What if. . .

Ahhhh, it's October. Other people are thinking about pumpkin spice lattes, but I'm thinking of 50,000 words.  

I woke up this morning with this thought in my head: What if I lived my life as if I already had all the things I say I want. 

 

I know, it’s not an original thought, but it landed with me in a new way.  Specifically, I asked myself the following question:

 

If I were a writer with a three-book deal, how would I spend my day.  

 

Here’s my list of ten things I would do differently (not really in a particular order, but 1. is always first). 

 

1.     I would sit down and write first thing. That means I would not go to Instagram or Facebook or What’s App first.   

2.     I would spend a little time on social media giving positive interactions to people who visit me. 

3.     I would exercise because I’m more productive when I move, and I would do a little yoga because yoga makes it easier to sit in a chair for 7-8 hours a day. 

4.     I would meditate because meditation gives me some space in my brain. 

5.     I would spend some time focused on my ten-year intentions. 

6.     I would eat well because when I eat too much sugar, as I’ve done the past week, I’m not able to focus as well. 

7.     I would neaten my space when I finish work because I like to work in a clean space. 

8.     I would efficiently do the work that currently pays the bills, and I would set limits. If I’m only being paid for 8 hours of work, then I will do eight hours of work, no more, so the work I produce may have to be good enough. I used to talk to my students about choosing to give 80% effort to some classes and being okay with a B.  I can remember that pep talk myself as I do my consulting work. 

9.     I would spend time thinking about and tracking my goals, including building my brand online. 

10.  I would congratulate myself for work well done; I would forgive myself for any failings because shame makes it hard to show up tomorrow.

 

It’s a good list, right?  Yours will probably be a little different, and mine may change as I think more about it (I know that a few of these items are actually two items).  But I like the question. I’ve heard writers talk about this, and the writers I admire often talk about living this way before their first book deal. I just never thought of it like this.  I never really felt it as a deep truth the way I did this morning. 

 

So, today, I did a few more of these things than I did yesterday. Tomorrow, I hope to do a few more, and when I fall, as I know I will, I will dust off my ass and get back up. And when I succeed at some if not all of these things, as I know I will, I will have a dance party in my own honor.  

 

In a way, living like the writer you want to be is the power of National Novel Writing Month. For one month, we live like writers. We let other people cook dinner, wash the dishes, walk the dog.  We let our outside commitments slide a little.  We give 80% at work instead of 110%. We prioritize writing.  

 

We do what we would do if we had a three-book deal and an editor breathing down our necks.  We make a life where writing is what we do. 

 

So, hold me to this.  I’m going to live like the writer I aim to be for the rest of the year. Not just in November, but starting now and running until December. 

 

Also, I’m going to send those finished manuscripts into the world so that I can actually be that most cherished of things: the writer with a three-book deal.  

 

Good luck to you as you figure out how to make NaNoWriMo work for you.  Let me know what mental tricks you use to get the work done each day.  

 

Winning

I’ve been babysitting, hiking, climbing mountains, and driving, so I haven’t had time to celebrate my win.  Today, I finally have a minute and good internet access, so celebration, here we come. 

Only, it’s a little less celebratory, and I’m not sure why.  Sure, this year marked the half-a-millionth word I’ve written over the past eleven Novembers.  Yes, I wrote over 50,000 words.  Okay, I brought new characters to life, put them in difficult situations, and watched as they grew into better versions of the characters I started with.  Fine, I wrote every day even while driving across the country and being a grandma to the most amazing human on the planet.  Yes, I marked my tenth NaNoWriMo win. 

All those things are important, meaningful, even, but this year, the writing was bittersweet.  That friend I lost.  She was a writing partner. I wrote with other friends, attended write-ins, and engaged online a little, but I felt the loss of my friend deeply. 

