writing skills/profession

NaNoWriMo: It’s Nearly Here!


Time to put on my thinking cap because the month of November is Write a Novel in a Month time aka NaNoWriMo. I hadn’t given much thought to it until September rolled around and a writer over at the Slate decided to write a chick lit novel in the three weeks plus change she had before resuming her regular SCOTUS beat when the Justices picked up their gavels for their new session. She set up a Facebook page for people to comment, give suggestions and even direct the narrative, a kind of “choose your own mama-drama”. It set me to wondering. Could I do something like that for NaNoWriMo?

I think I could. When I was in high school, I wrote a soap opera (126 pages/college ruled – I still have it) for my friends. They would suggestion scenarios, characters (based on themselves and people we despised – whom I tortured without mercy in true soap fashion) and generally, a good time was had by all. They were entertained, and I got the kind of instant gratification that made me want to write more.

I am torn between chick lit and chick lit. Okay, modern day and historical. But nothing is set in stone. What do you think? Would you read a novel in the making (without becoming odious copy editors)?

I am really thinking hard about this. I will be working on the memoir still, but the word count for NaNoWriMo is a mere 1600 words a day. It’s really doable if I don’t blog, and I wouldn’t be. I would put up a segment of novel a day and that’s it.

Interested to read your thoughts.

The Memoir


I am rewriting the beginning of the memoir. I think I mentioned that a while ago. The drafting went like a field afire after a summer drought, but despite the length (10,000 plus words) it was bones only. After letting Rob read it, I am fleshing it out. Slowly. Not that the words come slowly but the memories are far clearer than they have ever been and they compete viciously with the emotions that saturate them. The word count will easily have doubled by the time I am finished – next week sometime with luck – and then I have to meld it to the original.

I am excited about it. Really. Because it finally looks and sounds the way I have envisioned it all along. But, the scope sometimes pulls me up short. Feelings are going to be a bit raw when people read about incidents that went on that I never shared or when they discover my true feelings concerning events that involved them. I have wrestled with this from the moment I decided I would write about my experience and me and Rob. I still haven’t worked it out completely.

Memoir is a subjective form of storytelling. And it is the telling of a story. The story happens to be true, but it’s a limited viewpoint and one that is faulty unless the author happens to be omniscient and even the bible lacks the all knowing third person.

One thing I noticed as I have gone about the business of living these last six years is that nearly everyone I had contact with had no problem foisting their interpretation of circumstances on me and expecting me to agree with them regardless of the veracity, so I have decided to proceed and write it the way I recall it and show how I felt. It might not match up with others’ recollections. So be it. The beauty about memoir is that everyone has a life and they are welcome to write about it from their own point of view. As long as one isn’t trying to settle scores or be cruel, and recognizes that it may result in some “splaining”, memoir is a good way to maintain the tradition of personal/family oral histories that help us to know and understand one another.

Six years. It was six years this past summer. Even digging up the events that led to Will’s being diagnosed weren’t enough to bridge that span for me entirely. He is so long gone, and the person I was disappeared along with him. The interesting thing? I don’t miss her.

Taking Classes


I spent some time scouring the course catalogs of university and colleges near and far yesterday in search of direction. It all began with the requirements for teaching licensure in Alberta, which reminded me that I have just three years left on my Iowa license, and I will need to take six accredited hours to maintain it.

Trouble is I am only really interested in taking writing courses and generally speaking, creative writing is the basket weaving of continuing education. No credit whatsoever is offered unless you happen to be in an MFA program. Getting accepted to an MFA program for writing is a lot like getting into a performing arts school like the one in the movie, Fame. You need a combination of academic cred and a bit more interest in literary fiction than the next guy or gal. It is also a good idea to be young and relatively unpublished in the mainstream and without real work experience beyond the part-time jobs you might have needed to pay for the stay your scholarships and student loans didn’t cover.

Here is my dilemma. In order to maintain teaching licenses, I need to take classes, but am I doing it for any other reason but an unreasonable fear that something might happen to Rob and I would need a real job again? Which isn’t all that unreasonable really. But the truth is that the only thing that would get me back into teaching at the secondary level would be desperate need of employment, so why bother? Why not let the license go? Apply for an Alberta one which would extend my ability to teach somewhere by another two or so years beyond the Iowa license expiring and then, depending, let that one go too?

And here is what irks me, the fact that writing courses that aren’t taught within the holy confines of an MFA program won’t earn me any college credit. With an M.A. I can theoretically teach at the college level, I am limited to education courses or entry level English. I couldn’t teach writing without an M.F.A, and all the writing courses I take and all the writing I do and any publishing I might get done, doesn’t mean anything.

There is no M.F.A program in the area, but even if there were, we aren’t going to be here much longer and won’t be anywhere for very long for a few years to come. Not time enough to start a program – provided one can be found – and finish it. Realistically, an M.F.A. program would have to wait until we came back from overseas and settled somewhere. Given the premium placed on youth and lack of real life experience, I will be that much older and that much more experienced. Writing is about the only career outside the performing arts where age and experience are negatives.

Rob points out to me that I would hardly be destitute if something happened to him, and he seriously doubts I would be inclined to frivolously spend insurance money – of which there is more than enough. And he’s right. Money doesn’t burn holes in my pockets. In fact, the more money I have, the less I tend to spend because I am my father’s daughter.

I think then this gets back to the idea of having a job. I had toyed with the idea of getting a part-time job, but it had to be a mother’s hours type thing, and they simply don’t exist. Sure, Dee could go to after school care. She’d be thrilled, but she learns enough questionable behavior from the kids she goes to school with at times for me to deliberately put in her a situation where she’d be exposed to more of that.

And there is the question of having all this education which is all but worthless outside of education. English is only slightly less disparaged as a major than education. Those who can’t – read books and work 9 months out of the year.

The writing classes offered are mostly offered at night and tend to be taught by people who can write but don’t know much about teaching. The same can be said of workshops for the most part. The teacher in me is sometimes too offended to learn though there is often not much being taught that I don’t already know. Which is the other problem.

Sigh with a small little grrrr.