Let the following random sentence chosen from a book on my bookshelf inspire you. Don’t think just write.
“Our voices, curving slowly around the woods, again, again swung back on silence.”
The Grass Harp, Truman Capote
NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month, in all its horror and glory.
Unplugged.
A Facebook friend of mine (our relationship used to be face-to-face but now exists purely through the evil genius of Mark Zuckerberg) is also a hobby writer. He suffers, like I do, from follow-through issues stemming from habitual procrastination and a willingness to be distracted. I figure he’s talented. Years ago he promised that I could read something of his and shortly after our friendship dissolved… perhaps the pressure of my possibly judgemental review of whatever he was planning to let me read contributed to that. But I’m getting off topic. The point is he’s funny and creative and one of the rare people whose Facebook statuses are very frequent and completely personal, but somehow entertaining and engaging.
(To me, the worst Facebook offenders aren’t the vapid daily selfie posters, or the people incapable of spelling any words correctly, or even those glorious few who have uncomfortably personal conversations and arguments out there for the world to see – my dark side finds these last examples a certain kind of wonderful. What I can’t stand on social media is people being BORING: “Just got a grilled cheese. Yum!” “Ugh. More snow.” “Watching hockey with the fam. #blessed #goteam #hashtagsonfacebook.”)
This friend’s ability to post about his unextraordinary life is a friggin’ miracle. I look forward to reading what he has to say in three sentence tidbits, and I’d love to be able to read something longer. Last week he took a break from social media and the internet as a whole. My Facebook feed suffered, but his writing flourished. In his words “An entire week offline. I haven’t thought this clearly and undistractedly (not a word) since the 90s […] this is the key to being able to write. Being unplugged for relatively extended periods.”
I’m trying to decide if I agree with this statement. For the first two weeks of NaNoWriMo, I turned off the internet while I was writing. I had a rule that I could only go online once an hour for fifteen minutes, or every thousand words, whichever came first. It worked wonders, forcing me to put (virtual) words on the (digital) page because there was nothing else to do. However, about halfway through the month, once the daily writing had started to be habit and I didn’t have to be as vigilant about avoiding distractions, the tools that the wondrous internet provided were essential. I became a devotee to the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter account, which had me competing for word counts against myself and others while throwing in optional challenges like using the word sloth or writing a birthday party scene. My personal beast to slay was the #1k30min. If completing NaNoWriMo was my primary goal, completely a #1k30min was a very close second. I managed it with a few days to go while writing a scene about a shark attack. No kidding.
I’ll say that if you’re stuck, uninspired, lazy, or procrastinating – definitely unplug from everything. Go out somewhere. Sit in a quiet space with a pen and paper and watch the world. Then write stuff down. For me, if inspiration comes from the physical world, motivation can come from the digital one. If you must be plugged in, find online outlets that will push you to write – communities, writing challenges, blogging.
(Psst: My Facebook friend doesn’t know I’ve posted about him, but I guess that’s the risk you take when you say anything online).
NaNoWriMo: so how did that go?
This may sound obvious, but I learned that it takes real effort to put 50,000 words on (digital)paper in 30 days. It also requires a general culling of all of your leisure activities – like watching Netflix or, y’know, doing laundry.
The people
The staff and volunteers at NaNoWriMo are endlessly supportive. With pep talks from notable authors sent to you twice a week, virtual write-ins to attend, and my personal favourite tool, Twitter sprints, you always feel like they’re your biggest cheering section.
The real glory of this challenge is the community aspect of it all. Writing is essentially solitary, except I always felt like I was part of something larger. The forums on NaNoWriMo.org are filled with thousands of people willing to offer support, sympathy, inspiration, or a kick in the ass at any moment of the day or night. The participants of NaNoWriMo are crazy, random people from all over the globe, but I was immediately a part of their club, their family, their in-jokes.
The process
NaNoWriMo has a helpful website that calculates how you are doing as you go, and also updates a super intimidating bar graph (below) as you enter your daily word counts.
As you might notice, I started strong. I had a goal to write 2000 words per day (instead of the 1667 words/day that would get me just over the finish line by November 30) and for almost the first half of the month, I did a reasonable job of meeting that goal.
Then, around day 13, the totally expected happened. I got the flu. I was an absolute mess for a good week… getting well just in time to go on the weekend away that JT and I had been planning since September.
I was so thankful I had overachieved those first two weeks. It meant that the deficit to make up was not impossible. Actually, I wrote 5000 words on the way home from our weekend away (eight hours in the car will give you that opportunity).
The second half of the month was both harder and easier. It was harder because I was focussing on other things in my personal life (I got a new job; I curl competitively; Christmas shopping had yet to be started), but easier because I had built up a momentum. I knew my characters and where I was taking them… sort of; I knew how much time I needed to put in daily to reach my goal; I knew I wasn’t likely to get sick again; I knew I had all of December to binge-watch Walking Dead and Community.
Time for the cheesy ending
I feel as of NaNoWriMo did all I hoped for and more. It demolished “writer’s block” excuses, forced me out of my comfort zone, and helped me create.
Looking forward to next year!
NaNoWriMo: an overview
Hello dear reader.
I’ve missed you, which means it’s about time I get back to this whole blogging thing. You’ll be happy to know that in the last two years, I have not been idle. I mean, of course I’ve been idle occasionally. But I have been writing.
Most recently, I had the very exciting, overwhelming, mind-boggling experience of participating in National Novel Writing Month.
From the website:
“National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 p.m. on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel. Here’s a little more about how it all works.”
I’m not certain how I managed to be unaware of NaNoWriMo for the last few years (it began in 1999 with 21 participants and in 2013 I was one of 365,519 who made the attempt), but in the last week of October it came across my path and I embraced it.
I decided to take part for a few reasons.
- I’ve had a story outlined for almost two years now, waiting for the time when I would commit it to (digital)paper
- I have a love/hate/romantic/skeptic relationship with fate, and the timing of learning about NaNoWriMo a week before it began seemed… fortuitous
- NaNoWriMo is specifically designed to help me overcome my greatest weaknesses in writing. Namely, over-editing, needing everything to be perfect the first time it’s written, stalling on a story early. It was as perfect of a writing exercise as I could imagine
- The over-achiever inside liked the idea of an ambitious but not impossible project
So I refined my outline, did some preliminary research, wrote and signed a contract with myself (e.g. Point #4. For every 30 minutes of writing, I will do 10 minutes of exercise), elicited the support of the stalwart JT, got acquainted with the forums, and off I went.
The result? I won. I did it. I started writing on November 1 at 6 a.m. – blurry-eyed, pyjama clad, grumpy but motivated – and stopped writing on November 29 around 5:30 p.m. with a total of 50,250 words.
I’ll go into more detail later, but the main point is this: My story isn’t great. Maybe a tenth of it will survive editing, and much more still needs to be written. But I wrote 50,000 words… in a MONTH, and that feels incredible. I worked through unlikeable characters, massive plot holes, inconsistent timelines, and a number of other issues by just continuing to pound the keyboard. Somehow, I also managed to have a few moments of beautiful writing, and found a community of crazy, creative word nerds just like me.
Yours,
S.E. Lund
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