Also, I’ve been a Municipal Liaison for Ohio: Elsewhere for the past five years now, and I’ve relished being able to encourage, motivate, and provide safe writing spaces for other writers. But NaNoWriMo updated its website and made it harder for me to do my job online, and when I was in Ohio I was busy, so I didn’t run any ML events this year.  Also, I’m moving in 2020, so it just didn’t seem worth the extra effort to learn the new systems and cultivate write-in spaces.  So I was a terrible ML this year.  And I don’t think I’ll apply to be one next year in Pennsylvania.  

Everything has a season. Friendships end. We decide a job we’re volunteering for no longer suits us.  That’s okay. But it’s also okay for that to hurt, to grieve the endings when they come.  

So, this year’s win was also full of loss.  And, it was the first time my win has not been based on a single project or revision but on five different writing projects. So that made it seem less like a win as well.  I’m almost finished with the novella I finally settled on. I have notes and scenes for two other books in the works, but though I wrote 50,000 words, I didn’t finish anything.  

Still, I celebrated.  I climbed the highest peak in Texas.  I’ve been working a little bit on my writing every damn day.  I raised a cup of coffee to all the other writers who wrote this year, and I’m doing some reflection and goal setting for next year.

And today, I celebrate putting up this win post, even though it doesn’t sound very cheerful, because that helps me close out my November, too.  

We write through the good and the bad, that’s what makes us writers.  Maybe we don’t do just what we wanted to do, maybe we had to change course (several times), maybe we didn’t get our 50,000 or even 10,000 words, maybe we’re looking forward and wondering what’s next without a clear answer. But we sit down every damn day, and we write a little or a lot.  We keep moving forward, keep putting words on the page (or taking them off when we’re editing), and we celebrate ourselves because we do this work even when no one pays us, even when no one reads our words, even when writing reminds us of what we’ve lost. We’re writers, writing is what we do, even when. 

Getting There

It doesn't matter how you get there. Hop a freight if you need to.  Image copyright Lori Gravley

I’ve been behind almost since the beginning, but I’m really trying to hit my tenth win this year, even though my path there has been harrowing and harried. Still, after a couple of 5,000 word days, I may get there.  
Here’s what will help:

• I’m not cooking for Thanksgiving. 
• Tony arrived yesterday to help with Grandbaby sitting so I have more free time in the mornings to write.
• My story is headed in the right direction, and I’m at a good place in the middle to skip over the parts of the plot that are often challenging for me to the final countdown, climax, and atonement scenes.
• Writing bad sex scenes is a good way to write lots of words that will have to be cut later.  (I started in YA, but it’s turned into a romance). 
• My van has a comfortable workspace, and I’m getting good sleep.  
• Coffee.

I have two more hours to work today, so I’m hoping to get in at least 2,500 more words, bringing my total to almost 41,490 words and putting me in spitting distance of the finish line.  
I hope that you have a list of things that will help you, too, whether you're 2,000 or 25,000 words away from a win.  There are a number of novelists who regularly write 10,000 words a day (my max is about 5,000), so even if you’re at 25,000 you could still come from behind for a NaNo win. Remember, whether you get to 50,000 words or not, you’ve written this month, maybe even every day, and that counts as a win whether it counts in your NaNo stats or not.  

This Writing Moment

NaNoWriMo Screen Shot, Nov. 15, 2019.

It is possible that I’ve never been this far behind. I just clocked 16,077 words. I’m supposed to have over 25,000 words.  I am 9,000 words behind.  I can get stuck on the behind part. 

But, I’ve written over 16,000 words.  Words that did not exist on Oct. 31.  Beautiful words, awful words, wrong words, right words, misspelled words, typos, beautiful similes, forgotten vocabulary that has shown up in my character's mouth.  Words.  

I’m not even counting the poems I’ve written, the postcards I’ve written, the posts I’ve written.  

Here, in this writing moment, I’m creating a new world, a character I love with a wicked sense of humor that I think is actually showing up on the page (I don’t often write funny though that’s been a goal of mine).  I’m just showing up to write every day and letting the words come. 

It will be a mess.  

But there is so much joy in this writing moment. In getting these words on the page, in the morning, in the evening, in between chores, in between renovations, in between grief and rage.  

