A CHRONICLE OF NANOWRIMO 2014: DAYS 15-20

Eowyn kills the Witch King LoTR

Yes. It was exactly like this (LoTR)

This is the diary of the final week (cue dramatic music).

To my new readers (hi!), this year I attempted to write a novel in 22 days. Spoiler alert: I did. For posterity, to record my trauma, and for your amusement, this is the diary of the final week, otherwise known as Days 15-20.

To my loyal followers, thank you. Seriously.


 

NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 15 (7 Days to Go)

Rest day, nothing to see here.


 

NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 16 (6 Days to Go)

I get my 500 words done in the morning before work. Feeling inordinately pleased with myself, I drive off feeling righteous. I am soon punished for my transgressions when my workload comes in and I realise that I won’t be able to take two days off this week as planned to do my 5,000 words.

I like to think I don’t panic. Right, I think to myself. I’m just going to have to be super diligent and professional and not spend a whole day writing 5,000 words. That’s totally doable, right? Heck, if these crazily amazing people can write 50,000 words in 24 hours, I can write 5,000 in 3.

Right?


 

NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 17 (5 Days to Go)

I have a confession to make.

At heart, I’m a reforming jerk perfectionist. As a result of this, aside from being super-competitive with myself, I also really, really like timers.

My Weapon of Choice

My Weapon of Choice

I like racing against myself. I like having to swear at myself when I know I need to write 500 words in the next 10 minutes to stay on track. I like how they make ‘dinging’ noises or give me the option to play epic music at the end like some sort of blockbuster soundtrack to my life.

Because of this, I used a timer way back in Week 1. And then abandoned it in frustration because I was just going too slowly.

Not today.

I get up early. I decide to think of myself as a professional going to their job. I sit down, plot out my 8-10 scenes that I want to crank out today, and then have breakfast and coffee like a professional.

Again, exactly like this. Only in my pyjamas. At home. With a lot more coffee.

Exactly like this. Only in my pyjamas. At home. With a lot more coffee.

At about 8.50am, I drift upstairs to my pretend office and sit down. I play around with Scrivener’s Full Screen options to minimise distractions.

And I start writing.

It’s a bit shaky at first, I’m trying to hit 30 words per minute so I can get 5,000 in 3 hours. There’s a lot of staring and switching back and forth between Scrivener and my timer just to make sure I’m on track. I hit 1,700 at around 45 minutes and feel pretty good, so I lie on the floor to recover. And then get some coffee. And then come back and keep writing.

And somehow, like a miracle, something cracks open inside me and I start writing fluidly. It doesn’t feel like professional writing, certainly – I can tell as I write that there are things that need to be rooted out and burned in a chemical fire. But I’m writing and it feels like me, like I’ve suddenly unlocked what makes me feel at home writing poetry and short stories.

I end up writing my 5,000 words in 2 hours and 10 minutes, way ahead of the target. And then, like a goddamn professional, I stand up from my desk and try to figure out if I should be dancing with joy or crying hysterically in case this magic never happens again.

I settle for eating lunch and going to work. And trying not to think about the fact that, due to my upended work week, I have to do exactly the same thing again tomorrow.


NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 18 (4 Days to Go)

Bizarrely, now that I have done 5,000 words in 2 hours and 10 minutes, I’m actually more afraid today, because this time there’s definitely a standard I can fail. The knowledge makes me jittery, enough that going through the motions pretending to be a professional just leaves me even more nervous. I feel like a failure already when I sit down to my desk at 9.05am after dithering about, an imaginary boss glaring judgementally at me from an imaginary corner office.

I open up the timer, get my scenes in order, and start again.

It takes me a little while to get back into what I can only describe as that fabled ‘flow’, like the one I somehow discovered the day before. For me, it’s where I’m solidly writing at a rate of about 48wpm, including time spent staring contemplatively at my screen as if it will tell me the answers to the universe, or more importantly, my plot and characters.

But after a few stutters and starts, and lots of lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling (my very odd form of meditation/mindfulness/recharging my writing batteries) my competitive streak kicks in. And just because I want to, I try to beat my time from the day before. I cross the 5,000 word mark at 2 hours 5 minutes.

I stare at the screen, and at the proof that yesterday wasn’t some sort of once-off, magic bullet. I think about how painful Weeks 1 and 2 of this challenge were for me, and I wonder what the hell happened. The only answer I can dredge up is the tired refrain that when you practice something, you get better and faster at it.

