Tag Archives: Kitsap

National Novel Writing Month!

Do you know about National Novel Writing Month?

Put in its simplest terms, it’s a challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Every year, thousands of writers push aside as many pressures on their time as possible and set goals of setting down around 2,000 words — or more — each day as they try to make their dreams of becoming published authors come true with one big push. And many authors who have been published use the month to push forward on their newest projects.

The best part of NaNoWriMo, as its participants call it, is that you’re not doing it alone. Every year, through the website, NaNoWriMo participants find fellow writers in their communities. They meet, they commiserate, they encourage one another, they hold each other accountable. (In Kitsap, you can find each other here.)

In 2008, my friend Craig Lancaster and I decided to take the NaNoWriMo challenge together. A fellow newspaper editor, Craig, like me, had always wanted to break into the novel-writing biz but hadn’t quite pushed himself forward.

I faceplanted. After getting a great start on a nasty little noirish crime novel about an estranged father and son who bond over a rising body count, I wandered off track with my narrative and decided to hit the reset button on Nov. 15. Yep, I started all over. I pushed hard, and wrote more than 10,000 words on Nov. 30, but in the end I came up short at just under 43,000 words.

Craig, by contrast, drew a much more confident bead on his project and knocked out some 80,000 words in just 24 days. Wow! He spent the next several weeks polishing up his manuscript, and had it ready to release as a self-published book by March 2009. The novel, titled 600-Hours Of A Life, was a lean, light comedy-drama about a man with Asperger Syndrome trying to broaden his narrow comfort zone in life before he turned forty.

Thanks to Craig’s tireless efforts and business savvy, the book began to find an audience, and virtually everyone who read it loved it. His relatively strong sales and standout reviews, mostly in his home state of Montana, drew the notice of a Montana outfit called Riverbend Publishing. By fall of 2009, Riverbend had re-released the book as 600 Hours Of Edward, bolstered its distribution reach, got it into the hands of more literary tastemakers … and, aided again by Craig’s tireless promotional work, touched some pretty rarified air.

By the time Edward won the High Plains Book Award, Craig had long since completed his second novel, The Summer Son. After shopping it to Riverbend, Craig made a deal this summer with AmazonEncore, the new publishing arm of the online bookselling giant, to release that novel in paperbook and e-book form in January 2011.

That’s right: Barely two years after we took the NaNoWriMo plunge, Craig’s literary star is on the ascendant. Backed by the fearsome global power of the world’s biggest bookseller, there’s just no telling what heights he’ll hit.

But … wait a minute, I can almost hear you saying. Just how did he get through NaNoWriMo to achieve this awesome success? What about the self-doubt we all deal with? The lack of direction? The lack of discipline? The pull of the pressures of everyday life? The gnawing fear that we really suck at writing?

I’m glad you asked. Because I asked Craig to share his perspective and advice, and he answered the bell as he always does.

Here’s what he had to say.

*****

Back in late October 2008, your kind blog host, Mr. Thomsen, asked me if I’d do National Novel Writing Month (aka, NaNoWriMo; aka, Couldn’t They Have Picked a Less Busy Month, Like, Say, March?) with him. After some hesitation, I agreed.

I’d been there before and had never finished the requisite 50,000 words in 30 days – had never really come close. I had no reason to expect that NaNoWriMo 2008 would be any different – especially since I hadn’t given it much thought and didn’t have a story idea.

As Jim’s already said, that November changed my life and gave some juice to my aspirations of being a novelist, a dream I’d long held but hadn’t done much work in realizing. Here, then, are five hints (plus one bonus observation) for making the most of NaNoWriMo, should you be just crazy enough to accept the challenge:

1.     Publication? Perish the thought: If you’re dreaming of a book deal and wearing an ascot in your author photo, you’re way too far ahead of yourself. NaNoWriMo is about tossing a lump of wet clay onto the wheel and beginning to fashion something. Your only expectation should be that you’ll be a ways down the road come Nov. 30. Even if you go truly stratospheric, like I did, and write 80,000 or so words, your story will not be ready for agents or publishers. Bank on it.

