Short Story Anthology: Crime Gone Wrong

As many of you know, I participated in the National Novel Writing (NaNo) challenge in November. Even though my novel is pure garbage (but I plan, eventually, to do the proper rewrites and see if I can salvage any of it), it whet my appetite to write more fiction. And to get serious about it.

So what does any self-respecting fiction-writing wannabee do in that situation? She goes and finds herself a group of seasoned fiction writers to hitch her shiny new wagon to. I found a good one.

Enter DIVA, our little group of four fiction writers from different parts of the world who came together to write short story anthologies; three established hot-shots and me. Yep, they let me in the group and you better bet I'm soaking it all in. I've written fiction since childhood but I've mostly kept it to myself. These gals are showing me the ropes and helping me polish my craft. 

This is how we do it: as a group we decide on the title of the story collection. Then we go off and write our individual stories based on the title/theme. It's interesting to see how my fellow writers interpret the title and write their stories based on the chosen theme.

Soooo, we just published our first anthology, Crime Gone Wrong. My story is dark. In fact, they're all a bit twisted, in a good way. If you like stories where vengeance doesn't always go as planned, vampires and witches don't see eye to eye, and where peeping in windows might scare you to death, check it out:

Buy our book on Amazon

If you read the stories, please let me know what you think. Honestly. I want to get better and the only way I can do that is through real and constructive feedback.

We are in the midst of writing our second book, a young adult anthology about Summer Love. After that, we're doing flash fiction stories with a Killer Heat theme. It's all very exciting, so stay tuned... 

By the way, DIVA stands for Diverse, Independent, Verruckt Authors. 
According to our German member, verruckt means crazy. :-)
 

7 Things I Learned During National Novel Writing Month

A few days have passed since I wrote over 50,000 words during the 30 days of November.

30 days and 30 nights of literary abandon.  Indeed.

It was a huge commitment but it taught me more than I ever imagined. I often said it was like taking an immersion class in fiction writing. Here are some of the nuggets I got from it:

1) It's hard to turn off your internal editor but when you do, magic can happen. So can crap. Still, if you end up with more magic than crap, you're ahead of the game.

2) The world doesn't stop spinning if laundry piles up and counter tops are jumbled. The NaNo veterans remind us that when we signed up for NaNoWriMo, we set the audacious goal of writing a novel in 30 days, not scrubbing surfaces clean. Word.

3) Support groups work. I did not participate in NaNoWriMo write-ins but I did join a virtual group that was awesome. We encouraged each other and shared successes. Like Ernest Hemingway says, "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life." A support group makes it feel less so.

4) Friends and family can help. Let them know what you're doing. When I left the Thanksgiving table to sit behind my computer and bang out words, they gave me a pass. In fact, they wanted to know how many words I managed to do that day.

5) What you start out to write may not be what you end up with. My NaNo novel went in directions I never planned. It took sprawling tangents with wild subplots; new, interesting characters showed up with rich back stories - it was a fascinating process.

6) Just write. And write. And write. Don't stop. Some people dig writing challenges, some swear by  Zen Writer or Dr. Wicked's Write or Die. I tried them all when the muses weren't smiling on me. The point is, keep your fingers tapping no matter what. A guy in our support group wrote a scene in his 2009 NaNo novel where a father told his son a bed time story. That story turned into a children's book that he's currently shopping around. You never know what will come out of the experience.

7) Embrace the rewrite when you're ready. I crossed the 50K finish line but lost steam. IMHO, my story could be good and it started strong, but I lost the love. I plan to put the manuscript in a drawer for several months and forget about it. I hope to reread it with fresh eyes one day, edit the heck out of it, tack a decent ending onto it and decide what to do next. But I did it!

The list is specific to me and my experience as a first time NaNoWriMo participant. I'd love to hear how you did!

Oh yeah, in addition to writing the novel, I blogged through the month. If you want to take a look at my progress, here are the links:

National Novel Writing Month - I'm In
NaNo Day Two and Super Storm Sandy 
NaNoWriMo Personal Best 
28,623 Words 
NaNoWriMo and Me: I Got Nuthin 
Closing In On NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo Winner = Me

Thanks for the encouragement, friends.

NaNoWriMo Winner = ME

It feels kind of silly to call yourself a winner when everybody that crosses that 50,000 word finish line is dubbed a winner. Still, I'll take it. It's been a long month. I managed to write the NaNo novel, keep up with my client deadlines and be there for my personal commitments. So yeah, even if there are hundreds of winners, I'll gladly wave the winner flag right alongside them.

The National Novel Writing Month stats are interesting.  
Number of words logged during the 2011 event: 3,074,068,446

Total collective word count for 2012: 3,144,450,256

That's a bunch of words! I bet some of them are even good. My own, however, are probably not. Not yet, at least. I'll fix all that during the rewrite. 

Coming up soon, I'm going to write a post about everything I learned by participating (nee, winning, haha) NaNoWriMo. Some of it is trivial and some is pretty profound. I just don't have to juice to write about it right now. I'm spent. 

In case you're wondering, yes. All in all, it was worth it.   

NaNoWriMo - Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.

Closing In on NaNoWriMo

Four days. Four short days remain in November - National Novel Writing Month - which means I have four days to finish my novel.

What's that? How am I doing? Oh, thanks for asking.

Here are the specifics:

So yeah, I'm closing in on it. I made a commitment to put 50k words on the page this month, so I'm staying with it. 

I'm pretty sure that what I've written the past few days is crap. It may be salvageable crap or it may be editing room crap - that remains to be seen. But not anytime soon.  

