Seasonal Plume

The second day of NanoWriMo has come and gone. I’m off to retire, but I wanted to write a bit before I did. I’m going along rather splendidly in terms of the word count goal. I stopped as I hit some faintly problematic stuff in memoir-writing: that is, research into the exact sequence of events and things. It’s still a little slow going.

NaNoWriMo 2007

words: 4,278 / 50,000 (9%)

One thing to note, however, was that I changed the point of view of my story in the middle of writing it. Since this is a memoir, I’ve been writing it in first-person perspective. Unfortunately, a few problems came up, namely:

• limited knowledge; or, inability to provide a bigger perspective of each scene, and
• it increasingly felt a little too close for comfort.

The second issue is due largely to the fact that I am writing about a certain time in my life: it’s currently a bit too “close” to me. Since the point of this exercise is also to do some post-processing of that situation, I decided a more objective, distant voice would better suit this scenario.

Hence, now I am writing in third-person omniscient, and I have a chunk of text greyed out in my text that needs to be converted over to that POV in time, as well as expanded. I kept it in since it’s really part of the story, I just need to do a rewrite.

The Wikipedia entry for Point of View actually has the exact same scenario that I am using (although it’s an advantage in my case):

The disadvantage of this mode is that it creates more distance between the reader and the story. A variation is where the narrator is a character in the story; a small amount of the story might be told in first person.

I kept the first part of the memoir in first-person; the introduction/prologue, if you will. I will probably expand this in time, but for now it will have to do — I don’t want to go in and edit it since that might bog me down.

It’s that time of the year again — it’s National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know what it is… where are you been, seriously?

It’s also that time of the month where I always set myself up to fail, apparently. I’ve joined almost every year, but after writing about a few couple thousand I slack off rather horribly. This year isn’t different, as I have signed up again for the 50,000 word challenge.

However, what I’m going to do will be slightly different. Starting November 1, I’ll be working on a memoir chronicling a certain time in my life. There are three things that I’m hoping to “hit” with this:

1. do some internal processing of the events and emotions that are related to the subject matter,
2. for memory’s sake, so I have something to look back on that will hopefully be a little more coherent than my journal entries, and
3. if my journal entries on the subject are any indication, I should be able to win NaNo this year!

It should be good as both a writing exercise and a way to process the events. I probably won’t be posting much snippets from the novel, as it’s obviously something that’s highly personal in nature, but I do hope to be blogging about the experience of writing the memoir itself.

Why does it seem like a lot of my favorite YA authors seem to be leaving Earth this year? I just found out that Madeleine L’Engle died last September 6, at the age of 88. Of the books she wrote, the ones I read and loved were her Kairos books, principally the ones with the Murrys. (Of the O’Keefes, I’ve only been able to read An Acceptable Time).

Lenneth posted a wonderful interview with her: Allegorical Fantasy: Mortal Dealings with Cosmic Questions. I practically couldn’t tear my eyes away from the interview — I felt it had great meaning to me personally, both as a writer and a Catholic.

I’d like to highlight some lines that I felt were very meaningful for me:

[Writing and praying is] not a matter of feeling like it, or waiting when I feel inspired, because both in work and in prayer, inspiration comes during rather than before.

…Freedom comes on the other side of work. If I want to play a Bach fugue, I must practice scales. If I hope for any transcendent experience in prayer, I have to have just done my ordinary, everyday prayers, which is the same thing as practicing my scales. I have to write every day. Freedom and discipline, rather than being antithetical, are complementary. Permissiveness, either from others toward you or toward yourself, ends up being restricting and crippling. If you choose to be a writer and a mother, you have to be incredibly disciplined. Otherwise you won’t manage. Discipline does not imprison you.

This is truly something that I personally have to work on, even though I’ve read this same thing from various places and books, and they all say the same thing. And yet I still don’t get to write on a daily basis — creative writing, that is.

We’ve got to be free to fail. … We live in a world that insists we be successes. If you’re not free to fail, you’ll never be anything but mediocre. You must try to do more than you can really do. Sometimes, you do do more than you can really do. That’s the marvel of it.

