Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll continue our full bio conversation about the life of playwright August Wilson. Biographer Patti Hartigan joins me to discuss. It's your last chance to see the play Jaja's African Hair Braiding before it closes on Broadway this Sunday, but there's two ways to see it: in real life and online. We'll explain. We'll learn about the late artist Michael Richards, who is the subject of a new exhibit at the Bronx Museum. That's our plan, so let's get this started with National Novel Writing Month.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in which participants try to bang out an entire first draft of a novel, at least 50,000 words or 200 pages, in just 30 days. It started in 1999 with just 21 participants. By 2005, there were more than 59,000, and the event's founder, Chris Baty, decided to file NaNoWriMo as a nonprofit, which is now called The Office of Letters and Light. In 2020, NaNoWriMo boasted 383,064 writers, and we suspect that some of you, dear listeners, might be among this year's participants.

Here in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, we wanted to have a conversation about the writing process. Where should a story be after about 25,000 words? What might a revision process look like? If you're looking to publish, how much should you be thinking about market trends, and what kinds of stories are popular right now?

Joining me now with his writing and more importantly, his revising tips, we welcome Matt Bell, writing Professor at Arizona State University and author of many books, including his latest novel Appleseed. On the subject of this discussion, his latest about the craft of writing is called Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

Matt, welcome back to All Of It.

Matt Bell: Thanks so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Also joining us is bestselling, Young People's Poet Laureate and National Book Award-winning author, Elizabeth Acevedo. Her debut novel, The Poet X, led to the publication of her second book, With the Fire on High, which she wrote for, wait for it, NaNoWriMo in 2013. Those are both young adult titles, but her latest book is called Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo's first book for adults, which follows the stories of a Dominican-American family.

Elizabeth, welcome back as well.

Elizabeth Acevedo: It's a pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you participating in National Novel Writing Month? Give us a call, tell us how it's going, or if you have questions about how to end your novel, or about the revision process, or about publication, our phone lines are open. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call in and join us on the air, or you can text to us at that number as well. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Also, social media is available, @allofitwnyc.

Elizabeth, you published your book With the Fire on High in 2019, six years after you wrote the 2013 National Novel Writing Month book. You wrote it during that month. What advice would you give folks working on their stories as participants in this year's event?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think that I would probably suggest folks write out of order, especially at this point in the month. Because when you first start NaNoWriMo, you're like you're in it [laughter] and those early pages are flowing. Then you get to the middle of the month and you realize, "Oh, wait, my outline was thin. I don't know what to write. I'm stuck." What was really helpful for me was to write out of order. I would write the parts I knew, the scenes I knew. I would write the ending first. Whatever gets you to getting the word count, allow the detours to happen.

Alison Stewart: Matt, you chuckled when Elizabeth said that. Why did you chuckle? [chuckles]

Matt Bell: Oh, I just think a really similar approach in some ways. I really think of first drafts as exploratory drafts and allowing yourself to explore and allowing yourself to digress and go down rabbit holes, which for NaNoWriMo purposes is ideal anyway, where you're sort of stacking up word count. Yes, I feel like in a first draft, I never want to be too sure of what it is. I feel maybe this halfway point, your NaNoWriMo novel is becoming something other than you expected, and that's a good thing and a positive thing to move into that instead of be maybe frozen by it.

Alison Stewart: Matt, in your book, you outline your three-draft novel process, but you also advise taking breaks and being patient; two things which may be a little bit at odds with this timeframe. Everybody's thinking about this month timeframe. What tips do you have for keeping up your endurance and your pace when you don't necessarily have the luxury of patience or time?

Matt Bell: I think one thing I guess I'd say is that- this is true for all first drafts and maybe especially when you're writing fast is as much as possible, you want to suspend judgment of what you're making. I think I'm constantly telling my own writing students like, "No one judges you on anything you don't show them."

