The Blog: November 2009

Stack the chairs on the table tops
Hang the sheets on the chandeliers
It slows down but it never stops
Ain't it sweet after all these years

And these are the last words I have to say
It's always hard to say goodbye
But now it's time to put this book away
Ain't that the story of my life

- Lyrics from “Famous Last Words,” Billy Joel

Prompt of the Day: Kiss of True Love... or, someone gets slapped/punched/kicked.

“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds”

– Douglas Adams

The way you walk
The way you talk, and try to kiss me, and laugh
In four or five paragraphs
All your compliments and your cutting remarks
Are captured here in my quotation marks

- Lyrics from “Everyday I Write the Book,” Elvis Costello

"I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations."

- Mary Shelley

Prompt of the Day: Not going anywhere for a while? (Yeah, you all know the candy bar line... right?) Your character has to wait for something - in line, for a phone call, for the end of the world, whatever works for you.

Or...

It's the day after Thanksgiving! Let's celebrate by cleaning! Your character(s) have to roll up their sleeves and clean something.

Tip of the Day: Don't give up! 29,000 words behind, with only four days left? Don't sell yourself short, say "I can't" and give up. Aim for that 50k. Even if you end up with 10k, that's more than you had, and people have done extraordinary things in the last days of NaNo- you never know what words may come.

Don't hurt yourself trying to get that 50k, but don't just give up, either.

"The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish."

- Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

Prompt of the Day: Take the time to describe food in detail - in a way that makes sense with your narrator. Is he/she/it/other cooking? Or maybe hungry? Appreciating a wedding cake for its visual beauty?

OR

Bring back a character you haven't seen in a while, with some important news or useful information.

Tip of the Day: If you have family visiting today, or friends, enjoy the company first before you disappear to NaNo.

Tip #2: We're heading into the home-stretch of NaNo, but don't stress if you feel like you're not as close to the end of your novel. 50k doesn't have to be The End.

You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

– Ray Bradbury
Wright

Prompt of the Day: Someone bumps into your character, knocking him/her over.

2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer
inside of me, threatening the life they belong to

- Lyrics from “Breathe (2AM),” by Anna Nalick

Prompt of the Day: Someone apologizes, admits he or she was wrong, and/or attempts to make up for a wrong-doing.

Tip of the Day: Cover your turkey with a cheesecloth soaked in butter and white wine, and then with aluminum foil. Lift the foil to baste the bird regularly, but otherwise keep covered until the last half-hour of cooking. Your bird will brown in the last half-hour, but your white meat won't dry out. Related tip: If you can get them, kosher turkeys have been brined before you buy them, so you can skip the messy brining process but still get all the wonderful flavor and moisture.

Wait, you're looking for a *NaNo* tip? This is Thanksgiving week...

I need to go make the mock-mincemeat now.

"A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order."

- Jean Luc Godard

Prompt of the Day: Take some kind of fear or frustration from your real life, and put it into your book. A character might have money issues (even if you have to simplify your 40k grad school loan into "the ATM doesn't work"), or car trouble, or the flu - or something good, of course, if something has recently happened you're elated about. Whatever it is, take the emotion from your real life, and stick it in your novel.

"An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought."

- Mignon McLaughlin

Prompt of the Day: Use a mixed-up cliche, or use a cliche in a weird way.

Author's Ramble...

Sorry that some days have been missing prompts. I didn't have time to quite finish everything before November, and I haven't kept up as well as I would like. I've done NaNo since 2006, but this year is the hardest it's ever been.

In 2006, I was in Texas for a semester as part of National Student Exchange; that year was (relatively) easy. I ended up with Part 1 / Book 1 of Mancer, and the real beginning of the Castrili world.

In 2007, I was a senior undergrad, taking two capstone classes (English and psychology), involved in an increasingly serious relationship, and not only became the primary cook for Thanksgiving, but had to figure out how to kasher my entire kitchen because my girlfriend kept kosher. Token of Darkness (to be released Feb. 9, 2010) came out of that year.

In 2008, I was in full-time graduate school, and working full-time as a teacher, helping write lesson plans and grade exams, still the full-time cook. This year's finished piece was All Just Glass.

Welcome to 2009. This is the hardest NaNo I've ever done.

On the plus side, the wedding planning is going well - we have an appointment with the caterer this evening to taste some food samples - though I'm nervous that we won't get the house we bid on yesterday. At least there were no hospital trips this week. But c'mon, it's not like I'm in full-time school this year, right? What could possibly be making this year so hard...

