While Waiting to be Published: Equipment for an Expedition to an Alien Savanah

While Waiting to be Published

A blog about what I do while waiting for the envelope that says "yes" ....

Equipment for an Expedition to an Alien Savanah

I’m getting ready for the International 3-Day Novel Contest and I've set up a small wire shelf for holding dictionaries on my desk. It has: The American College Dictionary(1962), The Observation Deck, The New York Times Almanac, The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference, Sisson's Synonyms, The Word Finder, a selection of books from an antique shop, and an old set of dice (good for coming up with space station communication frequencies and engine serial numbers.) It also has a list of words:

The crash

The Savannah

Danger

The cave

which will serve as my roadmap through the story or jog my memory if I get lost in a digression or lose my place after a break or a meal. So, at midnight, I plan to .... lie down and get a good 8 hours' sleep. It's a bit like taking the SAT: rest and a solid breakfast make for a better start and less burnout. (I'm used to the schedule, so I know that three days is enough time for what I want to accomplish.) My narrator is ready, I've assured him he can tell the story from the hotel, afterwards (he has already put in a request for extra stationary, this is the kind of place whose "elegant primitivism", as the brochure says, does not permit terminals in guests' rooms.) I think his world has typewriters: I am sure the hotel has one, somewhere, and if he says it is for his wife's letters home there will be no embarrassment.

(Young ladies need to develop accuracy and hand strength: even a woman of the better classes has had some typing in finishing school so she can prepare proper household records and correspondence. She uses a terminal, of course, but a woman's life is about the invisible practice involved in getting it right the first time.) Her husband has never touched a typewriter (he is too well born to be a clark) but he can type: he has used terminals.

The International 3-Day Novel contest is a good way to find out if you can write and if you like to write: and if you can put up with self-doubt, getting bored, worrying about your material, whether you're ready to let others read your work, finishing what you start, and whether you have the persistence to be a writer. Writing is not all dreaming up new worlds or fascinating scenarios ... the follow through (finishing the story, working with beta readers or a writing group, and sending it to publishers until it appears in print) takes all of the qualities this contest tests. (National Novel Writing Month is fun, but it is far more casual and leisurely, and far more about spinning up a story with lots of friendly support.) Very few undertake National Novel Editing Month (yes, there really is one) and there is no National Novel Publishing Month (no major publisher responds within a month: many take at least a year.) I recommend it over NanoWriMo (although I have nothing against trying NaNoWriMo, first) if you want a good self-assessment of where you are as a writer and what you need to work on.

(I am terrible at plots: my characters' lives are like everybody's lives — not thrill-a-minute. They are seldom caught up in international spy rings, life or death adventures greater than avoiding a bad driver during the first snow of the year, or emotional dramas that require a continuous 600 pages of verbal fireworks and over-the-top action. They tend to be unusual people in extraordinary situations (even "Inspired by 'The Ebony Frame'"'s narrator is, as little as he realizes it) but they also tend to be too modest (or too short-sighted) to advertise that fact.)

This year's 3-Day Novel narrator will be "Inspired by 'The Ebony Frame'"'s narrator: if all goes well his anniversary trip with his wife will go terribly wrong. (At least, as he hoped, he will get to know her better.)

-Lisa Shapter