Tag: national novel writing month

I Survived NaNoWriMo (More or Less)

December 12, 2022 / Kyle A. Massa

Background Image: “Nine Lives” by Paul Scott Canavan

30 days, 50,000 words, and one sorta-finished story. That’s what happened last month for NaNoWriMo.

The Stats

Being a sports fan, I always enjoy a few well-placed stats. So here are a few, just for you:

Final word count: 50,014
Highest daily word count: 2,280 on the 23rd
Lowest daily word count: 130 on the 30th (the last day)
Average daily word count: 1,667.13
Hours spent stressed out: Countless

I even got a cool little certificate for finishing.

My NaNoWriMo 2022 Certificate

The Book

The name of the book I wrote was Remembering the End: A Novel of Novel Apocalypse Tales. It began as a book about people telling end-of-the-world stories, and it ended that way, too—more or less.

My original framing story was simply a ruined world; colorless and lifeless and pretty damn boring. At the urging of both Sara and my writers’ group, I devised (what I hope is) a more interesting setting: a hotel. Here’s an excerpt:

I splashed lukewarm water on my face, then dried myself with a towel from the rack. I examined the name of the hotel, stenciled in gold stitching on the towel: the Interstitial.

Look, I’ve heard of the Hilton and the Ritz, but I’ve never heard of the Interstitial. I read the name several times, just to make sure my present condition wasn’t deceiving me, yet it seemed I was reading that right.

So, then I knew where I was. Sort of.

I returned to the main room, feeling only slightly better than prior, then I realized how damn cold I was. Forgive the image, but all I had on were my skivvies. There was no suitcase on the floor, so I searched the wardrobe and pulled on whatever clothes were in there. Turned out to be a pair of too-big sweatpants and an oversize hoodie depicting a rain of $100 bills. (At that point, I was really hoping the Interstitial wasn’t a fancy place.)

As I prepared to step outside the door, I noticed shadows flutter along the crack of light beneath the door. Looked like people, several people, had just passed by in the hallway. Not that I heard them. I opened the door, squinted into the light, and…

Nothing. No one up the hall or down. Empty.

This was more than a little unsettling, as I’m sure you can understand. I mean, on top of my nausea and general amnesia. I crept down the hall, suddenly feeling anxiety about what might happen next.

Music played from somewhere down the hall. Sounded instrumental, like the big-band sort of stuff you might’ve heard on the Titanic, though it was too distant for me to be sure. More artwork lined the walls, framed photos and paintings, all of them just as odd as the one in my room.

For example, one image showed an image of a planet from space. The planet was engulfed in flames, like the head of a torch. Another depicted what appeared to be a wasteland, filled with numerous corpses and skeletons, each attended by a swarm of carrion birds. The name of the painting was etched into the frame: “The Buffet, or All You Can Eat.”

At this point, I was starting to get a little worried.

Beyond that, I worked on four of a planned five stories to be told within the framing device, each narrated by a different guest. The working titles of those stories are…

“Baby Magic: An American Myth, Featuring a Sloth”
“Choops & the ‘Foot Investigate the Uninvited Guest”
“Two Houses”
“Festivals in Hell”

I reiterate: These are working titles (as is Remembering the End, for that matter). Some, if not all, will probably change prior to publication. Still, I hope you enjoy what I’ve got so far.

The Takeaways

First and foremost, this experience reinforced my aversion to daily word counts. I’ve written about this decision before, but basically, I need variety. I thrive on hopping from one project to another, returning to Project A when Project B stalls, and vice versa. It’s tough for me to slog through my writing, especially when inspiration is hiding.

That happened a lot during NaNoWriMo. Not that I didn’t like Remembering the End—it’s just that I’d often come to a narrative roadblock and feel compelled to bust my way through rather than devise a clever way around. Ideally, I’d work on something else in the meantime.

But hey, on the bright side, I’ve got most of a new book in my back pocket for 2023. It’s not done, but it’s a lot more done than it was a month ago. Looking forward to sharing more with you soon!

Kyle A. Massa is a comic fantasy author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include three books and several short stories. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking coffee.

I’m Joining NaNoWriMo 2022

November 1, 2022 / Kyle A. Massa

I succeeded once, failed once, and now I’ll be doing one or the other again. NaNoWriMo, here I come!

That stands for National Novel Writing Month, by the way. It begins today and ends when November does. My mission: To write a 50,000-word manuscript in 30 days.

