Twitter: Shakespeare Style

So I've been posting an extended poem under the hashtags #twitter #poetry. It was interesting writing (and I'm sure reading!) a poem in such a fragmented manner, but for those of you who didn't cotton on, it was a sonnet, Shakespearean style. I'm posting the whole thing below for those who couldn't follow or just want to see it as one whole poem. Enjoy!

Twitter: A Sonnet

Here I must conform to limits on space
Where letters count and numbers hope to rise.
My thoughts still seek a vast unending place
That does not submit to shape or size.
They cannot fit in characters so small
Softly typed, a breath to the tempest world.
They speak only barely, if heard at all.
Only when seen are they a flag unfurled.
Yet still I type, my fingers pounding keys
An attempt to harness the things within
But the words do not heed my desperate pleas
Laughing at pride, my original sin.

Doggedly I sit, as day bleeds to night.
Hopeless, I know. What can I do? I write.

The Value of Leaving the House

As some of you know, about a year and a half ago I moved to Greenville, a small town in rural East Texas. It's a nice enough town and the people are friendly, but it's the kind of place where you meet people through work, church, or children. I have none of these things. So my range of social interaction outside of my house is limited to my brother, his family, and some of his friends. Otherwise it's just my boyfriend and our three cats.

So I've turned into a bit of a hermit.

Though without the epic beard.

I sit at my laptop and work on my book. I go grocery shopping once a week. Bob and I occasionally drive "into town" which translates to a 45 minute to 1 hour drive to some part of the Dallas metro. But that's about it. For a while, I didn't even really see my brother unless something was happening, i.e. niece's volleyball game, game night, etc.

But I have to be careful, because all of this "me" time, this wonderfully productive and creative coccoon ... well, it can be suffocating. No one can exist in a vacuum. Most of all someone who creates. We need to see people's reactions to our creations. We need to bounce ideas off others and be, in turn, inspired by them. So people like me, people stuck in their own little bubble, need to make an effort to leave the house.

I've got a lot of excuses not to. There's no one close to me. The closest writing group I found was an hour and a half away. The closest meetup for NaNoWriMo is about that too. Seriously.

But it gets to a point where you just have to suck it up and do what it takes. This last Saturday I drove to the opposite side of Dallas for a NaNoWriMo plan-in session in Denton, TX. Sure it was three hour drive there and back. Sure there were gas costs and I had to drive it by myself, but it was totally worth it.

I met some really great writers and people and I hope I'll force myself to keep in contact with them. I'm historically bad about that kind of thing, but all I need to do is make the effort.

I'm also going out to my brother's house once a week. Just to hangout. Just to talk and listen to someone different.

So I may be the stereotype of a lonely writer, and it's true, writing is a very solitary activity, but contact and inspiration and connections are like air to creative people. We get lost in our vacuum, our head-space. We need to break out and take a breath.

We just need to leave the house.

NaNoWriMo 2013

So I've got a story. I've got characters. I've got an outline. But most of all, I have a goal.

This year's NaNo is going to be a bit different for me. Last year I already had a novel started. I had approximately 30,000 words and I used NaNoWriMo to kick me entire gear and write the last 50,000.

This year I'm starting with nothing. No words to speak of and a book that I expect to be 120,000 words long or so. In some ways this is more intimidating. I'm not going to be able to finish such a long book in one month, but I should have an incredible start.

Last year I had difficulties with time management and only barely met the end word goal. This year, it looks like there might be an even bigger obstacle in terms of time on the horizon...

Spoilers!

... but I'm still going to try and power through. That may mean doing bigger word counts at the beginning so I have some room in the middle of the month. Who knows.

For me, NaNoWriMo is more than a word count goal. It's a catalyst. It kicks my brain into gear and I can churn out more serious work in that one month of crazy deadlines than I can any other month of the year.

I'm ready. Are you?

The Importance of Outlining

Outlining. For some writers it's a dirty word. For me, it's the reason I finished my first novel.

That may sound a bit extreme. There were many factors that contributed to my realizing that goal, but I cannot stress how important outlining was. Especially since I wrote the last half at the break-neck speed of NaNoWriMo. If any book has helped me with this process, it's William Bernhardt's Story Stucture: The Key to Successful Fiction

Insert shameless plug here.

Outlining my story helps me fill out the in-betweens. The segments that happen between major turning points. I knew where I wanted to go, but until I outlined, I had only the vaguest sense of how I was supposed to get there. And like any map, outlining is only a suggestion. A simple route from Point A to Point B, but that didn't stop me from wandering off the map when my characters led me.

In terms of process, it's a lot easier for me to sit down and write an entire scene. I pick up the next index card (yes, I'm old-fashioned) and I write that scene. I know where it's going and I know where the story is supposed to end up. Some people prefer to write from middle to middle that way they aren't starting with a blank page. As for me, I tried that, but I could never bring myself to stop in the middle of a scene. If I got started I had to go until it was finished.

I also believe outlining gives you a chance to look at the story structure as a whole. Outlining defines the trees, but it also gives you a pretty good idea of what that forest is going to look like when you're done planting. You can see things like, are you ramping up the intensity? Do your subplots find resolution?

Above all, the reason I'm talking about outlining today, as I prepare for yet another NaNoWriMo, is to remind myself. Yes, coming up 60-100 scenes is time consuming and exhausting. Yes, my OCD means I have to have the index cards fully filled out and in a semblance of order. Yes, I could be watching Netflix. But outlining is important.

