May 2013 – Still Working on My Novel

Interference versus Inspiration

May 25, 2013 AJ Niblock

I have conquered the writer’s block created by my indecision surrounding some of the names in my novel. In fact, I decided this week to change 3 of my characters names and after I made that decision, I was able to finish a whole chapter.

I didn’t reach my weekly goal of 5,000 words, but I feel like I’m making enough progress for now. I would say it was a lack of time that kept me from reaching my goal, but that would be a lie. In reality, it was choices that I made. I chose to spend my time doing other things, and so, the novel that will be has suffered. (But on a happier note, I managed to sell my car this week, so I checked that off my to do list).

These last few days as I’ve been writing, I have been thinking about how what I’m reading also seems to affect my writing.

When I read something that I both enjoy and find thought provoking, I tend to write more and feel like the ideas are more easily attainable.

The converse is also true though. If I’m reading something that doesn’t hold my interest and I feel like I’m struggling / forcing myself to read, I don’t feel as creative.

This week I have been reading a book that I didn’t really enjoy. (I am going to post a review of it after I give myself 24 hours to digest it completely, seeing as I just finished it about an hour ago).

I have also been reading some short stories that I wrote during my undergraduate years, and I can actually remember certain books or short stories that sparked my creativity and lead to the pieces I have been re-reading.

One short story in particular that I wrote “Bill’s Sporting Goods Bonanza” is the spawn of too many hours spent reading comic books one weekend.

This was written a long time ago, (2007 I think) and to this day it makes me laugh because it is rather cheesy, but here it is anyway…

Bill’s Sporting Goods Bonanza

Tito Speed, a high school dropout who had just found this great job, mopped the floor of Bill’s Sporting Goods Bonanza very carefully, trying not to miss a spot. He used to be a star football player. He could have had any girl he wanted and he did. He was even thinking of going into modeling after high school, all the girls said he had the muscles for it. Then something happened, he’d gotten into a fight. He’d beaten the boy. He couldn’t even remember what for. They’d just starting arguing, and then he hit the boy. He didn’t realize he could hit that hard. Anyhow, it had gotten him a lot of enemies. He was kicked off the football team, and then he started to fight with his parents, and eventually he’d gotten kicked out. Now he was here, working as a janitor.

Shortly after midnight, Tito finished and was about to lock the store when he remembered he hadn’t locked the storage space. As he went down the stairs, he noticed movement amongst the boxes. He walked to the boxes but saw nothing, he looked around a bit longer, but only found more boxes, and he assumed it was just his imagination. Unbeknownst to him, Arthur Wart had gone up the stairs behind Tito’s back. Arthur was preparing to rob the store blind. He didn’t see Tito in the basement; he thought he’d heard the janitor lock up and so he prepared to make his move.

“Drop the shoes and put your hands up,” Tito said to the back of Arthur’s head.

“I don’t think you want to do that amigo,” said Arthur feeling what felt like a broomstick being shoved into his back. He quickly turned looking Tito in the eyes. Arthur tornado kicked the broom out of Tito’s hands and took off running.

“Oh, a tough guy,” said Tito as he chased after Arthur, who was heading for the indoor sports section.

By the time Tito caught Arthur, Arthur had picked his weapon of choice, a pool stick. Tito skidded to a halt just in time to see it swing by his face. He quickly made for a rack of sticks and chose one for himself.

“It’s like that, huh?” said Arthur as Tito turned around to face him.

“Yeah. Hope you’ve brushed up on your light-saber techniques,” said Tito as he and Arthur took turns swinging at each other. This came to an abrupt halt when Tito’s stick struck Arthur upside the head and broke in half.

Arthur shook his head a little and smiled. “How unfortunate for you,” said Arthur who, aimed his stick like a harpoon at Tito than then took off running to the left, headed for the snow sports section.

Tito followed Arthur. Soon Tito caught up with Arthur, Tito shoved Arthur as hard as possible, sending Arthur into a display of ice skates. “They didn’t make me night janitor for nothing, fool.”

“Perhaps, it was because of your wonderful people skills, loser.” Arthur, thinking quickly, removed the protective covering on one of the ice skates and sent one soaring towards Tito. The skate ripped deep into Tito’s leg causing the floor to become slippery with his blood. This stunned Tito long enough for Arthur to run once again, this time heading for the extreme sports section.

Tito gained some strength back momentarily and grabbed some darts as he headed for Arthur. Arthur had stumbled through the rock climbing gear and found some boots with spikes sticking out the front and quickly put these onto his feet and he high tailed it over to the ski equipment and grabbed some ski poles just as a dart stuck in the back of his thigh.