Part of me wants there to be something more than that. I try to think again, to go deeper

Sorry, couldn't resist. But seriously, I love this movie. Please don't judge me.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. But seriously, I love this movie. Please don’t judge me.

… and I remember that I just wrote 5,000 words in 2 hours and 5 minutes, so my capacity for thought is pretty strained at the moment.

I wander around for the rest of the day like a slowly regenerating zombie. My partner greets me at dinner. We talk. At some point, there is casual mention of the fact that we haven’t really spent much quality time with each other over the last few weeks, despite living together. Since tomorrow is a 500-words day, I feel absolutely no qualms in agreeing that this should be rectified by a date night. Score one for writing interval style, I guess.


NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 19 (3 Days to Go)

I write my 500 words, go to work, come back. I feel none of the useless, residual guilt I usually do for not writing. I’ve bloody earned this.

I get ready for my special date night with my partner. This involves a number of very important steps:

  1. Eating dinner
  2. Showering
  3. Hopping into pyjamas
  4. Settling into bed
  5. Spending 2+ hours playing Plants vs Zombies 2 together on my partner’s iPad.

And no. That is not a metaphor.


NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 20 (2 Days to Go)

I wake up and hop on the NaNoWriMo Facebook page while eating breakfast. It’s October 31. In between the hilarious, the tacky, and the absolutely, mind-blowing amazing Halloween costumes that populate my newsfeed, the same posts keep popping up from different people. Excitement. Nerves. Fear. Energy. I can’t wait until tomorrow. How many hours left for you? Less than 24 hours in this part of the world. Time to start the countdown. I can’t wait to deeply traumatise and then murder all of my characters.

Swept up by this buoyant wave of happiness and energy, I look at my plan. Today is meant to be another 500 word day, a breath before I write my final 5,000 words tomorrow. But since it’s been rare that I’ve stopped at exactly 500 or 5,000 words, I can see that in actuality, I only have 4,500 words until I hit the big 50k.

My muse, which has spent the last few weeks grudgingly helping me with my 50,000 word challenge while eagerly throwing all these other writing ideas at me completely unrelated to my current novel, starts whispering in my ear.

Hey, do you know what would be a great idea? We could finish off this one today and start another 50k project in November! After all, you’ve been really enjoying writing so much, right? So we should totally keep writing, even though the reason you started early was so you would still have a family at the end of the year! Ooh, I know. Let’s write the story about poetry classes and assassins and the universe. That one would be great! Or maybe the space western one with an imperial spy and sci-fi magic! And after that, we could jump off a cliff together and go swimming with sharks and sleep under a coconut tree!

I am ashamed to say that I entertain the muse for a moment, and then remember that I really do want to still have a family in November.

… but that doesn’t mean I still can’t try to finish tonight, after work.

I write 500 words over breakfast, and almost 200 during my commute. I’m late to work. Work goes late. When I get back, I find myself procrastinating. Oh yeah, since I can write 5,000 words in 2 hours 5 minutes I should be able to do 4,000 in way less than that.

Some mistakes are so great the only appropriate response is the Picard Facepalm

Some mistakes are so great that this is the only appropriate response

That’s how I find myself starting only at 9.30pm. And staring at the blank screen, struggling to come up with the required scenes to finish off my story.

Oh crap. I’ve… I’ve never actually written the ending to a novel-length story before.

I’m frozen for about 2 minutes before I realise that I’ve felt this way before. Very recently, in fact, when I was confronted by the horrors of The Dreaded Middle of the Story. And I remember what worked for me then, and what I need to do.

CHALLENGE. ACT. DISASTER.

I plot like a crazy person. Body parts fly – I break a character’s leg and another’s arm. My protagonist gets stabbed. Great dimensional light pours over the world.

I write. It’s painful, stuttering and staggering drunkenly to the finish line. In desperation, I turn to music.

It does the trick. It feels like I’m struggling uphill, fighting a thousand dragons, but I am struggling uphill fighting a thousand dragons with the most epic soundtrack.

And so, 19 days after I first sat down and set out to do 5,000 words, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life appears.

Scrivener Targets 2014-10-31 at 11-43pm

I take a moment.

And then I look back at my screen, because I’m not quite finished yet.

Part of me wants to stop. I keep going, for a little while longer. I cross the 5,000 word mark, out of nostalgia. And I write the last line of the story, and it makes it all worth it.

I sit back.

I’ve done it.

Goodnight.


Thanks again to everyone who’s been with me every step of the way. You know who you are.

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