NickCummings.com

When you’re searching blindly for a purpose or direction in life, it’s probably natural to find your mind wandering into some pretty morbid places. I’m not saying I’m feeling depressed or that I’m contemplating the fringe benefits of kicking the bucket; I just think that, with all the time in the world to ponder life’s mysteries, it doesn’t take long before you’re left pondering the biggest of them all.

So it’s little wonder that I’ve taken such a liking to Mary Roach’s book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. (Amazon link)

It’s not just that the book provides such an unflinching and candid account of the many fascinating things that happen once you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. What makes this book so special is how Roach treats her subject matter with such a delicate balance of awkward hilarity and genuine reverence. Dying is a serious, somber event, but what happens after the fact is  sometimes disgusting, sometimes uncanny, and almost always utterly fascinating.

Roach is the kind of writer I aspire to be. She’s got a sharp wit and an irrepressible curiosity that imbue this book with an oddly endearing personality. You’re probably going to feel an uncomfortable, unsettling feeling as you read her descriptions of cadavers being dissected, subjected to car and weapon safety tests and, yes, decomposing in the hot Tennessee sun, but Roach’s frank personality adds some much-needed levity to an unquestionably weighty subject.

It’s a strange kind of book to recommend, I know, but it’s also unlike just about anything else out there. And in my experience, reading a book with a dead person on the cover makes for some unusual conversations with strangers at coffee shops.

You might remember that I attempted and subsequently failed to complete National Novel Writing Month in November of 2009. That’s all right; whatever; I’ve moved on.

But now it’s April, and April means Script Frenzy month! The premise is similar to NaNoWriMo, but instead of being tasked with churning out a 50,000 word novel, writers are instead given 30 days to write a 100-page script.

This is great for people like me because

• Scripts have these huge margins. Have you seen them? It’s just ridiculous.
• You don’t have to deal with all those irritating trappings of novel writing, such as description and flowery language
• 100 pages is, like, a lot less than 250 pages

Want to sign up? Great! You can keep me company and watch first-hand as I fall flat on my face at around page seven.

First, you’ll wanna head over to scriptfrenzy.org and sign up for a free account. If you participated in NaNoWriMo before, your old account information (and all those shameful memories of failure) are preserved and adapted to work with Script Frenzy.

Next, you’ll want to brush up on script formatting guidelines. Don’t let these overwhelm you; they’re there to help give you a head start on the structure of your writing so you can focus on getting that Star Wars/Harry Potter crossover you’ve been having those creepy dreams about nailed down on paper.

And last, you’ll want to add me as a writing buddy. I don’t know if that serves any overt purpose, but hey: strength in numbers, right?

One final note: You can write whatever kind of script you’ve been yearning for. Got an excellent idea for the next soul-wrenching, low-budget indie movie? Eager to plan out that comic book series starring an unemployed writer with a bachelor’s degree in English or journalism? Think you’ve got what it takes to bring a revival of Remington Steele to television? Those are all perfectly acceptable reasons to take up the Script Frenzy gauntlet. (Actually, it might be best if we just leave Remington Steele alone.) Hell, I’m just writing a videogame script — something that has no established format — and even that’s okay.

So if you’re interested, take a look and let me know if you get on board. Besides, April’s just as crappy as November, weather-wise; what better time to flex your latent creativity muscles and get something done?

My final NaNoWriMo status. Not exactly a home run.

Good news: I managed to beat my previous record for National Novel Writing Month! After four false starts, my fifth novel concept shaped up into a healthy 470 words before the deadline at midnight on November 30.

Detractors might impatiently call my attention to the supposed 50,000-word requirement to “win” NaNoWriMo, waving their .pdf certificates of completion haughtily in my face. Frankly, they can stuff it. Writing isn’t about word counts and deadlines!* It’s about finding a way to tell a story that’s enjoyable to read and meaningful or useful to its audience.

Portlanders apparently wrote the equivalent of a library over the last month.

It’s true that I never really got much prose written throughout the last month, but I spent dozens of hours thinking about the process and forcing hundreds of ideas and themes through a trial by paper. When I picked up a novel, I began to realize that what I was enjoying was more craft than art — the product of countless hours of trial-and-error, research and revision, and occasional frustration and hopelessness.

