Chris Baty's Blog, page 202

The Author Huddle: 6 Tips to Finish Your First Draft

This week’s NaNo Coach, author Kristyn Kusek Lewis, sat down with Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish, to ask his writing advice:

Wrimos, lower the bar! According to Daniel Wallace, one of the most important things you can do this month is to not think too much. He knows of what he speaks: He is the author of five novels, including the acclaimed Big Fish, which was made into a motion picture of the same name in 2003, and is currently running on Broadway as a musical.

He also happens to frequent the same local café where I often write, and we met there recently to discuss some ways that you can make the most of the month. Here, his advice:

Much of writing is just doing it. I have a sign in my office that says Sit Down in big letters. There’s a tendency to let writing fall to the fifth or sixth place on our to-do lists each day, after shopping or cleaning or whatever, but it needs to be first or second. Commit to having a messy house—it means you have your priorities straight.
Suspend your editorial function while you’re writing a first draft—don’t worry so much about quality at this stage. Whether they take one month or several years, first drafts are not meant to be good. Spend this month just getting the stuff out and then when the month is over, I would put it away for a while. When you come back to it weeks or months later, it will be easier to discover what’s good and dispense with the things that aren’t.”
You simply cannot be thinking too much while you’re writing a first draft—in fact, that’s a great way not to write. A lot of my students hit the wall because they’re thinking too much, they want to take it really slowly and agonize over every word. A novel is going to take hard work no matter how you do it, so don’t get hung up on a single sentence at this phase, just get it out and know that you’re going to go back to it later.
Writing is tough for everyone, myself included, so you can’t get tripped up by a lack of confidence—or too much. In fact, if you think of yourself as a great writer, that’s a death sentence. You must know that you can always improve. I know that I’m imaginative and can craft a really great sentence but writing is very difficult for me—and it should be. It’s hard work.
One of the great joys of writing is the world you create through your senses. When you miss somebody, you miss their smell, the jacket they wore… Focus on these details, because it’s through the compilation of these things that we slowly create the imaginary worlds that become our work.
It helps to not be too precious about how you do your writing. I used to only write in one place but now I take my laptop everywhere—the backyard, the sofa…working in different environments can inspire in unexpected ways.

Kristyn Kusek Lewis is the author of How Lucky You Are (Grand Central, 2013), which was a Target Emerging Authors Pick and started as a 2007 NaNoWriMo project. Her forthcoming novel will be published by Grand Central in Winter 2015. She is a veteran magazine writer and former magazine editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other national publications. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her family.

Top photo collage made using an image by melstampz.

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 6

Today’s cover was designed by Mark Dudlik, based on a synopsis by Cydney Lawson (Click through for the image! Possibly NSFW, if, say, your workplace would consider The Birth of Venus NSFW. Who knows!): 

Terribly Right by Cydney Lawson

When Stacia Daniels decides it’s finally time to (literally) take the plunge and have sex for the first time with her boyfriend of a year, she never imagined it would be so… cataclysmic. No, seriously, just as Stacia gets to the part of the whole business that makes all of the awkward shifting and initial discomfort worth it, the world ends.

Stacia’s first time just caused the apocalypse.

They did not teach her that in Sex Ed.

In the midst of the planet falling apart, Stacia and her boyfriend, Garrett, are separated. A year of surviving later, she’s given up all hope of being reunited with him. That is until she catches a glimpse of him during a night raid on the Piggly Wiggly she’s been living in.

Now she’s on a mission to track him down with her new, post-apocalyptic family: an alcoholic ex-priest, her old gym teacher, and Muffins, a half-blind, half-deaf dog. Stacia refuses to accept defeat, but can she ever have a normal relationship again? Could the planet handle it?

About the Designer

Mark Dudlik is Executive Director of Lost Creature, as well as the Acting Director of Operations / Graduate Advisor for the Masters In Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

NaNo Coach: What's In Your NaNo Emergency Kit?

This season we’ve brought on published authors to serve as NaNo Coaches to help guide you to reaching 50,000 words. Our first week’s NaNo Coach, Teri Brown, shares her words of wisdom below:

I’ve done NaNoWriMo three times, and won all three times (two of those NaNo drafts became published novels). To say that I love NaNoWriMo is an understatement: I love the concept, the camaraderie and the challenge. But, despite all this, it is still a huge undertaking—you need to be prepared. So I have assembled a NaNo Emergency Preparedness Kit. If I’ve left anything out, let me know:

Coffee: What kind of coffee is up to you, but being a Pacific North Westerner I’m very picky about my coffee. During NaNo, I utilize the drip coffee maker, the French press, and the Keurig. If you’re a tea drinker, just do whatever it is that you do…

Chocolate: It’s been proven that not only does chocolate stimulate your happy brain chemicals, but also the neurons that allow you to think up and type new words. This is fact.

