NaNoWriMo Day 17: The final stretch--or not

As of today, I have 46,001 words of my novel written.  This means that I only have 4,000 words to go to complete NaNoWriMo and I will have a novel!  Or not. 

In fact, I find that I am only now really getting into the story and I have quite a bit of rewriting to do, so hitting the 50,000th word just means that the real work will begin.

Still, this isn't a complaint.  I was so worried about making it through NaNoWriMo this year, what with all the chaos that's been going on with the renovations and with the normal, everyday challenges of my husband's job and life with two young kids.  I thought I was crazy for even contemplating participating this year and, in fact, I've had several days where I wondered why I've been inflicting this stress on myself.  There are two reasons for this:

1. I really like the concept for my novel, and I want to submit it for the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest (ABNA for short, if you've never heard of it).  I've entered the last two years, but both times in the adult category and, since I'm still unpublished, it probably goes without saying that I didn't win.  But, while I'd certainly love to win or attract the interest of an agent or publisher, I'm still really proud of myself for entering as it means I'm taking those first tentative steps toward actually trying to get myself published.  To be honest, as much as I love my other manuscript, I feel like the one I'm currently writing will be much more competitive, and I think the young adult category may be a better fit for me.

2. This is the real reason: because NaNoWriMo proves to me that I can do this.  I can write a novel, no matter what kind of craziness is happening in my life.  I've always been a writer, ever since I was a child, but I've somehow always had this thought in the back of my head that I can't do it.  I have a bazillion reasons why: conditions aren't right, I don't feel inspired, etc., etc., etc.  But I've come to realize that these aren't reasons, they're excuses.  NaNoWriMo does not allow for excuses.  NaNoWriMo provides me with that extra nudge I need to make me feel I simply have to finish my project.  For me, NaNoWriMo is about chances, about proving to all those little voices of doubt inside that they are, in fact, wrong.

I recently read this really offensive article on The Economist.  It more or less states that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and that the world doesn't need more bad novels--as if every novel that's published is good or, conversely, as if every novel that isn't published is bad.  Well, The Economist, I will take a Shakespearean tack: I bite my thumb at you!

I'm not suggesting that everyone is capable of writing a masterpiece--I'm nowhere near being convinced that I'm capable of this.  Nor am I suggesting that everyone quit their day jobs so they can sit home and write a novel.  We do need to be practical.  What I am saying, though, is this: we always encourage our children to follow their dreams.  Why, then, are we so willing to give up on our own?  Maybe I'll never get published, but at least I'll know I tried.  I don't want to be one of those people who lives a life full of "what ifs".

And further, to suggest that participants in NaNoWriMo are just fooling around is offensive.  I bleed for my novel, just like every other author I've ever known or read about.  I care passionately about what I write.  I agonized over this manuscript long before NaNoWriMo began, and I will agonize over it long after NaNoWriMo is finished.

So to my fellow WriMos: I salute you!  Maybe you're surrounded by people who are supportive and helpful and believe in you.  Maybe you're surrounded by doubters who think you're crazy for even trying.  Either way, I am with you.  I may not know you and you may not know me, but we understand one another's passion.  Go right ahead and reach for the stars--I'll be doing the same alongside you.  Let's shine on together, fellow crazy NaNoWriMo diamonds!  May we all someday look back and laugh at that article, as we enjoy the phenomenal success of our books that were originally NaNoWriMo novels.

***

“Dara, the next four weeks are going to be critical,” Joshua said, his voice urgent.  “We have to do everything in our power to help your mother.”

            “Oh, I wish we worked opposite shifts,” Dara moaned.

            “I know, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.  We’re just going to have to make do.”

            “We’ll take turns each night.  I’ll sleep one night, you sleep the next,” Dara suggested.

            Joshua looked relieved as he nodded.  “Yes, that was my idea as well.”

            “Let’s take turns going to the medical bay too.  There’s a lot that needs to be done around here to get things ready.”

            “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” her father said quietly, taking her right hand and pressing it between both of his.

            “We’re a family,” Dara said, a lump rising in her throat.  

