Chris Baty's Blog, page 204

Roadtrip to NaNo: Creating 3-D Characters By People Watching

November is nearly here! To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, volunteer Milwaukee Municipal Liason Zhie shares her favorite people-watching suggestions: 

Greetings from Milwaukee, home of the devoted Brew City WriMos (how devoted? Try writing outside while it snows because the café is full and you’re still 300 words shy of your daily goal…).

While Milwaukee WriMos (sadly) can’t plan the weather, there are some things that can be planned ahead of time—namely the plot, main characters, and general setting of your forthcoming novel. When it comes to characters, stories usually have more than just three. By the time you get around to developing these ancillaries, it will probably be the middle of November, and may feel like an unwanted chore. 

This is where People Watching comes in. I have created more than one unexpected secondary character while People Watching (which I am capitalizing because it is a sport). To that end, I’ve compiled a list of places I like to go when I need to quickly develop a wordy wanderer. Think of this as your handy People Watching cheat sheet, useful for those moments when you realize that your character’s child’s English teacher is in desperate need of some depth.

Colleges or Universities

Campuses that allow the public into places like the student union or library can be ideal for people-watching. Think about it: students, faculty, administrators, parents, and custodial workers all frequenting the same narrow paths. Campuses are some of the most densely populated places, and the number one stop on my list.

Museums

Public museums not only encourage People Watching, they are also a great place for setting immersion. Writing a historical novel about a Pharaoh? Time to head over to the Ancient Egypt wing. Traveling back in time to the Triassic Period? Maybe you’ll find a bench near the archaeology exhibit. If you’re lucky, like we are in Milwaukee, your museum might even have a weekly free day for residents.

Public Transportation

This is a great way to get your write-in started before you even reach your destination! Here, the Milwaukee County Transit System allows many a Wrimo the chance to ride the bus, gathering words as they type or scribble away—and the people watching is fantastic! One world inside the bus, and another as you travel along… I highly suggest a window seat.

Airports

While not a place that brings forth the Great Calm when I need to use it for its actual purpose, I find that the airport can be great mini-getaway for writing. There is no shortage of seating and finding coffee is incredibly easy. It is pretty exhilarating to write in such a high energy atmosphere, and the People Watching is spectacular. Everyone is so flustered that they barely notice you compulsively taking notes about them.  

Television Commercials

I offer the following from my co-ML, who uses the television as his optimal People Watching locale. That is, he shops for minor characters by watching commercials. His strategy is to look for commercial actors and actresses who appear in multiple spots – and mash the different bits together into a completed character. Voilà! People Watching, and you don’t even have to leave the couch!

Zhie is a storyteller who sometimes writes things down.  She is a published poet and award-winning playwright, but is happiest when writing fanfiction. Her interest in and research into Tolkien’s Middle-earth has led to panelist participation at events such as DragonCon. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science, allowing her to be a librarian by day and a college professor by night. She lives in Milwaukee County with her co-ML husband, Mark, and their ‘in-home petting zoo’, which includes their nineteen-year-old black lab, Smudge.

Photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Roadtrip to NaNo: How to Focus On Your Novel (Code Words Included)

November is nearly here! To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, Carrie in Wichita, Kansas helps you stay focused :

It wasn’t until 2010 that I actually participated in a NaNoWriMo write-in. While I had done NaNo two years previously, it also wasn’t until 2010 that, not coincidentally, I won for the first time.

Most of us have heard that writing is a lonely business. The common mental picture of an author shows a sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, stressed–out person desperately pounding away on their keyboard, surrounded by dirty dishes, empty take-out boxes and a very hungry pet quietly napping in the corner.

Being a writer means that you spend a lot of time in your head. Before moving to Wichita, I had never written with other people. I was the writer with the over-caffeinated brain and too-hungry cat. I lived in a small town and felt that leaving my house would cause too many distractions for me to be able to really get into my writing place. But, after two years of not being able to finish my NaNo-novel, I decided to give this group-writing thing a shot. At my first write-in, I spent as much time staring at my screen as I did watching the other writers around me. It was fascinating. And I did almost no writing. But, there was one interaction that inspired me to continue coming.

In a booth next to me there were two men: one was typing furiously on his keyboard—let’s call him Gary—and the other was talking loudly and intensely, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Gary was paying him very little attention. After a few minutes, someone from across the room called Gary over for help, and shortly after, the loud man ended up leaving the cafe.

