March Madness Writer Style - The End of the Beginning

It’s March 31^st – the last day of the “March Madness – Writer Style” Novel-in-a-month challenge. And, unfortunately, I didn’t finish my first rough draft of disAppear. I fell pretty short of reaching the 50,000 words / 200 pages goal.

And I admit that I am a bit disappointed. I always seem to make goals and resolutions but then end up unable to reach them. But it’s OK. This writing challenge has been a good experience, despite how it’s turned out. And this is just the end of the beginning.

I also just finished reading No Plot? No Problem! – the NaNoWriMo writing guide by its founder, Chris Baty. At the end, he congratulates everyone who reached 50,000 words, but he also gives a still-congratulatory pep talk to those (like me) who fell short.

Here’s some of what he says (edited a bit):

“… if you fell a little short of 50,000 but still wrote your heart out, I have a little secret to share: In the course of this great experiment… the goal of 50,000 words has been, shall we say, overemphasized. … If you ‘only’ wrote 15,000 words over the past four weeks, you invented fifty… book pages of fiction. Those of you who made it to the 25,000-word point wrote eighty-three pages. In a month. … you chose to try. … You put your name out there for the world to see. You risked failure. And just by risking failure, you avoided it entirely. … You could have spent this month living your normal life. … Instead you agreed… to try and write more fiction than you ever have in a month. … You stepped up to the plate. And there is nothing more admirable… than someone willing to set for themselves the fearsome task of trying something big. So be proud, writer. You’ve done something fantastic this month, and I salute you for it.”

So, if the NaNoWriMo founder says it’s OK, then it will be OK with me. Because there are several things that I accomplished this past month –

*I wrote more words and pages in this month than I have in any other month, ever. Ian reminded me of this when I was lamenting to him last week that I probably wouldn’t make it to 50,000 words. He said, So what if you don’t? Just keep on writing – maybe it will take you five weeks instead of four, or maybe a little longer. The important thing is that you’ve written more than you ever have in a short timeframe like this. And he’s right. I worked on my previous work-in-progress, What Luck, on and off for two years, and got to about the same point that I’ve reached in disAppear, after just a month of working on it. So I think that’s pretty good!

*I struggled to break my habit of writing a scene and then re-writing it before moving on to the next scene. I kept my self-editing to a minimum, and only re-wrote three times. There were two different scenes that were difficult to write, and they turned out to be so stilted and dull that I had to re-write just to put some life into them so the story could move forward. And I also re-wrote the first 15 pages of the book, so it can be ready to send in for the manuscript critique at the June SCBWI conference. So I think I’m winning the re-writing battle!

*I also wrestled with my writing ADD – to mitigate my habit of constantly shifting my commitment and attention on my current work-in-progress in favor of new story ideas that seem fresher and more interesting. Although I did think about some of my other stories, I focused only on disAppear and didn’t work on any other novel or short story projects all month. I did write in my Morning Pages journal frequently, and I also wrote three blog posts – two of the blogs were about this challenge. So I think I tamed my writing ADD pretty well – hopefully I can keep it in check!

And I’ve learned some things about my writing, too –

*I’m not really an on-the-fly kind of writer. I really admire those who can leap right into a writing project with abandon and can keep the momentum going, even if they’re not quite sure where the story is headed or how it will turn out; and even if they run into obstacles along the way – they firmly believe they will get there in the end, until they do. I wish I could write with that kind of conviction. But I need to have a sense of where my story is going, and some kind of path to follow from the beginning to the end – even if it gets dark and winding through the middle, I need to know the path is still there. I’ve had the story idea for disAppear for several years, so I had a general sense of the main characters and what would happen to them, and how it reflects the theme of the story. So I did pretty well with the beginning. But I hit a wall in the middle, and struggled to write through it. This past weekend, I had a clear vision of the ending, so I sketched it out and also told Ian about it. But then I had to get back to the middle of the story, and I got bogged down in trying to figure out how it would get to the end. I just couldn’t see the path. I’ve never been into formal outlines, but I do think I need to work out the different plot points and their place in the story. So I got a pack of index cards, so I can write out a different card for all the plot points, and other story details. And then I can lay them out and move them around, until hopefully, they’ll help create a path for the story to follow until the end.

*I’m not too good at faking knowledge. I also admire writers who can write around an unknown topic and keep the pace going – they save any research for later. But I don’t think I can write convincingly about a topic if I don’t know anything about it. I’d rather get some kind of grasp of a subject so I can write about it with enough knowledge to make it clear and realistic. So I sometimes turned to research, online and in books, when I came upon unfamiliar subjects. I’ve learned some things about adolescent psychology, small-town police forces, school codes of conduct, and even bowling – just enough for me to be able to write those topics into the story and then keep moving it forward.

*This story is turning out to be longer and more complex than I could write in just a month’s time. Because I haven’t yet written a complete novel from beginning to end, I’m learning more and more about writing as I go along – things like how develop well-rounded, realistic characters who grow and change throughout the story; how to work a subplot into the main plot; and how to pace the ups and downs of the story arcs while building the novel toward the climax. I’ve been figuring it out, with the help of some of the many writing books that I have. And also by thinking about books that I’ve read and paying attention to the book I’m currently reading. I think that reading is as important as writing, and can help improve it.

*I can’t write for many long hours at a time. My attention span begins to wander (an ADD symptom, I think!); I start to feel sore and tired, and sometimes I need to step away from the computer and do something else. I did go out a few times, and also spent some time with Ian and my family. And I worked full-time all month, too. But that’s OK. Chris Baty also says, “Despite what you may have learned last month, sustained writing is best accomplished as part of a balanced lifestyle.” So I’ll keep trying to find the balance of my writing with day-to-day life.

As of tonight, I’ve written just 20,457 words – only 66 pages. But this isn’t the end; it’s just the end of the beginning. I’m going to continue to work on disAppear tomorrow, as well as the next day and the day after that, and every day until I get to the end. I’ll still keep track of my word count, and resist the urge to go back and do a lot of re-writing – at least until the first draft is finished. And I’ll focus on the goal of having a completed manuscript by the time of the June 11^th SCBWI conference.

After the experience of this “March Madness” writing challenge, I feel pretty confident that Spring will be a time of creative and productive writing. And I’ll keep posting about my book’s progress, until the time that I can say that I’ve made it to the end!