The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

My wife and I watched "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" last weekend. Don't tell her, but I've made a commitment to myself to go out with her more often. We haven't done that a lot in the past. But more than a month ago we went out to a movie. It was the first weekend that Hunger Games 2 was out and I frankly didn't want to see it.

My daughter was a big HG fan and I listened to all three of the books long before the first movie came out and I though each book was better than the next. In fact, I hated the third book, and it was based on that feeling that I chose to not want to see the second movie. But at that other movie we watched, they showed a preview of Catching Fire and said, "This movie was made to be experienced on the big screen." And from the preview, you could see why, and deep down, I believed them.

The following day I overheard some people talking about Catching Fire, saying it was so much better than the first movie. My problem with the first movie is that people who hadn't read the book often totally missed the premise of the whole story. I didn't think the directors did a good job of telling the story. I believe they did do a much better job with the second. In fact, there were some things that I thought were much clearer than the book.

I listen to most books. My family keeps Audible.com financially sound. I can listen at work, while driving, and when I want to tune out the kids. It would take me years to find the time to physically read as many books as I would like. So listening suits my needs well.

Finally, I will go see the third movie. There were some things in the third book the author did that I didn't agree with, that weren't necessary to the plot and I felt were only designed to elicit emotion. Also, as a reader of speculative fiction, and defining Hunger Games as a distopian urban fantasy I felt some duality when the author treated the story as a romance. From what I've heard from those who read romance novels, it appears that our heroine must make stupid decisions to perpetuate romantic tension. Again, I felt these plot twists were gratuitous.

I can only hope movie directors will improve the third installment of The Hunger Games as well they did in the second.

A magic portal under my sink?

My wife and I watched the first Narnia movie the other night. I've thought for years how cool it would be to have a portal take you somewhere fascinating. I remember as a teenager annoying girl friends talking about such things; like walking through the woods and finding yourself in a prehistoric world. But it was always fascinating or interesting places I would go. Well, here's an alternative.

From the editors that brought you, A Method To The Madness: A Guide To the Super Evil, comes the official book of stories for all those magic portals to places you might not really want to visit.

So this project looks to be right up my alley.

Brandon Sanderson said that anyone wanting to be a published writer should put out two novels and two short stories per year. This will be my first short story for this year.

Here's the link if you're interested in submitting to it as well:

https://portalundermysink.wordpress.com/

Happy New Year

In the last quarter of 2013 I stepped up my writing career to a new level. I feel like I made some significant progress. Here are my four successes of that quarter:

1) Submitted a novel manuscript to a publisher. This was the major turning point for me. After five years of practicing it's time to start playing the game.

2) Purchased my dedicated website. If you are reading this, you're at my site. That's good.

3) In November I took my sixth Nanowrimo challenge. I've completed at least 50K words each year, but never really felt like I had a complete novel in that amount of time. This year I finished the story in 28 days with a total of 100,138 words. That was almost 3600 words a day.

4) I edited my 2011 Nano, "Fly Paper Boy: Coming of Age" before January 2014. That ended up with 93K words.

What I believe this shows is that I can create a rough draft in a short period of time. With this years Nano, I did outline heavily in October, but ended up only covering the first third of the plot in this novel. It also shows that I can take that rough draft and smooth it considerably in an equally short period of time.

Goals for the first quarter of 2014 are:

1) Edit "The Pariah" (2013 Nano)

2) Write a short story for Jeff Hite's new anthology about a magic portal beneath the kitchen sink. I'll look for the link.

3) Fine tune Fly Paper Boy for submission. It's currently out to several beta readers and I've asked them to read it and get back to me with in 30 days.

Other things on the back burners are outlining the second and third books for "Shooting Stars", outline for the final book of "The Price of Friendship", a first edit on "Human Magnetism", my Nano from 2012, and finally, the second book after "The Pariah".

That should be enough to keep me busy.

