Why I'm not joining the NaNoWriMo cult

November is the principal month of worship in the cult of NaNoWriMo (what the uninitiated may call the "National Novel Writing Month"). It is chiefly for those whose nervous fingers cannot avoid the succulent keys. Until 2014, I had never been able to participate because of its unfortunate scheduling. You see, November is the fattiest meat of the fall semester and tough to cut; it's when I have the most day-job work to do. Sure, I could write a draft of a novel in a month - if I had no day job to tend to, if I had no other disruptions, and if I had the idea in advance. But that is really the challenge of it.

I could not participate in the NaNoWriMo celebration of 2016 because I was in the thick of a write-in campaign for President of the United States, as the candidate of the Bunny Party. Needless to say, I lost. (You can read about my defeat here.) By then, there was no more time in the month to write 50,000 words and win it. And if I decide to start, I must win it. I started my epic fantasy tome during that NaNoWriMo, perhaps to distract me from the pain of losing, and got the 55,000 with not too much trouble. The finished novel is 230,000 words but vivid, lean prose.

The 2015 celebration month occurred just as I finished my then-latest novel, A GIRL CALLED WOLF, written mostly during the summer when I was stuck in Beijing, China, teaching a university course. I could not stop preparing it for publication just to start writing something new - something so new that I didn't even have an idea. And I had the busy day-job things to do. So I bowed out.

In 2014, with my vampire novel sent out into the world just in time for Halloween, I was free of projects. I decided to give it a go, hell or high water, day job be damned! I had no idea as of October 31, so I grabbed an unfinished sci-fi novella that had been sitting around for many years and plunked it into the microwave for 90 seconds. Then served it to my NaNoWriMo muse. THE MASTERS' RIDDLE (still a working title) was about a little alien captured by mean Earth people, who escapes and tries to make his way home. For a quartet of weeks it was happening. I thought I would finish it. I "won" by completing 50,000+ words during the 30 days of the month. Granted, I started with a couple thousand and an outline but I finished with more than 55,000 words, anyway, thus earning me a cool sticker. But the novel remains unfinished at about 70,000 words. I lost that loving feeling when I hit a plot conundrum; before I could figure it out, I was compelled back into day-job stuff.

November for me is typically the lull season. The past few years I have had ideas stew during November and take root in a Word file sometime in January or February. I pound the keyboard through the spring months and cruise into the final page somewhere in the middle of the summer. I revise and edit into the fall and voila! a new novel is born. 

Then it hits me: the lull. Writers know what this is and dread it. The Lull Month is full of doubts. Did I just write a bunch of crapola? Will I ever get another idea? What in the world will happen to me if I can't write anything else? 

Then spring comes and everything blossoms - although, for me, it's usually in December or January. And the process starts over again. November? Not the best time for me.

In 2014, I wrote my medical thriller vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN on the above schedule. In 2015, I wrote a novel about an orphaned Inuit girl who grows up and saves the world, A GIRL CALLED WOLF. Now I am once more in that schedule, having finished the sequel to A DRY PATCH OF SKIN and too busy with revisions to dive into a new project. I am a serial monogawriter, after all. One book at a time. Besides, it's the lull month again and I have no ideas. I still have not finished the sci-fi novel from last year's NaNoWriMo but it would be unfair to try to use that again to achieve some dubious fame. 

There is nobody in my circle who would be impressed at me writing 50,000 words in a month. When I was again stuck in Beijing to teach a course in 2016, I pounded out 72,000 words of my 230,000 word EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS novel (as well as a 33,000 word erotic novella that shall remain unpublished). Lots of free time, ok? Those who know me, know I can do it. 

This past summer (2017), I wrote 55,000 words of my 2014 vampire novel's sequel, SUNRISE, while sitting in a hotel room in Beijing and teaching a class on the university campus across the street twice a week. (I blogged about that experience here.) However, I've always been a quality over quantity type of person and go through many waves of revision, tweaking a word here or there until I cannot contain the urge more.

Nevertheless, I shall cheer on those who choose to dive once again into uncharted waters - for what could be more uncharted than the lexical spaces within the gray matter of a twisted mind? 

The goal for the blessed celebrants of NaNoWriMo is to create from sacred mind-fire a 50,000 word book. By definition, that is the minimum length for something called a novel. That seems to be easy enough. My previous novels have been in the range of 72,000 to 128,000 words. My epic fantasy, being an epic fantasy, rose to 230,000 words. However, let us not forget the time factor: one month - with the day job looming precariously over everything. That 50,000 word goal means 1,667 words per day for 30 days. You can write that much over lunch - or between classes, as I did. (My students often complain about writing 500 words per week.)

Good luck to all, and to all a long night!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Is this the year for you?

(I seriously doubt it's for me.)

2015. There. I said it.  (Actually, I wrote it.)

And so it begins: another year of the blogging virus. Will any of us survive?

On Saturday, I felt a pang in my side. A pang is non-descript, a physical sensation that has no physical cause. A chimera, a mystery, a riddle wrapped in flimsy flesh. But I felt it.

