No Nano this year for me

NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) is a good way to jump-start a novel.  Write 50,000 words in the month of November and you win a certificate or something.  I completed my new novel last year, NaNo 2011, after weak starts in 2009 and 2010.  I considered doing NaNo 2012 with a new idea that is just starting to crystallize.  Then I decided with everything else going on this November in addition to my usual complaint about NaNo-Thanksgiving, I would bow out.

I've been doing my part to get out the vote this year, phone banking, registering voters, social media, and this week I went into hiding until Tuesday. I was just about burnt out. 

And then there is my annual college friends' trip.  We usually do it in the summertime, and we take turns hosting.  This year is being hosted by our friend who lives in New York City.  Fortunately, the last I heard, she didn't lose power during the storm.  But the five of us won't be piling into her place anyway.  She planned for us to go to her family homeplace in rural Pennsylvania.  The nearest airport is Pittsburgh.  These are my friends who survived hitch-hiking around Europe in the 60's.  We know about roughing it, just haven't done much of it in the last 40 years.  And we're watching the weather for the possibility of a Nor'easter.  With any luck we'll get out of there and back home well before Thanksgiving.

So NoNo NaNo this year.

I'm Done!

I reached my goal in NaNoWriMo. No, I didn't complete writing 50,000 words in the month of November, 2011 and I won't get a certificate for winning the challenge. I did what I set out to do, which was to complete the novel I started in NaNo2009 and NaNo2010. I reached the end of the story, and I did it before my Thanksgiving company arrived, with a few days to spare.

I will say that this time NaNoWriMo was a life-changing experience. I've never done that kind of heads-down pounding out words, most of which had something to further the plot of my story. Sometimes my characters went off in directions I had not planned for them, but they and I grew in the process. We grew so much that I changed my working title again. This one I'm not ready to reveal, but it has more grit than the first two titles I tried.

I have backed up this one, my first draft and don't intend to even look at it again until January. I have Thanksgiving and Holiday parties to get through before I'll be ready for the tearing apart and rewriting of my Nano-stuff. Wish me luck.

November is a hard month!!

Yes, I will be doing the Nano-thing again this year. NaNoWriMo. (The National Novel Writing Month)

I did it for the first time in 2009, churning out 7000 words. I thought that was pretty good for a first timer, considering that November is hard. The last two years we have done a cruise in November, and then there is Thanksgiving. Last November I wrote about 2000 more words on the same novel. That's no better than I do without Nano to prod me on. I won't volunteer to do Thanksgiving this year. Last year we had 25 family members with us for dinner. This year the cruise will be in December.

Once you sign up, Nano sends regular emails to nag you into doing that thing. Last year I deleted a bunch without reading them. I promise myself I'll do better this year. With my declining memory, I need to finish before I forget where this story is going. It's an old people's internet romance. You know...old boy meets old girl, somebody has a heart attack, somebody winds up in the hospital. Old boy loses old girl to a middle-aged guy. Old girl forgets her meds. And have you noticed this year how many stories lead to Brazil? Somehow there will be a happy ending.

I'll have to appoint a designated nagger to get me moving. Any volunteers? Can I do 1000 words for each of 20 days in November? I would have to stay away from Facebook. That would get me to the finish line.

Catchall Simile

When did AS HELL get to be the simile for all time?

According to Bossip Alicia Keys was in Central Park this morning, looking as pregnant as hell???

Gorgeous as hell? Hungry as hell? Hot as hell....that one I'll take. But cold as hell???

This comes from published writers. I won't name names. Can somebody give me some better similes than hell?

I thought Alicia looked radiant with her baby-bump.

Conversation with a youngun

"Grandma, have you been to North Dakota?"

"No, but I've been to South Dakota?"

"You've been to South Dakota?" Then turning to Grandpa,"Grandpa, have you been to North Dakota."

Grandpa says, "Yes."

Grandma interjects, "Grandpa has been to all fifty states."

