I’ve been working on tying up some loose administrative ends before delving head-first into the month of insanity which is NaNoWriMo, wherein I, and thousands of other literary lunatics, will aim to complete a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. That’s 1,667 words a day. To put it in perspective, my book Avalon Within is over 80,000 words long and I wrote it over a period of 10 years. My course work for my Celtic Studies master’s degree program has required five 5,000 word papers thus far (with one taught course to go and my dissertation of next year, which needs to be 20,000 words long) many of which I have written in about month’s time, including all of the readings and research. (Heck, it takes a day just to parse the reference citations correctly!) So how will I write a 50,000 page novel in a month?
Sheer willpower, obsessive behavior, high octane caffeine … and hopefully, a bit of the poet’s madness.
I am actually quite excited by this challenge. I have been a writer for my entire life, and have been blessed these past 15 years or so to have had the good fortune of being published in various markets and venues. But, like most writers, I write because I need to … even if no one else ever sees it. I’ve got quite a few half-started novels and abandoned short stories on various thumb drives, and they linger there in digital limbo because the majority of what I write these days is academic or non-fiction. However, the seeds of a story came to me last winter — something that has excited and moved me in a way that my other fiction projects have not. Finally, I understand the writers who talk about their characters speaking to them, who observe their stories unfold before their eyes without even needing to prompt it along. Empowered by the recent publication of my short story “The Gallisenae” in The Scribing Ibis anthology of Pagan Fiction, and encouraged by the fact that my next paper for school isn’t due until the end of January — I feel like the time is right.
The time is now.
For if there is any kryptonite for the writer, it is that story we are going to write in that mythical “someday” … that project that will manifest sometime in the magical future where we will have more time or better circumstances … or that the whole thing will be birthed, full cloth, from our heads like some literary Athena, without the pains of labor or the struggles of birth. These myths keep us from accepting the unvarnished truth:
Writing is *hard* work. And the only way it is going to get done is if we actually *do* it.
I am the type of person who needs hard deadlines. NaNoWriMo provides that for me, even if there are no true consequences if I do not meet my deadline (unlike school or work) — other than how not finishing is going to make me feel. This is not the first time I’ve attempted NaNo, but in the past 10 years I’ve had at least one child under the age of five at home with me, which had put a cramp in my writing style. This year, both of my kids are in school full time, and with them go all of my excuses.
The time is now.
So, I’m stocked up on coffee. I’ve set up my outline and put all of my research in Scrivener (Which is an amazing writing tool and I have no idea how I ever lived without it! I’m *totally* going to survive my dissertation because of this amazing program! I can’t recommend it more!) I’ve warned my friends and family to expect some sort of personality changes (Will it be cathartic weeping? Caffeine-fueled manic euphoria? Bestial growling and snapping? I cannot yet say.) And I’ve posted here and elsewhere about my intention to complete this project in a month — along with everything else I need to do in my life, including, yes, other writing projects — so that you, my gentle reader, provide me with a sense of accountability.
If I do not meet the 50,000 word goal, I will be disappointed — I won’t lie. However, if I have truly done my best and made some serious headway (even 30,000 words is better than ZERO), I won’t beat myself up too badly because in the end, it is the journey that counts. And the fact that I even traveled down the road at all is an accomplishment that brings me far closer to my goal than standing at the starting line, straining to see off in to the distance, hoping I can get there someday without ever taking that first step.
The time is now.
Into the abyss we go…
(FWIW, this blog entry is just over 800 words long, about half of my daily word count goal. That’s eminently do-able! Care to join me?)