NaNoWriMo: On the Home Stretch

Well, in a few days, it will all be over. I’m down to having to write 1500 words a day to finish on time. I haven’t written my 1500 words for today, but I will.

What I won’t do is finish this novel; I think I’ve probably about hit the halfway point this month.

Since this is a “rewrite from scratch” of a previous novel, the main purpose of NaNo this year wasn’t to create something new, but to see whether it was worth returning to something old — something very, very old. The first draft of this novel was the first novel I wrote, fifteen years ago.

About 45,000 words in, I’m still not sure whether this is a story that is worth revisiting. Last night I had the rather jarring realization that I think I’ve been going about this story all wrong. It’s hard not to feel like all those words written so far were wasted — did I REALLY have to write nearly 50,000 words to realize I should have been doing it differently all along? (Although, if I’m going to be honest and count earlier incarnations of this story, it’s really about 250,000 words later).

I’m still not sure whether I’ve answered the question I set out to answer–namely, whether this story is worth investing in outside of the frenzy of November. I know that after Wednesday, I’ll put this novel away for a long time, as I focus on my other competing writing priorities. There is something about this novel that continues to haunt my psyche; in fact, I think it’s something of a roadmap to my unconscious. Whether I ever do something “more” with this story or not, I have a feeling that even after November 30, I won’t have seen the last of it.

Snow Days and Writing

Snow days are so good for writing.

Being snowed in today reminded me of living in Duluth, and the time I was snowed in my apartment for two days in a row. My room-mate was in India, missing the only blizzard we got that year. I was working on the novel I jokingly called “Go to Hell” because it was a companion novel to one that had the word “Heaven” in the title, and because it gave me so much trouble while I was writing it. But there was something about those snow days that kept driving me to the computer again and again to get those scenes down.

Today I finally collected my 30+ poems from November, pulling them from my paperjournal, my Pictojournal, my Livejournal, and even my program for the Call to Action conference. Now I need to cull the collection down to 10 – 20 pages (currently it’s 36, but I won’t be sorry to see some of those poems go.) Here are a few that I feel more comfortable showing in the light of day now that they’ve gone through a first revision:

Tower

Did I ever tell you how happy I was in that tower?
From there I saw blue water stretch out forever—
I thought the silver moon on the black lake
Was the essence of joy.

From there I saw blue water stretch out forever—
And a narrow bed is never lonely under a full moon.
Was the essence of joy
Lining up my shoes perfectly at the door?

And a narrow bed is never lonely under a full moon,
And no one ever kicks my shoes across the floor.
Lining up my shoes perfectly at the door,
I rearranged the furniture to fill the empty places.

And no one ever kicks my shoes across the floor
When the hours stretch before me like the water below
I rearrange the furniture to fill the empty places,
And I don’t wait at windows for you anymore.

When the hours stretch before me like the water below,
I thought the silver moon on the black lake
And I don’t wait at windows for you anymore.
Did I ever tell you how happy I was in that tower?
- Nov 5, 2010

Disturb the Dandelions

Did you hear what I said
as you glanced up at TVs and waiters?
This conversation
has been choking my brain
like dandelions overrunning the lawn.
I watched them grow as I watched you shrink.

She accused me of pulling out my hair,
dropping it in the breeze like dandelion fluff
just so she could make all
those nights of crying make sense
as I kept my secrets in the room upstairs.
We can open the door to that room tonight,
even if it says
Do Not Disturb.
- Nov 30, 2010

Up to My Eyeballs

My status over at gmail, which is where I keep my “freelance/writing” account, claims that I’m “up to my eyeballs in writing projects.”

And the end of the year certainly is a busy time for writers, but now that we’re on the last day of November, I’m finally able to tick some of those items off my list.

