Road Trip Music

For the past three Novembers, I have created unique playlists on iTunes to listen to while I am furiously writing my nano novel.  The 2011 playlist consisted of a few of my favorite love songs, as I was writing a semi-serious take on the cliches of romance novels.  There were only 11 songs and it ran a total of 42 minutes.  I listened to those songs a lot.

Last year I was writing an update of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, with two main characters falling in love while arguing.  So I put together a pretty good playlist of conversation songs, duets, any songs I could find with two people talking to one another.  There were 58 songs, with a respectable length of 3 hours and 29 minutes.

A big chunk of this year's novel will consist of a road trip across the United States (if the main character ever gets off his heinie).  Therefore, I am searching for driving songs.  So far I have 45 songs, for a running time of 2 hours and 3 minutes.  The songs range from Woody Guthrie's Riding in my Car all the way to Cars by Gary Numan.  But the song that makes me laugh the most every time it comes up on the playlist is this one:

Bonus Points if you know what song they are spoofing!

I'd like to have more songs in this year's playlist than last year's, so I'm still looking.  What are your favorite songs about cars, driving and road trips?

Nano Update?
Exactly the same as yesterday as I have been super busy getting ready to fly to LA to take a train to SF. Good thing I'll have eleven (11!) hours on the train to catch up. . .

Sitcom Room Roundup

I recently realized that I haven't yet written a review about my sitcom room experience.  So here it is:

Two weeks later and I'm still thinking:  What a blast!  I learned a lot about comedy, sitcoms, and what too many Red Vines feel like in your stomach. But what really made the whole weekend a superior adventure was the people.

Ken and Dan, who ran the sitcom workshop were really nice guys and they helped us get as close to a real sitcom writing experience without smuggling us into an actual writing room.  Bad Chinese food, a very late night, and plenty of laughs.

The actors managed to bring our words to life whether the jokes got laughs or bombed.  They got scripts with little lead time and were able to successfully portray four different scenes. The panelists told wonderful stories while answering our questions.

But the best element of the entire weekend was the other participants.  They were fantastic!  Honestly, I don't have enough superlatives to describe the people I met.  Smart, charming, flexible, funny, open, engaging.  I want to use up all the exclamation points I've been saving in a futile attempt to communicate their awesomeness.

They were from all over the country and the world, some professional writers and some not.  But we were all there because we were interested in writing, being funny, and learning how to work collectively to do both those things.

I can't wait to see what the amazing individuals in Sitcom Room #7 achieve in the creative world.  I am suddenly interested in German sitcoms, Norwegian soap operas, and a yet to be produced horror film.  And those are just the projects I've heard about.  I'm sure there are many more I don't know about yet.

I know that my writing will be funnier because I was there.

All in all, a great way to spend 48 hours.

Nano Update:
Plot?  Main character is at work contemplating what to do with his life
Word Count?  20,211

Falling Down the Stairs

This morning I was all ready to do some errands, then go in to work to put in a good six hours on my writing.  Parking is free on Veteran's Day, so I could even drive.

However, my klutziness (toes broken by non-moving furniture, anyone?) had a different idea.  Somehow I slipped on our carpeted stairs, hitting five or six steps, and dropping everything in my hands before coming to a stop.  Initial soreness included my tailbone area, my right shoulder and elbow, my left heel, elbow and hand.

After a number of hours the pain has resolved itself to extreme pain in the tailbone whenever I move, some sort of groin pull and soreness in the middle of my back on the left side.  Plus my right shoulder is starting to ache again.

Usually I fall up the stairs with a small stumble.  Falling down the stairs is a different story.  And not the story I was planning on writing today!

Nano Update, Day 12:
Plot?  Main character is still hanging at his co-worker's place
Word Count?  18,514

Double Water Polo Whammy

Yesterday I went to two different water polo practices.  In the morning from 10 to 12, I worked out with the local master's team.  We scrimmaged for over an hour, and by the end of it I was quite tired.

