What can fill you with passion, make you feel stupid, let you laugh, and at the same time make you want to throw your computer across the room? National Novel Writers Month, or NaNo for short. The first day I heard students talking about NaNo in the Long Ridge Writers chat room, I pictured Robin Williams in “Mork and Mindy.” What the heck is a NaNo?
During the month of November, authors are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel. I didn’t think the goal was realistic and almost didn’t sign up. When another participant broke it down to sixteen hundred words a day, it seemed doable. It could be fun, challenging, and perhaps help break me of chronic procrastination.
A few days prior to November 1st, I visited the website at Nanowrimo.org to get some more ideas by visiting their forums. I was in a quandary. What do I write about? Will I have enough ideas to finish the story? A day later I decided to go with a mystery I had been plotting for years but had not yet figured out how to start. What in the world had I gotten myself into? Were my expectations too high? November came and those first thousand words were pure torture. I had no character ideas, no plans other than to have my villain poison people. So I wrote the word poison, and stared at it hoping it would talk to me.
It didn’t.
Then something wonderful happened. I came up with a character and a way to start the story. I began to write, and was pleasantly surprised how fast the words started flowing. Every day I wrote, I tried to outline for the next day. But I found out that the outline didn’t help and my fingers had a mind of their own. Before I knew it, the big day came when I hit 10,000 words. I was on my way! I wanted to spend a couple of days cleaning up typos, and adding more words. I wanted to rearrange things. It drove me nuts not to go back and play with the words that were calling my name. But I was determined to get this done before Thanksgiving.
The next week was a little tough. The story was on its way, but my ideas kept coming at the worst times possible. I had a great idea for a new character while I was in the shower. When I drove the kids to school, I figured out a piece of the puzzle I was missing, but had no pen handy to write it down. Another idea came while reading the kids a bedtime story. Do I neglect them and run for my computer, or do I read? I asked my ten year old to finish the story and I’d be back in a few minutes. Thirty minutes later I went back into their rooms to find them all asleep. Talk about mommy’s guilt! I had to find time to write and it wasn’t easy. I discovered that carrying around a small notebook was the only solution. I wrote whenever I had a free moment. Once while transferring clothes to the dryer, I stopped for a few minutes…and finished a chapter. I also tried to come up with a set writing time and tried hard not to waver from it. After a week, I was eager to write when that time arrived.
Week two tested every fiber I had. I didn’t want to commit to the time it would take, and when I sat down to type I was constantly interrupted. Twenty five thousand words, I’m half way there. No turning back now, no matter where I was headed I was going to finish! I got stuck again and literally stared at the computer as if it was a soap opera, hoping the characters would jump out of the screen and talk to me. No such luck and the words came to a standstill. My main characters needed something to get them closer to an important clue. Then, all of a sudden, one main character gazed into the eyes of another and whammo, three pages later I had a pair of lovers. I never saw that coming. After that the scenes flowed easily for another few thousand words. The magic number of 30,000 had me skipping and hopping all day. I can do this! In the back of mind I had been setting myself up for failure. The words came easily now once I got rid of the negativity and quit worrying about how well it blended together. This was a first draft and didn’t have to be perfect and chicken scratch was okay. Putting the words together to form a half way decent sentence was what counted. It became fun work when I let the characters take over.
I’m not saying it was easy. Far from it. But if I can find the time to do this with four kids under the age of eleven and a retail job during November, anyone can. I took the laptop everywhere in the car so that I could type while waiting for kids. I took it to work and typed at two in the morning on my lunch break. I even took the laptop with me to the movie theater but then left it in the car, realizing the kids needed a little attention and the glow from the screen and tapping noise of my fingers dancing on the keyboard might distract my neighbors. I drew a blank at 44,000 words. I knew how I was going to end things but now I needed to get there. What do I do now? Should I kill off the main characters for the shock value? Do I add an epilogue or end it nice and clean? The right end finally came to me and I wrapped it up, knowing it needed more TLC. The story had major transition issues but I could fix them later.
I felt an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and pride as I crossed the finish line. The experience taught me to trust the power of my words. I learned that when you put your fingers to the keyboard anything can happen. I learned to test myself and open up my soul. I learned that it’s okay to make mistakes. Everybody does. And I learned the importance of time. If you want it bad enough you will find the time somewhere, even if it is in the bathroom writing on a toilet paper roll. I really had fun with this, and I plan on fixing this story up, hoping it turns out good enough to be more than a wonderful NaNo experience.
The Nano challenge is a great way to learn that you, too, can actually write a novel. You’ll gain a lot of hands on craft experience as you write those chapters, and who knows? Maybe you’ll end up with a bestseller! For information on the 2006 challenge, check the Nanowrimo website.
--Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor
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