            “Nothing and no one can change that,” her father said, a ferocious note to his voice.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 10: The blues

Today was a pretty rough day.  I was feeling really down in general, and particularly about writing.  I think that it's so lonely to be a writer at times.  I'm always rather leery of telling people that I'm writing a novel because they react in one of two ways:

1) They think it's awesome and amazing that I'm writing a novel.  The people who say this often also express the wish that they could sit down and write a novel.  This is a good reaction, and I like it.  It makes me feel good to know that some people view my writing as an ambitious and admirable project.

2) They look at me kind of funny and are sort of patronizing about it.  You know, something like, "Oh, you're writing a novel?  How nice."  I always picture their inner monologue as being something like this, "She's writing a novel?  That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.  Like it'll ever be published.  Good luck with THAT pie-in-the-sky dream, sweetheart!"

I have to confess that I often feel like response number two is the one I'm getting.  It's like people do that smile and nod thing.  You know, the thing you do when someone says something and you have no idea how you can possibly respond to it because it's either outrageously stupid or outrageously offensive (or a combination of both), so you just smile and nod.

Well, today was a day when I felt like the whole world was smiling and nodding at me.  Not good.

However, I did come to a realization about my novel.  I'm trying to make a statement with it, and I realized that the first part of the novel isn't achieving what I want it to achieve.  This might sound like a bad thing and it would be if I hadn't realized what I could do to fix it so that it would achieve what I wanted it to. 

The problem is that it's going to require some extensive rewrites, which is something that's not in keeping with the spirit of NaNoWriMo.  So, in the interest of adhering to the NaNoWriMo idea, I resisted the urge to edit.  Instead, I added some things and then continued on with my story, promising myself that I will go back and rewrite when I've officially "completed" the manuscript.

Yes, this will be a pretty major change in the structure of my novel, but I know it's going to make it better, so I'm not bothered by that.  All in all, it was a pretty weird day, considering I had the icky feeling that no one is taking me seriously coupled with an epiphany about my book that I think will make it much better.

Also, I recently found out that the novels "Water for Elephants" and "The Night Circus" started out as NaNoWriMo drafts.  Considering how phenomenally successful those books are, I KNOW there's something to this NaNoWriMo idea.  Sometimes, you've just got to reach out and grab for the brass ring, even if everyone you know thinks you're crazy and/or foolish for doing it.

***

“Letizia, I’m going to turn the flashlight on.  I need to see how badly you’re wounded.”

“No...light,” Letizia whispered.

“I don’t have a choice.  I have to examine your head.  I’ll keep the light covered as much as possible.”

Before Letizia could protest any further, Dara pulled out the flashlight.  It was fairly small, so she was able to cup her palm around it.  Though the light was far from concealed, Dara figured it was better than nothing.  She shone it on Letizia’s head and was unable to keep herself from gasped.  Dark blood crusted Letizia’s hair and oozed from the wound at her temple.  It was a sizable gash, and Dara felt certain it needed to be patched, though that was far beyond her skill set.  The flying grit and dust had begun to accumulate in both the wound and the blood in Letizia’s hair, and Dara knew she had to get it cleaned and covered lest Letizia wind up with a terrible infection.

“I’ll try to be as gentle as possible, but this is going to hurt,” she warned Letizia softly as she shone the light on her bag, digging through its contents.  She found a sterile wipe, some gauze, and some tape.  It would have to do until Letizia could receive professional medical care.

As quickly as she could, Dara cleaned the wound.  Letizia sucked in a breath, and Dara bit her lip, knowing she was hurting the other woman.  If she’d had both hands free, she probably could have been a lot gentler about it, but she’d have been forced to put the light in her mouth which would mean she wouldn’t be able to do much to conceal its beam. They were both silent as Dara finished cleaning the wound.

When she finished, Dara was slick with sweat and she swiped her forearm over her eyes.  There was still a lot of blood crusted in Letizia’s hair, but now was not the time to worry about that.  Awkwardly, she covered the wound with gauze and taped it down as securely as she could.  She looked around for a second, trying to figure out what to do with the bloody wipe and the wrapper from the gauze.

What the hell, Dara?  This isn’t the dome.  You’re not going to find a conveniently located trash chute.  Just drop the garbage on the ground.

Letting out a shaky breath, Dara did so and then flicked the light off.  Groping in the bag, she felt the contours of one of the water bottles and she pulled it out, uncapping it and handing it to Letizia before she felt around for the second.

