Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

What A Difference Thirteen Years Makes

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Earlier in the week, someone asked me when I started writing. I started the story in typical fashion for me and true to form, lost the thread and never closed out the discussion. This post answers the question and covers what’s happened since.

On November 3rd, Facebook informed me that thirteen years ago I attended An Evening With Kevin Smith in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. It took eleven days, but I articulated the impact that night had on me in a blog post. You don’t need to read it before continuing this, but it might be interesting to read after. The relevant takeaway is that the post explains the answer to the question asked to me, and traces its origin back to the Kevin Smith show.

It took a few other fortuitous connections and a sliver of synchronicity, but if my writing journey is the fire, those connections were the kindling, and that Kevin Smith show was the spark.

Brick Walls, New Beginnings

I’ve long supported the adage that, “A rising tide lifts all ships.” I’m also a firm believer that no two people can take the same path and that, ultimately, we are the ones who get to define what success means for us.

In the thirteen years since that fateful evening do I feel I have been successful as a writer? If you would have asked me a year ago I would have said, “Somewhat.” Through the lens of today, however, the answer is a resounding, “Hell yes.” Why the change? What happened in that year to make the difference? To understand that, I need to recap the twelve years that followed the Kevin Smith show and give you some insight as to why my response was “somewhat”.

In (more or less) chronological order:

  • 2010: Blogged a lot. Immersed myself in the world of writing and met as many writers as I could
  • 2011: Failed attempt at completing a screenplay
  • 2011: Failed attempt at completing a novel
  • 2011: “Sold” a song for a podcast opening to Kevin Smith (he “art swapped” it for tickets to see him speak)
“Spunk” (a.k.a. Punk For Kevin)
  • 2012: Completed the first draft of a novel, No Fixed Address
  • 2013: Short story Losing Vern published in the Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior anthology
  • 2014: Completed a standalone novel, Hard Truth
  • 2015: Completed the first draft of No Known Cure, a sequel to No Fixed Address
  • 2015: Started writing for the OCH Literary Society
  • 2016: Ghost wrote two short stories and completed a standalone novel, Suburbia, and sold it to the same person
  • 2016: Completed my first nonfiction book, Bent But Not Broken: One Family’s Scoliosis Journey
  • 2016: Three freelance articles for the website The Good Men Project
  • 2016-2017: Two freelance articles for the website YourTango
  • 2017: Received my first publishing contract for BENT
  • 2017: Received a publishing contract for Hard Truth and the The “No” Conspiracies (No Fixed Address, No Known Cure, and three more)
  • 2017: Contributed three essays to the Stigma Fighters: Volume 3 anthology
  • 2018: Bent But Not Broken published
  • 2018: Hard Truth published
  • 2019: Completed the novel, No End In Sight
  • 2020: Sent the three completed The “No” Conspiracies books to my publisher
  • 2020: COVID. Publisher ceased releasing books (despite ebook sales growing in popularity. A decision that flummoxes me to this day)
  • 2021: Requested, and was granted, reversion of rights to The “No” Conspiracies series
  • 2021: Started exploring options for rights reversion for Bent But Not Broken and Hard Truth (this was not feasible as it would have cost me $1500 – per book – to get the rights back. I had no choice but to ride out the contracts to term; January and November 2023 respectively)
  • 2021: One freelance article for the website The Good Men Project
  • 2021: Short story accepted to an anthology (top secret project, publication date TBD)
  • 2022: Publisher decided to part ways with me and a handful of others citing COVID as the reason (still flummoxed at the rationale, but was happy as heck to be out from under a horrible contract)
  • 2022: Self-published Bent But Not Broken
  • 2022: Eleven freelance articles/posts for the website The Good Men Project
  • 2022: Completed the first draft of the standalone novel, Known Order Girls

By all accounts, those twelve years were pretty darn good. I was managing a full time job and a family with two small kids, a social life, a pretty serious bout of insomnia, and a severe concussion that had me off of work for months. Still, I carried feelings of inadequacy and laziness that have plagued me my whole life. I always felt like I wasn’t enough, that I had to work twice as hard to get half as far, that I wasn’t smart, that I was lazy, that I was capable of more.

Then came the diagnosis. Mild to moderate ADHD complicated by multiple traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). That explained a whole lot.

It was eye opening to finally understand why, despite all logical signs indicating otherwise, I’ve always carried these feelings of nonperformance, inadequacy, and lack of intelligence. In hindsight, I wonder why I never said anything. I mean, I know why I didn’t. Mental health wasn’t something you discussed openly. It wasn’t until I had friends talk about getting evaluated for ADHD and other non-neurotypical tendencies that I even entertained the possibility. Still, it took more than a year before I sought out someone to ask. I cannot understate how much it means and how helpful it is knowing why I feel the things I feel and why I am the way I am.

Half a dozen failed attempts at finding medication that works and another months long battle with insomnia that’s still rages later, I can look back at the last year and feel good about what I’ve accomplished.

In a moment of hyper-fixation during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I wrote Near Death By A Thousand Cuts: A Humorous Memoir of Misfortune in the 30 days following my diagnosis. Writing a book in a month is no small task, but writing one that’s an account of injurious events in my life and finding the humour in them was rewarding and educational both in the introspective as well as practical senses.