“Bull’s eye.” Tito threw dart after dart right for Arthur’s head and missed ten times in a row. As Arthur dodged this onslaught, he made for the direction of Tito and started to furiously swing his ski poles. One of them caught Tito in the leg and he fell to the ground and cracked his head on the tile. Arthur took advantage of the situation and kicked Tito in the side, sinking one of the spikes of his boots in between Tito’s ribs.

“You won’t get away with this, you were just a thief before,” Tito said as blood bubbled out of his mouth. “How does that make you feel?”

“Muy bien, how does that make you feel chump?”

“Well, not too good, seeing as I’m your first victim.”

“Not really, I’m just leaving you here to die, I’m not going to kill you, technically, you’ll die from blood lose.” Arthur turned and left grabbing a pair of tennis shoes on his way out.

Tito using all the strength he had to get up and make his way towards Arthur. “Not so fast, I got a croquet mallet here with your name on it,” said Tito as he smashed the mallet against the back of Arthur’s skull splattering blood on the freshly Windexed windows. “Damn it I’m going to have to scrub for an hour to get that off.”

A person walking their dog on the streets had heard the crashing inside the store and used their cell phone to call the police. The police arrived on the scene just in time to catch this last piece of violence.

“Drop the weapon and put your hands in the air! You, call an ambulance. You, handcuff the psycho and get him in the squad car. I’ll radio the chief, he’s gonna want to see this.” The cops quickly got to work and Tito was cuffed and when they realized he too needed medical attention, they rushed him and Arthur to the local emergency room.

Both of the men died from the wounds they sustained that evening. Bill, in a moment of entrepreneurial genius, sold DVD copies of the security footage from that night. He even hired a wanna-be filmmaker to add a soundtrack and subtle sound effects. And luckily for Bill, people love a good fight.

Writing

The Name Game

May 20, 2013 AJ Niblock

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted, and I admit that I have made little progress on my novel this week. I am actually stuck. I hit a block while working through my chapter 1 revision ideas.

I cannot decide what to name the main male character in my novel. When I originally wrote this story I named him Richard M. Deluka, but now I’m not sure I like the name and every time I sit down to write I find myself debating what to rename him rather than making any real progress.

I am pretty sure that I would like to keep the last name as Deluka, but I think I might change the first name. I have also considered the name Stoddard. What do you think?

Basically I have spent the last five days stuck on this problem and I can’t sort it out for myself. This may sound silly for someone who wants to write a novel, but I actually hate creating names for characters. I feel like their names carry with them connotations of past people and characters who they share a name with. Maybe I just need the following…

In fact, the only time in my entire life that I have been sure about a name was after I read Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth. I knew as soon as I read that book that if I ever had a daughter I was going to name her Zadie. (And I did).

In addition to moving past this issue, I am going to create a weekly goal for myself. I am thinking a certain word count would be good. Realistically speaking, I think I can manage 5000 words a week and still finish my novel this year. My ultimate goal is around 100000 words. (I did not pick this number arbitrarily). I did some research a while ago about the length of sci-fi novels and 100000 was the recommended number for a manuscript.

Writing

Narrative Decision

May 15, 2013 AJ Niblock

It hasn’t been quite a week yet since I began reworking, but I am working on my novel again and now I’m determined to finish! (I keep saying this in my head to convince myself every day that it is true).

The creative break through that I had last week still resonates within me and I have been writing, editing, organizing, and thinking critically about the draft I have so far. I normally find it very hard to look at my own work analytically, but the time that we’ve had apart has made it easier to see my work with fresh eyes. It’s been so long since I began this story that I have actually surprised myself while reading it this time. Every once in a while I find myself thinking, “What a good detail to include.” And of course there are the other moments where I keep thinking it doesn’t make sense.

As far as actual progress goes, I haven’t done much adding to my story yet, but I have done some rearranging and serious editing. At the beginning of the week I found myself flummoxed by a narrative choice I made when I originally wrote this story. In my original draft I set my story up as a frame narrative, and I have been reconsidering whether that is the best path for me to take with this particular story. The solution…

When in doubt consult Literature that has stood the test of time!

It just so happens that Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is one of my favorite books and one of the few books I’ve actually reread several times. (This is probably why I chose a frame narrative to begin with). Anyway, as I was saying, I couldn’t decide whether the frame narrative set-up worked for me, so I pulled Conrad off the shelf and reread the first 20 pages or so.

After that, I pulled Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw off the shelf too because I remembered while reading Conrad that James’s novel was also a frame narrative. (By the way, I am not trying to say that my writing is anywhere on the same level as these two great works of Literary brilliance). I just think that seeing the literary device of the frame narrative (also called a framework story) used in other literature helped me to work out what tense and voice to use in my own novel.

