author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Yo. Novel's on hold for another few days, as other obligations require. Between one thing and another, I probably won't get back to it until this time next week. But I will get back to it. Oh yes.

Met up yesterday with the Greeley folks at the Borders Bookstore (in Greeley, of course), some of whom also didn't make their Jan 5 goals (but some of whom did, Gods bless 'em). Discovered that "that song with the states in alphabetical order" has an actual name ("Fifty Nifty United States") and was not in fact written by my grade school music director; it is actually quite widespread, like a successful virus, and I was not the only person at the Greeley meet-up who knew it. I was not even the person who brought it up. But I was not the person who forgot New Hampshire, thank you very much.

And then there was the point at which the conversation turned to State Farm's "like a good neighbor" jingle, to which it was revealed there is a whole song out there, written of course by Barry Manilow. We very nearly ended up singing Manilow's "Very Strange Medley" right there and then, which I fear would have got us kicked out on our collective ear.

We shall reconvene in Greeley on Feb 15. My hope for Jan 5 had been to complete a revision cycle; my new goal is to have the book ready to A) submit to WOTC, or B) start querying agents. Either way, I should be ready to hit NaNoEdMo proper and attempt the 50 hours thing with, I think, my 2002 manuscript.

One other thing came out of the trip to Greeley. Whilst driving up Diagonal Highway towards I-25 and using my laptop as an oversized MP3 player (wired into the car sound system via one of those cassette-tape sound converter thingies you can get at RadioShak), I remembered that I had this on my hard drive. *Bliss* If you wanna know more, go here.

I have been reminded that my deadline is January fifth. Whoo! Five whole more days! I can still make it at three and a half hours a day!

Tonight, I finished "the manuscript slog." Me and my bloody pen finally reached the last page of the print-out. From here on out, I get to actually rewrite. I don't know whether I'm looking forward to it or not. A little of both, I suppose. On the one hand I get to stop looking at how bad the first draft is and instead start actively fixing it. On the other hand... I have to fix it.

Hey, just a note here: Holly Lisle says that after the slog, your ratio of marked-up pages to clean pages should be about 2:1 or 3:1, right? I have to wonder - what kind of miraculous first draft is it where any page stays clean of marks? I think in this entire manuscript there are maybe 200 words, maximum, that can stand as they are. And that's counting words like "the," "and," or "well." And no, those 200 words are not all on the same page.

Ah well. Chalk it up as one more reason why NaNoWriMo isn't necessarily conducive to redeemable first drafts. At least, not without a lot of discipline.

The original seed of this novel came from wanting to turn The Little Mermaid around. I wanted to write a story in which after the mermaid rescues the prince, instead of the mermaid following him onto the land, the prince goes into the water after her. (I tried the idea out on my husband, who promptly said, "He'd drown," forgetting, I suppose, that we're talking about fairy tale fantasy where magic isn't against the rules.)

Of course, what made this idea take over NaNoWriMo 2003, shoving the unicorn girl story aside to wait another year, was giving in to the prurient adolescent impulse (and, really, are we ever too old for prurient adolescent impulses?) to sexualize the first encounter of the two main characters, resulting in a whole bunch of implications that wouldn't get out of my head. But that's not the point.

The point is, I did want to incorporate the key elements of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale into this story. Somewhere during the painful rush for fifty thousand words I lost sight of that goal, and now, coming back to the manuscript, I find myself wondering whether attempting it now would result in too much artificiality.

But there are some places where I can see that I tried to inject the fairy tale into the story. The meeting with the Great White is reminiscent of the Little Mermaid's interview with the sea witch, certainly. And the Inanna/Ereskegal motif isn't completely out of place - Inanna's casting aside of her many acoutrements at the gates of the underworld can be seen in Anderson's mermaid's sacrifice of her tail, her voice, and the ability to move without pain.

And there's a point at which, in my story, the mermaids refer to the main character as "silent stalker" - they cannot hear his movements the way they can hear each other's.

