This year’s NaNoWriMo is almost over and I haven’t yet written the first word of my 50,000. Pretty much the same thing happened last year and the year before. Two years ago, I got sick just days into November and was down for the count for two very long weeks. Last year, during the final week of October, I agreed to take on a rush editing job that had me working long hours on a daily basis well into November.
This year? My computer crashed. I was late getting started as it was, still working on my character sketches and outline during the first week, when the unthinkable happened: my C drive became corrupted. After ten days of waiting for my trusty little laptop to come home from the shop and then four days of reinstalling all my software, settings, and documents, I found my newly reloaded email program bringing me messages from my fellow NaNoWriMos about how great it felt to have made it to the halfway point. The halfway point! Oh well.
It took a few days, but it slowly dawned on me that I didn’t fail this year. Last year I did, and the year before, too. But this year I definitely succeeded.
How can I say that? For one thing, I’ve got a great new book almost totally planned out and ready to be written. For a second, I figured out what’s been bothering me about another book.
The other book I started several years ago. I completed the first draft, didn’t get to the second draft right away because a new job got in the way, and then didn’t rewrite when I did have the time because something was bothering me about the story but I didn’t know what. I loved the basic premise and the characters, however, so I hung on to that first draft, refusing to banish it to The Cabinet. When this year’s NaNo was approaching, I decided I would take that original premise and characters, and write a new story. And that’s when I realized that the new book was book one of the series and the original book was really book two. So I’ve actually come out of this year’s NaNo with two books! That’s a win, I’d say.
Another reason this year is a success is that I’ve reconnected with my local NaNo group. I joined the Long Island NaNo group, called LinoTypo (a whimsical name—YahooGroups said all the logical ones had been taken), two years ago. After NaNo was over that year, the group continued to meet sporadically and I sometimes attended. Now the group has decided to become a more formal writing group, meeting monthly to outline goals and report on accomplishments, help each other with writing problems and editing, and enjoy dinner out with like-minded people. If I hadn’t decided to get myself in gear for this year’s NaNo, I probably wouldn’t have attended the October meeting, and I’d be missing out on a whole lot of valuable face-to-face help, moral support, and encouragement.
A final reason is the Women of Mystery. After Laura was kind enough to get this blog up and running back in April, I posted five times and then drifted away. But the WOM are so wonderful, they never gave up on me. They continued to include me on their roster and in their email exchanges, wrote to me privately to make sure I was OK, and told me numerous times that when I was ready to blog again to just go ahead and do it. So here I am, back again. And to once again be an active member of this friendly, skilled, creative, and very accomplished group is definitely a win!
Posts
7 comments:
Welcome back, Elaine! We installed a new networked backup drive because I refused to upgrade my operating system without backing up my computer...only to find that there's too much data on the computer and the network isn't robust enough to handle the transfer. So after two days of fruitless attempts, I gave up and hooked the drive directly to the computer to do the initial backup. Now I have to see whether I can schedule incremental backups over the network. Because if not, I am going to get lazy again, which would be a bad, bad thing.
Elaine-
Great to see your voice again! :D
I've never "won" NaNo before, in the 50k sense, but I've always felt I won worthwhile progress. NaNo pushed me to give up on something not working and restructure things that might. To get running starts on my headful of possibilities. I know what you mean about that, I think.
Whenever you get Book One done, you're already set for a multi-book deal with your sequel in the pipeline. It's a luxury not to have to worry about a sophomore slump!
Just today, I discovered the key historical figure and location that will provide the axis upon which my story needs to turn. Most of what I've already written fits around him like jello in a mold, but it was like I had an icon-shaped space at the heart of things that needed filling.
Now I know the who and where, and a lot of my existing themes and characters fall neatly in line, but it means that 50k is just the beginning. I'm in for serious retrenching and research to put this together. But I KNOW now it can be great in the way I've wanted it to be, even if it isn't, and won't be done. 50k of character sketches- YAY!
So, please allow me to join you in the Proxy Winners' Circle.
Hooray! Elaine is back!!!
You have had some time of it, haven't you? We're all so happy to have you back. I'm very impressed that you read all the way through the archives. I am also amazed by how techno savvy so many women of mystery are. I would not be one of them.
This is my first year in NaNo and it has been a struggle, especially when I figured out I was writing the wrong book. (Better to know early than late.) NaNo serves a purpose: it forces us to think about our commitment to writing. This year I signed on (altho' not until November 10th or so) because last year NaNo was such a hot topic in the writing community that I decided there has to be something I was missing.
I agree with Elaine, NaNo serves many purposes.
Terrie
Welcome back.
It does sound as if you were quite succesful this year. A good group to meet with in person can be a writer's most vauluable tool.
I just read J.A. Konrath's blog entry on his different kind of win. Even "real" writers do it.
If you're interested, here's the link, my snippets follow:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
2007/11/nanowrimo-day-25-on-goals.html
I did get 50k words. And they're 50k pretty good words.
But they're for two different stories...
That said, I enjoyed the pressure NaNoWriMo put on me, and I may do it again. In fact, I encourage all writers to try it, whether they end up with a novel, or part of a novel and a novella, or even a bunch of crap that will never see print...
This is a business about pushing yourself, because many times there's no one else pushing you. Unless you're lucky enough to have a deadline, the pressure is mostly self-induced. NaNoWriMo helps to put on some pressure. Pressure = words on a page. And that's what writers do. We write. Anything that helps us write is worth trying.
Elaine, it's great to have you posting again. And writing again. Technology can truly be the pits.
I'm thinking that the vast number of words that our NaNo bloggers have churned out must have lubricated the brain cells.
Pretty impressive stuff all around, with this group!
Post a Comment