Many people who become writers are perfectionists and want it to be perfect all the time, but allowing it to be messy and allowing it to only be for yourself at this stage is so important. That feeling of like, "Is this good? Is this worth doing?" it can really slow you down. As much as possible, you should just assume that it's worth doing because it's what you've chosen to do with your time and your days. I think NaNoWriMo is a really indulgent time and it's good to indulge in that.

Alison Stewart: Elizabeth, right dead center in the month, so in theory, to be on target, you should be 25,000 words in. Now you've written multiple novels now. What benchmarks have you used when you're writing your novels, or do you even use benchmarks?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think that doing NaNoWriMo was really helpful because I saw just how much those daily showing up, those words accumulate. 50,000 is a hefty amount to revise, it's a good amount to go back into and see where the bones are, but there's still room left to play. I would say that really for me, I'm a kind of put your head down and just get the daily, and don't worry about the big goal. You will get there if you just show up daily.

My one thing that I would advise, though, is Thanksgiving can throw a wrench in things. You have family, you have cooking, you have stuff. One thing I would advise that I did, I kind of front-loaded a little bit. I started adding an extra 50 words just to make sure [chuckles] I had some wiggle room. At this point in the month, you have about 10 days; start maybe tacking on a little bit so that you give yourself a day off.

Alison Stewart: You're crafty.

Elizabeth Acevedo: I try.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Got a question here. "I'm writing my first novel, but not constrained to 30 days." The question is, "I can keep editing forever. How do I know when I'm done???" Three question marks. Matt, you want to field this one?

Matt Bell: [chuckles] It's funny. Having written a book about novel revision, the question I always get is like, when am I done? I'm like, the whole point of this book was that you're not. [chuckles] It's a tricky question. I think, for me, done is different stages, right? A done in a first draft is I've done everything that I can do, I've got most of the story there, and without restarting, I'm not really making any real progress. Then in a second or third draft, I really want to do everything I can before I pass it on to other people. Your friends, and your editors, or agents, whoever is going to see the book next do have a limited amount of time for you and limited amount of times they're going to read your book. Even your best friend is probably not going to read your novel 10 times.

The further along I can hand it off, the happier I am with how they can help me. Having people help me with things I could do myself doesn't make as much sense to me, but everybody needs different feedback. I think knowing when and where you need an encouragement and constructive criticism is part of what you're figuring out while you're writing your first book.

Alison Stewart: Elizabeth, do you have a sense of knowing when you're done; to our questioner's question, that they can keep editing forever?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think what made NaNoWriMo really helpful for me is I'm an impatient writer. I want to race through the first draft because I kind of got to outrace the feelings or the negative self-talk. I have to be faster than the self-talk is. I guess that same impatience is what makes me want to get to the next book, but I can't get there. I refuse to start a new book until I'm done with the book I'm working on because I think you have to finish your projects.

I would say, if you're still in the world, then you're still in the world. Once you get that itch of, "Oh, I really want to move on to something next," you will be forced to let go. Once you're ready to let readers in-- I don't like pushing folks to let the world in too soon because it is very scary and you can't take it back. You'll know when you're ready to let air in.

Alison Stewart: We are talking with writers; Matt Bell, he's actually a writing professor at Arizona State University, and author Elizabeth Acevedo. They are our ride-alongs for NaNoWriMo. It is National Novel Writing Month, encouraging people to try to write 50,000 words in the month of November, get about 200 pages of a novel down. If you are out there and you are writing a novel, we want to hear from you, or you're participating in NaNoWriMo, give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'd love to hear how you're doing. You can join us on air, or you can text to us at that number as well. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Also, you can reach out on social media, @allofitwnyc.

Matt, the length of a story is usually what will determine if it's a short story, or a novella, or a novel, or a series. Within these categories, what are the different expectations across the industry, and how do you think about word counts and page counts?

Matt Bell: Oh, yes. In the first draft from my own writing, I think the story finds its own length and in some ways, it's really hard for me to aim for a length. That feels really challenging. I do think a lot of writers have an internalized sense of scale. It might change over time, but your ideas come to you at a certain size and come to you in a certain way. I think I mostly have novel-scale ideas.