Obviously I wanted to oblige my main character, like the fairy tale mermaid, to give up his voice. But I guess I forgot about that along the way. Or maybe I decided it was too much trouble to deal with in 30 days. In any case, there are pages and pages of long conversations between the MC and his seagoing lover. Long, pointless conversations. Word-padding conversations.

It occurs to me that if I make him mute, that magically removes a whooooole bunch of awful purple dialogue from the manuscript. And that would be a very good thing.

Plus it's a lot more plausible to call him "silent" because he can't speak (no air vibrating against his vocal chords, duh) than it would be to somehow posit that his swimming makes no sound. He pushes the water about just as much as any mermaid does, so it would be silly to say they couldn't hear him moving.

And - oh boy, bonus! - the MC's inability to comminicate with the very person who could give him all the answers he needs would give me a brand new sub-conflict to play with. I don't know if it'll be as integral to the final outcome as the Little Mermaid's silence was in Anderson's fairy tale (because she couldn't speak, she couldn't win the prince's love, and so she lost her life), but it's certainly got legs.

Fins, I mean. It's got fins.

Because then I'd really be doing the NaNoEdMo thing. I mean, I'm trying to do it right now, but as it's December I don't have the sense of participating in a huge marathon run with competitors from all around the globe. It's bad enough that I've told pretty much everyone I know that I'm trying to get through one revision cycle before Jan 1 - good darn thing I haven't told the whole world.

Because, of course, 43 hours to go divided by 13 days left is about 3 hours and 20 minutes per day. Starting today. And the thing about hours of revision is, you can't get them done any faster than at a rate of 1:1.

Holly Lisle recommends "Nerves of Steel" on her list of implements necessary to the One-Pass Manuscript Revision technique. She says she's kidding, but I think the only joke is saying that they're available for purchase at Wal*Mart. I mean, after just one hour of slogging through this manuscript, I can't sit still. I've got all sorts of contradictory stuff going on in my head...

"Ooh! Now I see what the overarching theme this scene serves is! I want to rewrite it now!" Except of course that would mean I might have to rewrite it five times by the time I got done with the red pen and the manuscript print-out. The last scene may, on reconsideration, also inform the revision of this scene.

"But there's no way I'll keep this all straight in my head for when I'm done slogging through!" That's why I'm taking notes. "Argh! But my notes are all mixed up!" Yeah. Good luck there.

"There's too much crap that needs to be done to make this thing publishable! It sucks! It sucks big granite boulders until all the quartz is gone! I can't redeem this dreck!" Which is why, I think, writing is a sort of religion; a certain amount of the process is built on faith.

Bleargh. Back to the grind, anyway. There was a time on Thursday when I was getting excited about really seeing clearly the main themes and character dynamics that drive the plot. Today, unfortunately, all I seem to be able to see is ick. It's obviously one of those days that separates the career novelist from the hobbyist writer - on a day like today, the one gets to work while the other goes back to bed.

"If you skip for a day or two, it is hard to get started again. In a queer way you are afraid of it." -Brenda Ueland

On days like today it's good to know that successful and famous authors have days like today too. Not because I enjoy seeing others in pain, understand, but because I'm encouraged to see that when others share that pain they keep writing (and publishing) anyway. It's proof that perseverance is not only possible but prudent. (Ha-ha! Alliteration.) Besides, if even Neil Gaiman has days when the writing's so hard he'd rather do anything else, then having that kind of day isn't necessarily my cue to throw in the towel.

...which won't exactly top the charts as a big band swing pop tune, but it sounds like it ought to be one, at least. The long story is, they're replacing the floors in the laundry rooms of my building, so in the meantime I have to take my dirty clothes to the laundromat in Diagonal Plaza. Last night I took my novel draft over there along with two loads of St. John's Bay jeans and Hanes Her Way undies and the rest of the fauna.

So, whee for me. I ended up hacking out some 1500 words from the very beginning of the book. X. Cut. Gone. Well - those pages have been set aside to be mined for redeemable material at a later date, anyway. But still.