1. NaNoWriMo. No, I didn’t participate this year. But I did spy on my friends who were participating. How did you do? And when can I read your stories?
2. The McSweeny’s Highwire Fiction Award: This is a grant given to a woman younger than 32 to work on her writing. I sent my application off the week before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t nearly as daunting as I expected it to be. The moral? Don’t ignore opportunities because they seem hard in your mind. Try it before you decide how “hard” it is.
3. The Gotham YA Novel Discovery Contest: This contest requires only the first 250 words and title of your novel, along with a $15 entry fee. I entered it last year, but the rules didn’t say anything about not being able to enter the same novel twice. So, I did. I’m sure the first 250 words are better this time around, anyway.
4. The PAD Chapbook Challenge: I wrote 30 poems in November, y’all! Although I’ve won NaNoWriMo 3 times, this is the first time I’ve successfully completed a poetry challenge. Now I’m putting them aside as I focus on December’s projects.

Numbers 1 – 4 above ALL have November 30 deadlines. What does that mean? If you read this post immediately after it goes up, there might still be time for you!!

Now that those writing adventures are behind me, I can focus on these, in deadline order:

1. Finishing the revision on my final chapter of the YA novel, in time to turn it over to my writers’ group on December 11th.
2. Frantically spit, polish, and shine said novel between December 17 (writers’ group) and December 31 (Delacorte Press First Young Adult Novel Contest deadline).
3. Turn my attention to this jumble of 30 poems and perform same treatment on them to send them off for the January 5 PAD Chapbook Challenge deadline.
4. Prepare a curriculum for Writing for Expression, Reflection, and Legacy, a writing class I’m teaching to senior citizens this spring.
5. And after the class ends in April? There appears to be . . . a void. For now. I can’t wait to see what fills it!

Is procrastination a sufficient writing goal?

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t touched my novel in about a week, but nor have I often had to write the dreaded word NONE on my writing spreadsheet every day. I’ve been keeping up better with the poem-a-day challenge better than I’ve ever been able to in the past. (Despite the fact that I’ve won NaNo three times, I’ve NEVER successfully completed a poem-a-day-for-one-month challenge. I came closest in April of 2009, mostly thanks to this blog, I think).

I think I’ve done so poorly with poetry challenges because I have this misconception that poetry is easier than prose. I mean, you don’t have to really worry about “what will happen” or “resolving” anything, right? But you do. You have to worry about it every single day, every single creation. So while it may not rely as heavily on ability to sustain long-term tension, I can’t pretend the need for a good beginning, middle, and end aren’t there. I’m also reading The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry because it was the most enticing, current anthology I found at the library. And what do you know? Just as I suspected, reading poetry DOES help in writing poetry. I AM one day behind on my poems, by the way, because I was too exhausted after a sleep-deprived weekend and 9-ish hour drive back from the CTA conference last weekend. But it was all worth it, and my latest entry at the Young Adult Catholics blog explains why. [AND tomorrow I will be revising the poems I managed to squeeze in the other two days of the conference, along with some other poems from this project scattered amongst various paperjournals. Hopefully I'll be posting something here.]

I’ve also been hoarding all sorts of neat writing links and discussions hoping to reflect on them here, but, I do worry about this blog’s ability to distract me from the novel that needs to be finished soon. Still, November is like an all-you-can-eat-buffet for writers, with excess writing tips and discussion everywhere. And it’s hard not to fill myself up to the brim with it all, and then pass it on to the audience of this humble blog as well. Who knew NaNoWriMo could still consume so much of my time even when I’m not participating? Still, I did pull together a write-in for teen NaNo-ers (and other teen writers) at the library next week, and I can’t wait. It may be the perfect stretch of time for me to finish draft three of ETD at last (and it may also be the perfect excuse to keep procrastinating whipping that last chapter into shape until then!)

Day 2, Poem 2

My friends still have 0 words on their NaNoWriMo‘s. Nooooooo!! (You may think I’m being over-dramatic, but I really do stress out about other people’s procrastination).