Then I published it, recorded the audiobook for it, and marketed it. The publishing was fairly straightforward but I learned a lot about how to make that process as efficient as possible. Recording the audiobook was an adventure I care to never repeat. I could not have done it without the help of this Instructables article. The marketing and promotion was tough. How does a virtual nobody from Canada get people to buy an expletive-laden humorous memoir? Hard work, perseverance, and a bit of dumb luck.

With a limited social media presence that was virtually nonexistent anywhere but Facebook, I needed to grow my audience and find my public voice. In the twelve months since I finished Near Death, I doubled my Facebook followers from 1,000 to 2,000. I recorded hundreds of TikToks. I started engaging more with readers, writers, and other personalities I enjoyed. I made friends and leaned on them for advice and support. Really, I was just being myself, but publicly for everyone to see. The average self-published book sells 250 copies in its lifetime. I sold that many copies of Near Death in six months.

I found an editor for Known Order Girls through my very first writer friend, the guy who attended the same Kevin Smith show as me, and whose blog post about it inspired the blog post I wrote thirteen years ago. Some of these new connections are beta reading it for me. Others are cheering me on, and that feels so good. I’m going to try to query for an agent with it when my editor is done marking it up with her red pen. Even if I don’t find one and end up self-publishing it, I know that all the hard work I put in on Near Death will come in handy. In my mind, the book is already a success. I don’t know if people will think it’s good, but it’s definitely the best thing I’ve ever written and is a great source of pride.

It would be easy to point to the new followers, new friends, the finished magnum opus, and the book sales and say, that’s the difference between twelve months ago and now. While all are great things, that’s not why I changed my answer. The difference came from all the things I learned and the change in perspective that happened along the way. These are my accomplishments, I did them on my own terms, at my own pace, and I am proud of them.

Success.

Connections

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I am a writer. As such, I have a lot of friends who are writers. I have even more acquaintances who are writers. On social media (mostly Facebook but also Instagram and Twitter) I would wager that my interactions with writers outnumber interactions with everyone else combined. I have a short list of non-family members that I put into the category of close friends. There are two from my university days and another three that I didn’t even know existed until I started writing, and more specifically, started participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as well like to call it, or if we’re being particularly lazy, “NaNo”.

NaNo is a challenge to writers everywhere to write 50,000 words in the month of November. In other words, write a novel in thirty days. That works out to 1,667 words per day, every day, for an entire month. It’s a lot. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s a lot. Trust me, I know. I participated in this challenge six years in a row from 2011 to 2016 and was only successful four out of those six years.

For a number of reasons, I’m not doing NaNo this year. A friend asked me if it felt weird and I said that it did. Other than the fact I’ve done it for six years in a row now I couldn’t put my finger on why that was. I thought a bit about it a bit more and came to the conclusion that it felt weird because NaNoWriMo is a big reason that I am a writer at all.

In early 2010 I started dabbling with some writing. Not simply jotting stuff down and blogging every now and then, but writing with plot and character in mind. Well, sort of. I was blogging somewhat regularly and I had every intention of starting a big screenwriting project, at some point, some time, you know, later. But by some sheer twist of fate, it was the month of November that all that changed.

If anyone out there is a fan of the James Burke show Connections (and Connections 2 and Connections 3) you’ll see that my “path to success” goes WAY back and isn’t exactly a straight line.

