Category Archives: Writing

Why I Say Yes to NaNo WriMo

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Note from Tom: This was originally posted December 2010, after another successful NaNo run. Since the Blogenning theme this week is NaNo WriMo, and we’re only a couple of weeks away from Day 1, I thought it would be worthwhile to re-post it. Please silently adjust all tenses to make sense – for instance, it is currently October, not December, and people are preparing their writing holes, not leaving them. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

As I write this, the National Novel Writing Month has been over for only a few days. Everyone, no matter how “well” they did, is coming out from their basements and their bedrooms and workrooms and blinking in the cold December light, making phone calls to loved ones to let them know they’re still alive and have a little free time again. They’re showering and shaving and generally coming back around again into becoming normal people.

Well, that’s the joke, anyway. The reality is a bit different. Very different, in fact. Because most of the participants in the event are not professional writers that hole themselves up all the time and just simply dedicated a month. The majority are people with very real lives to lead – parents, grandparents, high school and college students, full time professionals with a second job or a course load on top of work – that decide to dedicate a very real amount of time to themselves, to one of the greatest self-indulgent exercises society has to offer (that doesn’t involve extra calories or potential jail time): writing.

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Back in the Saddle Again

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30 - A Perfect PairI missed writing.

Last November, my NaNo WriMo novel was probably the darkest thing I had written yet – it was to be about a guy that was trying to hold his life together while he lost his mind due to rampant hallucinations. Over the course of the novel, the hallucinations grow stronger (they begin as simply visual, but over time begin to include auditory and…you know what? You probably don’t care about that. Moving on). I cranked out the first 50,000 words no problem during the month, and then in December attempted to keep working on it. I got maybe 1,000 more words in and then just…stopped.

It’s a weird feeling to leave a story dead in the water. I kept trying to go back to it, and I’d work out a sentence here, a sentence there, but never anything serious. In 30 days I wrote 50,000 words. In the following 8 months, I wrote about 1,200 more. Then this week happened. Continue reading →

Love is Like a Circle

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I have been to three weddings in two years, and on Saturday I’ll be going to my fourth. “Going to” as in “attending as a guest,” mind you. Not as the groom. ANYWAY, without going into much detail (I’m trying to protect privacy here), I’ve been asked to write a back-up ceremony to the next one I’m going to. I said sure, because I like a challenge, and immediately produced one. Apparently, the bride prefers to think of this one as the “fun” one, and not the “legitimate” one. C’est la vie. With her permission, I’ve copy-and-pasted it down here, for all of you to see. Names have been changed to common pseudonyms, but aside from that, it’s all the same.

Let me know if you want me to write your wedding ceremony. I could be tempted.

———–

Friends and family,

We’re gathered here today to witness the union of  Mark Twain and Rita Hayworth, a pair of rad people we all know and like pretty well. Among us may be people you don’t know. In fact, there may be many people you don’t know, but you can be certain that one of these two on the altar probably knows them. We’re all here for Mark and Rita, though, which is really the important part. So if you don’t know someone, don’t worry about it. It’s all good.

As you may know, today is the first day of spring. Spring is a time of renewal, and a time of awesome weather. It’s a time for bunnies and flowers and, above all, love. Love is not only in the air, it is saturating the air. You are breathing love in right now, in fact. Breathe deep. Feels good to breathe in the love, doesn’t it? That’s because love is happy. Love is dancing, and laughter, and being there for each other when the going gets rough. Love is uplifting, like a hot air balloon. And you know what a hot air balloon is? That’s right. Round.

You see, love is like a circle. It has no beginning, no end, and the ratio of its circumference to its diameter is Pi. Speaking of Pi, love is also tasty, just like a pie. It can be sweet like banana cream, full of comforting calories like a whoopie pie, or lightly sprinkled with the cinnamon sugar of devotion like an apple pie. After all, what are pies, but the physical manifestation of the tastiest circle of them all: love. You may be inclined to point out that brownies come in square form, and brownies are also tasty, but beware: rectangular is the shape of lust, which can be fun sometimes, but will never have the supportive crust of love pies.

What we are all witnessing here today is not just the union of two people, but the union of two ingredients. On their own, each of these ingredients is wonderful, but together…together, they become something special. They become a unique pie of love that is greater than the sum of its parts. From the outside, this pie may look like any other pie you may pass on the street, but we all know better. No two pies are exactly the same, because no two mixtures of ingredients are exactly the same. The ingredients we have before us today are a pairing that is unlike any other, and it is a joyful occasion that they found such perfect union together.

Now, without further adeiu, the lovebirds wrote their own vows, so let’s get the rings up here and get this going.

