“Choo-Choo to Broadway… Don’t get icky with the 1,2,3… Life is just so fine.”

I am a novel-writing neophyte. Although, i have lost a non-novel writing contest before. 

Well! i have a tentative course:

A boy reclines at the base of a tree, upon the high bank of a river, ruminating within a sunlit reverie, an idyll suggestive of Huck Finn’s liberty. 

“That which cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence.” The Boy, unaccompanied on the river-bank, finds—just as Wittgenstein—there is much which must be passed over in silence. (A mode of paresthesic dream-white translucency envisaged by a Boy prostrated in stupor.)

Uncertain how the idiom will be perceived I have decided to site some context which hopefully facilitates justification: Continue reading ““Choo-Choo to Broadway… Don’t get icky with the 1,2,3… Life is just so fine.””

Introducing Drew Beaudoin

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! 😀

Greetings from Halton Stoves

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”

I’ve been instructed to say hello

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.

Hello from the Yukon

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 from Elizabeth

Elizabeth Kurz joins the team at Stranger Than Truth with an introduction that cuts straight to the point. Let’s all welcome Liz and her twisted NaNoWriMo 2010 plans!

Current obsessions: misplaced phone calls, elaborate dream sequences, doubles, technology, monsters, underworlds, visions, David Lynch, lost girls, blackouts, white noise, skyscrapers, mirrors, bridges, feral animals, secret lives, lesbians, black cats, creaking houses, miscarriages, secret places, toothless prostitutes. 

I haven’t written anything in ages but I’ve been thinking of some ideas for a while. My biggest inspirations at the moment are Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Twin Peaks, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, and Paul Auster’s City of Glass. Essentially I want to write an absolutely terrifying psychological thriller that makes people kill themselves. I also am reading Les Miserables right now and therefore think there should be more toothless prostitutes clawing at suited men in general.

Continue reading “Hello from Elizabeth”

Massive Fuckjob

You read it here first. Well, you will, soon enough. And good thing, too, because I can’t imagine MASSIVE FUCKJOB is going to be a widely-released literary phenomenon.

First things first, my name is actually Cory McCallum, but I have more aliases than Carter’s got pills, so I have decided the NaNoWriMo moniker should be an old classic, Tasty Yumyum, fictional guitar player extraordinaire from Dank Resin, the best band ever to never play a note.

Continue reading “Massive Fuckjob”

A Bulko Introduction

By trade I work for Spacing, a Toronto magazine focusing on issues within the city’s public realm. While I don’t get tired of the lavish, opulent life of infrastructure, transit, local politics, and pedestrianism, NaNoWriMo is a chance for me to exercise my penchant for adventure, fantasy, and folk tales. This also provides an excuse for me to offload some previous, forgotten works, both published and un-. So grab your compass, +3 flaming battleaxe, and 10-foot-pole; the realm of swashbuckling and derring-do marches on NaNoWriMo.

While we await more from Mike, check out his take on Apple’s smart bike patent over at the Spacing Toronto blog.

Second try at NaNo

Hey everyone, I’m Ian.

I’m also gonna have a go at the NaNoWriMo this year. I tried it last year but didn’t get very far. To be fair though I don’t think I heard about it ’til about a week into November, and I couldn’t think of what to write about for another week after that. This year I’m getting my act together, and I have some themes that I really want to play around with. I’ll get into those later though.

I’m expecting to do a lot of writing on my phone this year. There are a number of reasons for this. Yes, the first is obvious—I’m a pretentious fuck and I’m obsessed with my iPhone. The more redeeming reason being that I actually do my best thinking and get most of my ideas while I’m out walking. Last year I was having to stop and pull out my notebook to take things down all the time so this will actually be a lot more convenient. All the writing I’ve done lately has been on my phone while I was out too, so we’ll see how much many words I actually write while I’m out and about.

…I’m downloading the WriteRoom app on my iPhone as we speak.

If you’re participating too, check out Ian’s NaNoWriMo profile: ianianianianian

Faceintheblue is giving it a try this year

Hello everyone,

My name’s Geoff Micks. I’ll be trying my hand at NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. My profile on NaNoWriMo is called Faceintheblue. My personal blog is faceintheblue.wordpress.com. You can also follow me on Twitter.

I’ve written a couple of manuscripts so far, and one of them is under review by a literary agency at the moment. I write historical fiction, but for the shorter and more spontaneous medium of NaNoWriMo I think I’d like to try something closer to Kurt Vonnegut’s style. I have an idea for a plot, and my hope is that it will prove to be an organic, stream-of-conscious narrative that will lend itself well to three or four thousand words a day. I’ll be sure to post updates here and on my own blog.

I look forward to sweating my way through November hunched over a keyboard. Cheers!