Nanowrimo This Way Comes
I mentioned before that I’d once again be doing Nanowrimo this year, but that I’d be going for rebel status. In other words, not technically following the rules, but using the time anyway to get things done and maybe meet some people online. I’m talking about it now, because Thursday I have another Open Letter post due up, so this is the last blog day before Nano starts.
This year I opted to do a collection of short stories. Or at least 50,000 words of same during November. When I first made this decision, I didn’t know if the stories would be connected by so common theme, or if I would just write as many different short stories as I could, with no connection. I decided to go with a common thread for the stories. I’m also down to two choices as to what that thread will be. (Leaning strongly in the direction of one of them, as of this writing.) Who knows, though, might change my mind between now and Saturday.
I won’t be revealing my choices, though. I know how disappointed you all must be to read that, but I wanted to keep the decision “pure” in the sense that I didn’t want other people knowing to in anyway influence what theme I’m going with. Once i do decide and start writing, I may reveal what my common thread for the stories is, or I might not. That too is, for the moment, undecided. Again, I think it might feel more fun to me personally if only I know what the common denominator is. On the other hand, it may be difficult to talk about my progress in the forums or here on the blog if I don’t reveal more. We will see.
I have a sub-goal for Nano this year as well; I want to engage with the community online more. I always try to, through twitter and the message boards, but I’ve not been great at it, really. I’m hoping to post on the forums a bit more often, and just in general feel more a part of things online. Last year I attended a few write-ins at the local library, and those were fun, but I didn’t connect with any of the people there after the fact. (Except for someone I know from elsewhere.) I don’t know that there are any local write-ins this year, so I am going to see what i can get done by way of connecting online.
Maybe I will do word sprints on Twitter here and there. Never did those before, as I am not a fast writer. But I’m being a Nano Rebel, so I might consider doing all kinds of other things differently this year.
If any of you are doing Nano and would like to add me as a friend on the site, my handle is TyUnglebo. Feel free to say hi, and mention you read my blog if you do!
It’s Not Always the Author’s Business.
When I write fiction, I’m more of a planner. Yet even I don’t know everything about the worlds or characters I create.
There are authors who do detailed character sketches and outlines of their settings. I do that sometimes, but not usually. And even when I do it, I don’t necessarily have a bunch of secrets tucked away about things that happened behind the scenes in my story, or before and after it.
Why not? Two reasons. The first is that the information may not be necessary for me to write the story. If I know enough to justify a trait or a decision, I know enough, I’d say.
The other reason I don’t know every single thing about my characters or stories, (and one that sometimes shocks people when I tell them) is that it isn’t always any of my business.
You haven’t misunderstood that sentence.
I used it at a writing group once a few years ago. Most of the members liked my story about two people that didn’t get along much, but nonetheless began flirting near the end of the story. The story ended without showing any romance between the two.
“So do they end up together?’ asked one of the readers.
“He may not want to reveal that,” said someone else.
I told them, “It’s not that it’s a secret. It’s that I don’t know. It’s none of my business, really.”
That got a strange look or two, but I think most of them understood.
For me, a story can be self contained. Meaning that I as an author see only a sliver of the entire lives of the people in it. I search the ether for these few moments or days or years within the universe I’ve written about, and I provide that story to the reader in words. Like any author, I decide a lot of what happens. But also like a lot of authors, I find that some things simply unfold on their own. It’s hard to explain to a non-writer, but every writer out there is bound to know what I mean. There are times when the story or at least a scene, suggests itself to the author, and our job is just to make sure we get it correct.
When I do get it correct at such moments, I tend not to overuse my author power. I could dictate what happens next in my mind, for my own satisfaction. I could decide that every blade of grass in every field of my universe has, is, and will forever do what I’ve determined. Yet for me, that’s too much in most cases. Just as in life when we pass through an experience, we don’t always know everything that comes before or after it, so is it with my stories. If the story was supposed to reveal a certain fact or action, I like to think I would have put it in there. But once it feels done, I sometimes only know a small percentage more of what lies beyond the edges than readers do. I think the story is more alive that way.
If I write a series, I of course have to know more. I also have to have a bit more of an idea about the past of the characters in a novel than I do in shorter fiction. Yet some of it remains a secret. More than that, it’s a secret what remains a secret; I don’t always tell readers if I know or if I don’t know.
What fun would that be?
Subtraction is a Plus.
When I’m writing the first few drafts of a fiction piece, I find it much easier to take things away than to add them.
