The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Why I’m Writing Flash Fiction: The Benefits of Brevity

Camp NaNoWriMo began because we knew your writing couldn’t be contained, especially not by November. And this April and July, we’re pulling all the stops, and challenging you to write whatever it is that you love. This week, we’ll host writers of all stripes to tell us what style they’re tackling, and why. Grant Faulkner, Camp’s Head Counselor, starts us off by telling you why he’s going bite-size:

The biggest conundrum for most parent-writers is finding the time to write. I used to love waking up to a quiet house and the inspiring scents of a pot of coffee and dawdling through hours of uninterrupted writing time. Now I’m greeted by small creatures who ask me to feed them, entertain them, resolve their conflicts, schedule their social affairs, and chauffeur them about town.

One way I’ve learned to co-exist with this new life of harried time constraints is to write flash fiction—also known as short shorts, microfiction, postcard fiction, smokelongs, quick fiction, dribbles, drabbles, and seemingly a hundred other names (even nanofiction!).

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Reveling with Your Inner Editor on the Revision Playground

Happy new year! We’re back to NaNo HQ feeling rejuvenated, and incredibly excited for 2013. Why so stoked? We’re launching our first ever “Now What?” months in January and February. We’ll be providing articles and pep talks about the sometimes-intimidating process of editing, of revision, and of publishing, in the company of editors, agents, and authors like Hugh Howey and Marissa Mayer.

Our very own Grant Faulkner kicks off the month by freeing his inner editor from its confines. Are you revising your NaNo-novel this year?

I’m going on the record with a controversial statement: Your inner editor, despite his or her persnickety reputation, can be fun.

Now I know that we in NaNoLand advise writers to banish their inner editors during NaNoWriMo. No one wants to hear some crank screaming “No!” in the background or get dressed down for a plot hole during the rush of writing a first draft. But with a first draft in hand, you’ve now built a playground for your inner editor to frolic in. Yes, frolic.

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NaNoWriMo 2012: The CreateSpace & KDP Chronicles

Congratulations, all you survivors of NaNoWriMo, whether you emerged victorious with 50K or not! The important thing is that you took on an incredible writing challenge with more than 300,000 people around the world, and came out with some writing to call your very own this November.

CreateSpace is offering all winners 5 free copies of their books—those codes, along with your other winner goodies, should be up by the end of this week. The CreateSpace and Kindle team sends us a final update (check out the others on their blog), and reports their final word counts:

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9 Questions for Pubslush, NaNoWriMo 2012 Sponsor

As the end of NaNoWriMo approaches, you may be wondering what to do with your manuscript after all the revisions and editing. Make sure to check out the soon-to-come I Wrote a Novel, Now What? page on our site. In the meantime, Jesse Potash, founder of Pubslush, one of NaNoWriMo 2012’s sponsors, makes his pitch for why you should consider launching a campaign for your book on their site. Check out our sponsors page, too!

Why is your company named Pubslush? 

The name is a portmanteau, joining publishing and slush. The slush pile (where unsolicited manuscripts are set aside when sent to publishing houses) is the basis for the concept: bringing the slush pile online and letting real readers decide what books should be published. We’re re-branding the slush pile as something positive for the new age of publishing.

If Pubslush were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? 

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An Artist’s Date with Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron was a successful screenwriter by her late twenties, but she realized she was writing with the pains of her ego instead of the lightness of her soul. She went through a process of “creative recovery” that she’s now shared with millions of people through such books as The Artist’s Way and her website Julia Cameron Live.

Cameron’s approach to writing mirrors NaNoWriMo’s framework in many ways. She discusses banishing “the Censor,” jumping into the mess of writing instead of honoring the judgments of perfectionism, and inviting in creative whimsy to nurture the artist’s soul. We interviewed her for some ideas on how to get the creative juices flowing before NaNoWriMo. For more NaNo Prep ideas, you can track #nanoprep on Twitter, read the NaNo Prep tag on this blog, and visit our site here.

Tell us about your writing career. How did you decide to become a writer, and where has it led you?

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Pantser? Planner? Percolator?

One of my favorite NaNo terms is “pantser”—as in writing by the seat of your pants, without an outline.

The term brings up the age-old debate about how to best go about writing a novel: pantser vs. planner. I’m intrigued by people’s approaches to writing a novel because writers’ processes can seem as indelibly etched in their psyches as their genetic makeups. Some of us like clutter. Some of us need clean, organized spaces. Some of us live somewhere in between.

