NaNo Prep 2022- Pep Talks

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Okay, so this might be a bit of a chaotic mess, and I apologize for that, but I found like 7 different pep talks that all called to me in one way or another, so I'm sharing them all. LOL This has been a fascinating thing to go through today and has me consider a lot of things for my own project this year, ngl... I'm just going to work on the various parts as I get impetus to do so, with the focus on my primary piece within the larger project as a whole, of course. While this what I usually tend to do, I feel like I have a new view on how to proceed with it this year somehow.

• Aimee Bender's 11/01/10 pep talk is really fascinating, and validating to me, because it focuses on the whole concept of tangents and giving yourself the chance to explore outside the rigid structure you think you need to follow with your novel. I'm something of a plantser, part planner and mostly pantser, in my approach to a lot of my writing. This has been both boon and bane of my existence at different times, ngl. But this particular pep talk really hit it home that it's okay to have this approach and have all these little "what if" tangents that may or may not make it into the final piece. Better to test the theory and decide it's not right than not even try it at all.

• Charlie Jane Anders' 11/02/20 pep talk is another pep talk like the last one. And I'll be honest that I picked this one initially because I fell in love with that shock of pink hair in the picture. LOL! But I love the whole reminder here that you are already a novelist and are just putting your ideas down on paper, so to speak, and you have the ability and the right to write it whatever order feels best and right to you. I have been known to write out of order a lot of the time over the years. Sometimes it means that I have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to get things to connect properly, but if it makes things better in the end, and keeps my stress levels about writer's block down, that's all that matters to me.

• Diana Gabaldon's 11/03/15 pep talk is one that I picked out of sheer perversity, ngl. I have issues with Gabaldon, so was ready to "pinch of salt" this pep talk. Amusingly enough, I kind of rolled my eyes at it because, while it does pretty much say "Nobody's like anyone else as a writer" and that's a good thing for some writers to hear, it came off to me as a bit pretentious and preachy, which is a bit turn-off for me. And I absolutely admit that this could be due to my issues with her in the past, but for someone who is not me and who needs to hear these words, this pep talk is likely a godsend.

• Lemony Snicket's 11/01/10 pep talk is exactly what I expected out of a pep talk from this man. LOL! I love how it feels like the antithesis of a pep talk, but is exactly what a pep talk should be by the end of it. Take all the negativity you hear about writing a novel and shove it to do your thing ...or believe and know you're not a novelist after all. But I bet you're more of the former than the latter.

• Mercedes Lackey's 11/01/10 pep talk is one that I've read before, probably mentioned before, too, and I'll do it again. It's a personal favorite, ngl... Most of my NaNo projects are fanfiction-related, for various reasons I won't get into, so this hits close to home for me. I admit that I have a bit of an issue with Lackey's kind of condescending attitude toward fanfiction, even as she says she writes it herself, but that's a story for another day. I cannot count how many novels [and movies] out there now are literally fanfiction with a few adjustments. In fact, I own a few that were written by friends, including one that I helped beta/edit from the fanfic version into the pro/original fic version. So while this is a favorite pep talk, I do still have some issues with it, too.

• Neil Gaiman's 11/01/07 pep talk is so incredibly incredible that I cannot truly find the words for how much I love it. It says everything that I feel with pretty much everything I write, fic or script alike. I always feel like it's nothing anyone will want to read, that I've wasted all this time and energy, but I still keep doing it, and that's what we all have to do if writing is truly what we want or need to do. Knowing that one of my faves is struggling the same way is a greater buoying feeling than I ever expected.

• Roxane Gay's 11/01/17 pep talk really speaks to me on so many levels, it's not even funny. Everything she says about how she approached her first novel: all the research, all the failed attempts, all the indecision, all the questions... All of that was me with my first novel. In a lot of ways, it's how I am with some of my fanfic, too, and why I tend to do more of a "Here's a universe I created and now you're going to get a lot of shorter oneshot fics that jump around in time, rather than a big old multichapter fic/novel, because I feel less pressure and anxiety re: completion in the former format than in the latter format." And Gay's whole "write how you're gonna write because it's just how you work" attitude really hit home with me and reminded me that I can only write and proceed in the ways that work for me, not in the ways that work for others, or I'll never get anything done.

NaNo name: Ctice

I selected these pep talks mostly at random. I scrolled down without looking at the screen and chose someone visible when I stopped.

