In Which Paolini Gives Writing Advice for NaNo'rs

[kippurbird]

As part of Nano, the organizers have solicited and gotten published authors to write pep talks for the writers gunning for 50k.

One of them is Christopher Paolini. His is written very earnestly, he really wants to be helpful, but misses the mark in a lot of cases.

Shall we take a look at it?



NaNoWriMo Participants,

No doubt you are currently hard at work on your novel for this year’s contest. As someone who once wrote 200,000 words in three and a half months, I know exactly what you’re going through.

No doubt indeed. It's nice he's relating.

So. Here’s my advice based on over 10 years of working to deadlines.

First, writing your book is going to be difficult. Know this. Accept this. Embrace this. It may be fun as well, but make no mistake, what you’re attempting is a major undertaking.

Dur. Unless you've got a really good idea... and it over takes your original one and runs away with your inspiration... what? *coughs* Um... *shuffles off into the corner*

Second, pace yourself. Because it’s going to be difficult, you don’t want to burn out. Save the late nights and early mornings for the last week, week-and-a-half of your effort. You may be writing at a quick jog, but don’t break out into an all-out, fear-driven, there’s-a-bear-behind-me pace until it’s absolutely necessary. Conserve your creative strength. You’re going to need it. (On a related note: avoid making big decisions not related to your writing. A person can only make so many good decisions over the course of the day, and you want them to go into your novel.)

Conserve your creative strength? Is there a limit of how much creativity you can use in a month? What if you only like writing in the early mornings or late evenings? What if that's the only time you can write because of say work? Children? School? I know that I usually get really going around 9-10 at night, personally. So where does that leave me? Picking away at the keyboard during the day? You know some people don't have the luxury to sit around and write all day. What if you only have time to write on the weekends? Then you're going to be doing an all out mad writing race.


Third, if you haven’t already, think about where your story is going next. If you’re going to be flying headlong through the pages, it’s good to have a road map. That said, don’t be afraid to deviate from your plan if a good idea strikes you during the process.

Not bad. Not good. It's basically 'write stuff' and see what happens.

Fourth, if you’re stuck, go for a 15-minute walk. If you don’t feel like going, that means you’ve been sitting at the computer/typewriter/paper for too long. Get up and get the blood flowing. It’ll make all the difference.

No... generally if you don't feel like going it means you're bored/lazy/it's cold outside/snowing outside/ the middle of the night...Though I will admit that I, myself, will take walks and try to work out plot. So, it's not necessarily a bad idea, it's just the follow up doesn't make sense. This seems to be a common problem. Good idea. Bad follow up.

Fifth, don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, or formatting. Those are easy to fix. Instead, worry about pacing, characters, and setting. Get those right, and no one will care that you put a comma in the wrong place.

Um. You really shouldn't have to worry about that normally. I mean, it is something you should have learned how to do in school and it's second nature. Also, I would hope that you would have someone go over your novel before you send it out. To make sure a. that it's good and makes sense and b. that all the grammatical mistakes have been fixed. But generally speaking...


Sixth, a casual tone (like this letter) is quicker and easier than formal. Nevertheless, use whatever voice best suits your story.

I'm sure a casual tone would work so well for that Gothic romance ... But really? Use whatever voice is good for your story? You mean I shouldn't use dark noir for my lighthearted comedy?! Amazing!

Seventh, tea is a big help. Black or green tea in the morning—Lapsang Souchong is a favorite of mine—cinnamon in the afternoon. Why cinnamon? For some reason, it helps keep my mind sharp. Don’t have black or green tea later in the day unless you’re in your last big push, then you can have a second in the afternoon, when you start to flag.

What if you don't like tea? What if you despise green or black tea? What about coke or coffee? Please don't recommend food products to help writing. People have their own idiosyncrasies when it comes to food and writing. Or food in general. That's not helpful..


Eighth, try to relax when you can. Watch a movie, have dinner with your family, blow up enemies on an Xbox 360 or PS3. Just don’t think about the book.

Try to relax when you can? Why? Do you think people will chain themselves to their desks? But again, seems a bit on the obvious side.


Ninth, try to reach for your word-count goal every day. But, don’t feel bad if you get less on a certain day. You will get less on some days. Trust you’ll also get far more on other days.