Last Time

Last time I tried NaNoWriMo was 2019. That was the failure.

…Well, I shouldn’t say that. I got about 45k into the book, then quit when I felt it wasn’t working. That was Short Contracts, a book about a sports league in a fantasy setting (not to be confused with fantasy sports). I plan to return to it when the time is right.

I also tried NaNoWriMo in 2017. That was the success. I wrote what Stephen King would call a trunk novel, which is one of those books you finish but save for later. It’s called Upstate and a While Back. Someday I’ll reveal it from the trunk.

The experience was fun but grueling, especially in the latter half of November. 50k words is all about consistency and planning, as I remember, so we’ll see if I’m up to the task.

This Time

This month, I’ll be working on a story called Remembering the End: A Novel of Novel Apocalypse Stories. Think Canterbury Tales, except it’s about worlds ending. Cheery, right?

Honestly, I hope so. I’ve already got a head start on one character’s story, and it’s turned out fairly comic (like most of my stuff). I anticipate the rest to be the same—though I’ve only got vague ideas for them. And when I say vague, I mean super vague. Like, the ending of Mulholland Drive vague.

Anyhoo, I’ll be tracking my progress on this here chart:

NaNoWriMo Progress

Yes, that is Magic: The Gathering artwork in the background. I use it in my MTG articles, but I like the cats, so I’m using it again here.

The Distractions

Over the past year I’ve recalibrated my writing strategy to be less about word count (in fact, I wrote an article all about it). For NaNoWriMo, I’ve got to readjust. Gonna be a challenge for sure.

Also, November is going to be a busy month. Here are some of the non-writing activities I’m doing:

November 11: Playing in my first Magic: The Gathering tournament since 2018.
November 12: Being a raging fan at the Cortaca Jug game at Yankee Stadium. Go Bombers!
November 15: The new Magic set releases online. Always a major distraction.
November 24: Thanksgiving. (And my beloved New York Giants are playing the hated Dallas Cowboys.)

Oh yeah, and I still have to work and stuff. Doesn’t seem like much, but when you’re writing 50,000 words in 30 days, you can’t really afford to take time off.

Will I Succeed?

Reply hazy, ask again later. But here’s what I can promise: I’ll be checking in with you throughout the month. Here’s the schedule…

November 1: This blog post.
November 7: Email newsletter.
November 14: Another blog post.
November 21: Another email.
December 5: An email and blog post summing it all up.

If you want to follow along as I slowly descend into madness, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter below. Wish me luck!

Let’s Get Ready for NaNoWriMo

November 1, 2019 / Kyle A. Massa

NaNoWriMo

It’s been a full two years since I last participated in National Novel Writing Month. Time to change that.

This year, I’d like to give you a sneak peek at my project. I’ll start with a preview post here, then a halfway mark review around November 15th, then a final roundup post at the end of the month.

Why? First, to shamelessly plug my book in the hopes that you’ll someday buy it. Second, I’m excited about this story and I want to share it with cool readers like you.

Sound good? Let’s begin.

First, What is National Novel Writing Month?

Every November, millions of people across the world set out to write a 50,000-word novel manuscript. Since it’s a bit of a mouthful, most people call it NaNoWriMo. (Always makes me think of “BiMonSciFiCon from The Simpsons.)

If you average it out, that means one needs to write an average of 1,666 words each day to hit the goal. That’s definitely a lot of writing and there’s little wiggle room. It helps to plan ahead, so here’s my plan.

The World

The working title for my book is Short Contracts. I don’t normally dig the “this meets that” plot pitch, but in this case, I’m using it anyway. My book is Moneyball meets The Lord of the Rings. Let’s start with the LOTR elements.

The dark lord figure has been an archetype of epic fantasy ever since Tolkien. It’s usually a character who appears infrequently on the page but whose influence is felt nonetheless. The dark lord wants to conquer the world, usually by means of vast armies. The central purpose of the book is often to defeat this character.

We’ve seen enough dark lords in fantasy to last a lifetime. Sauron, Lord Voldemort, The Crimson King…there’s no shortage of them. Rather than create my own, I’ve instead shifted my focus to the postmodern. More specifically, I’ve always wondered what happens in these worlds after the Dark Lord has been defeated. In the world of Short Contracts, it’s the introduction of professional sports.

Instead of football or soccer or cricket or something (how do you even score that last one?), the sport of this world is called Questing. Questing is a sport meant to carry on and commemorate the legacy of those brave adventurers who defeated the Dark Lord of this world. There were five in the party who defeated him, and so there are five possible positions for players to play.

