This month, I am trying to do NaNoWriMo. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and takes place every November. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world register at the NaNoWriMo website and pledge to do their best to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. For those of you shaky in math, that comes out to over 1,660 words a day. And if you fall behind on a day, woe be unto you, though you will lie to yourself and tell yourself you'll make it up on the weekend.
I've done this two times before and while it's fun in the same way it's fun to keep pushing that loose tooth around with your tongue ... it's hard! If you lived on a desert island ... okay, scratch that ... you wouldn't have internet. If you had no other obligations in your life it might be easier, because having a job, committments, kids, pets, and all that stuff makes it tougher to glue your butt to the chair. But because I'm a world class procrastinator, even if I had all the time in the world, I'd find a way to waste some of it. Plus, just because you have the time, that doesn't mean the words are going to flow.
I started two novels the last two times I did NaNo. I was pretty pleased with the results. At worst, it put me 50k into a new work in progress with each attempt. This time I am struggling. I'm starting in the middle of a book, having written about 42k before November rolled around and things aren't flowing like I'd hoped.
I thought the accountability of NaNo would help push me over the finish line of the first draft of this book. It's a story I care about, but it's miles from where it needs to be. Someone told me the other day that the first draft is you telling yourself the story. That made a lot of sense to me. I know there are whole bits that I'm writing that won't see the light of day (or my agent's eyes) and there are others that aren't in the book, because my heart hasn't found them yet.
I put so much of my soul into my second book that I wasn't sure I had any left. My agent, who is a swell person, emailed me the other day that she was "heartbroken that my book hadn't sold yet." I needed to hear that. My heart is broken, too. But I need to do some soul searching, some soul mending and some soul replenishing and go out and find the heart of my next book. It's a process. The heaven and hell are in the mix.
I've done this two times before and while it's fun in the same way it's fun to keep pushing that loose tooth around with your tongue ... it's hard! If you lived on a desert island ... okay, scratch that ... you wouldn't have internet. If you had no other obligations in your life it might be easier, because having a job, committments, kids, pets, and all that stuff makes it tougher to glue your butt to the chair. But because I'm a world class procrastinator, even if I had all the time in the world, I'd find a way to waste some of it. Plus, just because you have the time, that doesn't mean the words are going to flow.
I started two novels the last two times I did NaNo. I was pretty pleased with the results. At worst, it put me 50k into a new work in progress with each attempt. This time I am struggling. I'm starting in the middle of a book, having written about 42k before November rolled around and things aren't flowing like I'd hoped.
I thought the accountability of NaNo would help push me over the finish line of the first draft of this book. It's a story I care about, but it's miles from where it needs to be. Someone told me the other day that the first draft is you telling yourself the story. That made a lot of sense to me. I know there are whole bits that I'm writing that won't see the light of day (or my agent's eyes) and there are others that aren't in the book, because my heart hasn't found them yet.
I put so much of my soul into my second book that I wasn't sure I had any left. My agent, who is a swell person, emailed me the other day that she was "heartbroken that my book hadn't sold yet." I needed to hear that. My heart is broken, too. But I need to do some soul searching, some soul mending and some soul replenishing and go out and find the heart of my next book. It's a process. The heaven and hell are in the mix.
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