Truthiness revealed!

I edited a wiki entry today. This was a first for me, as I have never really paid enough attention to any type of wiki entry to really care about editing it before. My interest in wikis is generally limited to remembering the name of that guy that was in that movie - or the year that Ford started production of the Galaxy. This time, however, the topic was a bit closer to home.

I think you, dear Constant Reader, must be familiar by now with NaNoWriMo. You must also know of my involvement (obsession?) with the Urinal Cakes forum there as well. My association with the Piker Press began as a direct result of trading posts with Aser in that forum. This year, the thread has been running pretty well. One of the characters, who calls herself variously Queen Chaos, QAoaS, or just Holly asked some questions about past years, wondering if anyone knew what had happened to the archives. By chance, I had very recently found an unofficial wiki for NaNoWriMo called WikiWrimo that oddly enough has a page dedicated to the UC thread, and listed links to all of the previous year's threads (including one to this very blog, which is how I found it in the first place). I posted the link, answered the Queen's question, and thought we would go on with the hilarity.

Not so. I have recently acquired another job over at the Piker Press: Facebook Group Page Updater Guy. The poor group page was pretty neglected, and so I volunteered to come up with stuff to post to it periodically. Pretty good gig, but I am now constantly on the lookout for stuff to post. Since most of the regular Filthy Pikers are also big UC fans, I decided to post a link to the Wikiwrimo entry for the UC threads. This was met with some good response, but one pointed out some small factual errors in the entry. (Note, very pleasantly. Not in a nit-picky pedantic moron kind of way.) I suggested that the person sign up for the wiki and make the corrections, but then decided that I was being kind of bossy. Also lazy. So I did it instead.

I filled out the online form to request an account with editing privileges and then set about educating myself on the ins and outs of editing a wiki entry. I then moved on to the FAQ's and discovered something very interesting: the admin (and founder) of the wiki was in fact, the UC's own Sushimustwrite! Very soon after learning this, I got the email informing me that my account was approved and that I could sign in and start editing. Also that Sushi recognized me from the UC thread and that the entry on the UC thread was one of the first entries she made in the wiki after she created it.

So finally I got down to the business of editing the entry. My rusty old html skills came in handy, as I figured out how to post hyperlinks and such. The hardest part was to modify the entry to correct the information without utterly destroying the original entry. Also, to word the information in such a way that it made sense and didn't simply compound the errors I was trying to correct. I have done a bit of that type of writing before, but never editing a relative stranger's work. I really liked the initial article - how it flowed, the way the ideas were presented - and so I wanted to correct the information without destroying all of that.

I think it worked out. I have not received any kind of feedback on it just yet, but then I don't really expect any. It is not as if I re-wrote an entry detailing the mating habits of South American primate species. But you never know what people will take exception to.

For now, I am considering my next foray into the world of wiki-writing. My own bio.

How truthy should I make that?

© 2010 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

To NaNo or not to NaNo...

Not to belabor the point, but I am not really feeling excited for it this year. The last two years have yielded a pretty good start to a novel that coincidentally also had over 50,000 words and a horrible start to a short story that barely surpassed 10,000.

So, do I participate this year? Or take a year off? Do I try a run at a brand-new novel or do I break the NaNo-Rules and try to re-write the halfway decent novel that has been wasting away since then?

I don't know. Probably just keep making jokes about Urinal Cakes and QWAQ-ing with my NaNo friends and forget the novel. Easier that way, right?

Yeah, right.

Here it comes again...

I had almost convinced myself that I would completely ignore November this year. Last year was such a let-down; I couldn't even get into the Urinal Cakes thread with any sort of enthusiasm. Is my NaNoMoJo gone forever? Maybe.

Nevertheless, my good pals over at the Piker Press have been exerting a bit of peer pressure. KK for example made his participation conditional upon mine. "I'll do it if you do it." OK, if the old guy can do it, why can't I?

So that decision is made. Now, what to write? Start something completely new? Just head on over to the Seventh Sanctum and generate a random plot and get to work? This might be a good idea. Starting fresh with no preconceived notions of where I am going has worked well in the past. And yet I still feel that I would do better with a well thought out outline.

There are a couple of works-in-progress (meaning moldering away in that huge "I'll get to it" pile...) that I could pick up. This would technically be a bending of the NaNo rules, but would be serving a higher purpose: to get me writing again.

There is "The Education of Fred" which I have written a few scenes from. There is Zeniff the Spaceman and his trusty mining droid. I really have been wondering how he will get off that desert moon. "The Boy Named Sue" was a pretty good idea I had a few years ago, until I decided to make it a sci-fi western and tried to insert some old characters from another unfinished novel.

Whatever I decide to do, what Lao Tzu said about a journey of a thousand miles is true about writing a novel: it begins with a single word. (OK, he said step. But I am sure you knew that already.) I haven't done any writing at all for several months. This blog entry stands as the first writing of any kind I have done.

It also serves as a single step. Only 50,000 to go.

Wish me luck!

© 2010 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

3-Day Novel

Way back in 2005, when I first discovered National Novel Writing Month, I wrote my first novel. Well, I should say I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of November. What resulted was a rambling, incomplete mess.

