As many of you surely know already, November is National Novel Writing Month.  In its tenth year, NaNoWriMo continues to inspire tens of thousands of potential novelists worldwide with its message of speedy imperfection. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. One month.  It breaks down to an average of 1,667 words a day, and obviously it’s absolutely insane.  But.  The point of NaNoWriMo is to get the words down, to write more than you ever thought possible, to get a solid first draft (or even a really terrible one) down on paper so you have something to work with in your second and third drafts. 

I love NaNoWriMo.  I love the convergence of so many voices telling their stories. I love the celebration of writing and creativity and caffeine-fueled enthusiastic madness. I love a massive group deadline (second only to April 15 in this country), and the chance to share your deadline-induced misery with 89,999 other people. I love posting wordcounts and feeling like someone other than my own prone-to-excuses lackadaisical conscience is holding me accountable for my productivity or lack thereof. I love reading what my friends write. In fact, I wish that ALL my friends would write at least one novel, particularly if that one novel is a thinly-disguised memoir. Even better if everyone in my family wrote a thinly-disguised memoir, and then let me read it. As long as it didn’t lead to prolonged discussions of commas, punctuated (ha!) with claims that “that’s what the nuns told me to do,” I think that reading novels written by family members would be wonderful.

Will everyone reach 50,000 words?  Of course not.  But the point is to WRITE, and even 10,000 words in a month is 10,000 more than you might have written otherwise. 

If you’re doing NaNo this year – or even if, like us, you’re doing a modified version we like to call “If I’m Writing Thousands Of Words They’d Darn Well Better Be On My Current Novel-In-Progress” (the acronym’s a little trickier) – then you’ll probably need to catch up on your wordcounts by mid-month, and we have just the thing: our November Write-a-Thon, Saturday November 22, 2008. We’ll open the Studio from 9 am to 9 pm, and provide tons of snacks, coffee, soda, tea, and good company, not to mention a fantastic writing space and free wifi, to help you write your heart out. 

One word...um, acronym: NaNoWriMo.

While you’re busy worry about if that last semi-colon was placed, Danielle Steele and her heirs are making a fortune.  Tell you what.  Just write 50,000 words in November and worry about if it’s good after the fact.  If it’s half bad, you’ve still got 50 pages that you can keep.  Last year, when I tried to write a novel, I wound up with 3 short stories and 4 poems.  That’s not so bad.  If you can’t do it this month, no worries.  There are more similar challenges than there are months of the year to do them in.  For a list of quantity writing challenges and more information, visit the site.

The Chicago liaison has posted some NaNo related events for those of you who need an extra kick in the pants:

“Here are some other exciting things you can look forward to this month: the statewide write-in on 11/22; the CTA write-in (date TBD - it will either be Sunday 11/9 or 11/16); the Open Books Virtual Book Drive (see the front page of the ChiWriMo site beginning 11/1 for more details!); prizes for attending official ChiWriMo write-in nights at Open Books; and much more!”

Some of my students told me that a man riding a bus through Canada inexplicably turned to his seatmate, stabbed him repeatedly, and then decapitated him and started cutting him up. He later displayed the head to the other passengers who had since fled and trapped him in the bus. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Out here in the world of the sane, we do better things with our murderous thoughts, such as writing them really small in thousands of identical journals. For today’s story starter, access your craziness. Look back at old journals, or just consider what your thoughts when that guy in traffic cut you off. I think most of us have a wealth of crazy, but if you can’t, try to figure out this guy. He was apparently calm throughout the whole thing, as it though it was the most normal thing in the world.

When you’re done, voila! Serial killer character profile for your murder mystery, ready to go.

Make sure you clearly label this thing a writing exercise. I’d hate to have the FBI investigate you (or me). 

Last week, I asked you to write out your weird fantasy life, accessing an alternative universe where you are in control.  Today’s prompt is similar.  Instead of asking you to completely fabricate an unlikely situation, I’d like you to imagine a point of divergence from something that actually happened.

