NaNoWriMo 2010

National Novel Writing Month. Every November, thousands upon thousands of people set aside the time to write a 50,000 word novel. It seems like an impossible feat, especially to a guy like me who spends his whole life writing. I’ve been working on a novel called “Lefty” since 2007, and I’m still in the middle of rewrites on that. But here’s the catch. The NaNoWriMo novel is doable, because a) it’s just a first draft, b) the operators of the site encourage writers not to edit as they go along, and c) if you write 1667 words a day (doable, no?)… you will have a novel by the end of the month.

So… it’s November 30^th and I don’t have a novel.

I have 17,540 moderately kinda maybe good words. There are some structural issues in this first quarter of what will eventually be a novel, but it’s a good start.

But anyway. I didn’t win this year. I hope to win next year. I think I can win next year which, granted, Future Pat Who Lives In 2011 might be chuckling at, but I’ll try. And I’ll avoid the pitfalls that prevented me from winning this year. Maybe it’ll help some other folks.

#1

Don’t start NaNoWriMo if you’re already working on something time-consuming. I’m lucky enough to be in super tentative-don’t-get-to-excited-nothing-is-set-in-stone-at-all-even-a-little-but-holy-shit-I-am-excited-despite-what-I-said-before talks with an agent about a novel that I’m writing. It’s called Lefty and a really cool lady read it, liked it, and gave me eight pages of awesome notes that I’m confident will change the novel for the better. I’ve been working on this new draft since September, and I decided to take a break for NaNoWriMo. Thing is, my head was still really in the Lefty place… so I didn’t really have any EUREKA! moments of brilliance during the writing of my NaNoNovel. I did finally realize what the hell I was writing about a few days ago, but I’d already thrown in the proverbial towel. So yeah. If your head is somewhere else when November rolls around… let it stay there. I could have already resubmitted Lefty by now.

#2

Don’t get too attached. This is a tough one. Any writer worth his or her squishy will get attached when writing an extended (or even a short) piece. Try to ignore that voice that says “This character wouldn’t do that” or “How could I be so mean to this character?!” or “This is happened way too fast” or any of those kind of thoughts. If you get so involved in the story that you start examining the nuts and bolts while you’re NaNo-ing… you won’t get that shiny badge at the end. That’s what happened to me. Thing is, this might also be a good thing. If the “This isn’t right” voice is so consistent… maybe this novel is trying to tell you that it needs more time and thought than NaNoWriMo allows for. And I know that those are two conflicting pieces of advice, but I’m a novelist… What do you expect?

#3

Twitter. Facebook. Video games. They’re all delicious, delectable distractions. I’m an addict, I admit.

#4

This is the biggest and most obvious pitfall, but it tends to be the one that most people fall in. I blame a lot of my NaNoWriMo failings on the top three, but this is the Big Bad. Ready for it?

It's as simple as this: Not writing.

(I kinda didn't write.)

So the month is over, and I didn't win NaNo. But I’m happy. In November, I finally wrote my CV and applied for a teaching job. I got a better day job. I wrote and submitted two pitches to my favorite comic book publisher. I wrote a play called Jelly Pants that will be performed in the city December 6^th. I wrote the first sixty-eight pages of the first draft of Commuters (my attempted NaNoNovel)… and I feel like I’m in a good place. Hell, after I wrote the first fifty pages of Lefty, I stopped for a year due to lack of inspiration. Then an awesome girl and some coyotes inspired me in 2009, and I completed the first draft and am currently nearing the end of the second. So here’s to NaNoWriMo and productivity.

A lot of writers hate on NaNoWriMo for being antithetical to what the writing process is. Cramming the first draft of a novel into such a short period of time is, yes, usually inadvisable. A novel isn’t born in a month, no matter how good you are. But here’s the thing. While those who win this month, thinking that their novel is ready to shop to agents… they’re in for an upsetting (and super funny) surprise. However, NaNoWriMo does two awesome things. If you’re successful, you leave the month with a full first draft. A first draft that is in dire need of edits, yes, but what first draft isn’t?

