Pure understanding of NaNoWriMo

Seven years has passed since I wrote my first NaNoWriMo novel.  It was called Of a Demon, and it was about an organization of psychics who policed themselves, except for one (the main character) who they suspect killed his twin sister in order to absorb her power, but actually he was framed.  It was awful, in fact the worst, and this is not surprising.  I didn't expect to do anything with it.  I just wanted to finish a novel.

My best NaNoWriMo novel was the fourth.  It was called Stephen's Story and it was the expanded story of a character from another novel I'd written.  He was a member of an intelligence service and had a failed marriage and too many secrets to keep.  It's the only one of my NaNo novels I enjoy re-reading.  I have to wonder: is it the best because I was already familiar with the world and the character?  Was it the best story idea full stop?  Or did I peak there in 2007, and that's it?

This year's NaNoWriMo novel is more like my third: more experienced and coherent than the first and second, not nearly as inspired as the fourth, or even the fifth.  So maybe I did peak.  Great.

There's a competition in Canada and the US called The William Lowell Putnam Competition, administered by the Mathematical Association of America since the 1930s.  The median score is something like 2 out of 120.  It's what you might call "fiendishly difficult," or at least it takes a certain kind of mind and certain kinds of skills.

When taking Mathematics at university, you're told about the competition in 1st year, but it's 2nd year when you're most encouraged to enter.  In 1st year you don't have the skills, in 3rd year you know too much.  There's a pretty middle-ground where you know enough without all those facts complicating your pure understanding of the math.  Lovely.

Some people defy these statistics.  A professor of mine at the University of Victoria is known for doing well every time.  Somehow he can figure out these problems without letting his years of experience cloud his understanding.  It's a gift.

I didn't have that gift with the Putnam Competition.  And I wonder if this is what has happened to my NaNoWriMo output.  I learned what I could learn about producing a novel in 30 days, and then I learned too much, or I tried or expected or demanded too much.  So I can't get back to that pure understanding of what I was actually trying to write in that timeframe.  I've overcomplicated my skill-set.  I've un-learned my naivity.  Put me out to pasture with a Moleskine and a fountain pen.

Or maybe this is just an excuse because I've reached the notorious second week of NaNo, when the book can seem to fall apart beneath your sore and frantic fingers, all great plans for nought.  I should really just get back to writing.  The third week is bliss.

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Man interrupted at his writing (1635) by Gerrit Dou

Twitter trends from racism to censorship

Censorship was shoved to the top of my mind pretty roughly today by the Twitter trend #thingsdarkiessay. It has been in the top 10 trends for a while. Reaction has been varied. From "oh dear what ever next" to comments far less reserved. Generally, it hasn't gone over very well. We are not surprised.

The origin of the hash tag quickly became obscured by outcry about its content. At some point remarks began about whether the outcry came from black people or white people, (eg. "more whities than darkies mad at this lol") and whether this was relevant. A cry came up to start a #thingswhitiessay trend, but it didn't catch on.  Then, some tweets came through stating that the hash tag had originated in South Africa, and if you weren't from SA, "you won't get it." Someone explained: "'Darkie' is used ironically by black South Africans to refer to themselves and is not considered racist." They were saying that it wasn't offensive, taken in context.

But the rushing, random format of Twitter brought it pretty well out of context. And perspective of the twitterers was skewed by ignorance, too. Someone said, "Only in America is #thingsdarkiessay allowed to be a TT!!!... "land of the free" my ass!!!"  Assuming that the entire reaction had to be American.

Then someone who had at least heard of Europe asked, "So can US (& UK) reaction to #thingsdarkiessay be indication that black people within those spaces feel they determine what is appropriate?" General response to this spoke that Yes, black people world-wide thought they had a right to feel it was inappropriate no matter the context.

And of course the platform of the entire debate was eventually called to answer: "Twitter look at the trending topics, you need to do something about this."

That's where censorship comes in.  On the very same internet sensation that brought us the #IranElection hash tag, kicking oppression in the nuts with the steel-toed boot of free information, we have a cry to "do something about this," maybe make the hash tag invisible on home pages, or worse, delete tweets that cite it.

Deleting those tweets would not delete the original intent of the hash tag, good or bad.  It would not delete the opinions of the people who responded either for or against it, whether they understood it or not. It would not increase understanding in any way at all.  And it certainly won't stop the next revolution or misunderstanding, what it might be, from exploding out of the internet and into the brains of the connected. It would not even convince those who are afraid of the trend that they were safe, although it might give a little salute to those who would like everything to be squeaky clean on the outside at least.

