NaNoWriMo – Ecce Signum

IWSG, April 2025: The Varieties of Companions

2025-04-022025-04-02 John Winkelman

I wasn’t sure what I would write about in this post, other than the usual recap of my lack of creative writing over the past month.

Then I saw this video, posted this past Monday (March 31). It is an update on the state of NaNoWriMo, both the event and the organization. To sum up – after several years of struggling, NaNoWriMo is shutting down. There are multiple reasons, but the core issue, even more than finances, is a lack of communication between the various staff and volunteers. Having had many jobs over the years and having worked with multiple organizations, I can say that without clear and open communication channels, no organization with more than one person in it will last long.

IWSG has talked about NaNoWriMo many times over the years, and I have written quite a lot on the event since I first attempted the Month of Writing back in 2013, so no need to recap the past decade of participation.

I am grateful for the good that NaNoWriMo brought into the world, and I am sad that it is shutting down under such unfortunate circumstances.

Anyway.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for April 2025 is: What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

This was a fun question! Picking characters from almost 50 years of reading fantasy was difficult, but here are my final choices. Which is to say, my choices this week, which are probably different from my choices next week.

The character I would like to have a drink with is Li Kao, from Barry Hughart‘s magnificent Bridge of Birds. I am sure Li Kao would be able to drink me under the table, but that seems to be how apprentice-ships work in Hughart’s books. I don’t think I have the intestinal fortitude to participate in what Li Kao would consider an adventure, and as for fighting him, he is far too much of a pragmatist and would likely assassinate me if events pointed toward us getting in a fight.

I think Gideon Nav from Tamsyn Muir‘s Gideon the Ninth would be an absolute blast on an adventure. She is smart, a superb fighter, and has a wicked sense of humor. She seems a bit mopey when drunk, so not so great as a drinking companion, and she would likely immediately kill me if we got in a fight.

The fantasy character I would most like to fight is Corwin of Amber, from Roger Zelazny‘s Chronicles of Amber. I have no doubt I would lose, but of all the other fantasy characters who are fighters, I believe Corwin is the one least likely to kill me once I start losing. Heck – we might even end up as drinking buddies or going on an adventure.

Have a wonderful April, everyone!

[NOTE: a partially-completed version of this post went live earlier today. This is the updated version. I was distracted in the middle by a sudden need to pump several-score gallons of water out of my basement.]

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

Weekly Round-up, October 19, 2024

2024-10-192024-10-19 John Winkelman

Painted stones fond beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.

[Painted stones found beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.]

This past week was hectic. Far more hectic than I would have expected on a week off. But my week off coincided with the kickoff of a new project, which I am leading, so I had to pop in to a couple of meetings when I would much rather have been walking in the woods or otherwise not staring at a computer screen or listening to other people talk.

But I did manage to accomplish some of the things I set out to work on for the week. My house is slightly improved. Our cats are verified healthy. I am too, as of my first physical in over a decade.

Reading

I finished the Borges interviews, and for a change of pace picked up Runes of Engagement by Dave Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell. I know Klecha from the ConFusion science fiction convention, where we are both volunteers and occasional members of the ConCom, and he has been most helpful as I learn the ins and outs of helping to manage a science fiction convention. I met Buckell at ConFusion several years ago. He is a Righteous Dude.

Runes of Engagement was a fun read, and light, and I finished it in a couple of days. Next I read Jack Ridl’s new poetry collection All At Once, which was absolutely beautiful. Some of the poems moved me to tears, which almost never happens. Ridl is a treasure.

Now I am reading Norah Lange‘s Notes from Childhood, which I acquired several years ago from my subscription to And Other Stories. I might have missed this one, except that Lange is mentioned more than once in the Borges interview collection, and so was floating near the surface of my subconscious.

Writing

With my little extra free time I began organizing my notes for the upcoming Month of Writing. Since I am no longer participating in National Novel Writing Month, I am instead participating in “That November Thing”, an event coordinated by the West Michigan Author Alliance, that which used to be the Ottawa County/Grand Rapids region for NaNoWriMo.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Apocalypse, Precursors
Setting: Battlefield
Genre: Lovecraftian

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 5, 2024

2024-10-052024-10-07 John Winkelman

Poe, woozy from the drugs.

[Poe, woozy from the drugs.]

