Join the Club

In a way, I'm a bit sad.

I've been sticking with the Don't Break the Chain approach to revising one of my old drafts -- a book that optimistically combines love, sex, religion, drugs, death, magic, biodiesel and video games under the unlikely title of The Ballad of Congo Willy.[1] This was the product of NaNoWriMo for me in 2011, and I have attempted rewrites and restarts every few months since the keys cooled from the original draft, always fizzling out for one reason or another.[2] But I'm actually almost nearing the end of it now, three months into making myself spend some time with it every night. I can't say that it's actually good, but I know at least that it's improved from its previous form, shoved in a box on a shelf being ignored.

Inspiration was hard to come by for this one, and instead of getting itchy fingers at the approach of November this year -- time for a carnival o' writing! -- I'm feeling kind of... dry. Empty. Not used up, necessarily, but not as eager as in years past. A bit sad, even, because there's no way I'm not doing NaNo this November, and more than I'll allow myself a night away from C.W.. Writing even terrible fiction is such a sea change from my day job mucking around with databases and code,[3] and I enjoy the oddball camaraderie of the Typewriter Brigade and the general festival nature of NaNo. For someone who slips into his habits easily and stubbornly refuses to get out, a month of creative chaos is a welcome and necessary part of my life now.

But what to write about?

I know that I'm not a (seat of the) Pantser come November. I don't just sit down at the typewriter and bleed. I need at least a sketch of a character or two, and a situation to toss them into: the basics of an outline, which I adhere to or drift from over the course of the thirty days. This flawed exercise is my capital-p Process, such as it is. And usually I am coming into October with just exactly these basics, having scrawled them down in notebooks and index cards during the summer. But I've spent all that time this year rewriting and revising, not sowing. So just as I'm forcing myself to Get Creative Daily, Dammit, I'm going to cutover into Full Bore Planning Mode in October.

The Internet[4] attributes this quote to Jack London:

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

After three months of enforced hill-climbing, I completely agree. There are days when rewriting C.W. was mental agony, and days when I couldn't get out of the way of my fingers fast enough. And I know that book is far better[5] overall for the attention it's been paid this summer, especially when the going got tough. And now I'm looking at the hill that is November, and realizing that I need to climb this thing yet again, and the only way to do this is to grab hold of both sets of bootstraps[6] and go.

But it's friendlier with more.

So here's a challenge to you, dear reader. Who's with me? Who's willing to head out and club up some inspiration? Who needs to break out of their daily rut a bit and write four weeks of bad prose? "I have nothing to write about" isn't an excuse.

Who's going to join the club?

---

[1] I did say I was being optimistic.

[2] Just one reason: pure unadulterated slacking off. I've tapped a vein of the stuff and mine it all day long.

[3] All of which is flawless, of course.

[4] "The Internet is always right." -- Abraham Lincoln

[5] And much, much weirder. I'm happy with that, too.

[6] Not sure this is physically possible. Not worrying about that, either.

That Magical Age

Typed on a very Muggle-ish 1952 Skyriter


It's alarming to me how out-of-practice I've gotten at typing. Typos, dropped words... you'd think we were in the middle of NaNoWriMo. Which, incidentally, is approaching at an alarming pace: even faster than my kids are growing, it feels like. I hope to get some more limbering-up typecasts in during the next month.

The Hook

(from U.S. Patent #2486473, "TYPEWRITER RIBBON AND SPOOL" by H. J. Hart (1946)

On my Royal's ribbon spools, there is a small hook that drops down: the ribbon holds it in place when it's wrapped around the core, but when you reach the end, the hook lowers and trips the reverse mechanism, and what was now the end of the ribbon becomes the beginning. (This is a snip from the patent drawing, above.)

We're ending week two of NaNoWriMo, and maybe you're feeling a little at-the-end too? Like you've typed all you can and have run out of ideas? Time to invoke the Hook: make a change, kill a character, summon those monkey ninjas from the ninth dimension. Do something dramatic and you'll have a whole fresh story all laid out before you.

All the way to 50K, people. You can do it.

Smug

Today was a difficult day: my lunch was interrupted by a minor crisis, and while fixing that, was interrupted by another more major crisis, the two of which conspired to keep me away from my afternoon NaNoWriMo session. I'd been especially looking forward to this one, as I'd literally been on my feet all day -- I'm using a new standing desk, and am in the adjustment period where my back is happy but my feet are protesting. Sitting in a padded chair for forty-five minutes in the middle of the day sounded pretty damn good. But instead what I got was a gulped-down lunch and two hours mired in the depths of financial software. By the time the fog lifted, it was too late to skulk away with the Skyriter under the arm.

This made me bitter.

And then the lights went out.

For the second time in a month, we lost power to our building, and after the wails of despair died down ("I didn't save!") and casual conversation broke out in the hall, I realized that life had turned my lemony day into novel-ade. Out came the typing pad and the Skyriter, and for the next forty-five minutes or so, I typed by the fading daylight, boosting up the word count. Someone even stopped by and jokingly suggested that I hand out spare machines to anyone needing to finish up their work. I said, "I am doing work!"

This made me smug.



I took the sudden work stoppage as a sign that Dramatic Action was called for in the novel, too. I've been languishing a bit, wallowing in the flabby and ill-defined section in the middle of my outline. When the lights went out in the office, though, the lights came on in my brain, and whether it was the unexpected opportunity of a writing session, or the endorphin rush from finally sitting down, I think I've got a title for the story, and even a decent synopsis I can put up on the site.