Norvaljoe

Writing Excuses Podcast, Oct 14, 2013

I was listening to the Writing Excuses Podcast yesterday. If you are trying to write genre fiction at any level and you haven't found this podcast, you really need to. Here's the link: http://www.writingexcuses.com/

I found it because I'm a Brandon Sanderson fan. But, there are four authors who are all intelligent, imaginative, and humorous. 

There was a question about "organic" writing. Also known as "seat of the pants" writing, if you're not familiar with the term, it's when you just  start writing with an idea, not really knowing where it will go. Really, even with organic writing, you should have an ending in mind before you start writing to give your plot some direction, but some organic writers don't even have that. The question was, what do you do to keep your plot moving, when you're an organic writer, and you don't know where to go next. 

Brandon suggested something that I really liked. He said to imagine what's the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist, of course while moving the plot forward, and what is the best thing that could happen. Then figure out how to make it look like the worst thing is going to happen and have her/him overcome in it a way that no one will expect.

I know Brandon is very "Architectural" in outlining a story, which is the opposite of organic. Mary, on the podcast, is more in between the two extremes. But, she does lay out what she wants to happen in each chapter. Someone else also mentioned that a person doesn't need to write linearly. If you're an organic writer and you're stuck, move to another section and write, even if it's far down the eventual plot line. In writing that part you might find how to bring the two pieces together.

In preparing for Nanowrimo this year I am going much more extreme in my planning than I have in years past. My first three Nanos were very organic. My second year I found myself writing myself into plot circles. I got more than 65K words written but never finished the story. 

Last year was the first time I really had an outline of the whole book, but as usual got off on enough organic tangents that I was still interested in the story as it developed. Sometimes the plot twists which are best are those unexpected ones which surprise you as you write them.

This year I am world building and character building the heck out of it. I've got tectonic plates, weather and ocean current patterns. I have races with differing values and leaders with conflicting political intentions and hidden agendas.

I think my fear in the first few years was that I would get into it, write a story, finish and not have enough words. I find that much less of a concern now. In fact, this may be the year that I have too much story for one book. We'll see.

If you're a Nanowrimer, I'd love to be a writing buddy with you so that we can encourage one another. Here's a big surprise, my Nanowrimo name is Norvaljoe. Look me up. I follow back anyone who follows me.

Here's the link: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/norvaljoe 

Nanowrimo 2013

I just signed up for 2013. 

This is my fifth Nano in a row. I had only just begun to write when I started my first on in 2008. When I finished that one, I had 51,000 words of garbage. I tried to rewrite it a year ago and got bogged down trying to stay in-sync with what I had written before, but that was way too hard. I just completely started over. 60K words later I got bogged down again. I'll probably start that one over again, someday....

This year I'm basing the novel on a short story I wrote during the summer about the Pig-Frog, or Pariah. I've been world building the heck out of it, (A lot different than my first Nano, when I essentially had an idea of how I wanted to start it and ran with it.) 

I have a good idea of how the story will go through the first half and most of the events toward the end, but I need to work out a little more conflict and a twist or two. There is a blerb and a piece of the short story on my Nanowrimo site.

If you do Nanowrimo, too. Let me know so we can be writing buddies.  

My site is: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/norvaljoe 

I've started my own website.

Any surprise I named my website, "norvaljoe.com"? 

I started writing five years ago with my first entry to the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge, which is now at http://wwwoneadayuntilthedayidie.com. It seemed that most people who participated used some kind of pseudonym.  I didn't know, at the time, that a lot of the people participating were from Second Life, and those were their character's names. But I went ahead and used my alter ego of many years and submitted my story under the name of Norvaljoe.

Two weeks later, I tried to change to my real name, but Lawrence Simon, who ran the weekly challenge, just wouldn't let it die. Since that time I have usually referred to myself as Philip 'Norvaljoe' Carroll when writing, allowing readers, or listeners, both old and new to recognize me.

Please bear with me as I learn to make this website more beautiful. It's taken me three weeks to get this far. So, it may be a while before it looks truly refined.