This past week was hectic. We had to take our cat Poe to the vet to have three of her teeth extracted. She is recuperating nicely, but caring for her as she recovers has thrown off the daily and weekly routine. Therefore I didn’t manage to accomplish as much as I had hoped.

Reading

I am still reading through the collected interviews of Jorge Luis Borges. He is currently at the top of my list of “If you could spend a day talking to one author, living or dead.” The interviews are all excellent, but there is a notable difference the interviews where the interviewer is almost as smart as Borges, and the ones where the interviewer is nowhere near as smart as Borges. Actually, “smart” isn’t the right phrasing. “Well read” and “erudite” work better.

Writing

I am still planning what I will tackle in November, since NaNoWriMo, having both become enshittified and having shit the bed, is off the table. Probably a re-write of my novel-in-progress Cacophonous.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Colonization, Economics
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Mystery

Listening

Kris Kristofferson died a few days ago. I am posting this video because “Casey’s Last Ride” appeared in an intense scene in the first season of True Detective.

Interesting Links

“Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?” (Rory Sutherland, Behavioral Scientist)
“How the US Lost the Solar Power Race to China” (David Fickling, Bloomberg)
“Metal music festival loses headliner, multiple bands after announcing Kyle Rittenhouse as guest” (PennLive) – Four of the bands, the headliner Evergreen Terrace, along with Southpaw, Let Me Bleed and American Hollow, dropped out of the Shell Shock festival when they found out Rittenhouse was a guest. I suppose inviting an incel whose mom drove him across state lines to hunt people for sport is a bad move for a festival whose stated purpose is to support people with PTSD.

Weekly Round-up, September 28, 2024

2024-09-282024-09-27 John Winkelman

Hot peppers, tomatoes, a large pile of string beans, and many acorn squash, displayed on a small table.

[The latest, and possibly the last, harvest from our small garden this year.]

Suddenly here we are in the last week of September and the first week of Autumn. We finally have something approaching seasonal weather, though the weather we are having now would have been considered unusually hot only a decade ago. So it goes.

Reading

I have set all of my other reading aside so that I may focus on reading the collection of interviews with Jorge Luis Borges. I picked this book up back in June 2016 and it has been gathering dust for the past eight years.

Writing

Thought it isn’t necessarily creative writing, I did stay up late a few nights ago and write a long blog post for the monthly Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop. The post will go live on Wednesday, October 2. The question for the month was about our favorite classic ghost stories. I chose “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. For why this was the story which most affected Young Me, check back in a couple of days.

Reading the interviews with Borges has helped me sort out a few problems in one of my longer (and older) works-in-progress. I am taking notes and rearranging a few things, noting where I can remove characters who are now extraneous and adding one or two who will be central to the revised work. Though I will not be officially participating in NaNoWriMo this year I do plan to spend much of November (and October, and December) writing, and perhaps complete a first draft by the end of the year. This will only be possible because I will be able to use more than half of the previous version essentially unchanged, or only lightly edited. And if I can’t complete a draft by December 31, I would like to have it done by the end of the Year of the Dragon.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Revenge, Music
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Mystery

Listening

Interesting Links

“Helene’s Catastrophic Potential Stokes Fear Amid Florida Insurance Crisis” (Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams)
“Hurricane Helene’s rapid intensification fits ominous trend” (Andrew Freedman, Axios)
“Dozens dead, millions without power throughout southeast U.S. in wake of Helene” (Clyde Hughes and Don Jacobson, UPI)
“Why Hurricane Helene is a wake-up call” (Lavanya Ramanathan and Umair Irfan, VOX)

Weekly Round-up, December 9, 2023

2023-12-092023-12-09 John Winkelman

Hello. This is me trying to get back into the habit of weekly blog posts about goings-on in my life. We will see how long it lasts, and how my intentions endure the slings and arrows of *gestures at everything*.

***

I have been thinking about Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, and also about Frank Wilhoit’s quote about capitalism.

Ashby’s law states, more or less, that in any control system, the control apparatus must be able to account for (e.g. be as complex as) all possible variants in the system being controlled.

Wilhoit’s quote is as follows: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

There is some resonance between these ideas which I have been exploring in my (almost non-existent) downtime, and I will post updates to these thoughts as they crystalize.

***

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, and I have logged my eighth win out of eleven attempts, I feel like I have the energy to continue writing. In past years that has not been the case for many and varied reasons, but this year, though I am well into my mid fifties, I have energy reserves which were simply not there in years past. So I will take advantage of that.