2.     Let inspiration carry you: When I started writing at midnight on Nov. 1, 2008, I had a basic story idea, a bare-bones outline intended to keep me focused and a lot of enthusiasm for the effort. That last bit mattered most. This is a 30-day festival of dumping the contents of your mind. Consider letting adrenaline, rather than richly detailed plot points, carry you. The ride is so much more interesting when the final destination isn’t known.

3.     Don’t fall behind: You know that vicious cycle of destitution that occurs when you don’t pay your bills? There are late fees and reconnection fees, and you end up in an even more precarious place. Same thing with NaNoWriMo. To get 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to write 1,667 words, minimum, each day. If you write 750 on the first day, you have to write 2,584 on Day 2. It doesn’t take long for the deficit to become more than you can make up. By the same token …

4.     Writing ahead is paying yourself: In 2008, I wrote 79,175 words by Nov. 25, my entire first draft of what became “600 Hours of Edward.” Here’s a day-by-day breakdown (in parentheses is each day’s progress):

Nov. 1, 2008: 5,763 (5,763)

Nov. 2, 2008: Off

Nov. 3, 2008: Off

Nov. 4, 2008: 11,183 (5,420)

Nov. 5, 2008: Off

Nov. 6, 2008: 13,721 (2,538)

Nov. 7, 2008: 16,963 (3,242)

Nov. 8, 2008: 20,439 (3,476)

Nov. 9, 2008: Off

Nov. 10, 2008: 23,085 (2,646)

Nov. 11, 2008: 27,293 (4,208)

Nov. 12, 2008: 30,744 (3,451)

Nov. 13, 2008: 34,558 (3,814)

Nov. 14, 2008: 39,886 (5,328)

Nov. 15, 2008: Off

Nov. 16, 2008: Off

Nov. 17, 2008: Off

Nov. 18, 2008: 43,846 (3,960)

Nov. 19, 2008: 51,811 (7,965)

Nov. 20, 2008: 54,816 (3,005)

Nov. 21, 2008: 60,837 (6,021)

Nov. 22, 2008: 63,957 (3,120)

Nov. 23, 2008: Off

Nov. 24, 2008: 73,208 (9,251)

Nov. 25, 2008: 79,175 (5,967)

Look at all those days off. I’m convinced, in retrospect, that the ample rest kept me sane, because on days I was writing, I clearly had time for little else.

5.     Move forward, always: I disdain most mechanical writing advice, believing that no one can tell anybody else how to coax a story into existence. But NaNoWriMo is different; if you’re doing this thing, presumably you’re doing it because you relish the challenge of the word count. (If you don’t relish that challenge, why bother with a contest? Just write.) So here’s the key: no backtracking, no rewriting, no revising. Every word should move your story forward. You most assuredly will have to rewrite, probably extensively. That’s what December and beyond are for.

6.     It’s OK to sit this one out: Having written one novel under the auspices of NaNoWriMo and one in a more traditional way (three-month first draft, followed by nine months of revisions), I have to tell you that I’ll probably never again do the NaNoWriMo thing. Word count is a pretty flimsy construct in the first place; when someone asks me how long a story should be, my answer is: As many words as it needs, and not one more. To then squeeze those 50,000 words out under intense pressure no doubt leads to some irretrievably poor writing. If it’s the challenge you want, that’s one thing. But if you’re aiming for a writing career, you should ask yourself some hard questions about what you want from a month’s work. It’s entirely possible that NaNoWriMo won’t offer what you’re seeking.

*****

Thanks, Craig. Sage words indeed.

And that’s all I shall say, at the risk of writing a 50,000-word blog post.

Well, there is more more thing.

Good luck!

News and Notes: Bite-Sized Adventures in Authortastic Awesomeness

Some news and notes from around the Kitsap literary scene:

• Just got a note from the folks at Elandan Gardens in Gorst that a copy of Gnarly Branches, Ancient Trees: The Life and Works of Dan Robinson, Bonsai Pioneer has arrived at the home of the world-class bonsai art collection, even though the book won’t be formally released until October. Robinson, of course, is the world-renowned “Picasso of Bonsai” who makes Elandan his home base when he’s not off trotting the globe teaching others the exquisite tree-design art. At $49.95, the price may give pause, but, if you click on the link and leaf through a sampling of pages, you’ll see the the pictures are indeed exquisite. Ordering information is available there as well.

