How I Turned a NaNoWriMo Failure into a Successful Learning Experience

Earlier this year I decided I was going to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel from start to finish all within the month of November.  I didn’t come anywhere even remotely close to finishing.  If NaNoWriMo was a cross-country race from Liberal, KS to Washington, D.C. (1458 miles) I would have only made it 87 miles.  Not exactly a stellar effort.  However, I’m still calling the experience a success, and because I learned a lot about my writing over the course of that month.

I found out I like outlining.

Generally speaking, there are two types of writers.  Outliners and Discovery Writers. Outliners are exactly what they sound like – people who make outlines.  Discovery writers are the ones who sit down and just let things flow onto the paper or computer screen as they form in the writer’s mind.  I’d only written short fiction before NaNoWriMo and I leaned more toward discovery writing.  I decided since I had never taken on a project as big as a 50k word novel, I’d try and outline the plot to keep me a little more organized.

I searched around the internet for a while looking at different ways novels are outlined, and I soon learned there are about as many ways to do an outline as there are writers.  Eventually I settled on outlining the book chapter by chapter and including various scenes I wanted in the book.  It was at that point when I learned that I was definitely an outliner.  Over the month of October I’d sit down at my computer and brain storm scenes and find out where they would best fit within the story, and I had a blast doing it.  By the end of the October I had it planned out to be around 20 chapters or so, and I was pretty pleased with where the plot was going.   Getting to sit back and look at the big outline I made already had me feeling like I had accomplished something.

The story grew bigger than I expected.

Looking above at the section on all I learned about outlining, someone might think, “Well if the whole book was planned out before you started, why didn’t you write more?”  Good question.   The thing that really derailed me was that I kept going back and messing around with the outline instead of writing the story I came up with.  The fist day I got off to a great start and got my first chapter written and everything was great.  However, then I started thinking about other cool things that could happen, and those things sounded way cooler than what I already planned but wouldn’t fit within my outline.  So I went back and started messing around with the outline more.

This happened constantly over the first week and a half.  In order to finish your 50K words in the month you need to average 1,667 words a day.  After ten days I had 3,000 words because instead of writing, I was tinkering with my outline.  While I was changing the direction of the story over and over again, I was adding more characters, making some characters more important than I’d planned, getting rid of others who I thought would be major impact characters in the story, and debating whether or not I wanted to work in a love interest into the story.  After several days of that, it was obvious that the simple story I’d originally planned for NaNoWriMo had turned into something that was just too huge to take on in a month.  Which led me to the next big discovery about the project.

I wasn’t ready for a project this big.

I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was a teenager, and as I mentioned previously, all I’d written was short fiction.  Writing short fiction is great.  It’s fun, you get lots of practice doing different things with plot, character, and language, and it’s something that you can do over the course of an evening or a week.  It was not a good idea for me to try and write my first novel in 30 days.    It was demoralizing when I looked up and saw that I was 15K words behind schedule. 

The funk didn’t last long, but there was definitely a funk.  For a few days I didn’t go anywhere near my office and I wouldn’t talk about my book with anyone.  I kept thinking that I’d wasted so much time messing around with the outline that I’d never finish.  Luckily that self-pitying only lasted a day or so, before I was able to pick myself back up and re-evaluate what I was going to do for the rest of the month.

I signed up to learn and have fun.  So I was going to keep learning and having fun.

I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to finish the book that month.  It didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to finish it ever.  I’d had so much fun planning, outlining, and world building that book that it would be a shame to give up on it.  So I looked at what had become of my simple 20 chapter fantasy novel.  I looked at the changes I’d already made and looked at my notebook where I jotted down changes I’d been debating.  The book became something so much bigger than I’d ever thought of initially. 

So I decided I was going to just go back into planning mode and not worry about writing another word of the actual story.   As I planned I made notes to myself about characters, plot, and worlds that were going to make up the story.  I identified things that I need to do a lot of work with, and what kind of research I’d need to do to make the cool things I added to the story make sense.

In the end, I came up with something epic.

What has come out of that experience is the plan for a big epic fantasy series that I’m so excited to write.  However, because that has become so much bigger than what I was ready for, I decided to put that idea on the shelf for a while.  I still pull it out now and then and add some cool ideas that I want to try and work into it, but that particular story is going to wait a little bit for me to get a little more practice.

In the meantime, I’ve started planning an urban fantasy novel that is going to be a lot more low key.  The idea behind this project is to start and finish a novel without the stress of keeping up with daily word counts.  Instead of approaching it like I did NaNoWriMo, I’m going to follow along with one of Brandon Sanderson’s fiction writing classes.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, Mr. Sanderson teaches creative writing at BYU.  In his class, the project they work on the entire semester is completing a novel or novella (depending on the semester).  The coolest part is that the lectures are all on YouTube.  (Here is the link to watch the first couple semesters)  So to keep myself steadily writing and working on this new book, I’m going to follow along with the most recent semester that was posted and approach the novel as if I were writing it for Mr. Sanderson’s class.  Any cool writing exercises or side projects coming from that class will probably be posted on the blog because I think sharing that stuff will be kind of cool.