Writing, be it creative, work-related, keeping a journal, or blogging, is a habit which requires practice and maintenance. And when pulling out of a slump, there are two parts to restarting the practice: getting out of the habit of not doing the thing, and getting into the habit of doing the thing.

***

Currently reading: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Fields of Castile by Antonio Machado, Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

***

The writing prompt for the past week was:

Subject: Undead, Addiction
Setting: Ship
Genre: Magic Realism

I didn’t do much with this one, other than to come up with a few interesting scenarios during my walks to and from work.

The writing prompt for the next week is:

Subject: Addiction, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Border Town
Genre: War

***

Random links for the week:

Literary Fight Club: On the Great Poets’ Brawl of ‘68 (LitHub) – This would have been a fun party to attend.
Gulag Archipelago: Fifty Years After The ‘Bomb’ That Exploded Lies Of Soviet Rule, Solzhenitsyn’s Son Recalls Book’s Impact (Radio Free Europe) – I haven’t yet got far in The Gulag Archipelago, but I did read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and it has stuck with me for over 30 years.
The Bond villain compliance strategy (Bits About Money) – This is why financial crimes should be treated as violent crimes. De facto, the wealthier the criminal, the more severe the punishment should be.
The Etymologies of Capital, Capitalist, and Capitalism: A Brief Sketch (Naked Capitalism) – I like that “capitalist” and “decapitate” share the same etymological roots
Pressley, Welch introduce legislation to guarantee right to vote for people with felonies on record (Associated Press) – I’m all for this. All citizens should be allowed to vote in any election in any district of which they are constituents. This right must not be limited in any way. Not by photo ID requirements (which is to say, poll tax), gerrymandering, limited access to voting locations, limited location hours, or any of the other ridiculous barriers to democracy which conservatives have put in place, and continue to put in place, for decades. Even the slightest limit or restriction on the voting rights of any American citizen is nothing less than full-on, deliberate fascism.
Censoring Imagination: Why Prisons Ban Fantasy and Science Fiction (LitHub) – The simple answer is, of course, that the cruelty is the point. When it comes to book bans in prisons the goal, like banning books in schools and universities, is to create an under-educated underclass in a state of permanent precarity. This plus the decades and centuries of purposefully and openly racist carceral policies in the USA demonstrate that the American version of conservatism is nothing more than aristocracy and feudalism with the serial numbers filed off.
Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (Cory Doctorow) – Exactly what it says on the tin.

NaNoWriMo 2023 In Review

2023-11-302023-11-30 John Winkelman

Poe, worn out from being Poe

I am happy to report that, for the eighth time since I first participated in National Novel Writing Month back in 2013, I have reached (and passed) my goal of 50,000 words. So, yay me!

This year I did something new. Instead of working on a novel or collections of short stories, I started a project called “Fifty Flashes and Fragments,” with the goal of writing fifty flash fictions or fragments of stories over the course of the month.

I hit 50,000 words on November 27 with piece 39, and then wrote one more because “Forty Flashes and Fragments” flows better as a project title. About half of the pieces have some merit, and of those, maybe half a dozen are genuinely good.

In service of this project, I created on this website a simple prompt generator which produces, at the click of a button, two subjects, a setting, and a genre. The only rule I set myself was that I had to use the prompt generated. Or rather, what I would NOT do is click the generator until I found a combination of subjects, setting, and genre that I liked. I only broke that rule once, when the generator produced a duplicate of the previous prompt. Random numbers are funny that way.

This method worked wonderfully, and I plan to continue to use the generator (with some modifications of the subject, setting, and genre options) for weekly writing exercises.

For NaNoWriMo 2021 and 2022, I came up with a new method of tracking my writing which focused more on the day-to-day nature of NaNo and less on things like chapters, scenes, and so forth. In those years I created one document for each day of the month, and when I started writing for a new day, even if I was still in the middle of a chapter or scene from the day before, I put that writing in the new document.

Psychologically, this had the benefit of breaking me out of the mindset of “I need to finish this chapter before I go to bed” or “I don’t want to start this chapter/scene/etc. until I have time to complete it in one writing session.” That kind of thinking is, to me, less valuable during the month of November. November is for writing 50,000 words. December is for editing those 50,000 words. Or not.

