Q & A On NaNoWri Mo (borrowed from Jim C. Hines)

Horace Scudder, 1903

In which I interview myself on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

What are you doing National Novel Writing Month* this year, Deborah?
Cheering on my friends. I'll be finishing up revisions on the next Darkover novel, Arilinn.  Revising is a very different process from drafting. I find that drafting goes better when I do it quickly, so I don't get caught in second-guessing myself or editing as I write. Both are recipes for disaster and paralysis. Revising, on the other hand, does not reliably produce any measurable result in terms of pages or words. I dive into it and call it quits every day when my brain won't function any longer.

How does NaNoWriMo compare to real writing?
Writing is writing! Every writer does it a little differently, and I think most of us change from project to project and also over the course of our careers. Challenges, whether novel-length or short-length, can be fun or oppressive, pointless, or a marvelous way to jump-start a new story.

Doesn’t it bother you when hundreds of thousands of people every year turn your career, the dream job you’ve worked at for 16 years, into some kind of game?
You say "game" as if it's a bad thing. If some aspect of writing isn't fun -- and there are wonderful professional writers who hate to write but love to have written -- then why do it? The community-building that happens during NaNoWriMo is one of its more attractive aspects. Writing is a solitary activity, so it's wonderful to have those "hundreds of thousands" of compadres cheering you on.

Sorry. Do you think it’s possible to write a good novel in 30 days?
Yes and no. Some writers can produce a solid first draft in a month, so that's the yes part. On the other hand, I'm skeptical of any first draft, no matter how long it takes, being "a good novel." I suppose some writers do so much planning and so much reflection on each sentence that their first drafts-on-paper are really third-drafts-in-the-mind. In the end, though, the goal is not to produce a good novel but to write quickly and and consistently and to push through to the end.

Isn’t the emphasis on quantity over quality a bad thing, teaching participants to write crap?
Most writers don't need to be taught how to write crap. We do that very nicely all on our own, thank you. However, writing challenges can teach us to get the story down on paper (or phosphors), which is a necessary first step to a polished final draft. The rewards of actually finishing a novel draft, no matter how much revision it will need, should not be underestimated. Even if that novel is indeed crap, it is finished -- the writer now knows that he or she is capable of completing it. That in itself is worth celebrating.

Another thought on crap. If you aren't writing it and you never have, you aren't doing your job. You aren't taking chances or pushing edges or just splatting out what's in the back of your semi-conscious mind. You are allowing your inner critic to silence your creative spirit.

Eric Rosenfield says NaNoWriMo’s whole attitude is “repugnant, and pollutes the world with volumes upon volumes of one-off novels by people who don’t really care about novel writing.“
I seriously doubt that what is wrong with this world is the surfeit of aspiring novelists. And I can't imagine why anyone would put herself through NaNoWriMo if she didn't 'care about novel writing.' Good grief, if you want to be irate about Bad Things In The World, there are plenty of issues out there, things that actually impact people's health, liberty, and lives. Too many one-off novels is not one of them.

Well, what about Keith DeCandido’s post, wherein he says NaNoWriMo has nothing to do with storytelling; it teaches professionalism and deadlines, and the importance of butt in chair?
Can storytelling be taught? I'm not sure. Yep to the other parts.

Fine, what do you think NaNoWriMo is about?
Why is it about anything than a community of people hell-bent on crash'n'burning their way through a short novel in a month? That makes more sense than it being a nefarious conspiracy.

Any last words of advice, Ms. Very Important Author?
I'd love there to be a parallel track for those of us who have other deadlines, such as revisions or finishing in-progress novels. Certainly FiMyDaNo (Finish My Damned Novel) fits the bill, and I encourage anyone in mid-draft to jump in. Revisions, at least mine, mean taking notes, cogitating, making flow charts of structure, correcting maps, ripping out chunks and shoving them around, not to mention generating piles of new prose. These all count. The thing with revisions is that sometimes a lot of thinking and a small amount of actual wordage change -- if it's the right change -- counts for a solid day's work. It's exhausting, too. So maybe the goal is, "I will think about my revisions every day this month." 


Okay, Ms. Interviewer, if you're not doing NaNoWriMo, what are your goals for this month?

*November 1 - November 30

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo is a month-long creative writing challenge that takes place every November. During the month participants from all over the world are challenged to write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel.

GUEST BLOG: Sherwood Smith on Monarchy in Fantasy

What is it with fantasy stories and monarchies? Isn't there any other form of government?

Two words, power and privilege.

What’s not to like?

What’s not to hate?

