What's In A Name?

I've been intending all year to write more about the Magic Language course I taught this year, but in the midst of an extraordinarily crazy semester, survival was the name of the game. Now that the class is officially over (and I can officially say it was the single greatest teaching experience of my life), I'm hoping to write a little bit more about it here. In our first unit, we read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, a fantasy book where the magic system revolves heavily around knowing the "true name" of people and objects. We spent a lot of time discussing how language works, if there is any connection between a word and the thing it names, and the power names hold in our society. I assigned my students a creative essay to write about their relationship with their own name, and I must say, I've never had more fun grading an assignment, because the essays I got were AMAZING. Some of my students loved their names, others hated them, some had even officially changed their names, and it was fascinating to read about. Every essay was deeply profound, and since reading them, I've been stewing all semester about what I would've written about my own name. As soon as I submitted final grades, this is the first thing I decided to do with my time. Below is my own name essay. I hope you enjoy.

“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet to the night sky. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as a sweet.” She has a point. What is a name, but a conventional piece of language, a collection of arbitrary sounds attached to us at birth. Names are just words, words just puffs of air. They mean nothing but what we ascribe them to mean. Why does it matter, what we are called, or that we are called anything at all? While some of us are eccentric enough to slip in and out of names and identities throughout life, the vast majority of us are saddled with a moniker at birth, officially to be changed only through a fee and court order. We do not choose our names, mostly. Our parents choose for us, but what do our parents know of us to pick good names? Just scrunchy blobs of newborn flesh, how are parents supposed to pick the perfect sounds to identify us?

Socrates and Cratylus debated the question of whether there were “true names,” sounds and syllables that represented and connected to a person’s true “essence,” a word that described them so perfectly that to know a person’s name was to know the person truly. They, along with the modern branch of linguistics, eventually decided this could not be how language works, and of course it is not. Words are not intrinsically connected to the things they signify. The names given us at birth are less like skin, attached to our being, and more like clothes, artificial additions. And like clothes, some names fit like gloves, others fit like baggy sweaters. Unlike clothes, names cannot be changed so easily, and sometimes the infant who snuggled in the warmth of their childish name must grow into the adult constricted by the too-tight fabric. If only names could be shed as easily as clothes, or shed entirely. What’s in a name, really? Perhaps it is a relief to some, knowing that their name, and whatever conventional baggage comes with it, is not actually a part of who they are. Names are signs, not realities of identity.

And yet, the first act of brutality the Nazi’s inflicted on inmates of those infamous concentration camps was to strip them of their names. In place, inmates were given numbers tattooed into their very flesh. There is a reasonable logic to this. Numbers are markers of identity too. Numbers can be even more individual than names; there can be an infinite amount of numbers without ever repeating, whereas one class of twenty kindergartners can have two Johns or three Marys. But reasonable logic doesn’t negate the fact that a number instead of a name is dehumanizing. Even de-biologizing. We name every living thing—the family pet, the flowers in the garden, even the algae scum on the surface of a puddle in some squalid bog gets a name (chlorella, what a beautiful name at that). To take away a person’s name and replace it with a number is not just to deny their humanity, it is to class them with the inorganic commodities bought and sold by bar code identification. Some things may be identified by number, but living souls need a name.

However arbitrary or ill-fitting our names may be, like all of language, names have power and significance because we believe in their power and significance. Our magic stories, fantastical semiotic reflections of how we imagine the real world could work, are rife with names of power: names that can summon demons, names that can control the wind or call a storm, names so evocative of dreadful evil that they must not be named. Names can be so sacred we don’t use them at all, but instead use honorific titles. While we can talk all we want about sticks and stones and words not hurting, it just isn’t true. Words matter, and the most significant words we have are the ones that have the power to identify us. To name us. We crave to be known by our names. To be called by our names. In the few instances of scripture we have where God the Father has spoken to man, he has called them by name: Adam, Moses, Joseph. To be called by name is to be known, or at least, acknowledged, a type of knowing.

