Excerpt from this year’s NaNo

So I was looking back through some prior posts and saw that I had posted an excerpt from last year’s NaNo attempt.  So I ought to do the same this year.

This year I wrote about gay teen suicide.  The title is “Suicide: An Act in Three Parts.”  The first part deals with the individual gay teens, second part deals with the community reaction, and part three (if I had gotten it written) would have dealt with following the gay teens into heaven.  I actually plan on finishing this one, editing it, etc.  But here’s a raw, unedited snippet.  (I’m not posting some of the more emotional scenes.  Maybe later, but it’s still too…raw.)  This is interestingly…the only scene I wrote in 3rd person.  The rest of it is all in 1st.  Bad author, I know.  Anywho, here we go:

It was night time.  Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley was playing on his iPod stereo system over and over again, set to repeat just that one song.  It’s a cold and broken Hallelujah.  Something about that song just seemed to fit the mood of the evening.  It was cold.  The first real cold night they have had all fall down in Georgia.  Not cold enough to turn the heater on, it was only cold tonight, but cold enough to wander if summer was over and if they were in for a long cold winter.  Probably so.  This cold, this early…it would be a long winter ahead surely.
Turning to lay on his back, he heard a dog incessantly barking outside.  He hadn’t heard the dog barking before.  He assumed it was one of the neighbor’s dogs, but there was no way to tell for certain.  It was barking like it had been injured, pitifully wailing and howling into the cold dark night.  It was probably freezing after all.  It barked away, no one stopping to help or checking in on it.
On the wall, he saw the light of the street lamp outside his window shine through the cracks in his vertical blinds.  They made small vertical lines of light, but for some reason one of the parts of the blind seemed smaller than others.  The spaces of light on either side of the hidden blind were wider, and it looked like physical bars.  It was a windy night, the wind was blowing in the cold air, and he could see branches from the magnolia tree outside his window swaying in the breeze.  They would make shadowy patterns on the wall as the branches moved to block some of the light from the sole streetlamp illuminating the darkness.
The bars of light started to remind him of a prison.  They were all around his bedroom, bars of light in the darkness.  But it was like the light was keeping here in the darkness, the light was keeping him in this dark cold prison.  The light was keeping him from escaping the darkness, and he knew that couldn’t be true…could it?  Could it be the light that was keeping him here in the cold darkness?  He pulled the comforter closer to his chest.  It was so cold.  Such a darkness, such a dark time.
He quickly turned over and buried his head in his pillows.  He didn’t know what to do.  The more he thought about it, the more he looked at it, the brighter the bars seemed holding him in the darkness.  The only way to escape was to go to sleep.  He had to escape it somehow.  A solitary tear was quickly absorbed by the pillow.  Not tonight, he thought, not again.  He’s cried enough already.

Lessons from leading NaNoLanta – Expertise vs. Enthusiasm

So I’m trying to reflect on some of my experiences this past month being a second year Municipal Liaison (ML) for NaNoWriMo:Atlanta (aka, NaNoLanta.)  For those not knowledgeable about NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, where the goal is to write 50,000 words during November.  This was my seventh year doing NaNoWriMo and my second year as a ML.

Last year was spent really learning the ropes in a masterful work of baptism by fire and was frantic the entire month.  This year I had more of a chance to be intentional about things.  So, I’m trying to glean some lessons from the, well, madness of November and late October.

And first among these lessons is going to be about expertise vs. enthusiasm.  I’m pretty enthusiastic about NaNoWriMo and definitley wear a cheer leader’s outfit well.  I’ve got the energy to devote to making NaNoWriMo Atlanta good.  But I am so not the most knowledgeable person in the region when it comes to the mechanics of writing.  Especially publishing.  I’ve never published a work of fiction, and it’s not like I’m planning to anytime soon.  But a lot of people have told me I made a pretty good leader of NaNoLanta.  So, what gives.

I’ve always somewhat thought that having a strong content knowledge was essential for being a good leader.  Having expertise in what you are trying to lead.  I suppose you could say I had expertise in doing NaNoWriMo for so many years and all, but I’m not all that knowledge about, well, writing.  I just do it for the fun of it.  So if we’re looking at credentials, I’m not the most qualified leader.

