Oh those lips of love that I was dreaming of

[raybear]

Today will be my last day of making copies. I will send them off tomorrow and get paid one last time and then I will be done. One last time. One last copy shift. I can't tell you how badly I want to blow it off and do it tomorrow. Or never. Its unclear if that will happen. Maybe I will split it in two. Ugh. I so don't want to do this, which is why I quit it, but now I'm wishing I'd just quit it completely and never signed on for a last shipment to get the few hundred bucks I need. Ok, suck it up Raymond. Put some fun songs on the ipod and make it happen like Mariah Carey.

So, five years ago yesterday, I was on the train going to a doctor's appointment (this was back when I had to be in the office every two weeks to get a shot) and I read a tiny two paragraph 'article' in the recently released RedEye or Red Streak, because back then there were two crappy dailys. And it was about National Novel Writing Month, and it was starting tomorrow. I thought, huh, I should do that next year. Except the next day I went to work and it was November 1st and penpusher made a post announcing he was doing it and so I said, fck it! Me too! And I did. I started writing and didn't know what the hell it was going to be about, but I got 1500 words done and on the train ride home, suddenly it all appeared to me, what my novel was about. I wrote it all, all 50,000 damn words, and I finished with hours to spare -- I crossed the line at noon on November 30th. MelRo and I had driven to her family in Philadelphia for thanksgiving, so I even lost time with travel, but I did it.

And so it all began. Up to that point, I had written no significant fiction, I didn't even really think about being a writer, except it also made total and complete sense. I had been observing, scribbling, reading, thinking in story form my whole life. I almost double-majored in English in college, but didn't because I wanted no requirement courses, just the ones for pleasure. I avoided the writing courses because they scared me, as I had no faith in myself for having talent in that area. But sitting down and writing 50,000 words in a month, and having half a dozen friends read along as I did it, and to enjoy it, well, I found some faith in myself. Enough to carry me to grad school.

Since 2002 I've thought of doing NaNoWriMo again, I've even started a couple times, but never really got it going, it always felt more like something I wanted to do again and maybe should do again, but the timing was off. I'm still not really doing it this year either, because I'm not following the rules, I have already started this novel. But! I will be drawing upon the collective energy of a nation filled with furious typing to put on paper all the stuff from my outline and brain from this draft, to complete this raw collage of words that I will then reassemble and dis-assemble to making a working and readable first draft by the end of 2007, and so, in the next 20 days, I pledge I will write 25,000 words.

Which means, I should probably get started on that right now.

Comments

[sebastian6.livejournal.com]

I think of doing NaNoWriMo each year as well. Three things always hold me back. One is the idea that if I plow through and write 50,000 words, I'll end up with a convoluted, meandering story that really isn't very interesting due to the speed with which it was written. Two is the lack of self discipline, which means if I stop writing half-way through due to loss of interest or lack of time, I'll end up being unhappy with myself and I've enough of that in other venues. Three is writing the first paragraph, which, if I want the piece to be good, commits me to a whole list of parameters in tone, plot, characterization, voice, etc.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

Silence your inner critic/editor! Lock them in a closet and don't let them out until December.

Shitty first drafts, my friend. Shitty first draft. Every novel started out that way. I guarantee that any book you've read and loved, 80% of the words in it weren't there, in that order, in the first draft.

You need more gentleness in your life in regards to yourself (I say this as someone who is constantly trying to do the same).
One, I guarantee your story will be convoluted and meandering. Everyone's is. The revising is where the magic happens to make it cohesive.
Two, if you stop halfway through, you still have half a novel. You can write the second half next month. Or next year. Because maybe it took you two months to write a novel, but hey, you wrote a fcking novel and you can cross that off your lifetime to-do list.
Three, the first paragraph is meant to be thrown away. Your voice never appears in the beginning it appears 15, 20, 50 pages into it, and then you hit the stride and keep it the rest of the time and part of your revisions later are re-writing the first pages and lining up the voice. You don't have to commit to isht. You can start of writing a historical romance and change it to a sci-fi novel.

Think about it like songwriting. Do you sit down to record a brand-new song and do it one take? Hell no. You spend lots of time away from the microphone writing it, practicing it, developing it. Then even when the song itself is done, you practice. Then you record it several times. Its all a process. And NaNoWriMo is about plowing through all the fears and just producing a large draft to be reworked later. Because if you keep it in your head, it'll never get revised.