There IS a rational explanation for all this (concept art from Mortal Kombat)
This year I’m attempting to write a novel in 22 days. For posterity, to record my trauma, and for your amusement, this is the diary of Days 2 and 3.
NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 2 (20 days to go)
Today’s target: 500 words
7.20am – I get ready for work. Everything feels heavy, like I actually ran a marathon yesterday. Partner offers no sympathy. I’m crushed, until I remember that partner is still recovering from the surgery two weeks ago (appendectomy). Oh, and that I forgot about our 9 year anniversary yesterday.
I guess I can cut them some slack. A little.
8:25-9.15am – I daydream about monsters in the car. According to the chapter plan I drew up in a hurry (the day before I started, because I’m just super prepared that way) there will be fantastical monsters coming my way very soon. Hmm… what will they look like? How many legs will I give them? What’s realistic if I’m putting them underground?
A black Honda cuts in front of me and then slows down immediately. Cursing, I slam on the brakes. That’s it, my monsters have black blood and are obnoxious assholes.
The Honda drives off, oblivious to my soon-to-be-immortalised revenge.
9.15am-6.00pm – Work (let’s skip the boring bits, shall we?)
7.30pm – Feeling smugly good, I sit down to my 500 words at the dining table.
7.34pm – … ok, I’ll be honest. I write 100 words or so and then hop onto Facebook.
7.37pm – I discover the existence of awesome people who write 4,000 words a day. My ego slowly deflates like a balloon. While I’m a puddle of latex and inferiority, I discover the existence of superhumans with halos shining out of every orifice fingertip who have managed to write the whole 50,000 words in 24 hours.
7.38pm – Deep breaths, Lee. It’s OK. Be an adult. You’re just starting out, you’ve never even finished NaNoWriMo, you’re doing really well!
7.39pm – My partner asks me why I’m crying.
7.40pm – I take deep breaths successfully. I am an adult. I read the blogs and find out that 50,000 words in 24 hours is broken down to roughly 30 words a minute. I can do that. And if I do that, my 5,000 word sprints should take me about 3 hours. That’s brilliant. I take notes for the next day.
8.15pm – I promptly get lazy. It’s just 500 words, after all. Not like 50,000 in 24 hours. I’m so relaxed that I don’t even care when my partner wanders into the room, holding a DVD.
“Do you mind if I watch Edge of Tomorrow?”
“No worries,” I say breezily. “I’ll just ignore it.”
8.28pm – Tom Cruise dies on screen. I write the rest of my words on autopilot. I shut my laptop. And then, like a mind-controlled zombie sucked in by the power of plot, I get up and join my partner on the couch, riveted.
10.30pm – Wow. That was… that was really good. I actually enjoyed that. Let’s watch ALL of the special features.
10.54pm – We watch the editing process for the movie with our jaws hanging. The script was literally written on set, during shoots. Each actor played a collaborative part in creating their own characters. Each scene worked and re-w0rked as they figured out where the story was going.
12.03am – I lie in bed, so inspired I think I might burst. Bring on tomorrow.
NaNoWriMo 2014 – Day 3 (19 days to go)
Today’s target – 5,000 words
7.50am – I open my eyes lazily, and check to see if I’m still feeling inspired. It’s not quite the blazing internal star of awesome it was yesterday, but it’s still there. Buoyed, I wake up slowly and reward myself with breakfast, before ambling to my desk.
9.20am – I commit a cardinal sin of NaNoWrimo and go back over what I wrote, as the 4k-a-day-lady suggested. I tweak and add another 500 words. Excellent.
10.11am – Still feeling pleasantly delusional, I finish editing and get started on Chapter 3. I set my timer for 10 minutes and try the minimum-of-30-words-a-minute thing. It seems to work. For inspiration, I play the following in the background.
11.40am – I hit 1,700 words. Just over one-third of the way there. Elated, I take a break and snack. I consider writing an ode to melted cheese on toast after November 2. It’s way more deserving than some random urn.
1.30pm - I write steadily. I hit 2,500 words. Then 3,000. Things are going well. I’ve already done this once before, after all. I’m beginning to hope I’ll finish this tidily and be able to enjoy my day off…
That is, of course, when the worst writer’s block I’ve ever felt chokeslams me across my keyboard.
2.15pm – I’m at Chapter 4 already, and they haven’t even made it to the main plot area. Hrnnghhhh.
3.10pm – Every word is horrific. I try word sprints. I try inspirational articles. Nothing.
3.43pm - I take a break and go on Twitter. A spambot helpfully tweets to me: We see that you do not currently have a job, Lee! We can find you a job! I block and report the account’s ass so fast that my keyboard smokes. I stare at the screen for a few seconds afterward, still not quite believing that my life has become an existential black comedy.
4.07pm – My brain attempts to tender a resignation. I angrily decline. To remind myself that whatever drivel I’m producing is (maybe) not as bad as it seems, I pull out the big guns (content warning: monster erotica).
5.00pm – I hit 4,463 words. One of my characters starts talking like a modern day English stereotype.
He’s a guard captain in a setting inspired by the Ayyubid dynasty.
I can’t decide whether I should kill him, or myself.
5.30pm - I am literally 300 words away from completing. Why am I prolonging my misery by looking at Facebook?
5.45pm – Fadfjaidjf… 5003 words.
That’s it. I’m done. I quit. I have never felt greater, meaner satisfaction in closing Scrivener down mid-sentence. Off to nurse my wounds and the corpse of my literary dreams.
6.50pm – My partner comes home, obviously tired from a long day at work. This is our conversation.
“God, work was really long today. My stitches are aching. How did you go?”
“You know how I told you on Sunday that writing was like getting blood out of a stone?”
“… yes?”
<Fried brain attempts to come up with a metaphor> “Well today, it was like… stabbing myself. Repeatedly. In the chest. With a knife.”
<Partner stares at me, eyebrow raised. Anxious that my message isn’t getting through, I pretend to stab myself several times, complete with dramatic sound effects to convey my anguish.>
My only witness to my artistic grief walks past, completely ignoring me, to go eat dinner.
NEW SEGMENT – What I learned today.
I will be honest. I hate people who whine and mope around, and that is exactly what I did for the next three hours. It took me that long for me to remember that this is the first time I’ve attempted something on this scale, and that even though I fully intend to get to those 50,000 words, what’s more important is that along the way, I learn more about how to write novel-length stories, and how to get better at it.
So. On reflection, my writer’s block came about because I misjudged some scenes and bogged down the pacing. Instead of continuing to write furiously in the hope that that will magic itself away, I’m going to try what the amazing team on The Edge of Tomorrow did and workshop as I go, playing with different points of view and recasting scenes and characters. Fingers crossed, it will work.
Or at least, not suck as much.
Hopefully.
Honestly, this process is feeling more and more like kicking myself until I freefall off a cliff.
See? There IS a rational explanation for this!
… but I’m hoping it will be worth it. So thank you, dear reader, for bearing with me this far. I’m going to go expire now, on 6,200+ words including this blog post. Until the next time!
