Danger!

It has come to my attention that there is almost no way that I can write on Monday. This isn't a good start.

The Magna Cartas

(Note: This is the second in a series of excerpts from "No Plot? No Problem!" that I'll be posting here over the course of the next month and a half. The few excerpts I'll be publishing here are no substitute for getting an actual copy of the book, which I continue to strongly recommend.)

What, to you, makes a good novel?

It's an excruciatingly broad question, but give it a shot. And feel free to be as vague or as nerdily-detailed as you like; this list can include anything from ultra-short chapters to ribald sex scenes to massive infusions of ill-tempered elves. Anything that floats your fictional boat should go on the list.

My list, to help give you some idea, looks like this:

first person narration
quirky characters
true love
found objects
disappointment
music
catharsis
feisty old people
strong, charismatic protagonists
improbable romances
smart but unpretentious writing
urban settings
cliffhanger chapter endings
characters who are at turning points in their lives
books set in the workplace
happy endings

Okay, now make your list. Go crazy, and take as long as you want.

Once you've finished, frame it. This document will be your Magna Carta for the next month, helping you channel your awesome writing powers for the good of the people.

Why is this list so frame-worthy?

Because the things you appreciate as a reader are the things you'll likely excel at as a writer. These bits of language, color, and technique, for whatever reason, make sense to your creative brain. These are the Things You Understand. And as you draw the basic outlines of your novel over the next week, you should try to fill that outline in with as many of the juicy elements of the Magna Carta as possible.

If you like it when authors start chapters with quotations, for instance, start gathering some pithy zingers for your story. Are coming-of-age tales your guilty pleasure? Consider setting your story at a summer camp. The chances are good that if a mood, motif, or plot device resonates with you as a reader, you'll be able to adeptly wield it when you're in the writer's seat as well.

Okay, that's the first list. Now on to its equally important sibling...

For the second list, write down things that bore or depress you in novels. Again, feel free to be as specific or wide-ranging as you like. And be honest. If you don't like books where the words-to-picture ratio favours the text too heavily, write that down. We're not here to judge. We just want to understand you better.

My list would include the following:

irredeemably malicious main characters
books set on farms
mentally ill main characters
food or eating as a central theme
ghosts, monsters, or demons
dysfunctional sibling dramas
books consisting largely of a character's thoughts
weighty moral themes
books set in the nineteenth century
unhappy endings

Now it's your turn. Write down anything and everything that bores you or brings you down in a book. Go.

When you're finished, frame this list as well. We'll call it Magna Carta II, the evil twin of Magna Carta I.

As you spend the next week thinking about what you want in a novel, keep MCII close at hand, so you'll remind yourself what not to put in your story.

I know it seems silly to have to remind you to keep things you dislike out of your novel, but be warned: The stealthy entries on your MCII list are vicious, cunning little buggers, and given the slightest opening, they will find their way into your book.

The reason they'll make their way on to your pages is related to the same scientific principle of self-betterment that causes us to bring high-brow tomes home from the bookstore knowing full well they'll go straight onto the bookshelf and never be touched again until our kids move us and our possessions into that miserable senior home down the road.

We buy these difficult books because we feel that, while not very exciting, they are in some way good for us. It's sort of a literature-as-bran-flake philosophy: If something is dry and unpalatable, it must be doing something for our constitutions. This kind of thinking also carries over to the writing realm. If we're worried that our story is lacking in substance, the first thing most of us automatically reach for to fix it are the bran morsels from the MCII.

Still not convinced? Let me offer a real-world example.

When sitting down to craft my second month-long novel, I decided that my previous work - a story about an American music nerd secretly in love with his Scottish green-card wife - had been high on fluff and low on substance.

I was right. So, on my second work, I committed myself to writing a Serious Book. Lacking any appropriately substantial ideas, I simply saddled an otherwise enjoyable main character with an ever-lengthening roster of mental illnesses, suicidal relatives, and ghosts, handily crushing the protagonsist's spirit under the pressure of weighty moral themes.

