Dear cheapandflimsygrandeur,

IT IS HERE! The final day of NaNoWriMo. The end of the road. The last stop. The jumping off place. No matter what you’ve done with NaNoWriMo-whether you wrote 50,000 words or 5,000 or 500-you did something. Yay! Something! It’s something you didn’t have on October 31st!

So what do you want to do with it? That’s the question. Only you know the answer. NaNoWriMo is a fine journey to take on its own, just for the sake of taking it. Or you could continue and keep working on your book. Auntie MJ can not tell you where to go, but if you choose to go on, she can advise a few ways forward.

1. FREAK OUT. You did it! You did it! Time to get WEIRD! It’s time to eat strange cheeses and do some EXPERIMENTAL HANG GLIDING!

2. GO OUTSIDE. Remember outside? It’s that place that’s outside. Take this slowly. Just go to the door at first and let your eyes adjust to the light. Slowly, slowly.

3. CALL YOUR FRIENDS. Remember your friends? They are the people not in your book. The ones with the bodies.

4. READ SOMETHING. Remember other books?

5. EXERCISE. You probably need it.

6. COOK SOME FOOD. What have you been eating? Be honest with Auntie MJ.

This is a good time to get back to your regular pursuits.

Feel better? Good.

Now, what do you do about your NaNoWriMo book? Here are your basic options: something, or nothing. Both are valid. There is nothing wrong with doing NaNoWriMo just for the sake of it and just LETTING GO.

Or, you could continue working. Which involves doing more of what you were just doing, namely, sitting and writing. For an indeterminate amount of time. And this time, there is no NaNo group or shiny sticker at the end. However, there is A BOOK at the end. And the journey, no matter what, is one you make by yourself. But alone is not the same as lonely. You can join a writing group. You can show it to your friends. You can work your writing into your life.

But from this day on, it’s up to you. It’s ALWAYS been up to you. Auntie MJ wishes you the best, no matter what you decide.

And perhaps she will see you next year?

For her part, Auntie MJ is just STARTING her own NaNoWriMo. So maybe you can send advice to HER.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Love,

Auntie MJ

Dear saidreadertorider,

Joss Whedon once said: “There’s a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called ‘fan fiction’.” J.W. always speaks the truth.

On day 29 of NaNoWriMo, it’s time to start discussing the state of your brain.

You have come to Auntie MJ with a question, and it is Auntie MJ’s responsibility to tell you the truth as she knows it. And Auntie MJ says this as someone who often seems a few pieces of toast short of a toast loaf … when you start talking about your characters like they are real, people get annoyed. And for good reason. They aren’t.

And trust me, Auntie MJ knows you know that, and she certainly sympathizes, but … they still aren’t. When you talk about them to other people, it annoys them because you are talking about people they don’t know. You are talking about people who are members of a very exclusive club, one that meets IN YOUR BRAIN. It’s like namedropping, with an added dose of, “Maybe you should be on some medication.”

Sometimes, our imaginary friends become a big part of our life.

I say this as a friend, saidreadertorider, and as a professional. If I went around talking about all my characters like they were real, two things would happen:

1. People would punch me in the face everywhere I went.

2. No one would want to work with me, because I would be “insane.”

Quirky is fine. A quirky writer is expected, even welcomed. But insane writers are generally to be avoided. So if you plan on Going Pro, this is definitely a habit to drop.

And I’ll give you another, better reason … when you start getting friendly with your characters, it becomes harder to make them do what they need to do. You need to make your characters do unpleasant things sometimes. Ugly things. You need to have bad things happen to them. Sometimes, you need to kill them. And if you are fraternizing with them in the off-hours, this becomes hard.

It’s actually good to reserve a place where you can just BE with the characters. That place is when you are working on the story, either physically, or just in your mind. It’s okay to imagine them as you are doing things. And hey, if you want to keep doing this, Auntie MJ is the last person who is going to stop you. Auntie MJ runs a home for five hundred imaginary wayward hamsters, after all. But this is her advice on the subject, which you can take or leave at your pleasure.

