Category Archives: Writing

Books, Writing

Gmail Down? 25% Off Lulu Today Only

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Downtown DandelionsYou may have heard about the big Gmail fail today when Google’s mail app went down for an hour and 45 minutes. It was a tech apocalypse of so-so proportions.

But it gets fun when on-demand publisher Lulu.com offered a 25% discount today only. Use the code “gmail” and you can get 25% off, up to $100 until midnight tonight. So what can you buy at Lulu.com? Well, among other things (like Wil Wheaton’s Sunken Treasure) you can buy my first novel, Downtown Dandelions.

If you’ve ever considered purchasing my barely edited, first stab at a novel, now’s your chance to get it for 25% off (that’s only $9.74). What a deal! I haven’t made much of an effort to pitch this novel, mainly because of the whole barely edited part (yes, it has typos). But today I thought, why not? Some of you might actually get a kick out of it. Some people have actually liked it. In fact, just last month a distant friend commented on Facebook: “I just read Downtown Dandelions on my vacation and really enjoyed it.” Nearly five years after it was published some people are still enjoying it, so why not pitch it again?

It’s the story of college students facing calamity and falling in love. Death and romance in one tidy package.

If you haven’t heard the back story on this novel, you can read up on it here. Essentially, I wrote it in a month as a part of the National Novel Writing Month. I spent a few weeks editing it (mostly for proofreading, it didn’t get a real edit) and slapped it together on Lulu.com so I could have an actual copy on my shelf, more for posterity than anything else.

So if you want to snag a copy at 25% off, you’ve only got a few hours left to do so. And if you’re cheap, you can also just download the free PDF.

Update: Looks like Lulu is having another sale for Labor Day weekend: 20% off up to $25 (code: WHITE) or $50 off $250 or more (code: GREEN).

Writing

It Takes Crap to Make Beauty

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Something I’m trying to teach myself as a writer is that you have to write some shitty first drafts before you can come with anything close to good.

That’s an easy lesson to learn when you’re writing something short like a review or a blog entry or an article. An hour or two of shitty drafts is no big deal. You’ll find a nugget or two of gold from that few hours of work and it’s all worthwhile.

The problem comes when you’re trying to write something longer. Spending 60 hours writing a shitty first draft of a novel is a lot of work. And the prospect of having to throw away 90 percent of that work is unthinkable. But that’s just the way it is. Amazing stories don’t come out of your head fully formed and breathing and wonderful. They take a lot of work.

In the early drafts of Back to the Future the time machine wasn’t a Delorean, it was a refrigerator, and it wasn’t lightning that was going to send Marty back to the future, it was an atomic blast (let’s see Doc Brown model that one!). It sounds stupid and that’s because it is. But the beauty and simplicity of the Delorean and the lightning didn’t come out until the writers had tried a few other things and worked their way into the brilliant idea of a car as a time machine.

Every great work of fiction was birthed in a sea of crappy ideas. Without the crap, no beauty.

Writing

Status Report on my Novel

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I got some feedback on my novel this weekend, my 2006 NaNoWriMo effort that I’ve been trying to polish over the last 8 months or so. It came from an industry insider who kindly agreed to read the first few chapters. There were definitely some things I need to work on, but perhaps most important it confirmed a suspicion that the young adult genre might be a good fit.

I like to chafe at genre limitations as much as the next person, but in reality genres just make things easier to categorize, sell and ultimately read. So you might as well get used to it. If you want readers, you’re going to have to deal with genre.

So I spent some time at Barnes & Noble yesterday, trying to embrace the YA genre. I think it might be a good fit. I’m actually a big fan of kids books and young adults novels, though they’re not always branded with the YA tag. Harry Potter, Madeleine L’Engle, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Phantom Tollbooth, Louis Sachar (Holes), Jerry Spinelli (I love Stargirl and the sequel), James Howe, Nick Hornby’s Slam. There’s quite a bit in this genre I resonate with, perhaps because YA novels frequently deal with the teen perspective of coming to terms with life and finding your place in the world. Those are big themes. But it’s all drenched in the drama, angst and immediacy of the now. Teens see broken things in the world and don’t accept them as they are. They want to fix them, and fix them now. That’s inspiring.

It also helps that American culture celebrates a perpetual adolescence.

Continue reading Status Report on my Novel →

Business & Marketing, Writing

20 Minutes at a Time

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Earlier this week I read an article by Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing fame) about how he’s able to be a productive writer in an age of distraction. It’s definitely a worthy question. In some ways I’ve answered that question with National Novel Writing Month, but that’s not a very sustainable solution (nor is it all that more productive; I’ve yet to truly polish any of the three novels I’ve written during NaNoWriMo).

One of Doctorow’s suggestions is to have a short, consistent schedule where you do nothing but write. Even if it’s just 20 minutes, as long as you do it every day you’ll accomplish a lot. I’m beginning to realize how true that is, for more things than just writing.

Think of all the enormous tasks in this world is accomplished not with some Herculean effort, but with the small, slow drip of consistency. Winning an election, overturning a social ill, writing a blog, landing a job, landing on the moon, earning a degree, making a friend.