That isn’t to say taking away is always easy. I can fall in love with my stuff as much as the next writer. But if I get to a “done” type of feeling with a draft, in the majority of cases I’d rather be told I need to lose 2,000 words than have to come up with 1,000 more.
Lest you think this relates only to tight plotting, I’ll mention I feel the same way about some of the literary pieces I have written as well. I’m sort of allowed to meander if I am going the literary route, and believe me sometimes I do. Yet even when it’s all about the metaphor or the prose, I’d rather be consolidating than expanding the piece.
Maybe I don’t love my darlings as much as most writers. Or maybe I don’t see them as my darlings until the story itself is complete. (Maybe I’ve never liked the often quoted “darlings” metaphor anyway.)
Whatever the level of “darlingism” in my words, it’s obvious that making things shorter is less labor intensive to me than adding spacers and making them longer is. (At least 90% of the time this is true, anyway.) I’ve often told people than some of my best 5,000 word stories were former 7,000 word stories.
Shorter is not always better, though. I haven’t totally deified brevity as some do. In fact, making something shorter doesn’t always make it short, does it? It just means that upon further review, I’m able to rid my piece of a character, a plot twist, a setting, a conversation that turns out not to improve things. By so doing, the piece is tighter at any length. After all, a 1,000 word story can drone and ramble just as much as a 30,000 word story can do so. The opposite is of course true as well; a 100,000 word piece can in fact move quickly, so long as most of those 100,000 words are operating at maximum efficiency, and not taking my reader too far off course. My readers don’t always have to know where I’m going, but they should always feel that they’re on a road, and not bumping around in the cornfield somewhere. Shortening my work is sort of like avoiding the cornfields.
Silly as it sounds, I feel I am accomplishing more, and have in fact gotten more work done when I am cutting things out then when I am adding them. Taking away and slimming down and quickening a piece means that I’ve probably already produced most of what the story needs in one form or the other. I just have to tidy up. If I find that I need to add scenes to future drafts, however, I tend to feel I wasn’t really done yet. Or that my idea, as stated, has to be changed into something else, and that is more draining. Worth it sometimes, yes, but far more draining to realize, “this isn’t done yet.”
I won’t claim this is the best way for a writer to feel. I happen to be a planner most of the time. I’m also someone who finished a first draft without ever looking back until it’s done. I don’t know if this view of editing and revising would work for pantsers or for people that edit each page as it comes. Not that it has to, naturally. But if you’re unsure about whether or not you have written anything worth keeping if you find yourself cutting and cutting it down to sleeker, smaller pieces during revisions, you can take heart from my experiences.
Writers: is it easier for you to add or subtract from you work as time goes on?
An Open Letter to My First Internet Friend
For the purposes of this open letter, the subject will be addressed as Courtney. –Ty
Dear Courtney,
You may remember me if you stopped to think about it, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised or too offended if you didn’t though. Until I happened to read about your obscure hometown last year, I hadn’t thought about you in years.
Looking back on things all this time later, I realize I reacted poorly, though it was under false pretenses that you could have prevented.
I was much younger when we happened to meet each other in that online chat room years ago. The whole thing was rather new for me, and not especially enjoyable. The percentage of people online that are dull, or mean, or total wastes of my time is about the same as it is in so called “real life.” (Or IRL as people used to say.) But when you and I started talking, I knew something was different. You were funny, you listened to what I was saying, you shared my disdain for the way most people acted, both on line and offline. Public chats led to private messages. Then emails. Even snail mail here and there. Then you asked for my number some months later, and thus began, (with far less awkwardness than is normal for me) a long, at times intense telephone friendship. A few times a week we’d talk several hours into the night about all kinds of subjects. I even talked you through a few life events that were, according to you, difficult to deal with. And you were there for me, most of the time, when I was simply tired of being alone.
Then one day we broached the subject of meeting in person. So deep were our conversations over the months and such trust had been built up, we both, it seemed, felt that it was the next logical step. We knew each other. When we decided to go for it, I remember how enthusiastic you were. I remember how excited you were, along with me, when we would talk about the sort of things we could do when I came to your town. The people you’d talked to about me who wanted to meet me. The possibilities. My planned visit was the subject of most of our conversations for about a month I’d say. After some shuffling, we had a date picked that would work for both of us. I sunk what little money I had into the bus ticket to take me to your town. You knew where the bus stop was.
I guess a highly insightful or more astute person than myself would have put things together right about then.Maybe not, I can’t be sure. Nonetheless, even I knew things had changed in just a few days.