So I'd better get busy.

My Crazy Process: Creating Side Characters

So in preparation for this year's NaNoWriMo, I've been hammering out my new book. Think Salem Witch Trials + Book of Job + a pandemic plague, all on an abandoned, near-future Galveston Island. Most of the book takes place in a religious commune and I want this community to feel solid and real.

I've had some trouble coming up with side characters (aka, the members of the commune), but I finally figured out a process.

Piles of people!

Now, I admit it looks kind of crazy. It's the kind of stuff that might raise questions in more stable-minded folk. But I gathered almost 150 pictures of random people - all ages, genders, races, etc. - cut them out and started making families out of them.

I'm totally normal, right? Right.

I think the reason this has really helped me is that I'm a visual person. I've had "concept photos" of my main characters since the beginning. Looking at a person's face helps me envision an entire life for them. Helps me figure out who they are. A face is the starting point. Give me that and I can create an entire world.

I know a lot of people don't function like this. They're less visual or perhaps just less OCD. That's great.

This is the kind of background work that often isn't obvious in a finished novel, but even if you don't memorize the charts, even if you don't keep track of who is related to whom and how they got there, I hope I can give you a depth. The impression of a real community - of real people who live and love and work together through all the trials that I will undoubtedly put them through.

The Classics Project: A Year of Classic Literature

I've always considered myself fairly well-read. After all, I read all the time. Then I saw one of those lists. You know the ones. "100 Best Books of All Time" "100 Must Read Classic Works of Literature" Those. And while I do usually score above the "average" person, that has always felt like a really low bar. Many of these books have been influential in our society, and I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out.

So I've decided to start a project. The Classics Project. I'm going to take one year of my life and devote all of my pleasure reading to the classics. I'll give myself a pretty large selection and write a review for each one so you, my readers, can follow along in my literary journey. Honestly, it's kind of shocking which books I haven't read, but please don't judge me too harshly! After all, I'm not listing the plethora of books that I have consumed. ;-)

Here are some quick rules about the list. 1) It has to be something I haven't read. 2) It has to be fiction. I prefer novels, but I do have one or two plays on the list. 3) It has to be a work of literary importance. I honestly don't care if it was written 200 years ago or 10. If it's great, it's great. 4) I'm trying not to duplicate authors with some notable exceptions, in which case, I either really love the author or I couldn't decide which was a better representation of their work. If you think I've picked the wrong book feel free to let me know in the comments! 5) The final decision is mine. I know a lot of you have very strong opinions on what should or should not be on a list like this, but ultimately this list is for me. You can definitely make one of your own though! 6) No Dickens. Just no. I'll watch his stories on the BBC.

I don't expect to finish in one year, because let's face it, some of these books will take longer than three and half days. I do plan to continue reading and writing reviews beyond 2014, but I will no longer be limited to classics.

So without further ado....

The Classics Project:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Middlemarch by George Elliot
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
8. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
9. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
10. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
14. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
15. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
16. Ulysses by James Joyce
17. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man  by James Joyce
18. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
21. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
22. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
24. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
25. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
26. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
27. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
28. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
29. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
30. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
31. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
32. The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
33. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
34. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
35. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
36. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway
37. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
38. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
39. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
40. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
41. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
42. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
43. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
44. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
45. Watership Down by Richard Adams
46. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
47. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
48. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
49. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
50. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
51. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
52. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
53. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
54. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
55. The Plague by Albert Camus
56. The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath
57. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf
58. My Antonia by Willa Cather
59. Native Son by Richard Wright
60. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
61. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
62. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
63. The World According to Garp by John Irving
64. Beloved by Toni Morrison
65. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
66. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
67. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
68. The Heart is a LonelyHunter by Carson McCullers
69. Blood Meridian by Cormac MacCarthy
70. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
71. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
72. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
73. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
74. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
75. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
76. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder
77. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
78. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
79. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
80. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
81. The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie
82. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
83. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
84. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
85. Last of the Mohicans by James F. Cooper
86. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
87. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
88. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
89. The Thin Red Line by James Jones
90. The Source by James Michener
91. The Hunt for RedOctober by Tom Clancy
92. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
93. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by James Ford

What do you think? Is there a book or two you think I should add? I'd like to get this list up to 100, so please comment below!


Edit: As I write a review for these books, I will change the title to a link. Check them out!

Learning to Sit Still

Lately I've had a lot of trouble reading.

Not comprehending, but just sitting still long enough to read more than a paragraph or two. I work at home and I usually have some Netflix show or Spotify playing in the background. So not only is the sitting still a problem, so is the silence.

I honestly think that I've just fallen out of the habit. When I was a child, I read all the time. ALL the time. But now, it feels almost like work.

As an aspiring writer, this is no good. I need to read for research and inspiration. I need to read fellow books in my genre to get an idea of the market. I need to read.

So last night I laid down (I love reading in bed) and I read. And read. And read. I didn't go to sleep until sometime after 2am. When I woke up I still had my glasses on, a frequent experience when I was a kid.

So maybe I don't have trouble reading. Maybe I have trouble starting.

Knowing that, I'll sit down today at an appointed "starting" time and I'm pretty sure I'll have no trouble at all.