This is a metaphor.
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 4 and 5.
NaNoWriMo 2014 – DAY 4 (18 days to go)
Today’s target: 500 words
I go to work. I come back from work. I go to the gym. Today, I bring along my little brother. He’s an adult, but severely autistic, so he’ll always be ‘little’ for me.
He likes to swim, so I let him hang out in the water while I kill myself on gym equipment for a while in an effort to find peace. Then I sit down in the muggy heat of the indoor pool to write.
I do my 500 words by clawing at random scenes.
I go home.
My brother and partner both ask me how the story is going. I think I word-vomit at them. They give me impeccable advice about changing points-of-view to add to the story and to just keep going.
I go to bed hopeful.
NaNoWriMo 2014 – Day 5 (17 days to go)
Today’s target – 5,000 words
I decide to be a lazy #$@# and sleep in.
This is a mistake.
By the time I’m up, I’m groggy and have to have extra coffee. I sit down at my desk and remember all the things I learned from the last time I attempted this. I check my story table in Word, try to visualise the scene, and start writing without thinking too hard.
This means that my group of characters runs into a cavern with giant spiders.
I would like to take a moment to assure you all that I’m a grown-ass adult who can handle their own shit, and that I have even co-existed peacefully for a week with a huntsman almost as long as my forearm.
But I still really don’t like spiders.
I decide that this free-writing thing was probably a bad idea.
#
My characters kill ALL of the spiders. I plod steadily along. Sweet buttcheeks, I might actually finish early today!
I should really learn to stop jinxing myself.
I get to around 3,3400 words, and that is when I meet The Wall.
#
The Wall looks somewhat like this:
However, this is also not entirely accurate. Specifically, this stock image has clearly been taken in such a manner that the model doesn’t actually have to launch themselves, spreadeagled, face-first into the wall, in the pursuit of art.
But this is real life. And my real life is not a stock image.
… well, that is, unless it’s as existentially terrifying as these.
I examine the pain and realise it comes comes more from the frustration of how goddamn close I was. Also, the odd feeling of being completely divorced from my hands. It feels like my brain’s left me while I was at work, without so much as a Dear John letter. And then burned all of my books, just to be extra spiteful. Bastard.
What I do next, I am ashamed of.
I start picking random scenes that I have already written and adding unnecessary details. Going back to fill in characters that I will soon kill off brutally. Writing something from another angle. Spending unnecessary time ornamenting a city. I pair this method with a timer and exploit both of them brutally until I’ve hit 4,000 words. And then I sit and do 100-word sprints until the end, and until my pristine Scrivener document is full of pointless prose that I will later eviscerate.
But hey, I get there!
What I learned today:
1. You can apparently word vomit your way past hitting the wall.
2. Having never run an actual marathon before, however, I would like to say perhaps don’t try this in real life.
3. Even if you feel like a zombie, as long as you are a zombie who knows how to type, you can get to your word count without stopping to refuel on brains.
4. I’ve just spent a week killing off over 100 characters, and it’s probably done something to my mind. Oh, and I’m interviewing potential recruits tomorrow for my work place.
5. May the God(s)/Spirits/Atheists have mercy on their souls.