 | 50,689 words and 31 days later...
Current mood:  relieved
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes So as some of you may or may not know, I entered this ridiculous challenge called NaNoWriMo. This is the National Novel Writing Month challenge. It began Nov 1st and ended Nov 30th. Within those days, I was expected to write a 50,000 word novel. And yes, I suppose that I could have written “All work and no play makes Katie….go crazy?” over and over again, but that would have been lame and obvious.
This was a long, uphill battle with no one but myself; and I noticed that I was going through a few stages of emotion. First I was pumped on the idea and relished the challenge as well as the opportunity to blow off my friends and personal responsibilities because I now had the excuse of “writing under deadline”.
After the first 8,000 words the severity and reality of the project came into focus and I was overwhelmed and basically…well… stumped. I literally had nothing new to say, on behalf of my main character, her love interest or her antagonist. It was official writers block. If you have ever read my blogs, you can tell that I enjoy writing. I enjoy telling a funny story or recapping the incidents that makes my life interesting. This novel, however, was not one of those stories. Short sprints are to long distance marathons as my blog entries are to this novel. I found that my story was all wrapped up by word 9,645. Needless to say, I found that to be inconvenient and frustrating, as I had another 40,000+ to go.
The second phase in this literary journey was freedom and surrender. I stopped worrying about what my friends would say. About how they would feel when they realized that all their obnoxious behaviors and insecurities had made their way into full blown characters that I freely exploited. I gave up navigating through the choppy waters of “what if”. I threw caution to the wind, and wrote what I knew. Once the limitations were lifted; I began having fun with the stories. I realized how rad it was to actually write. I was able to write about anything that popped into my mind, with little to no regard of the impact it would have on my life after NaNoWriMo. I was falling in lust with “creative license” and could not stop writing. Time will tell if the decision I made was the correct one.
After the purging of my creative soul, crept the third stage which was hatred. I hated my book, if you could even call it that. It was contrived, one dimensional, poorly written, confusing and most of all, boring. I knew that if I were walking through a bookstore and for some ungodly reason, picked up MY book, I wouldn’t make it past the first two pages, let alone the first chapter. I would think something along the lines of, “What a waste of money, energy and paper” and I would move on.
I felt depressed, ineffective and foolish for accepting such an “out of my league” challenge. Thanksgiving rolled around, and I was looking forward to 5 days off, no work, nothing to do but write. I wrote a total of 2 words during the 5 day vacation. I believe they were “Fuck it” and that ended my “book”. I figured that I had bitten off more than I could chew, or in this case, write; decided to file my unfinished “novel” away under the growing category of “silly things I attempted in my mid- 20’s” and grabbed an overflowing glass of cheap wine and ate some more turkey.
Then, something happened. With only 3 days remaining, I decided that I had to finish it. With a little prodding and/or guilt tripping from my roommate, I began writing Sunday night at <timehour22minute0>10pm. I was half drunk but so hyped on the idea of tackling this now, impossible task, I nearly passed out. I had only written 28,128 words. And had to meet the goal of 50,000 words within 3 days. I stopped thinking and started typing. And then something else happened.
Right around 34,000 words, with the 50,000 word goal in sight, all the pieces in my book’s fictional world came together. Organically, which was all I had ever asked for. All of a sudden I was able to wrap up loose ends, fill in plot holes and my main character actually felt like someone I might know. Instead of this faceless, soulless name on a page that would get into lame situations that seemed trivial, even after the first re-read. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night were spent at the office, until after <timehour21minute0>9pm. I had the perfect ergonomic set up here at my desk (see previous blog entry), little to no distractions, unlimited access to fresh coffee and my iPod. I was all set. With some help from <personname>Molly and Amy, I was able to create two new characters and my book was rounding the corner and the yellow tape of the 50,000 finish line was just ahead. Finally, at <timehour20minute12>8:12pm on Wednesday November 30th, with only hours to spare, I submitted my completed book via the NaNoWriMo website. I was done. 50,689 words of pure crap, but it was my crap.
It was dark and quiet in my office; no one but me and the janitors. I stood up, looking for someone to tell. Alas, I was alone. I sat back down in my chair, threw my feet up on my desk and could not wipe that grin off my face. I actually finished it. I knew it was wordy, grammatically incoherent, silly, unrealistic, convoluted, confusing and weird. I didn’t care. I was done. I had taken this project by the proverbial horns, said “fuck it” when I felt like giving up, and with a random change of heart, said “suck it” to all the nay-sayers as I approached the 47,000 word mark and was able to breathe a sigh of relief as I typed the last word. I completed it.
I am now able to cross that off my list of “Things to do one day” and able move on to something else completely ridiculous that I am, in no way, capable of doing.  | Currently listening :
Kid A
By Radiohead
Release date: 03 October, 2000  |
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