The residual effect of not finishing a novel for National Novel Writing Month is that I’m still writing my ideas down. I’m still thinking about what I would have to say. Writing has always been one of those things I’m naturally compelled to do, even if it ends up being disposable, but I’ve never attempted to write something in a long format. I’ve got myself to blame for that. Once I was two years into college and the looming specter of declaring a major was swooping down upon me, eager to suck all the fun out of my scattershot class schedules, I realized I had to commit to something. Journalism drew me in with the promise of making me a much better writer, with strong command of grammar and an ability to write well under pressure. All of those promises came true, but in the process I had forgotten how to write for fun.

Fortunately, last month proved it’s never to late to figure that out.

*It is if you’re a journalist.

If I learned anything from studying journalism as an undergrad, it was that a deadline is the best source of motivation to a writer. I wrote more stories in less time than I knew I was capable of. It was kind of exhilarating in a way — like cheating death, if death was just an angry professor/editor.

But as I’ve learned from attempting National Novel Writing Month again this year, fiction doesn’t work the same way at all; at least, not for me. Between school and blogging, I’ve grown so used to having a set of facts to gather and write about that the mere act of making something up is practically impossible. I’ll spend hours sitting in front of a blank document trying to get over myself and just start telling a story, but then my conscience will step in and shove the results in my face with a disapproving  tone. “‘Guy feels like he’s out of touch and longs for a girl he doesn’t deserve? Oh, and music plays a major role.’ Hmm. Congratulations, jackass! You just ripped off Nick Hornby.”

So now I’ve got eight days and change to write a brand-new 50,000-word novel. It’s my fifth concept for a novel so far this month, but I feel like this one’s going to write itself. It’s got two characters, a beginning and an end, and plenty of room to just make up whatever the hell I want in the middle. This experience hasn’t exactly turned out like I’d hoped (I would have loved to, just for once, not procrastinate until the last minute on just one thing in my life) but I know I need to finish it now, either way. After all the disheartening experiences I’ve had in the job market, I need to do something real and succeed at it to remind myself that I do have some practical use on this planet — even if it’s just making shit up.

This is what the rain can do to a person.

The rainy season unmistakeably arrived in Portland today: Streets are flooding, umbrellas are out, and Californian expatriates are preparing for the End of Days.

I’m no stranger to the gloom that perpetually overcast skies bring with them, but I’m also notoriously bad at preparing myself for the winter doldrums. Well, not this time! I’ve got a foolproof 30-day regimen that’s guaranteed to ease me in to Oregon’s annual unpleasantness with finesse.

During the month of November, I will write a 50,000-word novel, abstain from shaving (not that anyone will be able to tell) and blog about the whole unfortunate thing.

So why write a novel? I won’t deny the appeal of adding another outlandish boast to my repertoire for cocktail parties and art-gallery soirées, but I’m also chiefly interested in the lessons to be learned from committing myself to a major project I know very little about and forcing myself to get through it by the skin of my teeth. I’m notoriously bad at committing to work until the eleventh hour (thanks, college!) and I’m eager to see if there’s actually any reward to be found in pacing oneself when undertaking a massive effort.

As for the lack of shaving? That’s more of a “just get it over with” type of situation. As a man, I am theoretically blessed with the super power of growing facial hair. But thanks to some rather unfortunate genes and sour luck, I rolled a few natural ones at my moment of conception and wound up a couple decades later with a distressingly uneven smattering of facial hair.

Thankfully, I live in a city where an unshaven person who spends hours each day writing a meandering novel looks just as natural as a fat man in a button-up shirt, spurs and a ten-gallon hat raising a pair of pistols to the heavens does in Texas. (I have never been to Texas but I am told this is what life means to a Texan.)

It’s an altogether foolish plan for self-improvement, but at least my friends and family will get a few cheap laughs at my expense.

For updates on my novel, beard status and sanity, kindly subscribe to my blog.

Dear Reader,

Hi!

I haven’t been here in a while. I’ve been living this fascinating life where a lack of job prospects has lulled me into a significant creativity slump. Basically, nothing’s happening so I’ve got nothing to say. So yeah, I’ve broken a few pledges when it comes to writing continuously, but trust me on this one: the garbage I would have produced is a far more frightening prospect than the total lack of content I opted for instead.

But that’s all ending today. I’ve streamlined (deleted) the majority of my website and this blog is now the primary feature. In the coming days I’ll restore all the old stuff — contact information, my resume, a list of things I’ve done — through the WordPress infrastructure. At the same time, I’m vowing to update my blog at least once per day. I really haven’t planned how I’ll do it, and there’s a pretty solid chance it won’t be worth reading, but what the hell. What’s a writer without his shitty, off-the-cuff generic prose?

Always and forever,

- Nick