The Day I Met Brandon Sanderson

Last month I had the incredible fortune to stumble upon an opportunity to go to a Brandon Sanderson book signing in Houston.  Originally I had been planning to visit a friend in northwest Indiana in late January, but anyone who has The Weather Channel knows that I should have scheduled that trip for another season.  (I may live in an arid mountain shadow that gets hardly any snow, but the 938 miles between my friend and me was in the process of having snow and sleet liberally dumped all over the roads.)  So unfortunately, those travel plans had to be put on hold, and I was left with a week of vacation from work with no real plan on how to spend it.  So far, the vacation was looking like it was going to be a dud.

I briefly thought about making it a staycation, but honestly if I was going to hang around town, I’d rather just keep working.  I decided since, going north in winter was such a terrible idea and staying home sounded too boring and depressing, I’d go south to Houston and visit my sister and brother-in-law.  After setting up last minute travel plans with them, I hopped on the good old Internet to look for activities and events that were going on while I’d be there.  I was slowly poking through various websites when I did one of my compulsive twitter checks and saw a post by Brandon Sanderson about a signing he was about to go to.  Out of curiosity I went to Mr. Sanderson’s website to see if maybe he’d be going somewhere close to my hometown.  As luck would have it, he wasn’t going to be anywhere near where I live, but he was going to be in Houston the same time I would be there.  Finally, something lucky happened with the vacation planning.

I sent the info to my sister and my college roommate who lives in the Houston area, and suddenly Friday night’s activities were planned.

Before this, I had never been to an author signing.  I’ve watched several videos on YouTube of authors’ speeches prior to signings, but that was about it.  I checked out the necessary details I’d need to know about the signing and learned I’d need to buy a copy of his new book Firefight from the host bookstore in order to have anything signed.  So after getting to Houston and taking a little nap, my brother-in-law and I went to the bookstore to pick up my copy of the book and get my number for the signing. 

I’m going to take a moment here to give a shout out to the host bookstore.  The signing was being held in a smallish bookstore called “Murder by the Book,” located in the Rice Village area of Houston.  It is definitely one of the cooler bookstores I’ve been to in a long time.  About the only bookstores I get to go to anymore are Barnes & Noble and Hastings.  They’re nice and have tons and tons of things.  This small, local bookstore, however, had such a nice and homey feel to it.  It is a bookstore that just focuses on the books people actually read.  If someone came in there looking for a travel book on the forests of Albania, they’d be out of luck, but if they were looking for a suspenseful thriller, a page turning mystery, or an epically epic fantasy, this place had whatever you needed.  Plus the staff was super cool.  If you’re ever in Houston and looking for a neat place to spend some time, trust me swing by this place.  It may not have as much as a B&N, but seriously, who really needs an Albanian travel book.

Ok, back to the stuff about the signing.

So the night arrives and my sister and I meet my roommate at the bookstore.  The festivities were set to begin at 6:30, but when I was buying my book the cashier said they would start setting up at 5:00.  (If you really know me, you know that I’m also someone who is compulsively early to everything.)  So of course, I’m there a little before 5:00.  It wasn’t that big a problem though.  As I mentioned earlier, it was a cool bookstore with a lot to look at, plus I was able to spend that extra time catching up with my buddy.

The even starts and Mr. Sanderson walks in.  I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Mr. Sanderson’s Writing Excuses Podcasts, watching his BYU creative writing lectures on YouTube, and reading his books (all of which will be blogged about in the near future).  So to say I’m a bit of a “fanboy” when it comes to Mr. Sanderson would be accurate.  So when Mr. Sanderson arrived and casually walked in, I actually found myself a little star-struck.  Holy shit he’s seriously like 15 feet away from me!  I never get star struck.  I’m the kid who asked Barry Bonds (before the big steroid stuff made him a societal pariah) if he wanted my autograph when I met him at Disney World.  I will admit though, I had to work extra hard to keep my composure.

The event started off with a quick mini-lecture given by Mr. Sanderson.  During his talk he spoke about a time when he told someone he was a writer and they immediately followed with the, “Oh, so you’re unemployed,” remark people love to give.  Well in that instance, Mr. Sanderson just sold a book and was a comfortably employed author.  But then he made the comparison of writing as a hobby to playing basketball.  If someone plays basketball in their driveway, no one ever belittles them because they’re not in the NBA.  As an amateur writer myself, that was a particularly good message for me to hear.

He then held a Q&A for a little over an hour where he answered questions about his writing process, gave tips for other writers out in the audience, definitions of words he’s made up, and about his little fan fiction project.  Some of you may have heard of it.  He finished Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

Then we started the signing.  The process was very organized and efficient.  We lined up ten at a time according to our numbers we got when we purchased his book. (I was 102, so I had a bit of a wait.)  While you were in line a staff member would ask you if you wanted your book personalized when it was signed (ummm yeah!) and when it was your turn, you handed your phone or camera to another staff member,(do people still have standalone cameras anymore?) and that person would count to three while Mr. Sanderson was signing your book.  He would look up; you’d look at the camera, and boom you have yourself a new Facebook profile picture.  While your book was being signed, you could ask Mr. Sanderson more questions.  Pretty simple.

