50572 words written in 25 days

Undertaking the NaNoWriMo challenge has been a very odd experience for me. In short it is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. I was not thinking of doing it until Rachel asked quite innocently [? -- I think] late in October if I were going to do it. I recollected a novel called "Geneva's Quilts" that I once started and put aside. Why not finally write it, I thought. There is now a sub-genre of books about quilters/quilts with a publisher or two who know how to market them at quilt events and in quilt stores, maybe the book could actually be published. So I signed up and I have been writing. This is not a reasonably way to write a book. It has been both seat-of-the-pants and without a strong drive to make a specific statement.

I had no doubt I could produce the words, although I had only a vague idea of a plot. In fact, I've just reread the synopsis I wrote when I signed up and I find almost nothing in it congruent with what I've been writing. I became interested in my main character, Liz, and the men who come into her life because of her interest. Suddenly I'm writing a romance as much as the original story about the quilt stash she has discovered and the aging quilter who plans to give them all away. I'm not a romance writer -- far from it. I'm so far away, in time and experience, from what is being written by and about twenty-something romances today that I'm a blind man describing and elephant. But, I tell myself, people are people and I find these people unusual enough to be interesting if far from typical twenty-somethings.

Today I hit the 50,000 word goal and am maybe half done with a first draft -- a very sketchy draft in need of enormous rewriting -- and rethinking. I feel as if I'm a dinosaur of very little brain standing at the edge of the La Brea tar pit and likely to begin sinking at any moment ... committing months to actually writing this novel. And then more months, maybe years in the search for publication. And then, if the miracle of publication happens in this changing era of the book business, of course, I cannot hope for anything like a reasonable return on the time invested.

My first impulse was to say, "No, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo." Many first impulses are the ones to go with. I gave in to a slightly stronger, secondary impulse, which is to say yes to the challenges that arise. The tar is warm and sticky. I won't starve while I sink, there are plenty of dead bodies around to gnaw on.

Advice from a Pro

I'm well into NaNoWriMo with nearly 17,000 words so far -- will get to 20,000 today I think. I received a card with this quote from Mark Twain: You need not expect to get the book right the first time ... God only exhibits his thunder and lightening at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightening too much, the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Twain pulled off some wonderful thunder and lightening. I have doubts about what I'm writing being much more than a summer rain; but maybe on rewriting some of it will eventually build up to a bit of rumble in the distance or even a far away flash of light. In any event, I am having fun pouring out my heroine's story and I haven't even got to the most important part yet.

OVer 10,000 words

The sun was just coming up - with change in time I'll always be up for dawn but it won't always be so glorious.

The sun is about as completely up -- maybe more so -- as I am in this new novel undertaking. I've topped 10,000 words. The number sounds bit to those who don't write much but it's only about a tenth of a typical novel of something in the neighborhood of 300 pages. I feel like it's mostly scene setting at this point but the wonderful thing about writing a novel is one can take time to explore the characters and setting and situation. Things are happening but slowly. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut said as a refrain in Slaughterhouse Five.

Off to a decent start

Two days into NaNoWriMo with the goal of 50,000 words -- I've done over 5,000, more than 10%. But this weekend will be a blank so I'm hoping to get ahead. And I'm asking myself -- so what? This a purely voluntary writing exercise. I can tell myself it's important to reach the goal but I know it doesn't make a bit of difference in the long run, not to the world [most certainly!] and not really to my ego. It's a game and I am usually a bad game player because winning is never very important to me. The "Competitive" screw in my personality is loose, maybe got lost along life's way.

Anyway, I'm discovering things as I write -- various unexpected facts about the characters as I first describe them. Some people do all that in advance. I like to surprise myself, which pieces of my own background/reading/experience I can draw on. It's fun. My main character has taught school in Mongolia. This sets her apart from the potentially insipid person I originally had in mind. Her aunt is a retired school teacher who likes the "warhorses of middle school poetry" -- that offers some potential for dialog. These little bits are fun.

The big discovery is that I'm not writing the genre piece I said to myself I would write. Currently there is a minor genre of books that feature quilts or quilters, sweet stories, some of them historical, mostly, I take it [not having read any] well plotted and well researched. My research, from immersion in the subject, is pretty solid, but I'm not writing an easy-to-read genre piece. I don't think I can do that for any genre. I have never in my life wanted to write what people want -- thus I refused to study journalism in college. The questions looming in my mind are already bigger -- art questions, art versus craft questions, intention of folk artists. And then there's a trio of old ladies -- two among the old-old, over 85, one hearty seeming and the other frail. I don't know yet, but one or maybe both will die. My young character will have to deal with that, too.

