Social Introverts MeetUp
I’ve thought about it for a while, and the other day I finally did it. I invested in starting my own MeetUp group. I call it Social Introverts of Frederick County.
It’s only been up for a few days, and I am the only member thus far. I am hoping that a handful of local people join, at least. For that’s all the group needs, really. A handful of people. Handful of introverts, of course.
As I and many others have stated many times, (though it doesn’t seem to have sunk into the collective consciousness yet), introverts do not by definition always want to be alone. Some of us very much desire company at times. It just comes at a price. A price that is worth paying at times of course, but a price is a price. That means we don’t generally enjoy the same type of social interactions as extroverts do. We generally like quieter, smaller, more conversational and less chaotic activities. Though there are local groups dedicated to quieter activities, there were none that were dedicated specifically to those introverts who want to socialize, in the introvert way. So I was pro-active and started this one.
I don’t know if it will fly. Truth be told, my track record for success when I spearhead something is pretty low. (Don’t ask me why, I’ve never understood.) But ideally this idea will reach people who like me just want some more like-minded people in their life. I can’t be the only person who thinks the way I do who would like more friends of similar disposition, can I?
As a freelancer and generally non-charismatic fellow, I spend much of my time alone. Too much for my own health, I dare say. And while I have a few activities that put me around people on a semi-regular basis now, those activities have a specific goal to accomplish. The goal of my group is to enjoy the company of people like me, specifically for the purpose of doing so.
So if you happen to be an introvert near my area, (or no any of them) do check out my group, if you please. And if you have suggestions as to how to attract more people to it, I’m all ears.
More Novel 2 Blues
How do I solve a problem like Novel 2?
The sage I’ve gone through trying to make this novel happen would probably make a half-way decent novel in its own right. (Though I won’t be writing that!)
If you have followed the blog you know what I’m talking about. As per my normal writing process, I was to have a first draft of my second novel completed by now, ready to be set aside for first revisions later in the year. I started outlining the plot in early fall of last year.
That outline was not 100% finished when I started writing the first draft as part of Nanowrimo. In the past it has worked well for me to outline about half of something, then right the draft of it, than outline the second half and finish the rough draft. I make it a point not to review anything in the rough draft as I write. My goal is to write the rough draft, let it sit, and then come back a month or so later and begin revising. I don’t revise as I write.
The plan worked well at first. I finished most of the first half of the plot outline. I switched to writing the actual draft based on same for Nanowrimo, and got to 50,000 words, by the way. But then after Nano, things started to feel jammed and stressful. And not in the stressful way writers are used to when they have to create entire universes our of almost nothing. The kind of stress that comes when you know you have a big mess on your hands, and don’t know how to fix it.
First drafts are supposed to be messes, of course. Big, lumbering messes. That was not the sort of mess I was experiencing with Novel 2, however. I was experiencing what normally only happens when I try to “pants” a longer work; the plot was going nowhere. Even with the outline it became clear I was writing towards a void. I’m a plotter, dammit, I can’t work that way.
But I pressed-on, determined to stick with my process. I did get to the end of the half-outline. But as I started outlining the second half, I had to surrender to the inevitable. Despite being a first draft that I had not yet completed and allowed to “bake” for a while, Novel 2 was not sustainable. It just didn’t have enough of a skeleton to add flesh too. (One reason I outline.) It wasn’t that there was an arc and I was taking too much time getting there, or that the words I was using to get there were sloppy. No, as that old expression goes, I realized that there “wasn’t very much there, there.”
I sketched out an abbreviated new plot for the first half. I cut out about half of all the words I had written. I’d call it killing my darlings, but none of them were especially precious to me. (Maybe that was part of the problem.) I salvaged the passages and actions and plot devices I thought could survive the transition into a leaner, more focused story. Ad I left it. And there is has been left for the last several months.
And the time has come lately, to take a look at it again. I’ve been brainstorming, outlining, reading and rereading, and doing just about everything you can think of to piece together Novel 2 from all of the spare parts I’ve left myself with. And so far, it isn’t working. I just can’t seem to develop a skeleton that is in line with the spirit and premise I have already worked out. (A premise, I may add, that has been floating around in my head for years.)
I’m starting to wonder now, (or fear?) that only two none to pleasing options exist with Novel 2. The first is total rebooting. Staying with the concept, but forgetting all that I have written so far, and take the concept in a new direction.
The other is to abort.
Both options sort of make me nauseous. I made a conscious decision to write this novel next. I planned for it and invested in it. It may yet be salvageable as is, but I have run out of ideas so far. I of course could just let it sit longer. But my sense is that no cure will present itself for the problems that currently plague the project. If it were to do so, it would have happened by now.