Lev Grossman: Oh my gosh, this might be the pep talk I needed. Instead of talking about the business of writing or whatnot, he instead compared writing to the Hunger Games. It isn't about getting it perfect, it's about getting it done. Don't lose your nerve. The only bad draft is the draft that isn't done. He ends his talk with "Forget that stuff about the odds being ever in your favor. What does that even mean? Screw the odds. There are no odds. You’re a writer, and writers make their own odds." That is definitely something I am going to have to remember this year. I'm pantsing it all the way. But I'm still going to get it done. https://nanowrimo.org/pep-talk-from-lev-grossman

Robin McKinley: I needed this pep talk even more than the other one. Oh my gosh. I've loved Robin's writing since I was a teenager. Reading about how her first drafts were crap, her second drafts were starting to get the story together, and the third drafts were for polish really resonated with me. I know I have heard it before but this time I really needed to hear it. Robin wrote her pep talk the night before it was due while trying to sort out a gnarly draft that was due in eight days. If Robin had these issues, then me having these sorts of issues is a normal thing. All we have to do is put one word after another. I think I need to put this quote on my desktop: "on good days you’ll fly higher than a peregrine cruising for dinner, on bad days someone will have to scrape you off the floor with a spatula. This is what writing is like. You have to write on through the highs and lows, the careens and the meditations of your stories. And that’s what you’re here for now: to write. Go for it. Good luck." https://nanowrimo.org/pep-talk-from-robin-mckinley

Guess who was so distracted yesterday working on character sketches for Tuesday starting pistol that she forgot to post the pep talk info?

Have to claim host prerogative on this one.I moved the post by date to Nov. 1. Sorry ladies.

I actually forgot to list my NaNo name, which is ariestess just like here.

I selected the two most recently posted Pep Talks as my reads for this swap.

The Universe rewarded me with a connection on the first by Kwame Mbalia (October 24, 2022). I saw the word “Ase” at the end of his intro and had to smile. It’s been a long time since I first encountered that word. I was in Brazil. And it was spelled axé, ashay or ashe (pronounced ah-shay in all spellings). It is a blessing, benediction, confirmation -- example: May you each write more than 50,000 words in November. Ashe. – and used to mean the equivalent of “so it is, so it shall be” or “amen” or “so be it.”

In addition to seeing that word, what struck me about his piece was the advice to put away all the trappings of writing and answer the query: Tell me about the first time you thought of your story. It was a long, long time ago, first popping up as a thread of a story idea within the jumble of words in my first NaNo effort. The following year and the year after that, I wrote NaNo drafts and won both years writing Mercy stories. She is a character who just won’t go away.

Mbalia writes: “Peel back all the wrappings and trappings that surround the act of writing. … Dice through the unnecessary. Trim away the fluff. Find the core, the kernel, the spark before the flame, that single instant of raw imagination, the chaos before the Big Bang, the heart just before it pumps. There is, for everyone, a singular moment in time when you recognized a concept within the millions of stimuli processed in your brain, and something formed. A character. An idea.”

When I clicked on his bio, I also discovered an occupation I’d never heard of -- pharmaceutical metrologist -- and filed it away for some future use in a story. After reading a description of the job he’d had, I realized I’d misread the whole thing. I thought it said pharmaceutical meteorologist! LOL. I’ll take it as a personal challenge to create a job description for a pharmaceutical meteorologist and use that in a story sometime!

The second pep talk I read was by Sarah Gailey (October 30, 2022). They wrote: “One must take an uncategorizable, inexplicable, throbbing knot of perception and emotion and experience and somehow render it legible to outsiders.” Boy, does that ever fit my Mercy series.

By the way, sometime after I finished the second or third draft of the first Mercy story, I mapped out seven or eight books that could be in the series. Of the two Mercy stories I’m considering for NaNo 2022, the first one about a frenemy is essentially one of those original ideas never explored, and the second is a new idea that would be a prequel of sorts, the origin story of that frenemy.

Since I have been in a state of not-really-writing for about five years, this line by Gailey struck me: “The worst part of not writing is that writing always lingers at the edges of it. … Because the story is waiting. It’s perched in the future somewhere and it wants to be real and I am the only one preventing that from happening.” In a word, yep.

I’ve never read either of their works. Based on their Pep Talks alone, I’d be inclined to read more from Mbalia than Gailey (the whole fig thing). But after clicking on their bios and reading more about their books, it was the opposite. I found myself drawn into Gailey’s stories, but not Mbalia’s. As always, though, I got what I needed and more from both of them. Ase.

@ariestess : What are your issues with Gabaldon? I'm going to go read the Aimee Bender one based on what you wrote. I recall reading both Gaiman and the pink-haired lady in years past.

@neserviam : I needed to read this today. "To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them... A writer—someone once said—is a person for whom writing is difficult. That resistance you’re feeling is proof that you’re digging deep. To write a novel is to lose your way and find it over, and over, and over again." Thank you for picking the Grossman piece and posting about it.

@Artistic : Right?! I had the exact same feeling. It's not just me, but "real" writers feel the same way!

The Gailey quote sticks with me as well. " Because the story is waiting. It’s perched in the future somewhere and it wants to be real and I am the only one preventing that from happening." That is so me.

@Artistic :: Gabaldon has been, among other things, a major rpe apologist in the past over the gratuitous violence & rpe in her Outlander books. She's said some pretty nasty stuff to readers/fans about it, too, and will not even try to see what abuse survivors say about it.

Artistic :: Gabaldon has been, among other things, a major rxpe apologist in the past over the gratuitous violence & rxpe in her Outlander books. She's said some pretty nasty stuff to readers/fans about it, too, and will not even try to see what abuse survivors say about it.