October 27, 2014

BYOT XVII

Once again, Bring Your Own Theater graced my life this weekend.  Once again, it was amazing and given life by so many talented, brave, beautiful people.  And once again I wrote a ten minute play in a couple hours and then taught math to elementary school kids the next day while exhausted.  The kids didn't notice. 

I was concerned this time because I felt as though I didn't flush out the characters as much as I would have liked.  I don't think I differentiated them as much as I could have, and that's something I prided myself on in previous plays. 

This play was a different beast.  The heart of the story was driven more by the situation than by the characters.  And I really wanted none of the characters to learn anything or grow or change, so then of course, none of them did.  I think because of that, it felt shorter.  Snappier.  Less of a pivotal moment in a character's life and more of a stupid thing that happened once.

Which, I've decided, is fine.  It worked.  The actors and director were amazing and they did brilliant things.  The ending I'd written was weak.  I knew it was weak.  But they made it work, given great stage direction decisions and a change of props.  Also, when the father was telling one of his many stories, the kids would mouth along with him, doing the same hand gestures as if they'd heard it a million times before.  Brilliant!  That gave it history and tied the characters together.

So now that I've alerted you to all the nit-picky things I don't like, here's the script for you to read!  Enjoy.


October 3, 2014

mini NaNo

I love National Novel Writing Month (NaNo).  I love the weird, weird things people say on the forums.  I love the charts of your progress.  I love how people who've never written before will go, "Yeah!  I can write a novel!" and they'll fly with that confidence for at least a few days.  The word count part isn't hard for me, and I always have some idea of something to write.

So it took me a while to realize why I so often "fail" at NaNo.

It's the "all new content" part that trips me up.  I have to be writing constantly, or I feel like I will explode.  So the stars have to align where one project ends on Oct 31st so I can start another on Nov 1st for NaNo. 

This is the problem I had last year.   I was pretty close to done with edits on a previous novel when NaNo rolled around, and I put those edits on hold to write something new.  I got about 30,000 words into it, then missed my old project too much and had to go back to it.  At the time, I said that I'd said everything I wanted to say with the new project, and it just ended up not being 50,000 words.  But I'm now thinking that was an excuse to not abandon my baby. 

I want to do the Chicago Center for Paranormal Support story for NaNo this November, since I haven't made all that much progress on it.  But the reason I haven't made much progress is because I've been distracted by a stupid, useless novel that's like a big, guilty pleasure. 

I need to finish it before November.

And I figure that I don't really have 50,000 words left to write on this thing, and I do have a full month.  So let's mini NaNo this sucker! 

The problem though with this is that I write out of order, and getting chapters that are half written in shape means that I'm actually adding very few words to my word count total.  I'm in that quilting and ironing phase, making sure things I wrote a while ago still work, that I haven't repeated myself, that they flow together.  Wednesday, when I started mini NaNo, I made loads of progress, spent three hours on it, and then checked how my total word count had grown.

...I'd added 500 words.

It looked super, but still.  500 words?  If time and word output are proportional, to hit 1,666, I'd have to work for like 9 hours.

So to fix this, I'm looking chapter by chapter, and seeing how much of it I've got in shape from the beginning to where I have the first gap that needs filling.  Suddenly, I wrote so much more!  I'd been working long sections into place, and once one's in place, that's like 1,000 words right there. 

And this is how I'm spending October: trying to get this thing done.  Follow along with the #miniNaNo tag on my twitter.

October 1, 2014

Write for Twenty Minutes

Recently, there was a discussion on NaNoWriPod (check it out on iTunes) about how to split up your writing time to encourage productivity.  If you write for an hour, are you really writing for an hour?  Or are you writing for thirty minutes, then puttering around for thirty?

My favorite recommendation for this is a method called "20/10s."  You work for 20 minutes (setting a timer) then take a 10 minute break (setting a timer) then repeat as needed.  Now, this method comes from UnFuck Your Habitat a fantastic site designed to help you clean your house.  The idea is to avoid marathons--hours of non-stop cleaning--and instead break it into reasonable chunks.  You don't realize until you try it how much you can clean in twenty minutes.  I often recomend this method to my students (without telling them where it came from because avoiding profanity outweighs the failure to site my sources.)  They can study for 20 minutes, then take a break, then come back and study more.  That way they don't end up staring at their text books, zoning out and not not really benefiting.

It ties into another theory when it comes to studying: separate your work and your break.  By keeping them disconnected (I mean physically.  Move to a different space) you're more ready to switch into work mode when you sit down to work.  You're also more forgiving of yourself when you take breaks.  You don't have to think, "Oh no.  I'm not working.  I'm so bad," because you can think, "Okay.  Here's my 10 minute break and then I'll get back into it."  It helps you work harder, and party harder!

The problem is, that in any of these situations (cleaning, studying, writing) you might get to the end of 20 minutes and think, "I can't stop now.  I'm on a roll.  This whole scene has unfolded before me and if I stop I'll lose my momentum."  And that's fine!  Don't stop.  Do what you want!  The point is to give yourself permission to stop when it gets hard.  Don't force yourself to work for two hours.  Force yourself to work for twenty minutes, which is completely doable.

My second favorite recommendation is Write or Die.  You set a time limit and a word count goal, and just type, type, type.  If you stop for too long, the background turns read, and then there are horrible noises until you start writing again.  I works really well for just regurgitating stuff, but not so well if you want to stop and research things, or read over what you wrote, or edit, or talk on g-chat.  But, boy howdy, I can get 500 words down like nobody's business.  I like the "old and busted" version because it's free and looks simpler and I really don't need a bunch of fancy options.  Also, I need to remember to turn off the sound on my computer when I work at coffee places.  For me, the red background is bad enough.

And it works really well with 20/10s!  Or, in this case, 30/10s, because you can't set the timer for 20 minutes.

Now, a lot of people hate Write or Die.  I can understand.  For me it works really well.  So if you're more in the mood for positive reinforcement, there's Written Kitten, which gives you a picture of a cat for every 100 word you write.  Actually, you can set how many words will give you a picture.  It's pretty cool, but not as motivating for me.