Was it a mistake to start this novel in Nanowrimo? Should I have outlined completely before writing instead of outlining the first half only? Was my difficulty in outlining a clue that this was simply not a workable idea? Or should I have pressed on and finished the rough draft, even with its gaping holes before trying surgery? Should I have pantsed my way through the holes that showed up? Maybe I wrecked it by not trusting my process? Or perhaps I was too much a slave to my process…
I just don’t know. I only know this…this isn’t the heartache of trying to bring a story to life. This isn’t the hard work that comes with being an author. This is a mess. A mess that I am uncertain can be fixed while maintaining loyalty to the concept.
Update This.
Updates, whether to information, hardware, software or procedures or important, I suppose. Especially when an overall improvement is made.
But I’m the type of person that will trade some degree of efficiency for familiarity. I’m not a Luddite. I use technology. I’m not in most aspects conservative. I tend to be open to new ideas, even if I don’t adopt all of them. But I wish some things would just stay as they are. Actually I will amend that. I wish I had more options to stay in one place with certain concepts of objects even as others move ahead.
Most recently this applies to a desktop application on my computer. TweetDeck. I’ve used it for years without the slightest problem. The last few days there have been problems. I went to support, and they no longer support that version. Much of my free time today has been spent trying to figure out the new version I was required to download.
If you read my tweet stream on the right side of this website, or if you follow me on Twitter, you already know the transition has not gone well. That’s because it’s not only the application itself that has changed (without improving, in my opinion), it has required me to change the very nature of how I consume information each day. My routine, in other words, has taken a hit, and I am a creature of routine believe me. I’m still pissed about Google Reader. (And equally pissed about the replacement I used for a few months, FeedReader, which is also now on the fritz and worthless. I’m on my third RSS feed of the year here.)
I don’t want to ride around in a wagon, or read by candlelight. Progress is progress. But whether it be TweetDeck uselessly updating itself into something different, an organization that shakes up leadership for no reason other than to do so, or a television program that reboots itself to appeal to a “broader” audience, change for change sake just pisses me off some days. (Like today.)
Or when a change is made simply to appease the 1% at the forefront of everything, instead of the 99% regular people who don’t want to innovate every three months. Those like me who just want to rely on something, and make use of it to add to our lives. Or take part in that organization…or enjoy that show…or get around that website…
Is “Death” Cliche’?
Sometimes in the world of fiction, I think it may be.
Now don’t get me wrong, on occasion I have written death into my stories. (Though probably not as often as some would say I should.) Few people like to think about death. I am not one of them. Yet squeamishness and fear are not the primary reasons I tend to avoid death in my fiction.
One of the big reasons I avoid it is that it doesn’t usually solve anything, or bring anything new to the table. Unless it’s a paranormal story, it’s as final as it is predictable. And perhaps a bit lazy.
You can go the route of George R.R. Martin and build up characters just so people fall in love with them, and then kill them. That’s one way. I haven’t read those books, but based on some of his interviews, I think he relies on that “shocker” a bit too much.
I also tend to think J.K. Rowling relied on it too much in the Harry Potter books. Though in Rowling’s case there was the added aspect of antecedent death. That is to say a death that has taken place before the action of the book begins which is crucial to the plot. That too is a well worn device. We open on the guy who just lost his wife, or his kids. Or lost them some time ago but is still working his way through the grief of said loss(es). How on earth will he cope? Or will he?
Worst of all, in my view, is what I call “Disease Fiction”. That is to say a large aspect of the plot revolves around somebody slowly dying of something. Before they do so, they spend the book making amends, facing fears, tying up loose ends, or what have you. And then readers along with characters have a good cry at the end. Overused. Depressing. Dare I say it, not very creative.
I’m bolding this section because I want to make one thing perfectly clear to any and all who read this; I am personally quite aware that death is a part of life. That tragedy happens. That people have to face this all the time. My father was dead by the time I was only seven years old. I was old enough to remember it all. They don’t have a word or phrase in all of the languages ever spoken on this planet that adequately expresses what that does to a person. So please don’t confuse my (usual) disdain for character deaths in fiction as some sort of denial.
What I’m actually doing is expressing that death is often used to manufacture drama within a story that otherwise lacks it. Now as a fan of Shakespeare, I have consumed more than a little literary death in my reading and theater days. It can enhance a work. But only if the work is worth while before the death. If it isn’t, you’re just using it to break people’s hearts and piss them off. That isn’t writing excellent fiction. That’s buying the most expensive silver platter ever made, and serving a Doritos Locos Taco from Taco Bell on it.
