NaNoWriMo, Day 0: A Prelude to November

I have a clipboard. It has plans on it. It has story plans, and sub-story plans, and coloured stickers, and post its. Writing-wise, I don't think I've ever been prouder of myself.

Last time I did NaNoWriMo, I didn't have a clue what I'd be writing about, and I wasn't even sure of who the characters would be. This time, they're all fairly well-defined in my head, and will hopefully be able to speak, through my hands, on the page in a reasonably convincing way.

And I know all of the events! That's good, isn't it? It's nice to build to something. I spent about three quarters of my last novel alluding to something that I had made up yet, and it just kind of meandered to a conclusion that I scrapped together from what I'd sort of laid down in all of the building up. I don't think it was great. This time, I know the ending, and how the main character arrives there. Yay me.

This post serves as a smug, old warning. I am going to be posting on here every day, a short little post, to update on my NaNoWriMo progress. I predict the smugness graph will look something like a smile.

:)

Writing Novels and Things #14: Giving up

You think this is going to be me telling you how I've quit editing my novel again, because it's complete and utter shit. But it isn't [about that]! Novel editing continues apace, I'm about three quarters of the way through. I think I'll have increased the word count by about 25% in the process. Not sure how that happened...

ANYWAY, no, this is not about that, exactly, but it is about the virtue of quitting. I was listening to this Freakonomics podcast, about quitting and it struck a chord, largely because it was saying that quitting is a Good Thing. Admittedly, they meant like if you're in a bad job, or you're a prostitute, or something, but it works with all walks of life, including in literature.

Hope Clark wrote a little blog post about quitting books, recently, where she says that when she's reading, she'll give a book 75 pages to interest her and if it doesn't, she'll stop. That's what I do! Though I will, generously, give it 100 pages. If it doesn't entertain me, or at least make me feel things, I get rid of it, and still, crucially, feel entitled to have an opinion on it.

I know a lot of people who will not abandon a book. It might mean that they barely read anymore, or they don't enjoy reading anymore, but they will finish that book, and they get a bit upset when you say you didn't like something so you stopped reading it. There are, sometimes, insinuations... but whatever; in the time it took them to read that book, I read three others, and they were great.

This works with writing too, obviously. If an idea is not working, you should probably just give it up, and move on to something else. Maybe the idea just wasn't very good in the first place, or maybe it will be good one day, but not right now, with where you are as a writer/human being. It doesn't make you a bad person. There are loads of other things you can do!

And that is the crux-a-mundo. When you're reading a book you don't enjoy, you read much less than normal. If you're writing something that is not working, and is painful to write, you'll be writing less often that you usually do. Which is not a good thing. To keep it interesting (if not necessarily fun), you really do need to know when to cut your losses, however painful it might feel.

I'm assuming here that you're a slightly obsessive type of person who finds it hard to quit things, or to leave food on your plate. Waste is bad, I agree, but giving something up is not waste. We only have so much time to play with, and you waste it when you don't enjoy your leisure time.

Rhys Recomends... Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby's brilliant. If you think he isn't then it is, in fact, you who is not brilliant. You're unbrilliant. He is, I think, the writer I'd most like to be like. He's funny, extremely intelligent, a bit geeky, draws fully-realised, interesting, funny and likable characters, and has written some of the best books ever. He's also appeared on an episode of Jordan, Jesse, Go!, so I'm jealous about that too.

I started reading his books when I was but 12 years old with High Fidelity. I obviously didn't understand the intricacies of the writing, nor could I really explain why I liked it, but I just knew that I did. I went back and read Fever Pitch, a book about football, and I even loved that. It was About A Boy, my first literary hardback, that cemented my love for him though. It just made me feel all these feelings, and I read it over and over. I wanted to live inside it. And as an adult, as someone who has studied the... heck... out of a lot of books in order to analyse writing style, I can say with a reasonable amount of assurance that his books are, in fact, Good Writing.

To honour this, I am going to rank his novels, arbitrarily, into my own special Top 5! Read on...

[I did say novels, which excludes such excellent reads as The Polysyllabic Spree, Fever Pitch and 31 Songs, as well as his short stories and films. If you would like to know how I would rank his films... I'll tell you!
1. High Fidelity
2. About A Boy
3. An Education
4. Fever Pitch, the English One
5 Fever Pitch, the American One (Because I haven't seen it, largely.)]

