Notes on a NaNo No-Go

Today is November 30th, and I raise the white flag of surrender.  #NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and glory has eluded me.  What started out with such optimism and determination fizzled somewhere along the way and eventually died.

Don't get me wrong -- I did get a lot of writing done early on.  But then cruel fate raised her head, initially in the form of an unexpected 4-day business trip to New York during which my NaNo productivity plummeted, then with a Thanksgiving road trip to my visit my remaining family members that sucked up another four or five days.  And so, do you hear that?  My NaNoWriMo dream melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

My word count stalled at precisely 15,300.  But before I concede total defeat, let's consider some of the take-aways from my first NaNoWriMo experience.  Even though I didn't finish, progress was made and lessons were learned.

First and foremost, I still like the idea of my NaNo book, and feel more than ever that it has legs.  I worked out some elusive details that had been troubling me and keeping me stalled before, and now I can pretty much see where most of it needs to go (if not precisely how to get there -- but that's the fun).

I learned so much more about my characters, where they'd been shadowy before.  I discovered bits about their motivations, their flaws.  They started making sense.

I learned that there's a lot more in this idea to explore than I had imagined before, which is both intellectually stimulating and scary as shit.  I feel as though I have a responsibility to these wholly made up people and their wholly made up lives.  And somehow, that starts to feel like an obligation.  Surely my fellow writers out there will understand something about that.

Perhaps most importantly, I've accepted the fact that first drafts are just that, and are meant to be messy.  I still have an inner editor in residence, and, believe me, he is a major pain in the ass, but in the NaNo process I learned to grow a pair and tell him to SHUT THE FUCK UP and let me work.  For that alone, it was worth it -- worth the effort, worth the attempt, worth the lack of sleep.

So, will I try it again sometime?  Who knows.  But my take is this:
Even if you don't finish or "win" NaNoWriMo, there's a lot to be learned simply from giving it a go.

#NaNoWriMo

Call me crazy, but I've decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year.  Yes, me -- despite the fact that, as documented here previously, I am a notoriously slow writer.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Once I get started, I can go pretty fast.  It's that painful process of figuring out where to go.  And yes, I do outline -- loosely.  I'm not a complete pantser.  But still I get stumped.  Or I did with my current manuscript, the one I call my novel-in-endless-progress.

For those who may not know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.  It happens every year in November when thousands of aspiring novelists attempt to write a draft of a novel -- the goal is 50,000 words -- over the course of that one month.  Writing by nature is lonely, solitary work.  The competitive aspect of NaNo (even though you're really only competing with yourself to get the words down), and the feeling that you're part of something bigger, part of a movement, seems to serve as inspiration and motivation to sit and get it done.

But 50,000 words in one month?  Who am I kidding?  It took me nearly two years to get there with this other book I've been working on.

I keep telling myself that the new novel idea I have for NaNoWriMo will be different.  It's faster paced, more mainstream, with plenty of built in conflict to explore.  I feel that with this one I will be able to free myself to write in many different directions, to follow different threads to build the word count.  I argue that if I get stuck I can skip around and move on to another part of the story that excites or interests me.  I've even been training myself to get up extra early and write before the day begins.  Still, I have my doubts.

And of course, there's another part of me -- the little devil (or is it the angel) on my shoulder -- that keeps insisting that the only reason I'm attempting NaNo in the first place is to avoid the hard work of finishing up the current rewrite of the novel-in-endless-progress.  And you know what?  The little fucker could be right.

Still, I can't help it.  I want to put a toe in.  I want to give it a try.  I want to hold my nose and jump, belly flop, cannonball my way into this thing.  Hopefully, I'll be able to keep my head above water.  And then come back to the novel-in-endless-progress with fresher eyes.

We'll see.  Wish me luck...

