Today is the official last day of NaNoWriMo, but for me it ended yesterday, when I wrote my 50,000th word. (It was “perilous” by the way. I just checked. I figured one of you would ask. Though to be honest, the sentence looks pretty dicey; “perilous” may not make the final cut.)
Throughout November, I’ve been reading Chris Baty’s book, No Plot No Problem which is all about how to write a novel in 30 days. The last half of the book is designed to be read as you participate in Nano, one (tiny) chapter each day. On Day 30 (today) Baty says this:
You could have spent this month living your normal life. You could have gone for long walks with your lover or won points with your boss by coming into work without those big bags under your eyes. Instead you agreed to do something dumb. You agreed to try and write more fiction than you ever have in a month… You stepped up to the plate. And there is nothing more admirable in this whole damn world than someone willing to set for themselves the fearsome task of trying something big.
And that’s the thing about having done Nano. It was big. It was crazy. I had no idea at the outset whether or not I could do it; I just had a feeling that it was important to try. It was scary, and stressful, and it required a lot of things I’m frankly not that good at – fast writing, for instance, focus, faith. Now here I am on the other end of November with a novel. Well, almost. It’s 50,000 words. It’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s got wonderful, flawed characters doing wonderful, flawed things, and it’s got something to say about how love works. (And how it doesn’t. And how sometimes it does both at the same time.) I’m excited about it. I’m looking forward to December and all the work I have left to do, because I’ve been reminded why I love writing fiction. It’s fun again.
Okay, and besides the book, here are my three take-aways from Nano.
- Turns out, I like doing what scares me. NaNoWriMo is one day behind me and already I’m looking for the next opportunity to leap.
- Exuberant imperfection is good. I do believe that “the quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.”
- Nothing (not even cheesecake or the best wine) is better than friends and family at getting me out of a funk. I had some tough days in November, but I never felt like I was alone.
Thanks you guys!
(Oh, and if you want a sneak peek at Karen From Mentor’s nano novel, check out her post. And say something soothing. She has post-nano-stress-disorder.)
Categories: j's lists · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: chris baty, fiction, Judy Clement Wall, nanowrimo, writing
Okay, so I’m in the home stretch with nano, writing like crazy. Oh, and all the stuff I had on my list to do before I took on nano? Yeah, I still have all that to do, too. Like all of you, I have more to do in a day than I can possibly get done, and yet… I waste a lot of time. Case in point. I came up here at 10:30 pm to write this post. It is now after midnight, and I’m just getting started.
What was I doing for over an hour and a half? Let’s see, I fooled around on Twitter for a while, checked Facebook, read and commented on some of my favorite blogs, checked HuffPo, messed around on Twitter some more, and went through my email. None of that was essential. And here’s what I’ve noticed since I gave up watching almost all of my favorite television shows: I still waste time.
No matter how much I have to do, I still procrastinate, still wile away embarrassing amounts of time reading what interesting people say on the internet, rearranging things, day dreaming…
I think of myself as an accomplished time-waster. I have a friend who says it’s because I work best under pressure. He says I put things off subconsciously so that I can get the rush of being under the gun. I think he gives me too much credit. I think I put things off because it’s more fun to goof around. And so now I’m wondering how do you waste time? For the purposes of this post, we’ll define “wasting time” as the time you spend NOT working on the critical task(s) at hand.
Are you a blog junkie, a social network addict, a compulsive news hound? Do you watch television, read comic books, play video games?
(Oh, and reading Zebra Sounds? Totally not a waste of time. My blog will make you smarter, funnier, sexier, faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.)
Categories: question of the day
Tagged: fun, goofing off, Judy Clement Wall, procrastination, television, wasting time
I don’t even know what to say about this one. I’ll leave it up to you!
Caption this!
Categories: caption this
Tagged: caption this, funny pics, pics, runny animals
It would be too weird to not do a thanks-giving post on Thanksgiving Day. So here goes.
