Twice I have wrestled with the beast that is NaNoWriMo and twice I have won.
See?
And with a day to spare. This win comes on a day that I was told by my cancer surgeon that there is not another surgery planned for the time being and on a day that I got to watch my cancer surgeon berate the cancer doctor I do not like at all for ordering an unnecessary ENT exam. Massive validation for me. She sucks and I’m totally not the only one who knows it! Win! Win! Win!
I thought that I didn’t have enough story to get to 50,000 words, but there’re probably another 10,000 to 15,000 words before I can say that the first draft is done. I won’t be doing 2,000 words a day, but I will keep going until this draft is done and then beyond into the perilous land of rewrites. I already know that the beginning has to be completely overhauled and that there should probably be extra bonding scenes between the main character and the murder victim.
But for now, pizza.
At Day 20, I have 34,463 words for NaNoWriMo. I need another 15,537 by midnight on 30 November. I am pretty sure I can do it — even with a traditional Thanksgiving at Blues BBQ. I am also pretty sure that the final 50,000 words will mostly be crap. This is not false modesty or neurosis. This is the truth. There have been more surprises this week. Scenes that are more melodrama than drama and, I will not lie, they are there mostly for word count purposes. They also helped the surface plot and they were fun to write.
One of the great things about NaNoWriMo is that it gets you writing and provides a framework for self-styled discipline. This forces you to just write, damning the torpedoes as you go. This has been really freeing for me and I have come up with some interesting scenes and characters. Do these words as they are at this moment make a great story?
Absolutely not.
This is what has been bothering me and it is the hurdle I have to get over each time I sit down to write. I remind myself, sometimes out loud, that this is NaNoWriMo. It is not about craft. It is about showing yourself that you can sacrifice a few hours a day to write and proving to yourself that the dishes will wait patiently in the sink for you to finish your daily word count. For me, it is also about taking time to engage in an activity that improves my quality of life, contributes to harmony in the home and makes me less neurotic in general. In its current state, this collection of words is a story, but a very superficial one. Better comes later.
To help me improve this story, I am reading Hooked by Les Edgerton. His book Finding Your Voice is also on its way. Only a few pages into Hooked, the cavalry arrived. I knew already that the beginning would need a lot of work in rewrites and I had a suspicion that the beginning should happen a few weeks or a month before the day and events that start this NaNo project as it is. When I started my rewriting notes this afternoon (yes, already), I found that the story absolutely had to start before the main character arrives in California. The murder that takes place, though it is important, is not the underlying problem that drives the main character’s actions. Her real problem is much deeper and it had better be or the story won’t be worth reading at all.
NaNoWriMo has been very helpful in showing me that, although I know all this storytelling stuff in my gut and in my head, putting it into practice is another thing entirely. If I didn’t have a full-time job and a commute, I could probably focus on the word count and writing a first-rate story at the same time. But that’s not how my life is at the moment. I’ll take a month-long break after November. It will be Christmas after all and that’s stressful enough. I am fairly sure that my brain will keep working at it as I shop, trim the tree and eat too much. After NaNoWriMo, I will keep writing, though not in 2,000-word bursts. More like 500 to 1,000 and, then, not every day. I dread rewrites because they are hard work and life sucks enough all on its own, but today I am looking forward to them because, really, it’s just a big make-believe puzzle, right?
Despite gastro-like symptoms and a fever of about 101°F almost all weekend, I have managed to reach 22,231 words for NaNoWriMo as of today. Hoping I don’t run out of outline, but I guess I’ll just keep making stuff up if that happens. Hooray for first drafts!
I got the full blood work results today – was sure I already had everything, but nope! Cancer markers are a little lower than they were in August 2010, down from 2.4µg per liter to 2.2µg. It isn’t ZERO, but it essentially means that the thyroid cancer is staying put. A surgery could still be in the cards next year to take out the affected lymph nodes, but for now, I have words to write.
My NaNoWriMo word count total is 14,360. I have started writing a little over 2,000 words a day. Now that the plot is on its way, I am not having many sluggish moments during my word count runs. I have even spied some possible future red herrings (red guppies?) in a few places and they showed up totally by accident. Making up characters as I go is still the most fun I have while I’m writing. It’s kind of like customising a character in a video game, I guess, only more elaborate. Well, I hope so. This isn’t supposed to be Sims Murder Mystery. Anyway, it’s my kind of game.
NaNoWriMo word count: 6,141. I only managed 1,078 words today. Gave myself a break. It’s Friday. This afternoon I got my blood test results. Cancer markers are back up from their lowest (Tg was 2.4 last time, but is back up to around 10). The increase isn’t staggering so I am waiting for clarification from the endocrinologist. I’ll see her next Tuesday. I am hoping that all the other tests and such can wait until April next year. I don’t want to have a Very Cancer Christmas. In April, there’s also Script Frenzy, which is tempting since I am pretty damn good with dialogue. It might keep my mind off waiting for biopsy results!
Knowing that I had writing to do definitely helped me deal with the information I got today. I decompressed after my commute home then jumped right in. As I go, I know that so much will need to be rewritten in order for it to be worth a damn. It is the discipline of writing fiction every day that I have been craving, even though a good day like yesterday when a character really takes off feels so nice.
This afternoon at lunch, I went out with my colleagues and they asked me what I would be doing this weekend. I said, ‘Writing.’ I explained that I was doing NaNoWriMo. I even told them the title (Saint Lorenzo) and the genre (a sort of-kind of murder mystery but not a police procedural or detective). The neurotic part of me cringed seconds before I said the title, but when I said it out loud, I felt a spark. I felt that THAT *is* the title — until an editor tells me otherwise.
I am finding once again the freedom that comes from self-discipline. It is intense and addictive. Come spring, I may end up training for a half-marathon. Who knows?
But I doubt it.
I am in full NaNoWriMo mode. Today’s word count was 1,675 in under 90 minutes. Total to date: 5,063.
Yesterday was a bit rough and I can already tell that part of it will be cut when rewrites come around. Today, on the other hand, was a blast. The story is in motion. The two crucial characters have met and I know what the main character’s hair looks like. Not that that is the most important aspect of the story. For now, there is very little editing and that’s as it should be. Just writing.
Whenever my energy flagged or I got stressed out today, I reminded myself that I would be writing this set of scenes come evening time. After my word count was hit and exceeded, I felt giddy. I realised that I have been wanting to write the main scene I wrote today for six years. The very basic bones of the scene actually happened to me when I lived in Venice, CA. From that morning back in autumn 2005, I knew I’d write about it one day. It was too strange and magical to file away and eventually forget. I am so happy to have finally written it. I feel like I have little song birds hopping on my shoulders.
And so begins NaNoWriMo 2011. In all, I have written 2,006 words on day one. The rust is flaking off the fiction writing parts of my brain and I am having fun. I left a lot undone before starting — I didn’t even know the main character’s name or what she does for a living or even what she looks like until this morning. Not sure what color her hair is even now. It’s more fun that way. I have my novel’s main question and the answer to that question. I have a rough plot outline. The rest is more fun to make up as I go along. We’ll see how well I do tomorrow after a full day at work and a commute. Oh and the dreaded blood test first thing.
I really missed making stuff up. I needed it more than I thought I did and for reasons even bigger than not obsessing about cancer blood marker results. At any rate, I’m more in kilter and that’s good.
My NaNoWriMo 2011 mascot is helping. Meet my glow-in-the-dark Make Your Own Munny from kidrobot:
All I need is a black Sharpie and I’ll start writing words from the novel on him. That’s the plan. He may not be as cool as all these others, but my custom Munny will be unique in his own way.