Today I put together a NaNoWriMo display at the library, and when I went to the site to download the graphics, I felt this ache in my heart not to be updating my word count. Last year I had Europe to distract me through November. But this November, I’m daily fighting the temptation to throw the rest of my life and projects away for a while and plunge in, just for that wonderful sense of accomplishment you get when you update your word count every day (I mean at least there, those words do mean SOMETHING, even if it takes you two years to untangle the mess you made of them).

I did feel a nice sense of accomplishment while working on ETD tonight; I reworked what’s essentially the “emotional climax” of the novel so that it resonates more deeply and ties into the rest of the novel better as well. I even discovered a few new connections. That means I only have one chapter left to revise, but it’s going to need some pretty big revisions just to make the logistics of it work. It’s a bummer to have logistics get in the way because I do like the last chapter pretty much the way it is. But unless children start going to school 7 days a week, I’ll need to do some tweaking. (This stuff didn’t even exist in draft one, and draft two was created over MANY long months — so many long months that I lost track of things like how many days in a row the main character was going to school. Oops.)

I wrote my first poem based on a LiveJournal prompt tonight! Here it is, November’s 2nd Poem:

She says if I saw it today
I’d think it was funny.
But all I can remember
is a gray-faced girl
with blood in the bathtub,
eyes and ears and tongues
mutilated to corn-hash mush.
See No Evil
Hear No Evil
Speak No Evil

Like the three monkeys,
we were three little girls
and one unexpected boy
huddled together
in one big bed
With screams from the living room,
our eyes closed tight
was not enough to save us.

When I sit beside you on the couch
you confirm what I remember:
This was never funny
You grew up listening to
the noises in crumbling walls,
and made ghosts your only fear.
Three little girls again,
and you the unexpected boy –
well, your parents only wanted one.
And after that, you knew what happened
to your brother.

You know it’s not funny
but you find a way to laugh away fear
and that’s why I crawl into bed with you
and imagine myself brave after all
burrow into your neck
to see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil

NaNo-ers, My Heart is With You!

The badges are so pretty this year!

Well, it’s here! For writers and would-be writers everywhere, this is the day you’ve been waiting for. November 1st, the official start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Well do I remember the joys, the sorrows, the euphoria, the stress, the comraderie! of this month of exuberant, frantic writing. And although I’m not participating this year, I am hoping to do all I can to support those who are: I created a NaNoWriMo page for the girls at NewMoon.com (which will also be featuring writing tips on the homepage all month long), I’m using my adult power and influence to pressure teens at the library to participate, and I’m planning to spy on and harass my friends who are participating (0 words so far, for shame!! If you’re participating and would like me to harass you, leave a comment with your NaNo username below — mine is sedeara.)

I certainly won’t be slacking on my writing this November, though! Besides asking my friends and associates, “Are you writing? Are you writing? Are you writing?”, I’ll also be:

1. Writing poetry every day for the PAD Chapbook Challenge. Poetry is not my strong suit due to the fact that I don’t read a lot of poetry, so I’ll be doing that this month, too. I intend to rely heavily on my Picto-Journal for inspiration (I’ll be adding some new pics to it tonight). I also plan to convert the daily “writers block” prompts over at LiveJournal as poetry prompts. And, I hope to bust out the guitar for the first time in 11 months and try to write a song for the first time in 4 (yikes!) years. And of course, I can’t forget magnetic poetry! I hope to share some of my efforts here.
2. Finishing the third draft of ETD, which is, incidentally, my NaNoWriMo project from 2008 (written just as I was starting this blog).
3. Attending the Call to Action national conference in Milwaukee. I write for CTA’s 20/30 (young adult) blog, with my most recent post being about the Biblical idea of “holding all things in common.” (Is it Communism? Socialism? Democracy?) I’m excited to hang out with the other bloggers in person again, to be traveling to the event with my best friend, and to hopefully be gaining some inspiration for upcoming blog posts.
4. Fantasizing about what I would be writing if I WERE doing NaNoWriMo this year. Lately, I’ve become very preoccupied with an idea I have for retelling Rapunzel. Thus, I dressed as Rapunzel for Halloween and have been listening a lot to a Rapunzel concept album a friend made for me. How fitting that Disney’s Tangled (which I’ve been looking forward to for years) also comes out this month!

