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By Ellie, December 1, 2009 12:44 pm

After doing the research and failing at this year’s NaNo, I’ve had a startling revelation: I want to write children’s chapter books.

I’ve been reading Captain Underpants and Magic Tree House books like crazy. For lower grade fiction, they’re amazingly addicting. And too much fun. The ideas of a mean principal turning into an underwear-clad superhero, and two kids traveling to different times and places through books give the imagination plenty to play with. And in the case of the Magic Tree House, it’s good educational fun. There are even research guides!

But studying the style wasn’t enough to learn how these books are written. I had to actually write in the style.

It’s not as easy as you think. A lot of people think that writing in itself is easy. Just type a few words, make a few sentences, have a plot to connect them all, and–BAM! Instant story!

Thing is, these people have probably never tried to write anything longer than a blog or Twitter post in their lives. They don’t understand the struggle of creating interesting characters, planning a cohesive plot (either through an outline or on the fly), or keeping track of every thread and action so that the entire story makes sense. Most novels run about 50,000 words. That’s a lot of stuff to keep track of.

You’d think that lower grade fiction, which usually runs no more than 9K words would be easier, right?

Hey, it’s still a story, and it still has to make sense.

And you’ve got a shorter frame in which to tell everything.

Not to mention the simple vocabulary, short sentences, and appropriate content you have to consider.

And can you imagine writing like this for 9K words?

George woke up. He looked over at his alarm clock.
It was 6 o’clock.
The sun wasn’t up yet.
He got out of bed and went to the window. There was a blanket of snow all over the yard.
He smiled. Snow day!

Yes, it does look simple, but try staying in this mode for about an hour, or however long you can write. It’s almost mind-numbing. And it’s very tempting to write longer sentences or throw in a big word or two.

But you’re writing for a very young audience, and it’s important to think at their level. How do they see the world? What do they think of it? What interests them the most? How long can you keep their attention?

These are the things I’ve asked myself when reading lower grade fiction and imagining myself writing it. When I finally get to write my own lower grade fiction, I’ll be facing a challenge bigger than any middle grade or YA novel I’ve dreamed up.

But I imagine it’ll be fun. I’ll get to revisit that younger, more innocent time when the world was all about stuffed toys, My Little Ponies, running around in the backyard, breakfast cereals and Saturday morning cartoons. Back when I didn’t have to worry about jobs, money, or being taken away by strangers. Back when the world was simpler and more colorful.

Yep, a big challenge, but a fun one.

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By Ellie, November 20, 2009 2:54 pm

Only ten days until the NaNo ends. And it looks like I’m going to lose this one, too.

It isn’t that I’ve lost interest in my project(s). It’s just that I kept restarting it/them and wanting to spend time with it/them.

I also decided that this was going to be a middle-grade chapter book, which usually run up to 30K words. NaNo’s are supposed to be 50K. But I figured I could write another 20K of fluff and still win the thing.

I’ve heard of a lot of writers who go back and forth between scenes, or who will write the ending of their story and backtrack to the beginning. I’ve tried that with the two other NaNos for this year, but with the third and last one, I decided to go the traditional route. So far, I’ve written from the beginning and… I’m still in the beginning. My characters have yet to reach the “point of no return,” when they’ll be thrown into the action and can’t return to the way things used to be.

But I much prefer this to writing absolute crap, which was how I won the ‘07 NaNo. Trust me, that one was horrible. I used adverbs, purple prose, gratuitous sex scenes. A lot of gratuitous sex scenes. I didn’t really feel pride as I downloaded the little graphic that declared me a winner. I just felt… dirty. And not in the good way.

So, after doing this three times, I have to conclude that the NaNo may not be for me. I feel like I have to rush 50K words, no matter what, quality be damned. I have a hard time continuing any project if I think it’s crappy.

It was like that for the first NaNo. But, dammit, I wanted to win that thing. I kept going until I was sick of the story, characters, even the entire world I’d spent years creating. Two years later, I can only think of five small things to salvage from that wreck, which is pretty good. But I’d feel better about the experience itself if the story had been a quality first draft. Because I believe that quality first drafts are the difference between major rewrites/overhauls and some major tweaking and rewriting.

(At least, that’s what I believe. I’ve never written an entire story and then a second draft, so I have no personal experience to back up that thought. But writing well the first time around so the subsequent rewrites won’t be such a chore seems to make sense.)

Who knows? I might give the NaNo a try next year, just to see if I can win it with a damn good draft.

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By Ellie, November 10, 2009 5:00 am

For those of you who haven’t scoured the Internet for writing activities, the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) might seem like an overly ambitious undertaking. And you’d be absolutely right: the task is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, from November 1st to the 30th.

I’d thought about participating this year, then came up with a list of valid excuses: I couldn’t decide which project to tackle, I didn’t like rushing through a first draft, I couldn’t finish a complete story in 30 days…

But when November 1st rolled around, I realized what day it was. After only a minute of debating it, I signed up for it and picked a random project to rush through.

The project in question was a middle-grade novel I’d conceived a few weeks before (actually, it was more of a “re-conceiving” of a project from my late teens). Since middle-grade fiction seems to be easier to write than YA or adult fiction, I jumped right in with little to no concern for fully developed characters or a rough outline.

But a few days in, I gave up. The story was blending with another project I was reworking, a humorous webcomic that never took off for various reasons. (If you’re curious: 1) It was about college students, and the Internet gods know that we don’t need another one of those. 2) I really didn’t have the drive or motivation to keep it up.)

So I picked up another project I’d started several weeks before. Yeah, it was cheating, but I’d gone three days without writing my NaNo, and I felt that using a 7,000+ word novel would get me ahead of schedule. It did. For a day.

I abandoned that one, deciding that it needed more research before I could continue, and returned to the first NaNo.

So far, I’m sticking with the first NaNo, and with luck, I’ll see it to 50K. If not… well, it won’t be the first time I failed.

I first participated in ‘07, and the NaNo I wrote then was so atrocious, I will never reveal it to anyone. I’m ashamed that I even wrote it. You want to talk about a rushed job? Hack writing? Plot holes so big you can drive a Mack truck through them? How about characters who changed from chapter to chapter to the point where they resembled asylum escapees in an Off-Off-Broadway production? This NaNo had it all and absolutely nothing.

But I went past 50K words. And I felt dirty when I downloaded my award banner.

I participated again in ‘08. The previous year’s sacrifice was a fantasy novel, but this one was a YA sci-fi offering. I made it to the sacrificial table, ceremonial blade in hand, but never quite made the incision. (Yes, my analogies suck. It is pretty close to midnight as I’m writing this.) So I abandoned the NaNo, but felt pretty good, because I wasn’t going to rush through it.

We’ll see how ’09’s NaNo turns out.