I am grateful for…
- My family and friends, of course, more than I can express. I am surrounded by love.
- Pizza, cheese, chocolate, coffee.
- Great books, movies, plays. Great wine.
- Sunshine, rain, music.
- Twitter (Yes, Twitter. The people I follow are awesome. They reassure me, encourage me, and provide emergency cooking instructions.)
- Beaches, mountains, woods… picnic blankets.
- Converse, Victoria’s Secret, Indie bookstores (hang in there!), latte art.
- Lipstick
- My body, which is miraculous in that it does almost everything I ever ask it to do without complaint.
- My ever-expanding world, and the people I’m meeting and working with now – funny, smart, provocative, creative. I am growing in their presence.
- You guys, the people who read and comment on Zebra Sounds. I love writing here, but the best part isn’t creating new posts, it’s the fun, thoughtful, sometimes wild conversations that follow.
Oh! And cheesecake. I’m really, really, really, grateful for cheesecake.
I’m sure there’s more but I’d rather hear your list. What are you grateful for today?
Categories: j's lists
Tagged: Judy Clement Wall, Thanksgiving
Remember I posted a link to Jim Mitchem’s wonderful post Eleven Minutes? I loved his stream-of-conscious ramble and wanted to try it. So, here’s mine – 7 minutes instead of 11 because… I’m sparing you.
11:10 pm
So today, in the last few seconds of a 20-minute Nano sprint, one of my characters had a heart attack. It surprised me. I didn’t see it coming. I think that’s good. I mean, I hope he’ll be all right and all, but the fact that his collapse surprised me is a sign that I am writing with a certain degree of abandon. If I’m going to have to clean the mess up in December, let it be a fine, rambunctious mess. That’s all I’m saying. Like my hair. Okay, it’s not really fine (especially not right this second), but it is rambunctious and it is frequently a mess. And if you’re wondering what that has to do with writing, stop. It doesn’t have anything to with writing, it just crossed my mind when I wrote the word mess. Let’s leave it at that, okay? Because what really has my attention right now is my neck. Or actually just below my neck, and above my shoulder blade. I slept on it funny and it’s been bothering me all day. Remember the good old days when you never hurt yourself sleeping? I do. Those days were awesome. Not that these days are bad. They’re pretty good actually. I’m having a lot of fun, getting to try a bunch of new things. And actually I was thinking about that recently. About motion. About how I am now, without a doubt, in motion, and it feels very forward, very north star-ish. I was thinking about this in the car. I was driving and two things happened. One, I wondered how you know for sure you’re moving forward. How do you know you’re not moving sideways. I could be taking a seriously scenic route, and not be moving forward at all, but I guess that’s okay; you know, all that stuff about the journey being more important than the destination. Whatever, for the sake of my 7-minute post, it doesn’t really matter because the second thing that happened was a duck walked out into the middle of the street. Three ducks to be precise, and a goose, because there’s a pond near where I live and there are ducks in the pond, and sometimes, they’re stupid. They are. I’m convinced that ducks aren’t, on the whole, very bright, probably because we humans aren’t very bright either, and we feed them bread crumbs and God knows what else, as we lean against the signs that say “Please don’t feed the ducks.” So anyway, these ducks walked right out into the street, spaced equidistant apart so they effectively blocked two lanes, and stopped. It was this weird duck-vs-human suburban showdown. Eventually someone honked and the ducks hurried, first one way and then the other, but in the end they made no real progress at all.
I’m wanting to somehow link that little story back to my thought about forward motion, but I have no idea how to do it meaningfully, and even if I did, I’m out of time.
11:17 pm
Categories: on my mind - NOW · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: 7 minutes, Judy Clement Wall, nano, ramble, stream of consciousness, writing
Okay so my real, exciting post today is over at isca media. It’s about my Director’s Assistant gig. I feel so important – in an absolutely second banana sort of way!