That’s Why I’m on This Oil Rig a Writer

  • In 1993 I worked as a clerk at a video store before heading off to university.
  • It was that first year at university that I would have a little girlfriend trouble.
  • While that was going on, Kevin Smith was writing the movie Clerks. It is a movie about a couple dudes working as, well, clerks. One in a video store and one at a convenience store. One of the clerks has girlfriend trouble.
  • That movie came out in 1994 and I saw it when it hit video stores in 1995. The movie changed the way I looked at films and my whole creative process and I was an immediate fan.
  • Later that year I got back together with one of my girlfriends from back in 1993. We would get married on November 6, 1999.
  • Fast forward to 2010. Kevin Smith had made ten movies and was a huge success and doing his Q&A sessions and multiple podcasts. My wife looks out her office window one day and sees a billboard advertising Kevin Smith coming to town just a few days before our anniversary.
  • We attend the show and have a great time and it sparked something in me. Afterwards, I came across this blogger and writer by the name of Robert Chazz Chute who wrote about his experience at the same show. In his post, he mentioned this weird thing called NaNoWriMo. I, in turn, wrote a blog post about getting off my ass and actually writing something. It was going to be a screenplay.
  • In 2011 I started writing the screenplay and I was having a conversation with one of those close friends I mentioned earlier in the post. I was lamenting that I was having a hard time getting my story to fit into the framework of a film. He said that he didn’t want to see an Andrew Butters movie. He’d rather read an Andrew Butters book. So, I switched gears and started to write it as a novel.
  • In November 2011, I attempted my first NaNoWriMo. I was there alongside Robert cranking out words and having a great time. It was on Twitter during NaNo that I met a writer by the name of Jennifer Gracen.
  • Jennifer was a NaNo cheerleader and she introduced me to a whole number of other writers and eventually she invited me into a writer’s group on Facebook. One of these individuals is now one of my other close friends, Gordon Bonnet. We joke that we are brothers from different mothers. Twins separated at birth and by more than a decade and several strands of DNA.
  • One of the Twitter NaNo folks Jennifer introduced me to almost died due to a medical complication and there was an anthology being put together to raise money to help pay her medical bills. I wrote a piece of creative non-fiction about the unexpected death of my wife’s brother and Jennifer edited that piece for me. It was eventually accepted into the anthology and just like that, I had my first published piece.
  • Shortly thereafter I had a photographer friend, Christine Reid, do some headshots for me. If I was going to write books I was going to need pictures for back covers, right?
  • Then, in 2014 my daughter was diagnosed with severe scoliosis and was going to require spinal fusion surgery. Since there was little information out on the web from girls and families that have gone through this, my genius wife decided that we should keep a family blog to chronicle the journey.
  • A year post-surgery the blog was done and I decided that if I could add a bit more context to the blog posts that it would make a pretty powerful book. In October 2016 I finished Bent But Not Broken: One Family’s Scoliosis Journey.
  • In January of 2017, I was talking to another writer, one to whom I was introduced at the same time as my brudder from another mudder. She suggested I talk to him about Bent. So, I did. He was beta reading the manuscript and unbeknownst to me had given it to the Editorial Board at his publisher, Oghma Creative Media (now called Roan & Weatherford, and you should avoid them at all costs. Message me if you want more details). A few weeks later I had my first writing contract.
  • A couple months later, the Oghma founder was asking me for a headshot for an announcement on their Facebook page about my signing. I pointed him to the folder of headshots that my friend Christine did for me.
  • He asked me if I did any acting when inquiring about why I had headshots taken. I told him I had them done so I’d have something for a book cover one day. He said, “Oh, you’ve written other stuff?” and I told him I had a few pieces of almost completed fiction plus bits and bobs of incomplete stuff that will take shape at some point. He invited me to the publisher’s writing retreat in the summer and said we would talk.
  • I returned home in August of 2017 from my publisher’s writing retreat with two book contracts: one for a standalone psychological thriller (short novel) and one for an open-ended suspense series called The “No” Conspiracies (which will be at least five books at this point).
  • Bent But Not Broken comes out on the third anniversary of my daughter’s surgery on January 20, 2018.
  • Hard Truth (the short novel) comes out in September of 2018.
  • No Fixed Address: The “No” Conspiracies Book #1 comes out in March 2019.
  • No Known Cure: The “No” Conspiracies Book #2 comes out in September 2019, which currently sits at about 25,000 words.
    • To bring this all full circle, it’s worth noting that this was the movie I started writing back in 2010 and ended up being the book I started writing during my very first NaNoWriMo back in 2011.
    • In fact, of the seven books I have either written or have committed to writing, four of them have been NaNo projects.
As you can see, there are a whole lot of connections that brought me from A to B on this writing journey of mine. I look at the long list of events above and if you remove any one of them the chain collapses. I see all those events as the kindling and the fuel for my fire. If that’s true, then learning about NaNoWriMo was the spark. The annual challenge for writers around the globe that I found out about at just the right time because the impact that a single Kevin Smith show had on a guy named Robert which prompted him to write a blog post that I happened to read.
Here are tonight’s three stars of the game:
  • Kevin Smith. For writing Clerks, deciding to do a show in Kitchener of all places in 2010, and inspiring writers and filmmakers in ways that only you can do.
  • Robert Chazz Chute. For sharing your fanboiness of Kevin Smith and writing and introducing me to the world of writing (also, for that drive into Toronto to go see Kev’s movie Red State when I was suffering from post-concussion syndrome).
  • My wife. For taking a minute out of her day to look out the window and suggest that a Kevin Smith show would be a good anniversary present, and for being the bond that has held together so many of the links in my chain for nearly a quarter of a century. You’re why I’m on this oil rig, baby. Happy Anniversary!
~ Andrew

Links (I know I linked them above, but it’s always nice to have a list):

What’d I Miss?

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It’s been a while. Thank you for not forgetting about me. Aside from my open letter to McDonald’s (which, if you’re listening McD’s, I am still really pissed about) I haven’t posted anything in more than six months. That’s a long hiatus, but… BUT I have some exciting reasons as to why the absence.

First of all, after my last post back in August 2016, I started a project which would have a significant impact on my writing career. I renovated the basement bedroom of my house and turned it into a writing room. A friend of mine down in Boston, Richard B. Wood, did this earlier in the year and dubbed his new creative space The Lair. Being a homegrown lad from The Great White North, the name for my space needed a Canadian touch and after much deliberation (entirely too much, some would say) I decided on Lair North, Eh? though around the house it commonly goes by The Writing Room.

Having a dedicated space to go and have uninterrupted time to create was of paramount importance. If I was going to make the leap from being a writer to being a published author I was going to need to take it seriously (more seriously than I had been) and give writing its own time and place. The room needed to be comforting and inspiring and filled with all the tools to help me bring my ideas to life.

I still need to put a few finishing touches on it (I need a small end table, a few pieces of art, and some blinds) but the transformation was extensive.

