NaNoWriMo
#NaNoWriMo Liza
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/20/2009 - 17:18This month, I’ve been trying to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month, which I’m currently calling Liza’s Party. It is a twenty first century remake of Pygmalion, where two guys attempt to create the ‘perfect woman’ online via sites like Facebook. The novel is moving along okay, a little behind schedule, but most of the characters are well defined, except Liza.
So, I thought I would ask people who visit my blog their views of what Liza should be like? What would make her the perfect online companion? More importantly, how would she demonstrate these attributes online?
Another question that I want some of my characters to struggle with is, what benefits, if any, might there be in attempting to create such an online companion? The potential downsides are much more obvious.
So, what are your thoughts? How would you imagine Liza?
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The Road to Virginia (Another Personal and #NaNoWriMo Post)
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 07:56I spent about eight hours on the road driving down to Virginia yesterday. It was a grey day, with brief periods of rains along the way. For the first couple hours, I listened to the news. Then, I switched over to a book on tape. Kim had picked up More Tales of the City
I’ve been thinking a lot about writing as I work on my own novel for National Novel Writing Month. What could I learn from More Tales of the City? There were moments of vivid descriptions, a good complex plot and very interesting characters. It was the characters that interested me most, especially those characters that have lived long difficult lives and were masters of reading people. I realize these characters were fictitious but they were very interesting.
The ability to really understand, to fully empathize with the people around you seems like one of those super powers concerned people might long for. Yet at the same time, it might be like Midas’ golden touch, and be a real curse, enough to drive a person mad.
It provides a very interesting contrast to Pickles, one of the heroes of my story who is perhaps tragically narcissistic. I’ve been asking friends to read sections of my novel and one friend, a psychotherapist from Australia did not like the character of Pickles. I tried to find out what she didn’t like about him, and it was this narcissistic characteristic that he had. I was relieved. It wasn’t that I failed to describe him very well. It was that, if anything, I captured his narcissism too well.
All of these thoughts mingled together during my drive to Virginia. At dinner my daughter and swapped stories of how our novels were coming along. She is well ahead of me at this point. I was hoping to get some good writing done last night, but was too tired after the drive. Perhaps I can churn out a few more words this morning before the festivities of the day begin.
Follow Friday #NaNoWriMo Author @renegadegenius
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/13/2009 - 06:57The sound of heavy wind outside only adds to my desire to stay warm and comfortable under the bed covers. It is five in the morning and dark outside. Is the wind and rain are the remnant of Hurricane Ida? I’m not sure but it may make the ride a bit longer. All the more reason to get out of bed and get going.
This weekend is Junior Dad’s Weekend at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. Miranda, also known as @renegadegenius is a junior this year and wants to do the whole Junior Dad thing. Her older sister @MaireadCH is a senior at Mary Baldwin. She didn’t want to do the Junior Dad thing.
I can understand that. I never was one for a lot of ceremony and the Junior Dad events reek of college marketing infused with old southern ceremony. “Few events in a young woman’s life are more memorable than the day she receives her MBC class ring,“ the page starts off.
Events kick off this afternoon with a “VWIL Honor Ceremony”. VWILs are the members of the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership, “the nation’s premier leadership program for young women” and “the only all-female Corps of Cadets in the world”.
But @MaireadCH and @renegadegenius are not VWIL’s, they are PEGs. PEG is Mary Baldwin’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted. Like many of their friends in classmates in the PEG Program at Mary Baldwin, @MaireadCH and @renegadegenius both started college at fourteen. It has been a very different sort of experience for both of them, but for both of them, a wonderful, rich and fulfilling experience.
I am not used to all this Dad stuff. I grew up in a family that was not particularly close knit, and only recently, as my father’s brother struggles through Alzheimer’s, have I reconnected with my father and his side of my family. At home, we’ve always tried to talk with our children as peers. They have important thoughts to share and should be part of much of the family decisions. We joke around, and they see me in all my warts, or at least all except a few that I might still manage to hide.
There are times that I feel my life has been hard. The failure of my first marriage was very hard on me. I’ve been very successful at times in my career financially. At other times the successes have been harder won and not financial, but perhaps even more meaningful.
Because of this, I have not been able to give my children everything I wish that I could, and each of them has missed out on things one way or another because of my own inadequacies. Yet each of them are turning out wonderfully.
@renegadegenius, now sixteen, is writing her third novel as part of National Novel Writing Month, or #NaNoWriMo. She self published her first two novels, Subtle Differences and The Silent Serian. I am a couple days behind in my writing, but @renegadegenius is all up to date.