That is all there is--this moment, today, to write.  I do not have to worry about tomorrow or November 30. I’m just focusing on showing up today and learning more about my characters by throwing obstacles in front of them.  

And today, I’ve had a very good writing day. 

What’s Working: Licking the Wounds

Just as a tree's wounds get separated from the body of the tree and protected by thickened bark, so too do the wounds your character has get protected as they grow.  Part of your job as a writer is to take your characters on a process of healing (or not) their wounds so they can either move forward, self-destruct, or continue acting in ways that the reader will find compelling. Image copyright Lori Gravley. 

If you’ve spent any time in therapy, you know that most of us who’ve made it past toddlerhood have survived mostly intact, but with some emotional scars that show up at inopportune times: a fight with your partner, your child’s bad decisions, a work project that frustrates you, a driver ahead of you on a two-lane road.  

These scars become wounds, sensitivities close to the surface or deeply hidden, that become hidden drivers of our behavior.  

A character arc is generally the path the character takes to recognize and resolve the wounds that childhood, past relationships, and the background you’ve given the character have created for that character.  A character in a romance, for example, may start the novel unable to trust someone in a relationship. The character meets someone who makes them want to try but then your character’s past or future goals get in the way of being able to commit to a relationship, even if the character wants to.  Through a series of plot developments and pressure from the world of your novel and other characters, your character has to face her wounds so that she can end up happy at the end of the novel.  

I’ve just finished Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, and though it is Book 5 in the series, Mercy Thompson is still working on the wounds that make it hard for her to feel completely connected to an individual or completely connected to a community.  

Personal Pressure: The beginning of the novel finds Mercy choosing not to share her concerns about her former love and current roommate/friend’s state as a werewolf whose wolf is taking over.  

Community Pressure: She’s in a relationship with the pack Alpha, and their relationship continues to be strained by members of the pack who don’t trust/like Mercy since she’s a coyote shifter and not a werewolf.  

Both of these pressures are activating her deepest wound, the belief that she doesn’t belong and that if people love her they will eventually be destroyed because of that love.  

Towards the climax of the novel, this wound is actually given a visual metaphor as a rope that has been frayed, cut, and broken and has been inexpertly mended. 

During the denouement/atonement of the novel, this same connection is seen as a beautiful, shimmering, solid golden rope with no evidence of previous damage.  

The steps both Mercy and her community take heal Mercy’s wounds, heal her community as well (at-one-ment as Joseph Campbell calls it). 

I’m skipping over some important plot points here as I don’t want to spoil this delightful read for you, but hopefully, you get the message.  Your character’s past has given him or her disordered ways of living in the world and interacting with others.  Your characters don’t need therapists to heal their wounds though, they have you.  

You can find a lot more information on exploring your character’s wounds at K.M. Weiland’s Site: Helping Writers Become Authors and in her book Creating Character Arcs.

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s book, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, is another helpful reference.  

If you get stuck moving your story forward, think about what you need to do to move your character forward and it might give you some story momentum to speed you into Week 2 of NaNoWriMo.  

A Look at My NaNoWriMo Writing Sessions

It's nice to play with words for a warm-up before you settle into your novel writing. Image copyright Lori Gravley

Generally, I write 1,000 words an hour.  That means that most NaNo sessions for me are roughly two hours unless I’m trying to replace the ceiling in my kitchen.

Still, two hours is a good chunk out of a busy day, so I try to optimize my time.  Often my writing sessions take place right after a meal.  If I’m at a write-in, I eat and get to work. If I’m at home, I’ll have some fruit and tea and sit down to write. I write better when I’m not hungry. 

Once I have sated the rumbly in my tumbly, I settle in and open my document.  

I’ll often write some sort of warm-up, like this one, and though I’m mostly a traditional NaNo writer, I do write all my words for November, even blog posts, in a single document.  So I open up my November document and either move to the last day’s writing on my novel or to the end of the document where I right reflections on the process, blog posts, and questions to answer in my manuscript later. 

