Something New for NaNo

It’s NaNo Time! (Nearly)

Yup, coming up on that time of year where a lot of people around the world go mildly insane trying to write 50,000 words during November. Other people sit back and watch, cheer, and jeer.

Where will I be? Historically, I write the 50,000 words by Thanksgiving and cheer everyone on. I’ve been debating the value of my continued participating in this annual event for years. In my mind, NaNoWriMo has value, but it’s to those who struggle with it. I don’t struggle with it, so why do it? I know I can write 50k in 30 days. If I push it, I can write 80k, although my family hates me for it. Does that mean I should modify my goal? Should I step aside and cheer on everyone else?

For me it comes down to the reason for doing it. I see NaNoWriMo as being for those who struggle. Namely, for the new writers. I want to encourage those who have an idea for a book, but haven’t set aside the time to get that first draft down on paper. (Figuratively speaking.) NaNo is for those writers still fighting with that first draft. Maybe it’s their first book, maybe it’s their third. It doesn’t matter. The point is, they’re struggling with it.

Critics argue Nano puts quantity of words over quality of words. Yes, it does. Sort of. Maybe. Here’s the thing on that: the goal is the word count, not the quality of the words themselves, so that criticism is true. However, experienced writers know a couple of things that those critics clearly aren’t considering:

1.   Increasing your words/hour doesn’t mean you’re writing crap. Authoress RJ Blain looked at three of her mindsets while writing, the words/hour that corresponded with each, and the quality of writing at each. Just because she writes faster sometimes doesn’t mean she writes worse. The blog post is worth a peek. I concur fully.
2.  When you’re inspired, your words/hour increases as does the quality of your writing. The experienced writers know the trick is to stay excited and/or inspired about your work. If the author is excited/inspired it shows in the writing and the reader picks up on it. A byproduct is that it gets that book written faster. At least the first draft, which is what NaNo is all about.

Don’t be concerned about quality anyway. First drafts are rough, they’re meant to be, and that’s what revisions are for. You’re supposed to put that quality concern aside for NaNoWriMo. Too many aspiring authors get caught in the editing trap: they write a first chapter, then edit it. Write a second chapter, then edit it. Then they decide the first chapter doesn’t work anymore and go back and fix it. Now the second chapter isn’t working anymore and they fix that. At this rate, they’ll never finish the book.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: when writing, the first chapter doesn’t matter. It’s a jumping off point, but it’s expendable. You may know after chapter two that chapter one needs to be fixed. Fine, but don’t fix it yet. Don’t you dare touch it until after you’ve finished the book. It’ll need to be fixed again after chapter three. And again after chapter four. And you’ll need to delete chapter one and fix chapter two after chapter seven, and so on. The point is: until you write “The End” you won’t know what really needs to be fixed in those first chapters, so there’s no point wasting your time doing it as you go.

That’s what NaNo is about: putting pressure on you in the form of a wordcount and deadline that you don’t’ have time to go back and fix things. You have to forge on. It’s brilliant, and it’s exactly what many new writers need to get that first manuscript finished.

Now, back to my dilemma: I’m not a new writer. I don’t need the wordcount/deadline pressure. I know not to edit as  go. I know how to forge on. Do I need NaNo?

Yes and No. Not really. I still do it every year, and I easily make my word count. Right now, I have a novel I’m working on to finish a series. I should finish that. I have another in extreme revisions (so extreme you really need to hear an echo when you read that). I should work on that. I have other books outlined, things I may not get to for years – except for NaNoWriMo.

This is the one month of the year I get to pretend to be a new writer again. Sort of. I still have to do my normal author-y things, but writing – for NaNo it’s always something new. A new book, a new concept, a new genre. Romance is too easy now, I can’t write that for NaNo, it’s not a challenge. I’ve done YA a couple of times (didn’t actually finish them, I may go back and do that.) I’m somewhat scary as a YA writer. I finished a zombie book (there’s a reason you haven’t seen it). Last year I wrote Rerun, my first suspense novel, and finished it up at 65k - the shortest novel I’ve ever written. This year…I’m not sure yet. Will I participate in NaNo? Probably. I’ll write something new.

I'm a Literary Psychopath

I’ve come to the horrifying realization that I’m a literary psychopath. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why. Spoilers. Not a literal psychopath, a literary one. There’s a very big difference. Please don’t send people with torches or the police to my door. 

Most writers know that some of their counterparts, if they’re not among the sect themselves, like to kill the occasional character. It depend on what you write. If you write murder mysteries, it’s a sure bet you get to do this. Thrillers? Almost guaranteed. Literary fiction? Maybe, it depends. Write it and see where it goes. SciFi/Fantasy? The same. Romance? Um . . . not usually. Not graphically anyway. Long death scenes just aren’t romantic. (Take that Shakespeare!)

I write romance – usually - and I kill characters. Habitually, it turns out. But I don’t draw it out, except once. Well, and I have another one coming up . . . never mind. I also write literary thrillers, but that’s a new thing. Since I killed a character something like five times, I decided maybe that one wasn’t romance after all.

