writing
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Another problem has been and remains that I don’t have a title for it. Why are titles so hard? ↩︎
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Hard to find who, but it seems to have been Hemingway. Whose writing I don’t like, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. ↩︎
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I have a vague memory of someone in a film or TV programme mis-saying that as “beneath the weather,” but I can’t think who, or where. I kind of want it to be Josie in Twin Peaks, but I’m not sure. ↩︎
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I could write posts in advance and set them to publish on a future day, but there’s no need for that. Maybe when I go on holiday I’ll have to do that. ↩︎
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And around 9000 of other stuff. ↩︎
- We'll be able to buy Mitch Benn's mighty 'I'm Proud of the BBC' in downloadable single format. So head off and do that now, and help it to chart. I'll wait.
Actually, it’s not yet midnight as I type, and I’ve just downloaded it.
NaNoWriMo is about to start. I'm having a go this year. Wish me luck.
I last tried it in 2004, which is much longer ago than I thought. I sort of had a half-hearted poke at it last year, but soon stopped. I’m hoping that expressing my intention in public like this will help to keep me going.
We’ll see, of course.
I see that the approaching start has brought the NaNoWriMo site to its knees. Oh well. Hopefully they'll get things back together.
To Nano or Not?
NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, and I still haven’t quite decided whether to throw myself into it this year or not. I’ve taken part several times in previous years, but never completed the 50,000 words. And this year I still have the novel that I’ve been working on intermittently for about four years, that I’d like to finish off.
Maybe it would be better, and more in the Nano spirit, to start something new. But I think if I were to do that, I’d never finish this one, and it would sit there forever, haunting me. Maybe taunting me too, who knows.
I should have a better chance of getting the word count up this year, as I have a longer commute, and I usually get a seat at or near the start of the longest part (Dalston Junction to West Croydon, if you’re interested). So it should be entirely possible to get two free blocks of writing time each weekday. But I have found it to be strangely offputting to write in that environment, when there’s a person sitting on either side of me.
Sure, they’re probably not in the least interested in what I’ve got going on, but as Stephen King says in On Writing, you’ve got to write the first draft with the door closed.
Still, I have recently been looking at the novel again, and I think I’ve worked out how to end it. That has always been the problem for me: I don’t do a detailed plot, but I need to know how a story’s going to end if I’m going to have any chance of finishing it. If I just start writing with only an idea, maybe a setting and some characters, I tend to meander around all over the place and never get anywhere. Or at least, not to a sensible end.
I don’t have to know much about the route, but I need to know the destination, in other words. So as I now know the destination — or at least have a much clearer idea of it — I think it’s time to take one last run at this thing.
But this is me declaring that I’m throwing my hat in the Wrimo ring. I’ve signed up, and even given it a working title1 — by raiding that fount of quotes, The Tempest.
Setting Myself Free of the Bear (and Others)
If you work with plain text, as I prefer to, then you probably try out different text editors from time to time (or, you know, constantly). I recently tried out a nice one called Bear. It’s an attractive environment to write in, syncs well between Mac, iPhone, and iPad, has good previewing and exporting features, as well as a host of different themes to suit your preferences. All in all, it’s got a lot going for it. I used it exclusively for a while, and paid the first month of its subscription.
But I’m dropping it.
The reason why is simple: although it’s all about plain text notes, it doesn’t store your notes as plain text files. Instead, it keeps them all in some kind of database and syncs that via iCloud.
Using iCloud for syncing isn’t a problem, but locking my notes away in a form that’s not accessible to any other text editor definitely is.
Its export features are good, so it’s not that your notes are locked away irretrievably. But while you’re using Bear, you can only edit your notes — or view them, for that matter — in Bear. And that’s just not how I want to work.
It’s kind of antithetical to whole plain-text ethos, to my mind. You should be able to switch text editors without having to even think about it. Just open the file in the new editor and get on with it.
Next I tried the unimaginatively-named Notebooks. A similar setup with the syncing, but you can point it at a directory of files on the filesystem. It has its own strangenesses, though, in that it wants to keep tight control of the directory structure, and when you look at the directory in Finder or another text editor, you find it has been polluted with plist files, one for each plain-text file.
So I dumped that one, too.
And right now I’m trying Ulysses, which is very much of the moment, because it has just switched to subscription-based pricing, and caused much furore in doing so. I happen to also be trying out the SetApp service, which is interesting in itself, and which includes Ulysses as one of the apps it makes available.
It’s fine, but is also prone to dropping the odd plist file in my folder, I see.
In the end I’ll probably stick with nvAlt for short-form notes on the Mac, using a folder synced via Dropbox, and Editorial on iOS. Not forgetting Drafts on iOS, of course, but you only type things there to export them somewhere else, really. And then BBEdit or Sublime Text for longer pieces.