It was an unremarkable scene, but one that stuck in my mind. A few hours later I found out that Gary, who I had thought was working hard on his novel while he had been typing, had actually been desperately messaging everyone in the cafe to save him from the chatty stranger. This is when I learned about the writing group’s “safe word”—a word that they had all agreed upon to use when they were being helplessly distracted and needed saving. Its use applied to situations large and small: from a talk-happy stranger to a long stint looking at cute animals on Buzzfeed. If someone said Peanut Butter, it meant that they were being overcome by distraction and needed help getting back on track.

That was when I realized how helpful a hands-on writing community could be. One of the hardest parts of writing is staying focused. I have heard writers complain, “I can’t write at home because the chores, kids, pets, Significant Other, or the Universe keeps distracting me.” And writing in public can be just as distracting: the noises, people and general lack of privacy can send our muses running out for coffee. Therefore, being in a situation that is geared specifically to helping you achieve what you need is the best of both worlds: writing alone, in public.

And most of all, don’t forget the Peanut Butter.

Carrie Lower is a mild mannered tax software geek by day and a secret Sci-fi Romance writer by night. She lives in Kansas with her 2 teenagers, 2 dogs and 2 cats.

Photo via Boston Public Library.

Roadtrip to NaNo: How Setting Can Act as a Character In Your Novel

November is nearly here! To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, volunteer Municipal Liaison Cadence hits you with more than a few thunderstorms from the Twin Cities:

Here in the Twin Cities, we spend November bundled up tightly: days are spent drinking steaming cups of coffee in order to keep our fingers from freezing to our keyboards. If you’re thinking about your novel’s setting while writing in either Saint Paul or Minneapolis (which are collectively referred to as the Twin Cities), the frosty weather is the first thing that might come to mind. In fact, weather is important wherever your novel is going to be set! Is your novel going to start out during a cold, snowy winter? How about a thick and tropical summer? Or maybe you want to go with the traditional ‘dark and stormy night’?

Beyond the seasonal setting of your novel, you can use the weather to set a mood. Maybe your character is having a hard day—her girlfriend just broke up with her and the gears on her bicycle won’t shift. You might as well throw in some dark clouds, and perhaps even a thunderstorm or two to reinforce the mood. Need a still, quiet feel? Consider a crisp fall day—where the only sounds to be heard are the crunching leaves beneath your character’s feet. The weather affects everyday life in a tangibly rich way. Paying attention to the surrounding climate will give your narrative a more robust and true-to-life feeling.

Remember also that the weather can act as a character in your novel: interacting with your other characters, changing the tone, and even creating situations that move the plot of your novel forward.

For example, if your novel is a romantic comedy, you can use that snowstorm as a plot device to get your two main characters snuggling under blankets for warmth. Or, perhaps there actually is a scary thunderstorm, which knocks the power out during a particularly heated fight. If you’re writing a gritty crime novel, maybe a freak tornado comes through town, which levels your main character’s house and forces him to stay at the same motel as wise-guy Vinny.

I challenge all of you to use weather to your advantage in this year’s novel (bonus points if you add a meteorologist!). After all, even if your story is set in outer space, there’s bound to be a meteor shower or two, right?

Cadence is a photographer as well as a writer. She has no spare time, but if she did, she would spend it knitting, reading and writing—all while drinking coffee. She was born and raised in Saint Paul, MN where she lives with her husband and her two kids (5 and 3). She also happens to be a Municipal Liaison for the Twin Cities region of NaNoWriMo.

Photo by Flickr user slimcoincidence.

Get Ready: 30 Covers, 30 Days Is Back!

30 Covers, 30 Days, our annual collaboration between NaNoWriMo novels and creative design, is back in full swing for 2013! Per usual, thirty amazing NaNoWriMo participants will be paired with thirty designers, who will create a work of art based on a NaNo-novel synopsis. We will be rolling out the chosen works throughout November: one per day. Now for the 2013 run down:

We are thrilled to welcome back Debbie Millman as the coordinator for this year’s event. Debbie is both a graphic designer and a writer: she is currently the President of the design division at Sterling Brands, the President Emeritus of AIGA, the professional association for design, and the author of five books. She also draws movies. When she isn’t writing and designing, she hosts “Design Matters,” a weekly radio-talk show about design.

