Terran Franklin

Don’t be sad, Barack.  My parent’s doggies shit all over creation too:  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/07/did-the-first-dog-leave-a-number-two-on-air-force-one/

(Just between you and me, this is why I’m a cat person.)

If it’s Halloween, it must be . . . National Novel Writing Month.

What? You’d think I mention someone being Jigsaw’s bitch? Granted, I like the reason behind Saw, but I just can’t keep from wincing about his methods.

“No argument with me here, Davey, but I can’t seem to get people to appreciate their lives, unless those lives are in actual risk. I could just embarrass them for YouTube if that’ll work.”

Ain’t you supposed to be dead? Whatever.

Even so, to someone like me, All Hallow’s Eve isn’t about costumes and candy, or even scary movies and even torture porn. It’s preparing for NaNoWriMo. This is going to be my second year. I started last year with the first draft of Blood and Metal Book 1.

Chris Baty created NaNoWriMo with a small group in San Francisco ten years ago, and it spread all over like wildfire since then. It was an excuse to get someone’s act together and hack off an item in the Bucket List. The goal, write a fifty thousand first draft in the thirty days of November or less. The movement takes caution to the wind and tosses aside conventions and fears of sucking, or for some purists, even the need for a plot.

I am not a NaNoWriMo purist. Whenever I write a first draft, after several previous years of practice before jumping into this movement, I need to know where I’m going. And to find out where I need to go, I’m going to need a plot deck. I’ll tell you about it later.

What I wanted to start off with, in my NaNoWriMo special posts, is to copy the voice telling you not to worry about sucking if you jump into writing any book, including a NaNoWriMo book.

Chris Baty’s 4 Revelations for NaNoWriMo

If it’s the first draft of any book. If that’s going to be the first book you’re ever going to write. Rest assured, it’s going to suck. Stephen King said in On Writing that Carrie, his first professional novel, isn’t any literary masterpiece. I kinda feel the same thing about my first novel, Lost Boy Found. Three-year post publishing, I’d love to redo it. Nevertheless, doing Lost Boy Found wasn’t for the sales or the prosperity or the desire to add to the Peter Pan story. What I really wanted out of Lost Boy Found was the experience. I wanted to go through the actual writing of the book just for the experience and find out that novel writing is for me.

It should be the same thing for you when you’re doing your first novel, especially with NaNoWriMo. Just hammer away at your story and enjoy the ride. How you ride it, however, is up to you.

The motto for National Novel Writing Month is “No Plot, No Problem.” In fact, Chris Baty has written a sort of manual for NaNoWriMo with that as the title. They’ll practically harp on not needing any planning to write the first draft.

Me, however, as I was practicing writing books up to BAM 01 (my first NaNoWriMo book) it comes to my realization that I really need a plan to tackle those 50,000 words. It actually took me a whole year to make an appropriate plot line, and it really helped me. I ended up shattering the goal 9 days early. That’s something I might not be able to do without a plot deck. Some people would just fill out their quota with just a question or scenario in their heads, also known as the Stephen King plot. “Here’s a mother and child in a VW Slug Bug. Here comes a rabid St. Bernard dog representing my coke addiction. <salutes> Have fun, kids.” I learned along way that typing at the seat of my pants only ends up in tears.

An excellent Primer for NaNoWriMo

In last year’s NaNo Radio, they talked about ‘plotters,’ who chart their courses before taking the plunge, and ‘seaters,’ who just start with an virgin word processor file and go to town. Either way you do it, it’s all right. If you need to make a little planning, or rather a lot of planning, to hammer through 50,000 words, go ahead. Hell, you can start NOW if you want. Chris isn’t going to pound your front door in and whack you for it. In fact, nobody frigging cares. This is writing a book, not a popularity contest or an experiment in conformity.

And speaking of conformity, let’s talk about one of the more formidable forms of planning, the outline. Some of you are cowering in fear, the rest is wondering what’s the problem. There always were more than one teacher in any public school who thinks that making children take a big book and make them do an outline based on every page in that book, and God help the child who gets a roman numeral, shift key, or space wrong.

Relax. You don’t need to be a mechanic stickler at this stage. It isn’t going to be showed to anyone important. What you really want the outline to do is to get your thoughts into paper and put them into an organized sequential order. Just use numbers to order things. You could even move things around if you have to.

