NaNoWriMo Shenanigans // Part Two

And now for part two of my NaNoWriMo update. If you're looking for part one, you can find it here. 

After finishing draft two of HIRAETH, I had plenty of NaNoWriMo stretching out before me and, in the spirit of the month, I wanted to churn out a ton more words. But I had a serious book writing hangover. I wanted to be working on HIRAETH. I wanted to be reading HIRAETH. I wanted to crawl inside it and let it seep into my blood. Other books felt dumb and boring in comparison. So I did what any rational person would do—I decided to tackle the project that has, every time I’ve touched it, given me the worst case of writer’s block ever. It’s name is BMT.

This book and I, we’ve known each other for four years. I spent a whole year daydreaming about it before we got together. We’re that couple that everyone gapes at and then asks themselves, “Why are they even together?” BMT has begun to feel like a running joke to me. Am I feeling bad about my writing? I can always pick up BMT and feel worse. Do I want to turn my brain into sad writer soup? I know where to turn.

It was almost NaNoWriMo suicide. Every day, I felt my gaze wandering from BMT to other projects, other words. I wanted to cheat on that book so bad. I did have a quick fling with a short story, but it was over in a day, and then I was back, staring at BMT’s ugly mug. Sometimes I think that my continued dedication to wrestling this book into submission is proof that I really do dislike myself.

I ended up editing a lot of what I had edited in 2016 and 2017, just running the story through my fingers, trying to get the threads, trying to figure out what went wrong, where it went wrong, where it always goes wrong. I drafted some stuff, too, in an effort to break from my normal chronological headspace and write out of order like I did when I was drafting HIRAETH in 2016. (To clarify, I wrote a full rough draft for BMT in 2015, but most of it is rancid garbage and so I am trying to start fresh.)

Eventually I had to rip off the bandage and look at the ugly, infected sore I’ve been dancing around for four years. I hate this book. I hate almost everything about it. Nothing works. The colors are wrong, the feel is wrong, everything is wrong, wrong, wrong, but there is just enough right, hidden beneath it all, that I have not been able to walk away, still don’t want to walk away. I wrote a super long list of all my problems with the story, everything that makes me want to stop writing and, instead, knit sweaters for snakes in the Arizona desert (you know, so they won’t get cold at night). Then I took that list of problems, and I brainstormed ways to address each issue. It seems obvious that I should have done this years ago, so maybe I lose some writer cred in saying I didn’t think to do it sooner, but I didn’t think to do it sooner.

Some of the issues were easy to address. For instance, I needed to establish clear rules within which my time travel world was going to operate. My story has been plagued with inconsistencies and plot holes spawned mainly by my inability to put up a fence around my playground. I’d waffled, writing one scene where time travel works one way, another where it works differently, and this zig zag running made it difficult to head in any set direction. It was starting to feel like that whole “sound and fury, signifying nothing” scenario. The quote feels especially apt, because most days I end up feeling like BMT is more than just a little melodramatic.

Here’s another fun confession. Lazy writers make ugly art, and I was making ugly art. I spent so much time avoiding scenes that I knew I needed to include, and it left my story flimsy and overwrought. I avoided those scenes because some subconscious part of my brain that I wasn’t willing to look at or address kept telling me they were too technically challenging to write, that I wasn’t the sort of writer who could write scenes like those, so there was no point in even trying, and the hilarious thing is that I think I spent so much more energy trying to write around those scenes, trying to write out of sinkholes I wrote myself into, than I would have if I’d just done the work. Lesson learned. Don’t be a lazy, fearful writer. Do the hard thing. It probably won’t kill you.

The topper on this sad wedding cake of a relationship is that I don’t like the characters. No, that’s not accurate. I don’t like the color beige; I don’t like the smell of lilacs. I hate the characters, every single one of them. I can’t expect any reader to love these characters if I don’t even want to look at them. I can’t write this story if I don’t want to spend time in its world. I’m still brainstorming solutions for this issue, because it’s extensive, and I may need to do some character transplants, if that’s a thing. But I’ve named the monster—I know what it looks like. Now all I have to do is cut off its head.

