Dedicated to my dearest daughter Princess Pirate. Thank you for all your inspiration and patience. You are amazing!
This month of writing has been incredible. It started last year with the introduction of the idea by Karyn and family, all of whom were writing a story during the month of November. They had done the preparation work, and had started on time. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish the goal, but I did get inspired to create 3 characters for a mystery series that I had imagined to be junior fiction, in the vein of Nancy Drew, and set in the Fairmont/CP hotels that I love across the country, and dream of not only visiting, but being offered free stay in them because of my great writing and their shameless promotion I would give them in my best-selling books!:)
My goal was to write 250 words a day, based on the Château Laurier, and achieve a start by month end of 7500 words. Then I signed in, and my counts bounced around a lot, because I was often writing late at night. I would expect to have the word count for the day I wrote it, but would be given zero for that day, since I had only saved it after midnight. Still, I found 250 words easy on most days. Then I discovered that a New Zealand writer had organized (ie committed to being there) a first west island write-in at my favourite Starbucks coffee shop on the first Thursday night. There were two young writers there, and an area organizer. They kicked my butt at sprints, looked politely at me when I told them my goal, and made it very clear that NaNoWriMo was not for sissies like me. That night I wrote 735 words, and then peaked at 2127 two days later, before writing nothing for the 4 days of SSU call and 12 hours days plus commute.
I surprised myself at making it halfway though. I had developed 3 characters that I loved, and had found an event to make the plot move forward, without needing a murder. I was jealous many times of the murder mystery construct though, because it is so easy, except for the uncomfortable knowledge of the growing pile of bodies. Mysteries are tough, because they really need to have a clever premise, and 1 month later, I still haven’t come up with one. So I developed these characters, and although the setting being on holiday ended up feeling a little shallow, I went to what was familiar, and staged a medical emergency. Every day that I sat down to write, I was afraid that I might not have anything left to say, but some plot line needed to be developed, or a character had to catch up to the others, or a new idea or new character would need to be introduced in the story, and then I was off again. It was a fascinating exercise.
Because I had started so slowly, I had to work really hard to regain ground. On day 25, I wrote 5174 words as my biggest day. It was not sustainable, and the last week has been quite tough to come up with ideas, in part because I have been writing non-stop for weeks, never looking back, and this really works for me. Never before have I gotten this far, almost 50,000 words and 118 pages so far. That is partly due to the incentives inherent to the program, the month, the daily word count, the fellow writers, the happy icons and coveted badges. But mostly I think it was this idea that now is the time to write, and not the time to edit or let anyone criticize you. That worked for me, very very well. I have started many novels, but never got anywhere. I have characters I used to love more, but I think they were based too closely on real people. The characters I created in this story come for some level of reality, but are their own beings. I feel much like Frankenstein must have felt, cobbling my characters together and bringing them to life, and finding, at some point that they have become their own entities, and I no longer control them. It is only my job to bring them to different places and meet different characters, and then record what they do.
Later in the story, I was getting bored of the characters just being expanded and I needed another twist. While walking my daughter to her dad’s at dusk, I told her the bare bones of my book, which by then was clearly nearer a romance, and erotic fiction at that (it helped pass the time!). She knew immediately how to fix it, and suggested, instead of this great blind date that I have my newest character, Luke, orchestrate, she said he should stand her up! Well, that was tough. I didn’t want my character to suffer another heart break. She had already grieved the tragic loss of the love of her life, and she didn’t deserve another blow. But her sensibility in telling a good story (not the boring one I was telling) was sound, so I went home and wrote the scenario as if Stephanie decides to stand him up, which was much easier. In the end, it came to me that maybe they both mistakenly think they are stood up, but can still meet up in the end. It is, after all, a romance. But it made me realize that I could use the story to talk about some issues that are important. My characters, like the people I have met in life, get depressed, have been sexually assaulted, have been burnt by former lovers, and burn out. It is easier for me to see a character die, though, than break their heart. I am sure a psychologist would have a field day with that!
This last week has been the toughest. I think in a more natural setting, I would not feel the pressure at this point to keep up the word count, as I fear the quality is dropping of as the numbers required to finish tonight have been daunting, since I had half of the novel (25,000) to write in this last week, and I wrote 40,00 in the last half of the month, averaging, of course 1667 words a day overall, which is reasonable but still impressively disciplined, but 3571 a day in the last week is not recommended for quality control.
I am looking forward to December’s advent season, and then will look back at my story to see what it truly looks like. I don’t think I have the heart, now that it’s written, to write it again more succinctly. I do, though, look forward to creating profiles for my characters to correct some inconsistencies that may have happened over time. I suspect there may need to be couple more plot twists, but I have a lot to learn about those, and have no leftover ideas that I can’t wait to try. I am pleased to have written this book, whatever it may be. Some parts of it are, I am sure, terrible, but I look forward seeing a few moments that it’s not that bad. I suspect the erotica, will need to be edited out completely. I hope that the plot twists are believable when I look at them again. At least I can find an excuse to visit Ottawa and stay at the Château Laurier, to make sure that my story is accurate.
Tips: Get ready for writing. November is a great month, but preparing weeks before a couple of plot points, a few characters and how they will interact is useful.
Don’t do it like I did, and sit for a month. Exercise! Don’t, as an amateur, try writing more than 1 -2 hours a day. 7 hours is not health, and neither is relentless arbitrary pressure. Although a little works.
Write a scene, and think of all your senses. If you take one perspective, write it again from another viewpoint.
Read. Write with other people. Talk about your writing, with people you can take criticism from. Just keep writing, even if it has nothing to do with your story.
Live. Get out and put your life into the story. My cat, an electrician, my SIL, my ex, an unrequited love, some of my friends and patients made it into the story.
I did it! I wrote (the first draft) of my first novel!
Soon, I have the hard job of editing. We’ll see if it survives, but part of it will live on with me forever.
