The Write Stuff

I was going to call this post, "Why I'm Living In Squalor" but I thought it might be a little off-putting to the readers. It's not that it is an untrue statement for I am, at the moment, living in squalor. I just didn't think it was such a good idea to call attention to it, is all...

I have always wanted to try participating in NANOWRIMO. It seems like such an "authorly" thing to do and what could be cooler than that? I never did it, though. The first stumbling block I always encountered was forgetfulness. I could never seem to remember when the event started. The second issue was sweet reason itself. The very idea of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days is madness. I was sure that there were professional writer-types who could pull it off. But that's their job. I have to do other stuff that involves commuting and telling myself that retirement is growing closer by the day. I don't have the kind of time it takes to write a zillion words that make sense.

But I still always thought it was a kind of keen idea, even if it wasn't for me...

This year, I actually had a bit of a heads up. One of my favorite knit bloggers/wordsmiths wrote a post about signing up for NANOWRIMO. I cheered for her, happy to know that I could at least be a part of it vicariously. And, secretly, I wished I'd done it myself.

However the month had begun, the writers were all busily pecking away at their keyboards and I had missed it again. So sad. Maybe next year...

Midway through the first week in November, I happened to think of a kind of cool sentence. That sentence sort of wandered into a paragraph and, together, they kept going. I thought I might jot it all down in case it wanted to grow up to become something. I also thought that it might have been nice had I come up with this before NANOWRIMO started. Then I could have played along except for the part about my not being able to write 50,000 words in a month.

By the end of the first weekend of November, I had 8000 words jotted down. The sentence had grown! I thought that it might be fun to participate in NANOWRIMO in a kind of unofficial way. You know...just to see how far I'd get. Of course I wasn't going to sign up, though. It was too late.

My goals were simple:

1. Write 50,000 words by the end of the month. (Even though that is impossible)

2. Finish the story by the 30th. (Sheepie has a tendency to over-write and to depend on narrative summary more than any human being ever should. Things start to get big, messy and bogged down when Sheepie writes for any length of time.)

3. Tell no one because 50,000 words ain't gonna happen and we like our failures to come with as few witnesses as possible.

I went to the site to see what the rules were so I could follow them from the safety of my own living room. There, I discovered that this was a rather forgiving lot and that first draft novel writing was considered more of a free writing process than anything else. Padding sentences to boost the word count was even encouraged! (editors may now gasp in horror) I was also surprised to see that my own word counts weren't all that far from that of the "official" participants.

Things got a little fuzzy after that and I may have blacked out for a second. All I know is that, when I came to my senses...I'd signed up for NANOWRIMO. On November 12th.

Let me remind everyone here of the situation: 50,000 words. In 30 days. Unless you sign up on the twelfth. Then you have less. "Impossible" was now "Stupid and Impossible"

So began my descent. In a frenzy of word mashing, I managed to catch up to where I was supposed to be word-wise in that first weekend. I dutifully uploaded new words every day and waited to see if the validator would agree with my word processor. It never did. It always cheated me out of fifty words and I had grumpily type more to satisfy it. This was the sum total of my existence.

The housework, what little I ever did of it, was left undone. I ate a lot of cereal. The cats were fed and sometimes I remembered to change the litter. If I had real children, they would currently be in state custody and I'd be sitting with a stern caseworker trying to explain how things went so wrong so fast. All I did was think, type, count words and remind myself that I was doing this for funsies so there was no reason to hate myself when I failed.

Today is the 28th. There are two more days left before the final bell tolls and I have two statements to make on the subject:

1. I have not finished the novel. I will probably not finish it by the 30th. Once again, I let things get a little bigger than I planned. However, it's not so bad as it's been in the past. In fact, I could probably wrap this thing up in four chapters if I put my mind to it. Ok...maybe five. Or six at the most.

2. At approximately 10:30 this morning, two days before the end of NANOWRIMO and having started well behind many others, I uploaded my text into the mighty validator. I waited with bated breath for it to digest them and pronounce judgement. The little circle whirled and whirled for what seemed an eternity and then...

The validator says it so it must be so!

Now I need to go find the carpet which I am certain lies under the crust of dirty socks, scrape a layer of cereal crumbs from the counter and check my blood pressure because there has been a great deal of coffee consumed over the past three weeks.

But first maybe I'll do just one more chapter...

SA