So again I say, when in doubt consult Literature that has stood the test of time!

In addition to deciding to keep the frame structure on my novel, I have also been dealing with the doubts that all creative people face. I’m not sure why, but I picked up the book The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron and began to read it.

I’ve had this book on my shelf for years and I haven’t gotten around to reading it. I have occasionally skimmed through it, but this time I actually started reading the introduction. Within the first two pages I came across something that helped me find the energy to refocus my efforts.

“Don’t be distracted by the opinions of others, real or imagined. Don’t worry about getting published – that’s a whole new topic, and one worth investigating if that’s your goal, but it’s a needless and potentially harmful distraction when you’re writing. Don’t worry about ‘getting better’ or fret whether you’re really any good. Read a lot. Write a lot.” (page 3).

That was exactly what I needed.

And then a few pages later, “If you want to write, you must begin by beginning, continue by continuing, finish by finishing. This is the great secret of it all. Tell no one.” (page 7).

I also came across this during the week, and it reminded me that there is magic in creating…

Writing

The Inspiring Pig

May 14, 2013 AJ Niblock

Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unlikely sources… The following is a story I wrote for my daughter about her stuffed pig. Sadly, for the pig anyway, this is a true story.

Thanks for reading! I also illustrated this (please don’t hold it against me).

I am busily working on the draft of my novel, so there will be more to come about my obstacles and triumphs later this week.

Writing

Here I Go Again

May 10, 2013 AJ Niblock

Yesterday I finally took the old draft off the shelf and pulled my notes from various notebooks and stuffed it all in a folder and took myself to the library for some quiet time to read through my original draft.

I have to admit I was a little surprised by how anxious I felt about reading my own work. It’s been almost 2 years since I worked on the first few chapters of my novel. I was thinking about how it’s going to be challenging to simply pick up where I left off. Think about it. Since then I’ve read somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 books. And whether I want it to or not, that much processing of the written word has influenced the way I now think. Before I even read a single word of the old draft, I started to think of ways of changing it or scrapping it and starting a different story.

Instead of being completely intimidated though, I decided to make myself read it.

I read through the first 3 paragraphs and right away I solved a problem I had the last time I was working on it. My novel is what most would consider a sci-fi novel, and the last time I worked on it, I was wondering how to make the solar system useable.

A part of my brain was working yesterday that said, “Who cares if it’s a made up solar system? It’s fiction.”

I think this realization was a direct result of last Saturday being Star Wars day. (I watched all 3 original Star Wars movies. So, even though I’m sure someone has said or thought this before, Thank you, George Lucas, for Endor, Tatooine, and every other made up planet in the Star Wars universe.)

So with that problem solved, I made some notes for later writing and continued reading.

Much to my surprise, only a few more paragraphs after that, I had another idea about adding backstory for my main character. And even more shocking to me, I wrote something.

It’s been two years, but my old story and I are friends again. I didn’t just write a sentence either, I wrote like 4 whole pages. (I have a weird drafting style. I like to work on the computer and with pen and paper. I go back and forth between the two, but I find that I feel most connected with my writing when I do it by hand.)

At this point, I am excited to begin working on my novel again and because I am still basking in the warm afterglow of a creative break through, I feel like my goal of finishing this year is possible.

With that in mind, I am going to work on a schedule or something to keep me on task. For this week, my goal is to read all the way through the old draft and make notes.

Book Review

Review of The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

May 10, 2013May 13, 2013 AJ Niblock

Johnson, Adam - The Orphan Master's Son (2011 ARC) — Johnson, Adam – The Orphan Master’s Son (2011 ARC) (Photo credit: sdobie)

Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel in 2013

Let me start by saying I’m so glad a winner was chosen this year. Last year, whoever makes this decision decided to not pick a book. I admit I was a little irritated. I actually make it a point to read whatever novel wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction each year and usually (but not always) it is one of the best books I read each year.

Last year when a book wasn’t chosen, I read about part of the process that goes into choosing this award. I don’t remember 100% how it all worked, but I will say this, if I were one of the people who read / skimmed 300 plus novels to make nominations, I would have been very annoyed that one was ultimately not chosen, especially because it seemed from what I read that many agreed on what book should have won.

As another side note before I review the actual winner from this year, let me also say that I am amazed sometimes at the books that are picked for this and other awards. I tell people (my students, family, friends, and sometimes anyone who will listen) that Literature with a capital “L” should leave a distinct taste in your head while and when you’re done reading it. To me, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel should do that, and I am willing to admit that some of the ones I’ve read don’t leave me with that distinct Literature flavor.

