Category: Writing

Nanowrimo part two

Having finished 31,200 words of my SF novella Last Train to Clarkesville and finished the story too, I am continuing Nanowrimo with some fantasy, namely Book 3 of The Brigstowe Dragons. Book Two has been accepted by the publishers and is due out in April 2018 so three is almost pre-sold, as long as it’s good enough. Obviously, I hope to make it good enough.

After taking Sunday off, I needed a good word count today to catch up. Happily, as soon as I entered the familiar world of Brigstowe the words flowed like a flowing thing and I bashed out 3049 words in a three-hour session of inspiration. Writer’s don’t always get days like this.

Officially, Nanowrimo is meant to produce a novel first draft but if I’m sticking to the word count demanded to produce two novellas I am adhering to the spirit of it which is, presumably, to make writers productive. Obviously, there are not enough novels in the world and only 20,000 or so new ones every week. Writers must all work harder! But there’s no point in writing if no one reads it so readers must work harder too. The unemployed could be forced to read for 8 hours a day to make it all worthwhile for us. Obviously, they’re skint but they can have the free books, of which there are multitudes. No one expects to pay for a book nowadays.

Strange Nanowrimo days

I was doing well on Nanowrimo up until Wednesday this week. I had bashed out 26,710 words of first draft and my vertical bar was right on the rising horizontal target graph line on their little Nanowrimo chart. Hurrah!

Then I got stuck. On Thursday I spent most of the day in a state of stuck, staring at a screen, drinking coffee, pacing up and down. I didn’t know where to go next. This is what happens when you make it up as you go along. I knew the end of the story but was jammed on how to get there. Then I cut out the last few hundred words of Wednesday’s work, a wrong turn, replaced some of it, and finished Thursday with 26,063 words, meaning I had gone backward.

The replacement words came courtesy of exercise book and pen. Sometimes staring at a screen is futile. Somehow there is more freedom with pen and paper. It doesn’t look so finished. You can scribble notes on the side. It went okay on Thursday afternoon and today – Friday 17th November – may have been the best days writing I’ve ever done, for quantity anyway. I sat and scribbled out eighteen pages. That’s more than 4,000 words and it flowed like good red wine. I started just after nine a.m. and was finished by 3 p.m. even with interruptions for duck pen cleaning and woman feeding. And the story is finished too. It’s not a novel, being about 32,000 words, but it’s finished. Hurrah. I typed up most of it tonight and have about 3,000 words to type tomorrow. Not write, just type.

I’m making this public just to help anyone other Nanowrimists who get stuck. You can get out of it! Have faith. And try the pen and ink technique. It might work for you too. If not, try white board and marker, stone tablet and chisel – anything. Staring at a blank word document until your eyes bleed is not always the best way.

I believe I will carry on with the Nanowrimo schedule and get another novella out of it of 20,000 words or so. That’s made it a productive November. First draft, of course. There’s a lot of work to do yet but a first draft is a big step.

Caitlin R. Kiernan

I was banging out my 2000 words for Nanowrimo yesterday and began wondering wistfully, not for the first time, if it was possible to make a living as a short story writer. It isn’t unless your name is Stephen King. I’m not a natural novelist and start to get a bit bored after 20,000 words. I expect I’ll finish it but it will be a novella of about 30,000 words. I can’t be bothered making up any more plot complications to extend it.

Anyway, thinking of good short story writers my mind wandered to Caitlin R. Kiernan. Reading various anthologies for SFcrowsnest, I have often come across her stories in volumes of horror, weird or Lovecraftian fiction. So I looked her up and it turns out she has a blog – Postcards from the Red Room. I perused it for a while and it’s interesting to read the daily life of a real professional writer.

Enlightening, too. I was under the vague impression that real writers bashed out 10,000 words a day but Kiernan gives her totals and they are between one and two thousand. Mind you, she writes very high-quality stuff – literary – so it’s no real surprise that she’s not churning it out with Asimovian ease. On the other hand, her dense, emotional fiction is best read, I find, in a mixed anthology. Whereas you can breeze through a book of Asimov short stories without too much trouble, a solid anthology of all Kiernan like The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories is tough. Excellent, you understand, but not easy reading. Here’s my review on SFcrowsnest. Or, for a different perspective, read this review of The Drowning Girl by my Crowsnest colleague Pauline Morgan.

Anyway, I’d recommend her. She has written several novels and won many prizes but reading her blog she’s not a happy soul. Training in Palaeontology has given her a realistic view of the extent of time and space and a Lovecraftian view of the insignificance of woman. Man, too. So she’s bleak, like Conrad, but all the more interesting for that.

And she doesn’t make a living writing short stories either. Back to the drawing board.