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Niall Leonard Crushes NaNoWriMo

Like many people, Niall Leonard had been “loudly promising a novel for a very long time.” As a professional TV writer, something else always seemed to come up, or he’d decide his idea for a novel had narrative problems. After watching his wife, E.L. James (yes, that E.L. James), write a novel, he gave NaNoWriMo a whirl in 2011.

Forget about those narrative problems. Last November, he finished the first draft of his novel, Crusher, which has just been published by Random House.

Read on as Niall tells us about writing screenplays vs. novels, outlining stories as shopping lists, and writing for yourself.

Since you were already a successful TV screenwriter, why did you decide to do NaNoWriMo to develop your first novel, Crusher?

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Postcard from Alaska: A Big Land Full of Big Stories

Expanses tend to fill up with stories. That’s just one of the realizations our NaNoWriMo team of rollicking writing evangelists has made this week while preaching novel-writing in small-town Alaskan libraries.

It all started when Chris Baty co-piloted our floatplane to a splash landing in the bay outside of Craig, Alaska. Or so goes the tale as he tells it. He actually just sat in the copilot’s seat on the flight up, but such literal details don’t matter when creating stories that speak to higher truths.

Since our splashdown, I’ve heard stories about people who live in the bush and mush a team of dogs for days to get provisions, about moose that eat cabbage out of people’s sinks (and lick their cars for the salt), and about fishermen who forbid bananas aboard their boats because they ward off fish.

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Cartoonist Len Peralta: ‘We Need More Geeks’

When we first encountered cartoonist Len Peralta, who designed the renowned Geek A Week trading cards, we knew he’d be the perfect designer for our collector’s edition of NaNoLand trading cards for three reasons: 1) He believes in many of the same things we do, such as ghosts, elves, and Bigfoot; 2) He wants to make art affordable for everyone; and 3) He designs with such a wacky, fun aesthetic it seems as if he’s a NaNoLand creature himself.

Len took a break from madly cartooning (and parenting a newborn baby) to chat about geekdom, trading cards, and his design approach.

What inspired you when designing these NaNoWriMo cards?

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Your Brain on NaNoWriMo

We’ve heard many tales over the years from Wrimos who tap into realms of intuition and imagination as they write during NaNoWriMo. It turns out that there might be an actual change in our brains as we write with reckless abandon. Charles Limb, a doctor and musician who studies how creativity works in the brain suggests that turning off your “inner editor” opens up a flow of expression. Read on!

Tell us what you discovered when you studied the brain activity of improvisational jazz musicians?

Charles Limb: In our study, musicians played a tune they had memorized and then a tune they invented on the spot, and we observed their brain activity using brain-imaging techniques. With the shift to improvisation, a region of the brain associated with careful planning and self-censorship called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex became dormant, while parts of the brain connected to the senses—hearing, seeing, feeling—became especially lively.

Most interesting, a brain area linked to autobiographical storytelling also showed increased activity. When jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition—and turn on those that let self-expression flow. Essentially, a musician shuts down his inhibitions and lets his inner voice shine through.

I guess the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is what we unscientifically call “the inner editor.”

Limb: That’s not such a bad phrase. The real key is that it’s not just a single cluster of neurons that is that editor, but a whole region.

Do you think your findings about improvisational jazz could apply to improvising in writing as well?

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Ten Ways Poetry Can Improve Your Prose

A few years ago, while plodding through a revision of my novel (revisions require the writer’s equivalent of heavy-duty hiking boots), I got bored by my writing. It was too literal, too realistic, too earnest, and too flat.

Most writers are all too familiar with this feeling after a red-eyed reading of a draft. I needed a way to literally jar my narrative sensibility. I needed jazz, punk rock, Jackson Pollock, Merce Cunningham, something.

Around this time, I read a quote by Emily Dickinson that remains among my favorite writing advice: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

I started reading poetry avidly and discovered that by focusing on the exquisite “slant” poetry offers, the “truth” I was trying to capture became more piquant, surprising, nuanced, playful, and meaningful to me.

So, in honor of National Poetry Month and Poem In Your Pocket Day, here are my 10 reasons prose writers should read—and hopefully write—poetry.

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Robert McKee: Sculpting the Shape of a Story

Robert McKee just might be the most intimidating screenwriting guru on the planet. You cerainly don’t want to cross him when discussing character conflict or story arc—just view the famous scene in the film Adaptation where he dresses down Nicholas Cage with more than spit and vinegar.

His spitting aside, I love his take on the art of crafting a story. In print, he’s actually friendly, inspiring, and helpful—a wise father figure.

That’s why I often turn to his bible of screenwriting, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, whether I’m writing a script or a novel.

Here’s a handful of reasons why I’ll keep Story within arm’s reach during Script Frenzy:

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