I feel there is a lot of truth in this statement, and frankly I feel this is where my biggest difficulty lies, especially in writing. I might go into this in depth at this blog some other time, but basically I’ve been coming to the conclusion for some time now that my biggest barrier in terms of writing is my fear of failure at what I most want to do.

I remember seeing, once back in the Philippines a month or so before I moved to Singapore, these beautiful new editions of her Kairos books. I wanted to buy them, as I didn’t have my own copies (the ones we have are really technically my sister’s) but I didn’t as I was moving. I really should have bought them.

I was shocked when I opened my email a few days ago and read that Lloyd Alexander died last May 17 in his home in Drexel Hill, just two weeks after his wife Janine died. He was eighty-three.

He was one of my favorite authors as an adolescent, and his Chronicles of Prydain continue to be an important part of my bookshelf. I find myself always going back and reading them, for the adventure and the sheer wonder of it, and for the thought-provoking themes and quotes one can gather from the rich writing.

I will be looking forward to The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, which is his last book and set to be published this August. He said that he had finished his life work with Carlo Chuchio. I am both sad and happy at the same time–it truly is bittersweet.

I found a wonderful quote from him about writing:

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

How does one do justice to what is in one’s heart?

I found this article by Lorelle VanFossen on Digg a while ago, about blogging being about writing. I couldn’t agree more, although blogging and creative writing have different goals and different means of getting to those goals. As I read through her 30-item list, a good number of them called out to me, having been victim/champion of those items previously.

So now I give you my top three blogging and writing similarities, as well as my top three blogging and writing differences, given her list.

Top Three Blogging and Creative Writing Similarities

1. Don’t Just Show, Show and Tell. This is also item #1 on Lorelle’s article, taking its cue from the ever-popular saying “Show, don’t tell.” I’ve always been touting along that same phase for a good while, but sometimes you just have to know when to quit showing and start telling. A nice long dialogue where you show subtle nuances in your characters’ personalities just don’t cut it when your story almost reads like a script. Nor is action upon action upon action very interesting unless your story should move that fast. A good balance between showing and telling is important, using criteria such as importance of the scene as well as time and pacing of the story.
2. Make Your Point in the First 200 Words. (Item #4 on the list.) This is one important feature of news writing, which I did for a short time when I was younger; news writing requires you to put all important information in your lead paragraph. For creative writing, you had better grab your readers within the first few paragraphs, if not by the first sentence. Introduce your conflict, start foreshadowing, whatever rocks your boat. But make your point, and make it memorable.
3. Write With Conviction and Passion. (It’s placed last, at #30.) This isn’t a tip or anything of the sort; conviction, passion, and love for the story shines through from the words you weave. Your passion makes your story different and original; any seemingly formulaic plot is given life and originality by the passion the author has in the story. Write about what you believe in. Write about what you love talking about. Write about what you want to shout out to the world.

Top Three Blogging and Creative Writing Differences

1. Don’t overuse your words because they’re not like blog keywords (see item #2). More often than not while writing we gravitate towards certain words and use them time and again. Shake out of that literary bog and try challenging yourself to use words that would better fit your scene; reading your story out loud will help you pinpoint which words are overused and which should be replaced to better fit the nuances of your scenes.
2. Write about what strikes your heart and not what you know. Unlike blogs which share information (see item #12), creative writing should call to your readers’ emotions. We’ve all been angry, sad, happy—it’s the creative writer’s task to evoke strong memories and impressions of those emotions in order to affect the readers. If we’re looking for the latest in genetics engineering, we’ll look it up; don’t get bogged down by explaining every fact if it’s not essential to your story.
3. Don’t write like the way you talk, (against item #23) unless you’re writing in the first person point of view and your character should sound like you. But don’t write like a textbook — find the style that suits you as well as your story. Dry, or flowery? Lyrical or hard action-oriented paragraphs? Your characters may have accents which make their speech unintelligible, but make your point and then let your readers understand them without having to resort to explaining every other phrase!

And oh, for the love of all that is good, if you’re a blogger who’s also into creative writing, please don’t blog the way you write your stories. We don’t want to hear about the scent of the roses as you step gingerly into the wide arch of the heavy door, breathing in to control your wildly thudding heart, anticipating the scene that would greet you when you lift your eyes to the…

You get the point.