Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women.
-- Charles Johnson, Middle Passage

NaNoWriMo: The Annual Act Of Self-Torture, Self-Guilt, & Gorging On Twizzlers

National Novel Writing MonthWell, I guess I’ve decided to torture myself again this year. I hadn’t intended on even making an attempt or even contemplating the mere idea of any of the mental self-abuse brought about by getting my hopes thinking I can write 50K of fiction in 30 days.

Oh, sure, I entered NaNoWriMo in 2005 and completed it with my 50K words just barely ahead of the deadline, but that just puts more pressure on me because that was my first attempt and the work was mostly autobiographical.

Writing 50K words of purely made up stuff is entirely different. I used to write quite a lot in my younger days — short stories, a novel once, but not only does that require a level of daydreaming and creativity that I worry I’ve not got anymore, but I always get a little lost in the facts. It’s the piddly stuff that brings me to a halt when I’m writing, that feeling that I should know more about my subject matter, the concern that I haven’t researched enough, that I don’t know my imaginary world well-enough. I often wonder how well science fiction and fantasy authors know the worlds they write in before they start writing the first words of their stories. Do they sort of make it up as they go along and it all sort of fits together as they go or is it all mapped out ahead of time and the characters fit neatly inside? J. K. Rowling supposedly had it all mapped out before she ever wrote the first word of the first book; she’d been sketching out the world of Harry Potter for years on scraps of paper and napkins and notebooks long before Harry arrived on Privet Drive.

So, the fear of not knowing enough about the world my characters live in often keeps me from dreaming of and writing their adventures. Sometimes I have characters I find fascinating who I think live fascinating lives and must get into incredibly interesting situations simply because of who they are and who they know, but there’s a nothingness that keeps me from exploring that too deeply. Ironically, if I took the time, when it wasn’t two days before National Novel Writing Month like say in March or April, I could probably start sketching things like solar systems or cultures out. I could explore kingdoms and economics and perhaps religious reasons for civil war.

However, here I am again, two days before NaNoWriMo, having done no preparation again this year, and I’ve been reading blogs and emails from other people who are enthusiastically going to torture themselves for the month of November and, of course, I never want to be left out of a good self-torture, especially when there are so many other people involved. Plus, I really like my local NaNo write-in group. I just hope this doesn’t turn out to be a repeat of last year when I wrote about half a page of nothing happening and then stared at that for a week and then felt guilty for the rest of the month because I didn’t have a plot or any idea what to do with the characters.

If you are planning on sharing in my misery by participating in NaNoWriMo this year, please drop me a line in the comments section. I’m signed up on the official site as JLynne, of course. :)

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Published:
29.10.07 / 3pm
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Life
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