I am reminded of the lyrics of The Sunscreen Song, that novelty record ostensibly by Baz Luhrmann, with words taken from Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich:

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

And then there’s Merlin Mann’s advice about advice as it relates to NaNoWriMo:

And, the warning? Don’t read too many blog posts like this.

The hounds are out this month, guys, and they smell your fear and self-doubt. So, shovelbloggers will be offering you a tantalizing Vegas-style buffet of endless writing “help” that will range from the indispensable to the stupid to the unconscionably poisonous. And, smile though they might, those folks could care less if all those page views end up killing your word count or distracting you at the one delicate moment you were about to figure out your troubled third act. Their job is to make you stop working. Don’t let them. Okay?

I am an exceedingly awful writer, truth be told. NaNoWriMo has made me realise this. Not because I lack ideas, not because I can’t string a sentence together. But because I really don’t like ’showing up.’ I like writing blog posts. I find something quite wonderous about them. I’ll start with a vague idea and somehow by the end of it, almost despite myself, I will have arrived at the end of that thought process, I will know what I now think, I will have expressed it and actually the prose itself isn’t too bad either. But for one reason or another, NaNoWriMo has been a grating experience. I secretly want to punch the next teenager who remarks on how much ‘fun’ it is.

Yes, I have next to no willpower. I’m not having fun. So ocassionally I will seek encouragement from various sources… But advice, as Mann and Schmich have observed, isn’t always helpful. You could imagine the solace (or lackthereof) I received when I went looking for encouragement to continue with my memoir project and came into contact with this from Jurgen Wolff:

The one area I would warn most people away from is the memoir. Unless you have been in the public eye or have a truly remarkable experience to relate, it is difficult to interest people outside of your immediate family in your life story (sometimes it’s even hard to interest people inside your family…) Of course, you have the option of self-publishing such a work and distributing it to friends and relatives.

This wonderful quote is from a book titled, “Your Writing Coach: From Concept To Character, From Pitch To Publication.” The tag line of this book is: “Everything you need to know about writing novels, non-fiction, new media, scripts and short stories.”

I guess when it comes to writing memoir everything you need to know is essentially ‘don’t bother.’

But Wolff taps into a much greater anti-memoir sentiment that I have noticed elsewhere and often. I’ve observed it in writing podcasts where hosts tell the memoirist that their work “… is a memoir but it has the devices and language of fiction” as if that made up for the fact that the author dared to write from their own experience. [So widely shared is this belief that authors have taken to calling their works 'creative non-fiction' to try to combat it.] There was also a suggestion that there should be “more novels, less memoirs” because “if you’re working in fiction, good for you, because as far as I’m concerned that’s how to get the truth.”

I get it people. Fiction is the order of the day, and Twilight and Harry Potter the centre of the universe. That’s fine. [I've not read either, though looking at the Twilight movie posters I can't help but think shirtless men - vampiric or otherwise - probably do speak to great life truths. Erm, somehow.] Kudos to everyone whose passions revolve around those things – no, really. I am very happy for you. But lived experience is what interests me. And actually there’s a really good chance I will never finish this memoir, there’s a good chance I will not make 50,000 words by the end of this month. There’s a good chance this will never be published, that it will never see the light of day. So, you know, you won’t have to read it. You probably won’t even have the opportunity to read it. And in the meanwhile it keeps me off the streets and from J-walking or loitering or something…

The moment we finish something, we get a sort of celestial pat – sometimes even a shove – a small boster rocket of energy to be applied elsewhere.

… I decided to start the day by finishing some small tasks. I made my bed, new sheets for a new month and new beginnings, washed some dishes and did some cleaning up. I had a shower, and then I started writing. I couldn’t believe how easily the words flew onto the page, how many memories came flooding back in that moment. I did a test run for a few days in October and decided I could write two thousand words in two hours. Today, however, I did it in one! Huzzah!