This year’s 30C30D will culminate in an exciting event: a silent auction to be held early next year that will celebrate the design and creativity of our writers, and the amazing designers who’ve donated their time and talents. The auction will feature beautiful full-sized prints of each of the 2013 covers designed. All proceeds from the event will go toward NaNoWriMo, the nonprofit, funding our arts-education and writing-fluency programs, including things like providing resources and curriculum to teachers, libraries, and prisons. We’ll update everyone with details as the time gets closer.

For now, get your synopses polished and titles ready to post, because our nomination thread just went live!

Who knows, maybe you’ll wake up one November day and see that the cover smiling happily on our blog is yours!

— Hannah

Photo by Flickr user Creative Tempest 

Writing Is a Journey: Enjoy the Climb

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.” — Neil Gaiman

“I have a book in me.” Don’t lie—it’s something that we have all said to ourselves. I, for one, am pretty confident that someday I will write the next “Great American Novel.” Seriously. And I’m not alone. According to an oft-quoted 2002 article from The New York Times, Joseph Epstein states that 81 percent of Americans are in the same boat.

Chris Guillebeau, of The Art of Non-Conformity, takes the math one step further: “More than 80 percent of people say they want to write a book, but less than one percent do.” Which means that, four out of five of the people you will encounter today have space operas and spy thrillers, fantasies, and fairy tales curled up inside of them.

Most of these people will never write these stories down. They will go about their days carrying these unborn half-stories—periodically lamenting that they simply haven’t the time to write a book or, after a glass too many, explaining in detail why their book would be the next big thing, if only they’d actually, you know, start it. It is a beautifully tragic thing, how the books we never write are best sellers in our minds.

And that is where NaNoWriMo comes in: providing the one time of the year when we get to look ourselves in the mirror and force ourselves to write. To throw open the doors to our secret worlds and let in the light. What would be my best advice for going forward on your NaNo journey?

Don’t care about whether you’re good enough to write a book, or whether or not anyone will want to read what you’ve written. Write every day, regardless of whether you feel like it. Write to prove to yourself that you can. Write for the sake of writing.

Because here is the scary truth: Miley Cyrus is right. It’s all about the climb. That fat stack of pages at the end of November are half as important as the hours you spent forcing yourself to think of them. And think of them. And think of them.

Maybe you will end up writing the next Harry Potter (and dancing in piles of money) but honestly, who cares if you do? Writing is an experience worth having in-of-itself, no matter what the outcome is. The real reward in writing a book isn’t the manuscript you get at the end of it, but what you gain along the way.

You discover that your characters have the ability to surprise you. You learn the joy of losing yourself in a scene at three o’clock in the morning while the rest of the world is dreaming. You realize that this huge, mad thing you’d talked about doing for months—years!—wasn’t that scary after all. All you had to do was put one foot in front of the other, one word after the next. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you can make the climb with hundreds of thousands of others. Even though writing is essentially a solitary act, this November we’re all writing together.

Most likely, December will begin with you showing your novel to friends and family, who’ll congratulate you and then move on to talking about last night’s episode of Survivor. And that is perfectly fine. Because while they chat about television shows, you can let your mind wander to the characters you’ve created, the writing friends you’ve made, the hours you spent losing yourself in a world that was completely your creation. And if that isn’t worth the 50,000 words, than I don’t know what is.

The folks behind Grammarly, the world’s best grammar checker, is planning to throw its hat into the ring—but with a twist. We plan to organize the largest group of authors to ever collaborate on a NaNoWriMo novel; we’re calling the project #GrammoWriMo. Throw your hat in the ring and join in here. 

A self-proclaimed word nerd, Allison VanNest works with Grammarly to help perfect written English.

Connect with Allie, the Grammarly team, and its community on Facebook.

 

Roadtrip to NaNo: How Motown Can Teach Your Characters To Sing

November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, volunteer Municipal Liaison Owen in Detroit, Michigan, helps your characters sing:

Welcome to Detroit! While you’re here, make sure you visit the Motown Museum, in celebration of Detroit’s rich musical history. What better place than Detroit, the home of the Motown Sound, to learn how to make your characters sing?

I’m talking, of course, about voice.

It’s important for characters to have voices that are distinct and believable. The time to develop voice is after we’ve done some basic design work on our major characters: we have some idea of who they are and where they’ve come from. Now it’s time for them to come alive on the page.

Unique voices make characters real to the audience through dialogue and narration. One thing I’ve found helpful is putting two or more characters together and asking a question. Let them debate the answers. Script format can help make this quick, without any confusion about who is talking.