And recently Luke (of isca media) and I met to talk about what neato things I could write for them. (He didn’t say “neato.” He’s British. He probably said “smashing” or “fab.” Or, wait. That might have been me too. I do go on.) Anyway, we came up with some very cool spread-my-creative-wings sort of ideas that I can’t wait to try. Stay tuned for more!
(Now, go read me. I’m just a click away!)
Categories: isca media · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: isca media, Judy Clement Wall, vagina monologues
So, either I just finished week 3 or just started week 4 of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I’m never exactly sure where we are on this thing. (And yet, just for the record, I do not believe the rumors that NaNoWriMo kills brain cells. That’s just silly… I think…)
No matter. Whether ending a week or starting one, today I finally got it right.
I wrote 5,414 Nano words today. Sadly, that just caught me up. I’m now on track, whereas before today I was languishing a bit in the dust of my fellow writers, some of whom have already passed the 50k finish line. (I know, right? Note to self: Befriend slackers.)
But this post isn’t about being behind, it’s about the good the bad and the ugly of nano, as I see it now, poised at the start of our final week.
The Good
- It took me until today, but I think I’m finally learning the true meaning of the word DRAFT. Writing 5,414 words on the same day that I did laundry, went to the grocery store, called my mom, and typed this post would be impossible if I were also worrying about the poetry of it all. Yesterday it dawned on me that writing a 50k novel in 30 days is like story boarding a movie. All the key elements are there, but no one should mistake it for the final product.
- There is something in the frantic pace of Nano, in the chaotic impact it has had on my life, that bleeds into the actual writing. I am far more willing to veer off course than I was when I wrote Beautiful Lives. There is a certain amount of daring that is required when you’re moving this fast. I veer off course and see what happens. More than ever before, imagination rules my writing day.
- I am proving something to myself. Choosing to do Nano was a lark. Choosing, once I started, to take it seriously was a leap, an act of faith, as all creative endeavors are.
The Bad
- This is crazy! And, in fact, I feel crazy a lot of the time. Overwhelmed. Guilty about the things I’m not getting to. I sleep less. I eat at irregular intervals. Today, I did not go outside (or even look out the window) until 5 pm! Which prompted me to suggest that writers would make good vampires.
- It’s (more than) a little stressful to feel like you never quite have control of your novel. It’s the kind of thing that wakes you up in the middle of the night and sends you wandering in search of your muse.
The Ugly
- The ugly is me, most days, typing from my fetal position, hair like a red-headed Einstein, mumbling incoherently, scaring the boy.
- The kitchen is ugly too. I work upstairs, especially now that it’s winter because heat rises. The kitchen is downstairs. I live with three boys and a big, unruly dog. Left to their own devices – which they so often are these days – they can make a kitchen downright scary.
But here’s the best thing about nano. The cheerleaders. There are the other Nano writers, of course. Tweet that you’re struggling, and you get a flurry of tweets telling you it’ll be okay and urging you not to give up. My friends call, and email, and post encouragement on Facebook. My family carries on bravely in the face of my neglect.
And Karen from Mentor sent me a button! I got it today in the mail and I’m floating three feet off the ground because of it. I put it on the bulletin board above my desk. (Some people might call it a dream board, but I don’t because I’m not prone to such woo-woo phrasing… but a dream board is totally what it is). The button says “I believe in j.” It’s so wonderful, I took a picture of it so you could see. I put the button right next to the picture of me and MC because a) I know you all secretly wanted to see it, and b) Karen will understand that’s a place of honor.
Thank you so much, KS! You rock my Nano world and beyond!
