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Nine Ways to Rev Up For NaNoWriMo 2015

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Want an online writing class to help you win NaNoWriMo this November? I teach both live and on-demand classes.
November has come to represent something for many writers: a chance to participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Participants pledge to write 50,000 words over the course of the month.

The main advantage of NaNoWriMo is the shared energy and impetus to get words onto the page, without worrying about whether they are genius or not. I’ve done it several times in the past, and always managed to either hit the 50,000 word mark or come within a few thousand words of it. While I don’t usually participate in local NaNoWriMo events, like the various write-ins at coffeeshops, libraries, and associated institutions, I do appreciate the feeling it brings of being part of a vast swell of words.

I’ve been mulling over whether or not to participate this year and finally swung into the Aye side. I’ve been having trouble getting my daily word count in lately (this has been a very weird year) so I’m signing up and will be doing daily posts. I also want to be able to cheer on students and friends who are also participating. You can find me on the NanoWriMo site here.

My aim is to:

  • Finish the unfinished scenes from Hearts of Tabat so I can finally start getting that to beta readers.
  • Finish three bespoke stories (one for the upcoming two-sided collection).
  • Finish at least one story for the Patreon campaign.

One thing I’ve learned is that you can put some prep into NaNo beforehand to maximize your success.

  1. Preplan what you’re going to write. You don’t have to have an obsessive outline (although it’s not a terrible idea) but pantsing is more likely to lead to the terrible moment where you’re staring at the page, telling yourself that genius must occur, and then deciding to go play Candy Crush instead. I like the beat method, where you describe the scene and roughly what will occur: They make a fire. Ben makes tea. Else raises the issue of the hunters again. Ben refuses to talk but spills the tea. They hear something in the underbrush. A wolf jumps out.
  2. Clear the decks. This is not the time to take on extra projects, plan to acquire better habits, or quit smoking. Make sure you have time to write, and that you won’t have things that occupy cycles in your head with worrying about them.
  3. Figure out your schedule. Actually sit down and plan the schedule: I will write every weekday and Sunday but not worry about Saturdays because that’s a busy day. Think about the events of the month and factor those in: I will write 2500 words a day so I can finish before Thanksgiving travel. I will take the day of my birthday off. I will write extra the third week so I can goof off that weekend. Etc.
  4. Plan your rituals. Where and how will you write? Every weekday I will go to the coffee shop from 1 to 3, turn off social media, and get words in. If I don’t hit my daily word total, I’ll get up early the following day and get an extra 500 in. Make rituals something that drive productivity, not impede it — don’t get in a situation where you can write only under specific circumstances (if you can avoid it).
  5. Line up some writing prompts. Words are what matter during NaNoWriMo, and it’s okay to write scenes or other chunks that may not go in the finished version. Now is not the time to worry about that — just get the words in and see what happens. So line up some things to write about.
  6. Reward yourself – not just at the end but along the way. I’m a big believer in the power of bribing yourself. Promise yourself some treat, not just for finishing overall, but for hitting your goals each week. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but something you might not otherwise do: If I hit my goals each week, I will take myself out to lunch the following Monday. If I finish overall, I’ll buy those books I’ve been wanting.
  7. Assemble your cheering squad. Got friends or family who are also participating? Sign up to cheer each other on. Let the people who are good about encouraging you know what you’re doing and how they can best help you.
  8. Tell yourself you’re going to make it. Visualize your success and how lovely it will be to have all the words under your belt. Tell yourself you can do it, and keep that cheerful internal encouragement going throughout the month.
  9. Be accountable. Figure out how you can track what you’re doing. I’ll be using the NanoWriMo site as well as posting word counts and snippets on this website.

Are you participating in NaNo this year? What will you be working on?

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Plotting and Re-Plotting Stories

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I'm always trying to add new writing tools to my toolbox; ways of plotting and replotting stories for rewriting are always useful.
Here’s another example of using a Stumbleupon-discovered post to spur a rewrite.

The story I just finished, whose working title is “Villa Encantada,” is one whose beginning I wrote over a year ago. I picked it up last summer and added a couple of scenes, but something about it has felt wrong and it’s been just lumpy scenes stuffed full of description of a balcony garden. I was pretty sure it didn’t begin where it was supposed to, and also pretty sure that the best thing to do would be to start it again from scratch, write it, then mine the previous efforts to see what should get folded into it.

So when I read this post on plotting out stories, I decided to use it to plot out mine. All you do, according to the oridinal webpage, is complete the sentences. I’ve thought about the story and its theme and know it about halfway well enough, I think.

1. Once upon a time . . . there was a woman who could not forgive herself.

2. Every day . . . she tried to kill herself in the very smallest of ways, cigarettes and high heels on stairways.

3. Until this . . . she meets a new neighbor, who is bossy and ominous and presumptuous.

4. Because of this . . . she tries to make friends and allies in the rest of the apartment complex.

5. Because of this . . . The bitchy neighbor, who is a witch, attacks her in increasingly powerful ways, leading up to a third neighbor’s death.

6. Until finally . . . the protagonist is pissed off enough to stop feeling guilty and react in a way that saves herself.

7. For every day . . . I’m not sure what to do with this last, but I’ll wrap the story up with some gesture that shows that her forgiveness of herself is a lasting and life-changing thing.

Okay. That let me start thinking about it in terms of scenes, once I had the overall arc in my head. From there I did start from scratch and write the story from my head. In the process I found myself adding a frame story. Once I finally had that draft I could go through the first version and fold in passages that I wanted to keep. I’m still not happy with the end, but at least I have a complete story now that I can tinker with.