Very smug indeed.

The Magic

Well, it happened this morning. The first morning when I hit the alarm button a couple of times, and actually resented getting up at some ludicrous hour to write terrible fiction.



This was taken at the end of the session, just before my kids woke up. I started at 5:30, and I've been starting at 5:00 since Monday. Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to the time change this weekend. It's far too dark to warrant getting out of bed, much less getting up to attempt to string together a contiguous storyline. But it's also one of the few times of day when I'm truly left alone -- since all sane people are still abed -- and so I take advantage of the quiet and solitude to work. (Since starting this post, for example, I have made two breakfasts, fed and let out the dog, defused a tantrum, and watched a parade of plastic dinosaurs and cows.)

Reluctance is part of the NaNo game, of course, and much as I try to suppress the Inner Editor, he is known to perch on my shoulder and make murky comments in my ear while I'm trying to work.

"This is crap."

"Why didn't you figure out the character names in advance? My God, this is lame."

"You got us up for this?"

Sadly for the Inner E, I don't hear so well at 5:00 AM, so most of these complaints go unheeded. And during my lunchtime writing sessions at work, the coffee-cart guy has Fox news turned up too loud on his TV, which I've found to be an effective drone to dispel all rational thought. NaNoWriMo thrives in pockets of irrationality, and in the very heart of those pockets lies magic.



Around the same time that the Inner E wants to start smacking "snooze", the Muse also starts kicking in. For me, writing is best tackled at regular times: I think it fools my brain into being creative, because, hey, we're sitting at that damn typewriter again and we're not getting up, might as well write. And it's in those oh-what-the-hell-just-move-those-fingers moments that the unexpected starts to creep in. The characters start talking to each other and reveal Big Personal Secrets. Scenes I had not anticipated appear, and the story is better for them. User "munk" on the Typewriter Brigade topic compared the feeling to a silvery thread connecting the subconscious to the typewriter. Yeah, I totally get that. It's the magic.

There was an anti-NaNo article on Salon lately, and then an anti-anti-NaNo article in the LA Times blog. You can search them down if you like, but it's the same arguments and defenses that have been trotted out every year, and I feel like it boils down to a slobs versus snobs distinction. I don't listen to the argument much, though I do savor some of the more nasty comments from both sides. I know the self-imposed suffering of writing regimen will end in three weeks, and I know that what I'm writing is not High Art. But gives me a chance get in touch with the magic, and that feeling makes it worthwhile.

But even more when we turn the clocks back.

All I Needed Was the Crazy

Laws-a-mercy, it's four days until November. Maybe it's just the pre-holiday malted milk balls talking, but I'm suddenly excited about this month. You may remember last week's self-pitying whinge about feeling preemptively blocked and bored of my story, or at least scared that it would turn into a month-long drudge instead of a celebration of free writing. I'm happy to say that the fear has evaporated, since I found the crazy.



Or rather, my main character did. Or will. Without tipping my hand, let's just say that my main character is pretty much doomed this year, in what could become a very bleak book. And I'm not very good at bleak, but the story seems to demand it. I've been trying to think of ways to throw a little leavening into the plot, a little lightness without going too far, and without making some kind of stock Comic Relief Wacky Neighbor type character. Nothing came to mind, and then it struck me. Unreliable narrator, whispered the muse, and suddenly all was made clear.



So yes, now the story is bleak, the main character is doomed, and he's very likely not on firm mental footing.

I couldn't be happier!

Two Things

1. Because I can't leave well enough alone, I'm considering adding some rub-on transfers to strategic locations on the pimped-out Brother. I'll need to trek down to the craft store, but I'm thinking something in the interior of the case (like under the keys) would look pretty sweet, and break up all that eye-sweating redness. Stay tuned. I'm still hunting for designs that don't look like a frat boy tattoo.
   
2. I know I mentioned The Impossible Project in an earlier post, but they have a new press release today announcing a modest resurrection of Polaroid cameras and Polaroid-branded film. Might want to harvest a couple from Goodwill while they're still cheap for the taking.
   

Remember(ing) the Dream

I'm surprisingly wordless today on this most historic of days, I think the worldwide supply of hyperbole has been seriously tapped. I watched some of the ceremonies via streaming AP feed this morning, and I did indeed get a little choked up. As I mentioned on Olivander's blog, 46 years was a long time to get across the National Mall, but it was worth it.

And with that, I'll make a clunky transition back to the spirit of techno-nostalgia. Please take a look at these two pieces by kinetic artist John Douglas Powers.

• Dream
• Remember (my favorite of the two)

See also this article about the artist for the story behind the Dream typewriter.

For a day when nothing seems to go right

Teakettles. Tires. Old shoes. Tin cans. Balloons. Rockets. Boats. Cars. Levers. Ladders. Fire. Water. Smoke. Mist. Physics. Chemistry. Equilibrium. Gravity.

A bunch of nouns, yes, but also components in the fascinating The Way Things Go. Artists set up an enormous chain-reaction of everyday junk, with a little chemistry and pyrotechnics thrown in, and let it go. And go. And go. Just when you think "ah it's stopped"... something else happens. The SFMOMA had this running on a loop in their gift shop, and it always drew a crowd, just watching bottles tip, boards teeter, and tires roll uphill.

Amazingly planned, and worth a rental. Suddenly, changing a typewriter ribbon doesn't seem like that big a deal.