raggedyanndy asked you:

Let’s talk names. How do you choose your characters’ names? Any advice or resources for people looking for names? How important do you think it is to have the “right” names for characters?

Dear raggedyanndy,

Are you familiar with the quote, “Wherever you go, there you are”? It’s been attributed to many great minds over the millennia, but most famously to Buckaroo Bonzai, the title character of the 1984 film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension. Auntie MJ has a corollary to this: whatever you name your character, that is your character’s name. And I’ll add on this additional wisdom for no extra charge: naming a character is the most unimportant important thing you’ll do when writing your book.

Now I’ll give you a second to get a bucket to scoop up your mind, because I know I’ve blown it.

Yes, naming characters is important. There is much to be said for a good name. We love Ebenezer Scrooge, Boo Radley, Bigger Thomas, Charlie Bucket, Sam Spade. There are double names like Humbert Humbert and Major Major. There are telling names like Dolores Umbrage and Sal Paradise and Billy Pilgrim and Holly Golightly. But many great characters have names that aren’t actually out of the ordinary. They’re just names. Jane Eyre. Willie Stark. Jay Gatsby. John Yossarian. Jake Barnes. Sally Bowles. Margaret Simon. Jim Dixon. I could go on FOREVER.

I could go on forever.

Telling names are usually found in children’s (middle grade and under) books and sci-fi and fantasy. They come from a world where the rules of naming are a little unhinged. We don’t normally get names that reveal our characters (and if we do, they tend to be nicknames). We infuse character names with meaning, because we take the name as a term and apply all we know about the character to that term. So Harry Potter takes on a whole set of meanings. But truth be told, we would feel the same way about Harry if he had been called Henry Palmer or Davey Duster or Sammy Finkus. Really. We would.

(It seems worth noting here that J.K. Rowling is one of the great namers of all time, right up there with Dickens, I think. Harry Potter has the plainest name in the books; this is clearly done by design. He is the Everyboy, the kid from under the stairs who becomes the Boy Who Lived. The other characters get names like Ronald Weasley, Cornelius Fudge, Gregory Goyle, Bellatrix Lastrange, Pomona Sprout, Luna Lovegood, Gilderoy Lockhart … names that indicate something about the characters. But Harry … he could be anyone. That’s the point.)

So yes. Names are important. But naming is also a great timewaster—right up there with building the perfect playlist and organizing the pencils in order of size and sharpness. You can spend a LOT OF TIME looking for the “right name.” I think there is an impression that the RIGHT NAME will announce itself like a bolt of lightning and from that point on, your book will more or less write itself because you have found the MAGIC WORDS. You actually just pick a name and move on.

In something like NaNoWriMo, the name thing can be a problem. Auntie MJ hears from many people who can’t seem to get anywhere because they can’t “find the right name.” I suggest you give this task A HALF AN HOUR. Go out and take a walk. You probably need a walk anyway. It’s good for you. Bring a pad of paper and a pen. Look around you. Look at street names. Look at names on mailboxes and trucks and signs. Look at objects around you. Mentally say what the things are called. Let your mind wander a bit. You want a name that’s appropriate, but most names are more or less appropriate.

At the end of a half hour walk, go back inside and write down the first reasonably appropriate name that comes to mind and GO WITH IT. You can always change it later. Make obsessing about the name a SEPARATE TASK that you do on non-writing time. It’s a nice way to kill time when you are riding around in a car or on a subway or digging the hole to put the bodi … any other mindless daily task. But for now, give it 30 minutes and move on with the business of writing.

That is what I suggest as a way of dealing with this PROBLEM should it ARISE. You know, of course, that there is no RIGHT advice for writing? There is no CORRECT way of doing things? There are just suggestions, which you can follow or ignore AS YOU LIKE. Auntie MJ is only here to provide ideas.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my shovel.

Love,
Auntie MJ

handful-of-berries asked you:

Do you think it’s better to start at the beginning of your novel and just write straight through or skip around and write the parts you’re most excited about first?