But having the best knowledge doesn’t make you a good leader.  It’s being likable, it’s being respected, and its being energetic and enthusiastic.  It’s being committed to a goal, and committed to helping your, well, followers reach their goal.  Being a leader is all about motivating your followers, not being the smartest guy or gal in the bunch.

But let’s face it.  As UUs, we tend to be drawn more to the knowledge side.  The most knowledgeable tend to be the leaders we respect the most.  Sure there is room for enthusiasm and there are leaders who lead by enthusiasm.  But how often when we look for a lay leader to do something, we think “they know how to this, they know how to get this done” versus how often to we think “this person has the energy to get this done, they have the enthusiasm to get this done.”  Something to consider.

Ok UUs…I’m back.

Man alive what a busy past couple of months.

September and October saw me dive in to this year’s Georgia’s Governors race with a social media campaign against the candidate….that won.  But I learned a lot, especially the art of spin and how to make a point in 140 characters or less (and heck, was even interviewed by the press about it.)  It was a pretty interesting experience, one I am glad is over, but I made a lot of connections and got a lot of people to, well, hate me

And then November rolled around with National Novel Writing Month.  As if trying to write a 50,000 word novel isn’t insane enough during a month, I set a really high goal of 200k.  I ended up writing 180k.  But it was all in one story.  Last year I did write 185k but it was 2 stories.

This year’s NaNo was about gay teen suicide, and its nowhere near done.  So I’m going to keep on working at it and do my best to write beyond November.  And edit the blasted thing as well.

But as if writing wasn’t enough, I’m also a ML, a Municipal Liason, aka, local leader of NaNoWriMo.  There are two of us right now for Atlanta – there was a third, but *drama* and then there were two, and there will be another third person doing it next year with me and my co-ML.  Atlanta has about 1200 people doing NaNoWriMo which is just…a lot of people.  I’ve got a million lessons learned this year about organizing large and spread out groups of people, motivating, encouraging, and fundraising.  (Atlanta kicked some serious tail with NaNoWriMo fundraising this year, and even won a fundraising competition.  Woot.)  We’ve got just a couple more events left before closing the book on this year’s NaNoWriMo, mainly our TGIO parities and wrapping up the book drive, etc. etc.

But boy howdy what a hectic last couple of months, and I’m looking forward to getting back to something resembling my normal life

Oneword from 1/8/10

Today’s word is flavor.

He was just a flavor of the month.  No one really thought he had talent, no one really liked him personay, but for some reason everyone this month decided he was the end all be all.  He was on every magazine cover, he was all over talk shows.  No one really thought that highly of him – it’s too bad no one told him.  He thought he was legitimately a star.

Oneword from 1/4/10

Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays I’m going to devote to creative writing.  I’m going to use oneword for now – the goal is to write as much a you can about a word, that they give you, in a minute.  The word of today was ship.

I looked at the ship that had crashed into the dock.  No one was around other than me, and I couldn’t figure out why this boat crashed on this pier.  There were no other boats around, and no other piers around.  It was like this ship was on a mission to run into this aging pier.  Maybe it was there on a demolition mission, maybe it was there just to remind people how beautiful this old pier was.  I sat down on a rickety, old, weathered board on the pier and just sat gazing, watching the ship bob up and down in the water as the sun moved cross the cloudless sky.

Oneword from 12/9/09

Today’s oneword was Stem.

The stem of the long stemmed rose had been dethorned.  I suppose he thought it meant that our fight was over, since the barbs that could hurt us both had been sheered off.  But the barbs were still there – if anything, the fight deepened the barbs between us.  I’m tired of always getting hurt.  These stems won’t fix it.

Tweet me a Story Contest

So I got talked into by a couple of my Atlanta wrimos to enter the Tweet me a Story contest.  The story had to be the length of a tweet – 140 characters.  They put us into randomly assigned groups and assigned us a word.  My word was “better.”  We got three different story chances, and over the next week judges are going to whittle down the entries to 25 a group, then the folks vote on their favorite.  The top audience pick and four judges’ picks from each of the 20 groups makes it to the final round, where they will assign another word.  This was put on by NYCMidnight and it was a challenge for me – I tend to ramble on when I write.

