Na No Wri Mo

I’m trying to write a novel.

Just writing that sentence above gives me palpitations. I know that at some point last summer I began an attempt, but luckily, the second part of my MA kindly got in the way, and I’d parked my idea until now.

Now we are in November, and as most aspiring novelists might know, November is National Novel Writing Month (aka: NaNoWriMo).

The mission, if you choose to accept it, is to knock out 50,000 words over the course of this one month, which should hopefully equate to a rough first draft. I was hoping to use this month to really slingshot myself into being a more committed and consistent writer. A little bit like I’ve tried to do with my marathon attempts and running. However, unlike my running, my writing has not been all that consistent. And I’ve not shown a great deal of commitment thus far. In fact this blog is, in itself, a procrastination from the task at hand.

It’s November 9^th, and if I were following a nice straight line trajectory, I’d be on fifteen thousand  words by now. But I’ve barely managed 3.5K. I’m trying, when I sit down to it, to not really think too much and just write. I have a story idea that can easily be condensed to half a page of A4, and from that I’ve got to pad it out to thousands of words. I’m just wondering if I’ve bitten off too much. Maybe I should have started off with short story writing? Maybe I should have stuck to blogs? Nonfiction is always easier than making stuff up for me, but I just wanted to have a go.

Having not previously created anything this big before means that I’ve no template on how to go about it. Now, like marathon running, which has tons of ready-made training plans available, there are a myriad of ways to tackle a book. From storyboarding, and writing elaborate plans and backstories before you begin – this is the archetypal ‘plotter’.  To just diving in from a single ‘what if’ – the ‘pantser’, i.e. writing by the seat of your pants.  

I am trying out the somewhere-in-between method. My extremely short synopsis, and a skeleton spreadsheet with names, ages, and a vague timeline. Then, I try and do as much of a chapter as I can on each sitting. I know the chapter will need to be completely edited and expanded on. But if I can get roughly what I want down in this first go, then I’m winning.

Many of Charles Dickens’ novels began life in serial form, like Victorian soap operas. It meant that he had regular deadlines to work towards, and a way of breaking down the bigger picture. I am never going to compare myself to Mr D, but what I would love to create in myself, is the idea of sticking to a deadline.

I do that with my marathon training. Between the start of my training and race day can be several months, so I add in smaller races along the way, to make sure I’ve reached a certain level by a set point, otherwise I have a bad tendency to sit on my backside more often than is good for me.  I don’t have an official endpoint with this book, so I can stretch the time in between until I lose any sense of structure.

What I have found, is that taking my laptop to the library, which I can manage three mornings a week, has been the most productive I’ve been. It’s like going to work, and because I’ve travelled to this particular place (and kept my laptop offline), I feel like I need to sit and focus for two solid hours. And every time I’ve gone to the library, I’ve managed to knock out roughly a thousand words in that time. I do some writing at home, but I’m easily distracted, by making myself a cup of tea, a sandwich, washing the dishes, putting a wash on, catching up on Bakeoff, etc, etc.

So, I’m not going to manage 50K words in this month, but I am beginning to know what makes me sit and write. Which is a good start. What I write may well be rubbish. That doesn’t matter as yet. Most people who are good at what they do didn’t start off good. They had to keep practising. And that’s the point. I just need to keep taking myself off to the library, for a minimum of two hours at a time, and write. Easy peasy.