Some days, I’ll write a poem or type up notes for a poem. I’ve been known to warm up with a picture book draft.  So long as it’s writing meant for an audience (not business writing, but fiction or non-fiction related to writing.  It goes in my November document and gets counted in my word count. 

It often won’t be a part of what I count at the end of the month for NaNo words, but it helps me feel like I’m moving forward even through the messy middle or, this year, in the muddled beginning.  

Once I’m warmed up, I scroll back up to my draft and read the last 1,000 words or so.  When life is busy and frenetic, as it is right now with our kitchen renovation, my writing happens in a sort of fugue state.  I don’t always remember exactly what I wrote the day before, so re-reading reminds me of my world and my concerns. 

And, most of the time, once I’ve read those words, I’m ready to write.  Of course, that is aided by the fact that I never end at the end of something.  I end my words for the day in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of drama, in the middle of some action so that the next thing I write will be clear the next day.  

Then I write.  I finish the previous scene and start a new one. I take a look at my scene cards and my notes about the character arc.  I put myself in the setting and wander around in my imagination to see what comes up. 

Sometimes, I’ll make a deal with myself that I can’t get up from my chair, not for anything, until I’ve written a thousand words or the day’s words.  

Some days, I don’t reach my target, actually, every day since the start I’ve missed my target number of words, but at this point, I’m still writing every day and a few 5,000 word days will get my caught up to the desired NaNo total. 

Okay, eat something, get a cup of tea, visit the necessary room, and get those words done. 

What’s Working: Beat It

 

Beat cards based on Romancing the Beat. Image copyright Lori Gravley.

Okay, so I’m back to working on my original NaNo project.  I like the characters, I love their voices, and I’m interested in seeing where they’ll take me. My Wild Things revision will have to wait until December or at least until I've replaced the ceiling in the kitchen. 

The thing is, I did not plan this novel out and pantsing doesn’t work for me.  When I write by the seat of my pants, the novel seems too much of a mess to even consider revising.  

But even though I still don’t have a plan, I’m not really pantsing.  For revisions, I’ve created several decks of index cards to help guide me through character arcs and beats. Using the work of a number of authors who discuss beats, I’ve got cards that I link to my plot points.  I have another set of cards that look at character arc. 

For this novel, so far, I’ve been working through my romance beats. Using my beat cards to hit the main plot beats.  I write a beat and then I let it take me along for a few thousand words, and then I look at the next beat card.  

It’s working so far.  If you’ve never heard of beats, you might check out the screenwriting book, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. It’s one of the first books where a screenwriter shared tips for creating scripts that hit all the high points of movie making. Writers like C.S. Lakin (12 Key Pillars) and Jessica Brody (Save the Cat Writes a Novel) have taken the screenwriting beats and adapted them to fiction.  Gwen Hayes (Romancing the Beat) has taken the basic beats and applied them to romance.  

If you are a pantser and want to bring a little bit of structure to your writing or if you're a pantser and you're feeling stuck, you might check out beats.  You'll find a simplified discussion over at Storyfix.com.

Today, I start on my Young Adult Romance Beat #4, No Way #1.  My notes about this beat say

• ·     H1 (the female main character) explains out loud or internally why she will not fall in love, not now, not ever but especially with H2 (the love interest).
• ·     They both protest too much.  

So, H1’s POV scene has her committing to her current path that doesn’t include love.  Often the love interest POV scene (if you have dual POVs) will include a recognition that H1is the girl (or guy) for him (or her).  But it will also show the reader how this character’s wounds and H1s wounds are going to cause problems for their relationship as it progresses. 

If you don’t know what I mean by wounds, stay tuned. I’ll talk about wounds a little later. 

I hope your words are flowing whether they are flowing from you like a river or being directed by you in some way by your planning. The joy of writing, especially at this point in your story, is often discovering things about your character you didn’t really expect.  

Have fun. Take joy. Write when you can. Progress, not perfection.