Birmingham NaNoWriMo in Full Swing

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Events, Writing      No comments

Nov
9

This month all around Birmingham you can find pockets of over-caffienated crazy-eyed folks hacking away at their keyboards, bouncing from typewriter ding to typewriter ding and dueling with pens, all in pursuit of writing a novel. . . in a single month. NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month. It is a 14-year-old event that has spread around the world helping spur the lazy, the perfectionists and day dreamers to commit words to page.

The goal is a simple one: write 50,000 words in 30 days. That breaks down to a 1600+ word daily habit.

Needless to say someone local needs to be on deck to organize all of this creativity and keep people on track. Birmingham’s writer wrangler is Jared Millet, local librarian by day and NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison by night and weekends (and days, too). He was kind enough to take a break from his own word count to answer a few questions about all things NaNoWriMo.

Q: How long have you been involved with NaNoWriMo?

A: The first year I participated was 2007. I don’t remember how I found out about it, but it was a transformational experience. Before, I’d always been what I call “a prolific writer of first chapters.” In 2007 I exceeded the 50K Nano goal and went on to complete a 75,000 word novel in 40 days – my first ever novel-length draft. I was working at the Hoover Public Library at the time, and the experience inspired me to start the library’s Write Club that still meets once a month. Last year the previous Birmingham ML departed for grad school in the Great Frozen North, and she asked me if I’d be interested in stepping up to bat.

Q: Isn’t it insane to write an entire 50,000 word novel in one month? Is that really doable?

A: Insane? Not at all. Challenging? Yes. It breaks down to a daily objective of 1,667 words. The typical working writer will produce 1,000 – 2,000 words per day, with a few outliers doing way more or way less. Walter B. Gibson, principal author of The Shadow pulp novels, wrote 24 novel length stories a year – on a manual typewriter. He would laugh at our measly word counts and cast us out of Writers’ Valhalla.

Q: Why would someone want to write their book under these constraints? Any benefits?

A: The 50,000 word goal does several things. It provides deadline pressure, it makes you stretch yourself, and it forces you to bury your self-doubt. It also disabuses you of any illusions as to what writing is. Writing is work, it’s time consuming, it’s exhausting, and if you’re serious about writing you have to make it a priority in your life and not just squeeze it into the cracks.

Along with the deadline and the quota, however, participating in NaNoWriMo gives you a community and support structure to help see you through to the end. Writing is a lonely business, but not so much when 300,000 of your best friends are doing it with you.

Q: So you are Municipal Liaison for the area, what does that mean? How is it going?

A: Basically the Municipal Liaison is the party organizer and moderator of our regional forum on the NaNoWriMo website. I set up the annual Kick-Off (which was hosted once again by the lovely folks at the Patton Creek Barnes & Noble) and arrange for weekly get-togethers at various places around town. I’m also here to answer questions, promote National Novel Writing Month to the community at large, and to encourage participants to donate to the Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit organizers of all this madness.

As for how it goes, I’ve been amazed at the enthusiasm and turnout I’ve seen in the local Nano community. This year could possibly be our biggest yet.

Q: I see the Birmingham group is taking on the state of Delaware!? What is that about?

A: To be fair, it was they who declared Word War on us. (Well, they sent a polite email asking if we’d be interested in a friendly competition.) Delaware and Birmingham are about the same size in terms of Nano participants, and the Word War has been neck-and-neck so far. They’ve been ahead by a percentage point for most of the first week, but we did pull ahead for a little while yesterday. Southampton, England has also joined our little fray, and I’m sorry to report that the Brits are whipping us both.

Q: What’s on the calendar for the NaNoWriMo group this month?

A: On the weekends, we’re having Write-Ins (where writers gather en masse to chit-chat, encourage each other, then shut up and write) at Church Street Coffee, Little Professor Book Center, the Hoover Public Library, and Blackwell’s Pub. NaNo participants are invited to attend the Write Club meeting on Saturday the 17th to report on their progress, and there will be a wrap party on December 1st or 2nd at a location still to be determined.

Q: What are you working on? How’s it going? What’s your blog? Twitter?

A: This year I’m writing the final 50,000 words of a dark, bloody fantasy novel called The Ghost Cauldron that I began in 2010 and continued in 2011. I’m about a day behind in my overall word goal, but I’m catching up and I plan to put the holidays this month to good use.

