Here We Go Again …

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who write blog posts and those who are trying NaNoWriMo … again. (If you don't know about NaNoWriMo, see my earlier posts about it.) See you on December 1.

NaNoWriMo Redux

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) once and get it out of their systems; and crazy people, like me, who vow to participate every year. I haven't done it in a while—not really, anyway. The last couple of Novembers I've made half-hearted attempts, but have given up pretty early on in the process.

So why do I think this year will be any different? I don't necessarily. But I do know that I haven't been doing much (read any) of my own writing for quite a long time. And that's a bad thing. Firstly, because I miss it. I think about writing all the time. I've a got million ideas, and at least 100,000 of them are pretty good.

And that's the thing. Writing ideas are a dime a dozen. You can have thousands of great ideas. It's the execution of the thing that matters. Until you put fingers to keyboard and try to translate that great idea into a story, you just don't know if it will pan out into something real.

Next, I feel like I'm in a different place in my writing. This year has taken a toll in a lot of ways, but it's also allowed me to let go of some things that I was holding onto for the wrong reasons. As I have absorbed these changes (some might call it growth, but that seems a little grandiose; others might call it giving up, but that seems a little pessimistic), I see some lessons that might apply to my writing.

Letting go is tough job. I think it's one of my worst things. I think my inability or failure to let go has held me back in my writing. So, it's time to see what happens when I really let go. When I stop trying to control everything and let the characters and the plot take over.

This is where I think NaNo can really help. There's just no time to be controlling. You have to meet your word count. To do that, you can't keep going over and over the things you already written, patting yourself on the back for your brilliance or agonizing over your complete lack of talent. All you can do is get in your 1,667 words a day and move on. Sometimes, that's all you can do in life—put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, that's all you can do in writing—put one word down after the other.

So, here we are. I'm already a bit behind (big shock), but I'm trudging along at 8,760 words instead of the 13,333 I would need to be on target as of this moment. But I like my idea; the words are not exactly pouring out of me, but they're coming. I know there are other things I should be doing. I know. So don't lecture me. I don't pretend that I'll have anything very good at the end of the month. But having anything at all is better than nothing. It's definitely something.

It's just too bad that I can't add the 535 words in this post to my word count. Hmm, that would bring me up to 9,295. Not bad.

One Step at a Time

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. — Robert Heinlein 

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who set goals and those who fly by the seat of their pants. I've always been a pantser.

I know some writers plot out everything they write in advance, but not me. When I was in school and we were required to do outlines, I always wrote the outline after I wrote the paper. I just turned in the outline first. Other writers set daily word count goals, but my brain doesn't work that way. Ticking down the 50K words of NaNoWriMo can be a lot of fun, but most of the time word counts are just daily trivia that gets in my way.

Oh, sure, I have goals:

• Have children. (Check √√√√) 
• Write. 
• Get people to read my writing. 
• Get my books published. 
• Spend six months a year living and writing in Italy.
• Become rich and famous. 

It wasn't until I started my Kickstarter that I finally began to understand the most important part of that Heinlein quote: "clearly-defined goals". I definitely didn't have those.

Goals are fine, but only if they're supported by a plan. For example, I always knew I wanted to have children. It took some doing to get ours here happy and healthy. But beyond that initial success, I failed to define my goals clearly, so now I'm dealing with questions like:

• How long do you actually have to feed them? And must they eat every day? 
• How (and why) do boys turn a clean bathroom into a total disaster in less than five minutes? 
• Will my teenagers drive me completely batty before they come of age? 
• What's wrong with flood pants? I just bought those for you last week. 
• What is the exit strategy? Will they ever move out and live on their own? 

So when we decided to run a Kickstarter campaign, I knew we needed goals and a plan. My brother helped me develop a detailed (21-page) business plan before we began our campaign. I should have consulted him before we had children.

I've always been terrified of the idea of being a salesperson. The threat of having to meet quotas scared me right down to my toenails. As we worked on our Kickstarter business plan, my brother tried to convince me that quotas work in favor of salespeople, because they will do anything and everything to make that goal. If it takes 100 phone calls to get five orders, and your goal is 50 orders, it stands to reason that you need to make 1,000 phone calls. Simple math. Terrifying numbers (at least to me).

Once we researched our vendors and knew where the price points fell and figured out how much money we needed to raise to do what we wanted to do, the plan came together: $10,000 in 31 days. Right from the start that goal seemed both completely doable and utterly impossible. But it worked. On day 30, we made our goal (thanks so much to everyone who contributed).