I woke up late this morning, so I wound up on the train with those special high school students who shout at each other across the aisles.  The idea of sitting next to one’s conversation partner has apparently escaped them, yet they seem annoyed when someone takes a seat being used by their book-bag or feet.  I sat next to the least threatening of them and shut my eyes, letting their swirling chaos assault my ears.  Finally, they exited, and I was relived to say the least.  Civilization would resume. 

I must have forgotten where I was.  When the doors opened at Fullerton, an obviously blind man entered, white cane a-tappin’, and he headed directly for the one open seat on the train, which was a priority seat.  Oh good, I thought, I don’t have to get up.  Turns out I did though. Some able-bodied woman, or girl I should say based on her behavior, slid into the seat, opened her Red Eye and didn’t even bother to look guilty.  The blind man looked confused.  Wasn’t there just a seat there, and now there’s a person?  Are my spidey-sense off? So I got up, and a gentleman in the true sense of the word boxed out other would be seat usurpers.  I was so happy with the gentleman’s behavior that I forgot about Ms. Red Eye.  Oh, the withering stare I should have given her!  The lecture about who among us was really blind!  I certainly would have told her, if I was one of those types that, you know, confronted people.  Instead I blog about them.  Such nerve!

We’ve all had these experiences that, if we had our druthers, we’d do over, preferably with a script and ample rehearsal time.  So this time, instead of starting with a fantasy and working out what would really happen, you’re starting with a real, lived experience.  That’s a story in and of itself.  The fiction comes in when you make happen what should have happened, or what might have if you’d had the courage to sauce things up. 

Keep the sauce on the paper, and keep writing!

What did you do today?  I wrote 2,000 words. 

Jealous?  You should be.  It was fantastic.  I spent two entire hours this morning wandering around, doing menial tasks, listening to music, and moodling.  Dreaming.  Imagining my way into my novel, my protagonist’s past, her wounds and hurts and opinions.  And then I sat down at my laptop and pounded out 2,000 words. 

Later, I took a long stroll through the bright autumn streets, smiled at the people I passed, stopped to pet a gorgeous golden retriever who closed her eyes in the sun.  I felt great.  Because I wrote. 

I have a theory that writing is like going to the gym.  Most days, you don’t really want to do it.  You have to drag your butt there, and once you’re there, you have to drag yourself through your hour on the treadmill or at the keyboard.  Sometimes you actually enjoy it, sometimes you get into the zone and think you could do it all day, but most of the time it’s just another thing you have to fit into your already too-full schedule. 

But.  Afterward, you feel good.  You feel great.  You were tempted to go home and curl up in front of the TV, but no.  You went.  You sweated.  You did it.  And you keep going back, day after day, because you know that it’s good for you, you feel better once you’ve done it, and every once in a while, you get that feeling like you’re invincible, you’re flying, you’re amazing.  You could do this all day. 

Writing’s like that for me.  If I write every day, I feel awesome.  If I write, say, four days a week, I feel pretty darn good.  If I go for a week or two without writing, I feel sub-human.  I start hating myself and everyone I know.  I can’t stand this stupid city and my awful little apartment and the horrible people I see on the streets and the bus.  I start wondering if my PMS off-button is broken, and if I’m doomed to be an utter grinch for the rest of my life.  And then I write for a day or two, or maybe I manage to squeeze in a couple hundred words a day, fifteen minutes here and there, and I crawl out of that circle of hell reserved for blocked artists, and I start smiling at the people I pass again, and I start answering the phone when my family calls.  Writing’s that important. 

I wrote 2,000 words today, and I feel great.  I’m hoping to tack another 500 on tomorrow, if I can squeeze it in between work and date night.  I know I’ll be a better date if I can. 

And THEN, I’ll take the opportunity to come to the WRITE-A-THON on Saturday, October 18—this Saturday!—from 9am to 9pm I’ll be here in the afternoon, curled up in a corner of a classroom or a couch, with my laptop and a million notes around me.  Maybe it will be the kind of writing day when I feel sluggish and stupid, and have to slog through just to get a few pages down.  But maybe—maybe—it will be one of those rare writing days when I hit that zone and I feel like I’m flying.  I feel amazing.  I feel like I could do this all day. 

Either way, I’ll feel awesome when I’m done. 

See you there!

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