Perhaps even better than that, NaNoWriMo teaches discipline. Writers are supposed to write every day. I’d even say more than 1,667 words. Writers, we’re weird. We want to write and we want to be published and we want people to read our books… but we get distracted by daydreaming and life (and also Facebook and Twitter). Most people doing NaNoWriMo don’t have agents to light fires under their asses and make them meet deadlines… because they have no deadlines. NaNoWriMo helps those unagented writers (hi there) write every day. And that is pretty damn cool.

LINKS:

My twitter.

My NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo's website.

Buffy Reboot: Leave Whit Anderson Alone

LEAVE WHIT ANDERSON ALONE!!!11!1excessiveexclamationpoints!!!

Alright, bit too late for Chris Crocker jokes? Yeah? Fine, fine. Though, you have to appreciate the expression of utter horror pictured above.

And that's kind of how it feels to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer right now. Kind of horrific. The Joss Whedon fandom is in the biggest turmoil since Firefly was canceled (read as: abused, mistreated, spat and/or shat upon, and then canceled) and things are getting ugly.

Here's the sitch.

Joss Whedon originally created Buffy as a film. People bought it. People made it. It sucked. Joss was super sad.

Joss pitched it as a TV series. People bought it. People made it. It became what many people consider to be the best television series of all time. Joss was super happy.

Now it gets tricky. The original people that bought and made the movie still have the rights to the character... and they're making a movie. You'd think that the fans would be thrilled with the news that our favorite slayer is hitting big screens to take out vampires and sparkle fairies (pictured below) alike.

But here's the catch. They're doing this without Joss. Sans Whedon. Minus the original creator. So instead of rejoicing, fans are going pretty much batshit. Thing is, I understand that. I don't necessarily agree with it as I'm a bit more objective than the average fan, but I understand it. Buffy's voice is Joss Whedon's voice. The original movie didn't work, the series did. People remember Sarah Michelle Gellar's quippy, morally ambiguous, heroic, and emotionally raw Buffy... not Kristy Swanson's campfest. So I get why the fandom is upset that the folks behind the original movie might shape this generation's vision of Buffy Summers.

However, what I don't get is this:

"This freak is just as delusional as Fran Kuzui. :/ "

“Why can't Whit come up with an original idea of her own to sell? But this is the culture we seem to live in where people want to constantly feed off of others hard work to bolster their own futures.”

“Who the hell is she to think she has the right to get ‘her version’ of Buffy on screen?”

“Whit Anderson needs to just calm the eff down and just post her little thoughts in the FAN FICTION section because that's ALL this will be - a glorified FAN FICTION that has apparently been given a budget.”

“Once this whitless woman person, watches one episode of Btvs she will truly realise how out of her league she is.”

“This Anderson chick clearly decided she wanted to take Buffy from Whedon and run it herself.”

“I will be eagerly awaiting Whit Anderson's future autobiography: "How to Become a Pariah in One Easy Step."

“If you're a true fan Ms. Anderson, you'll change your mind and leave well enough alone!”

“This chick and Warners can go to Hell! How many people did she have to blow to get this gig?”

“This freak needs to stop writing fanfics and get an original idea. Retarded.”

Alright. After you wipe the vomit from your chin, skip to the next bit.

Bit of a catch-up: Who is Whit Anderson? Why, she's the writer of the new Buffy film of course. She's also a nice lady, a hilarious tweeter, and most importantly... a fan of the show. Not the movie. The show.

Now, reread those comments.

Just know that those are Whedon fans. Fans of the creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, and Doctor Horrible. I’ve often described his work as the best of our time. He has created some of the most philosophically, psychologically, and emotionally complex works of television, film, and comics that exist. For years, I’ve been proud to be a part of a fandom that watches his work and understands why these works are important. I’ve analyzed his writing with people I’ve befriended over the years, and the gratification I’ve felt while connecting with someone thanks to Whedon’s work is immeasurable. Buffy, Joss Whedon, and the fandom have changed my life.

