NaNoWriMo 2012

So I Wrote a Novel…and Then I Avoided It Like the Plague

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 53 Comments

canstockphoto2547234And one day, when I’m mere ashes being transported in a tacky vase to my destination of choice (my reading chair, of course), they will rifle through my meager possessions to find a two inch black binder covered in a thin layer of dust and decorated with geometric coffee rings on every other page.

There will be notes in red ink hastily scrawled along the margins: Geez, time travel much? Get Strunk and possibly White, this grammar stinks! Schedule mammogram. Look up spelling of onomonopea omonomopia. Bread, milk, canola oil, trail mix with cherries, toothpaste. Thank you note to Grandma. Who is this character? If I don’t know, is he needed? Unnecessary side plot. Pay Visa.

As you can see, I have the attention span of a sugared-up hamster after consuming a box of powdered doughnuts. Even less, because the hamster at least finished the box of doughnuts, which is more than I can say for the editing of my novel. National Novel Writing Month was fan-friggin’-tastic for pushing me to write, but it turns out, when the month was done, I was still left with me. Procrastinating me – rationalizing every missed opportunity and every interruption as impossible to avoid, when all I’m trying to avoid is facing this 50,000+ word train wreck.

And check it out, I’ve taken more time to write blog posts about my novel than actual time editing it:

Purposeless Dialogue

The Making of a Serial Killer: Fictional Characterization

When the Writer’s Away…

Every day I plan to work on it. By a half hour in, I’m ready to scoop litter boxes. That doodoo would be easier to deal with than this bog of words into which I’m sinking. This morning I’ve been distracted by a very large spider crawling across the ceiling overhead. There’s the sound of a train in the distance. Emails are making my phone vibrate. My daughter just broke into a coughing fit while sleeping in the other room. Dogs are barking good mornings to each other across neighborhood fences.

My brain is cycling through 15 different writing projects, none of which include my novel. Problem? I’m not sure I want to fix it. It feels like a shoddy investment – I’ll fix it up and flip it, like a starter home, but I have never settled in and said this is the kind of story I want to tell. Sometimes, as a fellow writer pointed out, you just have to get the garbage out of your system before getting down to business. Oh. My novel has become a bad relationship – I’m sticking with it, because I’m afraid nothing better will come along. And maybe, just maybe, if I keep at it, things will change.

I’m the perfect unpaid writer. I write on whims and random thoughts. Word count goals got me to the table, but I’m too busy wondering if the table is pressed wood or if it came from an oak with a long history, mowed down to satisfy corporate profit and if corporations really do own us now and if they do, what’s the point of having a fake representative government….uh, where was I?

I Need a Shower

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 42 Comments

Winner-120x240 My wrists ache and I have an eyelid twitch. My daughter thinks she lives in a single parent home and my employers wonder if I’ve relocated to a witness protection program. I have finally met the National Novel Writing Month challenge word count goal of 50,000 words.

I’m sick of it. Let’s move on to something else. Like personal hygiene. And physical exercise. And possibly some flu-free living. November was a bit of a hell month, but not the same kind of hell month of those hit by Sandy or say the starving and homeless had. Even I have some sense of proportion – so this is my petty post. I’ll write about deep and meaningful stuff again. Eventually.

The novel I intended, is not the novel I wrote. Apparently I have a lot of issues to work out. It was simply supposed to be a character study, a family drama about the effects of addiction and dysfunctional personalities on a family and the repercussions. In the end, there were 3 deaths, adultery, incest, verbal and physical abuse, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and murder. This was not the family I had hoped to write about – it turned into an overwrought melodrama that I wouldn’t buy in paperback at the Goodwill store. How’s that for self-promotion? Needless to say, it needs a lot of work and a little focus wouldn’t hurt either.

Tomorrow is a new day and even better, a new month. I’m pulling down the boxes of holiday decorations out of the garage rafters tonight, so they can thaw out. My daughter has already hinted at a long list that she has been writing. I like to think of it as the “Stuff I Won’t Be Getting for Christmas Because My Parents Hate Shopping” list. When I put it like that, she narrows the list down to things that I can buy at the convenience store while I’m getting gas. Priorities, child, priorities.

I look forward to dragging my ass, which is strangely now the shape of my office chair, to the YMCA in the morning to start the long road back to full physical recovery. I’ll be the one wearing all black with a lot of layers, waiting for the treadmill that is against the wall. Without the mirror. I don’t care if there are twenty other treadmills available. I’m waiting on this one, lady, so get a move on.

After my workout, I plan on perusing all the blog posts I’ve missed over the last few weeks. I fear the NaNoWriMo thing has corrupted me – I’ll be writing comments to posts that are longer than the actual posts and getting frustrated when I can’t see the word count. I will happily, happily get back to blogging. No one interacts with you when you’re writing a novel, except to come into the study to ask if there’s dinner, slinking away in despair. My family has become a pack of scavenging wolves. They’re much more self-sufficient, though. I might tell them that December is poetry writing month.

Writing Spaz

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 19 Comments

The National Novel Writing Month deadline is around the corner, Essentially, I’m either screwed or writing like a maniac for the next four days. I’m going with maniac. It’s been a challenging month, mostly because because of the respiratory flu bug that has had its grip on me since the beginning of the month. I still haven’t shaken it, so here I sit at 5am, desperately trying to put more words to paper.

My head has that floaty sensation of too much cold medicine, my knee is bouncing up and down relentlessly. I’m finally starting to freak out a bit about NaNoWriMo, an arbitrary goal that I was so excited about striving towards. I recruited one of my friends who had never heard of the program. She passed the 70,000 word mark last night. I’m watching my other writing buddies dancing close to the goal (hooray Lorri and Ruth!). I may not make it, but I’m going to give it the “old college try”. For me that means I’ll be writing frantically in the last few days before the due date. My college career was made up of all night writing and pots of coffee, so I know it’s possible.

I started slowly and precisely with my novel and as I continued, more characters started butting in with their stories. Plot lines became twisted and tangled and overwrought with drama I had not intended. Watch it all go to hell as I write frantically into that dark night: I will not go down without a fight.

Needless to say, I’ll be taking a break from blogging over the next few days, which also means I probably won’t be reading other people’s blogs. Expect comments from me for blog postings that you wrote a while ago, but I hate to miss things. December will be editing on the novel and catching up with my blogging friends.

And now, lest I put one more word here that actually should add to my novel word count, I bid you adieu – but only until this NaNoWriMo thing has soundly beaten me or I it. Thanks and good luck to the rest of you. See you at the finish line, either November 30th or according to my word count stats, sometime in the new year.