What I may not have shared with you, what I may not have made clear is this: I didn't intend to complete a novel during Nanowrimo. I didn't expect that all the elements would magically fall into place and that I'd have a bound book sitting on my desk at the end of it. No. That's not what I envisioned. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Here's my deep, dark secret: I tend to stop, halt, freak out and lose all interest in my stories about 30 pages in. This has been happening for a year. Possibly two. I lose steam, headway, focus. I lose the ability to suss out what's what, to figure out how to get a character from here to there and if I really care about getting them there in the first place. I have started more stories and novels than I care to mention (truly, it is staggering), but I only finish the short stories. Even then, so many are abandoned before they're fully formed. Little lumps of clay gathered together in possibly related groups, waiting to fulfill their potential, if only I had more...what? What is it that I lack?
Nanowrimo, it turns out, isn't the antidote to my bored-at-30 (pages) affliction. I thought the pace would push me further. Perhaps I'd make it past the 30 page mark and find that I have a fear of 40. Possibly 50.
I had no illusions about writing a grand masterpiece novel in a month. I have read so much good work, so many brilliant novels - I know what that looks like. Through my daily nanowrimo writing over the past two weeks, I also know what I look like: I don't have the skills to write a great novel. Not yet. I knew this going in of course, but there's nothing like a time crunch to paint that picture fast and clear. As much as I wish my skills were honed, more refined, more - let's face it - readily available when needed, they aren't. It would be easy at this point to toss off the nanowrimo commitment. To follow the naysaying crowd that so vehemently paints nanowrimo as a fool's game, only for amateurs that play at writing. It would be easy to take down my little banner at the right and call it a day. To quit. Or, worse, to meet the word count deadline by writing dreck.
But isn't that the point? To be pushed into an uncomfortable place with your writing? To find yourself staring at your work and thinking - well, this is awful, so how am I going to make it better? For the first time in a long time, I'm sitting here, looking at my work, thinking through technique, through point of view, narrative structure, through all the elements of story that, as a writer, are your choice to use or discard as you see fit. I'm finding some interesting things. Habits I've formed, faulty ways I always begin a scene, the painful overuse of first person when it's not needed. I'm steeping myself in the tools of my craft. Revisiting old masters and their teachings. Picking up novels I've loved over the years and considering them now through writerly eyes, not readerly eyes. Did he really write that whole novel in close third person? Because it felt like first to me. But look, there it is, close third. Fascinating. Did she really spend the whole first chapter introducing the place? Setting the scene? Yes, she did. Funny, it didn't feel that way when I read it.
As a writer, I am naturally a reader. Yet what I've failed to do in all my reading is to read closely, as a writer, to see how my delight as a reader was crafted, controlled, manipulated to achieve the desired effect by the author. I look at my lovely library of books again and no longer see shelves full of books I've once read -- I see shelves of teachers beckoning me to crack them open once again, confident they'll be able to show me the way. Or at least, a way. A possibility. Another view from the same lookout.
Many wrimo participants would scoff at me now - saying that writing dreck quickly is the point. That you must not spend time worrying about things like point of view and structure. That you must dash towards the finish line as best you can, knowing you can fix it later. I see their point. I also see how dipping back into the tools and re-visiting old works can be seen as the true hallmark of a dilettante writer (can you say procrastination? no wonder she never gets any writing done!) - yet I beg to differ on all counts. I don't want to read crap and I certainly don't want to write it.
If nanowrimo serves as a vehicle -- as a conduit for anything at all it is this: it has shaken me, slapped me around a bit, and put me on notice. I'm open again - more open than I've been in a very long time -- to the tools of my trade. A few of the tools in the chest are rusty, need polishing. A few might need to be thrown out all together. But they are here. I do possess them. I simply need to dust them off and use them. Again and again until I like what I see. And again...