Kill Your Darlings

It took me a year and a half to get through the first draft of my slim novel -- the one I call my novel-in-endless-progress.  What joy I felt when I wrote the final sentence!  More so because I didn't see it -- that particular sentence -- coming.  I hadn't planned it.  It's as if the book told me the ending, and one that suddenly seemed so right, so...inevitable, that I actually sat back in my chair and laughed.

Happily, one consistent comment I received from my small group of beta readers was the imperative: Don't change the ending -- I loved it!

Great, right?

Then reality set in.  Just as consistent was the consensus that the opening, the beginning, was dry, it dragged a bit, it just didn't flow like the rest of the book.

But I liked my opening!  I was totally addicted to it.  What to do?

Sigh.

And so, of course I sat on it.  I put it away.  I started another, completely different novel, one that did start with a bang.  But little by little, the old one, the one I'd worked so hard on and fretted over all those months, started calling to me, and I was forced to pull it out and give it another, harder look.

I saw that my readers were right.  The opening, previously beloved, was too timid, too tentative.  It lacked the confidence of the later prose.  It seemed as if it didn't know where it was going.

Eureka!  Of course it didn't know where it was going.  I didn't know where it was going when I started out writing it.  Well, I thought I did, but the novel changed a lot along the way as, one by one, the characters started exercising their own freewill and acting out in ways I had not intended or foreseen.  Quite simply, the draft that I finished was not the same book I set out to write in the beginning.

For a while, I tried to convince myself that the opening was justified because my protagonist also was embarking on a new experience and didn't really know where he was going.  (Self delusion at its best.)  But eventually, months later, I hit on a new idea, and one that -- so far -- seems to be working.

That original first chapter?  GONE.  The new one is tighter, more assured, and quickly sets up the main conflicts, characters, and themes -- which have only been revealed to me over time and through the actual process of writing.

But here's the thing:  I now see that this new beginning also requires additional changes -- a lot of them -- throughout the rest of the manuscript.

The saga continues...

Sound and Vision

A while back I noticed a trend among novelists -- those publicizing their recent work via social channels anyway -- of publishing a "soundtrack" or playlist of songs to accompany their book.  My first reactions included adjectives like quirky, frivolous, desperate.  But then, I have to admit that it got me thinking.

I realized that I did have a soundtrack of sorts during the writing of the first draft of my current novel-in-endless-progress.  The book in question focuses on a group of (mostly gay) friends on Fire Island over the course of a summer.  And the music I listened to while writing was mostly Pet Shop Boys -- specifically a playlist I'd compiled in my iTunes and called "Pet Shop Boys MELLOW."  It helped me out immensely during the writing, a lot of which was done at the local branch of the public library (to get away from the need for constant attention by my rather demanding French bulldog, Rocky, but that's another post).  Plugging in the earbuds helped to shut out distractions and immersed me into the world of my story.  But that was a tool to help me focus and get it done.  Would it work, or even be relevant for a reader?

I have to say, authorial suggestions of that kind generally strike me as a bit facile.  I always resist (and sometimes roll my eyes at) using real life / pop culture comparisons to a character's appearance in fiction.  It just seems too easy to say something like, "She had an ass like Kim Kardashian," unless of course it's really relevant in some way to the story.*  (I recently read a new novel by an author I rather admire that was full of this kind of celebrity comparison that I found hugely disappointing and distracting, and it made me wonder if his work had always been filled with that kind of junk and I'd just never noticed.  But again, I digress.)

Fast forward to my current draft, and the endless rewrite.

I came to the awful realization that the opening of the book needed to be thrown out and completely rewritten.  And that has further implications for the rest of the novel.  I sigh.  But it's going well.  If I can pull it all together, the book will be in a better place -- I know it.  But I guess my point here is that my playlist no longer works for me.  And I haven't found a replacement.  Even if I do ... would it really matter to anyone who happens to read my work?

What do you think?  Is publishing a companion playlist to a work of fiction fun?  Helpful?  Distracting?  Or annoying?

* Doesn't mean I haven't done it myself.