A Cheerleader: Everyone needs a cheerleader. Writing a novel is hard. Writing a novel in 30 days is really hard. You need someone behind you when things get rough. Figure out who your cheerleader is going to be, pass them the golden pom-poms, and let them know when you need a good rah rah.

A Twitter handle and a working knowledge of hashtags: Even if you spurn social media, NaNoWriMo is the one time of the year during which you should crawl down off that high horse and ride the Twitter train. Why? Let me count the ways:

You can connect with thousands and thousands of other Wrimos.
You can get breaking news from NaNoWriMo Headquarters.
You can receive all sorts of tips from each week’s #NaNoCoach.
You can race other writers through @NaNoWordSprints.
It’s challenging. Try coming up with something cool to say in 140 characters late at night when you’ve been writing for twelve hours and nothing makes sense. It’s like trying to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle after imbibing a bottle of vino.

Mad skills for silencing your inner editor: This one is a toughie and many people have problems with it. Just the fact that others struggle with the big IE is a huge relief to me. Honestly, it’s like wrapping myself in a huge NaNoWriMo hug.

Try writing a paragraph and misspelling every other word. This will make your inner editor so nuts he, she, or it won’t even notice normal mistakes. Trust me on this one.

A healthy dose of denial. No, writing 50,000 words in a month is normal. You are not crazy. This is not insane.

A little self-respect and self-love.  I mention having a cheerleader above, but in reality, you have to be your biggest cheerleader. No one can win NaNo but you, and you have to believe that you can do it.

Go forth and write, people! 

Teri Brown is the author of Born of Illusion  (Balzer+Bray) and the Summerset Abbey series, (Gallery Books) You can follow her on Twitter, or check out her website.

Top photo modified from one taken by hownowdesign.

staff:Tumblr Tuesday: National Novel Writing...

staff:

Tumblr Tuesday: National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo
The official blog of writing an entire novel in November, NBD.

NaNoWriMo All Year
The unofficial fan-run Tumblr that brings you inspiration 24/7/365.

F*** Your Writing Habits
Writing advice made with much tougher love.

Go Book Yourself
Flawless recommendations for those of us just looking for something to read.

The National Book Foundation
The literary org that gives out the National Book Awards this month.

Photo by CMonteith via FuckYourWriting Habits.

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 5

Today’s cover was designed by Traci Moore Clay, based on a synopsis by participant Rachel Krueger:

Surface Bound by Rachel Krueger

It is the year 5770. The ice of the North Pole has completely melted, and all remaining land has been ravaged by pollution and mining. Humanity now resides in reinforced steel structures known as sea pods, deep below the ocean’s surface. People are kept separate from one another, fearing that real human interaction would bring destruction to a well-organized system. All they know beyond the walls of their rooms is produced by Human Interactive Virtual Experience Software, referred to as HIVE.

After a serial killer hacks into the HIVE Software and kills millions of people, Derek questions how safe it is to put his life in the hands of a machine. He escapes from his room to wander around the sea pods. The Engineers, who look over all of society, are interested to see how he experiences reality for the first time. The closer he gets to the surface and the more he learns about the system, the more nervous the Engineers get, until they eventually decide he has gone too far. They send out people to retrieve him, dead or alive.

Derek must make a decision—either spend the rest of his life in hiding, or head for the surface.

About the Designer

After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1993, Traci Moore Clay worked as an in-house designer for several local non-profits, and in a local design firm before founding Traci Moore Graphics (TMG), in 1997. TMG recently celebrated 16 years of designing award-winning projects. In 2003, Traci began lecturing in communication design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, teaching both typography and introductory visual communications. Traci is the past-president of the St. Louis Chapter of AIGA—the professional association for designers. She has been a member and president of the University City Education Foundation and the Municipal Commission on Arts and Letters for University City. She currently resides in Downtown St. Louis with her dog, Oscar.

Five Tips for NaNoWriMo: Week One

Our executive director Grant Faulkner shares his five tips to get through the first full week of November:

Studies to discover the key ingredients of NaNoWriMo success have been conducted by data scientists, wizards, alchemists, two plumbers from just outside of Cleveland, one rodeo rider, and a winemaker from Tours, France.

In our endless search to find the recipe for success, we’ve concluded that because everyone is different, there is no one formula to cross the finish line. The main thing is to keep trying new approaches, so here’s the magic NaNo recipe that works for me.

NUMBER ONE: Write your story. 

This is perhaps the most important tip for NaNoWriMo success (and a hat tip to my new writing buddy Hailey for emphasizing this to me at a write-in last week).

As Hailey put it, “Don’t worry about what’s marketable, don’t compare your story to others, just write the story that’s in your heart.”