Admittedly, they did have to go - they were fine examples of my ability to waste oodles of text in getting characters from point A to point B. Great word-padding for NaNoWriMo, but not very good substance for a novel. Which leads me to the following conclusion. You ready for this? OK, here we go: NaNoWriMo is not necessarily good for your first draft.

No no no really. Let's try that again, and more accurately: NaNoWriMo only produces workable first drafts if the author begins with the goal of a workable first draft. There. That's somewhat less extreme.

See, if you bop around the forums, you will see all manner of unhealthy suggestions offered on the assumption that those reading care only about crossing a 50K-word finish line, and not about which 50K words cross that line with them. Suggestions such as, "write a scene involving ninjas! You can fit ninjas into any story!" And, "do a find and replace on all your contractions - 'do not' is two words!" And, "Expand all your acronyms! 'International Business Machines' is three times the wordage of 'IBM'!"

Suggestions like those remind me of coffee and cigarettes and all-night writing sprees when what your body really needs are a nutritious meal and a good night's sleep. Not that the occasional all-nighter isn't a useful way of challenging yourself, understand, but what I'm talking about here is the difference between a torturous one-month marathon that leaves you unwilling to run for a whole 'nother year, and a month of solid, healthy running practice. Some NaNoWriMo participants only want to run that marathon and then go back to the couch all year, so to speak, and that's OK for them. Me, I want my November production to be part of lifelong writing career. So NaNoWriMo has to be fun, not torture, and it has to produce a draft I can be proud of.

Thus, my goals for NaNoWriMo are a little more stringent than those of many other NaNoWriMoers:

• I have to tell a story that I'm willing to live with after November.

• I have to tell that story, and not tell around that story.

• Lastly, I have to write as though I'll want to read it later.

In short, a NaNoWriMo undertaking, for me, has to resemble in some ways the first draft of a short story. From the beginning, the hope is to produce a first draft - not just a 50K-word ramble. This of course means that I'll be heartbroken if November's output turns out to be unredeemable after all. I've got more at stake than I would otherwise. But it's having stakes in the matter that gets me to the finish line. And I've survived broken hearts before.

Hell, I've had to rip five hours of knitting back into a ball of yarn. I know all about surviving heartbreak.

OK, time to unravel another 15 rows of lace... *grooooan*

Wow. Not a heck of a lot of novel gets edited in an hour and a half. I got through about... three pages. Three well-marked pages, and lots of accompanying mustn't forgets in my notebook.

I have realized that A) the first scene in my novel sucks, but B) it has to stay, so C) I may end up utterly rewriting it.

This must be why the fate of so many 1950s-era story drafts was to end as a crumpled-up ball on the floor. Not unlike the fate of several clinically depressed writers, sadly enough.

Well, more tomorrow. I'll be getting on a plane and heading off to Seattle. Which is fortunate, because the first scene in this novel involves a plane taking off at Seatac. I mustn't forget to notice exactly how the preflight briefing speech goes, exactly what Seatac's geographical relationship to Seattle is (with reference to I-5), and exactly how (and whether) the name of that aiport town is supposed to be punctuated. ("Sea-Tac"? "Seatac"? "SeaTac"? Er...)

In a way, that means my vacation is a paid vacation. I would be more jolly about that fact if I knew I actually would get paid, of course. But, as noted in the previous entry, you don't get contracted pre-novel until after you've novelled pre-contract. Whee!

In other news, I've started working on the definitive PDF template for archiving Neverending Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Stories. And I finally got a working cron job in place on that site and scheduled to prune the deleted items list every morning at five past midnight. Yes, it's procrastination, but it's productive procrastination, so shut up.

NaNoWriMo writers in search of something to get pissed off about should go here. (Nota bene: While this particular article is safe for the work environment, the rest of Ms. Case's blog is decidedly not.) Those who would like to refrain from bringing the gunpowder kegs of their tempers into close proximity with the sparks of Ms. Case's small-minded ignorance might wish to read this brief excerpt instead.

