NaNoWriMo Strikes

We sometimes require a truly unique tool to help us birth a project. You know, someone to stand by shouting we can do it as we flail around in creative confusion with all the organization of a disturbed anthill. NaNoWriMo 2008 was recently that unexpected, newly adopted kick in the mental pants I needed for sitting down semi-calmly and actually thumping out the novel I’d been struggling with only in my head for half a year (thank you Chasia). The story is a hybrid of interests, including the paranormal, mysticism, folklore, the mountaintop removal issue, murder, Appalachia, loss, love, cultural disconnection, soul relocation. At least that’s what it looked like disconnected and dropped on my mind’s canvas back then.

If you’re unfamiliar with Nanowrimo - or, National Novel Writing Month – 2008 was the 10th year people from all over the world braved the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel (or, at least, 50K’s start of one) ONLY in the month of November. Sound challenging? Impossible? Masochistic for you? Sadistic for your loved ones? Probably all the above. What fun!

Here’s what NaNo’s website says about it the whole spectacle: “Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved…the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks…By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel.”

I liked that. The Great Frantic Novel. It sounded healthy in a weird way. There’s a time for logical caution, a time for anal-retentive hesitancy, a time for reckless abandon, seasons for supernovas of pure creative bliss (on a schedule of no less than 1,666 words or more per day). I threw the safety and flipped my brain over to auto for that month, assuring myself that if I could only survive what I had no idea what I was getting into, I’d sure have in the end more than I started with. The story in my head would be more than just an obsessive passing thought. I’d perhaps be completing some framework of the whole story by December, be editing like mad come the first of the year. Twenty-five days into November I had the 50K and more of Black Mountain Light, continuing to write until the midnight on the last day of the month.

It’s now eight months later. It’s taken seven long, sporadic additional months to write just over that amount again, so something about NaNoWriMo worked. The story is a mere half chapter from completion and I’m craving another kick in the pants to finish this thing, this friend, this constant distraction, these people I’ve met out of the blue.

A week from now, maybe less, and I’ll be in serious editing mode if I can only commit to ending it. I’ve never been here before. Never tackled fiction like this, or had fiction tackle me like this.

*Also check out NaNoWriMo’s Handbook No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.