Those last two might become the subject of another piece, about how I don’t get what’s so great about BBEdit. But that’s for another time.
Whether You Want To Or Not
“Write even when you don’t want to,” say some people encouraging us to write every day. That would be me right now. The “don’t want to” part, not the “encouraging” part. It’s late and I haven’t written anything yet and I’ve made this daily rod for my own back.
On the other hand, I do love to write, and I can’t deny that I’ve done more of it in this last couple of months.
Though, not, as I hoped I might, any more fiction. I’m still stalled in the middle of the novel which in idea, at least is nearly five years old. It’ll be starting school soon!
And I need to get round to submitting some of the other, finished, things I have. Because they’re no use just sitting here on my hard solid-state drive.
The Writing Process
In What Writers Really Do When They Write George Saunders gives a great insight into some parts of his working process.
What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which she’s already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we’re adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs.
Or “Writing is rewriting,” as someone once put it.1
It’s a good piece, and well worth reading. Oddly, in the printed edition (Saturday’s Guardian Review section) it was entitled “Master of the Universe.”
All the Things in the World
Do you ever look around and think how amazing everything is? How it all got there? And I’m not talking about the grandeur of nature, the glory of the universe, and all that. I’m talking about all the human-made stuff.
I have often found myself in the middle of a city, or looking out of a train window at a bridge or power station, and thought, “Wow: people built this. Just ordinary people, like me, actually made all this.”
Look at ancient buildings and you realise that they used to do it without the help of modern machinery, too.
And then think about the infrastructure that’s carrying these words from where I’m typing them to where you’re reading them. Hundreds of miles of fibre and copper cables across the country. Thousands of miles of undersea cables. Satellites, and the rockets to launch them.
We’re pretty amazing sometimes, us humans.
Like I say, I’ve often thought about this kind of thing. But today, while not at work because I’m a bit under the weather 1 I had a slightly different version of it.
I had a sudden, overwhelming sense of how much cultural work we have created. Specifically stories and TV and films. Though in fact it was comics that really triggered it.
As I say, I’m not at my best, so I wanted something simple. I ended up reading a bunch of comics on Marvel Unlimited. And no matter how many I could read in a day, I could only make the tiniest of scratches in the surface.
And in TV, Netflix seem to have a new original series or two coming out every week.
It’s not all great, of course. But just think of all those people, writing away, acting, filming. Making things.
Some More Bitface Thoughts
Something I forgot to mention yesterday was that I thought the “bitface” term was useful not just to refer to people who manipulate bits for a living (or hobby) — programmers, like myself. It can also work to discuss anyone who makes digital content: websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, and so on.
We’re all moving bits around. We’re all labourers at the bitface.
One Month Gone
As you’ll know if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve challenged myself to blog every day this year. Well, the first twelfth of the year (approximately) has gone, and I’ve succeeded so far (my problems posting last Saturday notwithstanding).
One or two posts were extremely short, maybe just a link and a few words. But most of them have been more substantial. So I’m quite pleased with my progress so far. I’m not sure that it’s making me write more — well, by definition it is, as I have to write something every day.1
So: blogging about blogging. It’s a fine tradition. And thirty-two days in a row now.
On Writing by AL Kennedy (Books 2014, 11)
Unlike Stephen King’s book of the same title, this isn’t exactly “a manual of the craft.” You won’t find much about the writing side of writing here; nothing about crafting sentences, forming paragraphs, developing characters or plots.
It’s less about the craft of writing than about the life of a writer; and it shares with King’s eponym the part-memoir approach. Kennedy spends a lot of time describing how writing has been bad for her health in various ways, and how in turn her pathological fear of flying has made the writing life more difficult, (travelling to North America by ship for a signing tour) for example.
The largest and most entertaining part of it was originally published as blog entries on The Guardian’s site.
It’s very good. And not from the book, but with Doctor Who back (and nearly finished) you should read her meditation on it and on the state of Britain.
Andy's unpunctuated ambiguity
“Andy Murray finally reveals views on Scottish independence“, says the headline in the Telegraph. It goes on to say he “appeared to declare his support for Scottish independence”. That “appeared” is key, because the lack of punctuation and capitalisation in Andy’s tweet actually allows at least a couple of interpretations:
Huge day for Scotland today! no campaign negativity last few days totally swayed my view on it. excited to see the outcome. lets do this!
The Telegraph is clearly reading that as “‘No’-Campaign negativity…” The negativity from the “No” campaign, in other words.
But you could read it simply as “[there has been] no campaign negativity…” In other words, the absence of negativity in the campaigning (by either side or both) has left him with a positive view of the referendum.