Lovingly,

Auntie MJ

My dear alinatheduck,

You do not make things easy on Auntie MJ. That is okay. What is the point in asking easy questions?

I can only answer this question in general, because I don’t actually know what’s in your story, what specific religions and specific views and specific arguments. And that’s fine. Let’s look at it generally. And let’s take the sentence I have italicized above:what is the point in asking easy questions? Novels, at their heart, ask questions about why we live the way we do. Why we make the choices we make. Even novels you think of as “trashy” might pose some very serious questions about love, sacrifice, loyalty, family…

Also, novels both deviate from and mirror reality in a way to shed some light on our general situation, this wonderful predicament we call life. Now, if every character in your novel had exactly the same views, the views of the author, some prescribed message … that would not be much of a novel. Because everyone would be the same. It would just be a creepy group of people who went around agreeing with each other. This would not be ideal, unless you were trying to draw a picture of a creepy society, and even then, you’d really need a contrasting character to highlight how creepy that is.

Because difference is good. Can you imagine how freaked out we would be if everyone said the same things, or looked exactly the same? This is the stuff of nightmares. This is some uncanny valley, Stepford Wives, the robots are taking over, 1984 stuff.

It is also important to remember that YOU ARE NOT YOUR CHARACTERS and that NOVELS ARE NOT LITERAL INSTRUCTION MANUALS. They aren’t cookbooks. You don’t just read straight down the line and follow everything on the page.* Novels aren’t just WORD LISTS. They are documents to be taken AS A WHOLE. So if people decide to be offended because of something your characters do, then they are missing the point of reading. And there is nothing you can do about that.

If someone has a problem with what you write, let them talk to you about it. But you can’t scrub your story of something difficult to avoid potential complaints. Trust me, those people will find something to complain about no matter WHAT you do. You’d be amazed at the passages people will pull out and scream about. There is no predicting it.

The story is a story, which means that it contains difficulties and characters with different personalities and opinions. People write about characters that are NOTHING LIKE THEMSELVES. JK Rowling is not like Voldemort. Stephen King is unlikely to chase you around a remote resort with a hatchet. Harper Lee was not promoting racism.

The fact is, we have a lot of things inside of us, a lot of conflicting, weird stuff. Writing is a way of accessing it. And that’s good. It’s a way of understanding each other, even the stuff we don’t like.

So while I do not know exactly what is going on in your book, I cannot advise avoiding these difficult things. Is it hard to write some scenes? Yes. Might people react strangely? Yes. But they also might not. And people change. And that is the point.

Good luck out there,

Auntie MJ

* In my experience with book banners, this is a common problem. Book banners tend to read with a weird and selective eye and a highlighter in hand. They aren’t reading the story-they are scanning for words they don’t like. They highlight these words to make their complaint. And they do so not because they want to help, but because they want to be seen in the local news or in the town meeting or even on the big morning television show being “righteous.” When in fact they have failed the primary reading test: the comprehension test. This is one of the many reasons it is dangerous to give in to them: you can’t let people who don’t know how to read control access to books. This is truly giving the inmates the keys to the asylum.

Oh lacitedamour of my heart,

Here is a fact that people love to pull out at parties*: Shakespeare is credited with adding 2,000 words to the English language. Did you know that? Now you do.

And yes, English allows for the making up of words. We even have a word for it! Neologism. A newly coined word or phrase. But I will point out that neologism has a second meaning in psychiatry: a word used by a patient with a mental disorder that has no meaning except to that patient.

Which is to say this: yes, you CAN make up words. Many fine novels, plays, and poems contain totally made-up words. But it is ALSO true that English is a RICH language that has grown in leaps and bounds since the time of Shakespeare. No one can actually COUNT how many there are, but the Oxford English Dictionary estimates that it is somewhere around a quarter of a million. Chances are, that word you seek ALREADY EXISTS. You also might invent something that you think makes sense, but actually is just kind of weird (see second meaning of neologism).