I actually previewed this world in “A Good Fit in Penbluff City,” a short story from my collection Monsters at Dusk. Here’s a snippet about Questing:

“Questing, for those who don’t know, is a simple game. Ten players on the field, five on each team. Teams vie to score the most points over a 60-minute period (divided into four 15-minute quarters). A team earns 25 points for disarming an opposing player, 50 points for recovering the Hidden Artifact, and 75 points for slaying the Beast. (The Hidden Artifact is a small object that’s, yes, hidden somewhere on, in, or within the field. The Beast differs depending on the field, though they’re all large, nasty, and temperamental.)

“If that sounds like a dangerous sport, it is. Players have heads bumped, bones broken, limbs severed, even lives lost. Fortunately for them, the day’s advanced magical techniques reverse most of these injuries, sometimes even the fatal ones. Sometimes.”

So those are the rules and stakes of the game. It’s a sports drama as told in an epic fantasy setting (with a strong element of humor, of course).

I realize I’m being a bit cagey with the plot, so here it is in greater detail.

The Inspiration

Take a trip back in time with me. The year is 2014. I’m a senior at Ithaca College and I’m enrolled in a course called Advanced Writing for TV. The assignment: write a script for a 60-minute original TV pilot.

The film Moneyball had released just a few years prior. I found a discount DVD of the movie at the Target on Triphammer Road (remember DVDs?) and had been showing the film to friends whenever possible. The idea of a sports film, particularly one that delved into the transactional aspect of sports, was fresh in my mind. So I decided to write a TV show about baseball. I called it Expansion.

The main character of my show was a guy named Buck Foreman, which makes him sound more like a manly 50s actor than a starting pitcher. But pitcher he was; a hard-throwing (and slightly arrogant) southpaw for the New York Yankees.

At least he used to throw hard. We encounter Buck at age 38. He’s losing velocity on his fastball and has therefore become less valuable to the Yankees. Just a few pages into the script, he’s informed that they will not renew his contract.

Buck doesn’t even consider retirement. He believes he can still play, even if the Yankees (and most of the rest of the league) think he can’t. Only one team shows serious interest in him: an expansion team I invented called the Portland Anglers. (An expansion team is any new team added to an established sports league.) The rest of the script follows Buck as he adjusts to his new life with his new team.

I won’t write much more about Expansion. Why? Because you can read the whole thing for free, right here. Hope you enjoy it.

Now you might wonder why I went off on a tangent about a school project from five years ago. That’s because it’s serving as inspiration for the book I’m about to write for NaNoWriMo.

At the time I wrote this script, I honestly believed it was the best writing I’d ever done. The characters fit nicely together, the plot was tight, and it was really fun to write about baseball, a sport I’ve loved watching since my grandfather got me into it (sad Yankees fan here). I’d lamented the fact that I’d likely never become a television showrunner, which therefore meant nobody but my classmates and my teacher would likely ever read the script. I’m glad I get to use it in some capacity now.

The Novel

Short Contracts won’t be about an expansion team (though I could always return to that idea in the future). It’s about a player who’s been unceremoniously dumped by her team. Now she’s forced to adjust to life with a new one.

Our main character’s name is Four-Leaf (not a real name, but it’s the name everyone calls her). Four-Leaf’s Questing career has been defined by disappointment. She was the number one overall pick in her draft class, a local kid, and a great college (or in this world, academy) player. She was considered a can’t-miss prospect.

That made it all the more crushing, for both Four-Leaf and the fans, when she missed. A combination of injuries, poor coaching, and bad luck have ruined her once-promising career, to the point that she’s known as one of the biggest busts of all time. That reputation is solidified just before our book begins, when Four-Leaf makes a horrible error that costs her team a championship title.

So Four-Leaf finds herself on a new team. Just like Buck Foreman, she must adjust to a new city and a new team. The question is, will she become the player everyone thought she could be? That’s what I’ll be writing about this NaNoWriMo.

Parting Plug

If you’re interested in the world of Questing, you can get a sneak peek right this second. Remember that story I mentioned called “A Good Fit in Penbluff City”? It’s available now in my short fiction collection Monsters at Dusk. Check it out. Hope you enjoy it.

Let NaNoWriMo Begin!

I’ll check back about midway through the month with more info on my project. I’ll have updates and maybe even a little excerpt for you. Until next time!

Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats. He has written two books and numerous short stories, both published and yet-to-be published. He enjoys unusual narrative structures, multiple POVs, and stories about coffee.

NaNoWriMo 2017 in Review

December 4, 2017 / Kyle A. Massa

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.

It’s December, which means NaNoWriMo 2017 is officially in the books. This is the second time I participated and the first time I hit the 50,000 word mark. I’m glad I did it.

Did you participate in National Novel Writing Month too? If so, you probably learned a lot about yourself as a writer. I know I did. Allow me to share my best takeaways.

You Really Can Do It

Writing an entire novel seems impossible—until you do it. Participating in National Novel Writing Month is proof of that fact.

This year, I enjoyed using the NaNoWriMo website to track my progress. I entered my word count every day to see how many words I wrote each day, and how many more I needed to stay on track for my goal. Super handy and a great way to stay motivated.

You Just Did the Hardest Part

Buy yourself a coke, champ. Filling a few hundred blank pages is a monumental accomplishment.

Of course, we’ve just got manuscripts right now. They’re not novels until we edit them!

Though this is another daunting task, we now have the confidence to do it. Plus, it’s actually pretty fun to paint a shinier coat over the initial strokes. Since we’ve been racing against the clock all month, it’s unlikely that our first draft is ready for readers.

So let’s reorganize and refine those raw concepts. The result is sure to be magnificent.

People Now Think You’re Awesome

I mentioned this in my pre-NaNoWriMo blog post, but I think it bears repeating: people are always impressed when you finish a novel manuscript. I once interviewed for an internship and was asked what accomplishment I was most proud of. My answer: “I finished a manuscript for a novel.” I don’t have conclusive evidence, but I think it went a long way toward getting the internship.

Just because NaNoWriMo’s over for this year doesn’t mean we should stop writing. Keep at it!

Why You Should Try National Novel Writing Month

October 23, 2017 / Kyle A. Massa

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.

National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as the cool kids say) is a fun time of the year. It’s a time when people come together to create their own versions of one of the greatest forms of art there is: the novel!

Have you tried it before? Are you thinking of trying it? Here are some reasons you’ll want to join National Novel Writing Month yourself.

NaNoWriMo Gives You a Hard Deadline

I explored this idea in an earlier blog post from this month, but it’s still relevant, no matter what. In my opinion, most writers need deadlines.

This might sound harsh. Still, I know a ton of talented people who could generate a ton of great work, if only they hadn’t been working on the same project for three years. I’m not trying to put anyone down for doing so; writing is your time, and you should work on whatever projects you’d like. But hey. Sometimes you’ve got to move on to the next project.

I know I need deadlines. I often review my stories numerous times, making cosmetic (and ultimately low-impact) edits. For example: shuffling commas around. This is probably not a great use of my time, and it’s why I like deadlines. At some point, I can say, “This is as good as it’s going to be.” And then move on.

NaNoWriMo Gives You a Sense of Community

Unless you dig the working in a coffee shop thing, writing might feel a little lonely. And even if you do work at Starbuck’s, baristas are unlikely to chat about your first chapter.

But during National Novel Writing Month, you’ll have an entire community to people to discuss your writing with. NaNoWriMo is one of the rare times when everyone writes crazily hard for an entire month. Yes, that’s write—ahem, sorry. That’s right.

If you’re feeling lonely, head over to the National Novel Writing Month homepage. You can register your novel there, update your progress, and chat with others who are doing the same. Writing novels is hard, so feel free to encourage your friends as they slog through theirs. They’ll do the same for you.

NaNoWriMo Helps You Improve

Being a writer is all about gradual improvement. The first novel you ever write is probably going to be hideous. That’s just how it is. The key is to improve, and continue improving.

NaNoWriMo helps you do that. It gives you an excuse to go ham on your long-form writing skills for a while. Plus, it gives you a short window to do it in. As stated above, it’s kind of like forced practice. And, it’s a better time than any to get those much-needed reps.

I’ve found that the more time I put into my writing, the better it gets. So if you try NaNoWriMo, that’s a whole month of excellent practice. Which will help you improve. Which will help you write something even better next year. Woo hoo!

Bonus: People Will Give You Mad Props

If you tell another human being that you’ve written a book, they’ll be super impressed, especially if they’re not a writer.

Give yourself a deadline. Join a community. Improve your writing. Earn street cred. National Novel Writing Month starts in a little over a week on Wednesday, November 1st. Try it out!