I do think there are certain genre expectations for word count, like if you're writing epic fantasy, you probably get more space maybe than if you're writing literary fiction, but I feel like those are market problems to be solved later. You write the book the best you can. I think almost all of us write too much then cut back, so I think people shouldn't be afraid to make a big pile of words and then carve into it.

I really think of that first draft as like you make the marble, and then the second draft you make the statue, so it's okay that the marble is bigger than the statue. I think people should feel unconstrained in the first draft as opposed to trying to hit a certain number. Most of us are not underwriters.

Alison Stewart: Elizabeth, what have you found in your experience about page count and word count?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I don't want to undo what Matt just said, but I'm actually a very spare writer.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: It takes all kinds.

Matt Bell: Yes, that's great.

Elizabeth Acevedo: It's all kinds, and I think it's because I come from poetry, where we're taught brevity is the utmost- that's the aim, how can you say the thing in the least amount of words? I have to be really patient with the fact that there are things missing, there are holes. Then I'm going to have to come back and plug those in later, but I am telling myself the story, I'm introducing myself to the characters, and I don't have to aim for anything outside of what gets me to done.

I think sometimes folks imagine, "Oh, it has to be this many pages. It has to be this many words." It just has to get done, and once you read it, you can see where you have to add in or pull out. Give your reviser self a lot of credit because they're going to be doing the heavy lifting. This self is just playing. You should be experimenting and having fun and reach your word count so that you're moving forward, but allow it to be joyous.

Alison Stewart: When you're thinking about that first sentence, Matt, what should a writer be thinking about, the first sentence of the novel?

Matt Bell: Oh, yes. The first sentence of a finished novel is something that hooks you, something that promises you, I think something that makes it feel like there's a sense of scale here, there's a big story to be told. I think that promise that you're making the readers is really great there. In early draft-- I don't know Elizabeth's experience, but I think I very rarely have written the first sentence of a novel first. That seems actually almost never to happen. Some of it is because I don't know the whole thing yet. A first sentence at the beginning is just something that makes me want to write a second one and what makes me want to write a third one, and really finding those launching pads for chapter after chapter that seem exciting.

In a NaNoWriMo novel, which I wrote one too in 2005 or 2006, I feel like, this is probably true in all first drafts, but a lot of like foreshadowing lines are really good, where I'm casting things into the future that I don't know what are yet is really useful. That same suggestion you later give the reader like, there's something more out there, there's something to come after, there's a mystery to solve, a thing I want to know more about. Those kinds of opening sentences feel really fruitful when you're drafting that promise, something you have to go explore yourself.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Victor from New Jersey calling in. Hi, Victor. Thanks for calling All Of It. What's your question about novel writing?

Victor: Yes, good morning. I was wondering about the positive and negative aspects of AI involved in writing, especially when it comes to going through drafts.

Alison Stewart: Matt, thoughts about AI and writing?

Matt Bell: I think it's probably a tool people will use more. I think, personally, I'm not terribly interested in, but maybe I'm just old. I think right now, of course, the tools that are most available to most of us are, I guess I'll just say, I think unethical because they're built on the backs of other people's writing and work. The Atlantic article that came out a couple months ago had a search database. You could see if your books had been used without your permission in the AI database, and five of my books were in it. I don't think I want to use tools that are built on other writers' work without their permission. I do think there may be more interesting, ethical ways to engage with in the future that I would be curious about.

I also think for me a lot-- the difficulty is the point, almost, of writing. Solving the challenge of the book myself is where a lot of the art comes from, and so I personally am not trying to find another way around that, but I think lots of people will use it in interesting ways. It just has not been something that I have engaged with more than just checking it out so far.

Alison Stewart: Elizabeth, when you talk to other authors about AI and whether to use it as a tool or to be suspicious of it, what are your conversations like?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think it depends on what kind of writing people are doing. I know that for screenwriters, that's a kind of writing that can be very formulaic and something like AI is a huge industry disruptor. It can be very scary to know that a producer or someone outside of the writing world could just take a premise and have the machine make it. I think that for the most part, poets and fiction writers know that the technology hasn't caught up quite yet. I've looked at ChatGPT. I've put in my name and write a poem, and the poem that came out, I was not nervous about.