For now, I will finish the book. Then I'll do what Stephen King recommends and put the manuscript in the drawer for a while. After some mental distance, I'll be better equipped to determine what to keep and what to scrap.

Right now, none of that matters to me. What matters to me is that I finish what I started, that I write 50k words during National Novel Writing Month.

I think I can, I think I can...   

NaNoWriMo and Me: I Got Nuthin

An alternate title for this blog post could be:
  

I Got Nuthin*

What I'm writing today is not worth reading. Sometimes it flows right out of me and other times every word is a struggle. Today the writing muses are not smiling on me.

Ah yes, the National Novel Writing Month takes place annually every November. This is the first year I've made the crazy commitment to write 50,000 words in one month. All-in-all, I'm glad I'm doing it. It's teaching me a lot about myself and my fiction writing.

The relationship I have with my story, my characters and my craft is all over the board. Sometimes I love my characters but hate my story, sometimes I love my plot but hate my writing, etc. - you get the picture. 

(And yes, I get that love and hate are strong <<and lazy>> words to use here but I told you that what I'm writing today is not worth reading.)  

Focusing on the positive, here are my stats:
- as of today I've written 30,742 words (some are good and some are pure crap)
- I have 14 days to write 19,258 more words (hopefully some will be good)

What do you guys do when you're in a rut and nothing you write sounds good? Keep tap, tap, tapping or walk away for a bit? I'm walking away for today. 

Before I go, let me share this funny NaNoWriMo video. 

What I have today: *noth·ing/ˈnəTHiNG/

Pronoun:	Not anything; no single thing: "I said nothing".
Adjective:	Having no prospect of progress; of no value: "he had a series of nothing jobs".
Adverb:	Not at all: "she cares nothing for others".
Synonyms:	pronoun.  none - anything adverb.  not at all - none - never - not a bit - not in the least

28,623 Words

28,623. That's how many words I've written since November 1st. Well, that's how many words I've written on my NaNo novel. I've managed to keep up with my client work and my general correspondences. Aaand, I've even managed to squeeze in a few blog posts. All-in-all, that's a lot of output for this gal.

I celebrate the fact that I'm past the halfway mark on NaNoWriMo. For a long time, 25,000 words seemed impossible. Now, an additional 21,377 words seems impossible.

The problem is, I don't know how my story is going to end. I have a vague idea but it's not clear. No, that's not true, I have no idea. I know how to write the story and I've finally figured out how move it forward but I'm still not sure where I'm moving it to.

For me, writing an ending is the hardest part of fiction. I've spent so much time writing non-fiction, which is easy to wrap up with a nice little bow, that I've lost the touch (assuming I ever had it).

Anyway, as long as my fingers keep up the clack, clack, clack soundtrack of my November then I'll be okay. I trust that the ending will come in due time.

So, that's how I'm doing. One guy in my writing group has already written over 75,000 words! How about you?

Write on, good people.

NaNoWriMo Personal Best

I hit a mile-marker today, a personal best. I'm up to 10,598 words on my NaNoWriMo book. What's that you NaNo savvy people say? That I was supposed to hit 10,000 yesterday. Right you are! But let me tell you something - I've never crested the 10,000 mark on any single project. So this, my friends, is worthy of a blog post. And a nice glass of wine (or two).

My trusty NaNo dashboard informs me that I have to write 1,714 words a day to finish on time, and I think that's immensely do-able.

Is it any good? Probably not. At least not yet. But that's what December and beyond is for, to make it good. For now, it's words. Words on a page. 10,598 words on a page, to be exact. That makes me happy.  

For those of you playing along, I hope you're writing like the wind.

If you're writing like the wind, your probably not reading this blog post. Still, I'm rooting for you, one and all.

Happy Writing!

NaNo Day Two and Super Storm Sandy

Today is the second day of NaNo and I'm pretty far behind. I've been in NYC since last Saturday, October 27. The day before 'Frankenstorm' Sandy devastated the East Coast. Yeppers, I leave the coast of South Carolina and travel TO a hurricane. Not my finest moment but who knew?

We've been seriously sidetracked. Getting through the storm took all of my energy and concentration; there wasn't a lot of thought given to writing.

Still, I managed to hack out roughly 700 words yesterday and another 700 today. Lame and slow but I'm way out of my regular writing routine *understatement* so I'm giving myself a break (sense a theme? I'm very forgiving).

I'll try to get home tomorrow. LaGuardia is open now, so it's looking good. Hopefully I can write like the wind next week and catch up. I should be writing 1,673 words a day to reach the required 50,000 by the end of the week so I have a long road ahead of me.

Keeping a positive attitude...

Hang with me, muse.

If you're doing NaNoWriMo, I wish you the best of luck. Let me know how you're doing.

National Novel Writing Month - I'm In

Yep, you read that right. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. It starts tomorrow and the only thing I've done in preparation is daydream, because I'm good at that. I have the loose threads of an idea percolating but nothing more.

I'm taking the NaNo Honchos at their word:
It’s okay to not know what you’re doing. Really. You’ve read a lot of novels, so you’re completely up to the challenge of writing one. If you feel more comfortable outlining your story ahead of time, do it! But it’s also fine to just wing it. Write every day, and a book-worthy story will appear, even if you’re not sure what that story might be right now.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do. Write every day, ignore my internal editor, and see if a book-worthy story ever drops in.

I'm making this public declaration because I've heard "the looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse." I believe that. And because I'm an all-or-nothing commitment phobic procrastinator, I need all the help I can get.

Wish me luck!

PS - if you're doing it, let me know in the comments so we can shame help each other along. :-)