Okay. I have an hour now, at Panache, before I have to pick my parents up to see the house (yipes!). I can get in 1k or so, right?

Sometimes when I think of my wordcount and how far it still feels like I am from 50k, I want to start giggling hysterically - but I'm not giving up. I can plan a wedding, buy a house, visit emergency rooms, hopefully get a job, and host Thanksgiving while writing another 20k.

I'm not giving up, so don't you give up!

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

– Ray Bradbury

Prompt of the Day: Here's a classic. Use one of the following lines:

"You mean your name isn't Steve?"
"Do you like pina coladas?"
"This isn't genuine _______" (fill in the blank)

There are tales of good fortune that couldn't be planned
There's a chapter on god that I don't understand
There's a promise of Heaven and Hell but I'm damned if I see

Though the pages are numbered
I can't see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life

- Lyrics from “The Book of My Life,” Sting

Prompt of the Day: Peek in some windows (house, store, car, anything). There's something unexpected inside.

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. "

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The spark of creation, is flickering within me
The spark of creation, is blazing in my blood
A bit of the fire that lit up the stars
And breathed life into the mud, the first inspiration
The spark of creation"

- Lyrics from “Spark of Creation,” by Stephen Schwartz, from Children of Eden

"Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies."

- Emme Woodhull-Bäche

Prompt of the Day:

Some character (major, minor, or random) receives a major injury from a mundane source. Examples: infected paper cut, shocked changing a lightbulb, etc.

or

Use the following line (adjust pronouns/tense as necessary):
"I come to you in pieces so you can make me whole."
From "Pieces" by RED

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

– Ray Bradbury

There's a light at each end of this tunnel,
You shout 'cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out

- Lyrics from "Breathe (2 AM)," Anna Nalick

There's no mountain too great
Hear these words and have faith
Have faith

- Lyrics from “They Live in You,”
by Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, and Lebo M, from Lion King (on Broadway)

Prompt of the Day: Your character gets bit, stung or shocked by an insect or animal. Allergic reaction is optional.

Tip of the Day: You're at the half-way point! If you're at 25k, congratulations - now don't get lazy! And if you're not at 25k, there is still time to catch up.

It's easy to make excuses for your schedule - "I'm too busy" - but NaNo winners aren't actually people who have plenty of time. They're people who use their time effectively, who write without revising, who write in those ten minutes on the train even when they can't really remember what's going on with the file at home, and who write in their heads when they're not at their computer/notebook. I have yet to see any solid correlation between so-called free time and NaNo success. If anything, it's easy for people with too much spare time to make excuses and, in tortoise-and-hare fashion, never make the final mark.

A second tip: You're half-way through November. If you haven't done it lately, BACK UP YOUR WORK. Again, back it up in at least two locations over which you have control. Email to yourself is a great method - and, when the email arrives, download and open it just to make sure it worked. If you're writing by hand, go to a local Staples or Office Depot or a supportive parent's work and you can probably get photocopies made.

John Wilmot penned his poetry
Riddled with the pox
Nabokov wrote on index cards,
At a lectern, in his socks
St. John of the Cross did his best stuff
Imprisoned in a box
And Johnny Thunders was half alive
When he wrote Chinese Rocks

- Lyrics from “There She Goes, My Beautiful World,” Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Prompt of the Day: Your protagonist is lied to by someone he or she trusts.

"I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confided to my own identify, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age than my own sensations."

– Mary Shelley

Prompt of the Day: It's alive!

Something or someone is alive that your character didn't think was (a best friend, an arch-villain, a random bird that ran into the window, a piece of supposed road-kill). Or, the opposite: Something or someone is dead that your character had no reason to think would be.

Tip of the Day: Write first, edit later.

As you get further into your NaNo, it becomes tempting to second-guess yourself. You should have explained something sooner, or it doesn't make any sense for your character to go to that coffee shop again if she hated the coffee there in chapter one, or you've decided your protagonist is actually a boy even though you've written her as a girl for 20,000 words.

Make a note about whatever you want to change if that makes you feel better. I use those same marks I talked about for unfinished chapters, --- , so I can search for those when I want to catch my notes-to-self, or you can use something like MS Word's comments feature. But keep writing. Don't go back to fix it yet. You're not done; for all you know you might change your mind again.

For those who are wondering, during my NaNo07, Token of Darkness, the character Brent (also known as Bri) changed gender about a half-dozen times.