“Small sips,” Dara cautioned.  “I don’t know how long it’ll need to last.”

“Not sure...I can.  Stomach...” Letizia moaned softly.

“I know you’re feeling nauseated, but you have to take at least a few sips.  You can’t let yourself become dehydrated.  Here, I’ll help you,” Dara said, setting her bottle aside and taking Letizia’s.  She managed to coax Letizia to take two small sips before the other woman gagged, spilling the contents of her stomach over the dry, crusted earth.

Now Dara was very worried.  She was quite certain Letizia had a concussion on top of her head wound.  The adrenaline from their flight away from the transport was beginning to wear off, and Dara could feel panic setting in.

“Do you know how stupid it is to use a light out here?” a low voice growled.

NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 2: What? That's not the first chapter!

When I got up this morning, I started thinking about the direction in which I'd be taking my novel today.  I was really happy with what I'd written yesterday, and pretty excited because I'd received some positive feedback.

Then, I hit the panic wall, where I'm sure I have no idea what I'm going to write next.  I'm really good at psyching myself out this way, and I do it quite often.  However, this time I did my best to just rein it in and take a few deep breaths.  While I continued to get ready for the day, I just kind of let my mind wander and then, suddenly, I hit upon it: the chapter 1 I wrote yesterday really wasn't the first chapter.

After NaNoWriMo 2010, I decided that I was going to seize on the next NaNoWriMos as an opportunity to experiment with my writing.  I have written a few different types of works, so I don't think I was stuck in a rut or anything, but I have had these moments where I think about how much I'd like to write for a certain genre and then I dismiss those thoughts because I'm convinced that it's "too hard".  And then I huddle back into my comfort zone and head merrily through life.  I wasn't willing to settle for that, though.  I wanted to take some risks, try some things I've been afraid to try.  I knew it was certainly possible that I'd fail spectacularly, but I decided that my objective with each NaNoWriMo was to take risks.  The only question that remained was which genre I wanted to attempt.


When I was younger, my reading was almost exclusively mystery, a genre that I still enjoy a great deal.  Over the last several years, though, I've begun to branch out, and have discovered that I also love many types of non-fiction, historical fiction, and dystopian/speculative fiction.  I rediscovered YA fiction more or less by chance.  I'm rather obsessed with the Harry Potter series, but I hadn't really touched any fiction meant for young people since then.  A few years ago, though, I was teaching in a middle school, and I noticed that a lot of the students--and some of the teachers--were talking about The Hunger Games the way people used to talk about HP, and so I decided to give it a shot.  I read the first two books voraciously, and then had a few months to kill before Mockingjay came out.  Hungry (har har!) for more, I started looking at other titles, trying to find something to fill the hole.  That is when my love affair with the genre began.

I think I made the same mistake that many people make, which was to think that adult fiction was ever so much more sophisticated than young adult fiction.  Time and again, I was proven wrong by the many fabulous books I read.  In fact, the more I read of YA fiction, the more I realized that I was of the opinion that many young adult authors out there are far, far more talented than many adult authors, and that the YA authors were tackling some really meaty, deep issues and yet still managing to tell a rip-roaring tale while they did so.  What's not to admire about this?  As an author, I can try to entertain and inform at the same time?  Yes, please!  It was decided: I was going to try my hand at YA fiction.

Once I made that decision, I thought about what issue I would like to have central to my story.  It seemed that the best of the genre were novels that took a certain issue or aspect of society and used that as the foundation for the story.  A good dystopia doesn't just exist, it has to have grown from something, has to have evolved from some aspect of our modern life.  I thought long and hard about which issue I really wanted to explore in my dystopia, and decided on an issue about which I'm very passionate: education.

Initially, my intent was to write about teenagers in the distant future who were going through an educational system very different from the one we know.  It was my doomsday scenario for American public education, if you will.  As time passed, though, and as I read and listened to podcasts about the current state of our economy, my focus started to shift a bit, and I realized that the central question I wanted to posit in my novel was this: What if the influence of corporations spread to every corner of society?  And that is exactly what I'm attempting to explore.

However, I didn't want to let go of the educational system entirely, and felt that it was important to the development of my dystopia.  That is why I decided that chapter 1 needed to become chapter 2, so that I could use chapter 1 to offer a bit of flavor showing what schooling is like in my dystopia, as it is an integral part of the world I was building.  I hope you will enjoy.