But now this. I’m disappointed and disgusted to say the least. How is it that people who seemed to have grasped the metaphors of early Buffy, the philosophy of Angel, and the moral exploration of Dollhouse can stoop this low? Again, let’s rewind a bit. “This chick and Warners can go to Hell! How many people did she have to blow to get this gig?” A Buffy fan said that.

I’m fucking ashamed of this fandom.

Essentially, White Anderson took a dream job. She’s an avid Buffy fan, just like the people bashing her and, in some cases, threatening physical violence. She’s had to face this:

And here’s the thing. What is all of this for? A whole bucket load of nothing.

1. Joss Whedon’s Buffy is still going on in comic form. Fans might be a bit iffy with certain plots that involve aerial sex and reverse deux-ex machinas… but it’s there.

2. When the movie is released, it will not be loaded with Death Rays that will shoot from the projectors and into your homes to destroy your DVDs. Even if you see and loathe the new film… your DVDs will still be there. This doesn’t retroactively negate seven seasons and forty comics worth of Buffy.

3. As EricaCV pointed out on Twitter… the original movie sucked. It still exists. People still watch it. Could things really be worse than that? And if the film is worse… so what? Again, your DVDs are looking mighty keen to be rewatched.

4. Pssst. This might be crazy to hear, but you don’t have to go watch it.

5. Here’s the clincher. Joss… doesn’t seem to care much. Read his actual snarky, meh letter about it rather than the out-of-context bits that make it seem like he’s enraged.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has changed my life. My Buffy will always be Joss’s vision. But I’m excited to see what another person who loves the show as much as I do has to say about the character. I’m excited to see new people talking about Buffy again. I’m excited that, if the film is good, a bunch of new fans will be buying the DVDs and discovering the awesomeness of Whedon’s work.

Too much energy is being wasted on being angry at Whit Anderson. She took a dream job. I’m a screenwriter who has been inspired by Joss Whedon to no end. I love the man and his work. But I would take the Buffy job in a second. It’s not an affront to Joss Whedon, Buffy Summers, or the fans. It’s a kick ass job. And I hope and sorta kinda know that Whit Anderson will do said kick ass job justice.

So yeah. Fandom. Leave the lady alone.

Slay ‘em, Whit.

Hot Dogs and French Fries - a zombie story

Here's a sample of something I've been working on. Figured it was timely, what with Halloween being... you know... over.

Also, pretend there is a cool graphic of a zombie right here.

Oh, actually no. Pretend that this picture isn't shamelessly stolen from The Walking Dead.

Hot Dogs and French Fries

A Zombie Story

by Patrick Shand

No one in the world understands me.

I can see the looks of disapproval in their yellowed eyes. Those of them whose faces remain intact stare at me in slack-jawed astonishment as I eat my meal. “Blasphemy!” some of the more pretentious ones cry. “Disgusting!” the women say as they watch me swallow my food and lick my lips. Some of the younger ones say, “Mommy, what is he eating?” to which their parent responds, “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Move along.”

Yes, I am the strange one. The freak.

I wish I could say that I was a nonconformist, but I wish I could be like them. I wish I could find their meals savory. It is what’s expected. What’s right, the leaders say. But as I watch them grab the human prisoners at random, crunching through their skulls and tearing, chewing on, devouring, lapping up the insides of their craniums, I have to wonder… why do they like brains so damn much?

Thanks to my graveyard being within close proximity to Matheson Power Plant, I was one of the first to be reanimated when the incident happened. The good folks at Matheson tried to cover up their mistake, which is funny considering every cemetery within fifty square miles was churning within forty-eight hours. Within the week, the country was in a state of all out war. Within the month, the world was ours. Enslaved humans, total chaos, free reign for us, and skulls filled with brains waiting to be eaten wherever you looked.