Write first. Edit when it's done.

This applies to "little" things, too. You don't like the way that sentence sounds? You can't get that exposition paragraph to be clear enough? Your dialogue went on for sixteen pages when you meant to interrupt it after two? Keep it for now. Strip-mine it for material later.

"The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt of the Day: Side effects. Medical, mystical, foodborne. You decide.

Your sword can be a sermon or the power of the pen.
Teach every child to raise his voice and then, my brothers, then
Will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men.

- Lyrics from “Make Them Hear You,” by Lynn Ahrens, from the musical Ragtime

Prompt of the Day: Open some form of music player with a shuffle feature. Put it on random. Write down the second line of the first random song that comes up. Use that line* in today's writing.

*If necessary to fit your world or characters, you may change pronoun, or replace references to technologies/locations/etc that just don't exist. For example, if you write in a medieval world and the lyrics mention a spaceship, you can either be really creative, or change it to some equivalent form of transport.

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place be afforded: it can give form to dark shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself."

- Mary Shelley

Prompt of the Day: Chekhov's Gun

“CHEKHOV'S GUN is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but its significance does not become clear until later on.”

More importantly, this technique says an element should not be introduced unless it will be important later: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

Since you’re writing a NaNo, you have probably introduced random elements just for the sake of making words. Go quickly skim over a couple of your early chapters, and see if you can find a gun (figuratively speaking – in your NaNo it might be a pen, or a bird, or a pothole, or a person). For today’s prompt, find a way to “fire” that gun and make it important.

Don’t spend too long rereading anything. Just pick something and find a way to make it work.

"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Prompt of the Day: One of your characters receives an important letter. What does it say?

Cradle for a cat, Wolfe looks back,
How many angels can you fit upon a match?
I want to know why Hemingway cracked,
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction

- Lyrics from “Stranger Than Fiction,” Bad Religion

Prompt of the Day: Someone gets trapped or confined.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

– Ray Bradbury

Prompt of the Day: Locked out of the car (or relevant vehicle)! Or, if you don't have cars or your cars don't have locks, you can have stolen horseshoes, or flat motorcycle tires, or a sprained ankle, or something else that makes your primary means of transportation unusable.

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."

- Richard Wright

Prompt of the Day: Introduce a "damsel* in distress."

*For the purposes of this prompt, define "damsel" in whatever way works for you.

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

- Lyrics from “Paperback Writer,” by The Beatles

Prompt of the Day: Add something seasonal to your novel - a seasonal food, decoration, or holiday- either appropriately placed (ie, lights on the trees in December) or out of place (a pumpkin in July). If you're in a fantasy realm and haven't already, you'll have to do a little world-building to decide what kinds of seasonal events and celebrations your characters have.

Tip of the Day: BACK UP YOUR WORK.

I said this before, but I know some of you didn't listen to me. Back up your work in at least two places over which you have complete control - a computer owned by a relative or the school doesn't count, and neither does the flash drive you share with six friends.

Second tip (for those of you who did listen the first time):

Most places that offer wi-fi are cool with people camping out to write for a while, but don't be rude about it. If it's the busiest time of the day and you buy a bottle of water and take up a table for two hours, they're going to be annoyed. On the same subject, don't loiter! Unless you have a personal relationship with the staff and/or management and permission to do so, you don't want to go into a business, take up a table, use the wi-fi, and not buy anything. If you can't afford a coffee at least, rethink doing that write-in at Starbucks - maybe the local library would be a better idea.

"I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months... Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity."
– Stephen King, On Writing

Prompt of the Day: Something happens that seems too good to be true, to your protagonist or anyone else in the story so far.

Tip of the Day: If it's not working, you don't have to do it.

If you get stuck in a scene, and it's keeping you from continuing, make a note and skip it! I like to use the same symbol every time- something I don't otherwise use when writing- so I can use the search feature to go back and find these places later. So, my first drafts tend to have moments of

--- Unfinished scene! ---

Sometimes skipping around and working on later scenes will help get you unstuck on an earlier scene, or make you realize the reason you were stuck was because you were trying to do something that didn't actually fit with the rest of the story.

