barely slowed for the turnstile, and reached the platform just as a train pulled in half-empty. I grabbed the scenic seat and thought about all the opportunities I’d had to turn last night into something different. But no great ideas came to mind. Thoughts of awesomeness, briefly glimpsed, were creeping up, so instead I paid attention to the grandeur outside. Mt. Hood and the plume of its growing neighbor were steady on the horizon as the nearby scenery flew by. By the time the train reached Beaverton, the coffee and the view had dissipated much of my funk.

Something from last night must have showed on my face, though, because Stan the Man pulled me over after the morning stand-up. “Lena,” he said, “do you want to invoke the contract?”

“Etiquette by night, contract by day,” I replied. “Actually, I’m trying to figure out who broke etiquette last night. This morning I wasn’t the Lena you know, but it’s okay now. But let the contract be for now.”

“Well, nevertheless, I’m assigning you the girly leather stuff today so you won’t break anything.”

I started to protest, but thought better of it. Stan the Man had a nose for my moods, not to mention everybody else’s, so I’d use the assignment to come back to my normal, charming self at my own speed.

I said, “Okay, Stan, you’re the boss-man.”

He grinned and took my assignment sheet, handing me a new one. For all the claims of general uprightness in today’s society, I knew better. Those kinky mail-order catalogs were barely touched by the Watch and Ward; their wrappers just got a more opaque white when the upright crowd was in charge. The orders came to people like me. Inside what looked like a big truck terminal, we did “order fulfillment” for any number of outfits. We were the back end of the slick catalog operation; whatever the return address, the goods all shipped out from Beaverton.

Today I got Cowboy Intimates orders. All the items were unbreakable – thanks, Stan – though definitely not my kind of fashion. I cruised the aisles at 10 over quota, loading travel bins with leather garter belts, rawhide-trimmed corsets, lace-trimmed chaps and less obvious useful gear. Some sort of weird harness with a pommel seemed to be a favorite today. I lost myself in the rhythm of work. It was easy to fill a bin, bring it to the drop, pull the next order sheet, work out the best route in my head, fill a bin, and repeat. At this rate I would push 20 over quota, enough that Stan would make me relax the rhythm.

But the steady pace helped burn off all the residue of last night, and by noon I was only 18 over. After lunch I felt almost relaxed. Another hour of steady stock-picking reduced the Cowboy queue to its last few orders. I plotted my next run to veer off toward Stan’s post so he could get a fill-in assignment ready for the last couple hours of the day.

Oh, No, Get Me Rewrite!

Your Brico has sinned. He has broken at least two of his own commandments: don't edit if it's scrolled off the screen; and don't tweak until December.

Namely, at a key point in Chapter 4, the main character, Lena, accomplishes something important to her future. Her examiner, so to speak, rushes over to hug her for being so quick to catch on, and Lena feels aroused by the other woman. Except Lena has already demonstrated she's very much into men. Two days and two chapters later, it stuck out as false, just like a second thumb on YT's hand.

So, what to do? Remain true to the ideal of low expectations? Or sleep at night without wrong things running through Brico's aging head. Heh. I wimped out.

Ten minutes of word surgery makes Lena accept the hug, then flash on her latest man embracing her with lust in his heart, then pulling back to the realization it's a woman, a near-stranger, hugging her. Much better. That is, the general level of the writing meets YT's low expectations, but the sore thumb no longer throbs. YT will now repent at leisure.

Did your humble author not mention that the act of teleporting is only possible when the perpetrator has been drinking, and that completing the act fills the perpetrator with an impossible mix of awe and lust? So they do and it does, and this scene is along the lines of "the first hit is free, honey."

Word count after 9 days: 16, 449