***

I pledge to maintain the integrity of Magnum’s vision.

I pledge to always work at my peak performance.

I pledge to be dedicated and hard working.

I pledge to stay healthy and productive.

And most of all, I pledge to remain loyal to my Job Creator,

and to do all I can to ensure my Creator’s success.

Though she had spoken those words almost every day for the last fourteen of her seventeen years of life, Dara felt a frisson of excitement shoot its way up her spine.  Those words now had a depth of meaning to her that they hadn’t all those years ago, when she had first learned them.  Now she truly understood them, now that she was standing at the threshold, her entire future laid out before her.

             

As she glanced around at the other twenty-one students in her Engineering IV class, Dara saw a mixture of expressions on their faces.  Some of them looked every bit as enraptured as she did, while others looked slightly green.  She watched one boy in particular, Patrick Regan, as he swallowed convulsively and tried to surreptitiously wipe his hands on the pants of his uniform.  She wasn’t surprised.  Patrick had always struggled, had always hung on by his fingertips, and she regarded him now with some disdain.

            

Still, she couldn’t quite quell the slight churning of her stomach.  What if she had been like him?  What if she had spent every day in school struggling just to keep up, to hold on?  What if she, like him, was facing the prospect of failure, the prospect of sliding from being a Ballast to being a Core?  The prospect was so terrifying it made her shudder, and she hoped no one else noticed, lest they think she was worried about her exam tomorrow.

             

“Welcome to your last day as a prospect.  Tomorrow you will become a contributor,” Instructor Haddad told them.

            

Jonathan was unable to resist the urge to let out a slight hoot, and he cast a sideways glance at Dara as he did so.  A smile spread across her face, and the expression was mirrored on his.

Instructor Haddad leveled a grave gaze on Jonathan, but even the normally taciturn Instructor couldn’t quite repress a look of satisfaction.  The Instructor had a right to feel proud, Dara thought.  They were her most successful group of students yet—except for Patrick, that is.  Still, the Instructor had received special recognition from Magnum, an award for the services she had rendered Magnum’s youth.  It was a highly coveted prize, and there was always a lot of competition between the Instructors, each of them eager to claim the prize and solidify their position within Magnum’s educational institution.

“You have all worked very hard to get here, but let me caution you: now is not the time to rest on your laurels.  Though your education has been rigorous, expectations for you are very high.  You will not be handled gently tomorrow.  It’s very likely that your testing will prove to be far, far more difficult than it was for previous classes.  I don’t think I need to remind all of you that, now more than ever, there is a great deal at stake.”   

As she spoke, Instructor Haddad walked around the room, her hands behind her back in an almost military posture.  Each student was treated to her intensely laser-like gaze.  Years of practice allowed Dara to return the look with a steady gaze and a placid expression, but she could feel her heart speed up ever so slightly.   

Last week, the previous year’s graduates had returned to the school to sternly caution the students that, as rigorous as their schooling had been, it would seem easy in comparison to the challenges of being a contributor, but Dara still had trouble believing that anyone could be as exacting as Instructor Haddad.

A slight noise startled her, and she turned her head to see that Patrick’s face was so red it looked as though he might explode.  He turned his head and saw her staring, and his face turned even redder, though she’d hardly have thought it possible.  For the brief second that their eyes met, she could see that his were wet, and she realized the sound she had heard was him stifling a sob.  Quickly, she averted her gaze, refusing to look at him any longer.               

The tone sounding the end of the period was a relief, and Dara hastily grabbed the bag containing her reader and stylus, hurrying away from Patrick as quickly as she could.

Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo 2011

Last year was my first experience with NaNoWriMo--for those of you who don't know, that stands for National Novel Writer's Month, although the concept has gone international.  Basically, what it boils down to is this: each November, insane people like myself commit to sitting down and writing an entire novel in one month.  Yes, you read that correctly.  In order to "win" NaNoWriMo, you have to write a 50,000 word novel, which boils down to 1,667 per day, every single day in November.

