NaNoWriMo ’10

Losing NaNoWriMo — but winning a solid start to a novel

/ Meg / 11 Comments

The bad news: for the second consecutive year, I failed at NaNoWriMo.

The good news: I actually love the book I’m writing.

Okay — maybe not love. Love is a serious word. Love develops after putting in some serious hard work with some(one)(thing) and succumbing to a sensation beyond our control.

Let’s say I’m heavily in like with my book.

So what went wrong in 2010? Unlike last year, I didn’t have the ready-made excuse of a mid-NaNo vacation to fall back on. There were no trips to California, no incredibly taxing projects at work — just little old me sitting at my desk, staring at a calendar that was quickly filling up and losing my motivation to keep cranking out the words.

To be fair (or to further bury myself?), I did quite a bit of writing in November — just not on my as-yet-untitled novel. I cranked out columns at work and reached out with my audience, asking them to send me their holiday traditions in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I’ve loved reading everyone’s letters and replied to all of them — not to mention the 40+ handwritten Christmas cards I sent to you, my lovely friends, and friends and family.

I’ve written lists and addresses, letters and book reviews. Emails, rebuttals and love notes. Hundreds of tweets.

But books? No books.

My final word count for NaNoWriMo ’10 stands at 22,277 words. In the days since the project officially ended, I’ve added a few thousand words and left Josie, the travel writer with a bruised heart (and ego), in the hands of a new editor at the paper where she’s taken a part-time position. Thinking she’ll avoid having to travel to New York and catch up with her snobbish ex-boyfriend, Josie channels her energy into helping the floundering Sentinel outside Washington, D.C.

And everything is peachy until the reporter’s notebook is suddenly turned around on her. When her ex-boyfriend’s nude painting is accepted into a prominent New York art gallery, the whole world wants to know the name of the seductive-yet-innocent nymph captured on his canvas — and Nathan, bitter and angry at Josie for ending their melting relationship, is all too happy to tell them.

And then Josie’s behind is all over the art scene.

And she’s none too happy about it.

I’m not entirely sure where this is going — plus, I need a love interest in here . . . and STAT. A women’s fiction novel without a love interest? Let’s be serious. It’s not that the romance needs to be the central focus of the story, but it certainly needs to be there. And since I’ve pretty well burned the bridge between Nate and Josie (or did they burn it themselves?), there’s no going back there. I will have to have some resolution between them, though; everyone deserves closure. But I’ll focus on that after I’ve actually reached the denouement!

In short, I’m not giving up on my project — not at all. I just didn’t have it in me to crank out a book in record time, though I heartily congratulate all those who did! I do plan on participating in future NaNos — and maybe tasting sweet victory once again. If nothing else, I love that NaNoWriMo gets me writing daily and thinking about a major project . . . something beyond my short blog posts and 450-word columns. I like plotting and delving deep into a character’s psyche — and having the r0om to really do that. I like space.

Now let’s just see if I can fill it up with another 27,000+ words.

NaNoWriMo wrap-up: Week one

/ Meg / 33 Comments

In the midst of a chaotic first week of November, it was also the start of National Novel Writing Month — an international effort that asks participants to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (the month of November). Many of you have probably heard about it ad nauseum at this point, but I’ll throw in my own little status report — and update you on the role noveling as played in my life lately.

In college, I was all about poetry. When I wasn’t reading it and discussing it in class, I was penning my own. Long poems, short poems, sonnets, freeform, hiaku — I did it all and, most of the time, enjoyed the heck out of it. But once I left the University of Maryland with my shiny new B.A. in English, I went to work at the newspaper I’ve called my career home for the past three years. And in those three years, do you know how many poems I’ve written?

One. Maybe two. And both of there were embarrassingly terrible.

In these years since college, I’ve reconnected with my noveling roots — and NaNoWriMo has played no small part in that. A kid who would once while away entire afternoons writing epic “Star Wars” continuations in her father’s den, I’ve written no less than a dozen books in my lifetime.

Were they any good? Well, the early ones were written by a 10-year-old so, you know, I think they read the way you’d expect a 300-page tome from a fifth grader to read. But the more recent stuff, well . . . I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two from having thrown myself full throttle into my column and write meg! Blogging has helped me figure out a way to say things quickly, intelligently and, with any luck, humorously. So the three NaNoWriMo books I’ve written the past three years,while solid efforts of which I’m proud, aren’t the pinnacle of what I can achieve. Since last November and the start of my newspaper column, I see a major shift in my writing style and tone.

For the better, I hope.

This year’s novel, as yet untitled, is currently topping out at 11,772 words or 39 double-spaced pages. I wrote on my lunch breaks at work every day last week and quickly lost myself in the world of Josie, a freelance travel writer who hops off a bus in Brooklyn to discover she no longer carries a flame for her free-spirited, slacker boyfriend. While a talented artist, Nathan lacks a little thing called drive. And when he conveniently forgets to pick her up from a bus station in Manhattan, Josie is done and done. She slips onto the next bus back to D.C. with nary a text message to the man who once stole her heart. Then forgot he even had it.

In a fit of revenge after their cold break-up, Nathan decides he’s tired of covering up a certain canvas he toiled over for months. His most beautiful and ambitious work to date, Nate’s been hiding this beauty from a waiting art scene, afraid of what Josie would say should it appear in galleries, magazines and blogs around the world. He might not be that famous yet, but it’s only a matter of time . . . and this one? It’s one to get tongues wagging. A provocative, colorful and very nude painting.

Of Josie.

And — scene.

By the end of the week, I would like to hit 20,000 words and flesh out Josie and Nathan’s relationship. Right now, it’s all been told in dribs and drabs — a special moment here; a recovered memory there. I’m introducing peripheral characters like Josie’s pragmatic sister, Anna, and Anna’s wounded rocker brother-in-law. I have Nathan’s overachieving mama in there, too, plus Josie’s own parents — busy making new plans for life as empty nesters.

I’m not entirely sure where this is going, but I’m trying my hardest to bring in everything I love about a good women’s fiction novel: a powerful, independent and sympathetic main character; loving, colorful and well described friends and family; a moving plot which brings readers on a journey; a delicious love story which has me frantically turning the pages. I haven’t introduced all of those elements yet, but I’ll get there.

Writing is, above all else, tough work. And once the writing is done, we’re into the Edit Zone — which can be a scary, scary place. I’ll be chopping, rearranging, moving, subtracting, adding and crying. I’ll probably get disgusted a few times and want to give up. I won’t, though, and here’s why: with each book I finish, I know I’m getting closer to writing my own little masterpiece. I get better and better. And each paragraph brings me closer to my lifelong goal: becoming a published novelist.

But since life is all about the journey, I’m just enjoying this moment of creating.

And writing until my fingers ache.

That’s the only way to get it done.