Categories: writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: 50k, Judy Clement Wall, michael chabon, nanowrimo, writers, writing
Despite my posts that would seem to indicate otherwise, it’s been a while since I got in here without any notion of what I’d write. I’ve written a lot today, nano and otherwise, and it feels like maybe I don’t have anything left for Zebra Sounds. And yet…
I’ve been toying with a question-of-the-day post. Let’s try that. A while ago, I read this writing prompt that said, “Write your daydream.” Until then, I’d never given much thought to what I daydream. When I did – think about it, I mean – I was surprised to realize that my daydreams generally fit into one of three categories.
- Romantic. I know, me. Maybe the least romantic girl I know. And yet I dream chick lit. (See what happens when I come in here not knowing what my post is about. I get all revelatory and embarrassing.)
- Argumentative. Sometimes I daydream arguments. I take the arguments that get skirted in real life, and I have them in my head. In my head, I never worry about anyone’s feelings, or whether, when the argument’s done we’ll still be married or friends. In my daydreams, I’m ruthless.
- Revisionary. I am constantly rewriting life. In real life, things don’t happen the way I think they should. People don’t cooperate. I think they’re going to do or say one thing, and they go another way completely. In my daydreams, I right the wrongs. In my daydreams, you are all behaving just as you should and we’re all living happily ever after (see #1)… or we’re fighting. And you’re losing (see #2).
So, do you daydream? What about? Are any of you slaying dragons? I think I’ll start dreaming of that. Dragon Slaying… in my hot pink chick lit armour.
Categories: on my mind - NOW
Tagged: arugments, day dreams, revision, romance, silliness, winging it
Happy Friday!
So, I have no idea right now how to caption it, but I LOVE this picture. (Thank you, Terre!) I think it’s hilarious. The only way it could be more so is to have a perfect caption. That’s where you come in. Have fun boys and girls! Caption this!
Categories: caption this
Tagged: camel, caption this, captions, funny animals, funny pictures, pictures
If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be making time every morning to do yoga, I’d have believed you because, actually, I’m sort of gullible. But still. It would have seemed far-fetched. I’ve never thought of yoga as a workout. Workouts are supposed to raise my heart rate, build muscles, make me sweat. There should be a great deal of movement and, where applicable, some ridiculous manly groans to show how hard I’m working.
Yoga’s slow, flowing moves have always seemed kind of wussy to me. Pretty, but not really, you know, a workout.
I started doing yoga because of an injury. I kept doing it because I liked being more flexible, more balanced. But the most amazing thing for me is that when I do yoga, I’m quiet. My brain gets quiet, and that’s a big deal. I’ve blogged about my unquiet brain before, the way it jumps from one thing to the next at lightning speed, buzzing all the time. Focus and flow are elusive for me; my efforts at meditation have been less than Zen.
But yoga is my meditation. Rather than emptying my mind, or letting go of thought, I focus my mental and physical energy on the flow from one pose to the next, on my breathing, on holding each position for as long as I can. I try to be graceful (some days are better than others), and I introduce new moves every week or so, so that I stay challenged.
I’m still a novice. I’m only just getting past the basic beginning positions, but I love yoga. I love the mind-body connection, the quietness of it (which doesn’t prevent it from being as strenuous as you want it to be). It doesn’t work miracles. I’m still pretty easily distracted, my mind is still jumpy and scattered, but yoga does start me off in a calmer place.
My favorite part comes at the end of the workout when I set my intention. When I took my first yoga class, a year ago, the instructor would recite possible intentions. She would say, in her misty sing-song yoga voice, “Set your intention now… to find peace in your day, to love your neighbor, to be tolerant and forgiving…” Of course those are excellent intentions. Mine don’t tend to be so pretty. Here are some of the intentions I’ve set for myself:
- Sway, shimmy, shake… Dance
- Get the hell out of my imagination’s way
- Disturb the force
- Rock and roll
- Be seen
- See
So how do you get quiet? Or do you? Is it necessary for you? Do you meditate? (I originally typed medicate. Feel free to share that too!
Categories: on my mind - NOW
Tagged: intentions, Judy Clement Wall, meditation, quiet, yoga, zen