Then think about what makes Motown special: it’s the unique fusion of soul and pop. Use fusion when you’re writing your character’s voice. Flesh out their background. Where were their parents from? What TV shows did they watch when they were young; what music do they listen to? Who do they imitate? Voice is deeply personal and the influences on each of our voices are many and diverse. Motown was all about people finding their voices and when it burst onto the national and international scene, it changed everything.

Once you’ve got a voice that feels right to you, you’ve got the issue of calling it up quickly. It can be difficult to construct these voices, and get back into them quickly after we’ve paused to do something unimportant like eating or sleeping. During NaNoWriMo, we can’t always take a few hundred words per day getting back into our characters’ heads. We need quick tricks to regain their voices right away.

This is when I recommend images or collages. Sometimes, photographs can remind us of a person so completely that it’s like they’re in the room. Try keeping images around that are close to your characters’ appearance, or represent their interests and places that are important to them. You can also use catch phrases. No need to write them into the story, just go back and find a phrase (or even a paragraph) from your writing exercises that really captured that character’s voice. Rereading something like that can put you right back into that character’s head.

Your characters will seem more realistic if their speech is memorable. Practicing these voices will help you enter the world of your characters more quickly, and help them sing off the page!

Owen Bondono returns to Detroit as NaNoWriMo ML for the fifth time this year. He writes science fiction, magical realism, young adult, and combinations thereof. When he isn’t writing, he’s studying to become a middle school English teacher and working to inspire special education students in the city.

Photo by Flickr user lundgrenphotography.

Roadtrip to NaNo: How I Let Go of Setting, Overdescription, and the View In My Head

November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, volunteer Municipal Liaison Stacy in Chicago, Illinois, shares her struggles with writing about place:

One of the most important things I have discovered about writing is how I personally like to handle settings. In short, I don’t.

I am not really sure when my aversion to “settings” as a writing concept began. I just know that, somewhere along the line, I got really tired of trying to describe everything. Is that something a writer should never admit? After all, isn’t our whole existence predicated on describing things for other people to envision as they peruse the worlds we’ve created? But despite it being a huge faux pas, I’m admitting it. I’m a writer who doesn’t like to describe things.

If you looked at my early writing, back when I lived in various small towns throughout the Midwest and the South, you’d never guess this fact about me. My stories overflowed with details about how each room in a house looked, right down to how many feet the couch sat from the door. I wanted so much for the reader to see exactly what I saw. Creating cities and countries gave me fits as I tried to map out each street and building. How could a reader understand the tone of the town I was creating if they didn’t know the architectural makeup of every building within its borders?

Fast forward to today. Now, I live in Chicago. For many people, just the word Chicago evokes a stream of images and feelings. It might be the musical, Chicago, or the seemingly mythical and glamorous history of our crime-ridden early 1900’s. A number of people associate Chicago with government corruption, while others might simply think about cold and windy weather and looming skyscrapers like the Sears Tower.

As a writer, the randomness with which people associate images with words used to make me crazy. I used to struggle so hard to control my readers’ perceptions of my settings because I felt that I couldn’t trust them to figure it out on their own. And I wanted to make sure that what they saw was exactly what I saw. If I was writing about a place like Chicago, I couldn’t just let it be Chicago; it had to be my Chicago, as I saw it.

Being such a control freak ended up causing me to want to write less. Describing things started to feel like an impossible burden that I could never fully succeed in, no matter how detailed and precise I was. I now realize that my plight to describe things objectively was an inevitable failure because there is no such thing as objectivity. Even a concept as seemingly concrete as my Chicago is an ephemeral and constantly-changing beast.

And so I’ve learned to embrace the reader’s mindset. In fact, as someone who reads more than writes these days, I have become fascinated by how language feels after it is written. What images does a reader conjure from just a few simple sentences? Which are the details that are vital to the success of a place? Which are overkill?

For me, Chicago means hot dogs that have pickles, onion, and sport peppers, but absolutely no ketchup, ever. Other people might picture pizza with the sauce on top of the cheese instead of underneath it, over a thick and chewy crust. Or they might think about Millennium Park, Opening Day at Wrigley Field, and a river dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day. There are hundreds of different ways to interpret a word, a sentence, a setting. And that’s okay.

Stacy, aka “smwalter”, has been a NaNoWriMo participant since 2007 and an ML in Chicago since 2011. She is a licensed Illinois attorney with her own solo practice in Chicagoland, and she self-published her first NaNo novel, On Her Own Two Wheels , under the pen name Stacy Xavier in 2012. She is married to the most supportive husband in the world and is the dog-mom of Scout, the cutest Jack Russell terrier on the face of the planet.