On twitter I’m @JaredMillet and I blog, where you can find links to free stories, some anthologies I’ve been included in, and Summer Gothic, a collection of Southern ghost stories by Alabama authors that I edited earlier this year. Also, there’s a link to the most recent issue of Kaleidotrope, available free online, that includes my latest published story, The Unwinding House.

Q: Any parting words for your local NaNoWriMo’s or wannabe novelists?

A: Do it. Stick with it. Have fun. Have faith in yourself, and use this experience to learn about yourself as a writer. You’re not going to produce a novel that you can mail off right away to a publisher and get rich and famous, but you are going to discover that you have it in you to create art, and that enriches your own life and the lives of those around you.

Bookstore Shopping with Dirda

Posted by trav in Authors, Book Column, Book Talk, Recommendations      No comments

Nov
8

I  love articles like this one over at The Paris Review where a writer got to go book shopping with Michael Dirda. It is so cool that one of the greatest book reviewers alive and one who has written about “the classics” spends so much time in the SciFi section of used-bookstores. The whole article is worth reading as it shares a love of books, book hunting and the joy of serendipity.

A great quote by the article’s author:

“. . . you don’t get to be the best-read man in America by giving a damn about someone else’s taste.”

Oh to bump into Michael Dirda, who says he has about 10,000 books and is “a sucker for pretty books”,  in a book store aisle. Over the course of the article Dirda declares Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel as “. . . the greatest book ever”. So that one is now on my ‘books to read’ list.

I also took the time to make a list of the books that Dirda recommends or buys throughout the story. So if you’re looking for something worthwhile, these might be worth looking up. What’s fun is that not all of them are “stuffy”. There are spaceships and sailboats too!

Rick Brant’s ‘Electronic Adventure’ series
anything by Tom Swift
Arnold Bennett’s The Card
Pym (the edition edited and annotated by Harold Beaver)
M.F.K. Fisher’s Two Towns in Provence
Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel
Alberto Manguel’s Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Fiction
Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man
Dorothy Sayers’s Omnibus of Crime
Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time
Harry Kemelman’s The Nine-Mile Walk
Ross Thomas’s Chinaman’s Chance

Book Events: Oct 28th – Nov 3rd

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Events      2 comments

Oct
27

Here are three bookish-type events going on this week in the Birmingham-area. If you know of any upcoming author signings, book sales or library events around the Birmingham area, please share via email or in the comments.

Sunday, October 28th, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. – the Emmet O’Neal library has set up a walk through graveyard featuring the lives and deaths of some of the world’s greatest authors.

Sunday, October 28th, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – Nabeel’s owner and now author John Krontiras will give a talk and will be signing his new cookbook Beloved Family Recipes at the Homewood Library. (tip: you can also sign up to win a free copy of the book over at Grasping For Objectivity.)

Wednesday, October 31st at noon – Haunted North Alabama author Jessica Penot will give a talk about Southern ghost stories and will be signing books at the Birmingham Library.

Stephen King Universe Flowchart

Posted by trav in Authors, Book Column, Book Talk      No comments

Aug
30

These kinds of things are always fun… check out this flowchart to the Universe of Stephen King books. I had no idea that so many elements and references threaded through his books. These kinds of easter eggs are exactly what fans like. You can go see the original post (and future updates) over on Gillian’s blog or click the image below to see the huge flowchart/info-graphic:

Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson

Posted by trav in Authors, Book Column, Book Talk, New Releases, Upcoming Titles      No comments

Jul
31

Here’s one I haven’t read yet (it comes out August 7th, William Morrow/Harper Collins), but I’m pretty excited about it. Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing is a collection of pieces by Neal Stephenson. Much of Stephenson’s new book is non-fiction, but I’ve heard there a couple of short stories as well. In the book Stephenson talks about his geek travels where he travels to far off places just to witness the installation of fiber optic internet connections in some remote pocket of Asia. He also tries to make a case for “modern Jedi knights”, chats metaphysics and technology/freedom vs. the Chinese. So it’s all over the place. Should be fun!

If this book is as detailed and accessible as his fiction, I know it’s one I am going to enjoy.

Anything new coming out that you’re looking forward to?

Book Events: July 15th – July 22nd

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Events      No comments

Jul
15

Here are three bookish-type events going on this week in the Birmingham-area. If you know of any upcoming author signings, book sales or library events around the Birmingham area, please share via email or in the comments.