Monday 2 November
Wordcount: 4067 (+2020 on previous day)
The words came less fluidly. I was reluctant to show up and write. Certainly less uninspired than yesterday. I have a lot of video to review that relates to this project and while this is infinitely useful and helpful, it can also mean writing takes much longer if you get distracted by going too far down the path of memory lane. I’m resisting the urge to write more than approximately two thousand words a day. This is all about consistency. If I leave the page wanting to write more hopefully that enthusiasm will translate into good things for tomorrow’s effort.

Tuesday 3 November
Wordcount: 4717 (+650 on previous day)
A completely horrible day on all fronts. [Somebody said something that was intended as encouragement but actually had the opposite effect altogether. They hoped that I could sustain the project for the 50,000 words. The only thing is up until they said that I never doubted I could. I genuinely thought I'd get to the 50,000 words with ease and still not be at the end of the project. This doubt really took hold in my mind, I didn't reach my daily wordcount and everything went downhill from there.]

Wednesday 4 November
Wordcount: 4717 (No increase on previous day)
It was hard to imagine a worse day than yesterday… but here we are. Actually I did a lot of things, even writing, on this day. It was quite a productive day. I just didn’t do anything on the NaNoWriMo project. (I played a lot of music. I recorded a song – and it relates, um, thematically, at least, to the NaNoWriMo project.) I figure tomorrow really can’t be worse than today. Like, it just isn’t possible. You can’t write less than nothing. (Let’s keep the bar low people!)

Thursday 5 November
Wordcount: 5885 (+1168 on previous day)
I took a break from the narrative of the project itself and worked on a section that was always intended to be an appendix to the book. I wrote about writing the song that I mentioned earlier. It was a very emotional process, but it yielded a breakthrough more than a breakdown. I shared some background on the story with a friend via email and this reaffirmed to myself that this was a story worth telling. Mostly I am just happy to be writing again.

Friday 6 November
Wordcount: 6368 (+483 on previous day)
I wrote a little bit in the morning and then spent the rest of the day staring at the screen. I wish I could say this wasn’t true…

Saturday 7 November
Wordcount: 6368 (No increase on previous day)
After the cabin fever of Friday I knew I needed to get out of the house, so I did. I spent some time in a local park and was impressed at how much more clearly I thought in that place. There was no writing on this day, but when I got home I started cleaning up madly. Decluttering for creativity or merely procrastination? I guess time will tell.

Sunday 8 November
Wordcount: 7356 (+988 on previous day)
Things are slowly taking shape. Very slowly. Infact I have a feeling that by the end of the month I’ll have written 30,000 words. Sure it won’t be the 50,000 NaNoWriMo hopes to inspire, but it still isn’t too bad. It’s certainly more than anything else I’ve written. (Indeed the current 7356 words is the longest continuous non-Academic piece I’ve ever written, so that is something to be thankful for too.)

Bill Grundfest (whose credits include writing and producing Mad About You) on The Writing Show:

So it comes from writing not from your head, but from your guts and from your pain and from your humiliation and all that stuff. And I see a lot of scripts where it involves, ‘And then the police get them in the interrogation room and they interrogate them!’ And I’ll ask the writer, I’ll say, ‘How many interrogations have you been in?’ And they’ll say, ‘Well, none.’ I’ll say, ‘So why are you writing about interrogation rooms? There are people actually who have been in interrogation rooms who are writing about interrogation rooms. But I’m gonna guess that there’s a lot of stuff that you have experienced that only you know. And you can put that stuff in any genre.’

Berry Gordy Jr. talking about The Motown Legacy on Motown 50 podcast:

When we were in the creative business my feeling was ‘Wait a minute – what is the human element?’ And rather than write what somebody else I think they would like, I told the writers and all the people ‘Write what you feel. It’s about YOU. What do you feel? Because you’re a normal person, I’m a normal person.’ So if we write what we feel then we’re not gonna look down on those people and say, ‘Well, wait a minute, we feel this way, we’re gonna write this for these people over here. Or we’re gonna write this ’cause it’s commercial. Or we’re gonna do this…’ I said, ‘No, always stick with what you feel.’

To what extent do your life experiences inform your writing?