Perhaps that is why I went through such a period of mourning when I changed my last name after marriage. I’d disparaged my maiden name while growing up. Smith. Could there be a more common, more unimaginative, more bland name in existence? My shallowest fear in life was to become a teacher before I got married and have to listen to my students call me “Miss Smith.” And yet, and yet! That name had been my identity for twenty-one years. That name tied me to the only family I’d known, to my father, and to his father before him, and his father before him. It was a name rich in legacy, a name of prophets and presidents. Though my lineage did not change with marriage, I still felt a severing, a wondering if I could claim my noble ancestors now I didn’t share their name. Would my children feel the same connection to that heritage if they never bore the name Smith? It felt like losing a part of myself, and I mourned that loss.

I considered keeping my last name (and confession, I did keep it as a middle name, but the strange place and powerlessness of middle names in our society is a topic for a different essay). However, if I had to go back and do it again I would still change my name, because I recognize how my new last name represents the new family unit I have built. It connects me deeply to my husband and my children. Tanner (a name, I might add, barely one syllable more interesting than Smith if no less common and unimaginative) is the name that unifies and identifies us as a family. It’s a powerful thing, to share this common family name. It binds us together. I wish the burden of losing and changing names and identities didn’t fall so heavily upon women in our culture, didn’t reinforce so much the paternal connection. I wish my name represented all the lost maiden names from my maternal line, the Nortons, the Prices, the Warrs… but hyphenated names are an in-elegant solution. The only perfect situation happened to my Grandma Donna Smith, who married her third cousin once removed, my Grandpa Mitt Smith, and never had to change a thing. Of course, we can’t all have looping family trees like that, or the species would be in danger.

The significance of last names, the connection to family, define people in a very specific way, but first names are another matter. If Socrates’ “true names” exist, names that define the true essence of who we are, we would expect to find them in the first name. But if first names actually reveal anything about anyone, it is more about the parents giving the name than the child receiving it. Did my mother have any clue that the name “Suzanne” was a French version of the Hebrew word for “lily”? Did she believe that flower possessed any essential connection to the babe in her womb? No. My mother gave me my name for the entirely unromantic reason that my due date was originally on the birthday of her favorite college roommate, who happened to be named Suzanne. Of course, then I actually came two weeks late, so the date was irrelevant, and I’ve never in my life met my namesake, which generally makes me question how strong their friendship actually was (if you name your child after someone, don’t you think they’d be an important enough person in your life to actually meet up with occasionally, and introduce said child to?). So for all intents and purposes, I consider my mother’s choice of my name to be arbitrary. Practically meaningless.

And yet, and yet… When I stumbled across the etymology of my name in a baby book years later, I felt a spark of recognition. I felt the clothing of my name, at times in my past too tight or too baggy, to slide in comfortably around my skin. I had loved calla lilies since I was little—pure and white, graceful curves, long and elegant. They were the flowers in my wedding bouquet. And French had been my minor in college. I did a study abroad in Paris. Now here was my name Suzanne, literally meaning French lily. Fleur-de-lys. Could a name be more perfect for me? Was it a true name? Or was it coincidence? Did my name, with the power of some unbelieved magic, shape me? Predict me? Guide me to become the essence it defined? Or was it just luck, me forging connections to an arbitrary collection of sounds randomly assigned to me by chance? Is that what all people must do who love their names? Find the connection, build the identity, create the definition they want?

I decided I wanted to name my first daughter Lily, as a way of naming her after myself without giving her the name Suzanne. Maybe that’s a selfish thing to do? But how could I give her a more significant and meaningful name? How else are parents supposed to choose names for their children? How else other than chance, whim, liking the sound of the syllables, the way it will look on some future theoretical resume, the connection to some long-dead ancestor or some beloved celebrity, trying to conform, trying to be unique, naming her after my favorite flower, myself? How else to pick the single crucial defining symbol for a being who exists more in potential than in experience? And, like all the other baggage parents pass along, children must do their best to get along under the weight (or weightlessness) of the name handed to them.

