I can't stand horror movies. I think they're silly and rely too much on creepy visuals. However I've always loved a good horror story.

I distinctly remember reading Poe's The Black Cat and being terrified. It was during the day, it was still light but there was no one else in my house and I was so scared.

Written horror stories leave much more room for imagination which will almost always be more terrifying than what Hollywood is capable of.

So this Halloween, pick up a good scary book. I'm going to be rereading Ray Bradbury'sSomething Wicked This Way Comes which I do every year.

I have a problem with characters. Or rather I’m simply picky about them. I’ve written about token characters on here before. I’ve always been drawn to character driven stories more so than to other stories. 

We live in a society that revers individualism and unique personalities, at least in fictional characters. You can see this attempts in many movies and televisions shows now. I believe it started with the indie films which developed the conventional “indie girl.” There was Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a woman full of quirks. She was a great character but she wasn’t the exception. The new television show The New Girl also has an abnormally quirky female lead. Numerous other currently popular shows have this same thing, shows like Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Community thrive on extreme versions of stereotypes. Some of these shows realize they’re doing it and create a sort of parody of themselves in the acknowledgement but others try to still be taken seriously as a show, pretending the universe they exist in is completely normal. Often the leads are exaggeratedly quirky while the minor characters are normal. 

I have a hard time with characters like these because it ruins the verisimilitude of the story for me. I sit there during the whole show thinking that no one could be like this and still functional and I can’t get into the show. Fortunately this is a lot less common in literature. Television shows and movies are stories too though and they deal with characters. They should be dealt with properly instead of taking the easy way out when writing them.

Today all of my school work has risen over me like a great tidal wave of assignments. Feminist theory, language in Shakespeare, describing fictional interactions with people.

Today I am wondering how important it is to take time out for yourself. I wrote a sarcastic note on tumblr recently about aspiring students who think that their English major is going to make them into a writer. I can tell you from experience, my English major has done little to foster that.

I am a writer though, because at some point I took up the backside of my math notes and began a story. And I fell in love with it. And I could not stop. Soon I wrote on the back of all of my notes, and on envelopes, napkins, scraps.

It is important, of course, to hone your skills to the best they can possibly be. I just worked with a mentor long before I set foot in college. So, I blame little of my development on my schooling. As I am swamped with assignments, lack of sleep, caffeine withdrawals, and all of the irrationality that comes from being a college student (though luckily I don’t live in the dorms, so I still have some solace) I realize that I have not written, let alone read, anything for myself in almost two months.

I begin to feel cracks in my mental state, in my whole perception of my self. And this is why I think you are not a writer unless you truly think you are one, classes notwithstanding. I do not feel human when I am not writing on my own, for no purpose than my own pleasure.

Write on, Octopi. Hopefully I’ll make it through this semester alive!

An Objection to NaNoWriMo

I'm sure a lot of young and aspiring writers are interested in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which is coming up next month. I personally have never done it.

I admire the thought behind it and certainly wish to encourage those of you who are participating. Good luck to all of you, including my co-writer, Natalie, who wrote on her experiences on it just this Friday.

But, I will not be joining you.

I think the discipline of writing every day is important for every single aspiring writer. I do not think that it makes you a good writer, however. Too often those participating in NaNoWriMo brag about how much they have written as if they deserve an award. I'll be honest, I've never read anyone's work from it that I would say was particularly good. That is completely okay. The important thing to keep in mind is that this is an exercise in discipline and that only. I want to remind you all though, that participating and meeting your goals in NaNoWriMo does not make you good. It simply makes you disciplined.

Over the summer, I forced myself to write every night until I completed a novella I was working on. I had a direction and aim, and with only the smallest goal- to write every night until it was done- I accomplished something I am extremely proud of. Originally, I had no intention to write a novella, I was amazed when I realized what I had conceived as a short story had grown so large. Most importantly, it took me deep into the lives and emotions of my characters, more than I ever had when I was planning. 80 pages is nothing compared to the length of some of the things you all will write during NaNoWriMo.

But, I have written longer stories of which I am less proud. I never strove to write a long story in my life. I strove to write a good one.

As you sharpen your pencils for November, please remember that quantity in writing (or any other artistic format) does not mean quality. I wish you all the best in this exercise!

Is anyone doing National Novel Writing Month this year? If you are planning on doing it I would suggest starting this month. Starting right now, today, this minute even. Yes, it doesn’t start till November but the biggest thing NaNoWriMo ever taught me was the importance of preparation. And that took me three years to learn. 

I did NaNoWriMo two years where my plan was just run in and see what happened. Surely despite the fact that I was fighting to churn out 16,667 words a day, not to mention academic responsibilities, I would be able to hash out a full plot at the same time. As you may have guessed this was not the case at all. 

So last year I decided to approach it differently. Admittedly I had also come up with a plot that was going to require a bit of research and I knew I wasn’t going to have time to do that. So I hunted down various resources and writing tools. I tried a few organizing programs for notes and plots and characters. I even printed out one of those outlines where you plot out what happens not only through the whole book but even chapter by chapter. Let me say right now, I didn’t follow that outline perfectly but it was there and that made all the difference.

What I learned last year, when on November 30th, a whole day early, I crawled, panting and wheezing over the 50,000 words marker, was that knowing where you going is half the work to getting there. This doesn’t only apply to NaNoWriMo though, it’s for any writing project. So I highly encourage you to know your plot, plan ahead, plan ahead in detail, before you start writing. Nothing is written in stone, you can still change things if you see the need for it but it will be a huge help in finishing a novel.