You didn’t respond for days to my email telling you I had the ticket. When you did, it was friendly, and played the part of excited, but was uncharacteristically short. The same with our phone calls over the next week or two. Again, nothing in your voice that I could detect indicated anything, but I noted the shortness and the less frequent nature of the calls. But being in college, I knew about how busy life could get at certain times of the year for a student, so I thought little of it.
About a week before the date on my bus ticket arrived, though, I started got a bit concerned. I asked you for specifics about my visit. Where you’d find me, what you’d be driving and all of that sort of thing. This wasn’t just excitement for visiting, this was important information. And you weren’t responding. Days went by, my departure time drawing ever closer, and still no word from you. I knew you had been going through some difficult personal circumstances, and I wondered if that had kept you away. I hoped everything was all right when I’d leave you voice mails about once a night in the days leading up to my visit.
About two days before I was supposed to leave, I made my part of the mistake. I left several messages on your voice mail throughout the course of that day. I can understand, looking back over the years now, how that would have made you uncomfortable. Again, a more astute person would have probably just given up days before, having come to the realization I had yet to come to. But you have to understand that because you had been my best friend for a year or so by that point, and had at least claimed you looked forward to my visit so much, I had no reason to suspect otherwise. I trusted you, and assumed you trusted me. So that final day, when I left you too many voice mails at one time, it was not out of anger, or a desire to control you. It was not because I felt I owned you or could run your life for you. It was, quite simply, because I was worried. Given everything that we had been through up until that point, I figured your lack of response, almost as soon as I bought the bus ticket, was due to something unfortunate having happened to you, or maybe your family. I didn’t have a specific picture in my mind about what that could have been, but I was still operating from a place of trust. So when you just never got back to me in regards to the grand plans we had made, I felt justified in assuming something beyond your control had happened, and I just wanted to know you were okay.
That’s why I left you so many voice messages that day. That’s why they were hurried and anxious. And in a moment of confusion and concern that had been building to some degree all that week, thinking foolishly that somehow my presence would help you with whatever was happening, my final message stated something along the lines of, “whatever is happening, I’m coming, regardless.”
Quite a while later I realized that could have been construed as a threat, though it was far from it. But as I mentioned, at the time, I was getting worried.
The following afternoon, you called me for the first time in two weeks. Contacted me at all for the first time in just about one week. I was thrilled to hear your voice and to find out what had happened.
The thrill was over in a few moments when you told me that your friends and family had gotten together, read my messages and listened to all my voice mails, and decided I was a danger, and that you should have nothing more to do with me.
Assuming I had not understood it properly, I sought clarification. Indeed, you were not merely telling me not to come visit, but telling me not to contact you through any channel ever again, that you would not be contacting me anymore, either.
I felt my chest tighten as I asked you how you could do this to me, after everything we had been through. Asked you why you had decided on such short notice to be done with me. You claimed then that it was your family more than you, but that leaving so many messages was “too much” or something like that. You said you had to go. I ended our conversation with the same cutesy catchphrase we had always used together. You actually returned the cutesy catchphrase, in one final moment of our two year friendship. Then you hung up.
I wept, and I don’d do that often.
So the first purpose of this letter is to apologize for all of those intense messages. I meant well, and thought you may have been in trouble, but still probably should not have left them. If my zeal freaked you and your family out, I take responsibility for that.
However, the other main reason I wrote this letter, is to let you know that it didn’t have to end that way. You allowed it to spin out of control like that. The messages part of the mistake was mine, but at least it came from a sincere place of concern. What you did, or failed to do, was deliberate and not at all necessary.
So it wasn’t obvious to me at the time, but it is now; you never had any intention of letting me come to visit you in person. You didn’t want to see me, and you, it would seem, merely pretended to be excited about the possibility. Perhaps you gave your assent, assuming I was being just as insincere about a visit as you were. But once I had the ticket, and you realized I was serious, you shut down. Took steps away from me. Threw up walls and tore down what we had built. You hoped, it seems to me, that be being evasive I would suddenly just wash my hands of the whole thing, eat what little spending money I had spend on the ticket, and move on. After two years of strict confidences and openness, and four hour phone calls, and sending gifts to one another by mail, I guess that was easy enough for you to do. For me it was so foreign, I didn’t even suspect it as a possibility until everything blew up.