I had so many images in my mind of what this daughter would look like, how we would go see the ballet together every year, how she would let me curl her hair and we would wear matching dresses, how someday we would go to Paris together, and how her favorite flowers would be lilies too, simply because of her name, and the connection it would give the two of us. Three years ago, I gave birth to that daughter I’d been dreaming about, and I named her Lily. And she grew up to be nothing like I imagined.

She is a force. Though she be but little, she is fierce. She is strong and opinionated and stomps around our house in her favorite pair of boots. She is passion and bursts of emotion and has a flair for the dramatic. She looks nothing like me (she is 100% her father’s child), and loves wearing princess dresses but only over pants. She won’t let me touch her hair, so she runs around with wild stringy curls, little more than bedhead. She will likely never take a day of ballet lessons in her life (though I can potentially see her going out for softball, and honestly, with the way I’ve seen her tackle her older brothers I believe she would make a fair linebacker). She is the life of the party, the center of attention, color and sound and explosion. She is the opposite of me in almost every way possible, and yet the depth of my love for her takes my breath away. I stand in complete awe of her fierce, beautiful, passionate little person, but I often worry she will grow up resenting the name I gave her, for she is nothing like the quiet, slender, elegant calla lilies I painted in a watercolor to adorn her nursery before she was born.

We do not get to choose our names, but even if we could, how many of us know what name we would pick? How to choose a collection of sounds to represent our identity? Such a significant weight for a symbol to hold! How does one choose the perfect name? Does the perfect name exist? What do we do with the names we are given? Especially the ones that fit like baggy sweaters or squeeze like too-tight T-shirts. Do we suffocate? Do we chafe? Do we drown? Do we insist on nicknames or file legal petitions to change them? Or do we learn to accept them? Do we let our names define us, or do we define our names?

What I hope my daughter knows is that while it may not be a “true name,” or a name that describes her essence perfectly, it is still her name. She is not a number. She was loved enough, cherished enough, to be given a name. Her name still holds power, still holds meaning, still identifies her. There is still magic in her name. Maybe some names “fit” better than other names, maybe some names feel arbitrary and unconnected to who we want to be or feel we truly are. But also, maybe it’s about making the connection. After all, a name’s meaning isn’t tied down. There are a million ways to inhabit a name, to find the connection, and make it fit. I wasn’t always sure my name defined me. Maybe my daughter will find her own reason to love her name. Maybe she will love the connection it creates between the two of us (a mother can only hope). Or maybe she will find some other way entirely to connect her name to the essence of her identity.

I am the calla lily, but there are other varieties of lily. She can be the tiger lily.

What Makes an Author?

I'm teaching English 101, the freshman writing course, this semester. It's been fascinating. So many things have changed since I took my own freshman writing course over 10 years ago.

The textbook we are using in my course is title Everyone's an Author, and we spent our first day of class reading the introduction and discussing whether the title is a true statement. Is everyone an author?

The authors of the textbook put forward an argument in the introduction that anyone who participates in social media or interacts online (which is basically everyone these days) is an author because they compose, "publish," and create work that has an audience (namely, whichever friends and family follow them, but potentially the world, since anything these days can go viral).

But while my students "publish" writing all the time to social media, very few of them felt like they could legitimately call themselves "writers," let alone something so endowed with cultural meaning as the word "author." During our discussion, I was able to pull out some of my own research interest knowledge and talk about how the invention of the printing press changed the way we view authorship culturally. Before the printing press, when anyone wealthy or lucky enough to find themselves in possession of a quill and parchment could write, the word "author" held a different meaning than it does today. In point of fact, it was much more closely related to the word "authority" (and it's not terribly hard to see how those two words are etymologically connected). An author was simply anyone who had the skill, the knowledge, the ability to write with "authority." Chaucer was an author because of his mastery of the (middle) English language. He could write with skill, he could write with authority, therefore he was an author.