It’s hard to do. Even as I’ve had this idea in my mind all week I haven’t found those 20 minutes for my writing. But I have found 20 minutes for other projects, and it’s proving beneficial.

It’s the old tortoise and the hare: Slow and steady wins the race.

Books, Business & Marketing, Writing

Authors Without Web Sites

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Earlier this week I singled out author Anne Lamott for not having a web site. But the sad fact is she’s not alone. A number of noteworthy authors lack official web sites:

  • Jonathan Franzen
  • David Sedaris
  • Sarah Vowell
  • Alice Sebold
  • Kathleen Norris
  • Robert Pinsky
  • Seamus Heaney
  • David Rakoff
  • Russell Banks
  • Frederick Buechner (supposedly coming soon)

Granted I’m doing a quick Google search. If an official site doesn’t show up in the first page of results, it doesn’t exist (quite frankly, if you have a site and it’s not showing up on the first page of results for your name, you’re doing something wrong). Even Wendell Berry, the Kentucky novelist who still uses a typewriter has a web site (granted it appears to be maintained by his publisher). So why do none of these well-known authors have a web site?

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Writing

Five Lessons from Writing a Novel in a Month

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National Novel Writing Month WinnerYesterday I announced that I had finished writing my 2008 National Novel Writing Month effort, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel called The Least. This was my third attempt at writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days (that’s 1,667 words per day). While I’m definitely a winner because I finished (that’s all that matters with NaNoWriMo), The Least is definitely my worst novel by far. I did learn a lot in the process though.

1. Sci-Fi is Hard
I knew it would be, but science fiction is an especially hard genre to write, especially in 30 days. The biggest hurtle is that you have to create an entire fictional world. If you pick a contemporary setting, you don’t have to wonder what kind of clothes people will wear or how they find food. I knew this would be a problem and ended up deciding a few things and running with them, even after I realized some of my assumptions wouldn’t hold up. I love the thought process and imagination involved, but you end up putting a lot of effort into the setting and it’s easy to neglect the plot or characters.

Continue reading Five Lessons from Writing a Novel in a Month →

Writing

NaNoWriMo 2008 Winner

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National Novel Writing MonthI finished. I just crossed the 50,000-word mark, wrapped up my epilogue and stuck a fork in The Least, my 2008 National Novel Writing Month novel.

Whew.

It was quite a sprint at the end, when I wrote more than 6,500 words in one day to overcome loses from the holiday and travel but then just kept on going to finish a day early.

The novel itself isn’t spectacular. Few NaNoWriMo novels are, but this one by far has more glaring holes and painful moments than my previous efforts. But that’s OK. That’s not what’s important. Just doing it is important, and I did it. Now I can call myself a Sci-Fi novelist.

You can read it if you like, though I’m not really recommending that.

Writing

NaNoWriMo 2008 Update

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National Novel Writing MonthFor those who don’t remember or haven’t been paying attention, I’m participating in my third National Novel Writing Month right now. That’s when I consume massive amounts of chocolate and caffeine and write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. After 20 days I’m over 34,000 words. That means I’m ahead of schedule, but not by much.

You can read along if you like, though I promise it’s full of typos, bad ideas, moralizing and inconsistencies (hey, it’s an unedited first draft).

Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2008 Update →

Writing

NaNoWriMo 2008: The Least

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NaNoWriMo ParticipantOh yeah, I started writing a novel today. Again. It’s called The Least (it’s a working title, I know, I’m not thrilled with it either). This is the third time I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month, the pressure-cooker event where you attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. In both previous attempts I won (i.e., finished).

So far I’m at 3,832 words, which puts me well ahead of schedule for the first day (woot, woot!). I find it really helps to start strong. It gives you a needed cushion for days when the words just don’t come. To save you the math, you have to write 1,667 words per day to stay on track.

And you can read along. I just set up a quick Blogspot blog where I’ll be posting the novel as I go. It will be full of typos, plot holes and it might completely suck, so reader be warned. It’s also a work of post-apocalyptic fiction, so abandon all hope ye who enter.

Hopefully it will be interesting and fun. I’d appreciate your comments and support, as long as they’re all positive (if you think my novel sucks, don’t tell me until December).

Writing

NaNoWriMo 2008

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National Novel Writing Month 2008 ParticipantNext Saturday begins National Novel Writing Month and I think I’m going to partake again. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was editing my last novel in vague hopes of finishing in time for NaNoWriMo 2008. I wasn’t sure if I’d actually finish, but I think I’m getting close. At least close enough that I can hand it off to someone else and let them tell me if it’s any good or not. Which gets the thing off my desk for at least a couple weeks.

All of which begs the question: What on earth do I write about this year?

Part of me thinks I should stick to my strengths, which seem to be character-driven stories centered around tragedy (assuming you consider either of my novels good enough to be strengths). But another part of me thinks it’s time to try something new. Maybe some post-apocalyptic fiction? Maybe cheesy yet subversive Christian fiction (like a Christian version of Liar, Liar called Preacher, Preacher where the main character can’t stop himself from preaching at everyone, no matter how wildly inappropriate the situation is)? Maybe something else completely?

All day long I’ve been mulling the possibilities. The biggest danger is I only have one week to figure out what the heck I’m doing, and then 30 days to put down 50,000 words.