<vow one>

<vow two>

If there are any haters out there who want to try to stop this awesome pie from being made, speak now or forever hold your tongs. No? Most excellent. Then in that case, by the power vested in me by the State of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you dude and dudette. Feel free to smooch.

Tom

On Writing

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Consider, if you will, the following passage from Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time:

Suppose you’d watched the slow accretion of snow over thousands of years as it was compressed and pushed over the deep rock until the glacier calved its icebergs into the sea, and you watched an iceberg drift out through the chilly waters, and you got to know its cargo of happy polar bears and seals as they looked forward to a brave new life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham – tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting soundtrack…

I like to hope I’m developing my own writing style as fun to read as that one. It’s not an easy thing for me to do, especially given how heavily influenced I am by the authors I’m reading at the time of any sort of writing. My last short story, for instance, sounded like Chuck Palahniuk at first, because I had been reading Snuff at the time.

When I started Late Fees back on November 1st (still not done, but close to the exciting finale!), I began reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series again, because I knew that his humor style was closest to what I wanted my story to sound like, and I would be able to think in my style more clearly if that was the influence I was receiving. Before you accuse me of cheating, though: it’s totally not. It’s really just knowing who I am and what I’m like, and adjusting my habits accordingly.

Plus, Discworld is awesome.

I wonder if this sort of thing affects all artists, or if it’s something more localized to writers? I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that one of the reasons bands start sounding like one another is because that’s exactly who they’re listening to. Same thing with art periods and whatnot. Okay, upon a barely closer inspection, it’s fairly obvious that artists influence each other like crazy.

I wonder who influenced my photography, then?

Tom

Technophile

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I own a typewriter.

It’s a decent looking thing. Clean, has a soft hum when you turn it on. The keys seem to work, although if I type too quickly the arms get stuck against one another. There’s even a method for whiting out letters, which is rather ingenious (you shift the tape up to the white portion of it, and re-type. The white will cover the black).

I have to admit, there is a part of me that sort of wishes it was one of the old school mechanical ones. Those iron monsters that weighed 40 lbs and just simply attracted whiskey glasses and cigarette smoke. The kind that you could imagine Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet writing on. Ultimately, I would like to get one, but I’m willing to wait. I have time.

The only other real news is that I totally fucking won Nano Wrimo again. Here, have a thing about that, and then a picture of my typewriter.

Winner!

Writer's Corner

Writer's Corner

Tom

Dust Some Cobwebs

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Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I have a great excuse, I promise. I’ve been busy.

No, really.

It’s called Nano Wrimo, and I’ve talked about it here before. And I know Brandon has mentioned it. We’ve been attempting to write a novel (each) this month. I’m up almost at 32,000 words, and Brandon is somewhere, but I don’t know his actual word count. You’d have to ask him.

The novel’s going well. Better than the previous two years, that’s for sure. When I started this back in ’07, I fell horribly behind, and had to crank out 30,000 words in a week (somewhere around 9,000 the last day, I think). It was nuts. Last year was a lot better, but I still fell behind a few days, which is both very easy to do and very dangerous to do. This year, the most I fell behind so far was one day, and I caught up the next day. I did get ahead by entire days once or twice, which was nice. At the moment, I think I’m ahead by about 12 words, but it’s all good. The plot is insane, the characters are all nutjobs, and I’m not sure some of what I write makes any sense.

So I’m obviously enjoying myself a lot.

The only other news is that I still have the completely used roll of film from the old school camera sitting on my desk, waiting for processing. I have to ask around and find somewhere that’ll do it, because I would love to see how (badly) those pictures turn out. I promise, soon as they’re scanned, you’ll get to see them. Until then, though, you’ll just have to wait.

In the meantime, have some fall pictures from me.

Playground

Freshen the Outside Air

Tom

Shadow of a Ghost of an Idea

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November is, oddly, not that far away anymore. Well, sure, okay, it’s far enough away so that we’re still in the summer, and technically have two and a half months to get through (give or take a week).

But!

If you’re a Nano Wrimo writer like I am, it’s not too far away (frighteningly). This time last year, I was beginning the process of collecting notes and thinking about the novel that would become Divine. I was working out character sketches, piecing together the story, and wondering how the villains would push things along. In short, I was beginning the process of being prepared, so that I would be ready for the event. This yeah, I’m in a bit more of a pickle.

I think my problem is that I have too many ideas, but nothing’s really jumping out at me. A kid who accidentally has a super power, a sequel to Divine, a sequel to Mists of Nerrivik, a thing involving poorly defined subjective gravity…just too much is running through my head all at once. It’s getting stuck in the doorway, I think, and nothing’s really getting through (sort of like a Three Stooges sketch, although with pose in place of, say, Moe).

