'Twas the Night Before NaNo

On the Playlist:  No Curtain Call - Maroon 5

Well friends, it's 10:58PM on Halloween. Who knows what that means?

If you gussed In sixty-two minutes, Bri will stare at her computer screen for approximately four minutes before beginning to type something along the lines of, "fgjfdhds", then deleting it, then typing, "I'm an idiot", then deleting it, then writing a first sentence of a new WIP that she will (hopefully) finish by November 30, you would be correct! And you know me far too well.

November 1 is the start of NaNoWriMo, where a bunch of crazy ambitious writers try to write 50 000 words before November 30. I've blogged before about what I hope to achieve with NaNoWriMo, and now I will tell you what I'm planning to write and how I've prepared.

My novel is called Like a Bad Country song, and here is the terrible synopsis:

Tiffany and Adelle have spent their lives in the small town of Chillicothe, Texas. Tiffany's parents are, and always were, happily married. Adelle's parents are not, and never were, in her life; instead, her grandmother is her guardian. Tiffany is the captain of her high school's pom squad. Adelle's position on the pom squad is to be the tenth member they need to compete. Tiffany has had the same boyfriend, Ethan, since she was five. Adelle's never been kissed.  Tiffany hates Chillicothe. Adelle loves it.

But when Tiffany and Ethan have sex at the start of their senior year, it sets off a chain of changes in the girls' lives.  For the first time in seventeen years, Tiffany and Adelle must change themselves to handle what their lives have become.

Now, you may be (and probably should be) asking, "Bri, why is your synopsis...not a synopsis? It tells us about the characters, but nothing about the plot."

That's because I have no plot beyond that. 

Sure, I have some ideas for scenes and whatnot, but I really don't know where this novel is going at all. I do, however, know my characters. This is not new to me; all of my stories start with characters, and without real plots. The characters show me the plot as I write.

So, how have I prepared for NaNoWriMo? I haven't, really. I, obviously, have no outline. I do, however, have a ridiculous amount of leftover Halloween candy and Diet Coke, which should get me through until I find a plot. It's worked before.

I plan to post every Sunday night about how my week went NaNo-wise. This will be incredibly embarrassing, because I will fall behind on wordcount, I will have moments where I'm sure that I can't do it, and I might even do the unthinkable and delete scenes because guys, when I write crap, I write crap.

But I think this will be a lot of fun, and if nothing else, I'll have more words than I did at the beginning of November. I am really excited to write at midnight.

NaNo'ers, tell me about your project! How have you prepared for NaNo? Do you know your characters? Plots? Do you have an outline? Do you have lots of chocolate? Let me know in the comments!

Soundtrack Saturday: Daytrotter

On the Playlist: Girl in the Moon - Everly

Soundtrack Saturday is a weekly series where I'll share a safe and legal resource where you can download and/or stream free music. These resources are great ways to discover new music to add to your writing playlist!

Just a quick note, I will go on and on about how awesome these resources are because they're awesome, not because I'm affiliated with them in any way. I just want to share these awesome resources with awesome people.

This Week's Website: Daytrotter

I had an hour commute to and from work over the summer, and was  desperate to update my iPod with new music that I could fall in love with on the ride. The problem was that I needed a website that offered downloads of music by indie bands, both ones I knew and ones I didn't, that wouldn't empty my bank account. Not the easiest thing to find. But, I stumbled upon Daytrotter one day, and it was an even better website than what I'd hoped to find.

Daytrotter has artists stop at their studio to record sessions (usually from three to five songs), then uploads those sessions for the public to download at no cost.

What Artists are on Daytrotter?
 Ever heard of Tegan & Sara? Vampire Weekend? Ingrid Michaelson? Though you expect a website like this to feature indie artists, part of you expects they will be indie artists you've never heard of. That's not the case with Daytrotter. They have a great mixture of popular indie artists (oxymoron?) and indie artists who aren't as well known. So, you can download some sessions by artists you already know and love, as well as discover some fantastic new music. Personally, I was sold when I saw that William Fitzsimmons, The Swell Season, Brett Dennen, Greg Laswell, Blind Pilot, and Amos Lee had sessions. I also discovered the incredible artists Dawes and Lissie through Daytrotter.

