Entry #6: NaNoWriMo Journal - Not Done Yet

So, I didn’t finish 50,000 words in November. I’m still not done. “The second time is always harder,” says Frasco. “But why?” I ask. The second time you know more. You’re competing against yourself, and you want to break your own record.

I talked with Frasco and Moser the night I realized I wasn’t going to meet the goal. Moser says that the anticipation of creating, in whatever medium we’re using, is the important thing. Overcoming the muteness of a blank page and expressing something, anything, is what is important, even the simple “I was here.”

The practice of sustaining momentum in creative work is so challenging. There’s a kind of mental energy needed that I found it hard to muster up this month, because of emotionally draining events. I kept coming back to my word count, but once I fell behind I couldn’t catch up and keep the quality acceptable to my own standards. I knew from last year that writing pure jibberish wasn’t useful. Besides, I can write 160 words per minute on my stenography machine, so it would technically only take me five and a half hours to do the whole thing if I didn’t care what I was saying. But I do care, and I care more this year than last year.

So, where do I go from here? There’s no question that I’m going to finish this. But I want a new goal. From what I’ve written I can see that I may have more to tell of this story than 50,000 words, so I’m pushing the goal to 60,000 and giving myself more time.

Two weeks from today I’m reading in the East Village as part of the FIZZ reading series with Red Lemonade. I’m nervous but confident, the time I spent polishing the draft in November when I could have been raising my word count was well spent.

Event info:

http://slicemagazine.org/site/event/1956

Entry #5: NaNoWriMo Journal - The Only Real Place

This is the only real location I’ve written about this month. I usually don’t use any real places, but this one was just too good.

The first time I went in here I was reminded of a short story by Dylan Thomas where the protagonist is led into a room so full of furniture that the floor is not even visible.

My narrator describes it like this:

“I came across the Community Bookstore by accident, while on one of my long city walks between study sessions at the Café. It was the old books I went there looking for, the books with yellowed, thumbed pages and notes scrawled in the margins. It was the lived history of reading that interested me there.

“On the sidewalk outside were displayed old issues of Bon Appetite, an illustrated Guide to the Galaxy, and an assortment of paperback classics. The windows held hand-lettered signs, faded by the sun.

“Inside were cartons and boxes stacked against high shelves lining the store and piled high, overflowing with every kind of book. I walked down the long aisle from the door, and turned along the back wall, browsing. As I made my way up the center aisle towards the register, I saw that my path was blocked by more cartons of books. Some were in white corrugated plastic bins like the post office uses, others in large cardboard boxes, and even a single shopping cart – too large for a store of this size – sat in the aisle overflowing with books. I couldn’t get through, so I turned and retraced my steps, peering down the last aisle. Here the Fiction section began, marked with masking tape labels along the shelves. I peered around the stacks of books at the end of the aisle. A man with long grey hair bent over a book behind the register. I wanted to get his attention, to ask him why he didn’t organize the place enough to get around, but he was deep in reading. I wound my way back to the door and glanced again at the man behind the counter, but he did not look up to note my exit.”

Entry #4: NaNoWriMo Journal - “I’ve got aphids on my lupines.” Finding specific phrases for characters.

I get caught up in the big picture so much that it’s sometimes a struggle to come down to earth, to the page or computer screen. I’ll have lots of ideas but what I need is to put the next word down, to build my characters and carry them forward through their story. I’ve found it helpful to focus on exactly what my characters would say, given their specific bodies of knowledge of the world and their temperaments.

Last summer I was at a BBQ with my boyfriend and his family. While we were looking at the garden and admiring the flowers there, his Aunt said “I’ve got aphids on my lupines.” My boyfriend and his sister looked at each other in confusion and burst into laughter, “We don’t even know what that means.”

Later on I heard my boyfriend tell his sister “Maybe that lower countermelody in the cellos would be better as pizzicato.” What? I laughed at my own confusion, and asked them what they meant. We all have areas of knowledge and words to describe these that are specialized, even if we think what we say is the most normal thing in the world. And if we all do, then my characters must too.

I’ve set about building an area of knowledge for the main characters in my story. My narrator is studying for the LSAT, so I started reading a test prep book to get into her mind a little bit. In between conversations with the other characters and the daily activities that we all do, this woman spends several hours a day pouring over logic puzzles. She is also the kind of person who wants to go to law school. She has intense, important reasons for wanting this. As I learn more about what’s required for the LSAT, I’ve begun to discover the things motivating her to study law. Then I made a list of other areas of knowledge the most important characters would know. I have a list of friends to “consult” with who can offer me some help. 