5. Slam

This is a sci-fi-ish young adult adventure, but not really. It's mostly just a Nick Hornby book, with this one weird bit of time travelling, and a kind-of talking Tony Hawks poster. I did really like this book, but it didn't stay with me much after I read it. The plot is kind of all over the place, and I don't think the resolution is that strong, nor the characters that compelling. This is all relative though, because every page is still alive with brilliant Hornby-isms (such as the afore-mentioned poster, with its often wise, but largely inappropriate quotes from the Tony Hawks autobiography, and the generally unglamorous teen pregnancy vibe).


4. High Fidelity

Basically, I couldn't really decide on a proper top 4, because they're all brilliant, so I have ranked these in order of which I'd most like to read again. This is bottom of the 4, largely because I've read it loads already, and seen the film quite a few times too. It's great, you know it is, with its list obsession, and collecting obsession, and love obsession. I would say that I never really got the love of Barry's character, or for any of the male characters in the book, to be honest, but it is probably one of the funniest and, in the end, is quite romantic. I think he'd write it differently now though, maybe less ponderously? Maybe more ponderously?!


3. About A Boy

This book helped me through my teen years greatly. So much so, that I think I'd find it quite painful to read again. What I do know is that the dual narrative works brilliantly, and Ellie is my second favourite creation of Hornby's, and it's one of those brilliant funny/sad type books that will get you. Every. Time. Yes, anyway, this is, I think, Hornby's superior coming-of-ager, as it features two characters growing up (one a boy and one a man), with hilarious and moving consequences. Just try not to read it thinking about Hugh Grant or the boy from Skins, if you can. You can have Toni Collette though.



2. Juliet, Naked

This is his most recent, and I don't have much more to say than that it's lovely, beautiful, and kind of perfect. If Slam is Hornby's SF YA novel, then Juliet, Naked is his chick-lit novel. The premise is something like this: woman [this is not the only reason that this is chick-lit-like, I am not that kind of man] lives with man obsessed by obscure rockstar, and is dissatisfied by her life with him, through a series of unbelievable events, she conducts an online romance with the very same rockstar and eventually falls in love with him in real life, blah blah blah. But, you know what I'm going to say, the way he does it is just so good! The only reason this doesn't win is that it doesn't have any one stand out, show-stopping character (though the rockstar's son is a cutie). Thoroughly recommend reading this, even though I have slightly spoiled the ending (but not really).


1. A Long Way Down

And here is our winner! Four people meet on top of a roof on New Year's Eve, intending to kill themselves. Hilarious hijinks ensue. Did I mention that one of the characters, Jess, is one of the best literary characters of all time? Well now I have. She's a spiky, chav-ish, lost girl, who hates big words and bickers fantastically with Martin Sharp, a disgraced TV presenter who likes big words. This book revived my love for Hornby after, erm, How To Be Good, and it did so big time. You'd think a book that's split between four completely different narrators would get confusing, or feel jumpy, but it never does. It's just brilliant. And funny. And it asks all kind of deep questions, if you like that sort of thing. Also, it features the only Hornby music reference I have ever got, which makes me like it even more.

I ♥ the 90s (comics), #2: Grant Morrison's JLA

Back in the 80s and early 90s, everyone loved British writers, mostly thanks to the creative and commercial successes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Writers like Mark Millar, Peter Milligan and Warren Ellis started getting higher profile gigs with the big publishing companies. DC, in particular, was very good at taking chances on these weird new writers.

Grant Morrison was one of these weirdos, and he was Scottish if you can imagine. They tested him on Animal Man, which was excellent, but relatively small fry, and also Doom Patrol, which I think was for people who are smarter than me. He was known then (and still now) as someone who writes outside the box. Outside the box and down the street and round the bend. So I imagine that getting him on board to relaunch one of, if not the, biggest franchises that DC publishes, was seen as something as a risky move.

But it was, as I'm sure you've guessed because you're very intelligent and handsome, a risk that paid off, big time.

Firstly, Morrison took what was then seen as a pretty big leap, and he started his run by only letting people on his team if they were already super popular. There was, I'm sure, outcry when Metamorpho and, erm, Fire were ousted in favour of Superman and Wonder Woman, but... it was a stupid outcry. Look at that first cover. How badass is that?! If you ignore Superman's hair, of course, which is still unforgivable. Super-Mullet go! Anyway, yes, Morrison began his run with what became known as the Big 7. That's Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. And in the first storyline, he showed that the most dangerous of them all, was the unpowered Batman. 

Like we didn't already know, pfft! (Awesome.)

Morrison knew what his audience wanted. There were all the big plots and neat ideas of his usual work, but less of the obscure storytelling and breaking the fourth wall. It was just great big balls-to-the-wall superhero adventure, with threats that could really challenge this team of near-gods.