Here were my three entries:

1 – “You’d better be telling the truth.” I looked at the devices sitting in pools of blood on the floor. Craigslist. Why did I agree to come?

2 – He stood on the towering edge above Wall St. The air was better here far above the stench below. He inhaled, leapt. Billions Lost…Him too.

3 – I looked at Daddy, all duct taped up and stuck to the chair. “Got a better idea?” I pondered. “No Sis.” “Ok, so go get the shotgun already.”

Here were a couple more that didn’t make my personal cut:

4 – “But, I’m your cousin.” I looked at him. “Got any better ideas then?” I could tell he was thinking. “No, but two wrongs don’t make a right.”

5 – “You’d better have a better excuse.” “Look, officer, I swear. I didn’t know she was dead. I thought she was just being quiet.”  “Sure lad.”

Also, on a random note, follow me on twitter!  I’m twitter.com/mattkinsi

Oneword from 12/8/09

OneWord of the day:  enhance

I wanted to enhance my beauty, but I worried no one would ever love me.  And if they loved me, they wouldn’t love the enhanced me, they would love the real me.  There are whole businesses and careers that are based around enhancing things like beauty which just ought to not be enhanced.  If someone alters their self from who they really are, enhancing themselves, then whats the point.

NaNoWriMo 09 Recap

So, this was my sixth year doing NaNoWriMo – national novel writing month.  This year was the first year I volunteered to be a ML for the Atlanta region.

Being a ML was amazing.  There were some issues getting going with having three MLs and some communication issues, but we got it all sorted out and the month was just amazing.  First off, Atlanta did just mindblowingly good this year.  We went from 10.9 million words written last year, 18.7 million this year and went from 19th to 12th in the worldwide wordcount rankings.  We more than doubled our donations to boot.

I decided at the beginning of the month it would be fun to challenge another region to a war – we picked Denver because they were just ahead of us last year in the overall word count.  At one point with around a week to go we were down 850k, and we ended up winning by about 200k.  Amazing Atlanta.

I had more fun this year than any other year doing NaNo.  From the massive amount of write ins, to having a blast in the NaNoLanta chatrom and declaring word wars on other regions and panda piles (where we would go invade other regional rooms and act like Pandas.)  Why pandas?  We had a write in at Ikea, had a blast, and ended up adopting this cute little ikea Panda as our mascot.  Seeing so many people in Atlanta hit their 50k goal, folks of all ages from 13 to their sixties, and being so excited about it.  I’m just so proud of all of my pandas of NaNoLanta!

The community of MLs was fantastic as well – I met some of the other MLs online, and chatting with them, word warring with them, made the month all the more enjoyable.  Heck, I was even interviewed on the Toronto NaNoWriMo radio show.

I’ve already got ideas for organizing next year, and this upcoming year I want Atlanta to crack the top 5 world wide.  That would just be amazing.

As for my own writing, I’ve written more than I ever have before.  I ended up writing 189k over the month.  145k on the story I had planned, and a new, sudden idea I had fr a very cute YA novel that I am actually going to work on, rewrite, edit, etc., because I think it has promise.

I put up an excerpt from the 145k nano.  The story was about this family all going to Thanksgiving at Grandma’s house.  It was a rotating, first person point of view, each character with their own 15k chapter till the final told in third person, and, well, grandma kills herself at the end.  Sad.   I tend to write the depressing stuff, although the YA isn’t.

Anywho, these are rather scattered thoughts.  I’m going on vacation this weekend for a well deserved break to catch up on all of the sleep I missed during November.  Yay on that front.

Lets see how long this new found writing motivation will last – maybe I can keep this going.  So, expect a lot of stuff writing related to go up here with the random spiritual stuff.

Oneword from 12/7/09 – Worship

He sat down and keeled at the pew.  It was time to worship, but he felt really crummy.  He felt bad for just entering a house of worship when he was such a sinner.  Last night..it was the first time he had ever been with another man.  It was amazing, yes, but he knew it was a sin.  A terrible sin.  He bowed down and put his head to the floor.  He stood up, crossed his heart, and took his place behind the altar to lead worship.

For those not familiar with oneword, the goal is to write about whatever the oneword is for 60 seconds.  I’m going to try and get more writing done, try to explore my writing side a bit more outside of November.