It was miraculous to see how closely the daily results mirrored our plan. If we had drawn a growth chart for the business plan, it would have looked identical to the chart of our pledges. I couldn't believe it. We made a plan and it worked … exactly as we planned it.

That was (almost) as big a success as actually making our goal and getting to publish our book. It has completely changed the way this pantser is approaching life and business these days. Now I'm looking over those vaguely worded goals I mentioned earlier and trying to find ways to define them more clearly:

Write. 

I do write. I write all the time. I'm probably writing too much. What do I really want to write? What projects are speaking to me? What writing do I need to do to help sustain our family? Which projects, if any, can I let go? Which project should take priority?

Get people to read my writing. 

Which people? You're reading this post. You totally count. How many readers will make me happy? How will I know who has read my work and whether they like it? (Comment below, and then I'll know.)

Get my books published. 

I have a lot of published writing. Most of it is online. Some of it is ghostwriting. I'm self-publishing the Animal Store Alphabet Book. Is that good enough? Do I need to be validated by being picked up by an agent? Will I only be happy if I am "traditionally" published? As Laura Munson once told me (as someone once told her), the only difference between being a published author and an unpublished author is that your book is published. You're the same you.

Spend six months a year living and writing in Italy. 

Really? I have been to Italy exactly twice, more than 20 years ago. For vacation. I have no idea what it would really be like to live and work there. I don't speak Italian, and haven't made an effort to learn it. So is this a goal or a fantasy? (Who are we kidding? It would be great to live in Italy for six months a year. Specifically here.

Become rich and famous. 

I have revised this last goal. I no longer have any interest in being famous, just rich. Still, what does that rich mean to me? Would being debt-free and living modestly be enough? If I could get my kids through college and into the world debt free, would that count? Would being able to do the Italy thing make me happy with my financial situation? I've always wanted a gardener. And a personal stylist. And a housekeeper/cook. But I could give up the gardener. And maybe the stylist. But not the cook! I definitely want the cook.

I have begun to understand that unless I clearly define my goals, I have no possibility of reaching them. Maybe the idea is to set smaller, realistic goals. Have big ideas, but smallish goals. Make the dream come true one step at time.

There is a caveat to the whole goal-setting thing. Once you set a goal and commit to it, you will do anything and everything to make that goal. That's the whole reason for setting goals, so perfect, right? Right, unless you have an obsessive-compulsive personality (as I do at times) and a family or other commitments. In that case, stock up on lots of frozen pizza, set a reasonable time-limit for reaching your goal, and tell your friends and family that you'll see them on the other side. If you're lucky, they'll still be there.

I do worry a bit about becoming a reformed pantser. The 12-step goal-setting program is starting to seep into other parts of my life. I feel an almost overwhelming need to make amends. Almost. I have a feeling that there will always be a bit of the pantser in me.

Goal-setter or pantser: which are you? Click here to leave a comment.

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

There are two kinds of people in the world, and I continue to have a blast writing about them. Looking back, I find that 2011 has been like most years — filled with strains and disappointments, hard work and constant struggle, dotted here and there with the occasional bit of good news and a delicious belly laugh or two. It was a year that both crawled and flew by, and I find my sense of time has morphed into a sense of vertigo.

After years of waiting for life to "get better", I think I've finally figured out that it just gets different. Changes come, some welcome, some un.

Catherine Wallace, a frequent speaker at OCWW, my writers' workshop, once explained that the best way to provide feedback to a writer is to ignore less than perfect writing and concentrate on the parts that shimmer. Her idea is that by pointing out what works best, the writer will return to the mental place that produced the good writing and use that to revise and improve the rest.

I don't know that I believe this is always the best method of critiquing a piece of writing, but do I think it is an excellent way to review the outgoing year. By leaving the negative in the past (where it belongs), and dwelling on the parts of 2011 that shimmered, I hope to be able to bring those sparkly bits forward with me into the New Year to make it a better one.

For me, writing is almost always the best part of my year. I learned a lot in 2011 and have many (too many!) projects in the works. Each effort inspired me to become more creative, more open to making connections. As the year progressed, my sense of what is possible seemed to explode. Thanks to people like literary agent April Eberhardt, I began to believe that the changes in publishing were not death throes, but growing pains. Changes and more changes, some wanted, some un. But with change comes opportunity, if you choose to see it that way.

So here are a few of the writing treasures from 2011 that I plan to carry with me to improve my efforts in 2012:

January — Helped launch my client's website for her new business, Where Are We Going. It has been thrilling to work with Karen Gray-Keeler as she has transformed her passion and avocation into a business. Her energy and creativity are infectious.