Another struggle I have as a father is how best to praise my children. They are special and I am very proud of them. I don’t want their heads to swell and I don’t want to stimulate sibling rivalries so I am careful in heaping my praises on them. On the other hand, I don’t want them to go through life not knowing how much their father loves and admires them.
So, this weekend, I am driving down through the wind and the rain to celebrate but a portion of Miranda’s many successes. I will dress up and where nice clothes for the “My Precious Someone Champagne Brunch” and the “Junior Dads & Family Ball”. Yet all of this will fall short of giving her the due that she deserves.
Am I a proud dad? Oh yeah!
#NaNoWriMo Scamming the Nigerian Scammers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/08/2009 - 11:08Today, I received an email from Flora Abed, a twenty year old girl living with her younger brother alone for fear of being found by the people that killed her father. There is $9.5 million dollars in a trunk in Sierra Leone that she needs me to help get out of the country. What should I do?
Well, normally, I hit the delete button, which I did quickly on this email. However, I stopped at thought. Perhaps the person who wrote this email can help me after all. I'm writing a novel for NaNoWriMo and have thought about adding a Nigerian scammer or two into the novel, so I sent this reply:
Hi. Thanks for the email.
I'm in the process of writing a novel about Nigerian, or 419 scams. In particularly, the heroes of the story create a fictious person. A Nigerian scammer attempts to scam the fictious person. One of the heroes decides to play along and try to outscam the scammer. Essentially, he provides banking information so that the first scammer can make sure they can transfer the funds necessary. When they raid the account, they find there is no money there to raid. However, the hero gets the scammers banking information. When the next scammer comes along, the hero gives the second scammer the bank information of the first, pitting the two scammers against one another.
I'm interested in your thoughts about this scenario. Does it seem believable? Feasible? How do you think the scammers would react? What other fallout do you think would happen? As an aside, one of the characters in the novel is an FBI agent working with IC3. How would you imagine the FBI agent getting involved with this would react and how it would play out?
Any thoughts you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
What do you think? Will I get an interesting reply? Do you have thoughts on the plot twist? Any feedback is appreciated.
#NaNoWriMo Update, November 3rd
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/03/2009 - 11:39I remember years ago someone talking about how their teeth were never as clean as when they work trying to write something. I know what they mean. I pace, I try to find other things to do, while I’m trying to conjure words for whatever I’m writing. Writing a daily blog post has helped with this, and for those who are not ready for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), there is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), where you try to write a blog post every day for a whole month. I started doing this a long time ago, and as a general rule, have a daily blog post, although the blog posts generally are less than the 1667 words a day necessary to win at NaNoWriMo.
So, I surf blogs and work on technology projects. Right now, I’m trying to get my Google Wave server to federate with other Google Wave servers. If that sounds geeky to you, don’t worry, it is pretty geeky. It does provide something else to think about as I work on my novel. I also try to visit my normal round of blogs. I’m not visiting quite as many blogs this month as I usually do, and it may fall off even more in the coming days.
Three bloggers whose blogs I regularly visit are also doing NaNoWriMo, Doug, Patricia, and Stacey. Good luck.
As I tweeted yesterday, my word count was 3,474, which is on track, but not breaking away from the pack. The first three thousand words were hard. I was setting up the characters and the setting. Then, I got to the fun part where the key idea gets introduced, as well as one of the plot twists.
It is an interesting experience for me. I’ve seen advice about how to properly write a novel. It sounds complicated; mapping out the main theme, the conflicts, the plot twists, the resolutions, the characters, how they are going to change, the settings and how they affect the characters and plot twists, and so on. It all seems so complicated.
I also remember the story about how to make a sculpture of an elephant. Take a really big blog, and start chipping away at anything that doesn’t look like an elephant. This is closer to my approach at NaNoWriMo. I know the overall theme of my story, a twenty first century remake of Pygmalion, where the creation takes place online in social networks. I have a good idea about the characters. I’ve been getting to know them in my mind for the past month. I have a sense of their histories, their motivations, and how the whole story will affect them. Yet their day to day lives have remained opaque, as have the conflicts they will face.
So, I start writing about them. As I do, their characters become clearer. The conflicts start to emerge. When I wrote my first few hundred words, I didn’t have enough ideas to make it to a thousand words. Now that I’ve written my first thousand words, the ideas are rapidly expanding. Hopefully, this will carry me to the finish line the way it did in 2007.
One other thing that I’m doing is sending copies of my first write through to friends that understand the idea of the first write through and are likely to share ideas that will help me further bring my characters to life and add exciting plot twists. Again, this worked great for me in 2007, and I’m hoping I’ll have some good readers this time as well. If you want to read and comment, get in touch with me.
That’s about it for my day three update. If you’re writing a novel this month, leave a comment about how it is going.