Rapunzel dreams of having a life outside the tower

Enjoy all the wonderful writing November has to offer! I know I will!

I Have a Plan!

So, I’ve made my decision: I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I don’t want to abandon my revisions of ETD when I have good momentum going, especially since I want to have it ready to submit to Delacorte Press’s Young Adult Novel contest, which closes on December 31.

However, in lieu of NaNoWriMo, I’m going to participate in the November PAD Chapbook Challenge, which is akin to National Poetry Writing Month’s Poem-a-Day challenge, except . . . November’s resulting poems are eligible to be published as a chapbook. Poetry is not my strong suit, but it’s never too late to learn. And the Jan 5 Chapbook Submission Deadline will help keep me on track.

Finally, I’m also going to apply for a McSweeny’s Grant to work on my writing. So, I have October to focus on the rest of my novel revisions, November for massively producing new work, and December and January for submitting. I’m excited!

Draft #3 of ETD: Status update 1

ETD are the initials of my new title for the YA novel I’m revising. I don’t feel comfortable making titles public while I’m in the process of drafting, but it’s a little misleading to just call it “my YA novel,” since four of my novels fall into that category.

After doing a ton of untangling between drafts one and two, I expected this round of revision to go a bit more smoothly. But I feel as if I’m untangling wet hair after not using conditioner in the shower–and you might need to have my family’s curly-hair genes to fully appreciate that analogy.

How much can I rearrange the same paragraph? Oh, let me count the ways . . .

Draft 3, Here I Come!

I’m starting on draft three of my young adult novel, and I’m buzzing with momentum. In today’s session, I

• Put all my critiques for the novel in order
• Made notes about “big picture” changes for this draft (something that’d been niggling at me during draft 2 is finally starting to make sense)
• Changed the title
• Found a nifty poem to include at the beginning for inspiration, or tone-setting, or something of the sort
• Revised Scene 1
• Drooled over the Literary Agency I’d like to send it to eventually

My goal is to have this round of revisions done by the beginning of December.The rough draft of this novel took me a month to write. The second draft took a year and a half. Is five months reasonable for the next round? Perhaps, if there weren’t another November–and the possibility of doing NaNoWriMo–thrown in there.

And writing again means I’m meeting with my writers group again. I haven’t seen them since May, but I look forward to a happy reunion in August.

Learn to Abandon Your Writing

This post is not as defeatist as the title may make it seem.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Leonardo da Vinci’s quote that, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Without publishing anything, I’ve never had to truly abandon my work before. Sure, I’ve let some of it grow dusty on my shelf and on my mind, but because it is not in the public’s hands, there’s still the chance that I might pick it up and whittle away at it some more.

But if I ever want to continue publishing–which I certainly do–there has to be a time when enough is enough. There has to come the moment of abandonment. I’ve recently come to understand just how painful, frustrating, and liberating that can be.

I mentioned receiving the galley for “The Man in the Mirror” earlier this week. My job was to read through it to make sure there weren’t any errors introduced during the typesetting. Now, the types of things I was supposed to be looking at were proper indentations, italics, maybe a missed quotation mark here and there. This is not the time to rework my prose, or cut a paragraph here and there. Besides, I’ve read this piece a million times by now; there can’t be anything worth changing this late in the game, right?

Wrong.

There was one particular sentence that really irked me, one sentence that made me think, “Ah no, why didn’t I catch that before?” It’s not incorrect; I just don’t like the way it sounds. I knew that the time for sentence level of edits had passed. So I did what I knew I had to do. I abandoned it, and hoped readers won’t judge me too harshly (if they did, it might only be karma, since I’ve been pretty rough on some writers myself). I hope for the chance to abandon many more projects in the future.