Whatever those words evoke to us, it’s usually not boredom. Human beings are hierarchical. You take any group, no matter how determined they are to interact with sensitivity and equality, and a leader somehow emerges. That’s in situations that have the luxury of safety. In emergencies or danger, people turn desperately to anyone who can show them the way out, whether it’s by fighting or fleeing. The successful commander who becomes monarch is as old as history.

Monarchs make government personal, and most readers want stories about people more than they want stories about the function of politico-economic theory, for pretty much the same reason people at work gossip about the boss’s likes, dislikes, and private life. The doings of people in power are interesting, especially when they can impact you, but even when they won’t. Look at all
the celebrity chasers busily reporting on the often fatuous actions, opinions, marriages and breakups of our king-substitutes, actors.

We moderns seem to prefer stories about kings and queens from the days when monarchs were colorful figures in preference to today’s reclusive royalty who, wearing business suits like everyone else, appear only for photo ops and ribbon-snipping. The old kings had more power, but they also had to generate their own PR by looking like kings: when they traveled past you, with outriders and banner snapping and horses caparisoned to a fare-thee-well, you knew a king was passing.

A Few Random Book Reviews

N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Despite all the fuss over this debut fantasy novel, it took me a while to pick it up. I'm not sure what I can usefully add to what has already been said, except to say that the praise is richly deserved. There's a bit of a bobble at the very opening, for me, at least, but that is undoubtedly a matter of taste and it doesn't last long. Very cool stuff about a castle that's a whole city, byzantine schemes and some very unpleasant, ruthless people, a few enslaved and therefore resentful gods, a heroine on the track of her mother's killer, and occasional moments of stunning compassion. Very shortly, I was immersed and am now looking forward to reading more by Jemisin.


Connie Willis. Blackout/All Clear. Time-traveling historians visit the London Blitz, get trapped  there, try to find a way home without changing history and thereby creating a future in which their world (and their time machine) does not exist. All done up in inimitable Connie Willis style. This two-part novel is (fortunately or unfortunately, according to your taste) downright chatty, with lots of conversations in which characters alternate between discussing the minutia of surviving in a dangerous historical period and trying to figure out either how to get home, why their failsafe return strategies aren't working, and whether they are inadvertently changing history. If you like dialog, you'll relish them, but if you find this sort of detail tedious, the story will be slow going. Crucial details are planted in the midst, and if your eyes are glazing over, you'll miss them. Another objection I've heard, although it wasn't an issue for me, was the

Pad Thai, Meatloaf, and Learning to Write

I used to make Pad Thai for dinner. If you've eaten this dish at a Thai restaurant, you probably wouldn't recognize mine. Usually, it's made with wide or medium rice noodles, scrambled eggs, bean sprouts, and chicken, with a sprinkling of chopped peanuts. I use brown rice spaghetti (Tinkyada, if you want specifics), onion, carrot, baked tofu, and a bunch of bok choy from a friend's garden. Not a peanut in sight, although I did use canned sauce.

I learned to make Pad Thai from Sunanta, a Thai exchange student whom we hosted some years back. Her mother, perhaps skeptical about American food in general and those crazy vegetarians in particular, used to send her care packages that included the dry rice noodles and packages of dry seasoning (which were undoubtedly mostly sugar and salt, although as I don't read Thai, I can't say for sure). Sue would cook and I would watch and learn. She made hers with nappa cabbage, carrots, and shrimp. (The packages had sesame seeds to sprinkle on top.)

What I learned was this: Pad Thai is like meatloaf. Every family has their own recipe and the best way to learn is to watch mom and then try it yourself. Chances are, you won't be able to duplicate the exact recipe anyway, and once you've figured out your own taste, you won't want to. You'll make it your own.

RevisionLand; Or, Aliens/Robots/Dry-Towners/Mad-Scientists Ate My Brains

Gillray, "The Headache," 1819

One of the delights of living with a fellow writer occurs when I'm sitting at the dinner table, trying to wrap my mind around 200 or 500 pages of text. He raises an eyebrow, Spock-style. I say, "Revisions." And he gets it. I am not only not flying with the rest of the ducks at this moment, I'm nowhere near this planet. I'm in RevisionLand.

Some writers look at me as if Aliens/etc., really have eaten my brains when I say I love to revise. Everyone's different. I'm not a writer who uses detailed outlines. I know some who do, one or two 3 x 5 cards per scene. I work from an outline that tells me I need to get from here to there and this is the emotional tenor of this story hinge, and that is how I want to climax to come together. How I get from a blank screen to ### (the end, in writerese) is an adventure. The story doesn't happen for me in the first draft, but in the revisions.