Thank you, Nathan Lowell
How often do you get to read a work of fiction that, once the last word on the last page crosses your brain, fills you with satisfaction? This is what happened to me when I finished listening to the podiobook Quarter Share, by Nathan Lowell. 
Ishmael Wang is orphaned when his mother dies. He is forced to leave the planet they lived on because the corporation which runs it had no place for him after his mother’s death. Backed into a corner, Ishmael signs on to a spacefaring merchant vessel and tries to find his berth in an environment as alien to himself as his home was familiar. On board the merchant vessel Lois McKendrick, he works to integrate himself into the crew and the daily routine aboard a solar clipper. There are regular safety drills, long periods of standing watch, hours of work in the mess, and weeks of travel in regular space before the brief and uneventful hop through hyperspace to the system of their destination followed by more weeks of travel. When in space, Ishmael only has his routine–and the mission of producing good coffee–to keep him occupied.
In another person’s hands this story would have been dry and cheerless. But, Ishmael’s voice is bright and optimistic, and the reading (or listening) is delightful. Quarter Share is a sea story set in space, and Nathan Lowell tells the tale as if he had lived out in the deep dark himself. In its very essence a science fiction novel, it nonetheless avoids the epic proportions that obsess most modern science fiction storytelling in favor of a down-to-earth (forgive the expression) style and chooses to recount the daily activities of Ishmael Wang. Unless you are so jaded that you can only read dark and gritty SF, Quarter Share and its sequels Half Share, Full Share, Double Share, Captain’s Share, and the hopefully soon-to-come Owner’s Share are required reading. You can find all of these at Podiobooks.com, as I’ve linked to them above. You can also go to the Traders Diary at http://solarclipper.com, where Nathan shares his Golden Age of the Solar Clipper world and adds many extra bits of story.
Early last month, Nathan announced that Quarter Share has finally been picked up by a publisher. This news was a consummation devoutly to be wished, and all your fans–including yours truly–are looking forward to owning their hard copy, happy to support your vision. Congratulations, Nathan, and thank you!
If you want order start with a little chaos
A short search through the blogosphere will reveal that writers are often of two opinions about their method of writing. Either they prefer to start with a well-laid-out outline, or they ditch the outline and write their magnum opus without one, by the seat of their pants.
Soon after finishing NaNoWriMo 2007 with a dandy 50,037-word, seat-of-pants manuscript that was practically useless, I tried to reign in the horrible mess by outlining what I had already written. This was exactly like herding cats, enormous and frustrating. So giving up on it was easy.
My great manuscript was a mystery story, and though I pounded away at it all month, it came down to a handful of poorly stitched together scenes. All of these scenes were important in some way. I wanted to understand my heroine and get her into and out of some trouble. But the plot was practically nonexistent, and I even went down a path I did not particularly enjoy, having her pursue her investigation by logging into an online social website a la Second Life. None of it was working out!
And then just recently the reason hit me: the novel was floundering because I new nothing about the actual crime! Oh, I had a vague idea, but nothing solid; and let’s face it, the crime is central to the mystery. Without a sense of whodunit, whydunit, whendunit, and howsitcoveredup there was going to be no novel.
An outline was key. Having one would be the result of thinking out all the details and red herrings central to a good mystery story. Now, I like the idea of having an outline to give me a sense of order and purpose. But because I’m not used to thinking about a story in terms of writing an outline, I always ran into a roadblock; the energy of this story always petered out, and I gave up easily.
But now I have a purpose and a plot for this mystery. What changed was how I looked at creating an outline. [A small digression: I am usually an all-or-nothing kind of thinker. If I use an outline I have to write everything in outline form. This meant that I had to have it already thought out, which meant that somehow something (the outline) had to come from nothing (chaos), but that I couldn't acknowledge the chaos part because the plotting process was supposed to be neat and orderly.] I started to let a little chaos back into my thinking. I thought, Yes, it will be better to have an outline, BUT FIRST I will do a little non-linear creating to get the plot going.
I new next to nothing about the crime, as I’ve already said. So to develop the crime’s story arch I started to write the scene where the criminal confesses everything that happened. I put in some characterization to liven it up. But more to the point, I wrote the scene without any preconception as to how it would turn out. As I wrote it I gave myself permission to discover what happened at the crime scene at the same time as the heroine. I inserted a little seat-of-pants chaos into my outline. Now I know the crime, who committed it, and why. Now I can plot out the timeline, the clues, the red herrings. And once that is done, I can stick my heroine into the thick of it with all of her own personal story and make the two storylines clash and crash all they can to make things interesting.
Here’s the essence of what I’ve just discovered: if you’re a seat-of-pants writer who wants to make a switch into creating an outline, go for it. But if the actual process of making that outline seems too epic, try to start by writing a scene out without plotting it just to see where it goes. This actually become a part of the plot, or illuminates the plot, and it always happens that you discover something interesting that you didn’t know. Give yourself permission to put the chaos into the order.
