Fiction By Marcus Carab & Friends
Stranger Than Truth does National Novel Writing Month
Time for the next chunk of my NaNo ’09 effort. In this part we get introduced to some new characters (the first of whom was going to play linchpin at a crucial moment in the story I didn’t even get close to reaching), and also get more from Cam & Jeromy. We’re getting close to the end now, but there is some very exciting action to come.
If you missed them, check out parts one, two, three, four and five first.
Hello! I’m yet another member of Toronto’s NaNoWriMo team—this is only my third year doing NaNo, and will only be my second win, but I’m already part of the Mod team, both as a chat mod and as an event mod. I really don’t know how much this is going to affect how or what I write, but I’m hoping it’ll make it a bit more well-rounded; last year, I largely kept to myself, and while I didn’t dislike it, a lot of my more interesting scene ideas this year have come from sitting in a coffeeshop. =]
I’m really looking forward to joining the team here at Stranger Than Truth—I’ve never been the most regular blogger, so I’m hoping that NaNo—and blogging with a group—will be the kick in the butt to get me in line with it. =b
I’m also going to be quite regularly tweeting about it (and all course of other things) at @Bdoing and possibly vlogging my efforts.
Tonight’s the Kick-Off party for Toronto! Do you all have your novel planned out already, or are you planning on going by the seat of your pants? Let me know! I’m interested! 😀
I’ve decided that in order to reach the 50,000 word goal I should make a schedule and strictly abide to it. Anyone who has tried NaNo before surely knows that in order to reach 50,000 you have to average 1666.66 words a day.
That kind of schedule is fine enough if you want to be the next poor starving slobbish author whose work will never see the light of day, but what if you want to write a brilliant literary classic that will make you rich and be read and adored for decades to come? What if you want to be next great author like James Joyce, Herman Melville, Kurt Vonnegut, F Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, or Vladimir Nabokov? That’s easy. What’s the one thing all these great authors had in common?…. They knew how to write a brilliant first and last sentence.
We all remember such legendary opening lines as:
Hey there fellow authors, hope you’ve got your heads screwed on straight. Stoves here. So I haven’t been two hours out of the hoosegow when my agent calls me up & says I’m washed up if I don’t get my ass in gear and write something on the quick to justify printing my name on his lousy agency masthead. It transpires that everything I’ve ever published is now officially out of print, the last 20,000 unsellable crates of Rawest of the Groins having been committed to the pulper just last month. Here’s to that! I can’t say that it’s my favourite work, although my editor did mention she drank only marginally while working on it. I suppose it’s time to replenish the coffers and restore my legacy. No matter, there’s more where that came from.
So I stroll into my agent’s office and say this, with a great deal of flourish and pomp: memoir. Halton Stoves tells all. From the gutters to gilded greatness and back again. Volumes one through twelve, hardcover, gorgeous filigreed spine, gold leaf and the whole kit. He threw up all over his desk a couple times, but I happen to know he’s not a well man. I expect to hear from him with all due enthusiasm very soon. Also the cheque I sent him in recompense for my bail money bounced. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.
Continue reading “Greetings from Halton Stoves”
A little while ago I opened up a thread on the Toronto board of the NaNoWriMo forums, asking if anyone else was keeping a blog of their NaNoWriMo efforts. There were quite a few intriguing responses, some polite demurrals, one post that I think was a snarky rebuff, and one discussion about Star Trek (check out the thread, if you’re curious).
Here I’d like to highlight some of the more interesting blogs (and one interesting not-blog) I was introduced to:
The great thing about NaNoWriMo is that you very quickly learn your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I learned very quickly last time around that I am terrible at writing dialogue. The reason for this is that all of my formative writing experience was writing academic essays in university. I probably didn’t write a word of fiction at all between 2004 and 2009. This means I can formulate an argument well, but I can’t for the life of me write three characters having a conversation without it turning into:
“____” he said
“____” she said
“____” I said
Dreadful.
Continue reading “Lessons from Last Year: Narrative Mode and Voice”
It’s always an interesting decision—what do you say to introduce yourself? Not really knowing the audience makes it a lot harder.
I’m not sure I’d call myself an author. I have a published novel, but I published it with my own publishing company, so I’m not sure it really counts. Publishing my own novel was not the point of starting a publishing company, but we needed a starting place, and that seemed like a good choice. The book I published was my first NaNoWriMo novel, which I wrote back in 2002. This will be my ninth NaNo. I’ve won six times.
This year, I will be attempting to finish while also tending to a two year old and a five week old. I think it’s going to suck, but at least my wife is supportive. I’m going to write a story in which a person dies in each chapter. In the next chapter, the person who killed the person in the last chapter will die. I’m not sure where it’s going to end up, but it’s going to start with a squirrel.
Every time I run into a literary wall, my main character is going to pull out his weathered copy of Atlas Shrugged and read the giant speech near the end out loud. Doesn’t matter if he is on the subway or in Subway. Ayn Rand. Loud. In full. And, as the man hunched over the keys trying to tell you this character’s story, well, it would only be fitting for me to transcribe the speech as he gives it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing the character justice. I wouldn’t be doing my job. And goddammit, if there is one thing I take serious in life it is writing real life stuff about real life people and if my main character wants to read the giant Atlas Shrugged speech ten times throughout the course of my (huge fake in-the-air finger quotations) novel, well then, it is my right…no, my duty and obligation, to allow you, the reader, the chance to multiply the cheat-factor and just skip it (like everyone in the entire world actually does with said part when encountering it within the confines of said book). And if you, the reader, the general public, don’t like it, tough tittie. Write a chapter about it in your own book.
Hey Everyone. The winter is here. Maybe not for you guys, but for me it is. There has been snow on the ground for months already and the sun rarely comes out. I’ve been working 7 days a week now since August and its starting to drain on me. However, since the sun is so scarce, we are cutting back on work and it looks like I’ll have some free time and some money to throw around in the next few months.
My job means that I am constantly having adventures. As a kid I used to canoe around my parents cottage and imagine that I lived in the woods. I guess I lost that part of myself at some point and I became a city slicker. Anyway, now I’m back into the bush and I’m loving it. I use my axe all day long for making posts (which are used to identify a land claim) and for chopping down trees. I’ve gotten really good at chopping down a tree because I have to clear so many out for the helicopter to come and pick me up at the end of the day. Often I find myself pushing through thick alder trees or leaping over dead fall. Last week I ran into a bull moose. I waited for him to walk away and then continued my day. He was a big guy.
Anyway, I’m back in town for this month and taking days off and I’m hoping to write some stories. My real life is probably more wild then any story I could write, so I may include some truths as well. I like what I’m reading here and I look forward to reading more of everyone’s work.
— your good buddy Tim
Hello there blogosphere,
After writing my first post about the prospect of writing a lot of my NaNo on my iPhone, I got to thinking….why not write the whole thing on my iPhone?
I conferred with our benevolent editor and we decided, yes, this is too exiting of an idea to pass up. I test drove the WriteRoom app, and after working out a few kinks with the new WordPress app (which I am using to make this post) everything seems to be in order.
The prospect of writing 50,000 words is a daunting enough task on its own, so we’ll how much more of a challenge it will be on a 9cm touch-screen.