(Let me add at this point, that I believe there is merit to writing that isn’t Literature, but I do believe there is a difference between thought provoking Literature and stories written to entertain. Most novels are read because they’re entertaining, but Literature should also teach you something. Anything. But definitely something.)

And so without any other digressions, my thoughts on The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson…

SPOILER ALERT: This book is written in two parts. The first part tells the story of a young man, Pak Jun Do, who begins his life as the son of a man who runs an orphanage in North Korea. The second part tells the story of a prisoner who kills a commander and takes his place as one of Kim Jong Il’s trusted men.

The first part of this novel sets the stage for the second part, which I felt was the more poignant part of the tale. Before I gush and rave about the second half, let me provide a general feel of the first part. The story quickly moves through Pak Jun Do’s childhood and into his military career; following this, the story moves quickly into his career as a kidnapper and then takes readers into his time aboard a fishing vessel. He is not on the boat as a fisherman; instead, he is there to intercept as many radio transmissions as possible to report back to the authorities. Pak Jun Do’s time aboard the ship is some of the most formative time in his life. I don’t want to give away the whole story, but one very important event happens to him while at sea — he gets a tattoo of Sun Moon, an actress who Kim Jong Il views as his own personal treasure. Many other life altering events occur for Pak Jun Do in part 1, but I don’t want to give away too much of the superbly complex and masterfully woven together narrative of Pak Jun Do’s life.

Setting is the most important element of this novel. Being set in North Korea makes a story that would be completely unbelievable possible. You will have to read it to truly understand why I say that. Think 1984 (which if you haven’t read, you should. Now. Go to the library or buy it for your kindle.)

The society Pak Jun Do is born into doesn’t care about an individual. Loudspeakers are in every home, and daily everyone is told ridiculous and fantastical propaganda that they accept as truth. Every second of every day of their lives is dictated for them, and only fear of being sent to a prison camp keeps most people in line.

Despite the control exerted over individuals, some, like Pak Jun Do, learn to think for themselves. His ability to see opportunity and think on his feet leads to Pak Jun Do assuming the life of Commander Ga. In any other type of society, this plot wouldn’t work, but because his identity isn’t important to the government, they don’t care that he’s an imposter pretending to be one of the top military leaders.

The second half begins as Pak Jun Do steals the life of Commander Ga…

And, the second half of this novel is what makes this story absolutely amazing. The second half of this novel is beautifully constructed. The first part of the novel is told in a rather straight forward linear fashion. Whereas, the second part is separated by distinct shifts in narrator and point of view. The second half juxtaposes the story as told by Pak Jun Do, who is now posing as Commander Ga, the story as told over the loud speakers as propaganda, and a version of events told from the view point of an interrogator. You might be thinking, how does any of that make sense? I assure you, the various viewpoints of this second half are brilliant.

Pak Jun Do manages to pull off the most unthinkable plot — he takes Sun Moon away from Kim Jong Il forever. I don’t want to get into the plot, especially of the second part, because you should read this book (I mean it), but I will say that this novel addresses some wide ranging themes — personal identity in a nation that sees people as expendable, freedom, and true love. All of this and more is intermingled throughout the tale of Pak Jun Do’s personal struggle for freedom in a nation where no one is ever free.

Ultimately, this book is an important read for our time. Our current political tensions with North Korea make this book worth reading. Even though it is a work of fiction, it provides insight about a culture many Americans will never understand.

Writing

Lifetime Goals

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013 AJ Niblock

I am starting this to help me achieve and remain motivated to finish one of my lifetime goals — to write a novel. I have actually started writing a novel and a novella, both of which remain unfinished. I am one of those people who every year on New Year’s Day I sit down and write up some goals I would like to accomplish for the next 12 months. This year in addition to my yearly goal of losing weight and paying off debt, I added the goal of finishing my novel.

This may not be a shock to many of you, but it is already May. I admit I have yet to write one word on my novel this year, and I still intend to finish it. I am going to share with anyone who is willing to read my blog and various ramblings all about my struggle to write my first novel and hopefully finish by December 31, 2013. (I say my first because I would like something to come of all this and hopefully there would be a second novel, even if only my mother reads both of them.)

In addition to working on my personal creative writing goals, I would like to share about the things I’m reading. A couple of years ago I decided to add to my “To Read List” every novel that has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and every novel that has won the Man Booker Prize. I find it fascinating what novels win these very prestigious prizes. I will be posting my thoughts on the ones I have read so far. I don’t strictly read the novels on those lists, and in fact, I try to read a little of every genre of fiction, with the exception being romance novels. So feel free to read my book reviews, but be warned, I will probably give away plot spoilers. I would also like to share my various thoughts as a mom and someone who over thinks just about everything.