Then the printing press came along, and things changed. Over time, printing press owners and then publishers became gatekeepers of the term "author," awarding it only to those writers they selected and allowed to move into print. No matter your level of skill or mastery of a subject, you could not call yourself an author until someone else, someone with the "authority" of a publishing house behind them, bestowed that title upon you.

In today's world of technology and social media, however, that is changing. Now, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can "publish" almost anything they want, from tweets to novels, and find an audience who will read them. The publishing house's role as gate-keeper is becoming narrower and narrower (although, it still pretty firmly exists). The term "author" is being applied to blog writers, people who self-publish novels, or those who write fan-fic. Our definition of who is an author is loosening, expanding, reforming with our technology.

But the point I put forward to my classes in our discussion is that I believe, in our new age of online publishing, the term "author" will need to revert to it's root connection to "authority." Yes, anyone can write whatever they want and post it over every social media account they want, but you should only be able to call yourself an "author" if you write from a position of "authority," a position of mastery and skill over the English language. And my goal for each of them, by the end of the term, is to help them gain that mastery and skill over the English language so that they can feel comfortable with claiming that mantle of "authority," so that they can truly consider themselves "authors."

But do I even consider myself an author? I, who only write in this small corner of the blogosphere, with my small and limited audience (hi, mom!). Do I even consider myself a writer? It's hard to claim those terms for myself. It feels like someone else, someone with "authority" needs to award those terms to me with a publishing contract and a book in print.

But at the same time, I do feel like I write with some skill, with some level of mastery (if I didn't feel that way, I sure would feel uncomfortable in my role as writing instructor at a public university). I do feel like this little hobby of mine, this little blog thing, however small my audience may be, is actually for an audience! People read my words! Doesn't that make me an author, at least in some sense?

I believe it does, and so I just want to say thank you. Thank you for coming here, for reading my words (however unskilled and unpolished they sometimes are). Thank you for participating in this space that brings me so much satisfaction and joy. Thanks for making me feel like in some small way, I can claim the title of "author."

Writing Projects and Reading Lists

Three years ago (I can't believe it's been that long, it feels like last year) I participated in NaNoWriMo, or, for the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month. I really didn't have an idea for a plot when I started. There was no plan, no big idea, I just had the time and the goal and so I plunged in. Needless to say, the resulting product was terrible. But I still did it, still got 50,000 words down in somewhat of a story form, and I really enjoyed the process of just having a creative writing project.

This year, I made another goal for myself to tackle a big creative writing project. The difference this time around is that I actually have an idea for something I want to write (less a novel, more a fictionalized memoir type thing). I have no expectations for this being any good, but I'm excited by the idea and excited just to have another project in the works.

Big Magic: Review and Thoughts

Oh, hey, if you came by today looking for that Book Blab live stream I promised you, well, it's not happening today. A combination of technical difficulties (like the entire Blab social media platform being dissolved... ugh, technology!) and scheduling conflicts means we are regrouping. But we're still excited about this episode, so we'll figure something out and get it posted in the near future. Keep an eye out.

So, remember when I made that goal to start writing a book this year? Well, in preparation, I decided to read some motivational/inspiring/instructive books on writing. I started off with Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic, which came out last year, I think?

Now, here's where I confess that I've not read anything else by Gilbert. I never read Eat, Pray, Love, and I suspect I wouldn't like it if I ever did read it. In fact, I suspect I wouldn't really like any of her other novels and I don't have plans to read them.

But  Big Magic? I totally loved. Yes, it's a bit woo-woo and probably not for everyone. But while I didn't agree with everything, I agreed with so much of Gilbert's advice that I found myself wishing I had the paper copy of the book (I listened to it on audio) so I could highlight or copy out quotes.