But I loved it.

I had rediscovered my love of writing and storytelling. I continued to participate in NaNoWriMo every year after that. Every year but one, I would meet my 50,000 word goal but not yet have a completed novel. That wasn't really the point. The point was to spend some time with my new online friends, and exercise my creative muscles. Each year but one, I was successful at both of these goals.

Then, one of my new online friends told me that she thought I had enough talent to write for her online literary digest. So I took my first NaNo novel and polished it up for publication. The Piker Press serialized The Prisoner and I had finally completed my first novel. (Or novella, depending on your definition... after I got done polishing it, it had shrunk from over 65,000 words to 35,000. Hardly a full-length novel.)

Fast forward to about a month ago. I was hanging out in the Piker Press forums and saw a posting from a fellow Piker asking for a partner to collaborate in a 3-day novel. I went to the website, and read up on it. It sounded like just the thing. Unlike NaNoWriMo, which is a contest just for the fun of it, the 3-day Novel contest actually has judges, and prizes. The winning novel gets a publishing contract.

So, I have already demonstrated my ability to hammer out thousands and thousands of words. Given a couple of years to get around to editing, I can even craft a story that people enjoy reading. Can I do it in three days?

Short answer: Yes.

Slightly longer answer: With a little help from my friends.

Chris and Mary and I have been planning this novel ever since we all agreed to give it a shot. We have pages and pages of character sketches, plot outlines, chapter summaries, and just plain notes of all the discussions we have had during the planning stage. (Contest rules allow all the pre-writing preparation you want, as long as the actual text of the novel is completed during the 72-hour period.) The rules also disallow a third collaborator, so Mary was gracious enough to accept the role of an advisor. (Since our story's main character is a teenage girl, we needed a Subject Matter Expert to ensure we sounded genuine!)

Midnight, we opened a new Google document and got to work. Oh, by the way, both Chris and Mary live in Canada - so all collaboration was going to happen via the Internet. We finished the first two chapters before going to sleep. For me, it was about four in the morning. The next day, along with my normal familial duties (including a shopping trip among other things...) I wrote and wrote and wrote. My dear wife was doing her best not to be exasperated at the amount of time I spent at the keyboard. I was doing my best not to be exasperated at the number of times I had to stop writing to take care of a crying baby. At the end of the first day, we were nearly halfway done, at least according to our outline.

The second day was Sunday, which took a four-hour chunk out of the writing schedule. Nevertheless, by bedtime Sunday night we had all but two or three of the chapters complete.

Wait, what do you mean all but two or three? Was it two or three? Well, this was the hard part. As we wrote, the story evolved. Chapters appeared out of nowhere, little plot lines growing voluntarily out of the neat plan we started with like sprouts appearing in those potatoes in your cupboard. Some get pruned right away. With only 72 hours there is not a lot of time for exploring unplanned territory. Others were interesting enough that we just had to keep them. Which meant going back and filling in plot holes that had formed due to our unplanned detours. So chapters appeared, reappeared, disappeared, merged, and transmogrified as the day progressed.

Nevertheless, at bedtime, we were confident that we could spend the bulk of the day Monday on editing and revising. A whole day for editing. What could go wrong, right?

It was about ten o'clock when panic began setting in. I was still working on Chapter Six of fourteen chapters, and I was trying to convince Chris that I needed to add at least two more chapters. And merge a couple. And drop one altogether. Gaah! What happened to that neat timeline we worked up?

Chris was great. He patiently listened as I proposed change after change. He patiently encouraged me as I totally re-wrote some of his chapters and recreated his characters with and without permission. I kept waiting for him to scream "Stop! I am tired of you changing everything I wrote!" He never did. Thanks Chris!

When I finally got around to writing the final chapter, it was after midnight my time. (Since Chris and Mary are in Mountain time, we were using their clock. I didn't start writing until 2 AM in my time zone, so I wasn't cheating!) Chris had already signed off and gone to bed (another huge gesture of trust in me!) so I was on my own. I started writing, and realized that while I had a very firm idea of what I wanted the closing chapter to contain, my brain was fried and the words were just NOT coming. It must have turned out OK, because when my wife read it later it made her laugh out loud.

As for me... I have not been able to bring myself to look at it since I finished formatting it for printing and sent it to FedEx Office.

When you pour that much effort into a story, and you write, re-write, edit, revise, rearrange, and delete, you get a tunnel vision that makes it impossible to read the story. You can't see past paragraph formatting and spelling and grammar errors. You can't see the imagery or identify with the characters, you simply see that your character starts talking about another character before she even meets him in the story line.

So it is saved in my Google docs, as well as in hard copy on a shelf in my closet. A few months from now, when the tunnel vision has receded and the fuzziness of memory has clouded those 72 hours a bit, I will pull it down and read it again. I am always surprised at how much better the story is when I have a bit of distance between the writing and the reading.

Until that time, I have yet another writing challenge to prepare for... November is only two months away.

Keyboards at the ready....

© 2009 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved

Welcome to Looberry Island!