I came home, puttered around, wrote my nano minimum, ate an amazing salmon dinner prepared by my honey and then at 7:15 I went to the club team practice at a nearby university.  I only lasted an hour before I had to abandon the practice to come home, exhausted.

There was no energy left to write my blog and it was all water polo's fault. But I thought you all might like to see an amazing foot to hand to goal shot from the last Olympics.  So here it is.  Enjoy!

Nano Update, Day 10:

Plot?  Main character's coworker offers him a couch to crash on

Word Count? 17,900

Premise statement

This week's assignment in my online writing class is to write a premise statement.  As I understand it, a premise statement is a description of your book in twenty words or less.

I would love to have a classy premise statement.  That would mean a good answer for the question I get most often, i.e., "What's your book about?"

But I am struggling mightily with this assignment.  Part of it is wordsmithing. How exactly do I describe the trapped life my heroine is living?  Horrific? Bad?  Or is the word trapped descriptive enough?

Another part of my difficulty is how to keep the sentence shorter than twenty words.  Up until now, my premise was very short:

A gangster love story set in Prohibition LA.

But those eight words don't give you any notion of main character, secondary characters, plot, inner journey, etc.  So I need more, yet less than everything I might throw in.

Apparently writing a premise statement can help you come up with a title for your book, too.  Which, would be great, because right now it's going by the placeholder title of Great American Novel, Take Two.  Not a sexy title and the cover of the book does not yet scream "Buy me!"

Ironically enough, I have easily written a premise statement for my 2013 nano novel:

First fired, then dumped, a young man takes a road trip across the United States and finds out what's important in life.  (OK, it's more than twenty words, but not much more!)

Nano Update, Day 9:

Plot?  Main character has just been dumped by his girlfriend

Word Count? 16,056

Driving through Korea

For the last forty years, every time I find myself near the Santa Monica Mountains in Southern California, my brain subconsciously thinks, "Huh, those mountains remind me of Korea."

It takes between three and five seconds for me to realize the ridiculousness behind my thought.  Because I have absolutely no idea what the mountains in Korea look like.  Are there even mountains in Korea?  I don't know.

I do know, however, what the hills outside of the fictional M*A*S*H 4077th looked like.  And surprise, surprise, the exteriors for that television show supposedly taking place in Korea were filmed in these same Santa Monica Mountains.

Sometimes, when the sky is very blue and the clouds are puffy and just so, I start to hear the theme song for the Simpsons playing in my mind.

The repetition of images can have powerful effects on our minds.  But how absurd that when we see the real, we are reminded of the fake.

Nano Update, Day 8:

Plot?  Main character is hung over after night at the bar

Word Count? 14,369

Rejection

The Minnesota Book Awards rejected my application to be a judge.  They were polite about it, saying I was a "qualified applicant . . . [they] were unable to place in a judge position."  They hope that I will consider applying to become a judge next year, and they dangled the possibility that they might be in touch if "an assigned judge is unable to fulfill his/her assignment".  Nice, but I won't be holding my breath.

When I told my honey, I called it "my first official literary rejection."  Always precise, he reminded me that it was actually my second literary rejection. Thanks, dear.  I needed that reminder.

I had successfully repressed the memory of my actual first official literary rejection.

It must have been the fall of 2008.  A local writing center was offering a class for writers wanting to learn how to revise their novel.  A writing sample was required to be admitted.  I chose to submit the first pages of my very first novel written the previous November.

Being a procrastinator, I did no revision on the writing sample, I just turned it in on the last day and hoped for the best.  Unfortunately, I was not admitted to the class.

But I ignored that rejection and kept on writing.  Now here we are in 2013 and I am enrolled in a seemingly similar class from the very same writing center. No writing sample necessary.  I am enjoying the class very much, learning an incredible amount about myself, my novel and writing in general.

So maybe the best did happen way back in 2008.  I've grown more confident, written a lot more novels, and am happy taking on the new challenge.

I know as a writer I need to be good at accepting rejection.  So, thank you, Minnesota Book Awards, for helping me practice this important skill.

Nano Update, Day 7:
Plot?  Main character and girlfriend are going out dancing
Word Count? 12678