Before:

After:

Everything in the new room has a purpose:

  • The little half-sized guitar is there because I occasionally write lyrics (really the only form of poetry I am capable of). 
  • The is some art that’s there and more to come because the presence of art pleases my muse. 
  • I have my NaNoWriMo victories on the wall hanging above a photo of my aforementioned friend, Richard, pointing his finger at me with the heading “Shouldn’t You Be Writing?”. These are great motivators. 
  • What was once a door to get into the circuit breaker panel is now a chalkboard (and also a door to get into the circuit breaker panel) for keeping lists and scribbling random notes. 
  • There is my wife’s BA (Political Science) and my B.Sc (General Science) from the University of Waterloo. These are accomplishments that we are both very proud of. 
  • There’s a chair for reading, relaxing, napping, and thinking (Winnie The Pooh has honey and I have my La-Z-Boy). 
  • A lamp because… well, we had an extra lamp and nowhere to put it. 
  • Books. There are lots and lots of books. The whole family has books on those shelves. I just wish I had more room for more books. 
  • Finally, to the left of me when I’m sitting at the keyboard there is my shelf of inspiration and usefulness. 
    • The top of this little bookcase sits books that my friends have written, music CDs they’ve created, and one bottle of beer that my friend Jon crafted (links to all the stuff below). 
    • Underneath that shelf are reference books, how-to books, Stephen King’s On Writing, a space pen, a Rubik’s Cube, an Oxford English Dictionary (because Webster can kiss my butt), and some golf balls from my brother-in-law’s memorial golf tournament (Ryan passed eight years ago today – also my birthday – and I miss him every day).

The rules of the room are simple:

  1. Closed door = Do not disturb.
  2. Don’t touch the laptop (it’s super finicky and on its last legs).
  3. If you’re done with a book, put it in a bookcase (alphabetical by author last name, or on the shelf of inspiration ordered by height).
  4. If you want to read a book, take one (just bring it back when you’re done. See rule #3).

So, what has happened since the room became a usable space?

Well, as some of you may know, a couple years ago my daughter had surgery to correct a severe case of scoliosis. My wife, not finding much helpful information for parents going through something similar, started a family blog so we could share our story and hopefully help other families. The blog was a great success, with families from all over the world finding the site and learning from our experiences.

Wanting to bring our story to as many people as possible, and always with something more to say, I compiled all the blog posts and sectioned them off into various phases (waiting for a surgery date, preparing for a second opinion, pre-op, surgery, post-surgery, etc.) Before each phase, I added my own take on what was happening at that time. I also added an introduction bringing everyone up to speed on our daughter and what life was like before the diagnosis, a question and answer section, and a lessons-learned section at the end.

It was a lot of work, but it was work I was able to accomplish, uninterrupted, at Lair North, Eh? over the course of a month. Once that was done, I got right into NaNoWriMo for the sixth year in a row and every day over the course of November you could hear the sounds of me typing and talking to myself. I am happy to say that for the fourth time in those six years I managed to write more than 50,000 words and win NaNo!

Then, a break for the holidays where I fiddled here and there with a few things and tried to figure out what to do next. Come the new year, however, something was brewing. I was showing the scoliosis book to a few trusted friends to get feedback and it was suggested that I get it in the hands of one of their publishers.

I won’t go into details (to protect the innocent and all that jazz), but suffice it to say that the manuscript for Bent But Not Broken: A Family’s Scoliosis Journey made it into the hands of Oghma Creative Media and a few weeks later I signed a contract to have the book published!

So, what happens now?

Well, the first step was to get all the words in the manuscript looking good for the fine editors over at Oghma. The next step was to provide all the images that would be used and place an image tag in the manuscript so the formatting people would know where stuff goes. Then, I need to caption all the images (close to fifty of them) and secure permission to publish any of the images that were not either a family photo or a medical image from my daughter’s personal medical record.

Once all that was done, off to the publisher it went. There, an editor will look it over and the process of fixing and re-writing begins. A lot of the book was blog posts and I’m hoping there won’t be any substantive changes made to those since they were written in-the-moment. I expect the narrative parts that I wrote will tighten up and give the book a nice pace.

At some point down the road, once we are all happy with the words there will be copy edits, formatting, and cover design.

When it is all said and done, at some point in the first half of 2018, we should have the book in stores and available for download, and who knows, maybe later on next year you’ll see another title from me hitting the shelves as well.

~ Andrew

Who’s on my shelf of inspiration?

Are You Done Yet? A NaNoWriMo Retrospective

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Another NaNoWriMo has come and gone. I didn’t “win” this year, but I didn’t expect to. As it was I took a few liberties with the rules. First, a little backstory:

As you may or may not know, earlier this year I started writing a serial for the OCH Literary Society. While I had hoped to issue a new instalment every couple of weeks I managed one per month for the first three months and then I got stuck. Call it writer’s block, call it poor planning, call it life getting in the way, call it whatever you want. I wasn’t writing much of anything and it was starting to suck.

In parallel with this I wasn’t sleeping very well either, with most days spent trying to keep my eyes open at work and then coming home and doing family things like cooking dinner and soccer with my son or swimming or whatever activity it was. By eight at night I was too pooped to do anything that required brain activity. I just didn’t feel creative.

Long story short, I did something about it and went to my doctor and she got me on some vitamin D drops and put me back on this sleep inducing medication that I used to take when my insomnia was really kicking my ass. Within a month or so I was starting to feel better and I was getting back into the groove, creatively speaking. After putting a few blog posts together (gearing up for the big Canadian election) I sat down with The Book of Good to write instalment four and realized something.

I was still stuck.

That’s okay, because NaNoWriMo was just around the corner and I would use the thirty days and thirty nights of literary abandon to move the serial forward.

My plan was simple:

Write instalment four, five, six, and seven; completing one every two days. Then, with the thirty-five thousand or so words I had kicking around from NaNo 2013 cobble together another eleven instalments. If I could at least get the bulk of each instalment down so that adding additional plot or character development wouldn’t take me weeks on end, then I would have all the heavy lifting done and cranking out an instalment every couple weeks after that should be easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

Fifteen instalments, thirty days. Go!

