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. 

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. 

Gang Aft Aglay and other Voices I Hear in My Head

Old kitchens have many layers. 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

gang aft aglay. 

                            “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

A good translation of the title of today’s post would be, go often astray. Maybe you’ve heard the quote before, as I have, as the “best laid plans.”  Either way, it’s in my head today, with a strong Scottish burr, because that darn kitchen put a bit of a wrench in my plans. 

And now, it’s 5 p.m., and I have not written a word today. 

Last night, we filled the truck with construction debris. I have more cabinets to dismantle, so we needed to go to the landfill when it opened this morning at 7:30 a.m. Then we had to load yard waste; then I needed a shower and breakfast.  Holy, moly, one thing after another, but the good news is that most of the demolition is done.  The bad news is I think I’m going to have to take the ceiling down and put a new one in.  

But, I don’t have to do that in the mornings.  I can do that in the afternoons, taking a writing break when my back gets too sore.  

And, to my credit, I’m sitting down to write now, so there’s that.  There was a time in my life where if I’d missed some goal at a set time I would get so down on myself that I would throw my hands in the air and not do anything:  all or nothing syndrome.  

Now, even if I miss goals, I look for ways that I can make progress on whatever I’m working towards.  There’s another useful slogan for this: progress not perfection.  

I’ll close with some Southern wisdom: Tomorrow is another day (Scarlett O’Hara). 

Old kitchens have so many layers. 

I hope you meet your goals today even if you don’t meet them in exactly the way you wanted to. 

Writing Amid the Chaos

Image copyright Lori Gravley

2019 has been a difficult year.  A young man I considered a third son died at the end of 2018. A friendship that I thought would last a lifetime ended painfully.  My marriage of 28 years gave its last gasp. My dog is dying. My mother’s Alzheimer’s has become so apparent even she admits she might need some help. My younger son has made some difficult and painful choices on his journey to adulthood. Yep, suckity for sure.  

Many of the difficulties are still in flux. I live in a 128-square-foot trailer that was once my office behind the beautiful 1880s farmhouse that I’ve worked hard to make a home but that we’ll be selling in the new year. We’re filing the dissolution papers in the new year for financial reasons even though it’s painful to have to interact and just seems to be prolonging the suffering. My son’s choices still haven’t resolved themselves. My dog is dying slowly, and while I’m glad to still have her companionship, it's difficult to see her suffer.  

But my word for 2019 is flourish, and, you know what, in many ways, I am. I’ve almost completed a new professional credential.  I’ve sent my work into the world. My writing is stronger than it has ever been. I love my vintage trailer, and this year I bought a van. Next year, I’ll live part-time in my trailer on my mom’s property, helping my stepfather care for her; part-time in hotel rooms for work; and part-time in a 21-foot Ram Promaster that has been made into a beautiful Winnebago RV. My tiny dreams are coming true in interesting ways. I am hurting. I am grieving. But I am flourishing. 

This year will be my eleventh NaNo and my tenth win.  I’ve built a new young adult world and made some interesting plans for this year’s novel, and I have an outline for another adult romance that I’ll draft in 2020 (I was prepared early, but then I changed my mind and decided to write YA instead).  The trick or treaters are knocking on the door, and I’m still working on my beats, but that’s okay.  I’ll wake up tomorrow, plan some, write some, downsize and pack a little more, and snuggle with my puppy.  

Really, I’m always writing in the middle of some sort of chaos.  But aren’t we all.  When I first participated in NaNo, my son was twelve.  I wrote while my husband was in Iraq.  I wrote through our first separation. I wrote when my older son and his then-girlfriend (now wife) moved to town for college and grad school.  

Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago, “There are other months you can write novels in.”  And I do write all year long, but I love the wonderful collective energy that is NaNoWriMo, and I welcome this creative collective as a still point in the middle of my shifting world. 

I hope you will, too. There will always be reasons not to write.  There will always be unfavorable external circumstances, but that’s one thing I’ve learned from NaNo, it doesn’t matter what’s happening on the outside, I can create stillness inside of my daily writing practice.