Awesome Title

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I've been thinking about titles recently. Book titles, blog post titles, that sort of thing. Titles can be very important. Titles can make a book sound unbelievably boring, or incredibly interesting. Titles can reveal everything, or conceal everything.

I'm not very good at coming up with titles, if you couldn't tell by the very title of this post.

I've always struggled with titles because, well, they are supposed to be short and creative and encapsulate the entire essence of what you've written. But the conundrum for me has always been, if I just spent so much time writing so many words to express the essence of what I want to say, whether it be a blog post or an academic paper or a novel, how do I boil that down to a mere few words in a title? So I end up with a title that is generic, obvious, or more often incoherent (the number one comment I got back from classmates who edited my last paper was that the title didn't seem to describe the paper I had written).

The ladies over at Brilliant Business Moms recently wrote a post about how to craft a killer blog post (from which I gleaned that I write very un-killer blog posts), and here's what they had to say about titles:

Research shows that many readers do not make it past the title of your post.  Was your title too long or confusing?  Did you hook your reader by making them curious or evoking emotion?

The research says that the first 3 words and last 3 words of your title are all that your readers will see. Did you pack the most important words towards the beginning and end of your title? The beginning of your title is also more weighted for SEO, so fit your key words into the title quickly.

I realized that probably over 50% of my post titles begin with "Book Review:" Hmm, now isn't that just a thrillingly evocative hook.

However, I do think I'm a bit better at coming up with titles than novelists of the 18th Century. I recently saw this list floating around facebook of actual novel titles from the 1700s, and I must say it gave me a chuckle. My particular favorite is The Adventures Of An Ostrich Feather Of Quality, followed closely by The Adventures Of An Irish Smock, Interspersed With Whimsical Anecdotes Of A Nankeen Pair Of Breeches.

I mean, are those fantastic titles, or are they fantastic titles?

And yet, somehow, I'm not inspired to read one of the books listed.

So, maybe I'm slightly better than most 18th Century authors, but still. I think I could work on coming up with better titles, in every genre I write. It's an artform, crafting titles, and one I haven't put a lot of thought into. But this is my new writing goal (manageable because it is small). I'm going to pay more attention to titles, the ones other people write and the ones I come up with on my own. I'm going to reflect more on how titles influence the way I feel about a piece of writing. I'm going to be more purposeful in how I create titles. Hopefully this will be one small way I can improve my writing overall.

The November that Was

Holy cow, it's December now.

November was a lost month to me. These last few weeks slipped past me in a haze of influenza nastiness (seriously people, get your flu shots! I had to learn the hard way, but fortunately everyone else in my family got theirs), holiday travel craziness, and the all-consumingness that was writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. But, speaking of that project:

I did it! I wrote a 50,000+ word novel in one month. True, I didn't finish until 11:15 PM last Saturday after a long flight home from our Thanksgiving festivities, but I did it.

And I have never been so glad to be finished with a project.

In no particular order, here are my likely rather uninteresting reflections about writing a novel in a month:

-No one will ever read this book. It is terrible, and I freely admit that. There were times in the middle of writing this that I was so bored, and hated it so much that I just considered giving up.

-That being said, once it was finished I realized my novel had all sorts of potential. Like I mentioned last time, I'm a discovery writer, which means when I got to my final scene, I had this epiphany about how everything should fit together. The problem was, I should've been building toward that ending through the whole book, but I didn't know the ending until I wrote it. So, that was annoying. In order to get this novel into a readable form, it would take months and months of intensive editing. If writing a novel in the first place was a daunting project, the thought of editing it frightens me to my core.

-This story has all sorts of gaping holes and missing scenes. It wasn't until I was in the shower after submitting my 50,300 final words that I realized I'd forgotten to write the most important scene. You guys, my two main love interest characters NEVER KISS! I had been building up to this kiss scene through the whole book, and then when it got to that part, I just had so much conversation going that I forgot to have them kiss! How stupid and unromantic is that? Like I said, this thing would need some major editing to get into a readable format.