Well, it’s been thirty days, so how’d I do? I am happy to report that I made a lot of progress. Instalments four, five, and six were written with relative ease. Instalment seven will probably need to be split into two (maybe four) with each one expanded, and instalments eight through fourteen need to have my main cop character added, but that was expected. Instalment fifteen is giving me grief at the moment so I think I’ll have to come back to it. As for instalments sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, they’ll have to wait for another day. On the upside, I cranked out four blog posts from November 24 -28 (I really like this short, short story, The Sandwich Artist) and this will be post #5 in the last seven days AND I even wrote some lyrics for a song my friend Jim put together recently.

So, not an all-out victory, but not a loss either. In fact, I see it as being quite successful to have come out the other end with more than I had when you started. I don’t think of it as having failed at writing however many thousands of words, I think of it as having created something before which there was naught. That’s progress, baby!

And to answer the question writers get asked more often than any other question, no, I’m not done yet.

~ Andrew

NaNoRetro

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First of all, I’d like to thank all my friends, family, and readers of Potato Chip Math for putting up with me this last month. If you’re not into writing it can be a bit much and I acknowledge that four or five straight blog posts and countless Facebook status updates may put a few of you off. Thanks for sticking around though and I promise things will get back to normal… starting tomorrow.

In case you didn’t know, I managed to “win” NaNoWriMo again this year, my third victory in a row!

So, yay me! Though that’s about all the celebrating I’ll allow mostly due to the fact that I’m freaking exhausted. I tackled the project in a slightly different way this year, in that I planned on writing a complete story – one with “THE END” written proudly at the bottom of the last page – rather than just writing 50,000 words towards a novel and having half of the story to be written, someday.

I thought I had it all figured out, I even had FIFTEEN bullet points written down with some key plot moments, names and short bios for my main characters, and all my locations mapped out right down to the “L” shape of the MC’s penthouse apartment (fancy schmancy!), the style and layout of the bank where he has a safety deposit box (ooooh intriguing!), and the location of the fax machine in the office where he shags his secretary (scandalous!). Even with all this prepared and ready to go by the time I went to bed on October 31 it was still a long, difficult journey to victory and I learned a few things along the way.

Days Off are Important (and Dangerous)

The plan was easy: write for twelve days and then take a day off. I had a workshop for a speakers event called Ignite! for which I am the speaker coordinator. I could not afford to take the day off prior to the event so that left me with no choice but to get ahead on my word count over the first dozen days and take a day off. 
It worked out wonderfully until I sat down to write on the 14th. By then it had been 44 hours since I had written anything and getting back on the horse was a challenge. I took two more days off in the month for various reasons (hockey game with my daughter on the 21st and the actual Ignite! event on the 26th and it was the same deal for the day after. I struggled to get words on the page. In every case I managed to at least keep pace with 1,667 words but I have a sneaky suspicion that those will be some of the first ones to hit the cutting room floor. It does bring me to my second lesson:

Just Keep Writing

I’ve said this before I’m sure, and countless others have said this before me, but the only way to get through the tough times is to just keep writing. Yes, you’ll have to lean on friends for support and you’ll be filled with self-doubt and worry, but that’s the deal. That’s what you signed up for, so suck it up buttercup and just keep writing. When in doubt, throw a curve ball at your MC. Think to yourself, “What would really fuck up his world right now?” or “Oh my god, wouldn’t it be terrible if…?” and then run with it. 

If You’re Going to Plan, then Plan Already

I thought I had prepared adequately. In past NaNos I never planned. I just started writing and kept doing the previous lesson until there were 50,000 words on the page. This time I had a plan, or at least I thought I did. It turns out I did not. My plan sucked. My plan was good for 15,000 or 20,000 words, tops. Next year I am either going  back to being a pantser or I am planning the living shit out of it. 
This year I ended up bloating my manuscript with who-knows-what to fill in the gaps that my sorry-ass planning left. Now, it’s not all bad. I did manage to dream up some pretty nifty character interactions that would not have come to light otherwise, but it was a real struggle. There’s a certain comfort in not knowing anything and having to make it all up as you go. There’s also comfort in knowing so many god damned things that the only thing left to do is write it down. Word of caution: the worst place to be is one where you think you know everything but actually don’t know squat.
A few other things I learned/noticed about this year’s event:
  • I felt better about my writing on days were I could get in 500 words after dinner and before the kids went to bed. I usually did this when they were eating their desserts or playing Minecraft. I planned these in based on the schedules for events (volleyball, play dates, my events, wife’s travel schedule, etc…). 
  • I made it rain on weekends, and starting NaNo on a weekend put me in a great position. I wrote almost double my target on every weekend (except this one, because I finished).
  • I kept a routine. I wan’t scrambling to squeeze words in before work, or at lunch at work (I keep my day job and my writing quite separate), or anything like that. I designated times when I could write, and then that’s when I wrote. 
  • I stopped writing most nights with enough time to watch an episode of Louie or Downton Abbey. Having 45-60 minutes before bed to wind down and enjoy some time watching TV with my wife really helped keep me sane. 
So there you have it. Another November come and gone and a brand new novel sitting in my “Writing” folder on my computer. Thanks again to everyone who helped me along especially my family (who is probably quite glad to have “normal” Andrew back) and those in my Writers Without Borders group on Facebook. 
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Sunday blog posts about mostly writing but also about a tonne of other things. I’m thinking I’ll keep it light and silly next week. Maybe crowd source a topic. What do you think? 
What would YOU like me to write about next week? Submit a comment and I’ll see what I can do. 
~ Andrew.

