First Cup of Coffee - November 3, 2020

How #NaNoWriMo is most useful for writers and finding the rhythm that works for YOU. Also mulling on grammatical sins of self-publishing authors, place as a character, and the Rebecca remake.

This is the blog post I reference on gradually increasing word count during #NaNoWriMo (https://blog.jeffekennedy.com/2018/11/01/increasing-word-count-and-training-for-nanowrimo-2/).

The 2020 version of Rebecca is here (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2235695/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)

First Cup of Coffee is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at Frolic.media/podcasts!

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, the author of fantasy and romance and all of the delightful places they intersect. Especially the delightful places they intersect. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. You all will be delighted to hear, I'm sure, that I uh got my Nespresso shipment finally. I have a like a hair on my mouth. Something's in my face. There we go. Um, you know, I was getting by with my instant espresso and I was very sad because I ran out of Nespresso, I think on Wednesday. Almost a whole week without my favorite espresso. So I have my regular shipment that comes, but uh David was having more of it than uh he had been before, so I um ran out a little early, and the Nespresso made it to Albuquerque in two days, and then from October 28th to November 2nd yesterday, it took that long to get an hour from Albuquerque to our house, which they were saying was partly because of the pandemic delivery problems, and that's like I don't understand why that's a problem. And in addition, we have this one UPS driver who can't figure out where our front door is, and the he leaves it the shipments over at our garage door, it just leaves boxes there, but I saw him take it over there and leave it there. Anyway, I'm set for coffee again. Today is Tuesday, November 3rd, election day here in the US. So um I'm going to be relieved to have it over with, uh, not only for the stress and anxiety, but so that I will stop seeing reminders on all of my social media to vote. I wish that there was some way to just like tell them that I voted weeks ago so that they would stop. Stop with the reminders about find out where to vote in your area. It's good, but I am not taken in by Netflix and Instagram acting like they are not culpable in uh swaying elections just because they are now urging us to vote. So um I'm getting better at coordinating the recording the podcast and doing the Instagram live at the same time. So we'll see if I can continue to do this. And yes, library addict, I will uh continue to save it to my feed because I really don't expect people to um be able to tune in live. Um it's uh eight in the morning here, or no, it's seven in the morning here. Oh, I forgot about the fallback. Feels like it. Uh it's seven in the morning here, and so we are uh I got you know, I know that it's not easy to like be on Instagram all the time. I don't expect people to watch it live. It's just a good way for me to do this. So let's see. Um, yesterday was much more productive writing-wise. I got a lot more done on Golden Griffin and the Bear Prince. I didn't quite make 3,000 words, I was like 165 shy, and I thought about grabbing them later after lunch, and I thought, no, I'll just call it good and uh kind of be kind to myself on that. I know a lot of you out there are doing nano rhymal, and you know, keep that in mind that if you don't necessarily get your goal for the day, it's not the end of the world. You don't it it's a good way to build a writing habit. And I know I talk about this a lot, but the most important part of NanoRIMO is building that writing habit. It teaches you to work incrementally every day, which is what you have to do in order to write a novel. But beating yourself up because you don't reach a word count goal on any given day uh is is counterproductive. So don't do that. I was talking with one of my SEFWA mentees yesterday afternoon, and she's doing that Orimo, and she told me that someone had posted my blog post to the mentorship Slack uh where I talked about building up your word count incrementally, which is um I can link to it in the show notes. But you know, the idea is that like the first day you do 100 and then you do 200 and you build up so that it's um like training for a marathon. You don't go out and do it immediately because then you run the risk of crashing and burning. And I know, Evergreen, that you uh had a counter experience, but I'm not talking to you. Um you really have to um be aware of how you work and what what works best for you. And my mentee yesterday was saying that she had already gotten, as of the second day of nanoRimo, she was up to like, I don't know, 4,500 words or something. And of course, uh many of you know if you're trying to get 50,000 words in the 30 days of November for nanoRimo, then it comes out to like 1,667 words a day. And she said that what she likes to do is get as much as she can at the beginning so that she builds up a buffer, and that way she can um have have a little bit of fallback, it gives her uh a feeling of um I don't know, it relieves the stress from her, I think is how she put it. Because if she has a bad day or if things go wonky with her kids or that sort of thing, then she knows that she has a little bit of buffer room, and so it gives her peace of mind. I think that's what I was looking for. So that can be good too, and it works for her, and that's what's important, is that she knows that that's what's working for her. I think it's better to build up incrementally for many people, because doing a whole bunch at the beginning can exhaust you prematurely. So it just depends on what kind of person you are. If you're good at doing a whole bunch at the beginning and then it makes you feel greater peace of mind to be able to relax after that and not have to do so many, or build it up. Um, I like the build it up gradually way because I'm a fan of nano-rhymo not being this finite effort to simply grab 50,000 words in one month. Uh it's most because 50,000 words uh of a rough draft, I mean it's a start, but it's not the finish. So you want to be able to work incrementally over long periods of time because you know, a novel might be 100,000 words. Most of mine are 100 to 120,000. So one month of 50k isn't gonna be enough. What NanoRimo does teach you to do is working every day, working incrementally towards a goal, and it also helps you understand what is what's a sustainable word count for you. If you do a whole bunch in one day, do you then crash for a week? Or is there an amount you can do that leaves you still feeling um full of energy and ready to go? I think it's better to stop when you still have energy left in you instead of stopping when you're exhausted. And interestingly enough, I had that conversation with my other mentee. We just finished up the three months of the SAPWA mentorships, and so we both kind of did like our exit interview, if you will. And my other mentee mentioned that that had been incredibly helpful advice for her to just set herself a word count goal for each day and stop when she hits it, because it can be very tempting to keep going, especially