-On a related note, I am not good at action scenes, but I discovered that I love writing dialogue. Seriously, there were multiple times when I was like Hm, I need another 1,000 words before the next action scene, let's have them sit around and talk! And so I'd just start a random conversation and 2,000 words later, I had learned all these new and amazing things about my characters. So I like writing dialogue, but I'm not sure how well that lent itself to the story. Is it boring to read about people sitting around a camp fire talking? Because there is A LOT of that in my novel.

-My writing style is heavily influenced by whatever book I happen to be reading at the moment. I read four books during my whole writing project (reviews are coming, I promise) and with each new book I noticed my writing style would subtly shift to reflect the author I was reading. This really gave me pause, because I think the reason I even chose to write a YA fairy-tale retelling in the first place is because that is what I've been reading so much of lately. I write what I read, which gives me even more reason to be selective about my reading choices in the future. What goes in comes out. If I want to write a great novel, I'm going to need to read great novels.

-I have an entirely new respect for authors. Seriously, I feel bad for some of my past reviews, because my novel? One star if we're being generous. Really, I'm so much more impressed with authors who come up with these creative stories, and then figure out how to tell them in unique and engaging ways. And then actually get them published. I'm completely in awe of the people I know in real life who write books, because it takes a lot of work and creativity.

-I need a break from novel writing, but I absolutely intend to do this again in the future. Maybe not a whole novel in one month, and hopefully with a story and characters that I'm a little bit more invested in, but I will write another book. If this exercise taught me anything, it's that I am capable of writing novels (whether they're actually good is another question entirely).

Can Mormons Write Great Literature?

Yes, yes, I'm supposed to be writing a novel right now, but I'm in a bit of a rut, so I've come back here to write a post and avoid writing my book. Plus, I read a couple of things this week related to writing in general that have really got me thinking and I kind of wanted to talk about them here.

I stumbled across this article from the New York Times called "Mormons Offer Cautionary Lesson About Sunny Outlook vs. Literary Greatness." Basically, the author talks about how any well-known or popular Mormon authors (Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, Shannon Hale) tend to gravitate toward genre fiction (fantasy, sci-fi) or young adult fiction because we, as a Mormon culture, feel more comfortable in these relatively happier, good beats evil genres than we do with the darker content of literary fiction. They gist is that Mormons are encouraged to always promote things that are "lovely, virtuous, of good report, and praise-worthy," and that basically rules us out from ever writing serious stuff like sex, violence, or the depressing messiness of the human condition, in any sort of realistic literary sense.

I know a few of my (Mormon) friends took issue with this argument, citing Mormon authors who aren't afraid to write about sex and violence and other generally taboo topics, but honestly, I agreed with the article. I've actually pondered about this phenomenon before, because it's very clear to me that Mormon authors only seem to find success and recognition in genre categories. I just can't think of a single note-worthy literary fiction Mormon author, at least not one that's still in good standing with the Church.

But I'm not sure I agree with the author's hints that it's the structure of the Mormon church itself that limits our authors. I'm just not sure that we have a bunch of repressed authors who would turn out to be Miltons and Shakespeares if the Church would just encourage us to write about the darker side of life. I honestly believe that Mormons don't write about the depressing subject matter of so much literary fiction because for most of us, that is not our reality. Maybe I shouldn't speak for other Mormon authors (and maybe I shouldn't be presumptuous enough to consider myself a Mormon author), but my reality is happy. Okay, not everything is perfect, there have been trials and hard times, but at the end of the day my reality consists of hope in a God that will make everything all right, and that brings me peace. I don't find myself drowning in the utter senselessness of human life and suffering. My life has meaning, my pain makes sense to me. There is a happy ending (or at least, the hope of a happy ending) to each and every one of my stories, and that simply does not fit with the modern sense of literary fiction.

