20 days in

Can you write a novel four sentences at a time? My 300 days project has been an exercise in snapshots so far, tiny fruity pebbles of writing each night or at lunch. No more than 20 minutes at a time until tonight, when I've had a luxurious hour to myself. I've written every day except one when I was so sick and tired I fell asleep at 8 p.m. I keep thinking of the image--via Anne Lamott, I think--of the writer who would get up from the desk, drive around the block, race back to the desk and write as many sentences as possible until he couldn't bear it anymore, then drive around the block again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Why is writing so hard and so essential at the same time?

Also read an interesting article on the tyranny of Word as word processing tool. I've been using Evernote to write my bits: sometimes dictating through my cell phone, on the Kindle, iPad, web version. You can't get very precious with Evernote, which is the point--no endless font picking, just butt in chair. . .you know the rest.

the 300-days project: soft launch is in the bag

During resolution season, I decided a new Big Hairy Audacious Goal was needed for 2014: I'm embarking on 300 days of daily writing. To make sure it isn't 300 days of one-word-per-day (I can be sneaky that way), I've set some guidelines:

* I will write at least 10,000 words per month

* I have two book-length projects I can work on, and I will write wherever the "juice" is (this is to avoid project spawn--new projects can be so much more appealing than the one right in front of me, especially if I've written myself into a corner)

* Non-project writing (scene lists, journaling, character studies, writing prompts, blog posts and tweets) don't count toward the 10,000 word limit but may count as writing for the day in a pinch

Today marks the 300-days-left-in-2014 point, so it's the official start of my project. I "soft-launched" last week and with a few days in the bag, I'm feeling good about the goal. More to come. . .

sources

Today, I decided I needed some inspiration. (Yes, I know. I should be writing. And I am. This NaNoWriMo has started out pretty rocky, and my wordcount is hosed, and I don't care because now I'm on the right track.)

One of my favorite tests of good writing is from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It reminds us that every written word, certainly every written word of a novel, is part of a dream. In order for that dream to be believable and sustainable, it must be "vivid and continuous." I've been using this test to silence the inner editor, that nasty little voice (I once had a boss who called it "Mort" and posted a cartoony face on her corkboard to remind her just how unreal he was) that likes to tell me my novel has probably been written before and thus is derivative at best and plagiarism at worst, that you can't indulge yourself in details--the inner editor that has had a delightful time while I've been living at warp speed and just skimming the surface of everything.

The concept reminds me that 1) the story, the characters, the setting are supposed to be dreamed up and 2) it's not only okay but necessary to go deeply into it. I don't need to worry because first drafts are supposed to be squishy, lumpy, self-indulgent messes that get cleaned up later. Whew.

So, in deciding I wanted this to be on my wall in a big giant way, I found this little tool, that lets you make professional-looking motivational posters for personal use (no, not that goony type with the black border and white "iconic" word that keeps FranklinCovey in business, but slightly edgier ones): www.recitethis.com. It's free, fast, and shareable/downloadable. Here's mine:

It was so easy, I made another one--we'll call this the downer version to the upper above, for those times when you need to take a breath and remember:

another go!

July 1 approaches--the start of Camp NaNoWriMo 2013.

Quick wrap-up: I finished 2012 on August 31, 8 p.m., racing the deadline and finishing with 50,491 words. Then I put the manuscript away and couldn't look at it for a year. I didn't feel accomplished or different, and it was several months before I could believe I'd done it. Burning the candle--staying up sometimes until midnight, or even once or twice getting up in the middle of the night because I'd gone to bed without writing--at both ends stretched me and my family to the limit, and September was a rough recuperation.

But when I opened my work from last year recently and read some of it, I realized two things: when you just crank and write as fast as you can, you can not only produce some words, but some of them are actually good, and usable. I recognized my voice in them--and that became a touchstone for everything else I've been working on. I don't know if I'll ever turn that mass of pages into a novel--I realized well into it that I have a ton of research undone--but it was a great jump start to writing again.

This year, I'm tackling a novel that has been rattling around in my brain in various forms for several years--the pivotal scene, a secret that the matriarch of the family carries that has become the source of rumor in her small community, started off in another novel idea when I was in college. That one never got written, but the pondering on this book has been going on awhile. It was one of the contenders for last year's event, but I was afraid I'd "ruin" it by using it as my trial run. Its time has come. . .

Making scenes in Scrivener, doing character sketches, trying to figure out when I will actually write and how much. If writing hasn't exactly become play--some days I still get nauseous when I face the blank page and will do just about anything to avoid it--I again know it's essential.