In my quest for writing that would last for generations, I managed to write a book that wore out its welcome in less than three days. Having packed almost every single item on my MCII list into one overwrought package, I lost interest in the main character and her morose life after about 5,000 words, and it was just out of sheer stubbornness, force of will, and a terrifying dearth of any other plausible novel ideas that I was able to see the book through to its predictably depressing finale.

The lesson here is this: if you won't enjoy reading it, you won't enjoy writing it. If you truly are fascinated by the plight of the nation's mentally ill, the ongoing politicization of religious sects in Saudi Arabia, or inner city high-rise housing projects as metaphors for racial injustice and miscarried modernization, then by all means put them in your book.

But if, in your heart of hearts, you really want to write a book about a pair of super-powered, kung-fu koalas who wear pink capes and race through the city streets on miniature go-karts, know that this is also a wonderful and completely valid subject for a novel.

Turning Close Friends Into Obligations

(Note: This is the first in a series of excerpts from "No Plot? No Problem!" that I'll be posting here over the course of the next month and a half. The few excerpts I'll be publishing here are no substitute for getting an actual copy of the book, which I continue to strongly recommend.)

Gentle encouragement from friends and family, however, is just the start. Warm smiles and you-can-do-it e-mails won't keep your butt in the chair when you're ready to give up in the middle of Week Two. After collecting a group of cheerleaders, the next step is to leverage all their goodwill into usable quantities of fear.

Yep. Terror is the amateur novelist's best friend. Without some amount of it pushing you onward toward your goal, you're going to lose momentum and quit. There are just too many other, more sensible things to do with your time than trying to write a novel in a month, and all of these more interesting alternatives will become irresistable if you don't have some fear binding your to your word-processing device.

Happily, with a little work, your friends and family can terrify you in ways that you never imagined.

Bragging as a Tool for Self-Motivation

When inculcating a healthy amount of fear, bragging is an indispensible tool. Nothing makes it more difficult to back down from a task than having boasted about it, in great detail, to your friends and loved ones. Think about it: Do you really want to be the butt of jokes every time novels are mentioned? For the rest of your life? Or have to hear your mother sigh when she learns that you have botched yet another attempt at making something of yourself?

I don't either. Which is why I make a point of laying a solid foundation of bragging way before I've thought about plot or setting or character. My ultimate goal is to back myself so far into a corner before the month starts that I have no choice but to stay on course with the word count, no matter how dismally off-track my novel gets in the weeks that follow.

In this way, bragging is an essential device for creating expectations. Not for genius prose, mind you. No, what you want to do is set up expectations for completion. For staying on-track. For seeing your way through to 50,000 words.

Some people pay personal trainers thousands of dollars to receive this sort of ongoing, disappointment-based motivation. Smart people get it from friends and family for free. Begin talking about your imminent ascent of the novelling ladder immediately after you have those first discussions with your friends about the thirty day plunge.

In our wired age, e-mail is the most efficient path to acquiring mass motivation. Send out long boasting e-mails to everyone you know about your quest. Look up long-lost classmates to inform them that you will be a novellist in a couple of months. If you have a novel-friendly office, spam your department with your good writing news. This kind of outreach nets you, the writer, two invaluable things:
1. Constant motivational/envious/resentful check-ins from friends throughout the month about how the novel is going.
2. An irresistable invitation to widespread mockery should you not actually reach 50,000 words.

Betting the Bank

Lustily bragging about your upcoming noveling exploits often segues beautifully into the next recommended prewriting strategy: leveling huge, possibly crippling debts against the outcome of your novel.

For Andrew Johnson, twenty-nine, of Christchurch, New Zealand, the opportunity came at the office.

"A disbelieving workmate challenged me when I said, 'I bet I can do it,'" recalls the three-time NaNoWriMo winner.

"'Okay,' I said, 'How much?' I took fifty dollar bets from any person willing to stake their cash on me being unable to complete the novel."

