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Paroxysms of risibility: NYT researches its own hard words

The NY Times web interface lets people look up words as they read articles and they have kept track of which words people look up. Attached is a graphical display where the most frequently sought words are largest.

Why do I mentioned uncontrollable laughter in my post subject? No reason other than it's abstruse phrase using two of the words. If only I would remember, I could use it more in conversation. I was pleased to use "elide" in an email over the weekend.

Now, if only they could get people to use "ensure"/"insure" correctly.

Everything is about writing

I recently finished Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated

It's about a young Ukrainian man corresponding with a young American Jew who wants to meet a woman who may have helped, or at least known, his grandfather during World War II.

On a certain level, it is about how writing can change history and perception. After the American's visit, the two young men correspond about how they relate the events of the war and what led to them. The American writes in lyrical, but distant, style of magical realism. The Ukrainian writes in a more immediate first-person style and realizes the power of writing as indicated in the quote from the book:

"This is why I relish writing for you so much. It makes it possible for me to be not like I am, but as I desire...  I can be funny, because I have time to meditate about how to be funny, and I can repair my mistakes when I perform mistakes, and I can be  ameloncholy person in manners that are interesting, not only meloncholy. With writing, we have second chances."

I wrote a short story of my own along this line, but not nearly as creatively told as Jonathan Safran Foer's book. I do know, quite well, the sentiment in the quote. This book falls into both the "first novel" and the "writer writing about being a writer" category.

It is finished!

That is, I have finished the first draft of my first complete novel. And I won for National Novel Writing Month and I have the gif graphic file and PDF certificate to prove it. It felt right and natural to spend time each day writing in my notebooks and crafting my story. It also felt more natural than writing a short story, a form of the writing arts often used to teach aspiring writers, but one I find exceedingly difficult to do well. It felt so good to write a novel that I think I can no longer put myself out there as a "reluctant writer." How can I call myself reluctant when I spent two hours a day writing for over a whole month?

An aternative to shutting down this blog is to put my name out there like other writers I know, with my name in the name of the URL, for example. Even though I would not miss the text of my blog so much -- I have archives -- I would miss are my "Typelists." I keep kept careful track of books that that I've read and books that I'm currently reading. For now, I'll try publishing the occassional post to Facebook

The next step, according to Chris Baty's book, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, is for me to read my own novel and decide if I want to invest a year in editing it, caring for it, polishing it. This, I plan to do in January, after the holiday craziness. If I proceed with my first novel, the very next step will be to transcribe it from paper to digital.

For so many years, I've had the occassional chapter or two, the false starts, the short stories.  In conclusion, I absolutely love having an actual novel to deal with! 

 

Month of Writing Feverishly

At the Night of Writing Dangerously, I spent more time talking to Chris Baty (the founder of NaNoWriMo) and the other NaNoWriMos than I did writing.  I'm loving NaNoWriMo so far.  You have all the advantages of the camaradarie of a group working toward a common goal with none of the disadvantages of a writing workshop. We share the journey, but so far, very few details about the plot. It's not like a workshop where you have to read 20 crappy stories so people can comment on your crappy stories or even worse -- a good story that you know will be published somewhere while yours is a first draft coughed up like a hairball to meet the course requirements.

Anyway, I'm at 27,000 words -- about 5,000 words behind.  But, I'm heading to Illinois where I think I can catch up.  I hope I can catch up.  Helping my close female relative move will take an unknown amount of time.

I contacted NaNos in her area and have plans to meet up with writers there.  NaNo is turning into a great way to meet people with similar interests, and an instant support network.

Here's a photo of me with Chris Baty. (As you can see, I did not dress up in noir sleekness like many of the attendees.  I dressed for caffiene-fueled writing craziness). 

Which is harder when time is short?

So, now Barack Obama is setting up his barackracy, his Cabinet, his appointments. He has from November 5th until his inauguration - approximately two and a half months. (BTW, I think the photo of Rahm Emmanuel whispering in his ear is hawt!)

I, on the other hand, am writing my novel in a month.  My normal pace is breakneck, take no prisoners, collapse exhausted into bed at the end of the day stressful.  When I sit down to write, I write like my novel is another check mark on my daily to-do list at first.  I want to get through the scenes as quickly as possible.  After the first year of my novel time flew by in only three pages, I realized I needed to take things a lot more slowly.