When I first heard about this, I thought it was utter madness--exciting madness, but crazy all the same.  I mean, who can possibly write an entire novel in 30 days, right?  After all, I've been writing novels since about the time I learned how to hold a pen, and I think the fastest I've ever written one was maybe six months or so.  Most of the time, though, I tend to labor over novels for years at a time.  Mainly, this is because I don't always like to write when I don't feel "inspired".  I sometimes go through these periods of mania where I JUST HAVE TO WRITE, and all is good.  But, more often than not, writing feels like work and, well, avoiding work is the human condition, right?

For several years, I made up excuses for why I couldn't do NaNoWriMo.  Mostly, these excuses centered around my kids because, as any parent knows, your kid is the ultimate excuse for everything.  Don't want to go to work?  Call the boss and tell him/her that your kid is sick.  Didn't have time to get around to doing all those things you were supposed to do?  Tell yourself it's because your kids keep you so busy.  Don't want to commit to sitting in front of your computer and--gasp--actually making yourself write something?  Convince yourself that you can't possibly do it because you have kids and, therefore, zero free time in which to do things like write novels.  It's pretty easy to convince yourself of this.  I should know, as I did it multiple times.

Finally, last year, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and just do it.  Now, something to know about when I write: I tend to agonize over word choice, syntax, comma usage--in short, anything that gets me out of having to actually take a risk and type something.  Now, that just wasn't going to work for NaNoWriMo as the ultimate goal is, really, to get the words down.  That doesn't mean you'll actually be able to do anything with your novel, but the point is to just write, so that's what I decided to do.  I would sit down, type what came to me, and I would NOT, under any circumstances, allow myself to edit as I wrote which is, naturally, what I normally do.

In the end, my "novel" was nothing more than a bunch of random gibberish and whatever flotsam was floating through my head on the day I wrote that portion.  In other words, what I wrote had no hope of ever becoming anything that even remotely resembled a novel.  However, I was not upset by this.  On the contrary, I felt amazingly liberated.  I realized that I could, in fact, write 1,667 words a day.  I just had to give myself permission to do so.  I had to muzzle my inner perfectionist and let my inner free spirit loose to just write and write and write.  It was gorgeous, really.  It showed me that taking risks can be awesome and, if not flush with extrinsic rewards, replete with intrinsic ones.  And while most of us tend to stress the extrinsic rewards of anything, the intrinsic ones are really the ones that bring us the most happiness.

What NaNoWriMo taught me was to take a risk, an idea that I've embraced with gusto.  I decided that, in order to continue to challenge myself, I would not only do something crazy like write a novel in 30 days each year, I would also try a different genre each year.  This year, I settled on YA dystopian fiction.  Why?  Because I read a lot of it and I think it's just awesome.  If you're curious, you'll find some links to my favorites of the genre as I think all of these authors deserve big props.

At first, trying this genre out seemed crazy.  You can't just arbitrarily decide you're going to write in a different genre.  That's putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and if you're to have any hope of anything workable, you have to have a good feel for the genre.  I think this is particularly true of things like fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopian fiction because there's so much world-building involved.  In order to make your story believable, you have to be able to create a logic within your own world.  This is NOT an easy thing to do--at least not for me.  For me, it's much simpler to just write modern mainstream lit in which my characters are people not that different from myself.

Given this, I knew I couldn't fly by the seat of my pants this year as I did last year.  So, with the help of my trusty friend Microsoft OneNote, I began setting up the world for my dystopia, and I realized that this could really be fun for me.  I'm very opinionated, and if I had to boil good dystopian fiction down, I'd say it's the author taking an issue and then exaggerating it in order to make a larger point about the dysfunctional nature of society.  For someone who's as passionate about various issues as I am, it's actually a dream genre.  Here's a chance for me to take an issue about which I have a passionate viewpoint and transform it into a work of fiction that illustrates just why I think this particular issue is such a bad thing.

So, what IS my big issue?  That will ultimately be for my readers to figure out.  My would-be English teacher genes forbid me from overtly telling people how to interpret a novel, after all.  I will, however, post some excerpts in this blog here and there, whenever I feel like I have something that may be worth sharing.  Hopefully, I'll feel that way after ever single day of typing 1,667.  But if this year is anything like last year, I'll feel that way a total of zero days.

Still, this isn't discouraging me.  After all, were it not for NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't have even thought of taking this risk.  That would have been a real shame as I'd have been missing out on something that has stimulated and excited me in a very intellectual fashion.