I’d guess that the Telegraph‘s opinion is correct. But it just goes to show… if he could place a quote character like he can place a tennis ball, it would all be perfectly clear.
Once again I won’t be reaching NaNoWriMo’s 50,000-word mark this year, but I have written over 30,000, which is the most ever. And I finished a novella at the start. So I’m pretty happy.
3,446 words today for a NaNoWriMo total so far of 15,724. That also completes a 20,000 word novella called “All Tomorrow’s Troubles”. Going well. Now I can get back to my novel.
This “short story” that I was going to knock out before getting back to my novel is growing into a behemoth. At 12000 words it’s thoroughly a novelette, and heading squarely for novella-land.
November spawned some words (but not that many)
I'm not very good at this NaNoWriMo thing, it turns out (again). This year I declared myself a NaNo Rebel (basically anyone who aims to write 50,000 words, but not of a brand-new novel). I had originally hoped to finish my previous novel before November started, and leave November clear for taking a big run at the new one, the idea for which came knocking when I was about three-quarters of the way through the then-current one. But as it turned out I didn't manage to finish it until a few days into November. So I decided just to count the words of original fiction I wrote in November.
Which proved to be just as well, because after just a couple of days on the new novel, I was cycling home from work one day when a short story deposited itself in my head, unbidden, but complete. I took a few days off from the novel to work on that, thus further ensuring my rebellious state.
As an experiment for my own interest, I also tried to keep a note of how many words I wrote for other things, both at home and at work; just to get an idea of how many words I write normally. I kept that all in a Google Docs spreadsheet, so I could get to it wherever I was. I’m sure I wasn’t complete in recording everything, though.
In the end I wrote 16,600 words of fiction;1 so comparable with last year. And oh, dear: reading over those old posts to get links makes me realise that this is the third NaNo during which I’ve been working on Accidental Upgrade.
But having said that, the thing that I’m underplaying in all this is that: I. Finished. My. Novel. 89,000 words of first draft, done and… well, left quite dusty, truth be told.
And a new short story drafted, and another novel reasonably well under way. I’m feeling quite positive about it all.
The Words that Maketh Novels
It seems like almost no time at all since I last wrote about not completing NaNoWriMo. But here we are again. A year passes like nothing.
I wasn’t strictly following the rules (but they’re only really guidelines, and optional at that) in that I wasn’t starting a new novel this time. I was carrying on the same one that I started last year, and I hadn’t written many more in the interim. I managed just under 15,000 words this year, which is slightly less than last time (and less than a tenth of my erstwhile OU Creative Writing classmate Karl’s crazy figure)
It has, however, given me a new kickstart, and I intend to carry the momentum onwards, but at a more manageable rate. My novel (working title Accidental Upgrade) currently stands at around 36,000 words. I’ve set myself a target of 80,000 by the end of February. That is more like the length of a modern novel, and achievable at a rate of around 475 words a day, according to Scrivener.
That’s much more feasible for me than Nano’s 1667. Though I’m just realising that I said essentially the same thing last year, and it obviously didn’t work. Still, I feel more confident this time. I wrote around 600 words today, and I’ve got Scrivener to help me keep on track.
Tell, and Maybe Show as Well
Prospective -- or actual -- writers are always given the advice, 'show, don't tell.' It's considered to be more engaging as a storytelling technique to let your reader know what's happening by letting them experience it via the experiences of your characters, rather than merely informing them what happens to your characters.
Good enough advice, in general. But there are always counterexamples.
This morning on the way to work I read a story on Tor’s website, which is almost entirely telling; and almost entirely wonderful.
‘Six Months, Three Days’, by Charlie Jane Anders. Highly recommended.
Link: Writers’ Bloc – a Literary Band
Writers’ Bloc – a Literary Band « East Kent Live Lit.
Some nice thoughts on what my friends in Edinburgh get up to with their spoken-word performances and chapbook publishing.
I really must get up for one of their performances.
NoNo
Well, this is my [NaNoFail](http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/658975) report. I managed around 15,000 words. Which isn't bad in its way, but is not only a lot less than the desired 50,000, it's also less than last time, when I at least made it to 20,000.
Oh well. The plan now is not to stop, because then I’d most likely never finish it. Instead, I’m going to carry on, with a much reduced target of, say, 500 words per day, and see where that takes me.
Edited to say: That’s 15,000, of course, not the meaningless “15,00”.
The Day After Hallowe'en
Well, midnight on the 31st of October is fast rolling round. We're not long back from a week in the Highlands of Scotland (very wet, but great, thanks). It'll soon be the 1st of November, which means two things this year.
Link: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo
How good scripts get turned into bad movies: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo
Link: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett
"The first step is waking up." Brilliant: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett