This is the first year that I’ve joined National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo). For those who are unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it is a challenge for participants to write a 50,000 word novel in only the 30 days of November. I don’t write much fiction, preferrering the structure, regularity, and utter lack-of-frills in technical writing.
Not to say that I haven’t tried “creative writing”. When I was still in school, I would often embark upon a short story, get about two thousands words into it, then give up rather unceremoniously. I thoroughly enjoyed creating the world, creating characters, but I struggled with finding a sound plot and the dialogue that I attempted was always dire.
I’ve had many friends get to the end of NaNoWriMo and tell me how liberating it was, quieting their inner editor to produce volume over quality. They wrote without regard to how well it would be written and it let them explore their writing in ways they’d never done before. There was also the satisfaction of having completed such a challenge, though silly it could be from an outsider’s perspective. The writers equivalent of running a marathon for no other reason than just to say you’ve done it once. I’d considered it in years past but something always came up – university exams, moving house, getting married – so I never tried. But this year, I had no excuses….
The first week of this year’s NaNoWriMo was exciting. I started out with dialogue and used that to create my characters. I interspersed it with some scene setting and sprinkled in some intruigue, hoping that any of it would lead to a plot. By the end of the first week, I had just over 10,000 words and no fewer than six interesting characters. Unfortunately, the story had gone nowhere.
It’s now Day 16 and I’m approximately 1000 words behind where I ought to be for this time on this day. I fell behind during what is referred to as the “week 2 blues”. I’d experienced something similar before – my company offerered an intensive one month training course (6.5 hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week, 3.5 weeks). The beginning of the second week was painful and all I wanted to do was give it a rest. For this NaNoWriMo, writing was like pulling teeth. I was uninspired and found myself wishing I was reading the Metro on the train instead of standing with my laptop propped up on the bicycle rack. I never stopped writing but I spent so much time staring at the screen that I’d fallen 2500 words behind.
Someone recommended that I introduce a natural disaster to shake the characters out of their lull – another friend recommended a fire. I thought I’d run with it, wrote that a neighbour’s house was set on fire, and let the characters react to that. Somehow, a plot bloomed. I found myself geting angry when the train stopped at my station and I had to shut down the computer to cycle home. I’d had a series of evening after-work outings and really ought to have been sleeping as soon as I got in, but I found myself laying awake in bed, forcing myself not to get out of bed to grab the laptop.
If in doubt, put your characters in a fire. If you really like them, then they’ll easily find a way to escape. If you don’t like them, then maybe their clever escape will redeem them.
15 days down, 15 days to go… [to be continued]