FILL: Nononotes 10 and 11? Whoops, what happened?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Post 11 November 2010

You don't want to know. I was stupid yesterday, and spent most of the time correcting student papers using the keyboard, because I really don't feel comfortable editing using the dictation software. And I'm paying the price -- my fingers feel pretty much as if someone had bent them into various unnatural poses repeatedly, leaving all the little muscles twitching and complaining. The really bad part is that there isn't any comfortable position. So today I am trying to be good and stick to the dictation software. Look, ma, no hands!

Anyway, where were we? Over here, http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143199.html I talked about Chekhov's gun -- the principle that the various objects, characters, and so forth introduced into your story should do something. The gun over the mantle in the first scene should shoot somebody or something sooner or later in the story. When you're doing rough draft write-and-keep-writing work such as nanowrimo pushes us to do, it can be hard to go back and introduce foreshadowing, embedding those helpful little hints in what you've already written. That's really more for a second draft and editing pass. But, you can certainly put things in the scenes for later, giving yourself the luxury of expanding on it later. In this scene, have your character notice the Ming vase beside the door -- and later when he runs through the doorway, he can yank it sideways and drop it in front of the ravening zombie. I also mentioned the MacGuffin -- the Maltese falcon that we're all going to hunt for, or whatever. Things that the characters want to find or get. You can use those to help push things along.

Or maybe you would prefer plot tokens. Take a look at The Well-Tempered Plot Device by Nick Lowe, then set your character to collecting the six pieces of the miraculous key that will solve everything. How many places can those keys be? The answer, my friend, is written in your wordmill.

Today's well-aged posting looks like http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143586.html and deals with some everyday ethical questions that you might use in your nanowrimo wonderings. Mistakes in change, by a person or a machine? How about some possible invasions of privacy -- do you peek, do you complain, or do you just take advantage? Those little nagging promises? Do you really have to do what you said you would? What about various prejudices -- how do you deal with different sexual preferences, religion, and so on and so forth? Even if you don't like those particular incidents, you can always tailor them to your own story. How does your hero deal with the bartender accidentally giving them too much change?

Sigh.

There's a pep mail from the Nanowrimo folks, and bits and pieces on the nano site, talking about Week Two. Apparently Week Two is where a lot of people drop out. There's something about pushing through the first week, and settling into the second week, that raises lots of questions. Which is good, actually, because I think part of what Nanowrimo is really about is looking at those questions, and making some decisions. Am I willing to keep cranking words, or do I really want to stop and clean up? Can I give myself permission to grind out 50,000 words before I stop to clean? How do I feel about discovering things while writing? And so on.

I've got a quote from a Zen buddhist monk over my desk. In part it says, "every day in life is training... my future is here and now..." It seems to me that part of what nanowrimo reminds us is that we are telling our story now!

Anyway. Don't let Week Two get you down. Use Nanowrimo as a prompt to decide what you are going to do. Write now, write here...

Write anyway you can!

TECH: Raindrops keep falling on my head? Nano #12

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 12 November 2010

Hah! I thought I had almost gotten my sinuses dried up, when last evening I walked in the door of our apartment, sat down, and started sneezing! Spent the evening dripping, and teased my wife that I was getting allergic to home.

By this morning, the weather had turned into a cold, rainy slog, which seems to have been the trigger for my sinuses deciding to run again (not that it takes much to trigger them right now). Needless to say, this made the day a bit of a dreary one. Read a little on the computer screen, blow nose, sniffle, run the mouse, see what the dictation software makes of a stuffy nose? sniffle, grab another tissue, blow nose. Hold head where sinuses are aching. What was I doing, again? Oh, yeah. Sniff. Blow nose. What?

Aha! Over here http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143808.html the old posting suggests thinking about weather. Of course, one is likely to fall into the pathetic fallacy, having a storm when they're arguing, sunny skies when times are good, and so forth, but you can always use the blue sky and glowing clouds to remind us of beauty in the midst of the fight or some such. After all, you might notice the wonderful color of the leaves in the fall, or play games with revealing the seasons through various typical bits and pices (the faint green poking through winter's brown in spring, the rush of corn growing in summer, the pumpkins of Halloween, or even the snowy winter?). Heck, even people in Los Angeles and San Diego sometimes remember what weather is. And as for the extremes of hurricanes, tornadoes, and what not, they can hit almost anywhere, and provide a whole different twist to the story. The two men that thought fighting over lawn care was so important might learn something when the tornado brings down a tree across their houses? or not.

And, of course, weather has effects. When the snow drifts, even people with an SUV and four-wheel drive are likely to find getting places a bit slower and more complicated than usual. Or perhaps the rain makes sinuses run?

Who knows? But when you're thinking about setting, especially if your characters have to go outside from time to time, you might think about the weather. Let your character get dressed up, raincoat, umbrella, galoshes, and all that good stuff. Or have Joe come running in from the outside, drenched, without thinking about it because he was worried about what he would find inside?

Interesting thought. I know that the pathetic fallacy is having the weather reflect the character's emotions. But I have to admit, rainy days certainly don't help me feel cheerful, while a bright sunny day can lift my spirits. Why isn't that a fallacy? I guess there's a question of causality -- while the weather isn't likely to respond to my feelings, no matter how I may wish that it would, it is pretty easy to see that our feelings often do reflect the weather.

Maybe that's why people think the moon influences werewolves and other shapeshifters? After all, just because the moon doesn't change phase when a shapeshifter shifts, doesn't mean that the shapeshifter won't respond to the waxing and waning up above, now does it?

Go ahead, write!