However, weird is often good. For example, there isJABBERWOCKY, which is almost entirely composed of nonsense words, and yet it is awesome.

So there is no answer for this. But since Auntie MJ likes to provide some guidance, I would suggest looking to see if there is a word that might mean what you are trying to express. If you look up the word in a dictionary or a (shudder) thesaurus, you can find related and similar words.

With loving frubosity,

Auntie MJ

* Not very good parties. Also, symposiums, awkward silences, and at any gathering with more than five English and/or Theater majors in one room.

My dear katwaterflame,

Auntie MJ has an MFA, a fact she sometimes brings up, but only SOMETIMES, and only in the right circumstances. This is largely because no one cares. But it is relevant here, because Auntie MJ has an MFA in nonfiction writing and learning HOW to do research was a major component of that degree. Nonfiction books, of course, are almost entirely research based (memoirs being about the only exception, and even then, you’d be surprised). They gave a very loose rule in teaching us about how to do research for our books, which was taken (I believe) from Truman Capote: you do about four times the research you actually need. Or, to flip it around, you’re probably going to use about 25% of your research.

Now, that number is OBVIOUSLY not going to hold true in every case, and it can’t be measured anyway. It’s just to give an idea of the relationship between how much you find out and how much of that stuff you actually use. And it’s more to give you an indication of how much work you need to do. In nonfiction, it’s usually a LOT. It’s a massive part of the job. It was supposed to indicate just how well we had to know our subject, and how selective we had to be when we were presenting it.

But I have written eleven works of fiction now, and I have some experience in transposing this lesson.

Some works of fiction require research. Some do not. Which ones need it? Well, ones with historical content. Or realistic content that requires a level of actual knowledge in order to pull off the story. FOR EXAMPLE, if you are writing a EXCITING SUBMARINE DRAMA, you kind of need to know how submarines work. If you are writing a POLITICAL THRILLER, you need to know quite a bit about politics. If you are writing a MURDER MYSTERY and have to kill someone, you probably need to know the details about how they die and how that would actually be investigated. If you are setting your book in a certain city, you need to learn about that city. If you are writing a book that features a character with an illness, you’ll need to know about that illness.

And that’s all sort of assuming a present-day reality. When you get into historical fiction, then the amount of research multiplies. Then you have to research ALL OF IT.

I would never be able to say how much research your book would need. Only you can figure that out. It’s usually pretty easy to identify the spots that require the research. If you are writing a scene that involves getting into a tank and you have no idea what it is like inside of a tank, that’s something you need to research. If you are writing a murder mystery set in 1940 and have no idea what was going on in 1940, then you probably need to pause, spend several months or a year or more doing nothing but researching 1940. Or you should set your book in a different time, because there is little point in setting it in a time you know NOTHING about.

As to the finding of research items, well, that is a BIG SUBJECT. Hopefully you have learned/will learn how to research in school. When researching, there are two KINDS of sources: primary and secondary. A PRIMARY source is a thing from the time or person or event. For example, an actual letter written by someone involved. An actual page of the investigation report. An interview with someone involved done by you. Photographs of the thing or person. A secondary source is a book or documentary, etc. on the subject, something that has taken a bunch of primary sources and interpreted them. (Here’s a handy article explaining these two things.)

You find your materials in quite a lot of places. Libraries, for one. Sometimes you actually visit the place, or go to an archive, or speak to people involved, or observe something in action. But the basics of research usually involve reading until you know your subject well.

That being said, you can OVERDO it. If you just need to know what the inside of a tank looks like, you don’t have to go INSANE and learn EVERYTHING about tanks. You have to learn where to draw the line, and this comes with experience. I wish I had an easier answer.