Telling your novel in the way you want to tell it is what matters the most. If you do that, the passion you feel for it can be as powerful as Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper.

NUMBER TWO: Experiment (which also means have fun).

Writing with abandon is also an invitation to be playful, wild, and downright wacky. How to be fun-loving in the duress of such a writing endurance test?

I recommend donning a writing hat to remind yourself of the whimsical powers at your disposal, participating in some NaNo Word Sprints, and giving the Young Writers Program’s Dare Machine a spin or two. 

NUMBER THREE: Get a dog who will force you to take walks.

A dog clamoring for a walk can seem like an interruption at a crucial juncture, but dogs have a preternatural instinct to know when you need to get the blood flowing in your body. Or so my dog Buster tells me.

There’s nothing like a dog walk (or your version of a dog walk if you can’t get or borrow a dog) to welcome in unexpected imaginative insights and ward off back spasms. 

NUMBER FOUR: Practice the art of letting go.

No one can do everything. If you’re going to write a novel in a month, you have to let go of things. Maybe you have to let go of a clean house. Maybe you have to let go of social engagements. The house can be cleaned in December, and good friends will wait until then, too.

NUMBER FIVE: Practice the art of not letting go. 

It’s easy to talk yourself out of any creative project—you might get sick during November, win the lottery, lose your favorite pen, or fall in love. Whether you have good luck or bad luck, you committed to writing a novel. Even if you fall behind and can’t hit the 50K mark, it’s important to hold on tenaciously to one thing: you are a writer, and writers write. Keep showing up.

What tips do you have? I’d love to hear yours to help get me through those inevitable moments when I hit the wall and can’t see a way forward (it always happens).

— Grant Faulkner, executive director

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 4

Today’s cover was designed by Thy Doan, and inspired by participant Jason Black:

Freight Train Bennie and the Gold Run by Jason Black

During the Great Depression, a 12-year-old boy leaves home so his parents have one less mouth to feed. Soon he finds himself in a new life, riding the rails as a hobo with a new name, “Freight Train”.

There, he meets another “road kid” who goes by Shackle, and turns out to be a girl in hiding. As Freight Train is leaving his family behind, he learns Shackle is on a journey to re-unite with hers. That is, if she can stay out of the clutches of the menacing “Jungle Buzzard” hobo known as Sidetrack, who also knows Shackle’s secret, and isn’t above taking advantage.

Together, Freight Train and Shackle make their way across America, struggling to stay one step ahead of the railroad officers, and one train ahead of Sidetrack.

About the Designer:

Thy Doan is an independent designer and letterer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Born and raised in California and schooled in San Luis Obispo at Cal Poly, her tools of choice are of the simplest means: pencils, pens and brush pens. She apologizes if the occasional dog hair gets included in the mix (thanks to her pups Fozzy and Nico). 

Thy is all about finding more unique and uplifting or witty quotes and phrases to letter and apply to different mediums like plates or odd found objects. You should see the shop if you think she’s joking. And, if you’ve been wondering this whole time, how in the WORLD to pronounce her first name…well, it’s simple. It’s pronounced like “tea”, “tee” or like the letter T. You’re welcome.

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 3

Today’s cover art was designed by Cary M. King, inspired by a synopsis from participant Mantarro.

Only Human by Mantarro

It was generally considered a good thing when the existence of superhumans became known. 

Carter had a slightly different opinion. As a senior in high school with parents who worked hard each day just to bring home dinner, he knew the only way he would ever get through college was with scholarship money. Being a certified genius, he believed his academic future was secure until the start of his final year saw the emergence of superhumans.

Colleges began scrambling over one another to offer free rides to any superhumans they could find and the money for the other scholarships simply dried up. Despite repeatedly testing for special abilities, Carter continuously received negative results and was denied on every application he sent in. 

Then an opportunity, as ironic as it was convenient, allowed Carter to cheat the test and falsely register as a superhuman.

The following events throw Carter headfirst into a world where the line between ally and enemy is blurred and  in which, sometimes, being superhuman isn’t enough.

About the Designer

Cary M. King graduated from the University of Alaska, Anchorage receiving a BFA degree in Art with emphasis in graphic design and photography in 1993. From 1993 until 2002, Cary worked as an art director and designer for local advertising and internet technology companies in Anchorage, Alaska. In 2002, Cary started his own company as an independent designer and in 2007 became co-owner of Red Carrot Design. Cary is very passionate about design and in 2008 led a committee of local designers to start the 65th AIGA chapter in Alaska. In 2010, Cary was elected president of AIGA Alaska and continues to support the organization as an adviser. Cary is married to his wife and business partner Jill; they both love design, movies and the outdoors.