if you're on a roll and you'll feel like, oh, I want to, I want to ride this wave all the way to the shore. And you don't um it there's a sense that maybe you'll lose if you stop writing then, if things are going really well and you stop, that that will vanish. And I don't think that's true. That energy will be waiting for you the next day, and it will help you get over that initial hump that so many of us experience of not being able to get started. You know, that for many, many writers, that initial ramp up for the day is one of the most difficult. Um, Dorinda Jones and I write together every morning, and she's we've both noticed that because we compare word counts and we write together for three hours, taking breaks between. And for both of us, our first hour is always the lowest word count. And then and and we'll console each other. It's like, well, not bad, not bad for the first hour, and and then we get more and more as as you get flowing, and so it may be tempting to keep going after that, but um try try stopping. Uh, I know that there was one author, and I don't remember who it was, it someone like William Faulkner, or I recall it was someone who was known for being verbose in his prose. That he said he always made sure to stop writing for the day in the middle of a sentence. So that way when he came back the next day, it was easier to pick up in the middle of a sentence. And I've tried that and I think it works. So, uh, those are thoughts on NanoRimo and sustainability of workout, building a writing habit, all of these wonderful things. We started watching um the new Rebecca remake last night. I've read the book a couple of times, and I think I saw the Hitchcock version. I can't recall if I watched the Hitchcock version of it. Um I don't always like scary movies, so sometimes I avoid them because I'm a fragile flower. But the new one has Lily James, and I think Lily James is amazing. So we watched that on Netflix last night. We only got like an hour through it. And we'll finish the rest tonight, I think, unless I don't know if David was really enjoying it. Um and Lily James is wonderful in it, but it's not as atmospheric, certainly as the book, you know. Um, and I'm sure that the Hitchcock version is atmospheric. We might have to watch it because I'm gonna have to see and compare. But, you know, one of the amazing things that Daphne de Morrier did with Rebecca, uh, for those of you who didn't have to study it in high school English class, is that the the POV character, the heroine of the story, the Lily James character, is never named in the book. She, and it's something that is subtle enough that you almost don't notice it because it's told from her point of view, so she never thinks of her own name, and nobody else in the book ever references her name. But it's deftly done because the book is called Rebecca, who is the previous wife, and her name is everywhere in the book, and the big curly R, the scrolled R, her monogram is on everything that the heroine is using, and it's it creates this sense of Rebecca being so much larger and um more relevant than the point of view character than the heroine. Uh that she is very much in Rebecca's shadow. And so it's funny because we watch everything with closed captions now, as many people do, because it's easier, and they in the closed captions it'll reference her as Mrs. DeWinter, which is kind of I understand that they need to give that cue for especially for the hearing impaired, and so I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but it does leech a little bit of that magical effect of having the heroine have no name. I mean, we know she's Mrs. DeWinter, but um having her named, yeah, it kind of took away. The other thing is about Rebecca is that the house, Manderley, is often cited, the book is often cited because Manderly becomes a character in the story. And this house, while I don't know, it's um certainly gothic. I think they wanted something gothic, but it's not graceful and lovely. And I think that the director, and I have no idea who it is, Leslie Penelope could probably weigh in on what the director uh did or did not do. I'm I'm not a filmmaker type. But the I wish I could figure out how to make my notifications not chime like that while we're doing this. Oh well, it doesn't matter, does it? At least there's not tons. Um but for this film is not for me capturing the ways in which Manderly is such an important character. And you know, the opening line of the book, and they did it with the voiceover in this remake movie, you know, last night I dreamed of Manderly. Um both Manderley and Rebecca are much more important characters than the point of view heroine. So um maybe Lily Dane James is just too uh too potent a force. She shouldn't be quite so strong because it should be all about Rebecca and Manderly. But it's it's otherwise well done. I sound like I'm trashing it probably, and I'm not, but I did find it interesting. Um we'll probably have to watch the Hitchcock version, right? And do a compare. I'm sure Hitchcock did a great job of that. Uh Hitchcock's very good about making place into character. And let's see, what else? Oh, I wanted to mention that um a bit of a gripe, and it's not a new gripe, but I was reading a self-published book that had been recommended to me, one that was billed as a dark fantasy romance, and I started reading it, and it was okay. I mean, I wasn't hugely drawn in, but I might have kept reading, except that there were so many typos. Um it just drives me crazy that people won't get, won't pay for proofreading. Pay for proofreading or copy editing or barter with your friend, get somebody who has an eye for detail to look at those things. This person um completely confuses their possessives and their plurals. So there are all of these plural words that have an apostrophe S that are should not, and maybe that's me. I know that some people say that they don't mind grammatical errors or they don't notice, but it um it it made me bounce out. Oh, and then there was another mistake where um like a vampire had a stake through the heart, but it was actually spelled S-T-E-A-K, which I can't get past that image of the stake through the heart. And I know that I am pickier than some, but I was just reading the sample and I didn't buy because I thought I can't read a whole book with this. So I urge you all to invest in that editing. Uh, I really do think it matters. So I am going to go on my way, uh, get to work here. I um hope that we are all hopeful and optimistic for how the election will turn out. Uh my mentee in New Zealand commented that like even her young daughters are anxious about the US election. Uh, it's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing that uh having the whole world watch this. But let's cross our fingers and stick together, be optimistic, and I will uh talk to you all on Thursday. And tomorrow I'm gonna have a special post up because I'm finally putting together the mastermind stuff, and I'm going to put that on the blog tomorrow so we can get going on that. And yeah, I think that's it for me today. I will remind you all that first cup of coffee is part of the Follic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts you love at Follic.media slash podcasts. And you all take care. Bye bye.