Glorious handful-of-berries,

Auntie MJ is a skipper. I don’t usually write books from start to finish. I know loads of people who think this is CRAZY TALK and start very the first sentence and write straight through to the last. The very idea makes my brain itch.

So this answer may be overly simple, but that doesn’t make it any LESS TRUE. Do what you like. If you want to skip, skip. If you want to write in order, write in order. I would only suggest, as a certified skipper … don’t just AVOID the parts you think are hard. Set some sort of internal goal for where the scene has to go or how much of it you have to do. Forge on with a whole small section. Go back and do some links you’ve been trying to work around. I say this because you can sometimes build up fear about those sections, or falsely think they’re going to be more difficult than they actually turn out to be.

I’ll say this again, because I cannot stress it enough: there is NO RIGHT WAY TO WRITE A BOOK. For every author, and every book, there is a method. History is full of stories of WEIRDO TECHNIQUES people have used to finish books. They are all equally valid. Anyone who tells you otherwise can go POUND SAND.

In fact … IN FACT … I would propose there are no WEIRD TECHNIQUES. Only techniques. Do it YOUR WAY.

You are never as weird as you think you are.

Skippingly,
Auntie MJ

gitana1 asked you:

Hi! I am doing NaNoWrimo this month while I’m a Junior in college and I work 30 hours a week. My classes are hard this semester and when I’m not in class or at work or doing homework I am exhausted. Do you have any encouragement or tips for me? Thanks so much!

My dearest gitana1,

Auntie MJ feels your pain. That is a lot to take on. Many people have this problem … how do you do this crazy thing? How do you write 50,000 words when there are so many other things to be done? Surely, this will require some kind of OUTSIDE MANIPULATION of TIME AND SPACE. A time warp. That is what we need.

When I was starting out, I had this somewhat insane commitment to write four to ten hours a day, even if it killed me. And I did this with a full time job. Later, I did four to five a day with TWO full time jobs—my only-for-money desk job, and my night job as the literary manager of a theater. I’ll be honest, I did this mostly by not actually doing work during my desk job. I also wrote in the morning, at lunch, and in the hour or so I had between the two. I did not, as I remember it, ever sleep.

I can’t completely recommend this course of action, but it worked for me.

But it is true what they say … the more you have to do, the more you get done. When the hours stretch in front of you, it’s easy it just drag something on. But when your time is limited, it becomes precious. I know that when my deadline approaches, I suddenly become about five times as productive. And I know a lot of full-time novelists with children, some with babies. Their writing schedules are completely dependent on the schedules of a TINY HUMAN. When the tiny human sleeps, they write (and do the wash, and answer email, and eat food, and shower, and sleep themselves, and generally try to live their entire lives).

My advice is this: block out your schedule. Look for blocks of one hour. If you can’t find one hour, a half will do. If you can find one hour a day, you can do A LOT. More than you’d think. Even a half hour a day is something. Just use that time, then shut the computer. See what you can get out of that block. If you can’t find one every day, as many as you can. And make sure you have also scheduled in some downtime. Don’t just grind on to all hours until you explode.

Frankly, if NaNoWriMo takes you a few extra weeks … so what? If you are super, super busy … things are how they are. Finish as you can. Don’t KILL yourself. I think just finding the time, blocking it out, and devoting its use could be the thing for you.

Unless of course you have a totally pointless and quiet job where you can type away to your heart’s content … but Auntie MJ would never tell you to skive off work, now WOULD SHE?

Doing the Time Warp again,
Auntie MJ

insomniapple asked you:

Dear auntie MJ, my paragraphs are really short! I know it shouldn’t matter but I feel like I must be missing something. Does it matter if they are short? *Flails in front of laptop*

My precious insomniapple,

There is nothing particularly wrong with having a short paragraph. There is actually no rule in the English language concerning the length of paragraphs. You can have a perfectly legitimate paragraph that is only one sentence, or even one word, long. Some people write long. Some people write tight and short. But you seem to feel there is something wrong, something missing, so maybe there is. Maybe you are finding your stride. That’s fine.