• I asked Ollala crime author Gregg Olsen about his newest fiction thriller, Closer Than Blood. All he would tell me is that it features Kendall Stark, the Kitsap County sheriff’s detective featured in his most recently published novel, Victim Six. Oh, and that it’s set, like the last one, in Port Orchard. And it has “a serial killer with ties to the South Kitsap High School Class of ’94.” It’ll be out the first week of April, which is when the paperback version of Gregg’s latest true-crime book, A Twisted Faith, comes out.

Gregg also reminded me that the “Dateline: NBC” program spotlighting the Kitsap case behind A Twisted Faith airs again on Friday, Sept. 24. He’ll also be discussing the story at a Nov. 12 fundraiser dinner for the Kitsap Historical Society.

• Bainbridge Island author Anthony Flacco, another crime writer, has been no less busy than Gregg. I’ll have a blog post coming soon on an interesting project he’s immersed at the moment, but he’s also plugging away at his next novel. His fiction work to this point has been historical, but this time he’s trying something new.

Said Anthony: “The new story is a contemporary magical romance set in San Francisco in the world of food shows and reality TV. The plot is moved by an ancient native myth that influences the choices of the principal characters.”

Anthony’s most recent books were The Road Out Of Hell, a well-received historical true-crime tale from the 1920s, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book, a Writer’s Digest book he produced last fall with his longtime partner, literary agent Sharlene Martin.

Speaking of The Road Out Of Hell, Anthony announced not long ago that an Italian publisher had acquired the book’s rights and would be hosting some author appearances when the translation releases in March 2011. Said Anthony on his Facebook page: “What a wonderful way to visit that country, La Dolce Vita! One hundred years after my grandparents arrived at Ellis Island.”

• Somehow, in my post last week catching us up on Debbie Macomber’s oeuvre, I missed that Susan Wiggs, the Bainbridge author of romance and women’s fiction, had the same day re-released The Firebrand, the last in a trilogy of historical romances she originally published about a decade ago based on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Publisher’s Weekly liked it, in a 2001 review: “She has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound as the relationships, characters and story unfold. Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed trilogy, and general women’s fiction readers should find this story enchanting as well.”

• Garth Sundem was nice enough to send me his geektastic new book, Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons, a couple of months ago, and I’m feeling guilty for not having mentioned it yet. The new book by the 1994 Bainbridge High grad, much like his first two, is a trip through the “intersection of science, math and humor.” It’s loaded with hundreds of funky little factoids, puzzles, logic tests and other ways of demonstrating how our malleable, easily tricked but surprisingly resilient brains work and how the science of putting it to work more efficiently has advanced.

Sundem, who now lives in Ojai, Calif., eats up science writing and research with two spoonfuls. As a result, his bite-sized-nuggets of geekery require more thoughtful digestion than a potboiler novel. That explains why I’m just on page 73, and why, if I wait till I’m done to do a proper write-up, we’ll likely have a new president in the White House.

So, to get a taste of what Brain Candy is all about, click here for some samples. Or watch this tremendously entertaining 2007 appearance on Good Morning America, in which Sundem banters with Diane Sawyer and shows how math calculations can determine whether or not couples should get married — or stay married.

• And, speaking of former Bainbridge Islanders, Seattle author Brandon Kyle Rudd just released the latest edition of his Cooper’s Pack children’s travel guides, Cooper’s Pack Travel Guide to Seattle. The 72-page picture tome follows the adventures of Cooper the dog and his pal, Elliott the otter, as they hop a ferry from Bainbridge Island and see the sights around downtown Seattle. The book, priced at $12.95, can come with plush toys and other kid-friendly accessories.

Rudd — whose pen name on the guides is just “Kyle” — made his mark on Bainbridge as a kid in the late ’70s and ’80s, publishing the Winslow Advertiser shopper from his fourth through eighth grades, and later Exhibition, a well-regarded visual and literary arts magazine, through his high-school years. His Bainbridge school years made a lingering impression on him, as the bios of his characters at the end of his books throw shout-outs to some of his favorite teachers: Gary Axling (Blakely Elementary), Dave Layton and Eileen Okada (Commodore Middle School) and Paul See (Bainbridge High).