When I first lumbered away from my grave, confused to be back in my body, which was a lot more malodorous than I’d remembered, I had one clear thought. I was hungry. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew that my stomach needed to be filled. I looked around and saw the others, the kind folks I’d been buried next to, were outright attacking humans. Babies were thrown about like footballs, men were taken down by packs of my kind, and women were lured into dark alleys and devoured by the skeevier ones.

Everywhere, they were eating brains.

Well, I figured, That seems to be the thing to do.

I set out on my quest. I approached a couple sitting out on their deck. They’d fallen asleep, and were oblivious to the mass hysteria that was taking place before them. Silently, I crept up on them as silently as I could, which, granted, wasn’t very silently, as I was dragging my broken right leg behind me like a sack of bones and flesh.

As I ascended the three steps with a thonk, thonk, thonk, the woman woke up, staring at me groggily. Before she could react, I was upon her. As I dug my decayed teeth into her throat to silence her, I felt the scream vibrating through my mouth, and I swallowed it, stifling her. The taste of blood stinging my tongue, I pulled her away from her still sleeping husband and pressed my teeth into her skull. My canines slowly sank into her head, and when I felt the resistance of bone, I pressed harder. With a loud crunch, I’d hit home. I rubbed my hands together, curious to engage in the same culinary ecstasy that my brethren were enjoying all around me. I pressed my mouth to her head and began to suck up her brains with all the gusto I could manage.

The taste overwhelmed me like the stench of a passing garbage trunk. I gasped, falling back into the sleeping husband, coughing, spitting, trying to force myself to vomit in order to rid my mouth of the awful, rancid taste.

“AHHHHH!” the husband screamed, pushing me away. He repeated his scream, albeit a few octaves higher, when I was out of his line of vision and he saw what I’d done to his wife.

“Garrrrrgh!” I cried.

“Monster!” he screamed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Garrrrrgh,” I repeated.

“Please, don’t kill me too,” he said, “please. Please. We have a kid, please…”

“Garrrrrgh,” I said, already quite tired of the exchange. The husband proceeded to collapse to his knees, needlessly pleading with me to not kill him. I didn’t want to do anything of the sort. I just wanted mouthwash.

I lumbered away, confused and displeased.

Maybe, I mused, she was an exceedingly dumb woman. Maybe dumb brains taste awful.

I continued to lumber down the street, wondering what to do. My hunger starting to scratch at my stomach, and I needed sustenance. I continued to walk on, until I found myself at the local university. There was a feisty young zombie on the walkway, feasting on the brains of a bespectacled man in a tweed jacket. The victim looked to be a professor.

Intelligence, I noted.

“Barrrrg,” I said to the young zombie. May I have a taste?

“Rackle marrf!” he replied. Get your own, mister!

A brief digression: Humans assume, based on the tropes of film and literature, that zombies are unintelligent creatures who live only to eat and kill. Incorrect. Humans have only seen the earth. We zombies have died. We’ve seen what comes next, and we have returned. Humans couldn’t dream of understanding us. Not our desires, not our intelligence, and especially not our language, which is so linguistically complicated that humans are just unable to hear the subtle nuances in our communication. What sounds like “Ughhhhh” to the untrained ear might just be, “Excuse me, don’t flee! I don’t wish to eat your brains! I’d simply like you to point me to the nearest hot dog stand” and what people may hear as “Garrrrrgh” is actually “Excuse me for gnawing through your wife’s skull, I was simply curious. My sincerest apologies!” and what may be misconstrued as “Braaaaaiiiinss…” well, that… yes, that is actually just “brains.”

So, back to my encounter.

“May I have a taste?”

“Get your own, mister!”

“I’d hate to have to resort to fisticuffs,” I warned the young zombie.

“Fine. Jerk,” he said, pushing the bespectacled man at me.

I shifted the weight of the man to my good side, as to not apply too much pressure to my broken leg. I sniffed the open skull of the professor, smelling nothing, which might be due to the fact that my nose had fallen off in an earlier stage of decomposition. Shrugging, I tentatively stuck my tongue into the folds of his brain, bringing a morsel of grey matter into my mouth.