Youngun is surprised and impressed. "All fifty states? But have you been to Canada?"

"Yes"

"How about South America?"

"Yes"

"Europe?"

"Yes"

"Antarctica?"

"No, I haven't been to Antarctica."

"How about Asia?"

"No."

Now the youngun thinks he's on a roll. How about Africa?

"Yes."

"Hmmm...but have you been to Nigeria?"

Grandpa chuckles, "No."

"My uncle John is from Nigeria. Grandpa, have you been to any other planets."

Grandpa and Grandma chuckle. "No, we haven't been to other planets."

Youngun says, "There is such a thing as aliens."

Grandma asks, "Who told you that?"

"Nobody. I just know."

???????????

Material for NaNoWriMo 2010.

I Signed Up for NaNoWriMo...what have I done?!?!?

I did it. I thought about it last year and the year before. This time I did it, but I'm going to stay anonymous. If you see a saraphen out there, it's not me....LOL.

It's the National Novel Writing Month. I have pledged to write something during the month of November. The goal is pounding out 50,000 words by brute force, over the course of the month, and maybe a story will be in there worth polishing.

You do the writing online, on the NaNoWriMo website, so they can monitor your progress and at the end they can verify that you haven't copied the same word over 50,000 times or the same sentence a bunch of times. It's free to join at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ They ask for a $10 donation. (Maybe by the end of November I'll stifle the urge to say Na-No-Ne-Ne-No-Nu)

So all my friends who have a novel just waiting to be written, this is your chance. I won't promise I will make it to the finish line, but if I don't start I know I won't.

In time for my sister's birthday!!!

FOREWORD

Family stories are easily lost, especially in these times when children leave home and move far and wide from the place where it all began. Family reunions are times when the old stories may be repeated, but the young ones often don’t listen. Some stories are never retold because of embarrassment or feelings of shame, and the failure to recognize that regardless of how dour our circumstances may have been, that was where we came from. Even our mixed heritage should be a source of our strength.

My siblings and I often heard the stories of our grandmother, Mattie. My sister LaVerne, as the oldest had the foresight to write down the story as told by our Mother before she died in 1958. LaVerne gave us all a typed copy that in my case was read and filed in a drawer of assorted family documents.

LaVerne went further in writing her own story of growing up as the first child of Robert and Georgia Gordon. She worked on it nearly fifty years as she remembered bits and pieces of all the places they lived and the churches Daddy served in his ministry through Georgia, Florida, West Virginia, and Virginia.

As the years passed, LaVerne developed decreasing patience with her computer, and declining memory of the names of people and places, until I took it upon myself to intervene. I hijacked her manuscript with the intention of crafting it into a story to be passed on to our progeny.

I found, however, the story needed no crafting, but it was missing the ending; I hadn’t been born yet. I called on my brothers to fill in the gaps to get us to Petersburg where I was born. Their tales of growing up as four brothers who followed their big sister, tales of adventure and mischief, were their story, not LaVerne’s. I wanted to keep LaVerne’s voice. No one else could have told of the “halcyon period” of our parents. No one else could express Mother’s motives for marrying “that yellow man.”

And so begins the Saga of the Gordons of Tallahassee.

S.G.W.

The Prequel?

One of the things on my New Year's todo list was to transcribe by sister LaVerne's book/novellas that contain a wealth of family history, and get her notes back to her. Some of it was typed, but she had a hard-drive crash a couple of years ago, and all she salvaged was the paper copy. I have completed scanning all of it, including the hand-written notes. I did the OCR thing on the typed pages.

I have read a some of it as I have been editing what the OCR gave me. It turns out to be a great story of survival of black people in the early days following slavery. Our mother told it to LaVerne over 50 years ago when she was fighting breast cancer. I have a picture in my mind of the two of them sitting under a tree in our back yard, Mother talking, LaVerne taking notes. I'm hoping that if I dig through my old photos, I can find something, some part of it that I can craft into that picture in my head.

