Good luck to my NaNoWriMo friends – here are 6 ideas to help out!

Today (November 1^st) kicks off the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! My friends are collecting their notes, changing their Facebook profile pictures and getting ready to commit 50,000 words to a story in the next thirty days.

I love the idea of people focusing on a creative pursuit like this. It gives you a chance to examine your own beliefs and ideas about life through storytelling, and it challenges you to have fun. Because if you can’t have fun you’ll never come up with 50,000 words.

Here are some ideas you might find useful:

1. Create a character you like. It amazes me how many books are published featuring unlikable protagonists. It’s hard enough to read 300 pages about an unlikeable character – I can’t imagine what it’s like to spend so much time creating, editing, and working with that unlikeable character! Yes, your character should have flaws, but I want to root for them to succeed in whatever it is they want to do.
2. Take your likeable character and make him/her miserable! You ever have one of those days where everything goes wrong? That happens to your character today and every day. Two steps forward, one step back (we are still rooting for him/her to succeed, so some forward progress is nice, but not a lot).
3. Set your story someplace where you’ve been, or where you can imagine being. Tell me about it in vivid detail, because I probably haven’t been there! If I have been there, tell me about it so I can feel special when I think, “I know where that is!” In mystery novels, the advice is to make your setting so strong it’s almost a character. I think that can be applied to any genre.
4. Give every character a secret. Reveal them, one by one. This gives depth to your characters and adds texture to your story when you’re not in the main flow of your plot.
5. Keep your reader asking questions – but answer some of them as you go. A novel is like a scavenger hunt. There’s a primary goal, but a lot of little components are needed to complete it. Reward your reader with small answers from time to time as you work your way toward the big finish.
6. Be brave! Let your characters sit in your head and play. Your brain works best when it is starting to get bored. If the characters are already primed and in your imagination then you will get ideas in the shower. On your daily commute. While doing laundry. Be ready for them and write them down!

NaNoWriMo is a great challenge and a lot of fun. My mystery novel, Asperger Sunset, started out as a NaNoWriMo. Well, several of the characters did. And I went through six years of editing and rewriting afterward. But the book never would have happened if I didn’t sit down to write a novel in the first place!

Best of luck to everyone and I hope to see the results from some of you in about thirty days!

Aspies aren’t nice to have around???

While browsing through recent blogs on Asperger’s, I came across a review of the novel, The Rosie Project, about a man on the autistic spectrum who creates a list of criteria for a spouse and sets out to find that woman. The reviewer felt the social aspects of the novel rang false, and said, “Asperger’s is a disorder. . . An inability to connect emotionally with others means that Asperger’s sufferers . . . are not nice to have around.”

Moment of stunned silence. WHAT?!? I raced down to the comments, ready to defend the Asperger’s community against such a cold-hearted statement. Not nice to have around? How mean can you get? The comments had been closed. No chance to respond.

My world is filled with people who have Asperger’s and this statement seemed so heartless and so cruel and, as I thought about it further, so true, in many sad ways.

Fiction wants happy endings. I’m a huge fan of “The Big Bang Theory,” and of Amy, in particular. Though everyone talks about Sheldon being a classic Aspie, Amy is a classic female Aspie, with some of the significant – and occasionally tragic – differences that occur in women.

Amy is very aware of social norms, yet rarely experiences them. She’s with Sheldon because she genuinely likes him, but also desperately wishes he was more “normal” at times. She has misunderstood her level of friendship with Penny on numerous occasions, most notably in the episode where she commissioned that huge, awful portrait of the two of them.

The episode that stands out to me, though, was the one where Penny and Bernadette went shopping for bridesmaid dresses – without Amy. She found out, and was crushed. This is where the “(Aspies) are not nice to have around” comment comes in. Amy wasn’t welcome. She was deliberately left out. In the show, Penny and Bernadette apologize and draw Amy back into the group, but in the real world, in a world not controlled by comedy writers and actor’s contracts, that wouldn’t happen.

More likely Amy would have discovered the rejection, sadly accepted it, and left the group entirely.

So, my heartless blogger was correct, in a grain-of-truth sort of way. People with Asperger’s experience a great deal of rejection due to their quirks, because other people don’t want them around. I counted the birthday invitations that didn’t come through, the dates that never happened – and how many Aspies ever attend their high school prom? These are direct rejections by peers, and they hurt.

However, Aspies CAN have successful friendships! They can get married. I know of one couple closing in on 50 years, and another going 24 years. They can have long-term friendships. In fact, to have an Aspie friend is to have a loyal, die-hard friend who will do almost anything for you – as long as you are clear on what you need. Aspies do not see friendship as disposable, because friends are precious and rare.

If people can get past the “not nice to be around” concept, past the quirks and oddities that pop up, especially as young Aspies are learning to navigate the world of friendship, people can find companions who will stick with them through the most difficult of times, who offer genuine friendships. So maybe the idea of a happy ending isn’t so far-fetched after all.

Asperger’s and the Social Benefits of Creativity – But Where are the Aspie Writers?

Asperger’s Syndrome and creativity – the two are certainly not mutually exclusive. People with autism see the world differently and should be encouraged to develop their creative interests.

Everyone has a natural desire to express themselves, and creativity provides a golden opportunity for socialization. I’ve always been uncomfortable at large family gatherings and I have a driving desire to document things. Throw a camera into the mix and a few basic scrapbooking supplies and something happens…

I started scrapbooking before scrapbooking was “cool.” I’m not fancy. I do fairly simple layouts on various colors of paper with a few sticker embellishments and lots of descriptive captions, especially names and dates. I put together a photo album each year and I always bring one or two of them along to family gatherings. People love to look at the books, we talk about the people in the pictures and my comfort level in a crazy, overstimulating environment improves immensely.

Kids with autism who paint or draw or play music can be encouraged to share their talents, and they often do. This creates healthy social interaction and builds confidence. But where are the writers?

Many people with Asperger’s write non-fiction, and that makes sense. Who better to describe what it’s like to have Asperger’s than someone with the condition? But finding fiction written by people with Asperger’s is extremely difficult, and I’m not entirely sure why.

People with Asperger’s have a keen sense of detail – something valuable for a novelist. Aspies are known for having sharp memory skills, handy for creating and maintaining a storyline. Since Aspies need to actively learn social behaviors, they have a strong understanding of what’s needed to motivate and develop characters. Aspies are all about rules, so reading a few books about the writing craft sets up a terrific structure to build upon.

There may be Aspie authors out there, just not writing about Aspie characters. I wonder about Jeff Lindsay, the author of the Dexter novels. While Dexter is a psychopath, his observations and confusion about human behavior are delightfully Aspie-like, and I’d like to think that’s an extension of the author’s world-view.

Jodi Picoult wrote a novel, House Rules, about a teenager with Asperger’s, but honestly, I never felt she got very far inside his head. She did a lot of hard work and research, but that neurotypical essence still crept through.

One of the reasons I wrote Asperger Sunset, my mystery novel, is because I couldn’t find anything else like it out there. But I’m looking for more. If you know of any books featuring characters with Asperger’s or works of fiction written by authors with Asperger’s, please share them with me. Did the writers do well? Why or why not? Celebrate creativity!