"Who are you?" I croaked to the blurry figure in black. It laughed at me again and proffered a coffee mug. "Take a drink before you try talking. Your whistle needs wetted." She was right. (It sounded like a she, but to be honest my eyes were not yet filling me in on such nuances of personality.) I sat up and took the proffered cup and poured a healthy portion in my mouth. It mixed poorly with the sand and seaweed already in there, and I heaved most of it out. Which was good on the one hand because it washed some of the sand and seaweed out of my mouth. On the other hand, my head was still in "Torture Device" mode, and dry heaving sand, seaweed and some kind of wine seemed to be encouraging its cruelty. Not wanting to be ungrateful, I tried to hand the mug back.

"You got any water?" I asked, my voice a bit smoother this time. (I mean, I was not yet as smooth as Tom Jones, but I had passed the Leonard Cohen stage at least.) "Water?" the lady in black asked, sounding confused. "There is an entire ocean of it right behind you. Why would you want some in a cup?" I strained to focus my eyes and see her face, to try and decide if she was kidding or not. I still couldn't tell. "I think I should try some water before I start into the hair of the dog." I said, but that does not seem to have answered her question. "Are you one of those people who prefer straight liquor?" she asked, her voice tinged with disdain. I shook my head, which was a mistake. After the world stopped spinning and the gong orchestra in my head wandered off for a union break, I tried to explain. "I am not sure how I got here, but I am pretty sure it involved adult beverages in rather large quantities. I think I had better stick with something a bit softer for a bit, at least until I can hold down some water. Also, I want to wash the seaweed and sand out of my throat." I was pleading now. The lady in black seemed unmoved. "Too good for my sherry are ya?" she snorted. "Find yer own water then." and she got up and stalked off. I sat there, watching her go. Part of me wanted to just collapse back to the sand and go back to sleep. The rest of me wanted to get the sand out of the various crevices it was lodged in. That part won. I struggled to my feet and limped after her, the gong orchestra back to work and doing their darndest to earn that Christmas bonus.

I limped after her as fast as I could. For some reason I was starting to panic. I had no idea where I was, how I got here, and the sight of another human being was somehow comforting. Plus, if she had sherry, I couldn't be too far from civilization could I? My eyes were squinted mostly shut with the pain of the pounding in my head, and so I didn't see the sign until my forehead cleverly pointed it out to me. I fell backwards onto the sand, and lay there rehearsing my entire curse word vocabulary at the cruel fate that I found myself living. And then the elephant showed up. Actually, the water preceded the elephant, since she was spraying it from her trunk. Nevertheless, I was suddenly doused by what felt like a high-pressure water hose. It succeeded in washing the sand off of my face and the part of my body that was not lying in sand, for which I was somewhat grateful, once I coughed my lungs clear. I looked around for the source of the sudden shower only to see what my fevered mind told me was an elephant butt disappearing into the treeline. Whatever it was, it was crashing through the trees away from me at high speed. As I sat staring after the departing... umm... creature, a voice startled me.

"She can be so helpful! What a wonderful animal she is!" I whipped my head around, (greatly distressing the gong players) and found the source. A slender woman with graying hair reclined nearby on a frayed beach chair. I stared at her for a moment, before shaking the water out of my (mostly) sand-free eyes and blinking like a newborn.

"Huh-whuh-who?" I managed to mumble. But the woman had already returned her attention to the shiny silver Macbook on her lap. She was pounding away at the keys with a rapid-fire pace. Every so often she would giggle to herself, as if her writing was unbelievably funny. I was about to make another attempt at communication, when the ground began to shake. I stood up as quickly as my sand and waterlogged body would allow, and turned to see an elephant charging towards me. I froze in terror. I was about to be trampled. By an elephant. With a bow behind each ear. What? Who puts bows behind an elephant's ears? The elephant skidded to a halt a few feet away and pointed her trunk at me. I stood there trembling, wondering what new pain I was about to experience. The wet kind. The elephant discharged her entire trunkful of water at me with the force of a firehose. The watery blast knocked me back off my feet, and I landed at the feet of the slender woman in the chaise lounge. She had somehow managed to open a ragged umbrella to protect herself from the deluge, which she now daintily shook the water off of and stowed beneath the lounge. Then, picking up a large mug of what I strongly suspected was cooking sherry, looked at me over the top of her sunglasses and remarked calmly: "I told you she was helpful."

The elephant had rumbled back off towards the treeline again, I assumed to refill her mobile shower device. I stood up and shook the water out of my eyes, which caught sight of the sign that had so recently met my forehead. It took a moment for the words on it to register with my brain, but when they did I was not sure whether I felt more scared, confused, or just plain high on crack.

The sign had three panels, each emblazoned with a different phrase that looked as if it had been spraypainted by a delirious monkey. The first read:

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!"

The second,

"This way lies madness!"

and the last,

"Beware of the Leopard!"

As I pondered these three phrases, the elephant returned and washed the rest of the sand off my back.

"Good Clara!" The lounging typist said.

(To be continued...)

© 2009 Tyler Willson. All rights reserved