Again, a bit on the obvious side. This is something people generally do. That's what the nifty word count tracker is for on the stats page.

And tenth… don’t give up! You can do this! It may not seem like it day to day, but as long as you keep putting words on the page, you will get to the end of this. And who knows? People may actually like what you’ve written. And that’s the best reward of all.

Or they're just saying it so they don't hurt your feelings. ... what? It is possible..

Fellow authors, I salute you. Luck in battle.

Okay, now he's just trying to be... dramatic. "Luck"? in battle. What sort of luck? Good luck? Bad luck? Mediocre luck? You can't just say luck. You have to indicate what kind of luck you want the person to have. Luck is just stupid. .. Yes, this is bothering me. Mostly because of the word play possibilities when used to doom characters.

– Christopher Paolini

Kippur



So, those are my thoughts on his advice. Right or wrong. THEY ARE MY OPINION.

Comments

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

LOL. He has to point out that he wrote a bajillion words in oh so short a time.

I wrote a 255,000-word book in five weeks once, Paolini. Beat that, you tree killer.

I'm not sure what kind of "deadlines" he was writing to ever, but apparently he's a very slow writer and it's taken more than three years between his books. Don't see how that suggests he knows how to run for the finish line. Though obviously I don't know what went on behind the scenes.

The advice on "voice" and "casual" and all that stuff is totally worthless. Especially considering he doesn't know beans about how to write casually. His prose is TORTURED.

DRINK TEA OMG. This is so silly.

I've never worked with a word count goal in my life. Nevernevernever. Which is probably why I don't want to do NaNo. Hitting a word count is meaningless to me. Trying to CUT words to not have a book that scares people is what I have to aim for at the end.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I would assume editorial deadlines. Of course GRR Martian was apparently worse. I guess it takes a certain kind of person who can write quickly and well.

How do you manage to write so much so fast without killing your hands/wrists? I did 50k in two weeks and my left arm has just gone up and given up on me.

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I've never had any trouble at all with typing a lot. I regularly type about 35,000 words a day.

Probably has something to do with two things: One, one of my first jobs was working as a chat room mod for a kids' chat on Kids' WB!, and most of what I did to yell at people was not automated, so I got a lot of practice; and two, when I learned to type in ninth grade, my teacher made this speech about "correct" typing posture (for hands, wrists, back, and feet), and said we would be very sorry one day if we got lazy and broke from it . . . I took her words to heart and type sitting in the chair with wrists lifted, back straight, at the edge of the chair with my feet flat on the floor like a musician, and to this day despite all the typing I do I have no complaints. (I type 120+ words per minute.)

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for the creativity aspect, but he is actually right about conserving your big decisions.

Studies have shown that you only have so much decision-making juice, and every decision (major or minor) uses it up. As it runs out, you start making bad decisions.

They call it "ego depletion"

I doubt he knows this though. Probably just coincidentally lucky

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, but this is NaNo we're talking about. It's better to make real life decisions than NaNo decisions.

[mangraa.livejournal.com]

Looks like someone wants to brag about how sophisticated he is by drinking tea. And not just some run-of-the-mill Earl Grey, but some weird shit I bet few non-tea drinkers know about. He could have mentioned how cinnamon's "bite" helps him focus, and perhaps finding something which has the same effect (Dr. Pepper? Pickles?) might help others. But no, it's just fancy-pantywaist-lad bragging.

I dare you to find any general or other person in charge of mounting a battle who would ever say, or not be irked by hearing, "good luck!" I assume good since that's likely what he meant, but he couldn't go 5 characters over his limit for the day. Battles are about _strategy_ above all else, which is "obvious", but it just seems childish and flippant/downplays the seriousness of the task at hand to say "[good] luck." Why not "Sally forth", "Go kick some ass", or anything else a bit more optimistic?

Anyway, this is kind of an interesting look into how Pao may mentally process the concept of writing or something. Something to explain some of the more egregious displays of poor planning or objective contradiction I've seen pointed out in sporks (mainly KBird's). If the analyses are accurate, then I guess Pao was hoping he'd luck out and barely be able to just stumble through the narrative and hope the readers would just overwrite old "facts and rules" with whatever is presently being presented.