I'm going to let this story lead me to where it wants to go. My sister will be 82 on her birthday next month. (I was born the year she graduated from college.) She and her husband are in relatively good health for a couple their age. LaVerne has the usual assortment of cardio-vascular ailments that plague all my siblings. Just before Christmas she was misdiagnosed and given the wrong medication that sent her into a downward spiral for a couple of weeks. It made her start talking about dying, but once she, on her own, decided to stop taking that medication she was back to herself in a couple of days.

Still, I'm going to try to get her to fill in as much of the story as I can. Maybe I can get it onto Lulu.com before her birthday, and give it to her as a gift.

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A nice rejection

I really feel encouraged by this agent who took about 10 weeks to respond. By email:

Hi Sarah:

I am so sorry for how long I have been with your memoir. I was so torn— as I think you are a fabulous writer— and your story is compelling, but I am afraid I am not enthusiastic enough to feel I would be the best advocate for it. I know you will find success with it, and I wish you all the best,

Onward and upward. That kinda makes my day.

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Changing Names

I had started out writing my memoir giving fictitious names to some of the main characters. I kept family members' real names. There were a lot of people who only appear on a couple of pages, that I had kept their real names.

At the writer's conference, we were advised to either get permission to use people's real names or change names and places. The person who lead that session writes mostly biography, notably Voices and Silences by James Earl Jones and Penelope Niven, and she recently published a memoir of her own. She wasn't taking questions from the class, but we could write her questions that she will answer by email.

Today I have been doing a series of FIND...REPLACE using WORD. Then when I go back and read the changes, I'm having a hard time remembering who those people are now with the changed names. (Who the heck is Bernard?) What I'm wondering is even if I change all names and all places, anybody who went to high school or college with me, will be able to piece together some of who is who. That's assuming of course that anybody reads it...ROFL. There were only a couple of people that I wasn't nice about. They will recognize themselves, but possibly only a few other people in the world will even care. And since most of it happened 40 - 50 years ago, a lot of the people are dead, or won't remember anyway.

If I get a real publisher, they will have to advise me. If I publish myself, then I would be subject to being sued. That could work in my favor with increased sales...LOL

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Re-write?

I attended the NC Writer's Network Conference in Winston-Salem over the weekend. This was my first writer's conference. Not that I have anything to compare it with, but I thought it was excellent. They had a variety of session in different tracks to choose from.

There were choices for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, screen writing, playwriting, publishing, something for everybody.

My choices:

The Perfect Pitch: Pitching your Manuscript

Step Away from the Desk: What to expect from a Publisher

Masks and Mirrors: Writing a Memoir

DIY Career Building Through Blogs and Self-Publishing

When Short Stories Don't Work and Why

All of the Faculty were people working in their respective fields, whether publisher's, editors for publishers, best-selling writers, or agents. In addition there were published authors chatting over morning coffee, and for evening sessions. I missed the Friday Night Opening to avoid an additional night in the hotel. The opening keynoter was Jill McCorkle. The Saturday dinner speaker was Robert Morgan. Both of these writers, as well as most of the faculty, have their roots in North Carolina. Robert Morgan was signing his newly released biography, BOONE. He also read some rather humorous passages from the life of Daniel Boone.

All of the seminars I attended were right on time for me. The DIY Career Building was most enlightening. Two of the speakers were "accidental authors" who first built a following with their blogs. Biodiesel Activist Lyle Estill started his Energy Blog out of his own personal passion, and he was happy having a small following of similar-minded people. When some national energy activist linked to his blog, his following soared, and a publisher came to him with an offer to publish his blog in a book.

Joseph Anderson started his blog as Notes to Mom while traveling through India. The internet would provide his mother with more up-to-date information on his travels than he could expect from using the postal system. I guess Mom shared it with friends who told friends, and before he knew it he had a following. He became another unexpected author.

