No-vember

Tasha Tudor's book, A Time to Keep, has the following quote to introduce the month of November:

No fruit, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!
-Thomas Hood

And this year November has meant no blog posts from me as well. Why? In one word, NaNoWriMo.

Okay, maybe that isn't exactly a word. It's an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month, which is an online program where you sign up to try to write 50,000 words in a month. You get a page with a nifty graph showing you how far you are falling behind the necessary daily word count, and a page where you can keep track of how far your Writing Buddies have gone. You can also post things about your novel, and there are a bunch of discussion forums and events, but I've never actually found time for all that.

Now, the usual advice that is given for people trying NaNoWriMo is not to worry about whether your writing is good or bad, just write, write, write, as fast as you can go. I tried that the first two years I signed up for NaNoWriMo, and it totally did not work for me. I should have known better. One of the few things I learned from the one fiction writing course I took in University (by my own observation of the other students) was that there are some writers who tend to write too copiously and need to cut, and some writers who tend to write too briefly and need to pad. And I am very much the second type of writer. If I just sit down and write without any going back or editing, that just means I am lucky if I have used half as many words as I'm going for before I get to the end of the plot.

My third attempt at NaNoWriMo did get to 50,000 words, but could only very loosely be called a novel. I managed to get a novella out of it afterward, which was less than 20,000 of the 50,000. The other 30,000 included a lot of alternate scenes and background material and things like that, that weren't really part of the actual narrative.

This year, my plan was to come up with an idea with so much plot elements in it that I would have to use 50,000 words to get through it all. I actually reused some ideas from my first two NaNoWriMo attempts, though not any of the exact same incidents or charactors, together with a whole mash of bits and pieces from ideas for novels and short stories that have never quite managed to get written. And it actually all fell in together really well. It was like these were all really meant to be part of one story, I just had not realized it yet.

So I got writing, and found that I was really pretty excited about the story. I liked it enough that I couldn't just leave inconsistencies in it, or not go back and make little changes when I thought of them. So I did. I also found that a good way to keep myself from charging ahead too quickly was to regularly stop and go back to work on earlier parts of the story. When I was down to the last chapter I even went back and read through the whole thing, managing to add a couple hundred words a chapter as I went.

By the end of the month, though, I was starting to get a bit burnt out. Finally on November 29th, having got to the end of my plot and put in every change I had managed to think of so far, I just didn't feel I was up to getting in the 3,000 words that I needed by the following night. So I decided to just write an extra chapter of whatever silly stuff came into my head about my charactors' further adventures in life after the main story. I thought it might be fun, and perhaps I'd even come up with something I could use elsewhere.

I did manage to get the 3,000 words done in a little over two hours. I'm sorry to say that it wasn't all that much fun, and there was absolutely nothing in it that I have any intention of ever looking at again. But it did get me to 50,000 words, so I could finally take a break. I have not done any more writing on the novel since then, but have come up with some more ideas. I found last month that when I was stuck in my writing, the answer to my problem tended to come to me when I was not writing, not when I was at the keyboard stressing over how to come up with another thousand words that day. Breaks are important. Of course, it is also important not to let a break grow by procrastination into simply not getting a thing done. So I'm going to try and get back in there soon, and get my 47,000 words up to the length I think this book really needs to be.

If I don't post again very soon, maybe that will be what I'm up to.

Ghosts and Lost Souls

Well, it's that time of year again. I am going to be back at Spooktacular. Marie Anne is busy promoting her wonderful Storysave CD set (which I highly recommend, especially for the stories about World War Two) but David Haas will be joining me and Jennie, with some backup from Dawn Blue and Laura O'Connor, after they are done telling for the younger set. I am looking forward to hearing his stories. He has a wonderful deep voice, which I am sure will raise more than a few shivers.

I always feel it is a bit of a wasted effort promoting Spooktacular on here, though. Either people are coming to it or they are not; I am sure it makes no difference whether I am there. However, this year I do have another Halloween event, where I am headlining! Sylvia Hertling, Serena Kaba, and I will be telling stories of Ghosts and Lost Souls at the Strathcona County Library at 7pm on Thursday, October 29th. Free passes are available at the Library, which is on the east side of the Sherwood Park Mall.

I am not going to be telling my Spooktacular stories. Instead I'm going to tell a couple old fashioned (well, actually just plain old) ghost stories, which offer melancholy chills rather than all-out horror. I'm brushing up Hoichi the Earless, which is an old favourite of mine to tell, and also working on a new-to-me story about the Legend of the Qu'Appelle Valley. I believe Serena is planning to tell a folktale about death. Sylvia hasn't told me what she will tell yet, so that will be a surprise!

Druids!