Photo by Flickr user tellmewhat.

Roadtrip to NaNo: Add Heart and Soul to Your Novel

November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today Starling_Sinclair teaches us how New Orleans can teach us to turn our stale weeks-old plot into a rich and delicious novel:

New Orleans is a city of food, drinks, and affable atmosphere. Cuisine is the cornerstone of everything we do. We conduct business around meals; we catch up with friends over food; we love over dinner tables. It may therefore seem obvious that the best way for me to talk about writing is by talking about food.

Here goes: a good novel is like a bowl of bread pudding—comforting, warm, and absolutely delicious. But however enjoyable it is to devour bread pudding, it is incredibly hard to cook.

First, you need some day-old, stale bread. “What? Old bread? What can you do with that?” you might be thinking. Read on. Old bread is something most of us have. Something we were “going to do something with later,” but then never found the time. Now it is sitting on a shelf, with seemingly no good purpose.

Think about it. Don’t we do the same with ideas? We all have these great stories rolling around in our heads. Many of them have been baking in our brains for years.

The first step this NaNoWriMo is to take out that old bread, some New Orleans know-how and that idea you’ve been mulling over for far too long. Next, add your baking staples: eggs, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and a dash of vanilla extract. To your idea, add story staples: characters, conflict, scenes, dialogue, and description. All the normal ingredients that make up a good story.

Before you bake, you must add one more thing—the most important bits for both bread pudding and noveling: your own flair. Here in NOLA, every restaurant and café in the city has their own twist on the dessert. Most people add chocolate, fruits, or nuts. Or Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or pumpkin bread. That twist is what makes it special, so don’t forget it in your novel.  Maybe you’re doing a steampunk Snow White story, or a time traveling toaster, or a special take on a summer romance in snow. Whatever it is, add your flair, and make your novel a real treat.

There’s still one more key ingredient, and that’s the rum sauce. All good bread puddings have an icing made from melted butter, confectioners sugar and rum. It’s slathered over everything and elevates the treat. Think of the rum sauce as the special sauce, as in that key ingredient that comes from a place deep within you: your heart and soul. That’s what makes your novel finger-licking good.

Then come December, when the weather’s the coldest, you can warm yourself up with the greatest dessert, a tasty novel with 50,000 words of deliciousness. Besides, everyone needs a good novel to read during the wait between Christmas and Mardi Gras…

Basic Bread Pudding Recipe

You will need:

One loaf of day old French bread (or about 10 pieces of sliced bread, nice and hard)
4 cups milk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp vanilla (or be generous and do 2)
1 tsp cinnamon
Half a stick of butter

Rum Sauce

You will need:

Melted stick of butter
2-3 shots of rum, or as much as you want (optional)
A box of confectioners sugar, or as much until desired consistency

Starling_Sinclair is a librarian by day, award winning filmmaker by night, and part time novelist. She’s a New Orleans native, born and raised, and is proud to swim home. Her film exploits including the launch of her award winning web series, The Adventures of Keith Flippen, can be found at www.thezbbc.com.

Photo by Flickr user calsidyrose.

Roadtrip to NaNo: Let Your Novel Scare You

November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, volunteer Municipal Liaison Valerie in Miami, Florida gets lost in the journey of her novel: 

If someone mentions Miami, you probably think of one thing right away: beaches. Warm water, sunshine, soft sand… maybe a few people who could use some more clothing, but hey, we’re all beautiful in our own way. Check out that hot dude, or lady, or both, or neither—I don’t judge, and anyway, you make the rules; this is your imaginary beach. Cool, right? It’s kind of like the beginning of your novel: shiny, fun, exciting. You can’t wait to dive in and swim around and build some sand castles.

Unfortunately, also like your novel, there’s a lot more to Miami than just beaches. Turn your back on the Art Deco glamour of South Beach, hop on the MacArthur Causeway to the mainland, and head west—past the downtown high-rises, through poor neighborhoods with tiny old apartment buildings and rich ones with huge Mediterranean-style mansions.

Look at all that plot, whooshing by. It’s probably raining by now, too. Eventually, you run out of road and you hit the Everglades, the River of Grass, a huge wetland area that looks like a swamp had a baby with a lake. Welcome to the middle of your novel.