There is no market for 50,000 word novels. No real publisher will look at a novel that short, but it is too long to be published as a novella. It is pretty much the most useless length of story someone could train themselves to tell. Different word counts lend themselves to different sorts of stories, with different levels of complexity and character involvement. The 50,000 word length is what happens when a real writer gets stuck and has a story too complex for short fiction but not rich enough for an actual novel. A 50,000 word story is a tragedy which will never see the outside of the writer’s desk drawer. And NaNoWriMo is trying to teach people how to turn a passing interest in writing into a failure.

There is nothing wrong with writing only for yourself or for yourself and a few loved ones or for yourself and few drinking buddies. Writing to satisfy only your own passion in fine. Writing to only amuse a small group is fine. Writing a professional word count because the rent does not pay itself is fine. But forcing yourself to write crap for a month? That is just pathetic and the people encouraging this should be embarrassed.

A winning NaNoWriMo manuscript is a first draft. This is the main bit Ms. Case appears not to get. She is under the impression that a 50,000 word manuscript can't grow to a more acceptable novel length (or shrink to a lovely novella) on the rewrite. (She may also be unaware that 50K is actually right on the money for a YA novel.) She is under the impression, furthermore, that those 50,000 words are set in stone. That if they are crap on November 30 they will remain crap forever and thus be a waste of the NaNoWriMo competitor's time. Foolish woman, I say! Foolish, foolish woman! And you know what else?

The process of writing a 50K-word plot in 30 days is worthwhile regardless of whether a rewrite ever happens. Ms. Case is under yet another foolish impression: that our efforts are doomed to failure and our time is wasted thereby. I beg to differ. I have heard the anecdote repeated by various published writers (the source, according to Neil Gaiman, is Raymond Chandler) that every writer has a million words of crap in him, and the trick is to practice through those million words as fast as possible. 50,000 words is a fair bit of practice! And it's not just timed writing exercises a la Goldberg or morning pages a la Cameron. It's 50,000 words on a single story. So it's an exercise not only in writing, but in sticking with a single story for a whole month, and in getting that story told on a month's deadline. These are all worthwhile skills. No writer who takes on the NaNoWriMo challenge should be called a failure - and no writer who wins at that challenge should ever be considered to have wasted his or her time.

The people encouraging NaNoWriMo ought to be proud of themselves. By providing a well-publicized dare and an organized online community to share in that dare, Chris Baty and his Minions Of Love And Carpal Tunnel Syndrome have given us that psychological kick in the pants that many people need (and should not be ridiculed for needing) to go from "I'll write a book someday," to, "I've written a book!" The career writer ends up with a serviceable rough draft; the non-career writer ends up with an outlet for whatever thoughts have been prowling restlessly inside. And, hey, check this out, NaNoWriMo as an entity has raised enough money this year not only to pay its own operational costs but also to build three, going on four, libraries in Cambodia.

Ms. Case thinks that Chris Baty et al should be ashamed?

I think Ms. Case should be ashamed. I mean, libraries in Cambodia!

Now, the question of whether a NaNoWriMo winner should be encouraged to call him/herself a "novelist" is of course up for grabs. My friend Alma, for instance, says no. And her opinion, not unexpectedly, has made quite a few NaNoWriMo participants pretty angry. Rereading her article now and comparing it to the follow-up conversation I had with her last year, I think that's mostly because in her vehemence she appears to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I don't think baby-disposal was actually her intention - she clarifies her opinion in a calmer manner at the bottom of this page. If you find yourself getting upset with her article, do read this follow-up before saying anything rash.

Alma's opinion is simply this: if all you have done is pounded out a 50,000 word rough draft, claiming the title "novelist" makes light of the hard work that the career of a novelist implies: you write and revise book after book and you send them off to agents and publishers and you steel yourself for rejections and you hope against faltering hope that this time it's a buy because you've got a mortgage to pay and dinner to put on the table. Until you've been through that wringer, she says, you can brag that you've written a book, and it's a great brag, but you shouldn't call yourself a novelist, and Chris Baty oughtn't to encourage you to call yourself a novelist.