Eyes On The Prize

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So here we are. We’re coming out of the third corner and into the home stretch. It’s been a tough race so far, sloppy to be sure, but not to worry because you were born to slop. You’re a mudder. Your father was a mudder. Your mother was a mudder.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_YlS3SLoz8?rel=0]

So there it is, the finish line. The wire. The tape. THE END.

For some of you it’s in your past. You found that extra gear. You turned it up a notch. You dug deep. [Insert another metaphor for overachieving here]. My message to you is simple: CONGRATULATIONS!* You’ve done what not many people can do and written a novel in less than a month. You should be quite proud. Your job now is to take a moment to feel as awesome as you can about and then turn and look those still in the race and cheer them on.

For some of you the finish line is so far away you’re wondering if someone hasn’t gone and made the track longer while you were running. That would be a thoroughly jerk move for someone to pull but I can assure you that’s not what’s happened here. Something did happen though, and that’s okay. Life has a gnarly way of getting in the way of things you set out to do. Do not fret because you have a couple options at your disposal:

First, you can just pack it in. Put the pen down, close the laptop lid, open up your Candy Crush app. You gave it a good run and there’s absolutely no shame in calling it a day. You started this thing for a reason and by golly you’ll finish it at some point, or you won’t because it was not meant to be. Hold your head high because you entered the race in the first place.

Next, you can forge ahead. Full steam. Get those legs pumping and crack that whip. Put your head down and go. Find the extra gear. Turn it up a notch. Dig deep. [Insert another metaphor for overachieving here]. If that’s what you’re going to do, I admire your efforts. You got moxie, kid. Now finish reading this post and get back to work.

Finally, you can find a way to make something else your goal. Remember what I said a few weeks ago about defining success. You’re in charge of that, and no one else. Not some website, not your friends or neighbours, not even your mudder mother. Recreate your goal and work toward that.

For some of you the finish line is in sight and every stride down the home stretch brings it closer. Now, if looking at my NaNoWriMo buddy list and checking out the website is any indication, a great many of you are in this position. The finish line is unbearably close. Closer than two protons at the heart of a plutonium atom. Closer than that guy on the subway that has lots of room to his left but decides to stand to the right face to face with you trying to get your noses to touch. [Insert another reference for closeness here]. It is right there.

For all of you, there’s only one thing to do. Sit down and write. Set your goal some time sooner than it actually is. Me? I want to be done on Friday so I can have the weekend to rejoice (also, on the 30th I’m taking the kids to see Mythbusters Behind the Myths so that day will pretty much be a wash). So take your remaining words and divide by the number of days and write that amount every day. Just write. It will be hard, oh yes it will be hard. You’re tired, you’ve been running for more than three weeks, and your brain is starting to fail. You’re seeing things that aren’t there. Don’t worry about it, that gnome hitting on your muse has always been there. She’ll take care of you, don’t you worry. You’ve been a good scribe for the greater part of a month. Just. Keep.Going.

Even if it’s not a photo finish, I’ll have my camera ready. See you at the wire.

~ Andrew

* Side note about that word “congratulations”: I used to work at this place as a bus boy / dish pig / cleaner / etc… and part of the job was setting up the big sign out front with the message of the day. Every Saturday we’d have one or more weddings and someone would have to go out and put the message “Congratulations so and so” or “Congratulations to all the newlyweds”. Well, on the inside of the lid for the container that held all the large plastic letters someone wrote the word “CONGRATULATIONS”. You see, the job didn’t exactly attract the kids competing in the local spelling bee. Anyway, I always thought it was strange they didn’t have the big letter box sectioned off with some of the words that were just always used. It was mostly alphabetical but having a few of those words set aside would have been really useful. Plus, it would have made it easier to slip a “D” in there before the guy who always gave you a hard time and made you clean toilets went out to do the sign.

Mid Life Crisis: NaNoWriMo Style

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If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, and close to keeping pace (or right on pace, or even slightly ahead of schedule) then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Halfway.

Welcome to the saggy middle.

If you’re like me this represents two moments of opposing emotions:
  • First, you’ve already written more words that you have yet to write. It’s all downhill from here, baby! These are good times and certainly cause for celebration. Take a moment to soak it all in and realize that even if your laptop were to melt in some freak background microwave radiation solar flare electromagnetic accident that you would have around 25,000 words backed up somewhere and ready to use (thank you Dropbox!)
  • Second, you still have more than 20,000 words to write. This damn journey is uphill BOTH WAYS! Don’t let that moment soak in though. For one, it’ll mess up your mojo you just gained from the awesome milestone of passing the halfway mark. Also, it’s too darn depressing and wallowing in it will sink your back end. 
Saggy middle. Sinking back end. What is this, a book about turning 40? This looks like a job for MOTIVATION!
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Some people use the resources right from the NaNoWriMo website (profile inbox, discussion boards, etc…) Another good resource is another writer. There are tons of videos, articles, blog posts out there where famous faces like Anne Rice, Stephen King, and Chuck Wendig. 
Another good one is go to the mall. I’m serious, especially at this time of year when people are either gearing up for Thanksgiving in the U.S. or Christmas everywhere else. Sit on a bench or chair with your laptop open and just wait for all the wonderful character traits and ideas to walk past. Imagine the conversations of the people across the aisle. Find ways to shut up that snot nosed brat screaming for the latest whatever-it-is at a mother who looks like she just dropped her last nerve in the garbage with the empty cup from her Chai Latte. Plus, the sooner you get motivated and writing the sooner you can get out of the hell pit of doom, destruction, and despair that is The Mall in the weeks leading up to December 25. 
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Me? Keeping in line with my last post on community I have a standard go-to for motivation in my writers’ group on Facebook. Others, they head straight to Twitter for words of encouragement and inspiration. Either way, what could be better that reaching out and commiserating with a group of people all facing the same sort of challenges. Reach out to them (remember, “Ask and you shall receive?” Well I’m not making this up, folks. That shit works!) 
Ask them for a boost, a shoulder to cry on, an empty face to yell at, an idea. They’ll help you out and whip your saggy sinking ass into shape. Even if they’re jerks about it, they won’t be, but even if they are, don’t worry about it. You’ve just been given a great opportunity to kill them off in your book!
~ Andrew.