The best thing I can advocate is LEARNING about how research is done. It’s a learned skill, and one you can use in ALL ASPECTS of life. Many colleges and universities offer a course in how to use their resources. TAKE THIS. Take anything that is offered that is like this. In terms of what you can do RIGHT NOW, there are some good internet sites on how to research. Here’s one guide from Scholastic. Here’s another from Cornell University. There are loads more out there.

Also, libraries have TRAINED RESEARCH LIBRARIANS who know the science of research. Go in with your questions (as specific as possible) and ask for help.

Happy hunting!

Auntie MJ

I stopped having fun writing. How can I try to make writing fun again?

We must go to the mountain now, and we must know the truth. We must climb and seek out the people in flowing robes who have big beards. Even the women of these mountains have big beards—that is how WISE everyone is. We must sit before them and ask, “Why is this no fun anymore?” And they will give us looks of beardy wisdom and nod, because this question is THE question. It’s the question at the bottom of EVERYTHING.

When we first start things, they are often AWESOMELY FUN. When we first start dating that werepire. When we eat that first handful of movie popcorn. When we decide to take that class in glassblowing. But then our werepire boyfriend or girlfriend keeps eating all the local rabbits, the popcorn is giving us popcorn stomachache, the glassblowing is not turning out the way you expected …

Any endeavor of any length is going to go through phases. And the things we come into with a BIG RUSH often have the biggest crashes. Everyone on Beardy Mountain knows this. In fact, most people down here on Normal Shlub Level know this too. Not every day of writing is a BIG RUSH OF WONDERFUL IDEAS, as I am sure you have noticed by now. Many times, we first sit down to write because we had a BIG WONDERFUL IDEA, and then we realized we had to KEEP SITTING THERE. See, that’s the key part, the keeping sitting there part. That’s the writing. There will be days when it will not resemble anything remotely approaching fun.

Which is why we have to go back up to Beardy Mountain and ask some more questions about Life. How do we keep going when the fun wears off? The good folks of Beardy Mountain have many answers for that. First, they might suggest pinpointing what you are actually feeling. Describe the SYMPTOMS. Perhaps you are sitting there thinking things like:

• I don’t want to sit here any more
• I have no ideas
• This is boring
• I don’t know what I am doing
• This is hard
• I should be doing something else
• I can’t do this

Just acknowledge those feelings. Say, “Oh, that’s me thinking I’m dumb.” “Oh, that’s me thinking I can’t do this.” Realize that pretty much every writer ever has had them, all of them, sometimes all at once. Those are things your brain is throwing up at you, but they aren’t necessarily real. Writing requires concentration. When you try to focus, sometimes a bunch of noise is generated in your head. Don’t try to avoid it, because it will chase you down. Just look at it, wave at it, and move on. Walk gently past it. It’s okay. They are just thoughts, doing their thing.

Thoughts like this come up in every aspect of life and often keep us from doing things we’d actually like to do. When we hit the part where the thing becomes work, the noise starts. But if you actually want to write, learn that those are the noises of the jungle. It’s okay. When you first hear the lion roaring “YOU CAN’T DO THIS,” you think the lion looks like this:

But the more you say, “Okay, I hear you” and move on, you will realize the lion looks more like this:

I had to resort to a lolcat to show you the truth. The people of Beardy Mountain would approve, I am sure.

Once you get past these initial bumps, you start to ENJOY the working phase. Not every day, all of the time, but so much more often than you would think possible.

That being said, I also want to say this: writing is not for everyone. We all have a THING, and writing may not be your thing. But it is ALSO true that a lot of people give up long before they have even started because they jump ship at the first moment they don’t think it is fun, and they are missing out in the long run.

Beardily,

Auntie MJ

Today’s Ask Auntie MJ column takes the form of this video. Auntie MJ is not abdicating responsibility-it is a holiday. And there is a lesson to be learned. It is easy to get VERY CAUGHT UP in something, like a NaNoWriMo draft, and start forgetting to TALK TO PEOPLE and SPEND TIME WITH THEM. So today she is doing that. (And, okay, possibly working on her own book, which is due soon, but ONLY AFTER she spends time with people.)