How did you do?
It’s December. The sky is overcast. A slight but steady sheet of snow will obscure my driving vision tonight. Among other reasons to be sad in December is that NaNoWriMo is over for this year. (Insert heavy sigh.) Did you get to participate? Did you win? And what are you going to do with your manuscript?
I know how I did…lousy. Yes, I signed up for NaNoWriMo this time, but did not get a single word written. As I’ve mentioned before (and trust me, I feel like I’m just shelling out excuses) my hands were a little tied. The good news is that The Boy is sleeping just a little bit longer at night!
However, though I was not nearly as productive as I would like to have been, I did get some work done on the ms I wrote for the 2007 NaNoWriMo. It got shelved soon after I finished it because it was so awful, and it soon lost the energy it started with. It was a mystery story where I did not know whodunit, whydunit, or even whattheydun, really. That’s how bad it was.
I still believe in the main character and her friends. The idea is still solid. I just have to work on the actual plot. Piece of cake, right? That’s where a post at The Intern caught my eye: NaNoRevisMo, or National Novel Revision Month. Check out the article. It made perfect sense to me. Instead of beating myself up that I couldn’t do NaNoWriMo this year I switched my focus to revising something I already had. I didn’t put any major pressure on myself, just that of working on the ms to prod it along. And IT WORKED. Did I make a lot of progress? No, but I now have non-zero progress in my work. And that feels good. What is more, the little bit of work I did gives me some not little bit of insight on plotting a story that I will share with you soon.
Please please PLEASE comment on how you did this month. Even if NaNoWriMo evaded you, you wrote something, right? Let’s hear about how you did. After all, that’s what it all about.
Other people’s creativity…
…often distracts you from your own. More on that later.
Get Set…
Oh, man, it starts tomorrow already. NaNoWriMo! I can imagine some of you setting your clock to 11:55 tonight so you can start writing as soon as the starter pistol goes off at midnight. That’s how I did it.
Do you know what you are going to write? Or are you taking the blind plunge into a new world? Either way, it’s a heady experience.
I just saw a great article recently about plotting by the seat of your pants. Worth checking out. And here’s another one about scheduling yourself during NaNoWriMo.
It makes me wonder…The Boy will have me up late at night regularly. What’s to prevent me from a half hour of writing every night after getting him back to sleep? Hmmm…
On Your Mark…
Sunday begins NaNoWriMo. I’m with you all in spirit. If you read this blog and are participating this year, by all means please comment below & let me know you’re out there.
A friend commented recently saying she likes the idea but can’t imagine having the time to do it, what with all that is on her plate. Not to sound hypocritical, but why not? 50K words breaks down to 1667 words per day for 30 days. If you write without regard to the actual quality of the story or plot, then a moderate typist can crank that out in about an hour, which can be broken up into chunks through the day. Think of it as a longer version of free writing. Give it some consideration! Remember, the book written by Chris Baty–who started NaNoWriMo–is called No Plot? No Problem! That gives us complete freedom to write anything that even somewhat resembles a story, no matter how disjointed and unreadable it is.
Just talking about it gives me the bug…
Will you NoWri this November?
We are fast approaching the most exciting month of the year. November! Now, some (here in the US, at any rate) get excited because they are looking forward to their next supersaturation of L-tryptophan, but not this humble wordsmith. No, November 1st at 12 o’clock a.m. begins the hallowed National Novel Writing Month. 
NaNoWriMo — as it is known to those who love it — is the wonderful month-long foray into sleep deprivation and overclocking of the plot crank, yes, that caffeine-driven deluge of words on page without rhyme, reason, or regard to personal safety. If you’ve done it right, on November 30th at 11:59:59 p.m. you will have several things: 1) 50,000 words of a previously unrealized novel, 2) friends and family who complain they don’t see you enough, 3) a mean coffee monkey, and 4) serious bragging rights. What you will also have is an obligation to finish what you so hastily started: a novel!
Alas, I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year (heavy sigh). There is quite enough to do in the Wade household with The Boy now starting his third month of benevolent dictatorship. But I did want to weigh in with my full support to anyone who is curious about it or is planning to give it a go. Do it! It will be worth it. Go to the NaNoWriMo website and sign up. Just having access to the forums is worth the price of admission. Well, it’s free to sign up, but…you know what I mean.
There are also many bloggers out there who are posting NaNoWriMo content this month and the next, posts about how they are doing it and giving excellent tips on how to make it through this next great month of November. I’ll have another post, soon I hope, with links to some of those. In the meantime, all of you my faithful and teeming trove of readers are welcome to post comments here about their NaNoWriMo experiences and tips as well.
TTFN and keep cranking!
The Guy
Cranking Plot by Guy Thomas Wade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.crankingplot.wordpress.com.