February 18 — 14,239 people stopped by to read about Isaac and Molly on the Mike&Ollie blog. I started this blog during National Novel Writing Month 2010 to jump start my memoir about raising 24-weeker premature twins. The blog was picked as Freshly Pressed by WordPress and got more than 40,000 hits in five days. The feedback I got was amazing. Now all I need to do is finish the memoir.

June — Designed and wrote the content for a WordPress-based website for a client, micro mosaic jewelry designer Wendy Gray Raven. Trained her and her daughter how to manage the site and developed a strategy for the blog, connecting her website to her Etsy shop. Becoming more expert in the tools available on WordPress.

March 15 — My first post went up on the Garanimals Blog. Now, once a week, I get to write about pets and animals for an audience of moms, working with an incredible group of bloggers and the amazing Amy Zimmerman. Who knew that being a Reluctant Pet Store Owner would lead to such a great opportunity.

May — Proved that relationships built on the Internet can transform into real-life friendships deeper and more important than most people think possible. It's a reinvention of old-fashioned pen pals with the added advantage of instant gratification. Here's a shout out to my girls: Victoria Flynn, Christi Craig, Julie Jeffs and Rebecca Rasmussen. Great writers, fantastic women.

May 12 — Presented at the annual meeting of Fraternity Communications Association on how to improve print communications for membership-based organizations, and critiqued back issues of many of the group's magazines.

June — Taught a creative writing camp with eight young writers aged 7-11 through the Evanston Arts Camp, thanks to Angela Allyn. Their enthusiasm and curiosity inspired my own writing in unexpected ways and I'm looking forward to the sequel in 2012. (Registration is open now for the Writers' Workshop, pg. 5, camp #922213C2)

June 2 — Ran the first of several social networking workshops, this one on Facebook for beginners. Email me for information on upcoming workshops or to set up a private session.

September 19 — migrated The Animal Store Blog over to WordPress in preparation for the launch of the new website (coming very soon). Found a new voice for the blog, Ernie the Giant Gourami, who has lived at the store since before Kenn bought it 20 years ago. I am understanding more and more that writing is all about voice.

November — "won" NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row (see my winner's badge to the right) by pushing out 50,000 words in a first draft of a new novel. I continue to learn the lesson that you cannot, should not, must not write and edit at the same time.

December — Named as a regular contributor to the Write It Sideways blog. Starting in January through June, I'll be posting twice a month about my favorite subject — writing. Along the way to this assignment, I contributed three guest posts to this great writing website: Hearing Voices? Maybe You're a Writer, How to Bring Your Characters into Focus, Writers Write — Creativity Is a State of Mind. Thanks to Suzannah for this exciting opportunity to expand the writing conversation.

These are just a few of the high points for me. I have more projects in the pipeline that promise to make 2012 a year that truly shimmers. I look forward to sharing it with you, and hope your new year shimmers as well. Look for the third annual Two Kinds of People Guest Post Contest to be announced soon. Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment about one or two of the glittering moments from 2011 that you plan to carry with you into 2012.

Look in Thy Heart, and Write

"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: 

 'Fool!' said my muse to me, 'look in thy heart, and write.'" 

 — Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

There are two kinds of people: those who celebrate literature and those who take it for granted.

November abounds with opportunities to celebrate the craft of writing and the joy of literature. My 2KoP readers may think I haven't been doing much writing, but that's not the case. I simply haven't been writing here. It's all good, and I'll be sharing more soon.

Last November, I participated in my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I had no idea what I was doing and, in fact, decided to work on a memoir instead of a novel (making me a NaNo Rebel — not bad for my first time out). And I won. What did I win? Well, nothing. Oh, I got that nifty little badge in my sidebar that says I'm a 2010 NaNoWriMo winner. I made some cool, supportive writing friends. And I have an excellent start to my memoir. Just a start.

I've signed up for NaNo 2012 and am well on my way with a new project — a mystery. Why am I starting something new instead of working on last year's project? Well, that's a complicated question, but thanks for asking. The short answer is, that's not the NaNo deal. NaNo participants agree to start a brand new project on November 1 and commit to writing at least 50,000 words in 30 days. Is there a NaNo enforcement department that will hold you to that commitment? No. But here's what I think.

Writer-types like me tend to do better when under deadline. Given gobs of time, we fret and agonize over word choice and characterization and plot twists and … nothing gets done except the fretting. Committing to NaNo is an opportunity to turn off that inner editor (or agonizer) and just get the words out. You see, there are many, many steps to the writing process, and each one requires a different set of skills:

• generating ideas
• getting down the bones
• rewriting
• revising
• starting over
• rewriting
• revising
• revising
• agonizing
• polishing
• getting critiques
• crying
• putting it in a drawer for a while
• looking at it again with fresh eyes

And that's just the first step. NaNo is the perfect time to execute bullet point #2 (getting down the bones). Just getting your ideas out on the page fast, without trying to make it perfect, can be a huge creative rush. There is plenty of time to agonize about how terrible it is when you reread and rewrite in December.

