What Kind of Work Do You Want to Produce?

Just because November is National Novel Writing Month doesn't mean that you have to write a novel. You can create anything that you want. Any time that you want. But the fact that there is a structure in place with NaNoWriMo makes November a great time to try. The website gives you access to fellow writers and a word counter.

So, you are going to write.

Fiction or non-fiction? Poetry? Recipes?

Here's a list and description of your choices, found under genres on the California Department of Education website:

Fiction

Drama

Stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical performance, where conflicts and emotion are expressed through dialogue and action.

Fable

Narration demonstrating a useful truth, especially in which animals speak as humans; legendary, supernatural tale.

Fairy Tale

Story about fairies or other magical creatures, usually for children.

Fantasy

Fiction with strange or other worldly settings or characters; fiction which invites suspension of reality.

Fiction

Narrative literary works whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.

Fiction in Verse

Full-length novels with plot, subplot(s), theme(s), major and minor characters, in which the narrative is presented in (usually blank) verse form.

Folklore

The songs, stories, myths, and proverbs of a people or "folk" as handed down by word of mouth.

Historical Fiction

Story with fictional characters and events in a historical setting.

Horror

Fiction in which events evoke a feeling of dread in both the characters and the reader.

Humor

Fiction full of fun, fancy, and excitement, meant to entertain; but can be contained in all genres

Legend

Story, sometimes of a national or folk hero, which has a basis in fact but also includes imaginative material.

Mystery

Fiction dealing with the solution of a crime or the unraveling of secrets.

Mythology

Legend or traditional narrative, often based in part on historical events, that reveals human behavior and natural phenomena by its symbolism; often pertaining to the actions of the gods.

Poetry

Verse and rhythmic writing with imagery that creates emotional responses.

Realistic Fiction

Story that can actually happen and is true to life.

Science Fiction

Story based on impact of actual, imagined, or potential science, usually set in the future or on other planets.

Short Story

Fiction of such brevity that it supports no subplots.

Tall Tale

Humorous story with blatant exaggerations, swaggering heroes who do the impossible with nonchalance.

Nonfiction

Biography/Autobiography

Narrative of a person's life, a true story about a real person.

Essay

A short literary composition that reflects the author's outlook or point.

Narrative Nonfiction

Factual information presented in a format which tells a story.

Nonfiction

Informational text dealing with an actual, real-life subject.

Speech

Public address or discourse.


While this list is nearly exhaustive, each genre can be broken down further into smaller sub-genres. 

Of course, you don't need to come up with a genre before you start, but if you know what you are planning to write, you have an easier time finding the correct resources. 

There is a quiet comfort in writing in a genre with which you are familiar. However, if you've never given your time to historical fiction, or sci-fi, or mystery, what better time to try than when you are already charting out your plans and you are surrounded by support and resources? Experiment!

What Kind of Writer Are You?

The first step of preparing to undertake a long-term creative exercise, like NaNoWriMo, is to figure out what kind of artist you are.

First things first: What is the best time of day for you to create?
Are you a morning person? When the sun is cresting the horizon, is your coffee already cooling and your fingers are all warmed up? Do you get the best ideas while mulling over lunch in the middle of the day because the sandwich is stacked just right? Or is nighttime the right time to get out the good stuff? Right after you get home? When the world has gone to bed are your creative juices finally waking up?

What are your chosen materials?
Do you write long-hand? Do you type on a laptop, desktop, phone, typewriter? I've been known to use a dictation program for early rough drafts.

What are your methods?
Do you need to eat? Warm tea, ice water, coffee, scotch? Music, cafe sounds, absolute silence? Cigarettes, pipe, blunt, vape? Does a rerun of The Brady Bunch have to be playing in the left-most corner of the room behind you while you chew on celery and hum Bach?

Knowing all of these things, you can start to plan your creating day.

Personally, I am best in the early afternoon on a keyboard in a cafe with a steady supply of coffee. However, I have a day job. So, the plan is to eat lunch at my desk and then take my lunch at my desk, on my laptop, with a full cup of coffee and my earbuds in playing cafe sounds from an app like Noisli.

Jimmy likes to write after the twins are in bed, on his 1957 Royal typewriter while chewing on a pipe stem. The typewriter will wake up the kids, so Jimmy may use his laptop, with a typewriter app installed. It doesn't have the same action, but maybe with a mechanical keyboard he could get closer.

Do you go through bouts of creativity and stretches of time where getting out of bed is a struggle? How you want to work around that is up to you. I just call them mental health days and they don't count on my personal timeline. I got through the day without serious harm and that was hard enough; I will not beat myself up for not being creative on top of everything else I did that day. Even if the sum total of the day was continuing to breathe and making it to the bathroom in time. My deadline is now December 1st, and I'm okay with that.

Think things over. For you, it might make sense to wake up a couple of hours early to knock out a couple of pages. You could ride the train and type or you could dictate while you drive (set it up before you actually start moving!). Get yourself an electric kettle for bottomless tea. Set up a babysitter for quiet afternoons. Figure out how to do you.