Jake Garrison:

I had this audio recording that I had done for a show that I was in, Too Close For Comfort. And I just loved this song. And I had originally planned to do the music video where I was the character that was singing and then there’d be two other people playing the guy and then the girl that’s persuing the guy. And I had tried to get them up, tried get them together so that we could do this music video. It was all going to be pretty much the same – it was gonna be a guy playing the girl and all that. And I realised one night, there’s no way I’m going to get these guys together, my project is due in a week, so I decided ‘what the heck!’ I’m going to do the whole thing myself. So the entire thing was shot by me, it was sung by me, it was edited by me, it was directed by me and that was my first major video project.

Through some clever costumes Jake appeared as the vocalist, the love interest and the girl, sometimes (with the help of thoughtful editing) appearing as multiple characters within the same frame.

Have constraints – such as time limits and availability of people – changed the way you’ve worked? How did it affect your creative process? Did you need to think a little more laterally than usual?

Let me know in the comments.

Do published authors frequent secondhand bookstores and fetes and sales?

Even leaving the ethical implications of book resales (second hand books don’t result in any income for authors, or count towards recouperation of an advance) aside, how would you react if you saw your book at such a sale? Be grateful that somebody bought it in the first place and decided to share it with the world? Wonder why they didn’t think it was worth keeping? Do you buy it, or leave it there in the hope you make a new fan? Do you offer to autograph it (after all this might be for charity)?

And what, heaven forbid, if your blood, sweat and tears has a 50 cent sticker on it?

Like most ‘entertainment products’ (if you’ll forgive the expression), books tend to exist both as individual artistic expressions and mass produced, mass marketed products. Sometimes the value of the work can be confused with the cost of the raw materials – the paper, the binding. Certainly when it comes to digitilised product consumers expect the work to be available to them more cheaply, even though the experience of the story (or movie or music) it could be argued is essentially the same. But talk to many Kindle authors who offer their books for a couple of dollars and you soon discover that a cheaper price point has it’s own benefits. The barrier to entry is smaller so more people take a chance on your book. If they enjoy it, there’s a good chance they’ll enjoy your other work. They may buy from you again.

This, I suppose, is the case I’d make for secondhand bookstores, free content online, and even traditional brick-and-mortar libraries!

I first heard singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins on the radio. Then I discovered her album Whaler at the local library. Did this hurt her bank balance? I severely doubt it. Because after I discovered it there, I bought it somewhere else. Plus her other albums, and a lot of singles, compilations, movie soundtracks on which she appeared. She toured Australia two consecutive years and I followed her around from gig-to-gig for weeks at a time. The work is the introduction to the artist. An individual may connect with the work, and by extension, the artist, or they may not. But the point is they were more comfortable in trying something new because the cost was reduced or, in the case of libraries and free content, removed entirely.

Don’t forget also that secondhand bookstores are the last refuge for out-of-print books. When I discovered my favourite author John A. Keel, for example, all his work was out-of-print. It was only through diligent searching of secondhand bookstores across the world – Australia, New Zealand, America, England, Scotland – that I was able to get my hands on these treasures. eBay, Abebooks and Books and Collectibles were particularly helpful in this regard.

For me NaNoWriMo 2009 is mostly about cultivating creative habits, about getting into the habit of writing every single day no matter what. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the mood, if I’m inspired or not – I have made a commitment to write every single day.

But as well as that it is about proving to myself that I can write a piece of at least 50,000 words. I have never written anything this large and last year the prospect of such a large project freaked me out and rendered me completely useless.

The project I am going to tackle in November isn’t strictly a novel. It is actually a memoir, and during November my primary concern is about collecting anecedotes that relate to the subject matter of the memoir. I am not going to labour too much about narrative structure, timelines, flashbacks. The goal here is to get the raw information onto the page so that I have something to work with in subsequent revisions.

You can follow my progress on the NaNoWriMo website.
You can subscribe to this blog via RSS for updates.
You can follow me (@johnlacey) on Twitter.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo in 2009? Is this your first time or are you a seasoned professional? Why are you doing NaNoWriMo? What do you hope to get out of this process?

Leave me a comment – I’d love to hear from you!