For picture book writers, November is also PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month), where you commit to generating one picture book idea every day, for a total of 30. Some people believe that discovering the idea is the hardest part of writing, but think about having 30 ideas to work from at the end of the month. Nobody said they all have to be good.

For those writers who feel too constrained by the "rules" of NaNoWriMo or PiBoIdMo, SheWrites.com founder Kamy Wicoff has issued a much broader challenges called SheWriMo, where the big idea is to make a daily writing commitment (your choice) and sticking to it. That's a little too squishy for me, but I appreciate the concept.

My friend Mary Beth recently commented on my Facebook post about my NaNo progress: "I know that your numbers stand for words. And just 'cause I'm feeling kind of left out because I do not have a novel in me, whenever I see your number count, I'm going to write a number."

I haven't figured out what her numbers mean yet, but I have figured out that maybe November is just a great month for goal setting. Even if you're not a writer, I hope you're a reader. Maybe you could take this month to set a daily reading goal.

Here's one more opportunity to celebrate: November is also Picture Book Month. I'm a big believer in the importance of picture books and read alouds, both for children and adults. If you're with me, you can become a picture book ambassador. Check out the website for daily posts from different authors about why picture books are important to them. Whatever you do this month, I hope it includes a celebration of words.

Photo credit: WASTEBASKET © Lksstock | Dreamstime.com

NaNoWriMo Here We Go

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who do NaNoWriMo and those who do not.

What is NaNoWriMo? I'm glad you asked. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's a voluntary act of craziness whereby participants pledge to write 50,000 original words during the month of November.

What do you get if you "win". The right to say you did it. And you get to change your website badge from "participant" to "winner". That's it. No writing contract. No money. No fame. Just the satisfaction of showing yourself and the rest of the world that you can do it.

In other words, it is the literary equivalent to running a marathon.

Why am I doing it? Oh, well that's a whole other question. First, this is absolutely the closest I will ever get to running a marathon. I don't actually run IRL, but I am happy to take the metaphor and run with it.

Next, I have a project that I've been wanting to get on paper (or on disk, as the case may be). It's a story that I know well and have been meaning to write for a long time. This seems like the perfect opportunity to splatter my shitty first draft all over my screen.

NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality. As their website explains, "The Kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." For me, personally, it's a chance to tell my extremely vocal inner editor to shove it for 30 days. My goal is to let the writing take me where it may.

Last week, Mary Scruggs, a writing teacher from the famed Second City, talked to us at Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW) about an improvisation game called "Yes, and …." One of the golden "rules" of improv is that you are to take what others say, acknowledge it and build on it. In other words, be supportive of your fellow cast mates and what they want to say. Mary pointed out that writers tend to hear our inner voices and respond with "No, no, no, no, no." What if, instead, we listened to our inner voices — our characters — and responded with "yes, and …"? Where could that take our writing? Would we go places we've never gone before? In other words, be supportive of your characters and what they want to say.

I'm looking at NaNoWriMo as one big experiment in saying "yes, and …" to my inner voice.

A writer friend who I have only met online, the fabulous Lisa Romeo, suggested that we partner up for this year's NaNoWriMo. When she asked, I jumped. First, I respect her as a writer and teacher, and if she thinks it's worth doing, then I believe it is. Second, it's always better to be accountable to someone. Who else would care whether I do this or not (except you, of course, Dear Reader)?

BTW, I won't be posting this month of writing here on Two Kinds of People, or even on my shitty first draft blog — SFD @ 2KoP. The whole point is to create a first draft, for me and me alone, a starting point. Then comes revision, revision, revision, editing, polishing and then … who knows. But first comes the shitty first draft.

So, tomorrow is day one. I've installed a little counter there on my side bar. That way you can all help keep me honest. Scroll back up to the top of this post to see one of the web badges designed for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm not quite sure how that particular image relates to writing in quantity, but I hope this whole project doesn't make a monkey out of me. Here we go. Wish me luck, or tell me I'm crazy in a comment here.

Ed. note, 11/2/10: Last night, my youngest (12-year-old) son read this post and decided to join in the fun, signing up for NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program. He has pledged 50K words, too. Here's my post about it on SheWrites. Seth does not have his own blog (yet!), so feel free to leave your words of encouragement for him here and I'll be sure to pass them along.