NaNoWayFools

Yes, I have heard of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo to you shorthanders).

No, I am not doing it.

I heard of this exercise about three years ago and I was interested for about half a second, and then I gave it some good thought and wrote it off as Not For Me.

This has not changed. This is not GOING to change. Therefore, stop asking.

A novelist called Jon Evans has written a fantastic screed about how not to become a successful novelist, and his skewering of this NaNoWriMo business is right on target as far as my own reasons for not doing it are concerned. In a nutshell: "Writing is like anything else: if you try and do too much of it when you’re already half-drained, the quality of what you produce goes way down."

The rest of this essay is fantastic as well; I highly recommend you give it a good read. Jon tells it like it is here. "Becoming a writer" is not something that can be accomplished with mere gumption - you must have both talent AND the willingness to work hard. And you must write. There are dozens and dozens of how-to writing books that attempt to make it more complicated than that. Most of these books are written by embittered failed novelists, I note. Is this what "those who can't do, teach" means? Truthfully, being a writer is simple, but not easy. Writers write. It's just hard damn work combined with natural ability and imagination. You can't just make it happen. There are no easy fixes. A writer's soul does not thrive on any sort of prepackaged chicken soup.

I realize that some people use NaNoWriMo very effectively as a jumping-off point for a more serious writing venture, and others do it because it's just fun, it's a way to blow off some steam, and they don't anticipate or intend that the finished product will ever see the light of day. But for what I'm attempting to do - that is, see my own novel through to completion and hopefully get it published - it's not going to work.

So no, I am not doing NaNoWriMo. But yes, I am working. I am working at my own pace. It is probably not as fast as I should be working, but I'm doing it, and I'm attempting to do it well. If I don't come up with 50,000 words by December, I'll be okay with that.

As a matter of fact, I had 30 pages of early chapters that I recently slashed-and-burned into about 10. This may look like the opposite of progress to some, but I feel great about it.

Thrills and Frills

John Kricfalusi, of Ren and Stimpy fame, has written a blog post about how old toys have better form and aesthetic value than toys now. In some ways, this is totally true. The things that kids are given to play with absolutely suck compared to their counterparts from 40 or so years ago.

I had my own encounter with this phenomenon, not unlike the Chipmunk dolls John K talks about. When I was 9 or 10, I was obsessed with 1960s Barbie memorabilia. I'm the child of antique dealers, and in the days before ebay, my folks set up at half a dozen shows a year. I developed the interest in Barbie stuff to keep myself entertained amid all of the fragile grown-up things. But immediately I understood how much better these clothes and accessories were compared to what I'd grown up playing with. For one thing, the outfits had names: "Enchanted Evening," "Friday Night Date," "Orange Blossom," "Garden Party." Barbie clearly had a busy social calendar, and the perfect outfit for every activity. They had real metal YKK zippers and gorgeous detailing in the form of tiny buttonholes, appliques, lace, beading, and all that other fun stuff. I was taught from a very early age to handle antiques very carefully, though I'd be lying if I said I always resisted the urge to handle the outfits, and even dress and pose the Barbies.

Barbie's wardrobe today emphasizes quantity over quality - where you can now buy twenty times as many different outfits for your Barbie, they'll all be made of the same cheap polyester blend with a velcro closure, they all come in the same bland packaging with no name, and you're lucky if they come with shoes. The vintage outfits came immaculately accessorized, too, with handbags, hats, shoes (open-toed, pumps, wedges, sneakers, boots), and even gloves and jewelry.

How could you not fall in love with dresses like this? I had this one ("Sophisticated Lady," it's called), and it was my favorite. I believe I had the shoes, and maybe even the gloves, but unfortunately no tiara or pearls.

While I haven't carried my Barbie obsession into adulthood, I'm drawn to clothes that remind me of what I used to buy for my Barbies - full circle skirts, coordinating colors, intricate patterns and details. I'm even thrilled by metal YKK zippers in vintage dresses. I'd love to dress like 1960s Barbie every day of my life, if I could. I'd even name my clothes. (Most of my wardrobe, I'm sad to say, still looks like it should be called "Work Day in Very Casual Office Environment" and "Weekend of Indeterminate Hanging-Out". And most all of it would look like jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt in a solid color.)

Barbie nowadays just looks cheap, unless you're talking about those collector-edition toys that aren't for kids and aren't meant to be removed from their boxes. (Which brings up a whole other rant inspired by JohnK's blog post - yes, there ARE toys as fascinatingly intricate and well-made as toys used to be. These toys are hardly ever marketed to children, though. Most people who buy them don't even take them out of the box, much less touch them or play with them.)

I think my ten-year-old self, upon viewing her adult counterpart, would probably be most disappointed by the lack of a human-sized counterpart to "Sophisticated Lady" in my closet, to say nothing for the dearth of excuses to wear such a thing.

Chicks in the Mix

Just one short mention of this MJ Rose entry on Huffington Post about the relentless chick-lit versus literary debate. (Credit where credit's due: I found the link via Ms. Addled Writer.) It's good reading, and makes a couple of points with which I vigorously agree.