I feel that my 2023 NaNo project is a natural outgrowth of the method I used in the previous two years, and I recommend it to anyone who feels trapped between the demands of the story they are writing, and the demands of NaNoWriMo.

As always, I want to thank the members of NaNoWriMo Grand Rapids for their help, community, and support.

Here is the complete list of prompts I used for NaNoWriMo 2023.

Index: Subject 1, Subject 2; Setting; Genre

01: Economics, Aliens; Subterranean; Science Fiction
02: Revenge, Empire; Ship; Technothriller
03: Dragons, Evolution; Ship; Biopunk
04: Cyborgs, Possession; Small Town; Mystery
05: Super Powers, Portals; Battlefield; Solarpunk
06: Super Powers, Kaiju; Urban; Adventure
07: Cryptids, Music; Boardroom; Utopian
08: Cyborgs, Portals; Outpost; Literary Fiction
09: Evolution, Economics; Virtual Reality; Steampunk
10: Spiritual Beings, Super Powers; Lost City; Spy
11: Aliens, Cyborgs; Library; Noir
12: Apocalypse, Precursors; Labyrinth; Dystopian
13: Aliens, Dragons; Ruins; Western
14: Addiction, Language; Urban; Literary Fiction
15: Dreams, Espionage; Ocean; Western
16: Empire, Death; Lost City; Adventure
17: Possession, Dragons; Bar; Horror
18: Portals, Dragons; Battlefield; Biopunk
19: Kaiju, Language; Wasteland; Horror
20: Portals, Revenge; Labyrinth; Folk Tale
21: Music, Cyborgs; Ocean; Magic Realism
22: Robots, Revenge; Ship; War
23: Dreams, Fae; Subterranean; Cyberpunk
24: Colonization, Cryptids; Wasteland; Solarpunk
25: Music, Super Powers; Lost City; Steampunk
26: Genius Loci, Reincarnation; Battlefield; Weird Fiction
27: Portals, Espionage; Library; Weird Fiction
28: Revenge, Artificial Intelligence; Wilderness; Solarpunk
29: Language, Spiritual Beings; Space; Noir
30: Super Powers, Cryptids; Ocean; Utopia
31: Portals, Kaiju; Labyrinth; Horror
32: Politics, Dragons; Wasteland; Romance
33: Addiction, Spiritual Beings; Wilderness; Spy
34: Aliens, Music; Ship; Literary Fiction
35: Espionage, Robots; Boardroom; Western
36: Relic, Apocalypse; Space; Science Fiction
37: Fae, Politics; Small Town; Literary Fiction
38: Revenge, Mutants; Academia; Procedural
39: Mutants, Environment; Bordertown; Utopian
40: Portals, Colonization; Wilderness; Utopian

IWSG, November 2023: NaNoWriMo, Y’All!

2023-11-012023-10-31 John Winkelman

Poe, helping us make the bed

Life is crazy busy, so this will be a short post.

The Insecure Writers’s Support Group question for November 2023 is:

November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

Yes I have! This will be my eleventh year, and this year I am switching things up by attempting fifty (50!) flash fictions in the month of November. To aid that quest, I created a simple prompt generator which you can play with here. It produces random combinations of subject, setting and genre. Here are some examples:

Subject: Espionage, Empire
Setting: Virtual Reality
Genre: Horror

Subject: Revenge, Environment
Setting: Outpost
Genre: Western

Subject: Precursors, Dreams
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Cyberpunk

The only rule I am holding myself to is that when I generate a prompt, I have to use that prompt. Generating prompts until I find one I like is not allowed.

My user name on nanowrimo.org is JohnFromGR, so feel free to send me a buddy request.

Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone!

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

IWSG, August, 2023: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

2023-08-022023-08-02 John Winkelman

Poe, looking out over her domain.

(Poe, surveying her domain, which is everything.)

Oh, what a month was July. There have been hotter summers here in Grand Rapids, and there have been more humid summers, but I don’t remember a summer when it was so unpleasant to be outdoors for so much of the time.

I imagine the perpetual smoke from the Canadian wildfires might have something to do with it. But there are up-sides. As Ray Barboni said in Get Shorty, “They the f*cking smog is the f*cking reason you have such beautiful f*cking sunsets.”