What would happen, for instance, if Batman were evil? That would be Prometheus, who very nearly takes the whole league down. And what about if the Martian Manhunter's people were alive and evil? Big-time destruction. And what if God were angry?

Not long into his run, Morrison started to introduce more characters. Tons of them. JLA became a veritable army, and introduced some brilliant new(ish) characters. There's Huntress and Catwoman, and Connor Hawke (the new Green Arrow), and Zauriel, Steel, Oracle, Big Barda (best superhero name ever) and Orion. He even made Plastic Man kind of cool. And the whole thing became bigger and bigger and totally, don't hate me, epic.

It was slightly affected by the excesses of 90s comicdom, unfortunately. Remember when Superman died? You do. And do you remember when he was instantly revived in this weird blue, electric form? Probably not. Well he's all blue and electricity-y for a large part of Morrison's run, which is rubbish. And when he's not, he has Super-Mullet. Thinking about it, Superman was the real victim of 90s excess...


I just loved this run. It was like watching a really well-produced, big-budget, intelligent blockbuster (like, say, the recent Star Trek film), for forty issues. And what could be better than that*?

*to a very specific kind of person

Mister Rhys Mysteries, Case #12: You Can Read Minds!?

There was once a man, from Israel. A strange man, with unique supernatural gifts, and a message. People began believing in him, and his gifts, and his message, and they began to follow him. And then came the naysayers and the non-believers who made it their mission to discredit and humiliate this sacred man.

This man? Sir Uri Geller*.

His enemies? The media and science.

Geller was a man of extraordinary gifts and, refreshingly, didn't pretend that they originated from anywhere spiritual or religious. He was honest: his powers came from aliens. So what? But that isn't enough for some people, oh no, they want 'proof'.

He could do insane things, like read minds, and make spoons melt, and dowse, and predict sporting results with a nearly 50% level of accuracy. Isn't that proof enough? Apparently not. Scientists would say his mind reading was just 'a parlour trick', and that a nearly 50% accuracy rate when it came to predicting sporting results meant that most of the time he was wrong, and that placed him somewhere below most sports fans.

And then there was Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show, which set out to 'interview' Uri and 'disprove' his dowsing and spoon-bending ability. See the video below for this supposed evidence.

He was tricked! Probably. Everyone knows that alien powers are very shy, and who's to say that the host hadn't tampered with things? Maybe there was no water in any of the canisters, and maybe the spoons were made of non-melting, indestructible materials. Who will ever know? Cynics can be just as corrupt as the 'frauds' that they attempt to discredit, n'est pas?

But Uri is a psychic, that's indisputable. He's not Professor X level, obviously, but he's up there. Maybe it's his entrance into the entertainment industry that made his claims appear less valid and has attracted so much scorn. Or it could be his chairmanship of oft-predicted-to-win-but-oft-lose Exeter Football Club, or his association with man-child Michael Jackson (and his ill-fated recommendation that he let Martin Bashir film that documentary), or his insistence that there is Egyptian treasure buried off the coast of Scotland, or the fact that he tried to sue Nintendo as he felt that Pokemon defamed him. Who can say? Who would want to say?**

All I know is that Uri: I believe.

CASE CLOSED.

*Uri Geller is not, technically, a Sir.
** Geller is notoriously litigious - it is best not to say.

Writing Novels and Things #13: Making Deadlines

Before I start this post, I just want to say that everything I said in my last post is still true: I have begun editing my first novel (again). In the first paragraph I saw, which I had apparently already edited, I found about eighty mistakes. It was excellent. Still, I am persevering on account of how it is good for me, and things.

HOWEVER, I have also decided that I am going to write another novel. And this novel will be written in November, or 50,000 words of it, and I will be doing it with others. That's right, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again! I said I wouldn't but I will. And the reason that I am doing it again is, mostly, because it makes me write, and the reason it makes me write is because it gives me, to all intents and purposes, a daily deadline.

Writers are, I imagine, like most people, and like to procrastinate. I like to procrastinate a lot. When I'm not procrastinating, I imagine that I like getting things done, but in those times I am completely deluding myself. I like not getting things done, if they don't need doing quite yet. I love writing, but I also like, well, lots of other things and some of these things are a bit easier than writing, so sometimes I do those things instead. Things like watching Hollyoaks and making hummus and eating hummus, things like that.