Community

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Welcome to NaNoWriMo Week #2!

At this point you’re either way ahead of the game and feeling good, on pace and still clinging to a sliver of hope that you can keep it up for 20 more days, or you’re behind schedule and looking at the chart on the NaNo website that reads: At this rate you will finish on March 13, 2016.

Regardless of which category you find yourself in I have something that can help.

Community.

No, not the show with Joel McHale and Gillian Jacobs. Actual communities. It turns out these things are everywhere, and they’re all kinds of awesome. Communities, and more specifically the people that are a part of them, are worth their weight in gold, or diamonds, or even in some cases platinum-190.

These are the people, when you say, “I’m depressed” they mean it when whey ask, “Why are you depressed?” and when you respond, “I don’t know” they’re completely okay with that answer. They give you a hug and then ask you if you want to go get a slice of pizza. They’re not trying to fix you. They’re not trying to solve All The Problems. They are people who, when they see that you have the courage to ask for help, they help. They show up on your doorstep, or wherever else you need them to, simply because you asked.

Writing, which is largely a solitary exercise, can wreak havoc on a person mentally. No one else is going to get those words out of your head and onto the page. You’re on your own for that, I’m afraid. But that doesn’t mean you are alone.

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Twitter has dozens and dozens of hashtags you can search to find thousands of people, just like you, churning out words or looking for nuggets of encouragement, support, or distraction. During the month of November the number of hashtags and the number of people using them in tweets increases dramatically. Here’s a sampling of some I keep in mind whenever I need to feel less alone:

#NaNo
#wordsprint
#NaNoWriMo
#wordmongering
#amwriting

There are also a whack of Facebook groups out there for you to join. Just search NaNoWriMo or just about any search term related to writing. You’ll find groups aplenty, and then some. Join ’em all or just join one, but join something – and then participate. The number of people you will find for support and encouragement will blow your mind. 
I took it a step further and once I found a bunch of wonderfully diverse and supportive people on Twitter and Facebook and I invited them to a Facebook group of my own creation. We’re almost at 50 members now and it’s one of the best places there is to be when I’m working on my writing. 
You won’t find any of it unless you look up from your keyboard every now and then and ask. As with most things in life, if you don’t ask you won’t get. So buck up, swallow your pride, find your ouside voice, put up your hand… do whatever it takes to ask. Just ask. Ask. State it categorically: I need a friend. I need some help. I need some encouragement. I need some pizza!

Ask and ye shall receive.
(pizza delivery times may vary)

~ Andrew

The Secret of My Success

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It’s November 2, 2014 and that means thousands of writers all over the world are hunkering down and trying to write a novel-length something before the end of the month. A “novel” is most loosely defined as: 50,000 words blarged onto a page of some kind. Our friends over at Dictionary.com have this to say about it:

“A fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes.”

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an organization that exists to ensure more books get out into the world. They tend to lean more toward my loose definition of the word “novel” and simply ask for writers to jot down 50,000 words (roughly 250 double spaced pages using Times New Roman 12 point font) in one month. Do this and you will, by their definition, be successful. You will “win”, and you will get a fancy certificate to prove it. Here are mine from the last two years:

The one from 2012 ended up being an entirely different book altogether when it was “done done”. That is to say after the 50,000 words ended up on the page I needed to write another 30,000 words to finish the story. Then I changed the name of the book and took out a big chunk of it and wrote another 20,000 words before finishing the first draft for good. 80,000 words total and it still needs a lot of work. 
The one from 2013 saw the 50,000th word hit the page on November 26 and I used the last 4 days to finish off the last 5,000 words from the previous project. So where is it now? Collecting dust. I hate the story. It’s taking forever to just get to the bloody point (pun intended: it’s a serial killer novel). That’s a bit of a lie. I actually like the story but I’m having a hard time actually telling it. So it will sit in a virtual drawer for a while and I’ll revisit it. Some day.
So, the big question is: have I been successful?
Arguments for:
I have two certificates from the Office of Letters and Light that say I was. I have a full on completed first draft of a novel, that’s actually being edited (or was until November rolled around again. I really want another certificate). 
Arguments against:
I don’t, however, have a book for sale on Amazon, no one has read more than two short chapters, and I have not received a penny for either of them (reader tip: that’s how most authors get paid. In pennies. Literally PENNIES a book. Remember that next time you think every writer eventually makes Anne Rice or Stephen King money).
Well here’s the thing: you don’t get to decide, at least not on my behalf.
You don’t. It’s as simple as that. When it comes to my success, you don’t have a say. I frequent Facebook quite a lot, and sometimes dip my head in the Twitter stream and I see lots of stuff that tells me, “Successful people do this!”, “How to succeed at this!”, “This many steps to succeeding at whatever it is!”, and do you know what? It’s mostly just shiny people with good teeth telling you that to meet their definition of success you need to be more like them. 

