Fart in a Skillet

 Fart in a Skillet

By Shannon Baker

This is the phrase my LG (Lucky Guy) uses to describe someone who has so many things going at once he/she can’t concentrate on anything for long. He might or might not ever use it to describe me.

I wouldn’t admit it to him, of course, but recently, I’ve felt a little like this. After five years living in Flagstaff, AZ and working for The Grand Canyon Trust, a non-profit environmental trust, I got a terrific opportunity to head back up to Colorado’s Front Range and get in on the ground floor of an exciting medical device start-up.

 I love the great outdoors and being part of an organization whose goal it is to protect and restore landscapes, but I’m a capitalist at heart. I also love Colorado and have been jonesing to get back up there.

You’d think doing the real estate dance of buying, selling and moving would be plenty for one couple. The excitement of starting a new business and launching a new mystery series might be enough thrill for one year, right?

Life being what life is and crazy being what we are, we accidently fell in love with Tucson. As a retirement place. Really. In a few years. But why not look at houses now, we asked ourselves. The housing market is as nuts as us and one inexpensive foreclosure on the edge of the desert later, here I am, sitting by my very own pool.

It’s true, there’s no kitchen (I mean none; no appliances, no counters, no cupboards, no sink) and no A/C (while I write this it’s 102 degrees) and the only furniture is a blow-up mattress and some patio chairs.  

Which brings me to the fart in a skillet issue. For the last month I’ve been a whirling dervish of real estate and logistical activity. I’ve been trying to wrap up my day job and tie all those lose ends. So much so, that the draft I need to write for my next book has been neglected.

But no more. I have one month from the end of my job at the Trust to the beginning of my new one. Between packing and moving and life, that affords me two weeks plus of nothing but writing. The only distractions here are the pool every so often, necessary to balance out the no A/C issue, and food scavenged from the cooler. Every two days I need to run into town for more ice.

Welcome to my personal ShaNoWriMo. (Shannon Novel Writing Month) I am cranking, piling up the word count and reveling in near total isolation. LG blows in every few days to make sure I haven’t lost my slippery grasp on sanity.

And I had this pesky blog to write to keep me sort of grounded in the calendar and connected to something real.

Signing off again. See you in a week. Until then, happy writing, dunking, sunning.

NaMoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo

Are you writing?

I am wondering how many of you participate in NaNoWriMo?  It has grown to over 200,000 people taking part.  Those are people who register... I am sure there are others out there who do it, but don't sign up on the website.  (you will have to find their website - just google nanowrimo - currently their website is down)

I know one author who eventually sold her book after participating.  Well, she wrote the manuscript and then revised it a jillion times.  :)

Please share your experiences with the rest of us!  I am fascinated by the idea of NaNoWriMo.  Just like my views on Harry Potter, whatever it takes to get kids reading is a good thing.  Whatever it takes to get writers writing is a good thing.  So let's hear your stories!

It's NaNoWriMo Time!

Yes, folks, it's that time again. November has arrived (I'm still scratching my head at that...where did August go?) and along with the eleventh month comes NaNoWriMo .


Haven't heard about it? Well, National Novel Writing Month is a project that was created in 1999 by Chris Baty, with the idea that the participants would attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel of their choice in one month. Yup, that's a five with four zeros after it. In 30 measley days. Well, twenty-one brave souls signed up, and NaNoWriMo was born. Every year attendance and participation has blossomed, and by 2009, 170,000 people took up the challenge. Now, as an official non-profit run by the Office of Letters and Light, National Novel Writing Month is a force to be reckoned with.


So, Nano sounds cool, but why am I talking about it? You see, back in 2004, I was noodling around the internet and stumbled across NaNoWriMo. The premise intrigued me, and, just like 87% of the population, I always thought it would be fun to try and crank out a book, but never put the thought into action. So I plotted and researched, outlined and re-outlined. November 1st came and I bolted from the starting gate and never looked back. By the time the 30th rolled around, I had typed my 50,000th word. I shocked myself. Holy cow, I'd written the better part of a real novel! That accomplishment led me to the Loft, here in Minneapolis, where I took a number of writing classes from Ellen Hart and Lori L. Lake.


November 2005 arrived, and I did NaNoWriMo again. I again surpassed that 50,000 word mark by the end of the month. Sheesh, in two years, I'd written two (albeit rather horrid) first drafts! I worked on revising and editing the two novels, and learned just how much I didn't know that I didn't know about writing. That little lesson about did me in, but was absolutely necessary. When NaNo 2006 came calling, I changed my groove entirely, and pumped out 50,000 words of what is now Bingo Barge Murder, the first book in my Shay O'Hanlon mystery series that Midnight Ink will be releasing in May of 2011. This effort was SO much better than the previous two, and I really found my voice. The book was funny and quirky, full of danger, chases, kidnappings, and of course, the Boxer dog named Dawg.