Cooper’s Pack Travel Guide To Seattle is the third in a series; previous editions spotlighted New York City and London, and next year will see Cooper visit Bangkok. The book — or its interactive edition — can be purchased online or at Seattle tourist attractions like the Space Needle, Ivar’s and Seattle Duck Tours. (Interesting sidelight: The media relations person for Cooper’s Pack Publishing, based in Seattle, is Marta Drevniak — who happens to be Gregg Olsen‘s daughter.)

• OK, one last ex-Bainbridge Islander (I get to do this because I happen to be one). Remember the big kerfuffle alluded to in a previous Reading Kitsap post about The New York Times’ alleged bias in book reviews toward white male authors from New York? Well, I found out that if you’re looking for Exhibit B to prosecute that case (Exhibit A being Jonathan Franzen), look no further than former Bainbridge resident Alan Furst.

The 69-year-old Furst, a native Manhattanite who lived on Bainbridge for a while in the ’80s and ’90s when he worked for the Seattle Arts Commission, has written 11 literary spy thrillers. All have been set in Europe, before and during World War II, and nine of them have been reviewed in the Times (check them out here). The tenth, Spies Of The Balkans, was reviewed in The Times not once but twice. (The second review is less complimentary, dinging Furst for Ph.D-level historical research at the expense of character development.)

And Furst also got a lavish feature in The Times’ Books section a couple of years ago, in which he sat with the reporter in his Sag Harbor home and said, “I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.” (Gentile non-gentlemen, start your outrage engines.)

But here’s my favorite part of the story:

Mr. Furst wrote what he now calls a “transitional book,” “Shadow Trade,” a contemporary spy thriller, and helped Debbi Fields, the chocolate chip cookie mogul, write her autobiography. There were also three novels he’d just as soon not talk about. They were comic murder mysteries set in the world of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. “It never occurred to me that people didn’t want to read about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” he said. “Or that there might be other things you’d want to do with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.”

Awesome, that. Also:

At a writer’s conference in the late ’80s, Mr. Furst went on to say, he ran into Peter Davison, then the poetry editor at The Atlantic Monthly and also an editor at the Atlantic Monthly Press. Mr. Davison said to him, “We looked at your manuscripts,” Mr. Furst recalled. “Do you want to know why we turned them down?” When he said yes, Mr. Davison said they were the most smart-alecky things he had ever seen.

Even more awesome.

• OK. but nothing’s quite as awesome as this. Jamie Ford, the South Kitsap High grad who’s coming Oct. 16 to Poulsbo to speak as part of the Kitsap Regional Library‘s “One Book One Community” program, shared a funny story on his blog about a fanboy writer crush he’s long had on legendary science-fiction author Harlan Ellison.

Seems that the acclaimed author of Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet wanted to honor Ellison’s legacy of performance-theater writing — Ellison used to type short stories in a storefront window and give them away to those who watched — when he takes the stage at Richard Hugo House in Seattle next month for The Novel: Live! fundraising event next month. Facing a two-hour writing turn before a live audience, Ford wrote to Ellison asking the other man — now 76 — if he could wear a T-shirt of his at the event.

Next thing Ford knew, he received a call at his Montana home from the man himself.

Wrote Ford in his blog about the call: “Picking up the phone and hearing, ‘Hi, Jamie, this is Harlan Ellison,’ was like learning that Santa Claus is real. Except he’s Jewish and drops the f-bomb a bit more.”

As a result, Ford will take his turn on stage at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 16, wearing a Harlan Ellison T-shirt.

Thus concludes this edition of awesometasticness.

Actually, wait, one more thing: Ford has agreed to do a Q&A with me in advance of his visit.

Flippin’ awesome.



Catching Up With the Seriously Funny Mary Guterson

It seems like no time at all has passed since Mary Guterson‘s second novel, Gone To The Dogs, was hitting bookshelves. It was just over a year ago, in fact, that the Bainbridge Island author seemed poised to break through in a big way as the Pacific Northwest’s resident comic chronicler of whackbag women.