There are more issues, but I think everything else can be dealt with by plotting and planning and taking notes, and since I am no longer allergic to outlining, even though it isn’t what comes most naturally to me, I don’t expect that will be much of an obstacle.

As for what the story itself is about, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll summarize it here: When Ember’s attempt to use black market time to save her boyfriend fails horribly, she kidnaps a time traveler and sets off to undo her mistake before time runs out.

Here, have two completely out of context snippets. Also, please note that Vince and Fred are stand in names until I think of something better.—

She turns to Vince. “Tell me about the scanners.”

He glares at her.

Her hand rests on her gun, still tucked into her shoulder holster. “You know, the sooner we save Fred, the sooner I set you free and you can go to a hospital. I would get to work, if I were you.” As she says it, she sees the thought she has tried to hide from herself, only lets her mind touch it for a moment before wrenching it away, back to the task at hand. If she lets him go, he will tell her grandfather, and it will ruin everything. She does not think she will be able to let him walk away from this, even if she wants to.

—

“Tell me how we’re going to find him, then.” Ember tries to focus on the word he used, disintegration, how it sounds too much like decomposition. Until now, the solution has seemed fairly straightforward to her. Grab Fred from the time vortex, pull him out. She hasn’t considered that they might be working with a very small window in which saving him will matter.

“Finding him should be easy enough,” Vince says, and she has to focus on his words to understand them, her thoughts are so distant and scattered. “The scanners are always on, always tracking and recording activity in the vortex. So they will show when he entered and where he’s been since he did. We can extrapolate from there where he’s likely to end up next, and how long he’s likely to hold together. A lot of it will be guesswork, but we’ll have a starting point and a framework to go on.”

Ember nudges him aside and takes a seat at the desk. Almost without thinking, she traces her hand across the screen, feels the fuzz of static beneath her fingers. For an instant, as she watches the hundreds of blips, she feels as if she could will them all to safety, clear out the time vortex with nothing more than wishful thinking.

She doesn’t know why they are all there, but there are so many blips, more than she could have ever guessed. The longer she looks at them, the more they seem like bacteria on a slide, stained blue and viewed through a microscope. They move in imperfect circles, intersecting, bouncing off each other, every blip its own center of gravity, like they’re hitched onto one point in time, and they’re spinning around it in ever widening revolutions. It’s not as clean as that, but that’s how she prefers to look at it. Which one is Fred? She massages her temples, tries not to think about how good a strong cup of coffee would be right now.

She turns away from the scanner, her pulse a jackhammer in her throat. “Okay, so tell me which one he is.”

—


And that’s it for today, Coffee Beans. Have you ever spent a long time working on a project you don’t like? Have you ever conquered writing a story with characters you can’t stand? Teach me your ways.

Embracing the Crazy

During NaNoWriMo, it’s not uncommon to go a little crazy. Sometimes you find yourself writing a scene where your characters mock you and question your parentage, or when they discuss all the plot holes and the reasons why you shouldn’t be a novelist. And you’ll find yourself agreeing with them. It’s great.

Even if that doesn’t happen to you, at this point in the month, you’re still bracing for the home stretch. If you’re like me, you’re probably tired and ready to take a good long break over the holidays. You may not even feel like you can make it to the finish line without collapsing into a pile of words along the way. Rest assured, this last bit can be just as enjoyable as the rest, provided you recognize the humor in it.

You’ll find yourself typing sentences like, “I see Jude, sitting on a log, rotted and covered with leaves, the log not Jude.” Instead of being a responsible adult (if you’re an adult), you may put off washing laundry until the last possible moment. You may even forget what day it is. Every time you open your word document, you’ll remember something important like the fact that you haven’t flossed your pet barracuda’s teeth in far too long, and maybe you should go do that instead of writing. Or you may suddenly recall the fact that you have something called a family (which doesn’t like to be ignored), and another thing called a social life (which must be maintained somehow—or so they say). Like a greedy dragon, you might catch yourself spending an obsessive amount of time staring at your word count graph and thinking about how you can make it OH MY GOODNESS SO MUCH TALLER before the end of the month. 

