Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 372

So you want to write a novel

Via Mary Robinette Kowal:

Yes, it is true, I have run into friends like this.  And yes, you know who you are.  This had me laughing so hard that I almost decided to… well, write a novel:

[image error]

The new car, 2 weeks later

We've been driving our new 2011 Kia Sorento for just over 2 weeks now and I figured it was time to summarize my thoughts on the experience so far.  Keep in mind that prior to this, I drove a 1997 Saturn SL1, which I bought new in late 1996 and on which put more than 120,000 miles.  It had power Nothing but overall I was happy with it.

If I was happy with the Saturn, I have been absolutely delighted by our new Kia.

Week took the Kia on a long weekend road trip to New York last weekend and it performed flawlessly.  I had the opportunity to make use of the cruise control, which made the long drive a lot easier on my knees and which also improves the gas mileage.

The car is bigger and roomier than what I am used to.  On Thanksgiving, our friends, with whom we were having dinner, asked us if we could bring an extra table.  We happened to have a spare dining room table and I was able to fit it easily into the cargo area of the car without having to move the rear seats.  It fit perfectly.  Having a lot of space back there makes life easier.  In the past, we've stuffed our Christmas trees awkwardly into one or another of our smaller cars and drove precariously back to the house, squished into the drivers seat being poked and prodded by branches.  I'm looking forward to this weekend when we can fit it in much more easily.

I'm still getting used to parking the car, as it is bigger than what I am used to, but the integrated rear-facing camera and backup warning system made parallel parking up in New York so easy.  I really like that system.

Kelly's favorite feature so far are the driver and passenger seat-warmers.  And I must admit, they come in handy on cold mornings like this morning when I had to scrape ice from the car.  The defrost feature works fast, too, and apparently is integrated into the side-view mirrors, a touch for which I am extremely grateful.  One thing I don't like about the car is that it doesn't warn you when you leave the headlights on the way both of our old cars did.  But I suspect it shuts them off automatically if you forget, I just haven't tested it yet.

It's been doing pretty well on gas mileage, averaging about 25 MPG so far, but we've done roughly equal amounts of highway and city driving.  Actually, we've been using the car quite a bit, probably because it's new and that's what you do with a new car.  We typically drive 4,000 miles in  a year, but already we've put just over 1,000 miles on the car.

I really like it and I look forward to driving it.  As a car company, Kia has completely charmed me and I've been impressed by their cars and their salespeople.  And just today I got an email outlining our first maintenance, which, of course, is free.  My guess is that the service people will impress me just as much as the car and sales.

[image error]

(Not?) A Laughing Matter

Yesterday while we were sitting in our family room hanging out with friends, the Little Man dumped onto the carpet a bowl of apple chips he was munching on.  I picked them up and returned them to his bowl (5-second rule) and gave him the bowl, reminding him not to dump his food on the floor.  He grinned at me with his Evil Grinchy Smile and proceeded to dump the chips once again.

I did my best impersonation of a stern parent and I said (without raising my voice), "Zip, NO! We don't spill our food on the floor."

It was at that point that the little fiend turned out his lower lip and burst into tears.  I mean the waterworks were really running.  He was terribly upset.  And it was at that point that the usually even-keeled Kelly had to bury her head in a couch pillow because she was laughing so hard.  Of course, her laughter made me start to laugh and I had to turn away from the Little Man so as not to laugh in his face.  I pleaded with Kelly, "I didn't do anything wrong?"

"No," she said, "you handled that just right, it was just so funny, I couldn't help laughing."

It made me realize just how difficult it can be to be a parent sometimes.  I wasn't angry at the Little Man and I didn't raise my voice, but he knew he'd done something wrong.  I felt terrible for making him cry (and he knew that I felt terrible, believe me), but it was the right thing to do, regardless.

My parents must have had it easy, what with such constantly well-behaved children as we were.  I'm certain they will object to this characterization, but I recall my parents friends and extended family members constantly commenting on how well-behaved we were, and I submit that into evidence as exhibits A, B and C and rest my case.

[image error]

NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 29 – Pushing Forward

I finally got around to posting my novel progress for the day.  I ended taking the weekend off because we had friends in town and between hanging out with them and dealing with 3 little kids, I was pretty much worn out for most of the weekend.  But I was back at it today, working through a rather longish Chapter 26.  The chapter was made up of 3 scenes each of which I'd estimated at close to 1000 words.  It results in a 2,755 words for me today, bringing my 29-day total to 59,088 words.  I was happy with all but the last scene.  That one will clearly require some work.

But it looks like I'm about 4 chapters away from wrapping up Part 2 of the novel and that means that on Friday or Saturday, I'll start into Part 3 which I'm really looking forward to writing.  I'm still pushing to finish by about December 15, and certainly not later than December 20 since I don't plan on taking the novel on vacation and I'd like to head out of town without the novel hanging over my head.

Tomorrow is the last official day of NaNoWriMo and after tomorrow, I'll be writing a post on my experience with Scrivener 2.0 through this process, so stay tuned for that in addition to the usual stuff.  I'll also be posting about how much time I spent writing in the month of November which was a record-setting month for me.

Here are the stats for today:

[image error]

NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 26 – A 2-session day

I was up at 7am this morning and did the first of 2 writing sessions today.  There were two scenes in Chapter 25 and I felt like between scenes was a good break point, especially since I had other chores to do this morning before our weekend guests arrived.  Actually, there were not originally 2 scenes in Chapter 25 but the way I ended the first scene made the subsequent scene a natural fit to ratchet up the tension, and overall, I think it worked pretty well.

I wrote 2,153 words today for a 26-day total of 56,333 words.  Despite my win on the 21st and missing 3 full days of writing, I am still more than 13,000 words ahead of pace, which is somehow pleasing to me.  Glancing at my outline for Chapter 26, tomorrow should be a pretty fun day as well.

