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From Fifth Grade to NaNoWriMo

The first book I ever wrote was during my fifth grade year in Mrs. Young’s homeroom class. She asked us to write a How-To book and to consider ourselves author and artist.

I didn’t think I knew how to do anything well. I played softball every summer, but I did cartwheels in the outfield during most games. I made one attempt at soccer then quit when the ball hit me in the face. I was a skinny, asthmatic kid with low self-confidence and little willingness to take risks. Still, I liked Mrs. Young and I was a dedicated student. I sat on the assignment and observed my fellow fifth graders for a few days. A popular phrase flew around the halls of elementary school that week and sparked an idea for a story: gag me with a spoon!

I remember my excitement as the idea formed in my budding writer’s mind. My heart raced. I ran around the house with wide eyes and hair on end searching for any and all loose sheets of construction paper and a few crayons. The assignment was due the next day; time was my enemy. I sat down at the kitchen table and feverishly scratched out a first (and last) draft.

My idea was solid. Using my author’s creative license, I tweaked the phrase a bit and titled my book How to Gag Yourself with a Spatula. I dressed a quirky Mr. Duck in a black bow tie and gave him prestigious role of the main character.  Mr. Duck’s words flowed onto the paper with ease. He explained the equipment needed, the risks involved, and finally the crucial steps towards the climax of a spatula induced gag.

I finished the book with a bold “THE END” and shook my papers straight. I stapled them together and slid them carefully in my folder. The next day at school, I held a finished book in my hands and waited, for my turn, to read my story aloud. The book was a big hit. Mrs. Young leaned her head back and laughed. I stood at the front of the classroom enveloped in a cloud of joy, elation, success!

That experience, at ten years old, of leaning over sheets of construction paper and scattered crayons with wild eyes and quick hands, reminds me of my last few days of NaNoWriMo. Last week, the words poured out slow and rough. With my idea only partially formed, the main character walked around the story like a cardboard cut out. I closed the file and flipped through other writer’s blogs, where I found solace and inspiration.

Yesterday, Linda Cassidy and Natalie Whipple wrote out exactly what I’d been thinking all afternoon. Recently, Ann M. Lynn’s post reminded me that even though NaNoWriMo is mostly about word count, it’s also about the story. Even in a writng frenzy, authors must avoid developing bad writing habits. And, the last several posts on Cathryn Grant’s blog told of another strategy: balance NaNoWriMo with other ongoing projects.

I took an afternoon and handwrote some thoughts about my main character. I jotted down a few prospective scenes. I let go of my obsession with word count. I picked two short stories to rewrite and refine during NaNoWriMo breaks.

This week, I have a clear idea of the story I want to write. My main character is taking shape slowly. She’s filling out like the inflatable pool I struggled to blow up last summer for the kids. I’ve expelled a lot of hot air, fought off an asthma attack, readjusted my focus. Now, the plastic is finally lifting off the ground. Last night, I closed the file at a little over 19,000 words.

 

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Writing with Tunnel Vision

For various reasons, I slowed down a bit with my NaNoWriMo novel this weekend. The decision to take a mini-break was easy, since this year’s NaNoWriMo experience has felt, in some ways, like I’m trudging through six inches of mud. I’m making progress, but it’s slow and sticky and I keep getting stuck.

I turned to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones again and flipped through my December issue of The Writer magazine. In both the book and the magazine, I found crucial tips or guidelines – or maybe even rules of the trade – that I often miss when I write, whether it’s for NaNoWriMo or just in general.

In The Writer, I saw myself as I read Mary Miller’s “A Case for Plot.” She starts out by saying she never cared much for plot, because she “believed that in order for things to happen in [her] stories, they had to be happening in [her] life.” Like Mary Miller, I keep my life as level as I can, because I, too, am a lover of structure and routine. I prefer logical steps to accomplish any goal and minimal risks. But, when I write with my idiosyncrasies and philosophies in the forefront of my mind, I make it difficult to allow a character in a story to take action or risks.

