NaNoWriMo Update Week 3

Week three wonders are really worth it.  My novel no longer has the gangly ungainly look of a teenager growing so fast his body parts don’t really fit.  It looks a little more like a young adult.  Still kinda skinny but with the right clothes, it can pass for everything a girl like me could ever want in a novel.  It will have to grow into young adulthood after a second look but that comes after NaNoWriMo is over.

But I love week three.  Everything is so much easier and even on days when I said I wouldn’t write, I still found myself adding a couple of thousand words to my overall word count.  It is a good week.  But there is one characteristic of it I had never noticed before.  I call it the: ‘You know my novel...Week.’

Things are going well in NaNoLand, characters have come into their own and you are astounded by the plot line that didn’t seem to mesh a few weeks ago suddenly makes more sense than even you could imagine.  You are able to sit down and do 1,000 words in a single spring without breaking a sweat and when some unexpected twist shows up in your brain you don’t try to manually strangle it, you write it in and say, “Okay.”

But you don’t want to go through this writing adventure on your own.  So at every opportunity, you will find yourself saying to everyone you meet – friend and foe, neighbour and stranger alike: “You know, in my novel...”  Then go on to expound on all the joys and terrors of being that intimately acquitted with everything maddeningly and yet marvellously inconsequential about your current writing adventure.

Telling people things are going well just doesn’t have the same ring to it as, “My characters are caught in a battle to find out who is going to be the ruler of Snickersland, the wonderful make-believe place that is made entirely of creamy chocolate with nuts and caramel.  They have to fight a duel with cocoa beans and the one who swallows the most without killing over wins.”  You’ll feel suitably impressed with yourself – everyone else might think you’ve lost your mind.

But when you’re riding high on the joys of week two, you’re too happy to care what other people think; too totally awesome to let the minutiae of the non-novelling world touch you.  You are too sexy to be ordinary – you’re a novelist.  And though everyone is going about their lives as ordinary boring people, there is nothing ordinary or boring about what is going on in your novella.  It is a wonderful place that embraces you with warmth each time you sit down to write yet another sentence, paragraph, page or chapter.  It is yours but suddenly the act of putting it down on paper has turned it into something so much more – so much bigger.

Something you just have to share in any way you can.

I’m looking forward now not only to seeing how my characters will sort themselves out in the final few chapters but also in finding the time to go fix those plot holes I talked about before.  The end is in sight for me and it is very exciting.  And if week one was about stepping forward with nothing more than enthusiasm, than there is the promise of victory and the wonderful joy of endless bragging rights to look forward to when I cross the 50,000 word mark.  But that’s a story for another time.

Current word count: 41,255

Mood: :-D

Music in my ear: Paula Cole

NaNo Update Week 1

NaNoWriMo 2010 and I’m participating one more time.  The creative challenge is always really wonderful and I have used it for years to write out some of the stories I have held in my heart.  I like pitching myself against what are poor odds and coming out on top.  I do this by choice although it might be hard to figure that part out from what I say about the entire writing process.

It doesn’t matter when it happens.  At some point during NaNoWriMo, I feel like I have made a mistake and I should be using my time to do something easier.  But creativity isn’t easy.  Putting the words on the page is a skill anyone who knows how to write can do.  But the art of digging deep and finding within yourself something you want to say – that you ultimately want other people to see is a lot harder to accomplish.

This process requires a strong constitution and every once in a while it will slip.  Something you thought you had figured out will fall through while something else you didn’t want to even think about will rear its ugly head.  Creativity evolves in the process of creating it and yet everything you create is still exactly what it’s supposed to be.  It doesn’t go according to plan during NaNoWriMo and that’s fine because that is also what makes it so exciting.

So I might rant and rave about hating my novel because it isn’t doing what I want it to do but that just means the creative process is truly using me as the conduit and while I might not be in full control of the process I am letting go of my controlling self to allow what will happen to happen.  I might occasionally say my characters are doing things I would prefer them not to do but I like to think they are coming into their own and are no longer a construct of my predominant archetypes.

And that is what creativity really is.  When we look deeply in ourselves, we see the truth of what is there and from that truth we create.  But the product that comes out isn’t just a creation of our lives but also a creation of the universe.  It imbues it’s spirit into every line we write seeking to express itself fully through us – and isn’t that right too?  We are all part of the same universe and we are all standing on the edge of something new where we are charged with creating our own stepping stones before we embark on another step into the very well known unknown.

I take pride in what I am able to do every November.  It might be literary madness but I think it is also literary genius, literary talent, creative courage and utter and complete audacity.  That there are times I get frightened by how big the dream is or how much I feel like myself when I am caught up in the process of creating is enough to make me want to run in the opposite direction but I haven’t turned away from this in 5 years, I will not do it now.

I will write.  I will probably complain about the process and that’s alright.  When I win, because I know I will...I’ll be terribly glad my story didn’t go exactly how I wanted to or that my characters are bolder, broader and more wonderful than I could have imagined them inside my head.  So let me get back to my writing.

Current word count: 9,806

Mood: :-) Because I know I can do it.

Currently listening to...Eagle Eye Cherry.