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Interviewed by Genevieve Valentine

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Cat in the San Juan Islands. Photo by Wayne Rambo.
In 2009, Genevieve Valentine did this interview for the press kit included with my collection. I’ve posted it here for posterity.

Genevieve Valentine: Though your stories take place in different worlds and range from the comic to the tragic, a common theme is the intrusion of the fantastic into the everyday (for certain values of “everyday”); do you find it more satisfying, as a reader, when there is conflict between worlds, or cooperation?

Cat Rambo: Well – story inevitably comes about as a result of conflict. Where there is only cooperation, as nice as it sounds, stories become a lot subtler and dreamier and sometimes easy to miss.

To me one of the inevitable things about the intrusion of the fantastic is that it makes us rethink the everyday in a way that may provoke a similar conflict in our souls. The very best stories sock us in the gut and leave us gasping with realization that we almost missed a cathartic moment.

GV: The workshopping process seems close to your heart; in what ways do you feel it’s shaped you as a writer and as a reader? What is your advice for writers who want to find, our found, a writers’ group?

CR: Curiously, I’ve found myself listening less and less to the line by line comments and more to the broad-scale, big-picture level stuff. If I can infuriate my friend Derek Zumsteg, I know I’ve gone far.

It’s possible to get too carried away with workshopping, to end up pulled in too many directions by too many voices. As far as founding a group goes – make sure everyone is at a comparable level, that people communicate with trust and respect, and that you establish the ground rules early on.

GV: Your stories are steeped in folklore, but your retellings seem built on the barest bones of the original tale. What advice would you give for writers who want to make an old fairy tale new again?

CR: When I was a kid, I was working with a somewhat limited library. I ran out of fiction to read, in fact, and they wouldn’t let kids 13 or below check out books from the adult stacks. So I spent a few months one summer working my way through the fairy tale and folklore section, which is where all the bones of fairytales that come glimmering through in my stories, such as “Heart in a Box” or “A Key Decides Its Destiny”, grow from.

It’s hard to do anything new with fairytales anymore because the top layer has been mined so thoroughly. If I’d seen the wealth of mermaid stories that I’ve seen since taking on reading for Fantasy Magazine, I don’t know that I would have been arrogant enough to try a new take on the Little Mermaid or Dick Wellington’s Cat (The Dead Girl’s Wedding March).

GV: What was the particular fact or piece of trivia that determined your course in writing “The Towering Monarch of His Race”?

CR: I was writing an encyclopedia entry on the acquisition of Jumbo the elephant by P.T. Barnum and the story’s details were too good not to go into a story. They are, for the most part, true — Jumbo did die as a result of a collision with a train and it’s true that when Barnum was told that Jumbo had laid down and refused to board the ship to America, he said every day the elephant spent lying down was priceless in terms of publicity. The elephant did refuse to go aboard until his keeper coaxed him onto it, and all of England mourned the elephant’s departure.

GV: Animals make frequent appearances in your stories; what are the challenges of writing around (and sometimes, writing as) an animal?

CR: Well, I have never found this quite as radical an act as some readers seem to have thought it. I know I caught some flak about writing from an elephant’s pov part of the time in The Towering Monarch of His Race, but I didn’t think it too over the top. I researched it and I spent time thinking about what an elephant would notice.

GV: So, what’s your beef with eagles?

CR: I like eagles! I see both golden and bald eagles almost every morning when I go to get my coffee – we have a tree down near the water that they’re nesting in.

GV: What’s something you feel people overlook in your writing?

CR: The muscular nature of my sentences, which I try to pare down as much as possible.

GV: What about your writing makes you roll your eyes sometimes?

CR: Often I get carried away with the intense beauty of my prose.

GV: As an [Overlord for Armageddon, you came to the table well aware of the potential and the peril of an online identity. What online platforms have been of most benefit to you as a writer? What should new writers avoid?

CR: I was, and still am, an Overlord for Armageddon, which is a game I’ve worked with for almost two decades now. I have been a public figure in the game for most of that time, and find being a writer/editor not much different. People are generally kind and patient if you are patient and kind with them, but you should also not be a pushover.

Computers are TERRIBLE TIME SUCKS but sort of unavoidable. Avoid committing too much of your time to an online presence – it does you no good if you don’t have some actual writing to sell.

GV: You’re doing a DIY promotional tour for Eyes Like”¦. In an age where publishing is getting scaled back, writers are becoming their own best publicists. What have you discovered about self-promotion while preparing for this tour? What are you looking forward to? What’s the number one mistake you’re afraid of making?

CR: That it’s incredibly hard, tedious work. I’ve been going through my mail compiling a list of reviewers and bloggers, for example, that I want to make sure get an ARC (advance reading copy of the book). I’m preparing for a 31 day virtual blog tour, as well as a month on the road where I’ll be reading at the KGB bar in NYC as well as venues in Philadelphia, Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.

In this I’ve been happy to have my retired mother compiling a lot of the info as well as my incredibly talented friend Kris doing a lot of the graphic work.

I am worried about pushing too hard with this book and alienating people, but at the same time, I’m learning that unless you ask, you can’t find out, sometimes.

GV: The most frustrating part of the writing process is _________.

CR: The slowness. I can’t stand markets that take 6+ months to reply. I think that’s RIDICULOUS. At Fantasy we turn stuff around within a week tops, and that’s processing 400-500 fiction pieces a month. :p

GV: This can be solved by _________ and liberal applications of _________.

CR: Determination and weed.

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