Really, I have National Novel Writing Month to thank for being the match that ignited my writing flame. Without having stumbled on nanowrimo.org, I wouldn't be be able to say the words, "I'm a writer," and really mean it. This is one lucky and incredibly fun phase of my life that I hope lasts a good, long time.

So, if you happen to know any wanna-be writers, someone who really would like to write that book one day but can't quite get around to it, send them on over to the NaNo site. You might just have a hand in creating the next John Sandford.

The Writing Process

Earlier this month I saw writer Aaron Sorkin on The View, talking about his new movie The Social Network. I really appreciated his descriptions of his writing process.

When asked offstage how he created the opening scene of his movie, he said “sometimes you’re thinking about it for months and months and months, you’re pacing around, you’re climbing the walls, but once you know what you’re going to write…you write it in the amount of time it takes you to type it and you hope that energy and speed makes its way onto the page.” Later he said onstage that he takes six to eight showers a day to hit his mental reset button when his writing isn’t going well and that driving around, arguing with himself, and watching a lot of ESPN also get his creative juices flowing.

I can relate to that.

For the past two months I tried to take the more disciplined approach to writing that others have described. I set a goal of writing five days a week, at least two thousand words a day. I started the Monday after my children returned to school, when the house was silent and needed to be filled with words.

Some days the words flowed, some days…not so much. I combined my new process with my old process: walking the dog, doing the laundry, cleaning out the refrigerator, and, oh yes, watching The View. That’s how I stumbled on Aaron.

He said although his writing process looks an awful lot like him watching ESPN, his brain is working all the time. I’m sure that’s true. Sometimes I think my brain is working on a story, percolating it, and I don’t even know it, sort of like ‘let’s sleep on it.’ A lot of my best ideas seem to come to me in the shower—but sometimes they leave even before I have time to dry off. And sometimes I write so long and so fast that I don’t snap out of it until my son gets off the bus and knocks on the office window, scaring the bejesus out of me.

I did find with the more disciplined approach, I could read a book at night after writing during the day. That’s never been possible for me in the past, so it’s promising to have it all compartmentalized now. It may be a natural step in my ever evolving writing process.

It’s been thirty days to date, and I’ve written 79,565 words, including ‘THE END.’ The crooks of my elbows feel sore from being bent so much while I type. I’m taking NaNoWriMo off to work for a weekly paycheck—gotta love those in this economy.

Of course, I’d like to write a novel that generates as much buzz and is as popular as Aaron’s television show The West Wing or his movie The Social Network.

Who knows, maybe I’ll evolve to that.

November is NaNo Month!

Nine days from today an estimated 100,000 participants will start out on the novel writing journey of a lifetime. Yes, it's NaNoWriMo time again: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

By November 30th last year, more than 15,000 participants had crossed the finish line and completed a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel (of sorts) in thirty days. The remaining eighty-some thousand walked away with a kernel of an idea, a partial draft, a great experience, new friends, or like me, simply used the collective energy to further their own writing goals in their own way.
I like the excitement and camaraderie (or maybe just the misery with company) of all those intrepid fiction kamikazes barreling into the great unknown.
NaNo tends not to be for the published writer, it's more of an exploration, although, several published authors I know participate in some form or another and some participants have worked their NaNo drafts into their first commercially viable published novel--Lani Diane Rich comes to mind.

As if NaNoWrimo wasn't cool enough, self-described as "a global, uproariously fun endeavor, where participants exchange advice and writing tips on the NaNoWriMo website and in real life, with group write-ins held in coffeeshops, living rooms, and libraries all around the world, there's this:
The NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program also takes place in November, offering a similarly exhilarating prose adventure for 12-and-under authors and those taking part in NaNoWriMo as part of a K-12 classroom. In addition to motivation-raising goodies for the young writers, NaNoWriMo provides teachers, youth librarians, and homeschooling parents with resources and curriculum to help get kids and teens excited about writing. In 2007, over 18,000 students took part in National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers Program.
www.nanowrimo.org
Script Frenzy brings the hands-on, inclusive approach of NaNoWriMo to the world of screenplays, stage plays, and TV scripts. Either individually or as part of a writing team, Script Frenzy participants first learn the basics of scriptwriting, including structure and formatting, before rolling up their sleeves and writing their own 100-page blockbuster (or art-house masterpiece) in the month of April. Script Frenzy launched in 2007 and had over 7,000 participants its first year.
In Script Frenzy's Young Writers Program, kids and teens spend March taking part in a fun, four-week online boot camp to help get them up to speed on plot, characters, and scriptwriting conventions. After a month of learning and practicing, they'll try their hand at writing their own movie, play, TV show, or comic book script.

Guest authors are always welcomed. Check out the programs. Maybe offer yourself up to blog or speak. Maybe just participate or lurk.

The enthusiasm and joy of these fledgling writers may be just what you need on a dark and stormy November night.

NaNoNaNo!
Susan Goodwill

Susan Goodwill writes the Kate London Mystery Series published by Midnight Ink

Brigadoom in March 2007

Little Shop of Murders 2008