For instance, in the first 10,000 words of my current NaNoWriMo draft, my main character observes way too much of life’s happenings from behind a window, either the kitchen window or the living room window. Maybe that’s her thing, her own idiosyncrasy. Or, maybe that’s more of me seeing the story through my limited vision.

Maybe my main character would rather step outside and press her nose up against the neighbors window, be more forthright in her snooping. I, myself, wouldn’t be quite so daring. I tend to hide behind the edge of a curtain or to open the slit of the blinds just a smidgen. But, that’s me. I’m only the writer. If I reconsider my main character in her own right, then maybe, as Mary Miller puts it, my main character will “step in and do something, or I’ll get to know her better and her lack of action will feel like a choice instead of just passivity.”

Natalie Goldberg’s chapters “Be Specific” and “Big Concentration,” complement Mary Miller’s article. First, Natalie Goldberg suggests we name things, like a specific flower or a tree, when we write. In naming an object with more specificity, “it takes us closer to the ground. It takes the blur out of our mind” (p. 70). Rather than show the reader a moment in a story from a general distance, naming things keeps the reader present, in the exact moment, and makes the experience more realistic. Second, Natalie Goldberg suggests we widen our concentration on a character and add environmental clues, like a sentence about the temperature or a background noise or even the color of the sky. In this way, we remind ourselves, and our readers, that “the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do” (p. 72). It all sounds simple, so simple that I forget to do it.

Each time I force my main character to stay behind the kitchen window (because that’s what I would do) and look straight across the yard to the neighbor’s kitchen window, I isolate her. I force the reader to decipher a story through tunnel vision, and I shortchange the experience. If, instead, I let my main character open up the front door, get hit by a brisk night air, sneak under the dark shadow of a large oak tree, and let goosebumps rise up on her arms, the reader has more to consider and is more vested in the story.  Are the goosebumps from the night chill? Or, are they in anticipation of what she might see once she climbs the front steps and presses her nose up against the cold, glass pane?

Tomorrow, I will have a little more time to spend on the story. By pushing my writer-self to the side and by widening my character’s perspective, I hope to travel easier along the plot line.

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Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1986. Print.
Miller, Mary. “A Case for Plot.” The Writer Dec. 2009: 15-16. Print.

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Missing Mrs. Wilson

I woke up this morning, excited that it’s Wednesday. I have logged over 6300 words for my NaNoWriMo novel (which will most likely turn into a very long short story, but that’s okay). I thought a quick post on Wednesday’s word would be a nice little break.

After my laptop warmed up, I clicked on over to Wordsmith.org. Today’s word is nihilarian – one who does useless work.

That’s a terrible stream of words for a writer to read smack dab in the middle of week number one of NaNoWriMo.

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Writing every day for 30 days straight isn’t useless. I know that. What is useless is my right and left hand that keep typing the letters b-o-l-t every other paragraph. Bolt here, bolt there. He bolted again. He’ll get whiplash from all that bolting if my fingers don’t stretch a little further and start typing something different, like bound or hightail it or even just walked away.

What isn’t useless is the strikethrough tool, which lets me keep all those repetitive words, plus the choppy scenes they describe. I wish I had used strikethrough on the first day of NaNoWriMo. I wrote a lovely opening scene with an elderly Mrs. Wilson as she got out of bed at midnight. Then, later that day, her rise at midnight seemed unimportant and took the story in the wrong direction. I hesitated to use strikethrough, since that felt like cheating, like I was padding my word count. So, I deleted about 700 words on Mrs. Wilson instead.

I’ve missed her midnight spirit ever since, which brought home one of Chris Baty’s tips for – and benefits of – finishing NaNoWriMo: ignore the delete key. A NaNoWriMo first draft is a smorgasbord of ideas that hopefully, but may not, go together. Don’t delete anything, because 1) you’ll cross that 50,000 word mark before you know it (and won’t that be a feat!), and 2) the scene you save may turn into another story later on.

I’m hoping Mrs. Wilson didn’t take my cut personally, and she shows up in her slippers again at some point.