Today is the 11th, which means it's the 11th day of the National Novel Writing Month, and we should be about a third of a way through our novels. How far am I? Last night I got to... 18,348 words. What's 1/3 of 50,000? 17,000.
Actually, they recommend 1,667 words a day because that's 50k divided by 30 days. So 1,667 at 11 days is 18,337. So I didn't have to do anything today, haha!
Now all I know about NaNo is what I learned from doing it last year, and I find that this year feels so totally different. Last year I didn't know if I could write 50,000 words on one topic, or 15k a day, every day. And according to my progress graph that I saved, I stuck with it for a full week, and then dropped behind for the second, then pulled through and finished a day early.
What had happened was this. In the spring of 2009 I accidentally watched an episode of Smallville which gave me an idea. I thought about this idea and spun it and molded it, and changed my thought processes and eventually it became a few pages about a deathmatch between two people who had once been as close as two people could be.
That summer I filled out that idea and added a whole pack of characters and made it a story in its own right, called Epoch. And when my sister dared me to do NaNo, I thought I might as well try it, or else this full-blown story would never see the light of day. (I'm very lazy)
That first week last November, I spent writing an elaborate flashback, a murder mystery. I had put a lot of thought into the plotting, the order of events, what was important to reveal and when. That's not something I'm very good at. What caught me up was thinking too much. Since it had to happen in a logical, mystery order, I spent a lot of time working out plot holes when I could have been writing.
The next big thing that slowed me down was after I'd finished the mystery flashback. This was uncharted territory, and I didn't know what needed to be said and when. I hadn't spent three months thinking about it. The words just didn't come. I ended up writing a bunch of tangential things just for word count, and speeding through scenes in order to reach an event I did know slightly better. And then that was 50k and I just stopped, practically mid-sentence.
And then I didn't write anything for this for an entire year. I'm not joking, I was all WHAT November's here again? And then I got really antsy "I'd better do it again or this story will never get written AGAIN" "I don't have enough time!" "I don't know if I can do it" "But I don't have anything planned!"
But what I didn't account for was the full year I'd had to marinate these characters and their world and their situation. Day one and the words just poured out, no problem.
My tack this time was this: after thinking about it for a year, I realized that the segment that I'd started after the murder mystery segment was really important. And because I was floundering, I really didn't do it justice last time. So instead of just picking up where I left off, I jumped back in time and started from the first night after the time jump.
And I had no plans, no great schemes, just a general idea sketched out in a page of writing about what the atmosphere was during that time. The purpose of this segment is to hype inter-character tensions and give detail to the world they inhabit, so they just went and did that, I just guided the way. I still am, and I'm learning new stuff all the time.
Doing it this way makes it feel like there's no pressure. I don't have to get it right, just something like it. And if I'm going to finish this, it'll have to be edited anyway, so I don't need to put the perfect words down, either (just 50k of them will do). And after a year of living with these people buzzing in the back of my mind, I realized that I've got to finish it no matter what, NaNo is just an excuse to not put it off.
My other tactic which has really proven effective is taking bites. I mean, 50k already seems like so much, and the day-word-count already does this, chops it up into manageable pieces for the time allotted. What I just started out doing was writing some, getting up and going away for any amount of time, coming back to write some more, going away again. The pattern started being in the morning, some point during the day, and evening or night. So that's only like 500 words per sitting, and that's only like a page. Very very manageable. No pressure, you just have to write one scrawny little page.
So when I stop because I haven't thought about this or what happens next, I wander off and it doesn't even matter if I think about it or not, an answer filters up and when I go back I'm ready to continue on. It's sort of awesome. I just finished a fight scene which ate a lot of words and added some much needed excitement to my angsty angsty emo drama.
And the cool thing about not planning this part? The things that are happening are just slightly off from what I thought had happened. So their effect is not what I expected. In one particular area, it's transformed a weak narrative device into a plot-driven encounter. It's changed the attitude of one character so that what I was going to have her do anyway makes every kind of sense in the world.
I guess what's happening is by loosening the reigns, the narrative is developing more organically. And while I still have an eye on the outcome, the journey we're taking to get there is spontaneous and based more in these characters and their choices. Instead of just what I would like to happen. It's very exciting to be me.
Last year I made up a playlist of songs that I thought evoked qualities of my stories. Quite a bit of Linkin Park: Runaway, Easier to Run, What I've Done, and Leave Out All The Rest fit squarely with Bentley's arc. But my favorites on the list are Savior by Rise Against which is exactly what I'm writing
(That's when she said I don't hate you boy
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save),
and The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves, which is exactly the tone I want.
One of the reasons I think the new Linkin Park album resonated with me was because I was gearing up into the Epoch mindset, and these songs come along and fit right into it. I mean:
"I'm swimming in the smoke / of bridges I have burned
So don't apologize / I'm losing what I don't deserve"
is exactly where Bentley is. And so on. All these songs--the whole thing--is just the sort of dark dark darkest before dawn apocalyptic hopeful epic cinematic...thing that I want Epoch to be. I see the soul of my story within this album.
And then I watch Twilight and New Moon back to back and want to punch myself in the throat for my similarities to Stephenie Meyer. Vampires, a hard-pressed relationship that no one approves of, listening to Linkin Park while writing. Please someone punch me in the throat.
But I assure you, Epoch is not a ridiculous thing about highschoolers and vampires vs. werewolves. It's about highschoolers vs vampires, if your highschool was like Hogwarts and nobody knew about it. And then if you were there to team up with other kids and train to fight demons, but lots of times demons killed your classmates. And then if your one remaining partner SIDED with the vampires and your school was totally destroyed. And then if your partner shows up three years later and is dying from a vampire curse...what do the survivors do with him?
Harry Potter meets Battlestar Galactica, is what I call it. Well I call it Epoch because Bentley here sold his school (for powers that are only gonna put him in the grave); ending one era and beginning another. But it's about second chances, because Huxley here won't let him give up so easily. But what right does she have to try to save the life of a traitor when everyone else wants justice? It's very complicated, and very angsty.
Well I'll gladly chat your ear off about this if you want to know more. But this is how I'm spending my November. How's yours going?
-Steph
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