There are now thousands more tweets in the #thingsdarkiessay trend than when I started writing this post.  Most of them are the same: they say the trend is sad, they swear their indignation, they suggest that if everyone stopped complaining about it the trend would disappear.   In the whole, I haven't seen more than a few that respond to the idea of saying what a "darkie" might say, and those that have are mostly nonsense.  I, too, think they're sad.  It's a poor thing to witness when there are a lot of other better trends in human thought that might be seen.  But I still hope that it isn't censored.  I don't prefer blindness to sight in any situation.  It just doesn't do any good.

NaNoWriMo is not what it used to be

NaNoWriMo is not what it used to be.  When I started, back in 2002, it was a little website with a few thousand people, and now there are hundreds of thousands of people and the website is regularly broken--

Wait though, it's not a website. It's an group that organizes a massive write-a-thon, although the buddies lists don't work and the forums are filled with chatter and noise--

No, that isn't right either.

The website itself calls NaNoWriMo an "approach to novel writing" that values "enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft." It is "for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved" and "the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output."

So NaNoWriMo is an approach to novel writing.  And that approach is definitely not what it used to be, because it used to be for me, and now I'm not so sure.  Really, I'm not what I used to be.

Every time I read NaNo advice that explains how to break up contractions to add words, I wince.  When I come across blog posts extolling segues into other stories (like the famous "If your book starts to suck... have one of the characters start their own book, right in the novel!") I slink away.  I shrug my shoulders at people who question if they can participate by writing 50,000 words of free association or describing everything they see, because I'm unwilling to discourage someone from writing, no matter the method.  Don't even get me started on people who write 30 or 40 thousand words and then stop, saying, "Well I know I've won, because I know I would have finished."  This stuff is not for me.

I'm happy to value enthusiasm and perserverence over painstaking craft, at least sometimes.  I think that when you're starting to write, then anything that helps you write is a great thing.  I know NaNo worked for me when all I'd written was a few dozen poems, some short stories and the beginning of about a hundred novels.  It worked to make me finish a novel, so I could figure out what I wanted to write.  So I could finish another novel, and then edit.  So I could finally write and edit something to the point when it was good.  Anything that helps that process has got to be worthwhile.

But when I come to this: "the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output," I have to face up to the fact that I've changed.  And after mourning for a moment, I can realize that this is a wonderful thing, to have changed.  That my writing and my writing habits are better** than they were.  I'm no longer using NaNoWriMo to make myself write, because I'd be writing the rest of the year anyway.  Now I use it for the sense of community, and to allow myself to experiment with new styles of writing, new genres, and themes I might otherwise avoid.  It's become a month-long stretching and breathing exercise to look forward to during the other eleven months of hard work.  Hard work is great, but sometimes you just have to breathe.

So my NaNoWriMo has changed, but my NaNo experience is not every person's NaNo experience.   And whatever works for whoever participates is exactly what that person needs.  They know, deep down, whether they're "cheating" and whether their plans will help their writing or if it's just something to do.  And it's okay if it's just something to do.  It's also okay to break the rules.  This is why the NaNoWriMo Rebels exist: they have recognized the value of the idea beyond the set guidelines.  And only each individual participant knows if it is worthwhile for them, or if they shouldn't bother.  It's not for others to judge.  NaNo is not a website or a group, and it doesn't even have to be an approach.  At its heart it's an idea, and a great one: "If you want to write, you should write."  Hallelujah, amen.

I'm not a rebel.  I'm going to write the 50,000 word original novel within the 30 days, and validate as instructed.  And I'm going to continue stepping sideways out of conversations that question whether others' participation is valid.  Good luck to everyone, whether it's your first time or your tenth, and good luck to the Rebels also, however you're doing it, however it's useful to you, and even good luck to you 50,000 word free-association people: there, I've said it.  It's November.  Get writing!

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** Listen. When I say "better" I mean "better for me." Not necessarily you. That's the point of this post. All right? Good.

Welcome to nowhere! You'll never forget it

When I was 9 or 10 years old and started reading everything Stephen King had yet written, I realized very quickly how interlinked his stories were. They took place in little towns, fictional or otherwise, around Maine. The towns knew about each other. Their politics, personal and professional, were intermingled. Many characters appeared or were mentioned in more than one book. And crazy, amazing, sometimes terrible things happened in them al the time. All of this meant that Stephen King's world, although seemingly the same as our own, was alive in itself. It was a setting that added loads to the stories he told. If someone were to ask me my favourite fictional town now, I would say "Derry" without hesitation. Though I would never want to go there! It doesn't even exist, and yet I'm glad it doesn't exist a long, long way from where I live.