This whole process of writing a novel has taught me this about myself as a writer. I think that I would love to write a literary fiction novel, but most of the literary fiction novels I've read in recent years have left me feeling sad, hopeless about life, and dark. And no, I'm not comfortable writing a book like that. I don't want to create something that is so antithetical to the way I actually feel and live. So I have started a novel that is a young adult fantasy. I'm more comfortable in this genre because even though there is magic, there is also a happy ending, and that is closer to my view of reality than more "realistic" literary fiction.

Really, I don't think this is a problem of the Church or religion, but rather one of the current state of literary fiction. It's a question, posed by a character in one of my favorite books (Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner):

Oh, come on, Charity said. Really. Art and literature have these fashions. Why don't you just ignore all that stuff so many modern writers concentrate on, and write something about a really decent, kind, good human being living a normal life in a normal community, interested in the things most ordinary people are interested in-- family, children, education-- good uplifting entertainment? (216).

What a question for the ages. Why don't writers write this kind of happy, normal stuff? Because only children and young adults will read it and find it to be of any worth. Because otherwise it is cast off as religious, sentimental fiction, not serious stuff. Because literary fiction must be full of sex and depression and meaningless tragedy.

I'm not saying that Mormon authors should ignore the real pain and suffering of life, pretend like it doesn't exist, and try not to represent it realistically. This would not be an accurate portrayal of life. A deep part of our doctrine is that there must be opposition in all things, and we recognize that there is suffering in this life and it is necessary. Our literature should reflect that. However, I don't think that we will see any great Mormon literary authors until the literary world accepts that while there is suffering, there is it's opposite as well. Some conflicts have resolutions, some people find peace in this life, and happiness is a legitimate reality. Happiness is a story worth being told, and I hope someday to read a great literary work that tells it.

Maybe I'll have to write it.

(P.S. I would love to know if you agree or disagree with any of my thoughts here. I'm willing to admit that my limited experience might not reflect the reality of the literary world, the Mormon literary community, or life in general.)

Novel Writing Update

I mentioned last week that my goal is to write a novel this month. I'm assuming that most of you are dying to know how I'm doing with this goal, so here I am to share my first week update.

You can see my NaNoWriMo word count widget above. For whatever reason, the NaNoWriMo official goal for every participant is 50,000 words. Apparently that is the suitable length of any legitimate novel (seems mighty arbitrary to me) but I guess it's a worthy enough goal, so that's what I'm shooting for. To write 50,000 words in one month, I should be averaging 1,667 words a day, which would mean by the end of today I should have written 13,336 words. As you can see, I'm a little behind. More like a lot behind.

But let's look at the positive. I've written over 8,000 words! This is the longest story I've ever written in my life to this point, and I'm pretty proud of those 8,000 words. And I'm pretty surprised at how much fun I'm having. Just the other day I caught myself thinking, "Huh, this story is getting interesting. I'm excited to find out what happens next." And then I had the crashing realization that wait, I have to COME UP with what happens next.

But anyway, this whole process is teaching me a lot about myself as a writer. It's been pretty interesting to learn this stuff, and maybe some of you are interested in my personal reflections, and maybe some of you are not, but I'm going to write them down here anyway.

1. When we heard Brandon Sanderson speak a few weeks ago, he said that there are two kinds of writers in the world: gardeners and architects. Gardeners discover the story as they go along, whereas architects have the entire story mapped out before they write a single word. Sanderson is an architect, and that is why his intricate stories are so well crafted. He knows where he's going before he begins. I have discovered that I am... a gardener. I spent the first four days of this month hemming and hawing over an outline, trying to decide just how I wanted to tell this story, and I got nowhere. I finally just decided to open up a stupid word document and start typing something. And, lo and behold, the words just keep coming. I still have no clear idea where this story is going, but I'm discovering it as I go. Kind of exciting.