CWI Anywhere! Sarah on Bringing Writing to Low-Income Areas

NaNoWriMo’s Come Write In program has partnered with bookstores and libraries around the world for four years. This November, for the first time, we’re welcoming community spaces of all kinds to become novel-writing havens. Steven Genise talks with volunteer Municipal Liaison Sarah, who works as a clerk at Lewiston Variety II, a convenience store located in Lewiston, Maine, about epiphanies and sensitivity:

Thanks for doing this interview with me! First, what’s your history with NaNoWriMo?

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for a few years. The first time I didn’t win—I was pantsing a vague idea for a story about a college student who tries to assassinate Salman Rushdie.

It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever written (literary symbolism aside), but the experience of writing so much at once was life-changing. I realized I was capable of so much more than I thought I could do. This epiphany hooked me, and I believe everyone can benefit from this kind of challenge.

That’s pretty awesome. What inspired you to bring NaNo to your community in Lewiston, Maine?

There are areas of Lewiston with a low income/literacy rate. We don’t even have a bookstore in the city (we need to walk across the bridge to Auburn if we want to browse shelves of new books). I want to turn this lack of interest into a fervent passion for literature.

Flannery O’Connor said by the time everyone reaches age four, we have three novels in us (I’m paraphrasing this badly). But I totally agree with this, and I feel every soul in the city could benefit from attempting to put into writing all the shocking, tragic, and magnificent workings of our imagination.

What kinds of things can we all do to help facilitate writing in low-income areas?

First, I’d say: Host write-ins in areas that are within walking distance or near a bus-stop. Many folks in these neighborhoods don’t have cars, and getting to a write-in can be an issue. César Aira once said that if a reader really wants to find an author, he will do whatever it takes to find their books. I think the same goes for writing. If you really want to write, you will find a way to do it. It just helps if the location is easy to get to.

Also, be sensitive to the sting of the economy. Don’t have write-ins at coffee shops where the cheapest thing on the menu costs an hour’s wages, unless the shop is willing to donate refreshments to participants. That 501(c)(3) paper from NaNoWriMo is a golden ticket when it comes to requesting in-kind donations. If you promise the manager that you will promote the business, it benefits everyone. What business doesn’t like free marketing?

Finally, if I can make my plea for shopping locally, target the little guy first. I’m talking about the Mom & Pop stores. These are your strongest allies—they want to take part in the community, and they’re not beholden to corporate signage schemes or policies prohibiting in-store gatherings. Local businesses are much more amenable to standing out in the community. Also, they don’t have big budgets for advertising, so present NaNoWriMo’s Come Write In program as no-cost publicity for them.

In the end everyone wins. When your word count hits 50K, visit the Mom & Pop for a celebratory beverage. Your success will be a source of pride for them. It’s not just about numbers for small businesses: they love to make a difference, too.

That’s absolutely incredible that you’ve given this so much thought. One last, and critically important, question: Will the pens and pencils used at the event come out of your stock, or will you go through a competitor?

I’d get the pink slip if I went through a competitor! Actually, our distributors are very generous and donate goodies to us for events throughout the year—it’s a win-win situation. They get to promote their products and we get to host awesome events.

For example, we give away penny candy to everyone in costume on Halloween (but you must remove your mask—our security cameras can’t identify the dude in the Guy Fawkes mask trying to swipe a six-pack). We’re also gearing up for a Grand Opening which will include t-shirt giveaways, electronics, and other items donated by companies like Busch and Capital Candy.

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 2

Today’s book-inspired art was designed by Val Lehnerd, based on a synopsis by participant Olivia Hull:

Milk by Olivia Hull

Charlie did what he was supposed to do: he married a girl, he got a job, he found the house with a white-picket fence, he joined a bowling league. And for the last 50 years, Charlie has continued to do what he was supposed to do.

Except today he forgot to buy milk at the store. He forgot the milk, interrupted his daily routines, and on his walk to the store he must decide: go to the store or leave forever and earn a re-do for the life he was supposed to live. 

About the Designer

Highly creative, multi-talented, and award-winning creative director and thinker Val Lehnerd spends his time serving a multitude of clients designing everything from simple stationary systems to complex branding & Identities.

Val spends his free time as a graphic design instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he shares his knowledge and expertise with young future designers.

Well-known for his ability to work through complex projects, Val is able to infuse his creative talents with his clients’ needs. He strives to continuously expand the boundaries of design, collaborative approach and creativity to deliver spectacular Individualized results.

Val’s passion for his profession is evident by his involvement in the design community and his involvement in organizations such as AIGA, the Professional Association for Design, where he has served on the board of directors in several positions, and now serves as President of AIGA Las Vegas.

Val received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Studio Art with emphasis in Visual Communications from the University of Arizona graduating the top of his class with high honors Magna Cum Laude.