At some point, you may be ill-fated enough to glance at the date and realize how little time you have left between now and the thirtieth, which might lead to a (minor) panic attack. So you’ll get to work and you’ll write a few hundred words. Then you’ll realize that you haven’t checked your Facebook messages in, like, five minutes. After that you’ll remember you should check your email, and also your watched threads on the NaNoWriMo forums. You’ll drink coffee and more coffee and at some point you’ll wonder when you decided to skip the mug and start drinking directly out of the coffee pot. Eventually you may find yourself eating the coffee grounds themselves because it’s much quicker that way.

Or you might sit down to write and find yourself accidentally opening Netflix instead. It happens. No doubt your fingers are forgetting how to type properly by now, so you’re probably really proud when you manage to spell at least every other word correctly. When you compare your word count with other people’s, you freak out because it seems like everyone ever is ahead of you and you just want to beat them (and I’m not talking about stats here). You realize that as much as you’re loving your novel, it’s not loving you back. So you drown your sorrows in more coffee, and you spend ages finding new music online.

All silliness aside, I get it—this is the hardest part of the month. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you’ll have to balance writing and eating and socializing, and that’s especially difficult if you’ve fallen behind. Not to mention (again) that you’re probably super tired already. And December is calling to you from just around the bend, reminding you of all the crazy busyness it has in store for you. So sprint now because you’re on the homestretch and you need to kick this novel’s bum. You can take a break from writing in December, but this is not December. Show the world who’s the boss, first. Then, and only then, do you have my permission to go insane.

Well, my little coffee beans. How is writing coming along? Are you looking forward to December, or would you rather petition the government to add thirty more days to November so you can write a bazillion more words?

Crazy Hamster Wheel

If you’re a writer like me, chances are you suffer at least a bazillion mood swings a day. Constructing a novel is hard, editing is hard, and querying agents is even harder. This does not lend itself to an emotionally stable situation, and often I feel as though I’m fighting a constant battle against arrogance on the one hand and despair on the other. Some days I think I’m the greatest novelist ever; some days I believe I’m the worst. Let me show you how this plays out.

 

Drafting:  From the first page to the last, I flee the rabid monsters of blinking cursers, crowded schedules, and impending doom. During this time, I often wander around feeling like a toddler flinging paint at the wall and calling it art. Eventually, I tell myself, I should probably just grow up and get a normal job like bull fighting or yak farming. Of course, I have my moments where the words sing and the characters dance and I’m convinced I’ve landed a masterpiece. Those wonderful occurrences last about as long as a caffeine rush. (Note to self:  Is coffee a performance-enhancing drug?) At this point in the game, I am usually not anywhere near my high horse. But just you wait and see.

 

Edits—Round One:  Unlike other people, I don’t enjoy reading my unpolished work. I remember the vision I had for my story and the warm fuzzy feelings that cropped up along the way, but somehow none of those actually seem to have made it onto the page. Nothing of the genius survived the transition from fingers to screen—nothing of the wit remains. After all that hard labor, all those long nights writing by the light of the moon—exactly what have I accomplished? And as I stare at that ginormous, ignominious pile of goop, I toy with my chainsaw, wondering if there might not be a huge distinction between deleting my entire manuscript and saving the world.

By the time I get my act together and dive into that icky vat of words, I’m starting to feel more confident. After all, there isn’t any rush. Since I have no actual deadlines—aside from the ones I set myself—I can take all the time I need to tighten my writing as much as I like without fearing THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. Anyway, editing is where the party’s at. And I’ve reserved a date with the backspace key. Just imagine all the lines we’ll tear apart and the scenes we’ll erase. Oh, won’t it be magical?

Once I’ve finished this first round of edits, I send my manuscript out to my beta readers, heart thumping in anticipation, head spinning with the intoxication of success. I anxiously await replies, imagining the adoring phone calls and emails I’ll be answering all week. Within a few hours, even, they’ll have breezed through my novel, and they’ll beg to buy me Lamborghinis and European mansions. Folk will hang off my every word, and soon agents and publishers will telepathically learn of my skills. The talented genius who only needs to edit once. I can see the headlines already.