A couple of things I feel like expanding on, though:

1) I disagree with what she says about The DaVinci Code. That book's success had not so much to do with the "book climate" and very much to do with its publishers, and the fact that they funneled a ginormous chunk of their marketing budget into this one idiotic volume. It sold like wildfire because it was marketed all to hell, and the public wasn't being told to buy any other books. (And that part, I'll grant, IS the book climate. It'd be great if there were more people willing to go digging for good books, but there's no book, no matter how awesome, that'll be a bestseller on its own merits these days. You HAVE to market. Which I guess is kind of her main point.)

2) Chick lit takes away from romance? Honey, chick lit these days IS romance. Maybe it didn't start out that way, but that's what it is now. What's all over the book store these days? Shiny pink trade paperbacks bearing pictures of shoes and be-suited cartoonified women carrying shopping bags. What's it displacing? Mass-market paperbacks with embossed covers, depicting flowing-haired hunks with bulging pecs and creamy-bosomed women spilling out of their period garb. But what's the protagonist's main objective in either? Twoo Wuv. The headstrong heroine meets her match. She probably hates him at first, but once they have several pages' worth of steamy sex, they love each other forever. The setting has changed, the physical appearance of the book has changed, but they are the same beast, make no mistake. Harlequin owns Red Dress Ink. Need I say more?

(I should add a disclaimer here that there has been at least one very excellent Red Dress Ink book which I read and enjoyed, and which did not follow this formula, and whose author will probably read this and disagree with my blanket dismissal of latter-day chick lit, but I want her to know that her first novel was awesome in ANY flavor she chooses to categorize it, but I didn't feel like it WAS chick lit. So there.)

Cue LeVar Burton

A couple of years back, I was a devotee of a semiregular writing group I found on Craigslist. It was, for the most part, a group of pretty cool people, some of whom were Seriously Into Writing, some of whom were just keeping journals. I finally had to stop going, though - in part because real life demands got in the way, in part because (okay, I'll admit it) I'd briefly dated someone in the group and wanted to avoid awkwardness, but mostly because of the attitude of some of those who claimed to be Seriously Into Writing. I keep running into people like this, and it completely blows my mind - there are folks out there who exhibit an unfortunate and annoying tendency that I can't quite get past - namely, they don't read books. And there's not just one or two. These folks are legion.

This concept is so far from my sphere of philosophy that I just can't come up with any logical explanation for it. I can't conjure any plane of reality that meshes with mine wherein someone with a genuine interest in being a writer that anybody else would want to read would not also have a genuine interest in reading others' work.

These people want to be writers - usually, fiction writers. They claim to love the written word. But they don't consume any, and it's not that they really love books but can't find time to read, it's that they've just never gotten excited about them. (Believe me, if you love the written word enough, you make time to read. I read on my commute - okay, I read on my commute about half the time, when I'm not watching Star Trek reruns on my ipod - and for 45 minutes or so before I go to sleep.)

I find it difficult to understand people in general who categorically don't read books, although I can certainly condone it if words just don't do it for them. Fine. Lots of things don't do it for me - the NFL, orgies, knitting, and political canvassing, to name a few - and I lead a pretty full life anyway. I even know some people who want to be newspaper reporters who don't read books, but read the Times and half a dozen other papers every day.

But to want to write stories and not spend every possible second (that is, every possible second not spent producing) devouring all the books you can get your hands on? It's like wanting to be a chef but only eating peanut butter sandwiches. It's like wanting to be a fashion designer but shopping at the Gap. It would be like me trying out to be a sportscaster even though I can't make myself sit through a full NFL game. I can't think of a single argument that could possibly begin defend this point of view.

I think I have something to learn from anybody who's ever been published, because already they're a step ahead of me. I pay attention to the rhythm of the words, the devices that drive the plot forward, what I think works and doesn't work, what I would have done differently. Every book I read - even the ones I don't like - lends that much more to my understanding of what goes into good prose. I think I get a little bit better every time I pick up a new book.

Sometimes, someone in my old writing group would share something and one of us would say, "what you're working on kind of reminds me of a book I read by X." A reader, or someone who is at least not averse to the concept of reading, will either have read the book (or one by the author), or ask about the book and write down the title. The ones who don't read will shrug it off. They're usually also the ones who get argumentative if they're at all criticized. These things go together for some reason - I think it's that they honestly feel their writing can't be improved by outside forces, which strikes me as unbelievably arrogant.

For that matter, if you don't want to learn from others, why on earth would you want to join a writing group? So everyone else can prostrate themselves at the feet of your clearly pristine and untaintable skills?

Also, if you're not interested in improving yourself, if you really think you're doing the very best you or anybody else can do, then why are you still doing what you're doing?

It bodes well that so far, in my writing class, most people have been furiously taking notes whenever an author is mentioned. Most of us do the reading assignments and we're not afraid to talk about them. Most of us are not afraid to learn something from the writers we read, or even from each other.

Honestly, in the big picture? I kinda suck. Someday I'd like to suck less. Someday after that I'd like to not suck. Someday after that I'd like to be good enough to produce books that people buy.

I'm always growing. I'm always learning. Therefore, I am always reading.