What You Should Know about Daytrotter

• When you download a session from Daytrotter, you have to install a downloader. Daytrotter will guide you through the process, and the downloader is completely safe.
• All Daytrotter sessions come with beautiful cover art that will appear on your iPod.
• The quality of the sessions can vary. Most are of good quality, but a few are of lower quality.
• All Daytrotter sessions come with information about the artist, but not in the way you might expect. Instead of boring biographies, Daytrotter uses beautiful prose.
• There's a new session every day. You'll never be without new music. 
• You can follow Daytrotter on Twitter at twitter.com/@realdaytrotter

You Tell Me... 
Have you used Daytrotter? What do you like/dislike about it? Favourite sessions? Discovered any new music through the website? If you haven't used Daytrotter yet, will you look into it now?

Also, do you like the idea of Soundtrack Saturday? Are there are any safe and legal resources which offer free music that you'd like me to cover?

Let me know in the comments!

NaNoWriMo

On the Playlist: Hey Ya - Obadiah Parker

What I predict my life will look like this November.

Well, I did it. I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year. It's not my first time. Back in 2008, I said I was going to do it without joining the site, checking out the forums, or, uh, knowing how to write. I may have written 1k, but even that's iffy. Last year, I told myself that I was going to do it, and that I was going to do it right. I made an account, posted on the forums, planned to go to my city's events, all that fun stuff. The moment November began, I was writing, and for the duration of November 1, I kept up a good pace. But come November 2, 3, 4, and so on, I fell behind. Way behind. And I decided that I hated my novel and tried to change it, but I hated what I changed it to, so I changed and back, and you can guess the rest. Needless to say, I did not win last year. I'm not sure I event hit 5k.

To me, my two failures meant that NaNoWriMo just wasn't for me. It wasn't because I was hasty, lazy, or indecisive. So, I wasn't going to do it this year. I had a novel to revise, research papers to write, leadership meetings for the Christian Fellowship to attend, a small group for the Christian Fellowship to run, and friends who may occasionally want to see me. That was (and still is) more than enough for me.

But there were three things I learned about myself as writer as I worked on my first novel:

1. I'm hasty.

2. I'm lazy.

3. I'm indecisive.

Ultimately, my goal with NaNoWriMo is not to win, though that would be awesome and certainly is one of my goals. However, as long as I'm faster at writing first drafts come December 1, I'm happy. That's what I hope to get from NaNo.

Fellow NaNo'ers, why are you doing it? Is it just to have 50 000 more words than you had in October, or do you have another goal in mind?

And if you're a fellow NaNo'er, I'm bri_ness over there. Come say hi and be my buddy!

Road Trip Wednesday: Who's Your Comp?

"Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing-or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic."

This Week's Topic: Who are your comp titles/authors?

 
I had a hard time with this question for Building Forts. I don't think it's so unique that there are no books like it, but I'm just not sure I can recognize when a book is like mine. There is, however, one book that came to mind:

 Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers was the first book that came to mind when I read this week's prompt. The relationship between Parker and Chris reminded me so much of the relationship between Callie and Darren, while the relationship between Parker and Jake reminded me of the relationship between Callie and Chase. It's still a stretch, especially the comparison with Parker and Jake, but the contrast between the two relationships is something I have in my novel. Also, Parker's snark reminded me of Callie.

The answer to this question was easy for the novel I plan to write for NaNoWriMo, Like a Bad Country Song. Of course, this is based on the outline alone, so things may change when I start to write:

 The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind by Kirstin Cronn-Mills. A "perfect", but boring boyfriend. A boy a character shouldn't be with but really, really wants to be with. A strong relationship with a grandmother. These are all aspects of Like a Bad Country Song, though the issues are handled differently in my novel and Cronn-Mills'. However, the biggest similarity between my novel and The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don't Mind is a small town, and more importantly, the overwhelming desire to just get out of it.

What books can you compare to your novels?

How Kids Taught Me Show Vs. Tell

I worked at a daycare over the summer. I experienced the following scenario countless times:

Child ("A") is misbehaving.

Me: A, bring your toy to a table. When you show that me you can play nicely, I'll let you join your friends again.

A goes to the table. Five seconds pass.