[laughter]

I think a lot of us take comfort in the fact that we are, one, constantly evolving, and so if you're looking at past work, that's going to be a really hard way to see where someone is going, but also we are hunting voice. We are trying to make something that sounds human, and we're trying to do it again and again and outdo ourselves. It, I think, can be a little bit of a-- it breaks the brain to consider how AI will be able to mimic what we are trying to translate.

For right now, I think folks are wary but not quite sure what to do or how to protect ourselves. I will say that I know that voice narrators, the folks who read our books, that is an industry that's being really challenged by this because AI does voice mimicking very, very well, so people are losing their jobs on that side of it. It depends on what part of the storytelling we're looking at. I think we have to be thoughtful about where the industry is going and what access the machines have to what we're doing.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing National Novel Writing Month with Matt Bell and Elizabeth Acevedo. We're also discussing it with you. If you'd like to call in and join us on air, tell us how your novel writing is going, or if you have a question. Our phone line is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can text to us at that number as well. We have a bunch of great texts lined up to talk about after a quick break. We'll also talk about revisions and endings. That's next.

[break]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Matt Bell, writing professor at Arizona State University, author of Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. His latest novel is Appleseed. Also joining us, Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Poet X, a National Book Award winner. Her book With the Fire on High, she wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2013, National Novel Writing Month, which is right now. We're right in the middle of it, so these two great authors are here to help inspire you and answer some questions.

Here's when we got a text. "How do I make the reader turn pages and HAVE TO-" that's in caps, by the way, "-and HAVE TO keep reading the next chapter and then the next?" What do you think, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think this is a good question about pacing. I think you want to think about how am I planning for the really next exciting part and I stop just before then. There's a lot of ways to play with pacing. I like to call actions and thrillers, it's like boom-boom-bap type books, and I don't write those. I'm very quiet interiority, and so for me, I like ending on a really strong image that makes the reader think and imagine and love the language and that, that propels them forward.

There's a lot of ways into what's going to get someone to keep reading, but I think you have to pin it on your character. If your character is interesting and asking interesting questions and constantly driving towards their objective, then the reader is going to want to see how they get there.

Alison Stewart: Anything you want to add, Matt?

Matt Bell: Yes, I'll just agree with everything Elizabeth said. Jim Shepard has this thing he talks about called rate of revelation, which is the pace at which you're learning crucial emotional information about your characters. As long as that's proceeding, the reader wants to keep going. If that feels like it stalls out, we get bored. Then I think I'm always looking for character actions and change in scenes. When scenes aren't producing change, the book feels static.

Even in writing quickly like in NaNoWriMo, if your scene has created change in the story in some way, then you're ready for another scene, and the reader will want to keep going because they'll want to see the implications of that change or the consequences of it. I think where we feel stalled is usually because no new information is coming in and because no change is occurring.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted, "I absolutely love NaNoWriMo. It helped me get to the finish line a few times. One of my favorite tips is to set a timer for 20 minutes and then the only thing you can either do is write or stare at the wall. I can usually get a few hundred words down in this kind of writing sprint." Thanks for the text.

Anna has a really interesting question. Anna is calling in from Bridgewater, New Jersey. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi, there.

Alison Stewart: You're on the air.

Anna: Oh, awesome. Okay, so my question is, I started a book when I was 10 years old, I've always been a writer. I had like 30, 40 pages of pretty good work, but it's in a 10-year-old voice. I'm 27 now. I've published another nonfiction book separately with a co-author. My question is, how can I think about taking that voice back up again? I no longer sound like I'm 10, but how can I re-inhabit that and maybe pick it up again and continue and hopefully finish it 17 years later?

Elizabeth Acevedo: I think it's really helpful that you have those pages because you have kind of a calibration. You know how you wrote, you know what words you had access to, what images you had access to, and the language of experience that that character was going through, and so I think you can check where your voice is now to where your voice was then.

