 |
||||||||||
|
Write
the Damn Book
For the month of November, in 2005, I participated in NanoWrimo,
National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org).
It’s an annual fellowship of crazy writing, with the goal being
to write a 50,000-word novel (or at least 50,000 words toward a novel)
by the end of the month. Quick
math time. There are 30 days
in November. Even if you
only planned to write 50,000 words, that’s almost 1,700 words a day:
about 6-7 pages a day. For
someone who does a million and one things already (teaching, editing,
being a sister and friend, etc.), I decided to jump in and test my
writing abilities. It was a
huge challenge. After all, I
had not written anything serious in over a year, and I had begin to
question whether I would ever find my rhythm again.
In addition to that, we had just returned to As
an English instructor, I’m always preaching the importance of
pre-writing. In my classes,
this is the time that my students select a topic, think about the topic,
and start jotting down their thoughts about the topic, not thinking
about what’s right or wrong. Same
thing applies when writing a novel.
Before you start the book, you should know what the book is going
to be about. I had been
thinking about the idea for my book for at least two weeks prior to
NanoWrimo. I had an idea of
a character. I had some
scenes in my head. I had
what I thought was a killer beginning.
Take a week or two and think about what ideas are burning in your
gut, wanting to come out. Brainstorm
the idea, the main character(s), and the goings on of the story.
When you have a loose idea of what you want to do, you’re ready
to either jump in and write, or you’re ready to outline. I
jumped right in on November 1. You
may opt to do some outlining. I
would suggest you outline only the first few chapters.
Once you get into your story, the characters will take shape, and
they will want to have a say as to what goes on in their lives.
My characters did. I
thought I had an idea of what would transpire in the story and how it
would end. My characters
totally flipped the script on me and did their own thing.
At this point in the game, you don’t want to make the writing
TOO rigid for you. You’ll
already be struggling with your internal editor (which you must TURN
OFF); you don’t want to start fighting with an outline your characters
really don’t want to fit into. To
outline. To jump in
blindfolded. The choice is
yours. In
a previous TWL article, I mentioned writing schedules.
Not only is it extremely important to make a schedule, but it’s
also important to give yourself…oh no, a DUE DATE.
You have to examine your life, and make a decision on a realistic
due date to accomplish your goal. A
month may be too short; consider two months, maybe three.
You don’t want your due date to be too far into the future
because you may begin to see it as unattainable.
Once you have a due date, do a little math.
Figure out how many days a week you will devote to writing.
Remember that number. Then
consider that you want to write about 80,000 words; it’s the typical
“minimum” word count for most publishing houses.
From there, you’ll want to do the math to see how many words
you’ll have to write per writing session in order to get the book done
by the due date. It’s a
bit timely, but in the end, knowing that you need to write 1,500 words
for each session will give you a task to accomplish. As
you begin your journey into writing the damn book, do not feel bad in
asking for “home help” from your family.
Delegate some tasks to the kids or to the mate.
Eat a few frozen dinners instead of your gourmet family meals.
The goal is to write your book, and if you need help to lessen
your load so that you can accomplish your goal, seek help.
There is a lot of hard work involved in writing a novel, but
there is a lot of joy in it as well.
Every day, I sat and wrote and became involved in my
characters’ lives. As a
part of NanoWrimo, I was able to share my ups and downs with other crazy
people who decided to write a book in a month.
If you haven’t already, join our Nubian Chronicles’
Yahoogroup (to subscribe, send e-mail to nubianchronicles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
so that you can share your journey with other writers. There will be
some miserable days, and as the saying goes, misery loves company. At the end of November, I had a 70,000-word novel completed. Is it good? A lot of it is. Some of it was good for a beginning. The point is I have something to work from and that’s what all would-be writers should be striving for—a good beginning to build on. So let 2006 be the year that you sit down, write the damn book, and then begin the daunting task of trying to get published (that’s a whole other article)!
If you have questions about writing or an idea for an article you'd like me to write for THE WRITE LIFE, please e-mail me at chickoflit@hotmail.com and let me know. I'm always here to help the fellow writer.
Keep
Writing. TTFN:
Shon Bacon
Next: Article #5: The Serious Writer's Toolbox, Part One: Books |
|||||||||