A: Bwianne/M'anne/Ain (Brianne is apparently a difficult name for three year olds), I'm playing nicely!

Me: Show me that you're playing nicely. I'll tell you when you can come play, don't worry.

Ten seconds pass.

A: I'm playing nicely!

Me: Show me. I can't know that you're playing nicely unless I see you play nicely.

Three guesses to what happened next, and the first two don't count. As frustrating as it was, it was also a Eureka moment for me. "Show, don't tell" was always a writing rule I struggled with, but kids, as they so often do, showed me how simple it is. They could tell me that they were playing nicely, and they may have been, but it didn't matter until I saw it. It's the same thing with your readers: unless you show them something, you can't expect them to believe it.

Of course, there are times when it's better to tell than it is to show, but I find that sometimes, showing instead of telling can make a huge difference.

Thoughts?

Picture This

The latest trend in the blogosphere seems to be sharing pictures that inspired your novels, and because I have no original ideas I want to be a cool kid, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and do the same.

But mine's a little different, because these pictures did not inspire Building Forts; instead, these are pictures I actively searched for that would fit the novel. These pictures help bring the novel back to life for me as I make my way through revisions. All pictures are from weheartit.com.

The coolest part of this search was when I found pictures that looked like a photograph of one of my scenes. It happened with the following pictures:

 

And my absolute favourite. The more I look at this picture, the more I realize how inappropriate it could be, but in the novel it's pure shirtless dancing fun.

Road Trip Wednesday: First Lines

"Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival" where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing-or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic."

The Topic: 

What are your favorite first lines? How do your own WIPs start?

Before I discovered Absolute Write and  all of the fabulous and helpful writing blogs, Google was where I went to find writing advice.  No matter what I searched--writing tips, advice for writers, novels r kewl  can i write 1?--I always found this piece of advice among the articles I read: have a good opening line. It made sense. After all, I wouldn't want a bad opening line.

So, I'd run to my room and read the first line of all my books. Seriously. Some were better than others, but as a whole, I was pretty underwhelmed. These were books I loved, yet their opening lines, though never bad, were never particularly good.

Their first paragraphs and pages, however, were fantastic.

When this topic came up on my blogroll, my mind went blank. There were no first lines that I'd stored in the back of my mind because they were so brilliant. Heck, no book titles even came to mind. I'm in my dorm room, so I couldn't raid my bookshelf like I used to for opening lines (and I so would've if I was at home), but I did look at the first lines of the library books I have in my room. One stood out to me, from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson:

"So she tells me, the words dribbling out with cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee."

The images this line creates are insane. It's so vivid. But, I'd love this line no matter where it was placed in the book. My opinion of the book would not have changed had the second line ("She tells me in four sentences. No, five.") had been the opening line.

Truth is, I don't really care about opening lines. Sure, it's good to have a good line like Anderson does, but it's good to have good lines throughout the novel. For me, if I'm hooked in the first couple pages, I'm good. A killer opening line helps that, but a couple of solid, engaging paragraphs help more.

All that said, I know that opening lines are incredibly important to some, so I do work harder at them than I do other lines. Here's the first line of Building Forts:

"Anyone who lives as much as he does would die."

What do you guys think? Do opening lines matter to you? What are your favourites? Let me know!

Road Trip Wednesday: Which Way to the Beach?

This week's topic:

You're packing for a month on a deserted island. What, as a reader and writer, must be in your backpack?

I would bring:

• The essentials: food, water, sunscreen, etc. A lighter would also be essential for me because there’s no way I could make a fire without one (and honestly, my chances are even iffy with one).
• The ultimate survival guide: The Bible. 
• Books, of course! I’d bring my favourites, but I’d probably leave The Hunger Games behind due to my paranoia. I’d also bring some books on my TBR list.
• Notebooks and pens. LOTS of pens. I lose them enough in my room, I can’t even imagine on a deserted island.
• An oldschool walkman with extra batteries and headphones
• CDs to write/dance/choreograph to: William Fitzsimmons, Mumford & Sons, Florence + The Machine, RENT Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack, and The Spice Girls. Werk.
• A volleyball named Wilson to be my BFF.

So yes, I would spend my month praying, studying, reading, writing, dancing, choreographing, and acting out every scene from RENT as every character. It would be a party.