The photo is a quilt of mine that is not quite the kind of wild, mostly unlovely -- or so the locals think -- quilts that feature in the story. But this one is on the "wild" side -- too much so for me to want to live with, so I gave it to Leslie who liked it. But then she lives in California and the sensibility is a bit different out on the Left Coast. Time to go back to my NaNo work.

Can Do It

I read, recently, on another blog this quote from Picasso "I always do what I cannot do in order that I may learn how to do it." This seems the general motto of NaNoWriMo -- challenge yourself to do what you cannot do, i.e., write a novel in a month. I have heard of some acclaimed novelists who were said to be able to do this [short novels, of course] and produce novels they did not rewrite. I can't remember if those were people who wrote formulaic work like murder mysteries. Such geniuses in music have existed, Mozart was said to be able to write a symphony in a week or two without revision.

I don't expect to write a whole, and certainly not a polished, finished novel in the month of November but I wrote the introductory 1800+ words yesterday and truly enjoyed it I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer. I do not start with a plot or with notes about my characters. I have a very simple plot in my mind: protagonist has a goal, goal seems attainable, complications arise, goal seems unlikely to be attained, goal is attained but probably in a somewhat different manner than was originally envisioned. I'm being very general because I know things will change as I wrote.

Mainly yesterday, and today -- in a few minutes when I go to that file and start writing -- I am setting the physical scenery, and describing the characters. I haven't yet had Liz, the protagonist meet Geneva, who is a sort of antagonist. For me the delight in working from the seat-of-the-pants is discovery as I write. I set it in the part of rural southern Indiana where I grew up. It's a landscape that is easy to write about and enjoyable. The characters are the type of people I have known although none are based on my actual family or people I know. A certain dialect is spoken there that I enjoy using to give flavor to dialog.

Many people doing this exercise [they are all over the world. I haven't looked at the total number, but I'm sure it's on the website] are working more "traditionally" with outlines and laborious notes they made in the last few weeks. Good luck to them. It's a matter of temperament -- and possibly of age and experience. I know words flow easily and I do not have ego issues at stake. This is a story I attempted once possibly twenty years ago, maybe more, I now have a different perspective and more experience so I can write in greater detail. I'm having fun. That's an important factor. I strongly suspect Picasso had fun every time he took up pen or paintbrush, he couldn't have kept going for so long and produced so much art if it weren't a great pleasure.

National Novel Writing Month, sks NaNoWriMo

Did it -- signed up for NaNoWriMo. I'm very jealous of my time although my days are my own. As everyone knows nature abhors a vacuum -- which is partly why Tantric meditation is SO hard. That's a different matter -- sheer everyday life abhors a vacuum and I'm very, very good at filling it with a ton of things I want and love to do.

NaNoWriMo is a month, i.e., November, during which the participants -- there's an official website and enrollment and daily tabulation, etc., etc. with worldwide participation -- attempt to write a novel, or something that could be shaped into a novel, of 50,000 words in the month of November. The word count is not particularly daunting, it's the time element that is a crunch -- goodbye to most quilting, lots of reading. Never mind the very avoidable housekeeping, I'm good at ignoring that. When I was asked if I was going to do it, my first answer was no. But I thought of a novel begun probably 10, 12 years ago, maybe more. Situation, conflict, setting, a couple of characters fairly well formed in my head. I stopped back then partly because I thought it was not marketable: the subject is the fate of a collection of quilts. Who cared? But in the interim books about quilters or featuring quilts have become a kind of sub-genre, a couple of publishing houses understand the market. There's hope of a sale.

So I signed up and will see how far I get. I'm sure the whole thing will be more than 50,000. Of course a first draft is only that, but it must be done and probably much will be usable. So as of Sunday I'll get started. Daily word count is reported.

There are regional groups, one of which met last night at the local Borders -- 12 or 15 enthusiastic 20-30 somethings, bright and fun oriented. Writing games, an attempt at espirit de corps. Okay, but not my kind of thing. Planned "write ins" -- I have never written with other people and don't want to, don't need that. Tend to feel that "real" writing is not a team sport. One does it as a part of one's life or not. Only a few do. From things I've read about NaNo -- it serves to some extent to weed out the wannabes who think there's glamor in writing from those who just know they will write and soon realize it's not glamorous.

Anyway I've committed myself and I'll do it, not truly feeling pressure to write approximately 2,000 words a day but, Geewhiz, that's not many words. I write that many words many days. Anyway, posts may be a bit fewer during November. It's a matter of so many hours in a day and I will not give up reading (books and blogs) or walking and have various other commitments.