But a lot can change in a year, and a lot has changed for Guterson. She’s since relocated to Los Angeles, where she works as a freelance writer of copy for movie trailers and is developing an addiction to frozen dinners from Trader Joe’s. (Ouch! Dart to the heart for us Kitsapers!) She’s done some teaching gigs, most recently at the Whidbey Island Writers Association’s MFA program. “And i don’t have an MFA,” she told me. “But they didn’t seem to care. I actually enjoyed teaching there so much that I’m thinking of trying to get myself some sort of teaching gig down here.”

And she’s working on her third novel (following Gone To The Dogs and her equally delirious, delicious We Are All Fine Here), but don’t expect another uproarious tale of a chick with a one-way ticket to Crazytown. Guterson being who she is, however, she couldn’t possibly not be funny in talking about her unfunny work-in-progress.

“For one, it’s not a comedy,” she said. “And for two, the main character is a child. Aren’t you just dying to read it??? An unfunny kid! Who wouldn’t want to rush out and pick up that book?”

She added: “In truth, it’s about the fifth novel I’ve started in the last couple of years, so I’m not at all positive this one will stick, but so far so good.”

More seriously, she elaborated: “I make no plans when I write. I don’t know what I’m going to write until I write it. So, writing a more serious work wasn’t done as part of a plan to stretch myself or to keep from being pigeonholed.

“I just write what I write, and apparently at the moment, I don’t write funny.”

Guterson’s ties to her native Northwest remain strong, and she’s a frequent flyer up this way. In October, she’ll have a short story published in a collection produced through Humanities Washington. And in the middle of the month, she’ll be participating in “The Novel: Live!”

The latter is an exciting experiment in which 36 Northwest writers — including Kitsap writers Susan Wiggs, Suzanne Selfors, Carol Cassella, Kathleen Alcala and Guterson, along with South Kitsap High grad Jamie Ford — spend two hours each writing their parts of a “marathon novel” on the cabaret stage of the Richard Hugo House before a live and participating audience. After the novel is done, it will be published and sold as an e-book in all formats, with profits going to a number of nonprofit Northwest literary causes.

“The Novel: Live! is the brainchild of Seattle7Writers, an authors’ collective of which Guterson is a founding member. Its aim is to energize and promote the area as a reading community, and Guterson is participating in that spirit. (Even if she claims she’s really in it for “free wine.”)

Writing, as we know, is generally a private, protected discipline. So I had to ask Guterson if she was intimidated by the idea of writing on display like a guppy in a fish bowl when her turn comes to take the stage on Friday, Oct. 15 from 6 to 8 p.m. (Cassella’s two-word response to the same question: “Totally terrified!”)

“Maybe I should be,” Guterson said. “But I’m thinking of it as performance art. There’s no thought that we are going to produce a work of beauty. Oh, God, watch, the others will produce a work of beauty and I’ll totally f— it up by writing my usual bulls–t. Now I’m afraid. Thanks a lot, Jim.

“But no, really, I think it’ll just be a fun sort of lark.”

(On her website, Guterson has the following idea for those following her during her turn onstage: “We can make a plan in advance where I say I have to use the ladies’ room, and then you, dear reader, sit in my seat and type away, and meanwhile I take FOREVER to come out of the bathroom! And when I DO emerge, you will have done most of my writing for me. Perfect!”)

(By the way, if you can’t come in person, you can follow the whole thing on a live-streaming website and e-mail suggestions to Guterson as she’s working. More on that at a later date.)

In the meantime, Guterson continues work on her novel without a publishing contract. Which, curiously, is the way she prefers it.

“I was offered a two-book contract for both of my books, but turned down the offer both times,” she said. “I don’t want to be contractually obligated to a creative endeavor. That would kill what little creativity I’ve got.”

It stands to reason that Guterson should have a strong position in making her third book deal, then, when the time comes.

“Gone To The Dogs did very well,” she said. “I believe it ended up selling more copies than my first novel …. My agent tells me that both books sold very well, and that my publishers have been very pleased. And that’s good enough for me.”

Us too.