I don't have to describe how fantasy stories have been using this "living setting" tactic forever. And a lot of good science fiction figured this out with their ships: the Millennium Falcon is a great setting unto itself, as is Serenity, Nostromo, and the Enterprise (pick your model depending on your age.) This isn't the same as having a cool ship. Star Destroyers, Borg cubes and Shadow vessels are all cool ships, but they aren't unforgettable settings like Ten-Forward or Serenity's cargo-hold. The latter add something else to where the characters are. They have history, depth, and they're irreplaceable in some way. You can always replace one X-Wing with another. But when the Falcon is gone, it's just gone.

Even vehicles can be big enough in the audience's mind to be a great setting: the General Lee, a time-travelling DeLorean, and Dean Winchester's Impala. I visited Universal Studies when I was a little girl and have a photograph of myself inside KITT. I remember he even spoke to me. This impressed me a heck of a lot more than the E.T. ride.

Maybe it all seems like common sense, but this value of setting is easily forgotten in the effort to create characters and a story. It's easy to think that just any place will do for the introduction of the hero, the downfall of the villain, whatever. It's the action, the dialogue, the smarmy expression on Dr. No's face that makes the scene. But what about the evil lair? It's good to remember how much more can be added by having events happen somewhere that means something to the reader. And it's great to know that the place you create might live on in someone's mind, with Twin Peaks creepiness, or Middle Earth clarity.

There's a Dictionary of Imaginary Places that I would love to browse. Let me know if you've read it.

The Point is that we're all Wild Things

An article at Guardian.co.uk examines a reaction that says Where the Wild Things Are is too scary for children, could cause nightmares, and should be avoided. This debate is inspired by the new film by Spike Jonze that's due out in December. And it's making me think.


The story is about Max, a little boy, who is sent to his room without dinner for being bad. He imagines a world where he's king of all the monsters, and in his imagination a whole wildnerness grows in his bedroom. But he eventually gets homesick and returns. From the Guardian article:

"This is a classic hero's story in which the protagonist undertakes a journey and returns a wiser person," (Professor Holly) Willett, an expert on children's literature, has argued in the American press. And Sendak's original tale has certainly stood the test of time: it is a reliable classic on the shelves of middle-class toddlers on both sides of the Atlantic and in 1983 composer Oliver Knussen turned it into a one-act opera that has joined the modern repertoire.

The article also mentions other popular scary stories from the Brother Grimm and Roald Dahl. And the general question seems to be not whether the stories are frightening - because they are, we know that - but whether they're harmful to children, or just all right, or even helpful.

Roger McGough, a poet, notes that the story scared his children but they went back to it because, "It is a scariness that you can control and that ends happily." And child psychologist Ruth Coppard says, "There is that pleasurable fear: you are safe but not safe. And that seems to exist in most cultures. It is the reinforcement of the safety." When Max gets home his mother still loves him. Dinner is still hot. What's better than that? Yet still some people are unconvinced.

A friend has a quote by Alfred Hitchcock in her signature line. It says, "Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare." I don't think Hitchcock wrote children's stories, but some things transcend age. Nightmares certainly do.

I usually try to be modest, but I think I'm the perfect person to comment on this phenomenom of safe/not-safe and whether it's useful. I watch horror movies as a pick-me-up. I might put Stephen King's It face-down in a drawer so it doesn't stare at me while I'm sleeping, but I still need a copy in the house. It's one of my favourites. Sometimes I have night terrors that make me wonder, in the darkest hours of night, if I could be connected to some awful other world, glimpsed only in the rapid-heartbreat hyperventilating seconds before I really wake up. And yet I don't want to stop having them altogether, because I think that darkness is actually a part of me. I don't want to be divorced from my own mind, and my own imagination, and even my own worst nightmares.

If this stuff is inside you anyway, you have to turn and fight it. No one ever defeats the monster by running away. The monster always follows. Children know this perhaps better than adults. They understand the inevitable. It's why they sacrifice one leg to the monster under the bed, while the rest of them suffocates under the blankets. It's why no matter how many reassurances a parent gives, there are no illusions about the monster in the closet. It's still there, waiting.

Children will be scared. We can protect them by not throwing things at them they don't yet understand and certainly don't have to experience: gory crime fiction? Not so much. Budgeting for alimony, random violence, witnessing abuse. These things will sadly come up eventually. Later. But the fear and hope that children already have, for the monsters in the closet, anger at their parents, at their siblings, a sense of adventure and rebellion, testing their own power, rage, loneliness, homesickness - it's already inside of them. We're too late anyway. Let them explore.

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Updated to add: Last night on an episode of The Simpsons a faux-version of Where the Wild Things Are was used to illustrate the fears Lisa repressed because she wasn't allowed to "just be a kid." I have no idea when the episode first aired but it's pretty interesting. (In the end she finds the monsters cute as well as scary. Huh.)