July 18th at 5:00 p.m. – Tanner Colby signing Some of My Best Friends Are Black and Carolyn Maull McKinstry signing While the World Watched at the Alabama Booksmith.

July 21st, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. – Amber McRee Turner will be signing Sway at the Little Professor Bookstore in Homewood.

July 21st at 7:30 p.m. – Booklovers, Bingo and Brews (must be 21 to attend) at the Vestavia Hills library.

Wall Street Needs to Read More Fiction

Posted by trav in Authors, Book Column, Book Talk      No comments

Jul
9

I recently read Arthur C. Clark‘s 1973 Rendezvous with Rama, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. I thought it was great. Especially if you like the Golden Age and old-school science fiction. If you don’t, then you might want to pass. It was fun. Anyway, I went out and picked up Clark’s sequel (the not-so-enigmatically titled) Rama II. I am not enjoying it as much as Clark is doing sooooo much world building that things are kind of slow (we’ll see how far I make it). But what I wanted to share was the passage, written in 1988, in which The Chaos of 2133 is explained for the downfall of planet Earth and why space exploration was halted:

“By the end of of the year in 2133, it had become obvious to some of the more experienced observers of human history that the “Raman Boom” was leading mankind toward disaster. Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance the budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of the populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself . . . The global stock market began to sputter in January 2134 . . . World leaders insisted that they had finally found the mechanisms that could truly inhibit the downturns of the capitalistic cycles. And the people believed them – until early May of 2134 . . . the global stock markets went inexorably down . . . three of the world’s largest banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans . . .”

Pretty crazy, isn’t it!? This sounds like it’s “ripped from the headlines” of 2010-2012, but it was written over 20 years ago. Maybe Wall Streeters need to read more fiction and science fiction. I mean other than being 120 years off (and the whole alien thing) Arthur C. Clark kind of called it didn’t he?

Book Events: July 1st -July 7th, 2012

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Events      1 comment

Jul
1

Here are three bookish-type events going on this week in the Birmingham-area that should be on your radar this week:

July 3rd at 6:30p – Hunger Games Trivia Challenge at the Hoover Library. (Free)

July 6th from 6:00p to 8:00p – Dan Wells signing at Little Professor in Homewood. (Free)

July 10th from 7:00p to 8:30p – Birmingham Arts Journal reception and community reading at Emmet O’Neal Library. (Free)

Upcoming Author Events

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Bookstores, Events      1 comment

Apr
30

Here is a quick list of some author signings in the Birmingham-area over the next few days. Let me know if I missed anything cool. We’re lucky to have so many events around town.

Tuesday, May 2nd – Lisa Dahl at noon at Gus Mayer/Summit signing The Elixir of Life Cookbook

Saturday, May 5th – Bernice King at 2 PM at Books-A-Million/Brookwood Mall signing Desert Rose: The Life and Legacy of Coretta Scott King

Saturday, May 5th – Charles D. Cole at 1 PM at Little Professor signing Strategies for Success in Law School & Beyond

Tuesday, May 8th – Dolores Hydock at 4 PM at The Alabama Booksmith signing In Her Own Fashion

Thursday, May 17th – Ron Tanner at 6 PM at Little Professor signing From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story

Friday, May 18th – Sarah Frances Hardy at 3:30 PM at Little Professor signing Puzzled by Pink

Saturday, May 19th – Jim Douglass at 11 AM at Little Professor signing Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment With Truth

New Basbanes Book in 2013

Posted by trav in Authors, Book Collecting, Book Column, Upcoming Titles      1 comment

Apr
11

Nicholas Basbanes is world’s leading expert on “books about books”. In 2009, during a BookTV interview (and tour of his home library), he teased his next book about the history of paper. It looks as if that new book, titles Common Bond, will finally get finished and printed. Basbanes is slated to speak at a University of Missouri dinner next week. An interview in the school’s library newsletter (PDF download) has Basbanes talking about the book briefly, saying:

“…I am loosely describing as a cultural history of paper and papermaking. It is a story that covers two thousand years but, consistent with the way I do things, is pretty much an exercise in storytelling. I go where the good stories are.”

The book has traces paper’s invention, use and future from the earliest pulp recipes in China through the current artisan and preservation efforts of today. The folks over at the FineBooks blog (the blog where I picked up on this and one you should be reading) said that Knopf is the publisher. I checked the Knopf Fall 2012 and didn’t see it listed, so it looks like it will be a Spring 2013 title at the earliest.