New Year, New Challenges, New Inspirations

Not wanting to rehash the same old "resolution/goal" post, I found what I didn't know I was looking for in the blog of another aspiring author. The blog is Tikiman1962, which I only saw because I follow N.M. Kelby on Facebook. I don't know the guy who writes Tikiman. (Is he familiar with Martel's Tiki bar at the Jersey Shore? Or does "tiki" mean something else for this guy?) But I already feel a bit of kinship with him. He writes, he's done NaNoWriMo for several years, he's married and appreciates the help his wife can provide him in his writing. And he appears to speak with his own voice on his blog.

Good qualities all.

His 2010 wrap-up piece made me think about what I accomplished in the year that's already packed in a Hefty bag and lying on the curbside. I posted 30 items on The Elephant's Bookshelf in 2010 — more than some years, fewer than others. A couple were book reviews by writing friends. Some were very short pieces that I slapped together on the fly. What I really loved about the majority of them, however, is that they seemed to find an audience. I thank all of you who commented and hope I inspire you to do so in 2011.

To be sure, the largest contingent of commenters came from the community of writers I belong to at AgentQuery Connect, which I think is the most honest, critical, and supportive writers' site on the Web — at least those I'm familiar with. I also say thank you to Caroline Hagood, whose witty, wonderful blog Culture Sandwich has been a joyful discovery for me. Caroline shared a book review on the Bookshelf, and I wrote a blog post in the Sandwich. In between, we both seemed to enjoy what the other was writing. I call that a great example of how the Internet can expand your horizons and help you develop opportunities. Plus, creating friendships with other writers always strikes me as good karma.

If the opening days of 2011 are any indication, the new year is replete with such opportunities, too. So, whether you're looking forward or peeking in your rearview mirror, I wish good luck to my fellow writers as we all look to typing, scribbling, or scratching out word after word after word.

Working Toward Nano?

With October just around the corner, I can't help but think about November, when National Novel Writing Month begins. I've done it the past two years (I've yet to reach 50,000 words total during my NaNo experiences), and this year with two small kids demanding the time they deserve from daddy I feel safe in saying I won't reach 50,000 words.

So I'm thinking it's still appropriate to work on the novel I started last year, regardless of the rules. I know I need to write more than 50,000 words before it's going to be "done," anyway, so I don't think I'm flouting the rules.

But writing doesn't necessarily require rules. Of course, grammatical rules should be adhered to, except when there's a point to side-stepping them. But point of view is something you can play with, as is the believability of the narrator. The novel can be structured in almost any manner these days. Personally, I prefer to have characters and story I can follow easily. I don't relate to characters in adult stories that are bananas or armoires. Still, when it comes to Nano, all bets are off.

What's my point? The point is writers write. Writers who are new fathers pine away wanting to write. But they write in their heads all the time. Ok, I write in my head all the time. I miss doing it on paper or a computer screen for myself. Over the next few weeks, I'll review what I wrote last year and try to get back into those people's minds. It won't be quite the same, but it's time for me get back into writing. My kids deserve it.

Nonfiction Writers Wanted!

If you're a writer of nonfiction who's looking to get his book idea into shape for agents, you might want to visit and join AgentQuery Connect, where a nonfiction discussion group was recently established. For those of you who are familiar with AQC, you probably know that it's primarily populated with fiction writers, but nonfiction remains the biggest segment of the publishing world and AQC recognizes that.

I don't work for AgentQuery, I'm simply an active member of that community, and while I'm there to gain insight into getting my fiction published, I'm a working journalist with ideas for several nonfiction works, so I'll be an active participant in that area too.

There simply haven't been many participants yet, so come on in and join on the ground floor of an active online community of writers. I'm sure you'll like it.

National Novel Continuation Month

November is almost over; just about six hours to go here on the East Coast. And with the end of November arrives the close of National Novel Writing Month. Though I have topped 15,000 words, it is not physically possible for me to get to 50,000 today unless I were to steal words from other documents and paste them into my work in progress. That's not going to happen. I respect myself and my fellow writers too much to do that.

But that doesn't mean I'll stop writing what I have begun. I'm still getting to know the characters in my new novel, Blood Falls. They're interesting and I'm sure there's a lot more complexity to them than has been shown so far. But that's what you learn when you first meet people. I know something about my main character's family, how her parents died, the awful disease her sister has, the brother who seems about as deep as the condensation on a bottle of beer. I met people I didn't know about, like the niece of my main character, who strikes me as smart and precocious and potentially uplifting as this family's story progresses.

I've also gotten to know a couple fellow writers better. For that I am most thankful. I feel like I've been welcomed into a community of writers and I've already learned a lot from them; I suspect that more will come. I hope I've helped at least as many people as have helped me.

But tomorrow, despite the board meeting I must attend and the mountains of work I must tend to, begins National Novel Continuation Month(s). Most likely, it'll extend into the new year. It may also overlap with the beginning of Local Life-Interrupted-by-Babies Lifetime, but I'm ok with that too. Because they will be a big part of my writing life for years to come. Indeed, I expect them to garnish a huge chunk of my salary over the next 20-25 years.

So, off I go to live the life of yet another aspiring novelist -- albeit, one with a novel to show for it and another on the way and dozens of workable ideas to pursue after that. I'll probably reach about 16,000 words on this year's Nano. I strongly suspect I'll start something else next year, but this year's word count may end up as a high-water mark for a while, unless I start fictionalizing what my kids do. Lord knows what tomorrow brings.

Even More Competition

This story from the Los Angeles Times made me wince. It hadn't occurred to me that in addition to the writers' strike consigning us all to a springtime of reality shows sprouting up like weeds, it will also pose a new challenge to authors (like myself) hoping to break into the ranks of the publishing world.

Those people who are able to spin teleplays to us over the TV screens are looking for something else to fill their time as the strike continues. So they've turned back to the novels they said they'd write "eventually." Well, Eventually has arrived, and these people should have the discipline to actually finish their work, unlike the people like me who have strong drafts that need a little tweaking but who put that off to do things like attend a Burns Supper on a Saturday night and recover the next morning (to read, mostly).

Ok, that's not so bad. People have to enjoy life in order to write well about it. And I'm not truly threatened by the "increased" competition that's out there, primarily because the industry is so difficult to get into any way that these other writers don't really scare me. What's another hundred zombies (ick) when you're already up against ten thousand?

So bring it on, writers' strike! Challenge me! Challenge us all. As long as we all get some good books out of it, I say: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the competition, I will fear no evil.