She also does not eat turkey, so she is glad is turkey is getting away. Hey! WRITING PROMPT: WHERE IS THE TURKEY GOING?

Dear afashionablefrown,

When Auntie MJ was a Teenaged Auntie MJ, she wanted to drive. My mom didn’t want me to drive, and kept on giving me reasons why the process had to be delayed. One day, when I asked for my learner’s permit (for the twentieth time), she replied, “You can’t get your learner’s permit until you’ve had more practice.”

(Note to anyone unfamiliar with Pennsylvania driving law: a learner’s permit is the thing you get that allows you to practice driving.)

She made this remark by accident, but for me, this beautiful Catch-22 told me all. I was going nowhere.

While this annoyed me greatly at the time, it’s been a useful lesson in how to deal with a draft. This sort of thing, the “I can’t start until I have done XYZ” is common. In this case, you can’t start the writing until you’re finished this outlining, ergo you can never start. You have set up conditions for yourself that have made it permissible never to write your story.

You may start to feel crazy.

Not to fret! This is a common enough problem. Rest assured the same is true of ALL these writing problems: you didn’t invent them. Someone else has had them. Probably someone you really like. The first and most important step in this case is to realize that this is just a trick your fears are playing on you. (You seem to already be aware of this on some level—now you just have to say it loud and clearly.) This whole not being able to start thing? It’s an illusion. Brush it aside. Fling it with great force, if that works better for you. As they say in the Matrix, THERE IS NO SPOON. Here is why:

1. That “vital detail” is a game that never, ever, ever, ever, ever ends. It’s called “writing.”

2. We can draw from that that what you are doing with that outline is WRITING THE FIRST DRAFT. Hooray! Consider it finished. You will find those “vital” details when you get into the next draft.

Really, this is completely psychological. Declare the outline done. If you need to, make a sign that says THE OUTLINE IS DONE and hang it above your desk. Now begin again, fresh, unencumbered, free.

Licensed to drive,

Auntie MJ

Dear erraticartist,

Your question fills Auntie MJ with joy and she happily provides the answer: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. In fact, there is everything RIGHT about that. To write for fun … that’s healthy and quite excellent INDEED.

There is a lot of talk about how the NaNoWriMo books must be rewritten and edited extensively after completion … but this is usually because people ask, “How do I publish my novel?” And that is how you publish a novel. You finish it, and finishing it means rewriting it.

But there is every reason to do NaNoWriMo because writing is GOOD and joyful. Because it allows you to express things you want to express. It’s okay to do it as a game. In fact, it’s great! It is perhaps the BEST reason to do NaNo. It’s really best under ALL conditions to write a book just because you want to. There is no other reason to do it. If you want to write books for money and fame* then you perhaps are barking up the wrong cellphone tower.** There is precious little money or fame to be found in the business. And books written for money and fame tend to feel like books written for money and fame. They have a hollow ring and an empty center.

There is a certain obviousness to books written for money and fame.

Write what you want. Do it for yourself, and if you feel like it, the entertainment of your friends. And if you are one of those people who wants to take it to the next level, then fine. But that first level is a good and beautiful place. And it is the place many people who write for a living try to return to when the deadlines come and the business part starts to feel weird.

So DO YOUR THING, my friend.

With adoration,

Auntie MJ

* Tagline stolen from my friend Scott Westerfeld. And he’s joking, FYI. TO MAKE THIS VERY POINT.

** I’ve never seen a dog bark up a tree. But I do see a lot of those cellphone towers made to look like trees, except they look NOTHING LIKE TREES. I just wanted to bring them to the public’s attention. WE KNOW THEY ARE NOT TREES. STOP TRYING TO FOOL US, BIG TELECOMMUNICATIONS!