The pang expanded, filled my torso until I almost could not breathe. For a few precious moments I thought that was the end for me, the beginning of not-me, my doppelganger. I checked my daily nutritional consumption to investigate the nature of what may have prompted the pang. I considered events of recent days, dismissing each of them summarily as unlikely causes.

I thought it best to rest, so I laid down. (Grammarians need not be concerned, at this point, for I actually did open a bag of duck feathers and spread them around on the floor.) I was already near the floor, you see, so I took my leisure there, close to the undercarriage of society, and there did I nap.

A resurgent pang awoke me, however, called me to rise and rise I did, like the morning sun in the land of the morning calm. Suddenly, I knew the source of my pang. Regret. It's always about regret. Usually somewhere in the plural. Regrets. And there would be more: a year's worth of them, surely.

The little bird outside, robinesque in its twittering, clenching firmly the bending, bouncing twig, dared suggest that a new day had finally dawned, and so I yawned. Already it was year 2015 on the standard calendar. Such an artificial construct! And I wondered: how had I managed, despite myself, to have reached this date? 

I recalled sometime in year 1984 wondering how I could have possibly reached that date, given all I knew or had done (or not done). At the time, I felt as though I had been blessed by a fistful of free hamburger coupons. That exuberance had caused me to reflect deeply on 1975 and the severe dismay I had felt for so many of those months. Much worse than 1962 when all I worried about were toys. Then, in 1999, I again faced the dark abyss and considered whether or not I could make that leap of faith and land sure-footed on the good side of Y2K. (I did.)

And then year 2004 and year 2008 came and went with much hurrah and much sighing, like any good matinee down at the multiplex. Luck of the draw. Everything begins and ends, after all, and you hardly ever see the smoke and the mirrors behind the dog and pony show. You see what you want to see and you get what you pay for. What comes free is always of questionable vintage. The peanuts are free, of course. And the can of soda, too--unless you sit in Business class. There the wine is free.

In fact, this entire holiday period seems drawn from a deep dream. For reason which still remain hidden, I gathered myself into a long box and later awoke and climbed out of that box, rather vampire-like in my proclivities and mannerisms if not for my skin condition. That is not quite how I wished to be, you must understand, but there I was: an automaton driven forth through the streets of some large foreign city, perpetually lost, always on guard and mute, unclear as to my destination. It was a nightmare but without the horse.

It seemed as though I was taken to a temple high on a mountainside and for a brief moment I believed I would be given the opportunity to leap off the top and fly, fly, fly away home. But no, not that. It's never that simple. Instead, the sordid experiments began and for several days there was no technology allowed but for the glasses I always wore. No clothes or shoes, either, only a thin robe and straw sandals. And winter had come. The food was rice and cabbage, and boiled tofu if I was behaving myself. And tea. Lots of tea. But no Q & A. LOL was swiftly punished.

Thus I did not speak, only listened; nobody was saying anything anyway. The world was reduced to birdsong, wind, heartbeats, and the disconcerting creaks of tired timbers along the floor I traversed from morning chant to afternoon meditation to evening sleep. After a couple days, I thought I was imagining everything, as though it were all a dream within a dream within a fortune cookie within a snowball set somewhere safe yet sullen. I was a muffin without a paper wrapper. And coffee was far, far away.

Then the curse broke and I was flying--yes, at long last, like a scrawny, half-starved bird, wax wings holding tight, soaring high to the ancient castle on the top of another, better mountain. And there I was hooked by long talons and wrestled inside through a latticed portal, placed on a davenport of Naugahyde and made to chirp my cute English words as though I were an expert. Or someone's prized pet. Occasionally I would be given a tasty treat. Mostly, I listened, for there was much I did not understand.

Not sure what exactly happened--though fairly certain it was not quite a dream (surely not a sleeping one, that is), but I nevertheless hold out for the possibility that I could have been fully conscious yet simply unaware of what was unfolding and refolding around me, so Laundromat-like in its efficiency, as it were--I chose to accept all of it. Indeed, what else could I do? 

And now the waking dream comes to an end--as all realities must at the start of a new page, the first of many: pages filled line by line with regrets, or the occasional cross-out of things that surprisingly went well, day by day. The earth still turns, still bleeds, still crow-caws, and humor is a rare delicacy. But now the pillows have burst, the clocks have been smashed, and the ringing of the school bell awaits. I shun reality like fermented bean paste mixed through with whole dried minnows and a side of kimchi. Because I can. Because I must. Because there is pizza.

If I somehow make it to year 2016, it will be only because of you: my invisible, semi-fictitious, semi-delicious companions on the rocky road to somewhere muffin-warm and marshmallow-soft, sweet and sour like breaded chicken cubes, a rare respite akin to real retirement in the rustic inn along the narrow side of the road, just beneath that crooked, towering mountain covered with ice and snow, and the precariously poised stones tilting there, ready to fall from its heights. Yes, that one. 

We are all in it together. Let's make the most of our fresh set of downs!

BTW, FYI, Year of the Lamb!

--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.