Last weekend, for the first time since well before the COVID lockdowns, I attended a writer’s group. It was…wonderful! And now I have a plan for what I am going to work on for the rest of the year.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for August 2023 is: Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it?

Occasionally. Less so now than in the earlier days of my writing, simply because I have had more practice and am more likely to spot problematic passages and ideas earlier in the process. But sometimes something slips past and makes it into a later draft.

Then there are projects like my first NaNoWriMo story, back in 2013. It was a technothriller set about fifty years from now in Gabon. I chose Gabon purely for geologic and climate reason, with no thought given to the history and culture of Gabon and Libreville, Gabon’s capital city. There isn’t much information on the culture of Gabon right now, and was much less 12 years ago. So while I still think the bones of the story are good, if I want to complete it for publishing I will need to seriously rework every character, as well as my assumptions about what Gabonaise culture will look like in 2075.

A more mundane example: For my 2018 NaNoWriMo story (NaNoWriMo again!) I wrote a book which was basically a transcript of multiple interactions with a terrible neighbor, rearranged and with a wish-fulfilling ending tacked on. I used everyone’s real names, so if I do try for publication, I will need to make some changes. I do this not to protect the innocent, or preserve privacy, but because, in the extremely unlikely event that the neighbor in question reads the book, I don’t want to get sued. So perhaps this isn’t something I feel conflicted about so much as a timely application of enlightened self-interest.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

IWSG, December 2022: Holiday Writing

2022-12-072022-12-07 John Winkelman

Poe hiding from loud noises.

[EDIT – didn’t actually write the post before its scheduled publication time. That has been corrected.]

The past several weeks have been busy, thanks to NaNoWriMo, work, family obligations, and planning house upgrades. Thus a short IWSG post for the month.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for December 2022 is: It’s holiday time! Are the holidays a time to catch up or fall behind on writer goals?

In past years I would have said holidays are when I fall behind, even though I have vacation time, but this year I think I might put that down time to good use. This is mostly because I have an actual plan and an actual draft to work on, with an actual end goal in sight. This is seldom the case at the end of the year. That, more than anything else, tends to drive whether or not I actually sit down and do the work.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

NaNoWriMo 2022 Wrap-up

2022-12-022022-12-02 John Winkelman

Poe in Repose

Well, NaNoWriMo 2022 is over, and I can chalk up another win for myself. I hit 50,000 words in my WIP Cacophonous on November 23, and managed to get in a couple thousand more before the end of the month. I had hoped to hit 60k but family and holiday stuff, as well as a strong attack of burnout from the year, sapped all of my creative energy. But still – 50,000 words in a little over three weeks. I’ll accept that.

This year I employed the same strategy as last year – one document for every day of the month, word count in the title, and let the chapter breaks fall where they may. As with last year, this had two benefits. First, it removed the sense that the next chapter couldn’t start until the previous one was finished. I didn’t have to finish scene X by the end of the day. I could pick it up the next morning. This is really more of a psychological than a practical trick. but it does keep the focus where it should be for NaNoWriMo – productivity and word count. The editing happens later. This is Draft 0. After it is all cobbled together, it is draft 1. Then the editing can begin. And second, I could start each day fresh, unencumbered by what I had worked on in the previous sessions.

The big change this year, from the past three, was the community involvement. Of course 2020 and 2021 had no in-person events, and 2019 I think I skipped out on everything so I could be with my partner as she had recently moved in and things around the house were still a little chaotic.

I didn’t realize how much I had missed the community aspect of NaNoWriMo until I walked in the room for the kickoff party back at the end of October and saw all of those familiar faces, some of whom I had not seen in five years. Then there was a book launch party for the first publications by Lakeshore Literary, the new publishing endeavor which grew out of the ashes of Caffeinated Press. And then two weeks ago we had DoKN, or the Day of Knockout Noveling, where I wrote about 5,000 words in one afternoon, ate a lot of really good food, and encountered many more of the people who I had not seen in years.

So, like so much else in 2022, my sense is that the world is making up for the two years when we couldn’t do anything, by having everything happen in a very short amount of time.

As of this writing I am about 60% of the way through Cacophonous. More if I take the short story I wrote in October 2021 and turn it into the last couple of chapters. I will certainly use a lot of it, but the book is significantly different from the short story so I will only bring over the bones of the first work.

Will I participate in NaNoWriMo again? Absolutely! There are no bad sides to such an event.