A page has a cadence. Go to your shelf, to your library or bookstore, and pick up some books at random. (It would probably help to pick up some certified “classics” for this exercise. Just flip through the pages. Don’t read them. Just look at the patterns on the pages. Look at the way the words undulate down the page, like the pages are breathing in and out. You will see all kinds of forms. Now pick three books you REALLY LOVE (or at least REALLY LIKE or THINK ARE GOOD FOR SOME REASON.) From each of those books, pick a page you like. Now read the paragraphs over and over. Count the number of sentences they have. Really take a good, long, STRANGE INTENSE look at these pages. Why do they work for you? What do you like about these paragraphs? I don’t just mean the story or what’s happening. Why is this FORM speaking to you? How much detail is given? Where does the author start and break the paragraph, and why do you think he/she chose this point?

Do this exercise every once in a while at random. Just pick a page from a book and have a good look at it. Once you understand the logic behind the form, you add to your knowledge base. It’s another entry in the “things I like, writing-wise” files. We develop our style by keeping these kinds of files in our heads and processing them. We don’t even know we’re doing it, usually. When you learn to write, you often have to make a conscious effort to figure these things out.

Many people recommend typing out an entire book they love. This is a famous technique. By typing it out, you start to put the ebb and flow into your fingers, you really have to look at every word. During NaNo, you might not have time to type a whole book. But you might want to try typing a page or two, just as a warm up. It requires no particular thought. You just type it and let things happen naturally.

I think you’ll find that the more you start looking at the paragraphs in this way, things will start to sort themselves out in your mind. But for now, don’t worry. Just keep going and try the exercises if you can.
With devotion,
Auntie MJ

navigatefreedom asked you:

How am I supposed to motivate myself when I have the wide world of tumblr sitting here?

Dear navigatefreedom,

You are fortuitously named! This might be my shortest answer yet, and perhaps the single most important one I write.

I realize that I said before that software is not the answer. But this may be the ONE CASE where software IS the answer. I strongly suggest downloading a program called Freedom. I own it. Lots of people I know own it. What does it do? It TURNS OFF THE INTERNET for a set period of time. It will ask you, “How long do you want to be off the internet?” And you say, “Sixty minutes.” Or whatever. And then it blocks your internet for that amount of time and you CANNOT TURN IT BACK ON.

Seriously. It’s really good. I recommend it. You can download a trial version for free that works five times. The full version is $10. That’s a very fair price to pay. You’d probably spend that much on three caramel lattes or a thousand rubber bands for your rubber band ball. Try the free version and see if it helps.

Anyway, this is what I do and it works. So there you go!

Switching off now,
Auntie MJ

UPDATE: The lovely papertimelady has given me the name of a similar FREE program called Self Control.

hpsummer asked you: I have a habit of restarting about every 5000 words. I reread what I’ve written and cringe. This causes me to start over. Any advice?

My darling hpsummer,

Auntie MJ has some very simple advice for you: stop rereading. That should do the trick.

Let me tell you about a friend of mine, the wonderful Ally Carter. The first time I ever wrote with her, she took this THING out of her bag. It looked like a BIG CALCULATOR.

“Ally!” I said. “Whazzat?”

“This,” she said, “is an ALPHASMART.”

I poked the AlphaSmart.

“Whassit do?”

“It’s a word processor.”

I cocked my head in confusion and pointed to my computer. Surely what I had in front of me was a WORD PROCESSOR and this thing, whatever it was, was some other beast entirely.

Ally explained. The AlphaSmart, she said, was a cheap word processor, made primarily for children. You can only see a few lines of text, and you CANNOT GO BACK. You can only go forward. This is how she wrote her first drafts, on this simple machine that only allowed her to press ONWARDS. It was cheap. It ran on batteries. It did nothing else but take in WORDS. From there, she exported the WORDS to her normal computer and added them to the book file.