Of course you had every right, as all people do, not to see me. You were not obligated to host me. Or for that matter call me, write me or have anything to do with me. But Courtney, why not just say that? Why not be an adult and say at the first mention of a visit, that you were not ready for that? No, you don’t have to tell the truth either, I suppose, but it certainly makes you less of a person for not doing so. Especially given that you had more than one chance to do so, and still didn’t. You just left me hanging. You were hoping I suppose, that I’d put it all together and just go. Yet your way of handling it, if that’s what you did, was the way of a coward and a child.
My heart was pained over that issue for about a year afterward. I couldn’t understand, and still don’t, how and why a person would pretend to trust someone, pretend to be fond of them and to care about them, when they so clearly did not. It’s not like you were getting any money from me, or some kind of particular privilege. All you were extorting from me in the end was me.
Of course people play games, and maybe that’s what you were doing, stringing me along for the pure pleasure of doing so. I can never know. I only know that your game, if you can call it that, came to an abrupt end just as I was about to come visit you. Did the stakes of your game become to high at that point?
Or wasn’t it a game to you? Were you perhaps sincere all the while, and suddenly found yourself scared of my coming to visit? I’ll allow for that possibility. I allow for the possibility that just like me and my overzealous messages, you too were a possible stupid kid who did a stupid thing. Yet to be honest with you, I think the bigger strike is still your own; it should have been no mystery that doing what you did would hurt another person. That is something you could have considered, and from what I can tell, you never did. If you did consider it and cared about the outcome, you came to one of the most absurd conclusions I’ve ever known. Furthermore, you never sought me out, even much later, to apologize for hurting me.
But, that’s long over, and all that truly remains of you within me now are the lessons on human relations. What not to do. What not to expect. To not trust until many more, much stronger reasons have been discovered. That, and the slight desire after all of this time to address you once more to offer the explanation of my feelings and actions that I was never allowed to give you back then. How you could fear I would hurt you after everything we talked about back then is beyond me. But certainly I cannot hurt you now. I haven’t the slightest idea where you are, and believe me, I don’t care, so don’t get skittish again.
With no ill will toward you per se, I bid you, at last, a proper goodbye, Courtney.
-Ty Unglebower
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
The Why of Progress Reports
Sometimes I post updates on here about my various writing projects. This isn’t of those updates, though. Rather, it’s a post about such updates. That is to say, I wanted to share some thoughts on updating the world on one’s writing.
I’ve heard plenty of people say that unless you’re famous, nobody cares about what you’re working on, how it’s proceeding, and what issues you may be having with it. I think the various messages boards, and the success of Nanowrimo negate that viewpoint somewhat, but I concede that unless one is a writer, concerns about someone’s writing progress may not be the most engaging material to read. Usually.
Yet, as I said, I post updates everyone once in a while. Sometimes it’s because I feel better about a problem when I let the world know about it. Sometimes it’s a matter of quasi-accountability; I let the world know about a writing goal of mine, and I am more likely to accomplish it. But another, less obvious reason I share how things are going sometimes is to demonstrate that I am a writer even when I am not in the actual process of writing.
Not that you didn’t believe me. I’m sure you did. Still, letting the world know every once in a while that I am ahead of schedule for my short story, or behind schedule on my novel is part of my writer’s identity, if you will. I am more than a writer, but as a writer I want to make it clear that my work is not simply an internal consideration. I’m laboring to accomplish demonstrable outcomes here. The work I produce will hopefully make its way someday to readers who will enjoy it. Like the body builder who shares his lifting program, or the amateur cook that blogs about how the latest recipe worked out, I keep the readers of this blog informed as to where I am every now and then, with various projects. It makes it all seem more real, in a way, even if those posts aren’t the most exciting posts I’ll ever write.
Plus, writing isn’t always pretty. There are struggles, pain, problems, hindrances. A serious writer gets his hands dirty, skins his knees, loses sleep, stubs his toe on a regular basis. I don’t need a medal for that. I just want to share the struggles as well as the successes. And all of the progress in between. It’s a process. It’s a job. It’s a marathon, (even if you write flash fiction sometimes.) Letting all of you know how I’m doing doesn’t make it any easier, nor does it make me a hero. It just makes me another artist, and indeed another person in the world that puts energy and time into something they believe in. Someone that shares the journey with the curious and the not so curious. Not every stop is am attraction. Sometimes you just need to stop for gas, and take a leak, and reprogram the GPS.
That’s a bit reason why I let you know how far I’ve gotten any given week. I encourage any writer with a blog to do the same thing, and no worry about whether or not such posts are interesting. Get your progress, or lack thereof out there. Share with us in the world. We writers will understand.
Ty Unglebower 