In the same documentary the same commentators suggested her Hounds Of Love album was her greatest and most complete work. They went further to suggest that the reason for this was because after being hurried on earlier projects, being constrained by time and the expense of studios and equipment, she built her own home studio. Here she could work at her own pace, here she could entertain creative whims and take artistic risks. The difference here was time. Because ideas – and artists – go through a period of gestation, and creativity and art take time.

In a similar vein, Mur Lafferty in her most recent podcast ISBW #133 – You’re allowed to suck / Anders and Defendini Interview:

You’re allowed to suck in your first draft but you’re also allowed to suck at the beginning of your career. Now I haven’t read the book yet but I have heard many people mention the Malcolm Gladwell book that talks about how you need to have 10,000 hours of doing something before you’re a master. And a lot of people have said ‘You don’t want to sell your first novel.’ And some outspoken agents on Twitter have even said ‘Don’t send me your NaNoWriMo novel.’ NaNoWriMo probably says, ‘we are all about quantity over quality. The goal is to get the book on the page, after that fix it. Or make it longer. Or learn how to write a book.’

I think one problem novice writers have is we believe every idea we have is a perfect snowflake that must go out to the world. This is what causes people to work on a book for 20 years. It’s what causes people to freak out when they’re rejected, and not think, ‘okay, well if this story or book has been rejected 50 times maybe I should put it aside and write something else.’

Bob Brookmeyer:

I joked with my wife, I told her I figured something out in the bathroom. So she put out a scorebook and a pencil – at least then you get an idea. I sometimes warm up with whole notes just to get pencil contact and anything that will start the process.

There are two great ideas distilled here. Firstly be ready to work with inspiration whenever and wherever (in this instance, the bathroom) it hits. Secondly get into a habit of ’showing up’ and going through the process perhaps with a warm up exercise of your own; something that is conducive to your own creative process.

I strongly recommend you read the entire interview at Cynthia’s website but I just wanted to include Karen’s comments about rejection here. Hopefully they will inspire and comfort you as much as they have inspired and comforted me.

Karen McQuestion:

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been rejected overall. Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe tens of thousands. When I first started out it was so painful. I’d try to find meaning in the words (if I was a talented writer and it was a compelling story why didn’t they want it?). There were several times, usually after a near-miss, where I’d get frustrated and decide I was through with writing. That usually lasted a day or two and then I’d get another “really good idea.” Now I put my best effort out there and take rejection in stride. No one owes me publication and every acceptance is a victory. I usually submit a shorter piece fifteen to twenty times before I decide to give it a rest. And after that I may revise and send it out again. Sometimes it’s just a matter of timing.

Cynthia is the author of Your Words, Your Story (a book that arrived in my inbox two days ago and one that I am really looking forward to reading!).

As I imagined I didn’t quite get around to attending everything on my list, but for the most part what I did attend was really good. The Creativity: Art or Science? session was much less about creativity – at least in the fashion that I understand it – and much more about science. (I haven’t been so bewildered since high school physics class.) The REEF e-book digital fiction project was fascinating and will be the subject of a future post on this website.

The Not Tonight Honey: Conversations with Richard Fidler Live session was particularly entertaining. It was a show within a show as we witnessed not only a fascinating conversation about the female libidio in both literature and research with Bettina Arndt and Linda Jaivin, but also the machinations of a live radio broadcast. You can download this conversation as a podcast from the Conversations website or via iTunes.

There was an intimate and unexpectedly wonderful series of readings at Greystone Bar. Tom Cho and Stuff White People Like creator Christian Lander both gave hilarious and animated readings. (By the end of Tom Cho’s reading I didn’t want to buy his book so much as buy a recording of him reading it. Truly a comedic genius!)

While I didn’t have the opportunity to attend any sessions featuring David Williamson (arguably Australia’s most celebrated playwright) I confess I was completely starstruck passing him in the reception area of the State Library of Queensland. I remember studying his play The Removalists in high school and really enjoying it – unlike much of the other material I was subjected to in my English class.

A wonderful experience! There will be at least one or two future posts about – or inspired by – sessions from the Brisbane Writers’ Festival so stay tuned (subscribe via RSS) for more!