This is a much bigger problem than you may think it is. “So you don’t have an idea? So what? Can’t you just figure that out as you go along?” Well, yes and no. Sure, I can (and I have), but I end up floundering a bit without having a solid idea of my story going into things. And I can’t think up a good story as I go along. Not to mention, there is always the fact that Nano is marathon writing, and going in without notes is a lot like going on a marathon run without training too hard or stretching first. Sure, you could do it, but do you really want to?

When I wrote Mists, I had a couple basic ideas and figured it out as I went along. It was fun, but it was slow going. By Thanksgiving, I was 20,000 words behind, and ended up averaging 6k a day until I finished (on a 9k day, if memory serves). Last year, when I went in with Divine, the most I fell behind was 5k, I believe, and I recovered fairly quickly from that, ultimately writing a novel that hits somewhere around 67,000 words start to finish (and that’s just the first draft).  Everyone I’ve become friends with through this event seems to agree that knowing what you’re going to write for a story before you write it is a great step to actually completing the damn thing on time.

Which brings me back to my quandry. It’s not indecisiveness, exactly. It’s more…not being sure what I want to write first. Although I’m starting to lean toward the superhero kid. I think I could have a lot of fun with that idea, and write a pretty funny story.  And who doesn’t like a funny story?

I think I may be rambling now, so I’ll let you go. Below, I’ve placed a web badge for this year’s Nano Wrimo. If you have any interest in attempting to actually write a novel, you should check their site out. I’ve met some totally awesome people through it.

Nano Badge

Tom

Ambiance

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As I write this, I’m sitting in my living room, watching my roommate HP play BioShock. For those who are not up on XBox 360 games: BioShock is sort of Ayn Rand meets Art Deco meets SeaLab meets magic powers. Essentially, you’re an unnamed character that ends up in the water when your plane crashes. You swim for what looks like a lighthouse, and end up going down to an enormous underwater city where scientists have split genes in ways that allow you to shoot electricity and fire (and much more), where the people living there have all begun going crazy (or have long since gone there), and where playing God has resulted in an undersea Hell (whose name in the game is Rapture).

The story of the game goes much deeper than that, but that’s the basic rundown. For fans of video games, it’s a must-play, at least once. For those who aren’t, it’s still an interesting  and well told story. Most of what you learn is through a man that talks to you through a two-way radio, and through diary tapes you pick up and listen to along the way. That in of itself makes the game worth watching, but then it goes a step further. Sure, they could have gone with Art Deco/Stem Punk  takes on standard game weapons (yes, they have elements of both, trust me), the tapes and radio, and the things like occasional cracks in different parts of the glass that encases Rapture and still gotten away with a good game. But the thing that really puts this game over the edge into “Fantastic” is the ambiance.

Fans of, well, anything creative can all agree in the necessity of ambiance. Hell, anyone that stops and thinks for a few minutes can agree on it. Candles and roses at a dinner for two? Dark and stormy nights for murder mysteries? Having a small fire in the fireplace while hot chocolate steams in mugs and fat snowflakes fall outside? Ambiance, all of it. If it helps, think of it as “setting the mood.” Little things go a long way, and BioShock is a great case study in it. The Art Deco, the leaks, the haunting cries of the psychotics that run loose through Rapture – there’s a slow build-up of nerves until you find yourslef jumping at every flicker of light, every footstep that could be around the next corner.

When writing, or taking pictures, or filming, or painting – or, hell, going on a date – keep ambiance in mind. Depending on your medium, you want to take careful stock of words, colors, smells, and visual cues you leave sitting around in the eye or imagination of your viewer. Don’t take it lightly, either, because the wrong combination leaves the wrong impression in  your viewer’s mind, and they won’t be properly prepared for what you’re trying to have them experience. The consequence of improper preperation is that they won’t have that experience as richly as they might have otherwise. So, in case of a movie, use some panning. In writing, hang around on descriptions for longer than you might normally (a perfect example of this is Raymond Chandler – that man knew how to write a room). In paintings and pictures, keep a close eye for what’s around your subject, as the subject, the surrourndings, and the interaction will give the viewer the hints they need to build a story for themselves.

Below, I’ve put two pictures I’ve taken, from two different sessions. They each have something in similar – the model is by herself (and it’s a different model each time). However, the ambiance – the setting, the posture, everything – makes it clear how very different a story each picture is.  I hope they help!