Ugh.

Now let’s be clear, if you are getting paid by someone to do a particular something then they get to decide. If you have a contract and the terms are laid out plain and simple (or as plain an simple as those things get) then that’s what decides. If you have defined success as some number of sales or some number in your bank account, then other people may be involved (by buying your book and/or giving you money), but it’s still your definition of success.

This year for NaNoWriMo I have defined success differently than in the past. Why? Because I can, that’s why. I am going to try to write a complete novel from a story perspective in at least 50,000 words. That means by the end of the month I will have something that can be edited. No loose ends. No missing chapters. “THE END” boldly written at the bottom. Oh, and I will do one blog post on each of the Sundays in the month of November as well (five in total).

I will get a certificate for the novel and I will proudly display it. It will represent my success this year and no one will be able to take that away.

So go out and define your success and then do whatever you have to do (legally, please) to achieve it. If you’re a writer then use NaNoWriMo however you want to help you down the road to success. Need to edit a few hundred pages? Good! Set daily goals and a monthly total and get to it. Need to finish off that novel you’ve been working on for the past 23 months? Good! Use NaNoWriMo to do it. Want to crank out 30 blog posts in 30 days? Good! You see where this is going?

You’re in the driver’s seat.

You get to decide.

If you will allow me a Yoda moment… In control of your destiny, you are.

Use The Force, Luke. Use The Force.

~ Andrew

It’s In You To Give

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I had a post all queued up about “success” for this week but something happened last Monday and Tuesday that has led me to move that post to next week – the first Sunday of NaNoWriMo. It’s a better post for the start of the 30 day novel writing campaign anyway. This week I want to talk about what happened last week and the profound impact it’s had on me, and how I feel about charity and giving.

A few months ago a Facebook friend of ours had to have surgery. Brain surgery. Real dangerous shit. He’s the real estate agent who drove us around for two days back in 2009 and showed us almost 30 homes and ultimately helped us buy the house we have lived in for the past 5 years. He even did the final walk through so my wife and I wouldn’t have to fly in from Ottawa to do it. We’ve stayed in touch on Facebook since then and followed the changes in his life, as he and his wife had their first child and then proudly announced earlier this year that another one was on the way.

During his surgery he almost died. He started to bleed and wouldn’t stop. There was something like a 1% chance of this happening and it did. It took blood donations from 60 people to save his life. They pumped 12 litres of blood into him to keep him alive. 12 litres. His body only holds 4. He came out of surgery without a single drop of the blood he went in with – 3 times over.

Healing and grateful to be alive he decided to give a little back and hold a blood drive down at the local Canadian Blood Services location in Waterloo and he asked all his friends on Facebook if they would consider donating.

I had low blood iron for the longest time and then was on some pretty fun medications after that and had never donated before. Being med free and with a healthy hemoglobin level right now the only thing stopping me was a healthy fear of needles and queasiness at the sight of blood, which seemed like really lame-ass excuses. So I booked my first ever appointment to donate blood for Tuesday of last week.

Then, in what can only be described as a karmic twist of the Universe, the Monday before my blood donation appointment my wife and I found out that our daughter does not weigh enough to bank her own blood before her surgery. You see, she has severe scoliosis and needs to have spinal surgery in the new year to have metal rods cemented and screwed into her spine to keep it straight. It’s a 10 hour surgery and if not everything goes as planned she’ll need blood. Better it’s her own than someone else’s too. Only now that was not possible.

My wife cannot donate because of some funky rule that prohibits donations from people who lived in France for more than 3 months during certain years. Seeing as she lived there for a year during one of those years she’s ineligible (something about mad cow disease and not being able to test for it until after you’re dead). I will be tested for compatibility (blood type, antibodies, etc…) and if I’m a match I will provide a directed donation to have on hand for my daughter’s surgery. I’ll only be able to donate a couple litres though. A worst case scenario would see her needing more than what I can offer.

That means there’ll be blood on hand from the blood bank. I really hope none of it will be needed, but it’s awfully reassuring that it’s there if it is in fact needed.

So on Tuesday I went in and donated blood for the first time. It was almost completely painless, everyone was very supportive, and I got to have juice and cookies afterwards. My friend was even there talking with all the people donating and thanking them. If I’m being completely honest, I felt really good about it. The best way I can describe it was that I felt like I was making an immediate and profound impact on somebody’s life. I went home afterwards proudly sporting my “First Time Donor” pin and feeling great (though getting out of bed the next morning was a challenge. I was really tired!)

I’ve been telling people this story ever since and am encouraging everyone to go find out if they are able to give blood, and if they are to please donate. It makes a difference. It saved my friend’s life and could very well save my daughter’s.

~ Andrew

P.S. I’m cross posting this on our family scoliosis journey blog. Read up on what we’re going through, and what it’s like to go down this path as part of the Canadian medical system.