NaNoWriMo Inspiration #1

I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. I've wanted to for the past few years and always found a reason not to--but not this year. (Ironically, needing to finish my M.Ed thesis by December 4th wasn't ample excuse this year...lol).

I signed up and started strong. Finished about 2K words in a few days but then reality smashed me in the mouth and slowed me down. I don't actually think I've written since like November 6th, but those fun first days reminded me of how much I love and cherish that writing time early in the morning before the family gets up. Something to look forward to soon as the thesis is done...

As a NaNoWriMo participant (even with the extent of my participation), I got some wonderfully motivational emails to keep me going. Found them extremely thoughtful and amazingly true to my writer psyche. Here are some excerpts from the first:

*******
[as a writer on a roll beginning a new project], You are looking good, feeling great...and you *are* going to be victorious....you have everything it takes to win, and win big. Keep it up. Don't slow down.

But this...is not for those doing exceptionally well. It's for the rest of us---authors with underdeveloped word counts, overdeveloped novel-guilt complexes, and sensational procrastinating abilities. Because we are the ones who are going to begin having serious misgivings....

Why?

Because it turns out we are too busy to do this. Or because a crisis has brought some novel-eating turmoil into our lives.Or because our stories are really, really bad, and we're wondering why we're sacrificing so much of our time to produce a consistently crappy book.

It all adds up to [a] ...wall..a low-point of energy, enthusiasm, and joie de novel that strikes most [authors on new projects] between days 7 and 14. This is when our inner editors, who largely turned a blind eye to our novel flailings [at the beginning] return to see how things are going. And their assessments are never kind.

The plot is draggy. The characters are boring. The dialogue is pointless, and the prose has all the panache of something dashed off by a distracted kindergartner.
If you're feeling any of these things---or find yourself starting to feel them this week---know that nothing is wrong. In fact, you're likely on track....Just lower your head, pick up your pace, and write straight into the maw of your misgivings. If you are thinking about quitting, DO NOT DO IT IN WEEK TWO.

If you have to quit, do it in Week Three.

I'm serious.

Because if you quit [now] you're going to miss an amazing moment---the moment when your novel begins to click. You'll miss a genius plot twist you can't foresee right now that will suddenly elevate your book from a distressing mess to a sort-of-tolerable mess. And then you'll miss the euphoric breakthrough that follows that twist, when your book improves itself all the way to not-half-bad.
Not-half-bad will make you scream, it feels so good.

And you know what? The more you write, the better it gets. So make it a priority to write in torrents this week. Allow your characters to change, and have change forced upon them. Follow your intuition, even if it leads away from where you thought your book was heading. And know that writing a novel is like building a car.

Your only job [in writing the first draft] is to create a clunky machine that will eventually move people from one place to another. If your beast rolls at all at this point, you're doing great. Pretty prose, snappy dialogue, brilliant metaphors---they're all part of the high-gloss paint job and finishing touches we put on *after* the body is built.

Keep plowing onward, brave writer! Good things are coming.

Thanks to Chris Baty & the NaNoWriMo team for the great, thoughtful emails. Here's hoping next year there won't be a thesis to compete with.

Happy Writing,
Beth