I think the one thing that might come up is your ego, honestly. When you write in a child voice, sometimes you want to make it sound better or smarter or this image isn't tight enough, and so it might be just allowing yourself to let go of all the things you've learned about writing and really just tune into that voice and keep trying to reread those pages to make sure it feels consistent.

Alison Stewart: Matt, after you've finished the first draft, you say writers should take some time before diving back in, and you described it as lived time and art time. What's the distinction?

Matt Bell: Art time first. I think when you're working on a novel, even if you're working in a month, a month is a long time, but for me, often years, and so need a break to let yourself think about some other things, to make something else. I actually wrote short nonfiction books between my last two novel drafts, just back and forth, to use a really different part of my brain. I have sometimes written very bad poetry as a way of taking break from my prose. That can be useful and really just to get yourself in a different set of artistic concerns.

Then lived time. When I'm finishing a book, it's all I'm thinking about. If you're writing a NaNoWriMo book, it's probably really all you're thinking about, to write that much that fast. For me, a month between drafts usually will get me thinking about something else. If I wake up and I'm no longer thinking about the book, that's usually a sign that it's a good time to go back and start. That's actually, paradoxically, the sign that I'm ready to dive back into revision.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Mark from Pleasantville. Hi, Mark. You're on the air, you've got about a minute.

Mark: Thank you very much. The best writing advice I ever read was from Hemingway who said, always stop at a point when you know what happens next, but I did have a question for our two guests. I've written two books, nonfiction books through traditional publishers. Just wrote a novel, decided to publish it on the Amazon platform Self-Publishing, and I wondered what your two guests think of publishing on the Amazon platform.

Alison Stewart: Matt, you want to take that? You want to start?

Matt Bell: Sure. I haven't done any self-publishing, I don't have a lot of personal experience with it, but I think there are good reasons to do every kind of publishing. The thing, I think, I always tell people in publishing conversations is, what will make you feel like the book is a success for you? How do you define that? If you want your book to be reviewed by The New York Times and be a bestseller, then that requires usually a certain kind of publisher. If you want your book to exist and to be read and you're comfortable doing self-promotion, then I think things like Kindle and other eBook platforms is really great.

In some ways, it's really about what you want to get out of the experience in publishing. Publishing is hard on everybody at every level no matter what choice you make, and I think being really honest with yourself about your goals is really more important than outside ideas about prestige or correctness.

Alison Stewart: What do you think, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Acevedo: Oh, I completely agree with Matt. I think if you want to be the publisher and have full control, then self-publishing makes a lot of sense. I think if you're someone who's like, "I want someone else to do the design and I just want to write," then go the traditional route. I do know that it is most lucrative to do both. Because you can build a platform with the publisher, and then folks are already following you, you can self-publish then, and you're getting income from many different streams. Depending on what you're trying to do, you can find the route that works.

Alison Stewart: All right. Matt, final words of encouragement for somebody participating in National Novel Writing Month?

Matt Bell: I think it's a time to really embrace this endeavor. I think so many people dream of writing a book and never doing it, and I really think National Novel Writing Month is a good time to show yourself you can. The first time I ever wrote something novel-length was National Novel Writing Month, and although I never did anything with that novel, it convinced me that I could type that much, it convinced me I could tell a story that long, and that confidence was invaluable when I wrote my later published novels. I think there's something really joyful from it.

To me, NaNoWriMo can be like running the marathon. Maybe I'll only write one novel, maybe I'll only run one marathon, but cool, you ran a marathon, you wrote a novel. It seems like such a joyful communal endeavor to be a part of, and I'm excited for anybody who's doing it this month.

Elizabeth Acevedo: Yes.

Alison Stewart: My guests have been Elizabeth Acevedo and Matt Bell. Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and encouragement on National Novel Writing Month.

Elizabeth Acevedo: Thanks, Alison.

Matt Bell: Thank you so much.

 

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