But when I have a deadline, and certainly one that is imminent, I work hard, like a normal person who likes working hard. When I was doing my CW masters, I read all the books and wrote loads in and out of the classes, because the deadlines were weekly, and I had to do all that work to be good for the next lesson. I barely went out for two years, outside of term-time, and I felt very pleased with myself.

NaNoWriMo is a bit like doing a masters, except it's about 1/24th the duration and involves far less reading and much more writing. When I did it last year, I very rarely felt stressed by the experience, I was just happy. It's satisfying, being able to tick off your word counts every day, you see, and, also, writing all the time is a bloody pleasure. You get to make things up and then make them real! It's pretty sweet.

This year, I have only vague ideas about the novel I want to write. I know I want it to be an comic adult fantasy novel (and by 'adult', I don't mean sexy, I just mean not 'young adult'), and I have some notion of characters and setting, but nothing very concrete. Which is fine! The best part of NaNoWriMo for me last year was watching my own story unfold and evolve before me. I barely even knew what was going to happen then (which would be obvious if you'd seen the first draft - which you will not!).

When I get round to writing my proper literary novel, I will be planning intensely, and crafting as I go, and the writing will take me a lot longer than a month. I don't know if NaNoWriMo (incidentally, the most irritating word to type in all existence) produces good-quality literature, possibly not, but for me it has been so useful in showing me that I can write a book, even if writing a good book is still somewhat beyond me.

This time, I am going to let the lesson stay learned. I am going to give myself a daily deadline for writing (say, 300 words) and I am going to stick to it come hell or high water. Definitely.

Also, this now gives me a deadline less than a month to finish editing my last book. Please do nag me about this.

Mister Rhys Mystery, Case #11: Disappearing Woman

There is a tendency, amongst some, to make grand, sweeping statements about women, in order to get a cheap laugh. 'They can't drive!', for example, or 'they have no sense of direction!', or 'menstruation really happens!', and so on and so forth. Some of us, however, are far too classy for such things, so please do not expect that level of misogyny in this post. Women make excellent drivers, have senses of direction at, or only slightly under, the level of men, and I'm not touching periods with a ten-foot pole. Literally.

The story here begins, as do so many others, with Amelia Earhart. She was so many things to so many people: a role model, a hero, and an idol to millions. Thinking about it, those are more or less the same thing... She had a lot of jobs though! One of her best known jobs was to try and break aviation records for women. She was quite good at breaking records, in that she succeeded at breaking them, and she became not bad at flying (unfortunately in that order).

One day, in 1937, she decided to break a flying-around-the-world record. It wasn't the First Person To Do It record, nor the Fastest Person To Do It record but it was The One Who Went the Longest Way Round record. It is, in these modern times, difficult to see why anyone would want to break an inefficiency record, but this was the Olden Days and that was just how things got done.

Anyway, all went well until it really did not. On her way to Howland Island (an island set right in the middle of the sea), Amelia's plane disappeared, and she was never heard from again, and nor was her plane. There are a million crackpot theories on what happened to her afterwards, and they are all nuts, apart from the one about her being a super-spy, which sounds fairly reasonable.

Now, here's where tings get spooky. Some other famous woman also went missing! For a bit.

That lady's name is Agatha Christie and for ten days in 1926 she disappeared from the face of the earth, returning with absolutely no memory of what happened. Now, I know what you're thinking:

a) Aliens
b) Unconnected

And my answer to you would be:

a) Probably
b) Wrong!

It's not just the famous old women that disappeared, I'd venture to guess that maybe hundred of other women have disappeared mysteriously in the last century, all apparently unrelated and for no discernible reason. That sounds like a pattern to me!

So, yes, it's almost certainly something to do with aliens, isn't everything? But what if this isn't anything to do with aliens? What if this is something altogether more... historical? Ever hear of a little group called the Amazons?

Now, did they really die out with the Greeks, like everyone says, or did they really go underground? And to what purpose are they abducting these brilliant women? Army-building? That sounds a bit far-fetched. Or does it? Think about it, they'd need to learn how all this modern technology works, so they took a brilliant aviational mind like Earhart's. They need to know about modern killing techniques, so they take the master of murder, Christie (just for a bit). They need numbers, so they take... all of the other women who have disappeared throughout history.

They're biding their time, clearly. It's been nearly a hundred years since they took Christie, and murder has moved beyond Poirot. It mostly happens in Scandinavia now. And aeronautical engineering has progressed leaps and bounds since Earhart went missing. It's clear, that when the invasion happens, it's going to feel a little bit steam punk, very old-fashioned and exquisitely uni-breasted.

CASE CLOSED