Writing matters. 

day 11: making friends with the slog

It's been kind of a hard week around here on personal and professional fronts. Yesterday was a doozy for reasons I don't want to get into here, but let's just say I needed a giant-sized margarita at dinner last night.

It's been really important to me not to let go of my dream of completing this month-long challenge and to write something daily, though, so every night I've dragged myself to my desk to put in a few hundred words. Except for one brief five-minute period where Husband said it was fun to listen to the rapid clatter of the keyboard, it's mostly been peck-peck-peck. And I ended the week a few hundred words short of where I need to be. It's hard to want to write well, make lovely understated copy, and churn out schlock, but I'm doing it and am managing to feel darn proud.

This morning, Husband took child Blossom grocery shopping and deposited child Sprout at a friend's house. I sat down to an unfinished scene and in the quiet (and without the sleepiness of my usual 10 p.m. date with my desk), I found the words flowing again and even got a couple of ideas to move the plot along a little further in a section that was so hazy it was starting to feel like it didn't belong in this plot--even though it was the spark for my original idea. It made me realize that, even on these hard nights where I planned to just sit down for 50 words so I could keep my promise to myself to write daily, I usually ended up with at least 500. And with a weekend that promises at least a few more 30-minute bites for working, I expect by Monday, I'll be groovin' along again--with the added bonus of having learned that the slog works, if we just keep at it.

day 6: calamity

Tonight, thanks to a hiccup in the internet universe, I lost my whole day's work--only about 800 words, but a pivotal scene. I grappled briefly with shall I try to rewrite this scene while it's as fresh as it's ever going to be? or just go on to the next one and come back to this one later, when I'm not trying so hard to chase the words that. Are. Just. Gone?

(Ugh. Because they really are gone. When you're writing this fast, the good thing is that the words can get flowing pretty well. The bad thing is that you don't really remember what you wrote until you review it.)

Suffice it to say, my love affair with Google Docs from day 1 is over. And I am reminding myself about the utility of the lowly flash drive. Stupid rookie lessons, ignored in my optimistic hubris that this project is just going to go smoothly, dammit.

Okay, it's not a calamity--it wasn't the whole 10K--but it does have me thinking about how ephemeral the act of "making" truly is. Lots of writers have their "lost manuscript" story--Garrison Keillor and leaving the finished manuscript on the train comes to mind (perhaps apocryphally). I am still convinced that the lost pages of my master's thesis (disappeared during another freak computer snafu, come to think of it) are the best work I would write on that project, and perhaps ever.

But I know better now, right? These are just words, and there are plenty more where they come from. The only works of art I've ever made with true staying power in a tangible sense are sleeping in their beds down the hall right now. And they will wake up tomorrow and tell me a joke or insist on my addressing them as "Baby Rabbit," and the world has gone on spinning just fine, lost 800 words and all. It's quite possible I will write a better 800 words of that pivotal scene now that I have the first dross-y version out of my system.

But from now on, I am backing up like a rabid mofo.

day 5: the swim test

Just finished my word count for the day and have banked a little cushion. My husband took the two kids grocery shopping this morning, so I had a good chunk of writing time and hustled down to work. Historically, my process requires rumination when I sit down at my desk, before I actually start writing. Now I'm finding the rumination happens during other pockets of the day. I'm sure I seem pretty distracted, but I can refine this approach when the month is over and I figure out my real rhythm.

I'm especially glad for the time today because yesterday was a bumpy one. Friday I got a call with some not-great news about my ailing father. It wasn't entirely unexpected, but it still was a shock. I woke up in a funk yesterday, sad about my father, which triggered full-on active grief for my mother who died last October, and finally, for my best friend, who died in an accident in December. And then we were just off to the races.

I wanted very much to channel this emotional state into productivity--in my novel, there are losses and griefs--but there was just no diving in yesterday. I kept my commitment to write some so I wasn't skipping a day, getting a few words down and then recommitting to catch up tomorrow.

So I ended up doing another "two-fer" day today. I'm not planning to do this very often (I keep thinking of Doyce Testerman's advice about not trying to prove anything with your daily word count), but I'm glad of the cushion right now because I suspect I'm going to need it as the month goes on.

I'm starting to understand how Camp NaNoWriMo is, more than anything, an exercise in jumpstarting your process. It's like the swim test at camp--all about the distance, about not getting stuck in either executing the crawl stroke so beautifully you can't make it across the lake, or going down when you get hit by the cramp. So far I'm feeling good about making those leaps every day and relieved that yesterday didn't sink me.