The Last Day Before The Insanity Begins
Well, today is January 31, which means today is my last day of sanity, at least for the next 28 days. At midnight tonight, the starter gun will pop for FebNoWriMo, or February Novel Writing Month. Fifty-thousand words in 28 days. Whew. That's enough to spin your head.
January, of course, was NaNoReMo, or National Novel Researching Month. Sadly, I did not win the challenge of completing 50 hours of research in 31 days. Happily, however, I completed 30 hours of research, and compiled a substantial body of knowledge for my first mafia novel. I'm proud of myself for getting that much done, and look forward to continuing that titanic effort a little bit later.
For right now, I'm bracing myself for the February onslaught. Needless to say, I will not be writing my mob book, as I have not even finished my research. So I guess Plan B it is...the story of a burnt-out personal success coach reinvigorated by an unexpected and controversial client.
I have done a little bit of thinking and planning on that story, but not nearly enough. When I wrote Asteroid Burn in November, there were some excruciating times, for my lack of pre-planning. I promised I would never again write a book with so little forethought. And yet here I am again...with nothing more than a simple plot idea, a couple character sketches, a couple of specific scenes in mind. So here I go again, leaping like Neo across a terrifying and impossible chasm...with nothing but faith and pure determination to carry me...which I saw in November is more than sufficient.
I've always puzzled over what feels so scary about writing a novel. I mean, really, what is there to be afraid of? No one's going to get hurt or die (at least, not a real person; characters do not enjoy that same guarantee). I'm not going to lose my money, my house, my friends, my limbs, or my family. It's ridiculous, really; these fears are complete abstractions, paper tigers in the mind. Completely artificial creations for the sake of personal drama. So, what are these fears anyway?
1) That I won't finish (Well, that's not awful. If I don't finish the novel in 28 days, all it means is that I didn't finish a novel in 28 days. Shit, who does?)
2) That what I write will be awful and ridiculous. (Well, duh! If you're going to write 50,000 words in 28 days, you'd better expect crap.)
3) I won't know what to write...it'll just be this staring contest between me and a blinking cursor. (Ok...so what? Just write drivel. I can consult my "Magna Carta" lists for inspiration. Chris Baty suggests a number of tricks too, like introducing a character who habitually quotes long passages from Shakespeare. Or I could cut to a special session of Congress, where a filibuster is going on with an obnoxious little senator reading from the phone book. Point is, I've got ways to deal with the blinking cursor. It won't be pretty, but all I care about is word-count anyway. And who is that damn cursor to blink at me anyway! Die, blinking cursor!!!! #)$(*#)&@) stab-stab-stab!
4) Then there's this vague but big hairy fear: that the writing process will just be plain painful. Before, this fear was mere speculation. Now I can point to the carpet burns I got in November to prove it. But what good does that do? To prove to myself that it's hard? Nonsense. It's as hard as I make it. I truly think that the degree to which I enjoy writing is the degree to which I can let go of my rigidity of "getting it right" and to just falling into the creative process, with no worries of quality or originality weighing me down. (That comes later, in the editing process.)
5) Boredom. This is probably the worst of all, and probably the fundamental source of my anxiety. The thought of having to sit down and spend countless hours with a story I can't stand to write. That's probably what hurt so bad in November, not the lack of planning. I blamed it on the lack of planning because I thought that if I planned it out first, then I wouldn't wander and stumble around on the lame and uninspiring roads I did. But a fully planned story can also be boring; if it's all planned out, where's the adventure? Once again, the novel-writing challenge gives me the opportunity to be wild and daring, to leap out of my carefully constructed worldview and let something wonderful and strange and bizarre happen instead. It's one more opportunity to stretch myself, to experience feelings and to take risks that I wouldn't otherwise.
Still, I have to ask myself, what about the whole "exposing my inner self" thing? Writers talk about how "personal" writing is. Am I afraid of that? I don't think I'm afraid of revealing my inner demons or the closet skeletons, because I know I'm not going to write anything I'm not comfortable with sharing. I am afraid of being laughed at, I guess. That someone will read my work and say, this is crap and you're an idiot for writing it. (In which case, please refer to Fear #2, and please remember that the respect and admiration anyone gets for writing a novel in 28 days far outweighs the criticisms one gets for poorly telling a preposterous story.)
So it's off to the wild blue yonder we go. Crazy? Yes. Frightening. Totally.
But perhaps I will keep my published copy of "Asteroid Burn" in my right hand throughout the month of February, as a constant reminder that if I just stay focused on this one goal, for a ridiculously short amount of time, I can (once again) achieve the impossible. The flush of triumph that coursed through my body at the end of November was short-lived. But it was something special. I'd like to have that again.
Bon voyage, my friends. Wish me luck! In 28 days, I hope to return to you with great tales of wealth, adventure and romance...in fact, I hope you'll sit down and read them.
Write on!
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