 

Edits—Round Two:  Within about a month, I receive the feedback, and of course I do a double take. Can it be? Can it really be? There are marks all over my handiwork, lines of red and blue—disagreements and confusion and SUGGESTIONS. I shiver, bite my lip. AM I GOING MAD? This is probably the worst part, the crushing of my stupid little dreams, the shame that comes with recognizing my naiveté. Obviously, I am a failure. Isn’t it plain I can’t write? I’ll never succeed since I can’t even recognize the clear problems everyone else notices immediately.

After the initial despair subsides, and after the coffee and the chocolate have had ample chance to become reacquainted in my stomach, I roll up my sleeves and dig in once more. Here’s where it gets both trickier and easier. I’ve already done most of the heavy lifting. Now, depending on the notes, my major concerns include fixing awkward wording, fiddling with character arcs, correcting inconsistencies, rewriting passages, adding scenes, and clarifying ambiguities. This draft is harder because I’ve already tightened the writing and started viewing the story as fixed. I balk at drastic changes, cringe at frightening flaws. The clay I am working with is beginning to dry, and now more than ever I’m racing against time. Every alteration I make, every idea I consider—I second guess them all a dozen times daily. I talk to myself and to my rat and to the wall. I procrastinate and play chess (I HATE chess) and draw pictures. Sometimes I cry. But as taxing as this part is, I find I love the challenge, the exhilaration of conquering and persevering.

Soon my bravado returns, and it brings friends. At this point, I start comparing myself with other, published writers. When I read, I edit their novels and laugh at their mistakes, snickering that I would never be so amateur as all that. They’ll be shining my shoes someday when I’m rich and famous. Bristling—glowing—with misplaced pride, I send my darling back to my beta readers, some new, some old. And I wait, certain that this time, they will find no fault. Meanwhile, I confidently reread swaths of my novel, basking in my success until HORROR OF HORRORS, I find a repeated word, an awkward sentence, a misplaced detail. I begin making plans to move to Morocco. Or Lithuania. Or New Zealand. I frantically fill out applications for jobs in sewer maintenance and snake wrangling.

 

Edits—Final Round:  After receiving feedback, freaking out, and plunging once more into the trenches of my novel, I find my confidence returning, slowly but surely. I tweak sentences, tighten dialogue, find snafus everyone missed. I burn a hole in my thesaurus when my brain explodes. Then I let the manuscript sit for several months while I pretend to be a normal person with normal hobbies like eating, and walking, and socializing. Eventually I realize this will not do, and I read my novel again, shrieking at all the nitpicky grammar problems that just leap off the page. At some point I consider kidnapping a published author and bribing them to fix my book. Instead I hunker down and get to work.

 

Home stretch:  Finally I’m ready to query literary agents. Tense and sweating, I hover over the laptop, staring at the cover letter I spent weeks perfecting, and I give a startled laugh at my blatant audacity. What on earth do I think I’m doing?

This feeling lasts about as long as it takes to click send, and then my old cocky self resurfaces, cackling all the way. In a few days, I think, I’ll have more offers of representation than there are hours in a month, and I’ll be chatting with agents all week trying to decide which lucky one to choose. In the end, I may have to use the dartboard method. Within the year, my book will be on shelves. I’ll make millions, of course—probably billions. Step aside, JK Rowling—you’re blocking my spotlight.

Then comes the onslaught of rejection letters (some personalized, others form) and the deadening silence. Reality sinks its teeth into my soul, and I whimper. What’s wrong with Little Miss Agent? How does she not recognize my genius? Even that one bright spot, that sterling moment when I unsuspectingly open my inbox and find a request for the full manuscript—even that tarnishes over the months of waiting and wondering.

In an effort to preserve my questionable sanity, I break ground on my next book. And so the cycle begins anew, this vicious yo-yo of Writerdom. This crazy hamster wheel.