It got to my turn.  At this point I’ve had over an hour to think of a question to ask him.  However, I was sitting pretty close to where the signing was going on while I was waiting to get in line so I heard the majority of people’s questions and his answers.  A lot of what I had to ask had been answered before I got there.  So when I handed him my book, and he asked if I had any questions, I just told him all I had was more of a comment.  I then told him that I’d watched his BYU creative writing lectures online and that his lessons had helped me a great deal with my own writing. 

He looked up with a big, genuine smile, and said “Thank you.”  We exchanged a couple more words about writing, he gave me my book, and I started to walk away.  Well, while we were talking and I was wowing him with my praise of his work outside of his actual books, we both missed the photo opportunity.  He was super cool though and let me come back to make sure I got my picture. 

Then I waited around for a while until my buddy was able to get his signed.  Of course my buddy spent his time up there asking a New York Time’s bestseller about video games. 

Overall, it was an amazing experience.  While I was there I was able to meet someone whose work I admire greatly, I was able to see a great friend and catch up, and I was able to stop pouting that my original vacation plans fell through due to weather.

Book signings are definitely something I’m going to actively look for in the future.  Obviously any Sanderson signing will require no convincing for me to attend, but I’d really like to experience signings from other authors.  I got to learn a lot about Mr. Sanderson’s writing process at this event, so I think it would be really cool to attend events for other authors to passively pick their brains a bit too.  The coolest part about this signing event was that as I looked around, everyone was having a great time.  It’s not just something for nerdy writers.  Nerdy readers would love them too.

So if you’re ever in your local bookstore and see an ad promoting a book signing, I definitely recommend going.

Answering the "Why" and the "What"

Hello, everyone!   Welcome to the blog.  This will be my third attempt to get a blog started and sustained, and hopefully the clichéd saying, “The third time’s the charm” holds true.  I’ve taken a lot more time and put a lot more thought into this attempt than the others.  I love writing, and one would think that a blog would come naturally to someone who enjoys it as much as I do.

So what happened?  Why the spectacular failures in the past?  It didn’t take me long to figure out why they failed; I didn’t have a plan.  I thought all I needed to do was log in, open up a new post and magical and meaningful words would spew forth onto the screen.  Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

Having taken some time to look at what other good blogs do, I’ve noticed the following things that they all have in common.

They know why they’re blogging, and they know what they’re blogging.  I asked myself these two questions, and a plan began to form.

For some it’s an opportunity to share their lives with friends, family, and strangers.  For others, they are trying to reach out to people and establish an audience or fan base for some of their other work.   Some people simply need to see their thoughts and dreams written in front of them to be able to process them. 

So why am I doing this? 

As I mentioned earlier, I love to write.  It has been a dream of mine since I was a child to write books.  I began seriously writing short fiction when I was in college.  That was also when I realized I didn’t only love writing, I wasn’t too bad at it either.  Well, eventually graduation came and went and I no longer got to check the Student box under employment.  Real jobs and responsibilities took over, and I stupidly thought I should put the writing on the shelf for a bit until I got settled. 

That was dumb.

Writing is like any other skill a person possesses.  It requires practice in order to improve, and I haven’t been practicing near as much as I should be.  I more or less have myself settled in the real world (whatever that means) and I started writing again a couple years ago.  I was rusty.   You don’t walk away from baseball after a couple years and then immediately step in the batters box and hit home runs off 90 mph fastballs.

I pitter-pattered around for a while planning stories and not starting them.  Starting other stories and not finishing them, and doing a lot of talking about writing without actually writing.  Something had to be done.  I needed to come up with some way to make myself write and at the same time keep myself accountable for the bigger projects I start. 

That’s where this blog comes in.  It’s my practice arena.  What better way to practice writing than to sit down and actually write?  It’s my accountability buddy.  What better way to keep reminding myself to work on the big stuff than to write about it and share how the project is going?   Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself on the back for a moment to congratulate myself for successfully answering the first question.  I found my why.

Ok.  So what the hell am I going to write about?

In the past I would have given and excited yet uninformed reply of, “EVERYTHING!”  No.  Focus, Sean.   That was what got me into trouble the first couple of blogs.  Everything might as well mean nothing.  When I decided I was going to blog about everything that entered my head I got overwhelmed and lost.  Too many things to consider for blog topics led to me not doing any of them because I couldn’t decide.

So, knowing that I needed to narrow the focus considerably, I looked back at my answer to why I’m doing this.  Hmm…it seems to be heavily writer themed.  Here’s and idea, how about blogging about writing and books?  Score.

So what can we expect to see pop up on here from time to time?  Right now the plan is for updates and sharing experiences about working on the novel I’m starting (I’m in the pre-writing phase right now), occasional book reviews, and some short fiction that I’ll do now and then just to practice new things. 

I’m going to keep it pretty simple right now.  Just those three things to start with.  In time, who knows?  Maybe we’ll start a book club on here?  Maybe I’ll head to a few book events like signings or conventions and share my experiences with those.

So there you have it.  I’ve figured out my why and my what.  Now let’s strap in and get ready to enjoy the ride.