I used to be ambivalent about this guy since I could give a shit, but now I'm starting to feel a tingle of annoyance and disdain for both his writing as well as those readers who fail to see (or deny the existence of) these mistakes. I guess Pao just lucked out, eh?

[Typed on phone, please forgive errors]

[hekateras.livejournal.com]

I agree - the bit about luck and strategy was especially true. As someone who has only recently (and I'm being optimistic here) left the shaky self-esteem stage of teenagehood and casual bragging, I think I can spot another person trying to subtly show off here. Just casually mention an obscure interest or taste in an effort to sound interesting, yeah. As kippurbird noted, there's a lot of failing to empathise with other people and account for diversity - in other words, realise that, say, not everyone likes tea, or that not everyone has time to write during the day. As a result, his advice just turns out to be talking about what's worked for HIM - even when giving advice, he ends up talking about himself.

He seems like such a nice guy, stuck perpetually in the happy enthusiastic fun puppy stage of writing. It's such a shame that his development of his skills has been crippled by his early success like that. But his writing advice is useless to anyone who's not a complete (as in, never wrote stuff outside of school essays before) newbie in writing, and potentially harmful to anyone who is.


For a breath of fresh air, let us quote something from Robert Louis Stevenson on writing, from this page: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/nanowrimo-the-fastest-writers_n_1079670.html#s457919&title=Robert_Louis_Stevenson


"Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. In every properly constructed sentence there should be observed this knot or hitch; so that (however delicately) we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the successive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first suggested and then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness."


Ahhhh, Stevenson. Now there was a man who understood that there was more to writing than a "road map" and a thesaurus.

[hekateras.livejournal.com]

...Though, as an artist, I'd have to say that even though visual art is not a "temporal" medium, as he calls it, writing and painting feels surprisingly similar. There's still that element of trying to create some pattern in broad strokes and then fine-tuning things, guiding the eye, etc... Only where it's things like colour and shape in art, it's pacing in literature that he's talking about.

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

I kinda agree. In another interview he twisted around to deliberately bring up how he wrote some of his manuscript with a quill pen and inkwell or whatever. If that helps you get in the zone and makes you feel like a badass authentic SCRIBE, fine, but don't go telling everybody about it trying to make yourself look sophisticated. It's annoying.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Earl Grey tea is very sophisticated. Captain Picard drinks it. You can't get more sophisticated than that. ^_^

I wouldn't know about generals, but I know in my own personal daily life if someone is going to offer me luck, I'd like to know what kind.

It is an interesting look at how he thinks, which is very important in understanding him. It really does at time, despite his massive outlines, feel like he's stumbling along.

[falconwhitaker.livejournal.com]

Oh bless his little cotton socks e-e He's trying so hard to be helpful, isn't he?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

He does. Which makes it worse, in a sad sort of way.

[reverie-shadow.livejournal.com]

Uh yeah, a piece of me just died while reading this, haha.

Is it just me or is there something incredibly annoying and condescending about that "As someone who once wrote 200,000 words in three and a half months, I know exactly what you’re going through" statement?

Iunno, I'm only failing NaNo this year on account of work and having a life in between that. Which sucks, but so long as I keep up with writing, I don't think it matters how many words I puke out this November.

Besides. Paolini is the last person I want to hear a pep talk about writing from.

[thecapillary.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one annoyed by this pep talk. The one that did bother me most was the "conserve your creative energy" line. For most people it still remains that they write when they can, and if they don't pounce on the abundance at that moment, they could lose it. ...Or maybe that's just me.

[silverphoenixx.livejournal.com]

His condescending attitude makes me angry. His "Of course, I wrote this huuuuge amount of words in only a few months" bit at the beginning just sets the tone. The rest of his advice reads like he's talking to grade schoolers about what to do to prepare for their first big test. Drink tea? Really? I think most of us know how to keep ourselves awake, Paolini. "I salute you" and "Luck in battle" are just...stupid. And pretentious.

[whereshadowsdie.livejournal.com]

I believe I can sum up everything I felt about this article in a few, short words.

Go die, Paolini.

Peace, Jazz, and Good Laptops,
~WhereShadowsDie

14-year-old writer, struggling through madness, half-blindness, and marching band, all without breaking a sweat.