Mur Lafferty is a self-described sci-fi geek, pod-caster, and mom. She syndicates her sci-fi novellas through weekly free pod-cast installments. She developed such a following of listeners who got impatient for the next installment that she published and sold her novellas in print.

Amy Tiemann has a doctorate in Neurosciences from Stanford Univ, but wrote MOJO MOM as the "missing manual for motherhood." Her lack of credentials as a parenting expert launched her into self-publishing and creation of a web-site that established her as an authority. She has been interviewed on the Today Show, and now is a professional blogger on parenting and technology for cnet.com.

----------------

The last session I had at the conference was Manuscript Mart. I submitted the first 20 pages of my manuscript to be read and critiqued by a literary agent. I'm still digesting that whole experience. The trouble is, there are two books in my book. There is the safe part of my story, some of the things I have blogged about, that are moderately interesting. And then there is the other part that I haven't told in my blogs, the conflict, the compelling part that makes my story unique. The compelling part is kind of buried in the safe part....the backstory. Now I need to strip away some of that backstory and cut to the chase.

I was thinking of trashing the first two chapters. Now I'm thinking how I can salvage them with more personality development in the backstory.

It's not an easy story to tell, but I'm getting better about my one-line pitch:

A coming-of-age-in-the-sixties black, single, pregnant, living in Munich for a junior year abroad...story. How does that grab you?

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Permissions - the final piece

I decided to remove the lyrics of two of the songs I wanted to use as chapter epigraphs (new word I learned in this process). The third one, I just had to go for. It took pulling together the representatives for the two collaborators. It all came together today for $87.50. Those 3 lines resonate through the whole book.

I don't have permission to print them here, but you know what they are.



Main Entry: ep·i·graph

1 : an engraved inscription
2 : a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

I got Permission!!!

"We are pleased to advise you that our overseas client has approved your in context intended use of the two lines of MORE. This will be gratis following your disclosure of the name and address of the publisher involved, but for the present will not be authorized for private or self-publication without further details such as quantity of printings and location of intended distribution and name and address of administrator. We wish you good luck on your submission."

I heard from the representative for the other 3 songs. They want a minimum of $100 each!! There goes my soundtrack.


Since that song, "More" was way before some of you were born, here are a couple of old videos.

Getting Permission

This is the continuing saga of getting permission to print in my book a few lines of song lyric from each of 4 songs. It's not enough to print the names of the writers, since I will be charging money for my book.



I knew going in that the hard part would be finding who has the rights to sign permission. One song can have multiple collaborators who are members of different unions, have different managers.


I used this site as a reference www.copyrightkids.org/permissioninformation.htm and I used their sample for my model letter.

If I don't get permission, or they want too much money for permission, I'll just remove the lines from the book.


On August 23, I sent off nine letters to cover 4 songs. I included my phone number, email address, and a SASE so they can choose their communication medium. I've gotten phone calls and mail, saying I need to contact a different person. I got an email from Richard Marks' attorney, saying that I should get permission from Luther Vandross' people first since Marks owns only 25% of the rights to "Dance with my Father."


Then I got 3 emails from one person referencing 3 songs (including Dance with My Father) whose rights are managed by the Hal Leonard Corporation. The guts of the email says this:


This is in response to your request concerning permission to reprint the lyrics of our copyrighted composition(s) listed above. The request has been sent to our print agent, Hal Leonard Corporation for further processing.


In order to grant you permission for this use, Hal Leonard will first need to receive ALL of the following information:


-Title of publication
-Author
-Publication date
-Retail Selling Price
-Unit size of printing
-Territory and language(s) of distribution
-A brief summary of the content of publication
-Galley sheet(s) or manuscript page(s) on which lyric appears.

Anything you have sent to EMI has been forwarded to Hal Leonard Corp. If any of the above items were missing, please send them directly to Hal Leonard Corp.


OK, I have assembled that stuff to mail tomorrow. If anybody wants more than a symbolic amount of money ($1) for the rights, I'll back off. Meanwhile, I'll hang in there.