I instantly dropped the man and vomited a black substance all over the poor young zombie. It was the first and certainly not the last time that one of my own called me a “freak.”

More to come! If you offer me love, devotion, and the hearts of twenty seven virgins. I kid. Twenty seven is way overkill.

Reviews for the New IDW Comics

A whole bunch of great Angelverse comics came out recently. Here's my review for the conclusion to the "Connorland" arc in the Angel book, the second issue of Brian Lynch's fantastic Spike series, and the epic first installment of Scott Tipton and Mariah Huehner's Illyria spin-off. It's a great time to be an Angel fan.

Illyria: Haunted #1: So, so very good. While IDW has given Illyria a lot of attention in the past (Fallen Angel: Reborn, Illyria: Spotlight, Angel: Only Human, etc.) this book gives us more insight into her perspective than we've gotten... well, ever. Since her arrival in Shells, she's been a mystery. We've seen her develop, change, grow... but she remains alien. Now, we finally get a good look at her thought process, and it's fascinating. Illyria has great conversations with both Angel and Spike that sheds light on all three characters in new and interesting ways. And that's really what good writing is. Developing characters in a way that makes sense considering their history, but keeping it all unexpected.Illyria: Haunted treads new ground, which is kind of ironic seeing that the plot is taking Illyria back to where she started: The Deeper Well. Read more...

REVIEW: Archvillain by Barry Lyga

Archvillain

by Barry Lyga

Picture this. I’m at a horse show. Watching my equestrian girlfriend kick ass. Well, not literal ass, but kick ass at riding horses. While I’m cheering, whooping, etcetera, my phone is a-buzz in my pocket. I hit ignore. It continues. I hit ignore again. More vibrations. Frustration.

After the results are announced (SPOILERS: she kicked ass), I checked out my phone. Voicemails aplenty. My friend Caitlin was at a YA convention, and she met one of my favorite authors, Barry Lyga. She’d been calling me so that I could talk to him while he was signing books. Whoops.

I ended up meeting the guy later, and this time I not only got a chance to talk to him, but I got something free out of it. Yup. Free stuff. Can’t beat it. Picture this. New York Comic-Con. I’m walking. Barry Lyga is walking. Our paths cross. Music swells. Only, not really. I go, “Barry Lyga.” He thinks, “Who the hell-?” I introduce myself. He’s off to be interviewed by a dude, so the conversation is quick, but hey, I walked away with the goods.

An advanced reader copy of his new book, “Archvillain.” Gotta love it.

I just finished it, and I enjoyed it. It’s a big departure from Lyga’s usual work in the YA field. This book is a Middle Grade (ages 9-12) superhero (villain?) adventure. Think Dr. Horrible meets Hey Arnold, with less moral ambiguity and no singing. The protagonist is… well, as you’d expect from a novel that follows the “villain,” kind of a jerk. He’s got a superiority complex the size of Metropolis and he treats his parents like dirt. To avoid making him a totally unlikable character, though, Lyga gives the readers little glimpses at Kyle’s soft side through his relationships with the two people (well… things) he tolerates: His rabbit Lefty and his friend/obvious crush, Mairi. Also, young readers will love Kyle’s penchant for pulling pranks on oblivious adults, but I found it to be a bit of a retread. Pranking is a major part of Lyga’s earlier novel, “Hero Type,” so it felt weird to have pranks as such an integral part of this book as well. Even Kyle’s reasons for pulling these tricks (showing people that they’re foolish) is reminiscent of the motives of the Fools from “Hero Type.”

While I mostly liked “Archvillain,” a major problem I had with it was the repetition and the sudden, somewhat dues ex machina-ey bursts of memory. Kyle forgets all about his first “encounter” with Mike and then, when it’s convenient, suddenly remembers not only seeing him down to the last detail. Then, while his dad is talking about a camera, Kyle suddenly remembers a pants prank (best kind of prank, if you ask me) that he pulled in the third grade. Kyle is supposed to be a calculating—albeit somewhat, well, bumbling—genius. Yes, a bumbling genius. It happens. There are a few times in the book where I wondered why Kyle was being so slow on the uptake, which made the moments where his intelligence was overtly obvious a bit incongruous with the rest of the narrative.