2. I am completely uncreative and unoriginal. I already admitted before I began this project that I had no ideas for a novel, and so I just decided to do what Disney has done with so much success, and rip off the Brother's Grimm. Yep, I'm doing a fairy-tale retelling. Super original, I know, but at least now my novel has some chance of being half-way readable. Also, apparently I can only write in cliches. I mean, it's terrible. I have entire paragraphs where every single sentence includes a cliche. So yeah, queen of cliches here. It's bad.

3. So right now this story is set in some vague, unidentified European country (although it's looking more and more like France, the more I write) and the time period is some undetermined historical period of the past. This means that a lot of my descriptions are vague, and my dialogue is ridiculous. It's like I'm trying to channel my favorite historical authors (Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare), and the result is this completely pretentious, flowery, overly-wordy dialogue that is probably horrible to read, but I must say is so much fun to write. I just giggle over getting to use words like "fortnight." Honestly, this thing would never make it past an editor.

4. This whole process has been easier than I thought. Now, I might not be saying this next week when I hit a wall and find I have nowhere to go with my story (because, like I said, I really don't know where I'm going). But for right now, I'm completely surprised at how much I've been able to write during my son's naptimes. I can punch out a 1,000 words an hour, more if I'm actually focused. Part of the ease is the fact that I'm not worried about actually making it good. I'm not going back through and editing, I'm not stressing over whether some editor would actually publish this. I'm just writing to write, and it's been fun. Now, to actually meet the 50,000 word goal, I'm probably going to have to start neglecting things like housework and social engagements, and that might not be so much fun, for me or my family (my husband told me I wasn't allowed to write after dinner tonight, and I kind of got huffy about that, but I suppose it is Friday night, or something like that) but we'll see how it goes.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now. I'll be back next week with another riveting update about how my little novel is coming along.

Write a Novel in a Month

I think, like every other book obsessed child out there, I always wanted to be a writer. I was that nerdy girl who wrote twelve page stories when the teacher only asked for two, kept huge notebooks filled with stories and ideas and random twaddle, and seriously planned on writing THE next great American novel. But then, writing for a career struck me as a little unstable and unpractical, so I became an English teacher, and then life happened, and that whole dream of becoming an author kind of got shelved. I always thought, Someday, when that perfect idea hits me, and I have the time, and the stars are all aligned, I'll write that Great American Novel.

But you know how things go, and I doubt I'm ever going to have that perfect idea, or the time. I have a couple of friends who have written novels (reviewed one here) and I just kind of hold them in awe. Like, wow, real people can actually think up these ideas and write these whole books and get them published!? While they do other things like raise families and go to grad school and stuff? It just seems like such a daunting thing, writing that many words!

But really, I'm going to be pretty disappointed with myself if I get to the end of this life without ever even attempting to write a book. So sometimes, you've just got to buckle down and give your life goals a try, right?

Source

I've been skimming through Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project recently (got it for my birthday, one of my favorite reads) and for one of her happiness goals she writes a novel in a month. I started thinking, You know, I should just do that. Just sit down and write a novel in a month, just to try. So I'm going to, this month, try to write a novel. It just so happens (pure coincidence, I promise), that this month is November (gah! November 1st today, can you believe it?) which happens to be National Novel Writing Month. I'd heard of NaNoWriMo before, but in all honesty I hadn't paid much attention to the movement until I realized that my novel writing month was going to coincide with theirs, so I thought, what the hey! I'll sign up for an account with them. Just making this goal a little more official is all.


So yep, starting today I'm going to spend this entire month working on a novel. Do I have a plot idea? Nope. Do I have characters? Not really. Do I even know what genre of novel I want to write? No (but I'm going to figure that all out by the end of today, I promise). My only plan is to just plunge in and start writing something. It's probably going to be spectacularly horrible, and no one will ever be allowed to read it ever. But it's just something I've got to do.

So, if things are quiet around the blog this month, it's probably because I'm trying to write a book. If things are a little more busy on the blog this month, it's probably because I'll be trying to avoid writing my book (nothing like a blog post to clear up the writer's block, right?). But here's to wishing myself luck!

Now excuse me. I've got a book to write.