"No New Characters!"

This week, I accidentally found myself doing a diligent job of something I thought I was bad at.

[ Above: more of my usual nonsense, a partial view. ]

I spent most of the weekend working on PDAP, with a few small breaks to, you know, be part of my family and have a life.

Tangentially, it's Tuesday morning as I write this, the day after a long weekend for "Remembrance Day." At preschool dropoff, a neighbour asked, "what did you do this weekend?" I had to stop and think, "what did I do?" before remembering and saying, "ugh, I worked." As soon as the words came out of my mouth I thought, "what do you mean, ugh? You love your work." Which is true. I offered my neighbours a mostly-insincere "ugh," because, sadly, disliking our work is the norm. In a real go-along-to-get-along fashion, I went along to get along, even though it's a lie, and reinforces a miserable state of affairs.

Anyway, the important thing is that on Friday I had a hold on the tail of the story for chapters seven through nine, and I wasn't going to let go until I'd wrestled that crocodile into submission.

"But wait, TC," you say. "I thought that's what you said you did last week?"

Mm, yes, but now all the gaps are filled. Last week, a lot of my writing was in the form of, "maybe this happens? Or perhaps that happens?" Now I've completed a pass at those chapters which says, "this happens, then because of that, this happens," and so on and so forth. It's decisive now.

More importantly, I did some editing. By accident.

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It's November, which means that some people are taking part in "National Novel Writing Month." The idea with "NaNoWriMo" is that you agree to take part, and then, propelled by social pressure, you write a 50,000-word novel over the course of one month. I've done it in the past. It can be easier than it sounds. I set a goal to write at least 1,500 words every night, I'd overshoot sometimes, and I'd be done before the deadline.

The goal of this exercise is to learn to accept that a lot of those words and sentences are going to be bad words or sentences. You must become comfortable with the idea that you are generating a lot of nonsense from which you will later edit your masterpiece into existence. This exercise is great for building the muscles that let you look at a blank page and not feel terrified by its blankness. I am grateful that NaNoWriMo has made me strong in this way.

Unfortunately, I am shit at editing.

I am especially bad at editing written text (as opposed to an outline). I have a hard time seeing the crocodile for the scales. I will fiddle with dialogue and phrasing endlessly, but I have an awful time seeing the structure of the story, and I really, really like to focus on detail, texture, and sense of place.

This is part of the reason I haven't been recommending NaNoWriMo this year — I still think the exercise is good, but it needs to be paired with an exercise that strengthens editing muscles, and I don't want to tell anyone to go to the gym unless I know they can work both their pecs and their lats. Balance is important; any physiotherapist will tell you this. (The other reason I'm not recommending NaNoWriMo has something to do with the official organization and AI. I don't know the details, nor do I particularly care. Just like "Inktober," the exercise remains essentially valuable, regardless of political factors, but I don't need another micro-drama in my life right now.)

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Over the weekend, after maybe the third time I told myself, "this character enters and exits this scene too many times, can we just keep them there or get rid of them?" I realized I was editing with discipline.

Looking back, I was using a handful of simple rules to guide my choices.

• When a character leaves a location, they go somewhere else, and with a sense of purpose. They don't go out, then back in, then out again.

• No one is allowed to go anywhere without a reason.

• No new characters! NONE!

• No coincidences, unless it gets the characters into more trouble. (This and "no new characters" are two I remember from a list of "22 Pixar Story Rules," and I hold onto them tightly.)

• Keep anything that makes me genuinely happy.

• And my new mantra: err on the side of a lean outline. Shoot for an elegant birds-eye view and trust that good writing will give it strength and character. If you don't leave room for that, the whole thing will feel too mechanical.

I'm still too close to it to judge properly, but I am daring to hope that what I have on my hands is "complex, not complicated." Robert McKee makes this distinction in STORY, and I've always liked it. "Complicated" I imagine like the giant metalwork marble rally outside the science centre which clanks and clonks, whereas "complex" is, say, an orchestral symphony. They both have a lot going on, but in different ways, and to wildly different effect. This is not necessarily a judgment — I love those metalwork marble rallies.

I'm going to do a little more writing. There are still a few aspects of Chapters Seven-to-Nine that I want to explore, and the denouement is still unwritten, even though it's very well-planned. Plus — truly putting the lie to my "ugh" at preschool drop-off — this process is my "happy place."

[ Above: every now and then, if I'm lucky, someone joins me for the process. I don't like to post family stuff here, but it feels important, right now, to share something that makes me feel lucky, or that I'm grateful for. Sorry for being a marshmallow. ]

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I saw a thread on Metafilter — the weekly "open thread" — which asked, "what is your happy place?" I enjoyed reading it. I was relieved to hear people describe what makes them happy, which should say a lot about my emotional condition right now. The context for that thread shouldn't be a surprise: people are sad about the US election. I am sad about the election. I don't want to talk about it, except that I found this article about "election grief" to be helpful, and I benefited from taking a moment to silently articulate some of the intangible things that I feel like I've lost. I've been taking an indefinite hiatus from news and social media, as well. This may seem to be ostrich-like behaviour, except that I am Canadian, living in Canada, meaning I have a front-row seat to American nonsense without the least ability to affect anything happening there.

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My media sabbatical means I missed this post from Joel Morris with a great long scroll of unused gags from CUNK ON EARTH. Fortunately I have good friends who send me important things like this.

I swear I watched CUNK ON EARTH on YouTube, but it must have been pulled down. Looks like it's on either BBC iPlayer or Netflix now. CUNK ON BRITAIN still seems to be up, and is, I think, a must-watch.

On a related note, the most recent thing I watched which made me cry-laugh was FRANKIE BOYLE'S TOUR OF SCOTLAND. I don't know what else to say except at least twice I had to pause it so I could collect myself and continue. I saw it on Amazon; YMMV.

And because I guess I only ever watch anything if its British, and to follow up on last week's discussion of TASKMASTER, here; I've ranked the series. (They just launched a "Junior Taskmaster," or "Taskmaster Babies," as I shall call it. I watched half an episode before turning it off. Shame, too, because Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak are gems, both individually and together.)

Remember: there are no bad series of TASKMASTER, only better ones.

TASKMASTER SERIES RANKED
18) Six (even though this has one truly astonishing moment with Tim Vine.)
17) Eight (though this does have one of my favourite tasks, "sneak up on Alex," and one of my favourite contestants, Lou Sanders.)
16) Fifteen
15) Three
14) Seventeen
13) One
12) Ten
11) Sixteen
10) Two
9) Four
8) Thirteen
7) Eighteen (the most recent series, which I love, but am nudging lower to offset the recency bias.)
6) Fourteen (this is the one that got me on board.)
5) Nine
4) Seven
3) Twelve
2) Eleven
1) Five

I can't help but feel that I've made some mistakes here. I need to print out lineups of all the contestants and sort them that way. Only then will true accuracy be achieved, I feel.

ONE FINAL RECOMMENDATION: if you haven't played with LEGO recently, I wholly recommend it. I've been building a lot with Kiddo, using piles of my own old LEGO and new kits he's received as gifts. We did some this weekend, at a friend's house. I find it extremely involving and distracting, a great thing to really focus on.

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Back to the drawing board! Everyone remember to keep your feet off the red green.

Until next week,
I remain,
holding onto that crocodile tail,

TC