Andrew finished out the month with both a new novel and a little extra pocket money. Unfortunately, he had to retire the scheme soon thereafter.

"Oddly, it only worked for one year," Andrew writes. "Those who get stung by a fanatical NaNoWriMo once are going to avoid being stung again in the future."

If you're having trouble finding people kind enough to bet against you, you can still leverage the same motivating fear of total financial ruin through "conditional donations".

This path was pioneered by a month-long novelist writing outside of NaNoWriMo. In May 2001, an aspiring writer named Paul Griffiths announced that if he failed in his quest to write a 60,000 word novel in one month, he would donate his entire life savings to the National Rifle Association.

Paul was not a fan of the NRA, and was very enamored of his savings account, and these two things combined to give him all the incentive he needed to get the novel finished.

To follow in Paul's footsteps, here's all you have to do:

1. Find an organization you detest. If you are stuck for ideas, call your favourite charity and ask for a list of groups who are out to destroy them. Be sure not to choose a good or righteous cause, as this may make giving up on your novel mid-month feel like a philanthropic act.

2. Once you've selected a suitably villainous group, break out your checkbook and write a check to them. Make the amount large enough to wreak havoc on your finances, but small enough that you won't be tempted to put a stop payment on the check should it ever actually make it to them.

3. Seal the check in an evelope, address it, and then give the envelope to a friend with strict instructions to return the money to you should you complete 50,000 words of fiction in a month's time. Should you fail to reach 50,000 words, he or she should do you the favour of dropping the cheque in the mail.

4. Inform your friend that someone posing as you may return in thirty days to plead for the money, claiming that the whole novel-writing thing was a dumb idea. If this happens, make your friend promise to restrain the imposter until the police arrive.

There you have it: intense literary motivation for the price of the stamp. And when you do finish the novel in thirty days, you are both a novelist and a righteous crusader, having kept a small fortune out of the hands of evildoers. Way to go, superhero!

And so it Begins

From: Steve Smith
To: (Undisclosed Recipients)
Subect: National Novel Writing Month
Date: April 8, 2006

You're receiving this e-mail because
1. You expressed some interest in participating in National Novel Writing Month,
2. You allegedly expressed some interest to somebody else in participating in National Novel Writing Month, or
3. I decided that you should participate in National Novel Writing Month.

Anyway, to refresh everybody's memory, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a concept wherein participants attempt to write the fifty thousand word first draft of a novel within one month. It's supposed to take place in November but, for religious reasons, we're celebrating it in May.

NaNoWriMo exists because the most common problem people have in attempting to write a novel is that they'll get stalled somewhere, trying to get some passage just right. When you only have one month to get the thing done, getting things just right is a luxury you can't afford.

What I need from you is the following:
1. A yea or nay on whether or not you're in;
2. A yea or nay on whether or not you want posting rights on http://onemonthproject.blogspot.com, which will be this project's homepage, on which I'll post people's weekly word counts, and on which participants will be welcome to post online diaries of their NaNoWriMo experiences, and such-like;
3. An agreement to send me your word count for public display every Sunday of May; and
4. The names and e-mails of anybody else you think might be interested in this.

If you're in, I strongly recommend acquiring a copy of Chris Baty's "No Plot? No Problem!". Mr. Baty is the founder of NaNoWriMo, and his book is the definitive guide on how to succeed (it's also pretty funny). I'll be posting summaries and excerpts from the book on the One Month Project as the month goes on, but there's really no substitute for the real thing.

In any event, here's what participants need to know for now:
1. You may do all of the prep work on your novel you like, but you may not actually start the novel until May 1. Baty actually recommends that you not do too much prep work, lest you become too attached to your novel in advance of it being written, and too unwilling to make it shitty (unwillingness to churn out shitty writing is your enemy in NaNoWriMo).
2. As soon as you decide that you're in, you should brag to as many people as possible that you're writing a novel in May. The desire to avoid being the subject of jokes whenever the word "novel" is mentioned for the rest of your life provides something of an additional incentive to do this thing.

Good? Good.


Steve