It’s okay, it’s good. It’s healthy. I save my emotional scenes (death, sex, whatever) for when I’m in the appropriate mood for them. When Hubby has a bad day, he takes it out on the dishes. Pots slam against the counter as he makes dinner, or unloads the dishwasher (and I shoot dirty looks to The Boy for not having done it already because it’s his job!) When I have a bad day, I calmly walk to my computer, lock myself in my room, and kill a character or otherwise ruin their life. The Lexi Frost and Thousand Words series? I’ve had those mapped in general for years. And I’ve been writing key scenes for years. I still have to write the actual books and jigsaw in the scenes I wrote a year or two ago, but the biggies I’ve got written or outlined because I was mad at someone or just really had to write a good sex scene and knew these characters hooked up at this point in the future. It’s the unexpected sex scenes I have to write now. Pretty weird for someone who doesn’t plot things as a rule.

And yet I still haven’t found a way to kill someone off by feeding them to piranha. (Everyone needs goals.)

Anyway, writing death scenes helps. It releases a lot of tension. Writing the aftermath of the death of someone from the viewpoint of someone who was close to them is even better. A lot of emotion there. (Okay, that’s worthy of the romance genre.) For those who enjoy writing, I suggest considering this as an exercise, assuming of course you have a supply of tissues on hand and no small children who are going to interrupt and ask you what’s wrong. It’s really difficult to explain a connection to a fictional character to a child.

“Your imaginary friend died?”

“No, honey, he’s not my . . . Yes. My imaginary friend died.” I killed him by having his parachute fail to open. Then his backup got tangled, forcing him to struggle with it and blowing him off course. He landed in a tree, breaking several bones. Falling from the tree, he then fell backward down a ravine where he landed among boulders and was bit by a rattlesnake.

“That’s sad.”

“Yes.” It was overkill. Literally literary overkill.

NaNo - Did I Write Garbage?

There’s an argument that during NaNoWriMo (and you thought we were done with this) you write a lot of ‘garbage’ because you’re frantically trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days and therefore not paying attention to quality. I disagreed with this oft-heard discouragement partially because I simply didn’t feel I edited any more ‘garbage’ from NaNo books than non-NaNo books, and partially because I think those critics are missing the point of NaNoWriMo. Some writers get so bogged down in making every sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter “perfect” that they never finish the book. NaNo is all about solving that problem. Making it “perfect” (and let’s be real, true perfection is subjective) is largely in editing and you have to have something to edit.

But I didn’t have any real data to back it up. So, let’s embark on a long-term project and explore the process, shall we?

I ended NaNo at 58,719 words. Yay. Then I came to a writing crisis and had to make some decisions about where I was going with this. So I took what I had and formatted it for Kindle to put it on Hubby’s tablet to see what he thought. Of course I had some disjointed scenes where I knew this was scene H (for example) but it was placed where B should be and scene G was only a three line idea. And some “(Look into this@@)” notes next to things that I looked into and removed. Mostly. And I changed the setting twice between when I started and this point. I also changed my male protagonist’s career, so I went and fixed those little tidbits and generally cleaned things up a bit. I even put in some general ideas on where chapters were going to be based on plot break, as opposed to word/page count, but the word count/chapter is oddly even in this one so far. Only chapter seven (in version 0.25) is radically ‘off’ in the word count range.

Anyway, back to my original statement, which was that some think you write a lot of garbage doing NaNo because you’re rushing. (Fidgets nervously.) I didn’t do a real edit here, this was making it readable and getting it ready to format for Kindle for a test reader.

I’m at 43,721 words now. Yes, I lost 14,998 words. Yes, I’m a little surprised, or I was at first. No, I’m not upset about it. No, I’m not changing my position that I wrote a lot of garbage because I was trying to write too fast. Here’s why:

I had a very vague idea of where I was going with this book when I started, not a detailed outline. I wasn’t even confident in the ending. That’s what sparked this writing crisis. It wasn’t that I didn’t like where the book was going, or I wasn’t comfortable with it, but I know my limits. I read and write certain genres. I’ve ventured into writing a genre I didn’t read before, it didn’t go well. I was starting to do it again. I was turning a romance book into a suspense novel. Now romantic suspense is fine, but not mystery suspense. It’s not in my arsenal.

So, do I take a break and see what it takes to add writing thriller and suspense to my arsenal and then go back and trim some romance scenes, or do I stick with familiar ground and say ‘this is primarily a romance’ and trim the scenes that were leading it off track? I chose option two. And I hadn’t connected those chapters (one is 5330 words, the other is 9991 words) to the main body of the book yet. We’ll call them chapters P and R, they’re that far down the line. No damage done, except to my word count.

Were they garbage? No. I’m saving them. I may use them somewhere else. Together with what I already have, the book is too suspense/thriller and not enough romance. Alone, each could be the major complication in a single book.

I believe I’ve said something like this before: Don’t fuss over making a single chapter or scene perfect until you finish the whole book, you might end up cutting it. I’ve done it before, and I just did it again. It’s part of the process sometimes. If you’re an uber-detailed plotter, you might escape this, but it’s really not as heartbreaking as it sounds.

Be Careful What You Wish For was a NaNo book and I cut the first chapter off of that. That first chapter was a prologue, now it’s the short story Meet Olive (free on Goodreads or ToriBrooks.com). And these two chapters may yet see the light of publication. See? It’s not so bad.

Now we’ll see what happens to those 43,721 words after I finish the rest of the book, revise it, and subject it to readers and an editor. How many will survive that? I did say it was a long-term project.