Part 2 has a taken a turn from what I originally expected, and I imagine that this part will change the most in the second draft.  But at least the changes have helped me push past the middle muddle and get back to my 2,000 words a day without much struggle.

Here are the stats for today:

[image error]

My Black Friday

I don't normally run out to the store on Black Friday.  But I wanted to pick up some logs for the fireplace since the temperature is really going to drop tonight and Kelly–who'd already been over to our local Target–said it wasn't too bad.

Keep in mind, our local Target is a 5-minute walk from our house. And if I was walking, it would be no big deal, but I was taking the car so that I could lug back 60 pounds of logs. So I got in the car, turned up into the Target parking lot–and was surprised to see plenty of spots–even spots up close to the front of the store–in which to park.

I figured that the parking lot must be misleading, but when I walked into the store, it was not more crowded than any other day.  I must say, I was bitterly disappointed. I was expecting to see shopping-drunk mothers bitterly fighting over the last Redskins Snuggie while their unsettled husbands shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, wondering when they could sneak off to check the price on the flat panel TVs on sale. Nope, it was business as usual.

I picked up the logs I was looking for but then I saw a Dust Devil on sale, and we've been wanting a Dust Devil to make it easier to clean out the messes Zach makes eating his breakfast in the new car. And then I wandered through Electronics and, seeing how it wasn't crowded, I browsed for a moment and managed to come away with a copy of Rock Band 3. Finally, I figured I'd go to the hardware section to pick up some stuff I needed for little projects around the house that I hope to get done today. I grabbed some hooks, some duct tape and string.

I thought for certain that the lines would be where I found the crowds.  And indeed, nearly every line in the store was open.  I walked right up to an empty one and checked right out with no delay.

All told, I was terribly disappointed. There's been all this hype about Black Friday and the crowds and the sales and the deals and the bargains and I couldn't find any of it anywhere. The morning news people were predicting a big day, with sales up 2% from last year.

Not sure where they are getting their numbers, but it's not from my local Target.

[image error]

NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 25 – Past the middle muddle

After a few days off, I was back to work early this afternoon.  I've been struggling lately with the "middle muddle" and felt stuck in the mud in the midst of Part 2 of the novel, but thanks to some reworking of my outline, and some quality thinking time cleaning 4 bathrooms and vacuuming all three levels of the house, I managed to push through it today and I feel good about it.  I managed 2,146 words for a 25-day total of 54,180 words.

I had intended to treat the holiday today as a "weekend" day and get up at 7am and do my writing, but I slept in.  I plan on being back to my normal routine tomorrow.

In the meantime, I was pleased with what I wrote today.  It was a brute-force push through the middle-muddle, but it introduced two significant subplots which will carry me through the remainder of Part 2 (roughly 6 more chapters) with what I think is a set of interesting and exciting story lines.  This is around where I died last year after winning NaNoWriMo.  For some reason, the pressure is off when you win, and that is a bad thing for me because I work so well under that competitive pressure.  Without that pressure, I have to work even harder just to get going.  But I think that today's writing was a turning point.  I'm already looking forward to Chapter 25 tomorrow.

Here are the stats for today:

[image error]

NaNoWriMo 2010 Winner!

You can verify your win today on the NaNoWriMo website.  I just ran my verification and was validated as a winner for 2010:

Now that I've verified my win, I'm about to tackle my 2,000 words for today.  Remember: I'm aiming for 90,000 words by December 15 so I still have quite a way to go.  Happy Thanksgiving!  And happy writing.

[image error]

My long holiday weekend plan

Since everyone has been posting what they will be doing this Thanksgiving weekend here is my plan:

Wednesday

Head home early
Clean up the house a bit
Work on more fixes for the novel outline
Write Chapter 24
Arlington Writers Group meetup at 7pm

Thursday

Early morning writing (Chapter 25)
Last-minute house-stuff
Thanksgiving with friends: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

(Black) Friday

Get up very early to… write Chapter 26 while everyone else is shopping
Hang out with friends coming into town for the weekend

Saturday

Get up early to write Chapter 27
More hanging out with friends

Sunday

Get up early to write Chapter 28
A little hanging out with friends before they head home
Cleaning up the house
Dexter and Boardwalk Empire

What will you be doing for your holiday weekend?

[image error]

Harry Potter and the Unoriginal Previews

Kelly and I had a chance to see the latest Harry Potter installment recently. It is the first time I'd been to the movies in many months. I enjoyed the movie despite its cliffhanger ending and having to wait a while to find out what happens. (I only read the first book and I've managed to avoid most spoilers somehow.) It was nice getting out to the movies, just the two of us, and I think we both enjoyed the film.

But something disturbed me before the movie even started: the previews.

I can't remember how many previews we saw, but as for the ones I do remember: Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Yogi Bear, Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Little Red Ridinghood. I'm fairly certain there was one other and it had the same thing in common as the first five previews.  Have you figured out what it is yet?

They were all previews for movies that are based on something originally in print form: comic books, novels, stories.  It made me wonder: is there any original storytelling ability left in Hollywood? Or are they now completely and utterly dependent on us writers for material? I suppose as a writer one might see that as a good thing, but I the movies made from previous material are rarely as good as the original material and just about everyone knows it. But I imagine that they are generally cheaper than coming up with an original idea, and cost-effective since there is already an audience base for the original work.

Seems pretty lazy to me, and I'm not sure what disappoints me more: the sheer laziness of Hollywood, or the sheer laziness of audiences who would rather see the original twisted out of form on the big screen than read it in its original from the library.  (I count myself in the latter group; as I said at the outset, I only read the first Harry Potter book, but I've seen all of the movies.)

[image error]