It's a valid opinion, and it differs from Ms. Case's in that it gets my respect. Alma's opinion is informed by somewhat more knowledge of what NaNoWriMo is about than is Ms. Case's - she understands the bit about it being a rough draft, you see, and Ms. Case does not. Alma's later clarification makes clear that her objection is simply to the use of an unearned word; Ms. Case's problem, as her encore elucidates, is with NaNoWriMo participants' use of their time, "using NaNoWriMo as their excuse to be inconsiderate lovers and friends.... making these excuses to people who have real keep-food-on-the-table deadlines to make and acting like theirs were more important." Perhaps Ms. Case only cuts slack for writers whose deadline is imposed by people who sign paychecks? All other writers - you know, us slackers who compose manuscripts on pure hope, not having yet enjoyed the level of success that brings a publisher's multibook contract - we're not following our dreams; we're just being "inconsiderate." (Gods only know how we're supposed to get to that level of success if we're not allowed to take the time to write now.)

And don't think she's backed off at all from her original epithets for NaNoWriMo participants:

...trophy wives trying to prove they have a few brain cells now that they are getting older and less pretty.... unemployed leech boyfriends who need to claim they are doing something besides shooting up and watching cartoons while their girl is at work.

Unlike Alma, who is simply arguing for one definition of the word "novelist" over another, Ms. Case has utter contempt for the entire NaNoWriMo she-bang and all its participants. She would be made happiest, I think, if one day she clicked on this link and got redirected to one of those "This Domain Could Be Yours!" sites. And she has advice for her NaNoWriMo participant friends:

There is also nothing wrong with loving books in general and novels in specific and not wanting to write one. Reading is a perfectly good pastime. Internet technology makes it really easy to keep a journal about whatever you actually do feel moved to write about. So maybe next November, fewer people will bring up the NaNoWriMo travesty. At least to me.

From NaNoEdMo.org:

What counts as an hour?
For the purpose of this event, an hour is any amount of time spent making actual edits. Clacking out words on the keyboard, crossing out things on the page, writing new words in the margins... Big structural thinking is more pre-prep. Besides, if I clocked every moment I spent thinking about my novel, I'd finish the 50 hours in just over 2 days. But actually working on it? That's another story altogether. And that's what NaNoEdMo is all about.

So, yes, I'm going to try for that 50 hours in a month thing. The month will be December. Ish. I'm actually attempting to get through one cycle by Jan 5, as outlined previously. (I think I need some sort of place to display that goal, prominently, on this blog somewhere. But I think I need to think about that later, and write now.)

OK, so it's not really a misery journey. I admit I am misusing the term. But, never having revised a book before, let alone one of my so-called novel drafts, and knowing how I start to get the creeping horrors when it's time to revise a short story... I am being duly pessimistic. Misery! Horrors! Novel Revision Hell!

Why am I doing this now? Well, it's too soon to start revising my 2004 novel. I am a firm believer of composting the first draft, having that quiet faith in round new potatoes springing from the rotten, sprouting remains of the old tubers you pitched out into the backyard. Also, which is more to the point, having the too-close-to-the-text syndrome something awful. And as for my 2002 NaNoWriMo expedition, well, it didn't seem as good a fit for what I have in mind...

Wizards of the Coast is seeking proposals for its brand-new line of fiction! Our exciting new imprint will publish science fiction, fantasy, horror, alternate history, magic realism, or anything in-between. If it can be shelved in the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror section of your local bookstore, we want it! We're interested both in the first book in a trilogy or longer series as well as stand-alone stories.

We are looking for the best, most original idea as well as compelling writing. We'll consider any style and subject matter. Please be aware, though, that what will count most for us is your ability to tell an exciting, original story in prose that makes us want to keep turning the pages.

To launch this book and the new imprint under which it will be published, we are planning a substantial marketing campaign. This book will be one of the most important that we publish in 2006.

So I'm considering submitting this novel right here. Worse case scenario, I have a ready-to-flog book that didn't get accepted. Best case scenario, I have a humungo monster marketing machine jump-start to my career.