Drama can exist absent of death. People finding their way in the world. Crises of faith. Falling in (or out) of love. Redemption. Non-Murder mysteries. (Why are there so few of those? There are many crimes.) The list goes on, and I think in the last ten years or so, the pendulum of fiction has swung way too far in the direction of “death as drama”. Instead of cheap thrills, we get cheap “feels”, as the expression goes today.
There will always be genres that require death in some form, of course. Or at least the real potential for death. War stories. Certain adventure flicks. Thrillers. (Though I think it would be more creative to come up with stories in those genres where nobody died. Think you could do it?) But on the whole I think in both literature and movies/TV, writers have become too reliant on it. Just because it is inevitable in life, that doesn’t mean it has to be inevitable in our fiction.
I’m all for some more fiction out there which is less depressing, frankly. My current novel hopefully achieves this. But if you must go dramatic, or even depressing or scary, do yourself and readers a favor and see how creative you can be by invoking those things without killing a character. You may surprise yourself with how much life you inject into your story by doing so.
What’s On Deck?
It’s All-Star week in Major League Baseball, so I titled this post accordingly.
But it wasn’t random. This post is about what’s on deck for me as writer. (That is to say, what am I working on next.)
It seems like a good place to lay out a plan, what with my first novel having gone through critiquing and being put on hold for a few months while that experience cools off and get processed in my mind. Not that I have worked on nothing else during this time, because of course I have. But periodic stops to get the lay of the land can be useful.
But why share them here? After all, how concerned are any of you about just what I’m working on next? Probably not a great deal. But to begin with, talking about it here where anyone can see it provides a small bit of accountability. I don’t think any of my readers will badger to make sure I’m doing what I said I would do here, but there is still that tiniest sense of people knowing what I plan on doing.
Also, as I pick what’s next, I don’t really want to explain in each post what I’m referring to, should an observation about one of my projects come up. I can just use this post as a reference.
One thing I know I’ll be working on are the shorts stories that are set in the same location as my novel. I’ve mentioned them before, I believe. It’s a set of ten short stories that I’m thinking about publishing on my own in order to gain some interest in my novel’s setting. None of the characters are the same, but these stories take place in the same community theater as my novel.
I got the idea from fellow author and friend of mine, J. Lea Lopez. She published on her own a collection of erotic and romantic short stories called Consenting Adults in advance of her publishing her own novel, Sorry’s Not Enough. (Click the respective links to check them out on Amazon. The short stories are free!)
In her case, the short stories were of a similar tone as that of her novel, though not the same setting, but the idea is the same. To gain some interest in the writing in small, free chunks in order to lead people into buying the novel.
I’ve written rough drafts for three of the ten stories so far. I’m also considering a sci-fi series of short stories. I have the setting and major arc of those set down already, but not any given story. Whether the stories at the theater or the sci-fi thing, I think having a series does me a lot of good. Always something to go back to that is familiar for the times I’m, shooting blanks on totally new work.
Then of course there is the ongoing for-hire project I’m working on. Confidentiality prevents me from discussing that further, though I imagine that writing project will be concluded by the end of summer.
The big question for me is whether to go back to working on Novel 2 soon. I like to have a major project going on while I work on smaller things, and the second novel is one possibility for that.
Some of you may recall that that sort of ended up as a mess. My original plan was to have a rough draft of that completed by about now. But it was flying off in so many different directions, even with me having outlined most of it ahead of time, that I didn’t think it could survive in it’s current form. So I cut out a lot of words and eliminated several plot points. Then I set it aside sometime in March, and I haven’t been back to it since. Is it time to go back over the large, disconnected pieces and try to assemble a rough draft out of them? I don’t know. Probably, but I feel hesitant for some reason. I wonder if enough time has passed before jumping back into that one.
As far as major projects, Novel 2 is by far the most ready to go, but there others. I’ve also kicked around ideas for a stage play and a screen play. I’ve only ever written one screen play, and the market for that is crap, honestly. With my local theater connections there’s an outside shot that a play I wrote could be performed one day, though not for any money. I have attempted only one short play in the past, so it would be newish territory for this actor.
And of course I’m still in a local writers group, and will on occasion write stories for that. And some one off stories of various kinds. (Though I do better with that when there is a deadline of some kind.) I should submit more short stories to places, I suppose, but I hate going through all of that. I have never had one accepted so far. I don’t write to the trends, anyway.
So that’s where I am now. Decisions to make and writing to accomplish. The main criteria for deciding what’s next will be what will keep me engaged and excited to write the most for a while. All writing gets tedious at some point, even if you love what you’re working on. But hopefully I’ll get on something here soon that will be worth it in the long run.
What are you working on?
Ty Unglebower 