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." – Silvia Plath

Prompt of the Day: Something smells absolutely... terrible!

or

Have a Facebook? Have any weird aps on it (Cafeworld, VampireWars. even Super-poke if you don't have much)? Look at your aps, your neighbors/friends in those aps, and think up some kind of scene inspired by that. Or, hey, inspire a whole story - it's still only Day 3! (Note: make sure you avoid flagrant copyright and trademark violations along the way.)

or

Use the following line (adjust pronouns/tense as necessary):

"It's no surprise I'm leaving tomorrow, I can't believe I stayed till today"
lyrics from "No Surprise" by Daughtry

Tip of the Day: BACK UP YOUR WORK.

No, seriously. Back it up. Don't just save it one place. In fact, don't just save it two places, either, especially if your two places are something like a computer you share with someone else and a flash-drive/thumb-drive/USB-drive.

If you are using a flash-drive, know how to use it right. Make sure you "safely remove hardware" before removing it from your computer, or you can corrupt any files saved on it. Never remove it while you have a file open - for that matter, you're safest if you close the entire program you were using, to make sure it's not still accessing for some reason.

Emailing your work-in-progress to yourself as an attachment is a great safety-system.

Adjectives on the typewriter
He moves his words like a prizefighter
The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell

- Lyrics from “Shadow Stabbing,” by Cake

Prompt of the Day: Your narrator is a bystander as something either absolutely horrible or fantastically wonderful happens to a stranger.

or

Set something on fire.

or

Use the following line (adjust pronouns/tense as necessary):

"I would scream and rebel, still, it would not come"
from, "Would Not Come," Alanis Morisette

Tip of the Day: Don't forget to stretch! It's good for your wrists, and your brain.

If you get stuck, you don't have to stay at your notebook/keyboard. Go for a walk, take a shower, call a friend, get a coffee - do something else to get your brain moving again, so you can get your 1667.

[edit - sorry this is a couple hours late - glitch in how I set up the auto-post. I think I've fixed it now]

Welcome to the first day of National Novel Writing Month 2009! For those of you not familiar with NaNoWriMo, you should check out the website (nanowrimo.org). For those of you who have participated in the past, or are joining the frenzy for the first time – welcome, and welcome back!

You may or may not know that Nyeusigrube’s writing community has dedicated a forum to NaNo every year since 2006. Members post their traumas, trials and tribulations (and more importantly, word-counts) in daily rant threads.

In years past, I have set up a section of the site for NaNo, where I have struggled to produce daily writing prompts (with varying degrees of success). This year, I am dedicating my blog for the month of November to NaNoWriMo09. Each day will feature a new post with the quote of the day, prompt, and probably something like a random fact or word. Those of you who have seen previous years’ daily posts will certainly recognize some of the writing quotes, since I’m going to end up recycling a lot of my favorites. I may repeat some prompts I still have around from 2007, too, if they aren't too specific to be reused in a new year.

NaNo will also feature its own Links section on the right side of this blog, with links to the official nanowrimo site, my nanowrimo page, other helpful tools and online gadgets – and of course the message board community, where I hope you will join us!

Yes, I'm pre-dating these posts; no, I'm not writing them in November while trying to write my own NaNo. It's currently September 9, and I plan to work on prompts for the next nearly two months. So you can comment on these posts, but don't expect the next one to respond much.

Now that the introduction is out of the way, on to the Daily Post:

"The scariest moment is always just before you start" – Stephen King

"You can fix anything but a blank page." – Nora Roberts

Prompts of the Day:

Turn on the television. Wait for a car commercial. Base your scene on the setting, characters, or scenario from the commercial.

or

Go to a public setting where people tend to talk (coffee shop, restaurant, park, train, etc). Take out a notebook. Don't try to follow any one conversation, but write down every snippet of conversation you "happen" to overhear. Make up a character, setting and/or scenario based on what you hear.

or

Include the following line(s) [edit pronouns/tense/etc if necessary]:

"She's not the kind of girl
Who likes to tell the world
About the way she feels about herself"

(from Garbage, "The Trick is to Keep Breathing")

Tip of the Day:

Make sure you save frequently!

Many word-processors have an auto-save feature, but relying on it is a really good way to lose work if your computer freezes or crashes. Most word-processors have a key-command, so you can quickly save without your needing to stop and open a menu (ctrl-S or apple-S, for most of them). Absolutely do not trust any kind of web form for any length of time, since accidentally refreshing or hitting backspace can delete the whole thing in a blink.

Welcome to Nyeusigrube

Monday, November 30, 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Friday, November 27, 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Monday, November 23, 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Friday, November 20, 2009

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Monday, November 16, 2009

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Monday, November 9, 2009

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Friday, November 6, 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

Sunday, November 1, 2009