Actually, the worst case scenario, if my paranoia is at all well founded, is that I submit it, they like it, they don't feel like paying me for it, and they'll run off into that misty territory where the legal agreement's "idea submission" subclause (c) meets the "waiver" clause, and they'll steal my novel. I'm hoping that someone who's more knowledgeable than I in the ways of publishing contracts can take a look at the legal agreement and advise me as to whether I should even be considering touching this contest with a ten-foot pole. (Yes, yes, I know that "but what if they steal my manuscript?" worry is frightfully amateurish. Look, I'm willing to quack like that duck if it keeps me from getting slaughtered like a lamb.)

But what the hell. Even if I oughtn't to submit, I'll have a finished novel. To submit elsewhere. And to shake happily in the face of Jethro and his Greeley Novel Finishing Month Pledge, which I have Undersigned myself to as follows:

Welcome to the Greeley Novelists Finishing Month!

We the undersigned vow to reach our own personal goals by January 5, 2005. We will encourage and applaud each other to strive to reach these lofty goals (unless, of course, we fail to reach those goals which gives the other GreNos free reign to change your middle name to "Nunn.")

We undertake this challenge knowing full-well that our friends, family and loved ones will be largely ignored for large blocks of time. We understand this is the same month as Christmas, New Year's Eve and probably lots of auto-ped accidents and that no sane people would even attempt it at this time of year. We don't care. We will do this...

Name: Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Personal Goal: Completing one (1) revision cycle on my 2003 NaNoWriMo Novel (working title: "The Drowning Boy") with option to submit it to WOTC's Novel Proposal Contest by mid-February.

So I got started thinking about it last night. I printed me out a copy of Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision technique and scrounged around for a one-subject spiral notebook and wrote down, "Theme:" ... and then I played video games until bedtime. But it's a start!

Better still was taking a longish walk down to the Whole Foods at Pearl and 30th Streets for some groceries, and rehashing the story arc in my head. Those who know me (and those who have lived with me) know that such rehashing was prone to coming out of my head. I talk to myself think out loud. Well, how am I gonna know what I'm thinking unless I tell myself, eh? Anyway, by the time I got home again with the cat food fixings and the sushi elements and the dishwashing liquid and the toilet paper (and the painful shoulders buckling under the weight of the two canvas sacks)... I had all sorts of insights about the story. To whit:

• The parallels, symmetries, and contradictions between the main character and his brother
• The odd sort of moral relativity introduced by positing a species that reproduces only by mating with drowning humans and refraining from rescuing them
• The difference between said reproduction and true sexual predation
• The way the main character's two closest acquaintances react to his time on land growing short
• And how life's basic unfairness doesn't let us off the hook from the responsibilty of acting justly.

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes.

I have not only crossed the 50K line, but I have also finished the story. That is so cool!

Well... there's probably a few loose ends that could be tied up. I still haven't decided whether Diane's parents get divorced or get back together, or exactly how Diane met Mitch. But these and other "what happened" sort of questions haven't left big holes in the novel - they've been sort of touched on and glossed over in vaguely satisfactory ways. No, the real problems with this draft have to do with the plot being as subtle as a concrete block falling on your head, and the moral of the story getting thwacked home with a sledgehammer. Editing this sucker will be a matter of making the basic story happen a little more gracefully.

Oh, and finally managing to memorize the Lenner/Wodemeier family tree. I kept forgetting which grandchild belonged to which daughter and how old each was and whether everyone's ages were plausible for the timeline. I'll sketch that one out when NaNoEdMo comes along.

So. Yay!

Tomorrow I'm probably going to get that short-short I mentioned turned in to somewhere or other, and not get a lot more done than that. Then, Wednesday, the first of December, will see those of us who can be bothered to show up having a bit of a celebratory dinner at Conor O'Neill's.

And then it's back to life as usual.

Now, if I can manage to keep up the 2K-a-day pace on all my writing projects, I will be a Golden Writing Goddess!

But unlike NaNoWriMo, in a normal writing life, I'll take weekends off.