At first glance, you’ve gotten yourself stuck in a huge, mucky mess. You have no idea how to get out. Every direction looks the same: flat horizon, open sky, sharp blades of sawgrass poking up through green-tinged water, and muddy mangrove trees with roots arcing up to give you glimpses of things that lurk underneath. Things that may have fangs, or claws, or sharp teeth and large, snappy jaws. You’re frustrated and discouraged, and just about ready to give up, because there’s nothing you can do.

But wait… that’s exactly where your character is, too! You’re both at a low point, lost in a big scary place with problems hiding in every shadow—and some not bothering to hide at all. You’re both discouraged, unsure of what to do next. But unlike your character, you’re in charge. This isn’t the real Everglades; it’s your imaginary one, and just like back on the beach, you get to decide what’s up.

See that water moccasin swimming toward you? That’s a new subplot! The alligator with the gently smiling jaws? A new character to play with. The ibis picking its way through the shallows, hunting for bugs? That’s a startling twist that changes everything for your main character! That airboat barreling towards you at top speed? …That’s just an airboat, actually, you might want to move.

Just like Miami, what at first looks like a scary mess is just as beautiful and exciting and full of possibility as the beginning of your novel. Don’t be afraid of it, fellow writer: use it. Embrace it. Swim around in it and get muddy, knowing that you—and your characters—will get through it. And when you do, that beach will be waiting. Don’t forget your sunscreen.

Valerie Valdes writes fiction, poetry, essays and whatever else deep fries her brain chunks. She’s been a Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo for eight years and loves to help other writers with thorny plot problems. When not writing, Valerie can be found reading, watching cartoons, playing video games, and generally puttering around the internet. She has an unhealthy obsession with beer despite not actually liking the taste. She lives in Miami, Florida, with her husband, toddler and four cats.

Photo by Flickr user blakta2.

CWI Anywhere! Jersey City Writers on How Writing Brings People Together

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. In the new adventures of Come Write In Anywhere!, intern Steve Genise sits down with Jim DeAngeles, co-organizer of an independent writers’ collective to talk about deadlines and diversity:

First, tell me more about Jersey City Writers.

Jersey City Writers (JCW) is an independent writers collective that grew out of a Meetup group.  JCW is a community of dedicated scribes who seek to develop and explore their craft by interacting with other writers. In other words, our mission is to help each other write.

That’s awesome! We’re totally on board with that mission. What are your members like?

JCW membership is diverse, and our members’ careers run the gamut from students and stay-at-home parents to professional filmmakers and marketers. In any given JCW meeting, you could have a corporate executive debating character development with a hipster software engineer. In addition to pursuing all manner of careers, JCW is also a culturally diverse group. It is kind of amazing how writing can bring people together.

What does an independent writing group do exactly? (I find this whole idea awesome and I can’t believe I’ve never joined one before).

JCW’s mission is to inspire people to write. Twice a month we work with writing prompts. Twice a month we review each others’ work.

Writing prompts are, essentially, exercises in writing.  Members take turns providing subjects, and the group then writes about the given subject for 10 minutes. Each member of the group then shares his or her work. Prompts help inspire creativity, and we have had people turn prompts into full-blown stories or book ideas. Prompts also show members how much you can actually write in just 10 minutes when you commit to it. 

Reviewing each others’ work helps in two basic ways.  First, it gives members deadlines.  We have had more than one member, including myself, finish a story because they knew they had to submit it to the group for review. Secondly, having your work reviewed in the group provides immediate, in-person feedback. 

We also hold writing marathons and inspirational retreats.

Have you participated in NaNo in the past?

JCW has not participated in NaNo in the past.  We are excited about participating this year.  Our members are looking forward to the challenge! 

For NaNo, JCW’s program will include: an opening mixer/celebration, a number of writing marathons hosted at various locations around Jersey City, and a self-publishing event.

Finally, and most importantly, coffee will be able to keep you focused during the event, but isn’t all that fun.  Beer is fun, but won’t keep you awake very long.  Which one are you choosing for your event? 

You have to pick one!?!

You’re right, better play it safe and bring both!  Well thank you, Jim, and good luck with your November!

Jim DeAngeles is the co-organizer of Jersey City Writers, has finished stories due to his groups deadlines in the past, and may in fact speak more than one of the 75 languages spoken in the Jersey City area.  It is unknown what he thinks of the show Jersey Shore. You can find out more about the Jersey City Writers at www.jerseycitywriters.org.