On Monday I went to a write-in at the Vagabond Café, in the West Village. This tiny café had reserved its entire space for NaNoWriMo participants, and we packed the place. Not sure whether I’d be able to get much writing done in a semi-social setting, I’d brought along the LSAT prep book. This became a good conversation starter. One of the organizers suggested I talk to a woman sitting a few tables away, as she was a lawyer. I went over and introduced myself, and we chatted briefly. I got a better idea of where my character would be in her thinking as a prospective law student, and made a few notes. This has been invaluable for creating the character as I feel she would be.

Thinking about the specific language the character would use helped me find a way back to practical reality. What is going to be the next thought in my character’s head? What words will she reach for to express this? Does she have aphids on her lupines?

Entry #3: NaNoWriMo Journal - Writer’s Block

Sometimes a writer’s block needs to manifest in some way, on the page or in a symbol or just in conversation with a friend in order to be dealt with. A few years ago when I was blocked, or maybe just coming off the life block that had kept me from ever writing seriously before that, a friend gave me this. It’s my writing block, and I’ve kept it on my desk ever since. It reminds me that a block is nothing more, nothing less. It’s just there.

Other times I use the feeling of writer’s block to build something. The block remains there, and I just climb on top of it and reach for the next word, idea or sentence, a little higher with the block to boost me. I pull myself up knowing it would feel worse to stay blocked than to just write something, anything, even if it’s terrible.

Sometimes all I have to do is reach out and move the block aside, and it’s so simple I wonder why I even thought I was blocked to begin with.

Entry #2: NaNoWriMo Journal - Staying On Course

It’s hard to stay on course. I’m good at distracting myself. There are really good reasons why I should be doing this differently. Last night I decided to write about something new. Something that seemed hugely relevant, and had occurred to me on a whim. It seemed easy because I hadn’t thought through what it would take to write it. Besides, I don’t have the skills to move ahead with the outline I started this week.

Lack of confidence is really hard to fight. It’s often difficult to get just one good sentence down on the page. I want to express what I imagine, but I doubt I have the skills to pull it off. What I’d started with was the loose outline of a story that has been bouncing around my head, in one form or another, for more than two years. I kept putting off starting it because it’s complex. It’s about changing technology, about heartbreak and a cult of personality. It’s also about disillusionment, and the failure of symbols to represent fully what we want them to. Yet how can I do this when language itself so often fails? I am constantly recovering from communication missteps that I perpetuated at some time or another. I know the answer to this isn’t as important as the simple task of getting back on course with the goals I’ve set.

Making a commitment is the point of NaNoWriMo. It’s designed as a challenge to make us push our limits as writers. If I change course I’ll just end up stuck again, and be tempted to again change course. The seed of a novel is in the outline I keep returning to although it is complex, incomplete, and barely developed. I’ve had this in my head for two years because there’s something there. At least enough to expand upon, to play with for the next month. Enough to let me reach my goal. I probably don’t have the skills I need to write this novel, but then, if I did have all the craft tools at my fingertips, I wouldn’t need to write it, at least not in this way.

I threw out the idea of changing course this morning. Even two days of wasted writing time can be recovered from fairly easily, as the progress graph on the NaNoWriMo website shows. I’m getting back on course, and this time I’m going to stick it out, despite my doubts.

Entry #1: NaNoWriMo Journal

So it begins, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It’s a challenge: write 50,000 words in one month. I’ve been looking forward to this all year. This is will be my second time, last year I coasted into the word count goal with only 20 minutes to spare. My manuscript was a mess, but I had one and I was filled with new confidence for having reached that goal.

I learned more in this process than I have in any writing class, ever. Reading through the manuscript afterward, I couldn’t help cringing. It was full of so many structural and stylistic problems I didn’t know if I could ever show it to anyone. Over the six months following I cut it in half, and began to rewrite from the beginning. It is a slow process that remains unfinished, but I got the opportunity to read the first chapter at BookCourt last March to friends and fellow writers. This was a huge personal milestone. It marked the end of hiding my writing behind the covers of my journal. Now I seek out places to get feedback. I joined a writers’ group and I’ve submitted to several literary journals over the past year.

This year seems even busier than last year was. I made a list of pre NaNo goals, but accomplished almost none of them. I did, however, come up with a rough outline, which I hope will keep my draft more coherent, even though I may ramble and expand on it as I stretch to reach the daily word-count goal. I read about plot and character in the excellent book, A Kite In The Wind and looked closely at two recent novels I enjoyed, The Submission by Amy Waldman, and Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt. These are both tightly constructed, modern, engaging books. Both present a problem and follow it through various complications to a satisfying (if not comfortable) conclusion. Each unravels its premise clearly, exploring every development and examining the consequences for its characters fully, while remaining focused.

There are many other things I should be doing, but I know that most important is writing. Last year was the only time I have had a clear success from writing, even if it was an arbitrary one. The online support from the NaNoWriMo website and the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people are working toward this same goal make it relevant. Writing is imperative to me to be able to live life well, and the victory of drafting a novel in a month is just what I need right now.

Here’s to moving forward, into a new story.