And if even an informal version of an outline isn’t enough, you can use what I would call an outline’s evil brother: The Mind Map. I learned about Mind Maps last year, and it has brought me out of more than one jam in my writing. Start with a large sheet of paper, the larger the better, and put your topic in a circle at the center. From there, make branches from the middle with anything that comes to mind in the main topic, and then do the same for the subtopics, and so on further around. A good mind map looks like a combination of a total mess and a work of art. Whenever you need help with brainstorming on a certain scene or plot device, just make a mind map out of the thing, and with luck, the answer will pop up there.

Another technique I use when I’m brainstorming is something you can’t have without the Internet and social networking: the Idea hashing. I have a small group of friends online who are very interested in these stories, in some area or another. I feel comfortable talking to them and hashing ideas that may or may not be into the book. There are some ideas that you don’t know if it works or not, and I’d like to know if it stinks before I commit 300 pages to it. Last thing I wanted to do is to waste a month or so of my life writing something that stinks on ice, only to have it end up in the SALVAGE directory because it ends up stinking on ice. Or worse, having it see print in any form. (Ever posted something you wish to God you want to take back? I sure do. Even if God forgives, Anonymous will not.) If somebody tells me that something needs to be taken out, or if someone has a better idea to work with, I’d prefer to hear about it when the book is still in an outline.

At the last part of the planning stage, where I have an outline that I’m satisfied with, I start making a plot deck. That’s when I transfer the outline to a deck of note cards, complete with card numbers and a header. Having a printer to use for the cards helps. In fact, I have a template made for Microsoft word. The cards are kept together Hipster style with a binder clip (The larger the better for me), or if it’s a large 150 plus deck, like with Blood and Metal Book 02, I need to have a box for it, I can easily get one of those where I find my note cards.

The resulting Plot Deck is where I take with me whenever I write on my books. With a Plot Deck not only do I have an important tool in keeping my writing on course and not go off into wild tangents, but it also provides a gauge on how far I’ve gone and how much I have left. I don’t type for any length, but I do write from card to card—I even use multiple files when writing, naming them by card numbers (That way I can assemble the pieces easier.) The sensation of taking out about half dozen cards in one sitting is visceral, and it’s a lot easier for me to think about than “Oh crap, I only have 20,000 words left to go, how am I going to end this thing?”

Right now I have all of my preparations done for NaNoWriMo 2009. The Plot deck is printed out and stashed in a binder clip, ready for November 1, or even late at night on October 31. In a little bit, I’ll tell you about the project, and about one of the more popular projects I have for some time.

“High Tech Amusement Park Costumes that can control who’s wearing it.  Why haven’t I thought of that?”

Where the hell are those traps when I really need them?!

Bush Derangement Syndrome.  Where your anger and rage against George W Bush is so great that your eyes are blinded by reality.  Such as continuing to vent your anger at the man long after he left office.

Come on people!  The Shrub is in his ranch in Texas.  He doesn’t have control over anything outside of the immediate five yards around him.  He’s no longer a perceived threat of anybody, let alone this country.  (And IMHO, if he’s smart, he’ll stay there.) And you fucking won the election!  Your Boy Is In Charge!  Shouldn’t you just drop the subject and Move the Fuck On?!  Dot Fucking Org?!

People who hate bush now are even dumber then even the image they have of the Shrub.

It’s more prevalent then you think.  Much more prevalent than even the current bitching against Barack Obama.

How else do you explain this?  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/09/president-barack-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize/

Now then, I wouldn’t mind Barack getting this, but this early.  Even if he was more productive than he was, he would certainly wouldn’t’ve done enough to actually merit the award.  Maybe in 2012 at the earliest.

I can’t for the life of me think that this is an appropriate time to give Barack that metal, unless you really think he’s Jesus Christ with a good Tan, or . . .

"From our standpoint, you know, we think that this gives us a sense of momentum … when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes." — State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley  Source:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/09/state-department-lauds-obamas-nobel-peace-prize-making-jab-bush/

It seems that Bush Derangement Syndrome is a worse disease then the Swine Flu, and it seems that anyone can catch it.

Even the Assholes in the Fucking Nobel Committee!

I lost all respect for that fucking medal.