Right then, it seems impossible that eleven
months have flown by, and yet we are here again. Twenty-four or so hours and
the relentless goal of being a NanoWriMo winner starts all over again. Last
year I had a huge headstart with over 13,000 words of notes, bits of dialog,
chapter and character details… this year I have a sheet of paper with all the
prime numbers up to 6,977 with the corresponding dates listed next to them, few
notes in a pile, a short synopsis and a blank whiteboard on the wall waiting
for rushed ideas. Pretty much in the same state as most of the people who I met
today at the pre-Nano meeting today at Waterstones.
I have just come home from a great
gathering of people who will be taking part this year, some old faces which
were lovely to see again, and many new ones whom I am dying to get to know some
more. I managed to chat to a few people briefly and as always was fascinated to
hear the diverse stories they had to tell, or in many cases are dying to write
out. There sadly wasn’t enough time to speak to all the people who were there,
nor was there enough time to get to know more from some of the people who I did
get to meet and wanted to know more, including the couple who are testing out
Cornwall by living down here for a few months and the lady who is writing a
novel about Chinese history the old fashioned way; by pen.
The newcomers to the National Novel Writing
Month I’m sure feel the same as I did when I first entered the competition,
apprehensive about how to go about their task, worried that they will end up to
look fools or have the so called writers block, or worse of all scared to talk
and chat to those of us who have gone through it all before. The fact is that
it’s not just the newcomers who feel all those things, heck, I’ve done Nano
twice before and I still feel just the same as I did a day before my first one;
the only difference is people expect me to sail through it, and so with that
come expectations that I’m not yet sure I can fulfill.
This year I have set myself a real
challenge. A story with little or no dialogue, written in the first person and
about a man who cannot move, see, talk or even breath by himself… what was I
thinking when I came up with that idea, I don’t know! I do have a backup story
to fall back on though if everything does go wrong, but I will try and give it
my all with the one I want to write, however daunting it seems. I really can’t
wait to get started and see what it turns out like, or if it will work at all.
One thing I know is, to paraphrase Chris Baty who first start up the NanoWriMo
competition: “There is a novel inside me, that only I can write.”
As always, I got asked a few times how is
it possible to write 1,666 words a day for thirty days (the minimum count of
average words a day to reach 50,000 word count.) Every writer has their own
answer to this, and I have one myself which is just write anything and worry
about what you’ve written after the competition has ended. Alas, that answer
doesn’t always bode well if you have a story, or part of a story in your mind
that you want perfect right away. Well firstly, don’t disillusion yourself that
it will be perfect first time around. I personally have re-written one of my
novels called ‘Mother Nature’ a full seven times now with the last re-write
totaling over 135,000 words, and it’s still not in the slightest way perfect.
The thing is though, it gets better and better every time. It’s all to do with
that budda thing of knowing that your journey for perfection will end when it
is your end. It might well be the reason why I haven’t gone down the route of
publishing any of my work yet?
For those who have realized that a story
takes thirty days and 50,000 words, and perfection takes a little longer, here
is a method that might just guide you a bit if you think the daily wordcount is
impossible. I am going to take a couple of notes, a bit of dialog and cycle
through it a few times… we’ll see what we can do with it. Let’s set a scene:
Sarah is in the utility room. She is about
to do some washing. It’s Saturday.
Francis, her teenage daughter wants her
jeans because she is going out.
There is an argument.
Okay, so there is not much to go on here,
but it’s a short scene and it hasn’t been written yet… so let’s copy what we’ve
got and add some dialog:
Sarah is in the utility room. She is about
to do some MORE washing. It’s Saturday.
Francis, her teenage daughter wants her
jeans because she is going out.
Francis: “Mum! Have you seen my jeans?”
Sarah: “You mean the jeans I found lying
beside your bed?”
Francis: “Yeah… my new skinny ones.”
Sarah: “I’ve just put them in the machine.”
Francis: “Oh Muuuum… You know I’m going out
tonight. I want to wear them.”
Sarah: “Well if you’d put them in the wash
basket, they would have been the first things in the machine and would be dry
by now.”
Francis: “You never wash my things first!”
Sarah: “Your things never find their way to
the wash basket.”
Well that’s enough for now, heck I’m
showing you a concept, I’ve got my own writing to do. Now though we are
starting to see things developing. Let’s copy what we’ve got again, add a bit
of description and this time, let’s put it into a format that’s more indicative
with a written novel:
It was Saturday again, and Sarah was
already on her second load of washing. The first load of the day was already
dry and if she was quick in folding it, could skip the process of ironing. Her
second most hated chore was briefly interrupted by her over hormonal daughter.