So, I take more time to live the imaginary moments more. I describe more. I think about what surrounds my characters, about what they see, touch, smell, hear and feel. In an odd, yet real way, writing fiction is like living more than one life.

Still, I think Obama's job is harder now. He has to pick advisers who can help us out of our quagmire. He not only has to judge someone's competence and character, he has to see around corners to predict if the adviser's skills are actually applicable to the problems we face.

Even though I'm writing a book in a month, I can just invent a character and competence level I need for my story, a much easier task even though I have less time.

The writing has commenced

This is the link to my status page for National Novel Writing Month. If you clicked on it at the moment I posted this entry, you would see that I'm running about on schedule at about 2,000 words on the first day. Over the last few days, my post about the Luddite clause has gotten several hits.  For the record, I am still invoking it and happily writing in my expensive Japanese Maruman Cover Note notebook with my vast collection of G2 Gel pens. If I average 12 to 13 words to the line most of the time, I can finish the project with only one notebook.

I started writing at a nearby Dennys just after midnight on November 1st.  Many of the hundred or so people there for the writing kick-off came in their Halloween costumes. After the writing started, the buzz of conversations when quiet, except for the loud, obnoxious pirate at the next table who had to tell everyone about the cheap pencils he bought for his writing adventure. 

I made a couple connections with other writers and managed to write about 400 words of my own before heading home again. I got off to a slow start, staring into space and trying to decide between a coming-of-age story and satire. 

Here's a little chart with various approaches to accumulating word counts.  If I work at a steady pace, I'd have to write 1,667 words each day.  If I front-load the work and try to write as much as possible on the first weekend, I could later weather the hard days I understand come up in the second week.  If I work really hard on weekends, it's still doable, too.

November Days	Steady Pace	Front-loaded	Week-ends
1	1,667	5,000	5,000
2	3,334	10,000	10,000
3	5,001	11,667
4	6,668	13,334
5	8,335	15,001
6	10,002	16,668
7	11,669	18,335
8	13,336	20,002
9	15,003	21,669	15,000
10	16,670	23,336	20,000
11	18,337	24,818
12	20,004	26,218
13	21,671	27,618
14	23,338	29,018
15	25,005	30,418	25,000
16	26,672	31,818	30,000
17	28,339	33,218
18	30,006	34,618
19	31,673	36,018
20	33,340	37,418
21	35,007	38,818
22	36,674	40,218	35,000
23	38,341	41,618	40,000
24	40,008	43,018
25	41,675	44,418
26	43,342	45,818
27	45,009	47,218
28	46,676	48,618
29	48,343	50,018	45,000
30	50,010	51,418	50,000

I opted for the coming of age story.  So, I better get back to it.  The pony is loose and things are up in the air.

The medium of writing - so many options

I spend all day on the computer and I'm thinking about invoking the Luddite clause and doing the deed in longhand. (The last thing I want to do in my off hours these days is stare at more computer screens!). According to the NaNoWriMo FAQ instructions, I can get a trusted individual to count my words and provide me with a word count.  Then, I submit a document with exactly that word count.

When I asked the NaNoWriMo veterans if anyone wrote their novels by hand, I got a variety of responses. Several used the Logitech pen. Some wrote by hand and entered the text by reading it to the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software.  This solution sounds very cool to me, but not convenient for travel, sadly.  Some tried to write in notebooks while riding in a van, and failed.

I could use my Alphasmart or my FlyFusion pen.  My current thinking is to use my Maruman Cover Note notebook and my favorite gel pen, the G2.  We also just ordered a new travel notebook computer.  Also, I bought a typewriter last time I was visiting home, a really cute manual portable typewriter in great condition. Maybe I can type my entries for the last few days.

Getting down to business -- NaNoWriMo

A recent email from TypePad suggested that a bit of focus could help a blog retain readers. My blog has not obviously aspired for clarity or focus. It's really been about stalling while I learn to write fiction or memoir.  I'm not getting any younger, and I'm tired of being distracted by many things, so I signed up for one month of intense focus on writing. So, this blog is now officially about what it's been about all along.

November for me will be National Novel Writing Month.  Fifty thousand words for a new novel.  I already found people in my home state to meet up with when the deadline hits and I'm home for Thanksgiving.