On the plus said, it reminded me of Nicktoons, back in the pre-Spongebob days where Nicktoons were actually… you know, good. It’s set in a somewhat simplified world, where the mass public operates as one unit. Other than Kyle, the entire school… town… and world accepts Mike without question as a hero. A force of good. The government runs experiments on him, but it’s all voluntary. Nothing that would hurt him. It makes for an interesting, sort of hyperreality where Kyle stands utterly alone, a genius opposing a world full of skeptical albeit well-meaning simpletons.

The book doesn’t do for Middle Grade Lit what Lyga’s previous efforts have done for YA, but I’m not sure that it aspires to. While “The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl” and “Boy Toy” both speak for the culture of being different in high school in a way that no other YA books have thus far, “Archvillain” is simply a fun story. Kyle Camden isn’t exactly relatable and it’s often hard to sympathize with him, but reading about his schemes and failures is enjoyable. Because hey, there’s nothing tastier than a healthy dose of schadenfreude, and this book offers it up in generous helpings.

I definitely recommend “Archvillain” to any 9-12 year old kids looking for an entertaining read, and I also encourage fans of Lyga’s YA lit to check this out.

3 ½ out of 5 squishies.

Click here to purchase "Archvillain."

Click here to read more about Barry Lyga.

REVIEW: The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

The Great Perhaps

by Joe Meno

Any form of high praise you can think of, I probably think it of Joe Meno's "The Great Perhaps."

But instead of resorting to hyperbole, saying things such as "This is a modern classic" and "Drop what you're reading, pick up this book" (see what I did there?), I'll tackle this from a more personal angle. "The Great Perhaps" has everything that I look for in a book, along with things that I would have been looking for in a book had I known that I could find them. It's one of those books that shows how deeply flawed people are, never shying away from letting our protagonists (all five of them) mess up in catastrophic ways. At the same time, as flawed as these characters are, I grew to love them. Meno's writing is so nuanced, so personal, so human, that he's not only able to portray the way that these five fully fleshed-out flawed characters mish and mash together in the complicated web of their intwined lives, he's able to show the remarkable heroism in the littlest of actions.

I loved the characters. I loved the oh-so-strange style which, with any other story, might have stood out a bit. But with the alternating POV (usually one chapter per character and then over again, sometimes with a short tale of one of their ancestors to break it up), the novel remains fresh throughout. It might be the only book like this where I had absolutely no preference which character's story I was reading. Even in the best written novels with shifting POVs, I find myself picking a favorite, a character to look forward to... but not so much here. Each character is equally fascinating.

I loved it. I was moved by the characters and their twisted, sad, lovely, happy stories. I laughed, I did the thing where I have to pretend I'm having an allergic reaction so the dude across from me on the train doesn't text his girlfriend that the guy across from him is weeping, and I was stimulated. In the intellectual way. Not in my pants.

...or was it in my pants?

But really, it wasn't. This book is wonderful. Smart and literary without being pretentious or dry. Read this, read this, read this.

5 out of 5 squishies.

Spike #1 review

The first issue of Brian Lynch's SPIKE series comes out today. It's a spin-off of IDW Publishing's ANGEL comic, and it's goddamn excellent. Here's my review.

The issue starts with some background stuff. We have Spike narrating a scene in Las Vegas that involves murder, mayhem, and bugs. Not giant bugs, though. Casino-bugs that do the whole swarm and eat tourists thing. Then, more Spike narration over a montage of his life. He gets sired, he arrives in Sunnydale, Buffy's fist makes its first appearance in an IDW comic by punching Spike, Spike gets a soul, and then Spike admits that Angel is better than him, much to the chagrin of a bunch of Spuffy fans. Actually, though, not at all. Read more...