“Mum! Have you seen my jeans?” By the tone
of the voice, her daughter was again going to spend the evening out of the
house and with friends.
“You mean the jeans I found lying beside
your bed?” Sarah wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries, and certainly not in any
frame of mind to have another argument.
“Yeah… my new skinny ones,” Francis’ arms
and surly demeanor worked in unison with each other.
Sarah would have dearly come out with a
remark that would have ended any conflict before it had started, but even as
she spoke she knew that the end was already a long way off: “I’ve just put them
in the machine.”
“Oh Muuuum…” There it was, the high whining
note that could only be found at the rightmost end of a piano. “You know I’m
going out tonight. I want to wear them.” The surly look fell almost as soon as
it had arrived, and as quickly as her arms dropped the appearance of someone
wronged took over.
“Well if you’d put them in the wash basket,
they would have been the first things in the machine and would be dry by now.”
Sarah made a point of hitting the door of the dryer, which opened smartly as if
it knew it would get blamed if it didn’t act quickly, and showed a full load of
clean and sweet smelling laundry. “See!”
There was a little quiver, hardly visible,
internally in Francis’ chin. “For f**k’s sake Mum, you never wash my things
first!”
“Your things never find their way to the
wash basket. You start taking responsibility and stop talking to me like that
or you will find yourself in a whole heap of trouble, young lady.” Sarah took a
step forward, which amplified the sense of anger that was brewing up quite
quickly inside her.
Oh dear this is not good, but I’m hoping
that you can see what I’m trying to achieve. Let’s go one more time and this
time add in even more details… See if we can tidy this up a bit:
It was the weekend again, Saturday, and
Sarah had once again wasted it cleaning up the house. It somehow was mid-afternoon
already, and instead of spending her day off doing the things she wanted to do,
she was working harder than she ever seemed to at the shop; which unbelievably was
her paid job. All through the working week she had waited for this day, looked
forward to it, and yet now it was finally here, she found that it had passed
her by without the slightest hint of ‘me’ time. It was just as well that the
weather wasn’t much to look at. It would have been even worse if it hadn’t been
mizzling outside, but then if it were sunny then she would have been tempted to
say to hell with it, and leave the chores for another, less deserving day; one
where the term ‘Dreckly’ couldn’t have been applied so freely.
Still void of make-up, well what’s the
point of putting your face on when the hair resembles a bomb site in Basra, and
there’s no Ben Aflick look-a-likes around to warrant trying to hide the crows feet.
Oh dear, crow’s feet! Why oh why does age show in your face first; it would be
far less stressful if wrinkles started in your feet and took a few more years
to work their way up, she wished… or is that begged?
The second and last load of washing, and
then maybe a sit down for a bit; biting her bottom lip, there was a thought.
The dryer beside the washing machine had finished it’s cycle, and the warmth in
the air marked a zone of comfort, just slightly more bearable than the chilly
draft from the cracks around the edge of the back door, only a few feet to her
left.
Sarah stuffed the last load into the drum,
threw in a tablet from the tub marked ‘Fairy’; as if their was anything magical
about what she was doing, and slammed the shaped door closed. One button press
and a whooshing sound of water marked the initiation of the hour-long whites
cycle. Standing up she put her hands on her sides and leaned herself back, oh
she was starting to ache… tomorrow, without a shadow of a doubt, she wouldn’t
get up out of bed at all.
Kicking an empty basket into place at the
door of the dryer was a lot easier than bending down and moving it like a real
grown-up would, and ….
Okay there I won’t ramble on and stop there…
I’m sure I could do a whole lot more here, not least Francis seeing that the
white washing is going a pink colour because a pair of red knickers snuck in
there, but I didn’t want to diverse too much from the notes we originally had.
The thing is, I cycled through each time and let my imagination go and from
those first three lines it’s quite easily possible to take it up to a daily
word limit needed for Nano.
Outside of the competition I tend to work
the other way. I have a long novel and cut bits out, but while we are in the
month of November then it’s perfectly acceptable to work this way, and lets
face it there are many famous novelists who have a story on a sheet of paper
and use this method to pad it out to 100,000 words or more.
The eagle-eyed readers of this blog post
might have noticed that the word-count comes to 2,132 and yet all I have been
doing is rambling for an hour and a half. As I have always said to anyone who’s
asked, I write, I have never said that what I write is good… However, Nanowrimo
is about QUANTITY and not quality. I have just taken a subject I know little
bit about, have shown how just three lines of notes can be expanded to show
more of a story, make it slightly readable and increase a wordcount.
Funny thing is, if I had written this
tomorrow (that’ll get the grammar freaks worked up), then I could have counted
this in my Nano total. Well, maybe!
That’s all this time folks!
