Creating my own Nanowrimo

How many of you did Nanowrimo this year? It seemed to me that fewer people I knew tried it, but maybe that's just in my part of the world. (For those of you who don't know what this is, you sign on - for free - to write 50,000 words during the month of November - see www.nanowrimo.org .)

When everyone else (I imagined) was madly writing away on their novels, churning through 1668 words a day, I was ... not writing. Well, I was, but I wasn't writing fiction. I was pounding the desk and rubbing my aching head and thinking I was probably more than a tiny bit crazy, and working on my candidature document. This is a thing you have to produce about your PhD project, and then you present yourself in front of a panel who quiz you to see if you know what you're talking about. (Considering I often feel as though I am talking gibberish about all kinds of things, you can see why this was nerve-wracking.) Plus I was writing a talk about verse novels to give at a conference.

Nothing was further from my mind than fiction writing.

Actually, I lie about that. Fiction writing was right there, like a friendly dog waiting to be patted (or written). The more I tried to placate it by saying, "Soon", the snappier it got. Finally, I decided I needed to make a promise. So I told it, "I promise that on the 15th of December, you will have my absolute full attention for a whole month." And it stopped growling at me. Yes, I write poetry and I love metaphors!

Tomorrow is the 8th. I have a week in which to tidy up my life (in more ways than one - my office could be a metaphor for the Apocalypse), finish the academic reading I haven't gotten to yet so I can get those library books back before more fines descend on me, file the 80 articles I have compiled so far and then find the 15,000 words of the novel I wrote on my retreat back in August. I know I printed them out, I just have to find them (see Apocalypse, above).

But during this week I plan to do more than just tidy away all things that have been interrupting my writing for the past 2-3 months. Just knowing that in seven days I will be writing again, I'm already thinking about the novel, the characters, and the plot holes that have emerged. I'm working through new plot ideas, daydreaming about the world I've created, writing down notes, collecting ideas. I want to hit the ground running, not just show up next Monday and go - Now, where was I?

That's the problem with having to put aside a novel for a long period of time. You have to find your way back into its world again, get to know the characters, wriggle back inside your main character's skin or brain, do some "writing around the novel" to feel its wholeness and real-ness again, in order to make it real as you write it.

Once I start on the 8th, I hope to keep working every day on it (probably even Christmas Day, yes), until I have a complete first draft. I have no idea how long it will be but it's middle grade so likely to be around 55,000 words or so. I'm conducting my personal Nano at a time that suits me, with a definite goal in mind. I've done 28 day challenges quite a few times, so I know now that with plenty of thinking time included, I can write 1000-1500 words a day with momentum. That's the key - make a promise and get writing, keep up the momentum and before you know it, you have a novel!

Location, location, location - for writers

Recently, two writer friends and I went to the movies and saw "Love, Rosie" (when you have been doing 14 hour days and working really hard, it's amazing how much a fluffy movie can brighten you up). Of course, we all came out of the theatre picking apart the plot! But we also stayed to the end of the credits to find out where the movie was filmed because certain scenes didn't "feel right".

The location scout would probably be disappointed in us. After all, he/she found wonderful locations to film in Toronto and Ireland. The only problem was that the key scenes were supposed to be in Boston and on the coast of England. We stayed to check out of curiosity, me especially, because I've found over and over that despite Google maps and street view and all the photos and videos on the net, actually being in a place makes a huge difference to how you write about it.

For one thing, you get smells and sounds when you are there. You get action, people and what the place looks like in different seasons. But you also get to simply sit and immerse yourself, or walk and explore. How long does it take to walk down that street or across that moor? What does it feel like in the rain, or the burning sun? What does it feel like to walk in a thick fog, or complete darkness?

So when it came to this movie, there was something about the dark green of Ireland, the old rock wall, and the house-hotel that didn't feel like England. OK, I'm being picky, but that last part of the movie was significant - it was where the main character finally followed her dreams so the setting was as important as the dialogue and action.

Of course, some movies do this location thing wonderfully. Think Lord of the Rings in the South Island of New Zealand, or Gladiator (this quote from Wikipedia - "The opening battle scenes in the forests of Germania were shot in three weeks in the Bourne Woods, near Farnham, Surrey in England.^. When Scott learned that the Forestry Commission planned to remove the forest, he convinced them to allow the battle scene to be shot there and burn it down.") On the other hand, I cannot imagine the Mad Max movies being shot anywhere except in the outback of Australia!

Setting is often the last thing that writers think about when they're in the first draft. It comes later, as the story is rewritten, but it's the choice of details that's telling, that shows you whether the writer really understands what's at stake. You have to help the reader feel as if they are there, and even more, you have to help the reader believe the character is there, seeing and understanding and reacting to that setting in ways that only they could. So maybe part of that being in your setting is also imagining yourself as the character and asking what they see, and how they feel about it.

So it may well be that in the next ten months, I'll be out near Broken Hill, or in the New Forest, or Chicago. All in the service of better writing!
(One day I'll figure out where to put this - below - in a story.)