I hesitated telling this story, because I did not want to give the impression that the answer to your problem is A NEW KIND OF MACHINE. Because this is the answer we long for. “I could write this book if I just had a better computer/this new program/better headphones/a chair that doesn’t squeak.” Many books go unwritten while would-be authors wander the aisles at the Apple store, looking at all the shiny new things. Why not spend five hours setting up this fancy new WRITING SOFTWARE? That will help in the long run, right? Why not spend three days decorating your IDEA WALL? And clearly, nothing can be done until the ULTIMATE PLAYLIST is complete.

You don’t need any of it. The answer is not in the technology, it’s in our behavior. Ally just found this machine and made it work for her. She took the sensible course: SIMPLE IS BEST. She knows that, like you, she needs to just MOVE FORWARD to get that draft done.

Take what you already have and set up a system that prevents you from rereading. For example:

• Email and save your work somewhere (MULTIPLE BACKUPS! MULTIPLE BACKUPS!), and start each day with a blank page.
• Same as above, but maybe send each day’s work to a friend, who stores it for you in a document (MULTIPLE BACKUPS!) and promises not to let you see it until you are done. Friend can tell you your daily word count.
• JUST DON’T LOOK AT IT.

Onward!

Love,
Auntie MJ

iamdanilamb asked you: Hi! This is my first year doing NaNo and I’m trying really hard to just write but the goal of fifty thousand words is freaking me out! Do you have any advice for this? I want to finish but I feel like I’m freaking myself out on the second day.

My dear iamdanilamb,
Let us consider the number 50,000. It is a non-trivial number. It must be examined and respected, but not feared.  It may feel like some strange CREATURE that lives in the corner, staring at you with beady eyes, but this 50,000 has come to help you. It is your FRIEND.

50,000 words may linger just above your head, looking like this.
As I’m sure you’re aware, writing is not about getting as many words down on a page as possible. We don’t think books are great just because THEY WEIGH A LOT. A writer is not classified as a genius because his or her works must be transported by wheelbarrow. Writing is about getting the right words in the right order. That’s the trick, and it’s not easy. Much writhing and teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling is done in the name of getting the right words in the right order. The task is so daunting that many people avoid it forever and make up excuses about why they never write that story they’ve always wanted to write. Fear blocks their way.

You, my friend, decided to sit down and give it a shot. And that is the first step in putting the right words in the right order. The next step is to write some words. ANY WORDS. Something has to be on the page. It’s totally okay if what goes on that page are the WRONG WORDS, as long as they are SOME WORDS, because you can work with the WRONG WORDS. A lot of what you are doing at the start is blowing some of the crap out of your head and knocking the fear out of the way. You are PUNCHING FEAR IN THE FACE. You’ve already got it on the floor. Now KICK IT. Seriously. KICK IT.

The 50,000 words is there to give you space, to give you room to play and move. It gives you a ring to reach for, a big red button to push. It’s there, smiling, waiting for you. It’s not the creature with the beady eyes, hovering, waiting to kill. It looks more like this:

Look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT. It’s doing loop-de-loops around your head, encouraging you to take advantage of this opportunity. Imagine this 50,000 words as a huge room you can dance around. A field you can roll through. You cannot mess this up if you tried.

And 50,000 words, though it seems like an UNGAINLY number, isn’t even as much as you think. It SOUNDS big, but that’s 1,666 words a day. That’s not a huge number. That’s a few emails and a couple of texts. It only seems big because you’ve put an expectation on yourself that you can now THROW AWAY. This is not a text. No one will tase you in the neck if you write the wrong thing, because YOU CANNOT WRITE THE WRONG THING. Give yourself a chance to get it wrong. You’ll get it right later. Listen to Mark Twain. He said:

“You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it.”

And he knew what he was talking about! Now go play with your owl. JUST LOOK AT IT.

With love,

Auntie MJ