NaNoWriMo

If NaNoWriMo and the month after were a ball, then the editing feels like a chain. I was very proud of writing over 90K words in 8 weeks but am now dragging my feet as I try and make sense of it.

Current working title ‘Albatross’

I’ve been left with something different and a lot larger than I expected. Some elements are better than I remember, others not so. I was never expecting to have the finished article after the first attempt, especially as a newbie, but sometimes I wonder which careful plan I was following.

The main plot has been clear in my head for a long time but I’m not sure it comes through well enough. The pacing, prose, dialogue and language in general also need work (important details I am told).

A biggest decision so far is going to be deciding how long to make it. Am I going for a German autobahn or a British motorway? Should I try and sacrifice as much of my ‘irreplaceable’ creation as possible to keep it moving or take my time and risk the words spilling across more than one book? I think I have just made the obvious choice but need to live with it for a few days, a trial co-habitation to see how we get on.

The view from your soap box isn’t always as clear as from the ground.

Some sections tend to be a bit ‘ranty’. I think I was using them to get things out of my head that were rattling around and annoying me. The other issue, as with most people, is time. Trying to get stuff done while balancing the conflicting demands of work, children, life and occasionally wife is not always easy. I could stop doing this blog but it is proving a useful exercise; think, write, edit, publish. A more immediate mini-version of what I’m trying to achieve.

In the mean time, my good friend Michael Bolan has just published his first book – The Sons Of Brabant. I had the pleasure of reading the first draft a few months back and look forward to reading the final version. And then picking his brains on how he did it. Repeatedly.

Now back to the ball and chain.

The point of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in November. I’d dismissed it initially for a few reasons, one of which was a lack of time. So, I wrote some short stories, had one rejected by a couple of magazines (I was so proud) and had a vague plan to try a collection of short stories based around one family.

Meanwhile…

The idea of doing something more substantial was taking hold, partly thanks to this man but I was also worried that Lieutenant Franklin was going to be my only idea. That’s when ‘NaNo’ re-surfaced. I reworked the stories, expanded, planned, planned and planned again. Wrote an outline, sketched out characters, mapped out the sections and planned some more (given a choice I’d rather know what I’m facing). That took about 6 weeks of casual thinking and note taking.

Actually getting the first real words down on Nov 1st was much harder than I’d anticipated. I re-wrote that first sentence repeatedly, and will probably cut it completely in my present mood, but at least I started. The rest of the month was easier. 1,666.6 words a day seemed daunting but wasn’t that much of a problem*. I wrote everyday, an average of 500 words an hour (slightly better than the 5 I did that first night) and my PB was just over 4k, though I was cross-eyed by that point.

I’ve played in bands where the song seems to take on a life of its own and it was interesting to see it happen here. The significance of characters and events changed, people walked into the story and took over, others left and the setting slowly took shape. I also had to work out how much I could steal from friends’ lives without actually publishing their DoB and passport numbers and then fit the pieces together so it was colourful but not blinding.

I could probably have saved myself some work by editing as I went along but apparently that’s not the best way to go about it and I reasoned it was easier to remove rather than add later on. I’m not so sure now, some of these extras may have muddied the water and I suspect I might be too attached to certain scenes that don’t actually add anything.

All in all, I got much more out of it than I put in. Whether you are considering the official NaNo or doing your own stealth version another month, or even adapting the idea, I would recommend it to anyone. Even if you don’t have time.

* is this like saying ‘the weather’s nice’ or ‘traffic’s good’ – and have I just jinxed myself?

I’ve written a book. There, it’s out in the open, I said it and now I have to go through with this. I think this is what the self-help gurus call unburdening yourself or accountability (either that or they ‘re-task’ a word for it and flog it until it’s on life-support).

Maybe I should be a bit more specific, it’s not quite a book yet. I have a bunch of words in a first draft, which the internet reliably informs me is allowed to be crap, and am trying to hammer these words into some thing vaguely respectable. I would very much like to avoid adding anything else to the tsunami I keep reading about that hit the self-publishing world a few years back.

About 52K words arrived during NaNoWriMo last year, another 40K the month after, throw in 10K I had knocking around in dusty, cobwebbed corners of my hard drive and somehow the last count stands at just over 120,000. In a way I am pleased with the numbers but it is also a little daunting. I am about a third of the way through my first edit and was under the impression that the word count should be dropping by now. I seem to have it backwards. Which worries me. A little.

The ‘easy’ solution is to split the total in two and as if by magic I would have trilogy. The problems with that are obvious; I’m not so sure it is so easy just to split a text in two (I have multiple story arcs and everything!) and I suspect the path of the rookie author* launching into an ever expanding trilogy is both well-worn and icy. I’m sure some can navigate it with ease, in my case you’ll have to to wait and see.

Lieutenant Franklin and his colleagues may not survive the impending cull but the idea will.  Something has been rattling around my head for as long as I can remember and there have been several aborted attempts in the past. It is only now that I feel ready to do something about it properly. Grabbing hold of whatever it is and forcing it out on to the page to take a bow is going to be hard but so far it has been worth every minute.

*I’m testing that term here, a bit like kids playing hockey on the freshly frozen winter ponds over here in Cz. How do they know it’s safe? Do they draw lots or just send out the least fat or most drunk? My British health and safety gene, something the Czechs seem to have had bred out of them, shudders at the mere idea of it.