A Sunday Stroll

Signs of Life

Tom

Inspiration

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In ancient Greece, there were the Muses. They would inspire the sculptures, painters, musicians and poets to create great works in their names and in the names of the gods. Things moved on, other societies has similar ideas, about the gods, or Lady Luck, or any thousand creatures, mythological or spiritual, that would slip their way into dreams and give people great ideas. Then, of course, there were the rebels, like Bob Marley or Thomas Paine, who created great works as a way of starting a revolution. There was Van Gogh, who took absinthe. e e cummings and Salvador Dali had new ways of looking at the world, unseen before them. Warren Ellis drinks a lot of beer.

What about the other artists out there? The garage bands, the writers squeaking it out in tiny studio apartments, or the photographer going to rallies and taking pictures of police and crowd? Where do they find inspiration? Yesterday I touched on the fact that I tend to find that I’m far more creative when I’m happy than when I’m down, and I think for me inspiration goes hand-in-hand with that.

The world is a very interesting place. It’s full of evil – war, greed, George W. Bush – but it’s also full of love – that woman that bought the 5 legged puppy so that a circus couldn’t get to it, Doctors Without Borders, the common hug. It’s a crazy place, filled with crazy things and crazy people. If you find yourself stuck and uninspired, do what I like to do best, and take a walk. Hop in your car or on the train/bus, go somewhere you normally don’t find yourself. Take a camera if you want (nothing professional, a point-and-shoot will be fine – this is for relaxation and recharging batteries).  Take pictures, look around. Observe. Watch the way people interact with each other, the way birds will hop around and peck at things hesitantly, the way dogs trot beside their owners, incredibly happy just to be out and trotting.

I don’t have an artist’s statement. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Let’s be honest with one another, half the reason people write those things is to fuck with you and see how gullible you can be. The closest I’ve ever come to an artist statement is the following: “I want to show the world how beautiful it really is.” But that sounds ludicrously pretentious. Black beret wearing, latte drinking, turtleneck donning pretentious. Still, though, when you’re willing to say something like that, how far out of reach could inspiration really be?

About as far as the next tree. Or kitten. Or dripping icicle. Keep your eyes open, kids, you’re surrounded by awesome.

Bright Lights

Tom

Art as Joy as Art

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I’m assuming by this point that you’ve picked up that I have a bit of an overactive imagination. Writing, photography, film, D&D…it’s all just a series of outlets for me. Fun outlets, and ones I would love to run with, but outlets none the less. I’m not really into that whole “tortured artist” scene, either. I was asked recently, “You’re not one of those people that can only create when they’re depressed, are you?”

No. No I am not. Actually, the happier I am, the better I feel, the more my imagination works. Which, needless to say, means I create more (and better). Anyone can write shitty emo poetry, but the only way to really, truly get inside the mind of a character is to be in a mental state where it’s not you against the world. At least, I can’t be there. I don’t really have to be in my “happy place” either, although that’s more or less how I get through Nano each year.

What I find works best is somewhere close to really happy, but just south of it. Realistically happy? It’s where you’re happy, you’re enjoying life and the projects you’re working on, but in the back of your mind you know that it’s not all a bed of roses, and that there’s work to do. But it’s okay, because it’s work you love, so it’s more of a game. Writing and photography…those can be absolute chores. Character development, plot progression, believable dialog, light levels, composition, knowing what the hell the f-stop does…there’s a lot to deal with. Which is why I let myself bounce around. Whatever I’m strongest with, I stick with while I can, and then I move on (or back).

I was working on a story for an annual short fiction contest Esquire has. The story’s half done, and the deadline is Friday. It feels weird to know that I started this thing months ago and I won’t be sending it out to the magazine I was expressly writing for, but on the other hand, I’ve taken thousands of pictures since I found out about the contest. Thousands. And I have a whole new project in mind that would not only be interesting, but it would be organic. It would grow and move as the models I use change or get new ideas. It would probably be immense to look at all at once, but in the small chunks I’ll be doing it, it’ll feel easy, it’ll flow (much like my novels in November are starting to do – it’s literally like climbing a mountain, then looking back and asking “Did I just seriously pull that off?”).

I have a few details to figure out and probably plenty of kinks to work out as I go along, but I’ll be putting a call out for models soon. I’ll need local (ie, Boston or easily avaible to show up, although if you’re going to be in town for a weekend, and I’m free, I’d be willing to work something out), and willing to put up with my bullshit (at least until I get the hang for this). I’m going to keep it a pretty small group at first, but I’d like to expand. I’ll explain more as I get to it, but if you’re interested, keep it (and me) in mind.

Have a picture I grabbed on a photowalk with Brandon Monday night. This hasn’t been digitally altered whatsoever (except I’ve shrunk the size to fit in the blog’s borders). It’s just streetlights near my apartment. Neat, huh?

Everything's Brighter in Brighton

Tom