No, not 50,000 words. But in the end I did meet my personal goal of 35,000 words. And I got to the end of the story. It wasn’t pretty, and now I’ll have to go back and redo almost everything to get the beginning to land at the place where I took it.
I’d say I went through three phases this month. The first week was: “I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I don’t know these people and have no idea what they should do.” I’m not sure how you can avoid this, unless you’re not writing the first 50,000 words but maybe already have 10,000 words when you start. And the bad thing is, if you struggle at the beginning, you’re behind immediately. Then I went back and switched to a first person narrator, and started to let him tell me his story. I lost some ground but gained a lot of momentum.
The middle was really, really fun. I racked up large word counts on my writing days and enjoyed being with my characters. I love these people! There was so much to learn about them. I can see them and where they are and how they talk to each other and what they’re going to do and why. I had ideas, ideas, ideas. It was a beautiful world. There was even a romance.
Then I remembered that there was a crime to solve here. I had to get back to that. There were serious consequences. There was a puzzle to solve. Time was running out.
Maybe I pushed it too quickly. Maybe I should have stayed in the happy place longer. Maybe it isn’t a book with a murder in it after all. No, I know it is.
So I found a really good reason for it– actually, this past week’s Frontline on police officers who get away with domestic violence gave me a place to go that fulfilled all my requirements. And I went there.
It wasn’t pretty in the end. But I had to know what I now know to go back and do the second draft, and I wasn’t doing myself any favors not figuring out the ending. And actually, yesterday, at the coffee shop, pushing to 35,000, I wrote a lovely paragraph that felt like an ending. With poems, I never know if I have a poem until I hit that ending.
I also had fun with the whole NaNoWriMo experience. A few days ago, I went over to the forums, places where people chat in long threads about various writing issues. There is a forum called “NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul.” I hadn’t been there yet, and perhaps it is not good to laugh at other people’s misery, but some of the title threads alone were pretty funny. “NaNoWriMo killed my dream” and “I can’t believe how much I hate my novel,” and “I hate my characters so much!” I opened the thread, “What’s Your Finish By Date?”
The most encouraging thing about the NaNoWriMo site is the word count page. When you enter your word count it brings up this graph that shows you your progress, where you should be on that date, and tells you things like how far you are from 50,000 words, how many words a day you’ll have to write to finish, and your “Finish by” date. In other words, if you continue on your current pace, you’ll finish the 50,000 words on December 19. That’s where mine has mostly been– December 7-21. For some reason, I found that encouraging, although I know it’s supposed to be in November!
Well, people on this thread had dates like “April 22, 2015” and “July 12, 2014.” I mean, that is kind of funny. And not helpful.
When people were really losing faith, other writers came in and perked them up. One 18-year-old was having a full-blown crisis realizing how many people– thousands, maybe tens of thousands– were going to write a novel this month. Who would care about his little novel? The odds of becoming a writer seem as good as winning the Powerball. But I found this same statistic really encouraging. Here we are. Look at all the stories being told! Look at all the people writing novel-length stories! And, of course, a small percentage of people will actually finish. And even fewer will go back to what they’ve written after today. It’s not like everyone can do this. It’s not like it’s so easy it isn’t worth doing.
What does “being a writer” even mean? I really do think, from what I see around me, that the way books are transmitted and what people read and how they read it is transforming as much as music has. Even when I was in graduate school, we said: “A writer writes.” We meant it as opposed to: “A writer publishes,” or “A writer poses.” Of course, publishing is important, but it shouldn’t be important because of money. Money is a bonus. Publishing is important because of an audience. Because you really do want the books read. But maybe that is distribution, availability, not publishing.
I’m still thinking. All I know is I feel better about writing now than I did in October, and I have this project, and I could see doing this every year.