The earlier you plan it out, the less time you waste not making art!

Prep for NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is coming! It's time to prepare!

If the USofA isn't your nation, if you aren't into writing novels, if writing isn't your creative jam, and if November is really a bad time for you - I hope you can find some of the advice in this and the following posts at least a little useful. We could all use a little spark some days.

Good preparation means you've put some thought into how to handle the anticipated event. For me, that means lists. And I like to make those lists in a sensible order. In the supermarket, it's by aisle. In bill paying, it's by due date. Here is how I prep to write:

1. What kind of a writer am I? 
2. What kind of work do I want to produce?
3. What kind of research will I have to do?
4. What kind of shape are my resources in?
5. How much support do I have?

These things vary from time to time. I am not the writer I was as a graduate student. And that writer was not the writer I was in high school. I'm not the writer I was last NaNoWriMo. 

I have never been good at comedy. Do I want to try it or should I stick to historical fiction? Can I make historical fiction funny? 

How much do I really know about my given subject? Will people who know more get rankled if I make a n00b mistake? Am I okay with that?

How much space is on my laptop? Is it updated? Where are my favorite pens? Will this notebook annoy me more than words can express?

Do my friends and family know what I am planning to undertake? Are they going to make room in their own lives to let me make room for this act of creation?

Think about these things. I'll get further in depth with them in subsequent posts.

Happy Planning!

"Bad" Words

In most spoken life, swear words are like salt and pepper - apply liberally to add interest to the offerings. At least in familiar settings.

Writing swear words, for me, adds weight to them. They were meant so emphatically that they could not be replaced with something more benign. Texting is a special case, somewhere between speaking and writing. But real writing, typing it out on the screen, putting pen to paper - that adds emotion.

Let me set a scene:

You are making breakfast. You are running late. The alarm didn't go off. Your phone didn't charge. The shirt you put on had a stain on it. You ran out of toothpaste. You cut yourself shaving. You have time for a bowl of cereal and that's it. You pour the cereal into the bowl. You turn to the refrigerator, open the door, and... "Where's the fucking milk?!?"
That is a perfectly natural sentence. However, when you go to add it to the grocery list, you aren't going to pen "fucking milk."

I recently purchased a typewriter. It's a decade older than I am. I love how it smells. I've taken to writing letters to a friend from my younger years, many miles away. She and I are very familiar when we text or talk and swear like sailors. I still use expletives when I correspond with her via snailmail, but each "damn" has more punch. Does the act of actually putting it on paper make it more damning? Do we still hold paper so dear that using it for something so crude seems wasteful and therefore Wrong? Is there a magic to the ink?

I don't have any answers. Feel free to expound on it in the comments.

This all was brought on by watching this video, which has an attached lesson plan.

Writing for Children

I write on FaceBook about the importance of context. Word choice is commonly the area of contention. The audience, though absent while writing, must be foremost in the writer's mind if the correct ideas are to be understood or conveyed.

Last night, I was reading a children's picture book. My son was asleep. I was reading it to see if it was something he would enjoy and I got wrapped up in it and found it repetitive. I struggled to not grab a red pen.

It's an adorable book with lovely illustrations. But it also carries the hallmark of GOOD children's literature. Repetition.

Picture books are intended to be read by readers to non or early readers. Repeating the same word or phrases again and again, while irritating to parents and editors the world over, is the keystone to early literacy. Yes, Little Lucy has memorized her favorite bedtime book, but please note that she can't recite it without looking at the pages.

My son is in kindergarten and he is learning Sight Words. These are the building blocks of English which are easier to just remember than to sound out every time you come across them. They are primarily small words of three or four letters. However, if the favorite book also contains a slew of adorable animals saying, "Hooray," in succession, Little Lucy will recognize that word again when she sees it elsewhere.

I try to get my clients to use a variety of words throughout their manuscripts. Sight words are one thing, but seeing the same noun in every sentence of a paragraph becomes tiresome. Not every person running along the beach used the same gait. Please make sure they don't all lope at different places in the text. Grab a thesaurus and make friends with it. Or "there's an app for that." Personally, I used Dictionary.com's app so I can toggle between the thesaurus and the dictionary functions. Like a painter trying to mix just the right hue, a writer should strive to find the correct word to convey (I have already used this word. It's annoying me, but I'm going to leave it just so you can understand my pain) the correct sense in their work.

You are an artist. Color your world precisely. Unless you're writing a children's book.

Why WordPrefect?

Yes, I proofread and edit. I also have a sense of humor :)

1. Prefect is the most common typo for "Perfect"
2. I learned word processing on WordPerfect
3. There is a very funny (and apt) definition on Verboticism for Wordprefect
4. One of my favorite fictional characters is Ford Prefect

Welcome to WordPrefect!

I will occasionally post about editing, proofreading, words, and publishing, but primarily, I will pimp out my services and toot my own horn.