Yesterday, I attended the launch for Barbara Galler Smith's novel, Druids. It was a very successful event, complete with a bard and a druid. The book seems to be off to a strong start, and has even been nominated for the Alberta Reader's Choice Award already. Check it out on the 'long list' on this website:

http://www.albertareaderschoice.ca/

I had already picked up a copy at Pure Speculation, and am about half way through. I managed to elbow in ahead of Nicole and Aaron, and was the first person to buy a copy from Barb! So far I am very impressed. I will post a review once I have finished.

Now I have a Google Site too!

I finally figured out how to set up a site through Google, so the procrastination is over; I have a website. There's not much on it yet, but I'll be working on it over the next while. Here's the link:

http://sites.google.com/site/jytkennedy/

I've also got myself signed up as a Librarything Author (I get a yellow button on my page!) I am now up to three books that I have been the only person to post on Librarything. Yes, one of them is my own book, I am sorry to say. (Although there are 4 people with copies of 'In the Dark!') The second was the long poem, 'The Courtship of Hippodameia,' by Jennie Frost. Jennie is a friend, and a wonderful storyteller, but I knew her book was not exactly mass-market, so that was no big surprise.

I was surprised to discover that nobody else had posted Barbara Hehner's wonderful book, 'The Spirit of Canada' though. Anybody who has kids, and wants to give them a sense of what this country is all about, should get this book. It really brings Canada's heritage alive, and it is the sort of book that can be enjoyed by all ages, because the material is inherently interesting. I have especially enjoyed her choices of traditional songs from various periods of history. I don't normally like books that use a lot of excerpts from other books, but Hehner manages to find pieces from historical novels that not only stand alone, but beautifully bring alive the period in which they are set.

I also recommend Michael Mitchel's recordings of Canadian folksongs as a great resource. Maybe I should see if his sheet music book can be added on Librarything. . .

Phyllis Gotlieb

After publishing my novel, I applied for membership with the Canadian speculative fiction organization, SF Canada. One of the things I quickly realized after being accepted was that I really had not read very much Canadian SF. I set about sampling work by various authors, and discovered several great books. But there was one author whose work I absolutely fell in love with: Phyllis Gotlieb.

Phyllis had the gift of writing work that awakened the imagination, the feelings, and the intellect. Her stories were always multidimensional. In Sunburst, she did not merely reverse the notion of psychic powers as evolutionary advancements to create the the 'dumplings,' she then proceeded to show these monstrous children not as villains, but as damaged human beings: the sort of violent youth which society all too often seems unable to help or control. The notion of sentient cats might be little more than a conceit in other hands, but Phyllis' Ungrukh are not only delightfully feline, but a race with its own heritage and challenges to face. They are a wonderful example of how very human issues can sometimes be illuminated by taking a perspective on them that is not quite human.

Birthstones, published in 2007, is about an alien society, the Shar, in which only the men are intelligent, while the women are incapable even of caring for themselves. However, this is not the natural state of things, but the result of progressive mutation, and the novel ends with hope that the Shar women will eventually be restored. It seems very fitting considering what a strong woman's voice Phyllis Gotlieb brought to her work over a period of time when women were very much in need of such voices.

Phyllis was active on the SF Canada listserver, and I felt very privileged to have that contact with her, although I think she only directly replied to me once or twice. I never told her how much I admire her work.

Phyllis passed away this Tuesday, at the age of 83. The reaction among the other SF Canada members has been very heartfelt, and a tribute to Phyllis will be in development over the next few days on the SF Canada website:
www.sfcanada.ca
http://news.sfcanada.ca/2009/07/phyllis-gotlieb-grand-dame-of-canadian.html

Librarything

I signed up with Librarything yesterday. It is kind of a neat site where people post books that they own. So far I've put up my own books; a few books by other current Alberta authors, some of whom you might not have heard of; and The Ode Less Travelled, which I have finally finished. (And yes, I did all the assignments. Some of them really really badly, mind you. . .)

I'm a bit worried that I've started on the slippery slope into networking sites and before you know it I'll be on facebook as well, and spend all my time poking people. I hear that's what they do there, anyway. Something like that.

In any case, here are the links to my profile and books:

www.librarything.com/catalog/JYTK
www.librarything.com/profile/JYTK

Name that Poet

March and April were very busy months for me, and I'm afraid I fell off the writing-every-day wagon. I'm trying to get back on track, though. I did another exercise from Mr. Fry last night. This time the assignment was to write a parody of your favourite poet. I don't believe in favourites, but had just finished reading a book of poetry by a very well known poet, whose style I thought would be fun to play with.

See if you recognize the poet. I'll give away a signed copy of Dominion and of In the Dark to the first person to post the right answer.

Dance, dance, dance,
Like a princess with twinkly toes!
And O for a yard of pink ribbon
To tie up my pigtails in bows.

Half a step, half a step,
Half a step and twirl round
And curtsy so pretty and graceful,
As you sparkle, O musical sound!

Dance, dance, dance,
By the moon or the splendorous day,
While the people all watch me and whisper,
'Tis a fairy princess at play.