She spent her life

The January 21st issue of The New Yorker had an article about Lee Miller. The first sentence explained that Miller was a model and photographer. This much was evident from the topless photo of Miller wearing nothing but a fencing helmet and a wistful look that took up the entire facing page. Later in the  first sentence, I found out Miller spent most of her life seeking adventure in Europe and the Middle East.

I stopped reading after that sentence, already jealous of this Lee Miller who knew what it took to seek adventure and how how to one spend an entire life doing it! How would I describe my own life that way?

I would be content to be reasonably confident that people would talk of me as a "writer and photographer" after my death. As of now, that would be a stretch. However, it would be a complete falsehood to say I was an adventure seeker -- at least in the same sense Lee Miller was. I was never much of a traveler, never a war correspondent and never a consort of artists and writers.

How would I respond to the question, "How did you spend your life?"

How would I fill in that blank: "Oh, me? I've spent most of my life (fill in the blank)." The answer I first think of to fill that gap is that I spend most of the week making other people's ideas work. Frankly, that doesn't sound very fun or rewarding. That amounts to saying that I spent most of my life avoiding poverty.

I could say that I spent most of my life seeking interesting and rewarding friendships. Many of my best friendships have been stormy, or long-distance ones, or so brief that I feel I must keep seeking them.

I could say that I spent most of my life looking for another "affair of letters." Those are even more difficult to come by than good friendships, but they never fail to provide fun and excitement.

If I want to feel gloomy and down on myself, I could say that I spent most of my life avoiding work and productive and creative endeavors. If I were writing myself an encomium, I would say I spent most of my life in service on non-profit boards, especially in the areas of housing and human services.

If I change my ways now, and poured all my time, energy and passion to work, say, on an attempt to create a great and heart-wrenching novel, no one could say "she spent most of her life" on something (assuming I live to age 88 or more).

Speaking of heart-wrenching novels, I'm nearly done reading Suite Francoise by Irene Nemirovsky. She was a famous Jewish novelist in the France who was killed by the Nazis during world War II. Her daughter, quite by some miracle, saved her mother's last novel from oblivion, carrying without knowing what it was from safe house to safe house for the rest of the war. Irene spent the first part of her adult life as a party girl and the last part as a writer, an author who wrote as quickly as possible, knowing she faced death almost any day at the hands of an occupying army. Her partial and final book is a marvel.

Lee Miller had no easy time of things either. She was raped at age seven and, perhaps in some demented form of therapy (according to the New Yorker article), her father made her pose nude. Outside. In the winter.

These women overcame what I consider to be great obstacles to create lives where someone could say "She spent most of her life" and "She spent her last days writing quickly."

I aspire for a spilt posthumous assessment like, "She started out playing it safe and getting her balance. Then, she really let loose."

Digital distractions and the decline of personal narrative

A while back, I alluded to other activities in my life that have been slowing my blog efforts to a near halt.

One cause is my recent obsession with digital storytelling. The technique involves using a personal story, normally in the form of a audio narration recorded by the person telling the story. The creators integrate video, still images, and either music or sound effects. Back in 2004, a heart-wrenching movie done in this digital storytelling style, called Tarnation, enjoyed a brief time at art-house theaters. Most digital stories run around 3 minutes.

Earlier this year, my favorite digital storytelling organization, the Center for Digital Storytelling, launched a new website for sharing digital stories, Stories for Change.  Not only is it a place where digital storytellers can share their often intimate work, it's also hosted in Drupal. (My other website is in Drupal).

Ever since visiting this and helping the CDS get a small grant for helping foster kids capture their stories, I've been obsessed with honing my three-minute digital storytelling skills. For one thing, I'm about to start giving presentations, and I want to do something other than the usual, boring-as-hell PowerPoint presentation. I've been writing and going through photos and digitizing videos and making digital art to go with my stories.

So, with all this great energy about people telling their own intimate, personal stories, I also sense a decline in the personal narrative. Stanford University is now offering a class called "Writing Beyond the Me," which promises to teach telling a story from another point of view and not tell a story like James Frey.

Not all personal narratives are deceitful nor told for the intention of securing monetary gain. I'll stay the course with my brief narratives. These really short stories, I hope, will help me hone my dramatic skills.