It’s all a bit frustrating. I’m working on a Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month novel) and I still have only the merest glimmerings of a story.
I have a lot of old plots I could have used. I wanted to be freer.
But the freer one that I seem to be working on (which I can’t detail because it’s too amorphous and silly) is amorphous and silly.
Maybe some of the words will add up to something. I think perhaps the 9000 may be boilable into a reasonable haiku.
Pearl Gets Thoughtful About Nanowrimo
Pearl's Not Sure This Will Work
Aha! A plan forms, vaguely, during my brain’s optimal thinking time, which is in those moments in the night when my eyes flutter open because “god,I’m thirsty” (I have a phobia about drinking water and really have a hard time with it), or have to go to the bathroom, or “god, I’m just incredibly thirsty.”
All the time what I was really thirsty for (aside from fluids) was a plot, a plan, a narrative structure.
My eyes didn’t flutter quite enough, and the plan is admittedly still extremely vague. It is a bit like a egg not sure if it will fry or scramble or even turn out to be a lightbulb.
And where will that egg cook? I have an idea–Las Vegas, a placehot enough to cook the egg all right, even on the pool deck–but it’s a place I last visited thirty years ago, and I really am not sure I know it well enough to use it.
Can the whole take place thirty years ago? I suppose. (Let’s say it’s one of those really old eggs that never actually smells rotten.) But doesn’t there have to be some reason for that?
Have to start finding out.
Fried?
All pancakes one pancake?
So far, I seem to be opting for the artistic in my nanowrimo novel. I have to confess that I think this is nearly always a mistake,
No offense to you true artists out there, but art is very difficult to sustain in a novel. “Artistry” is even harder.
By “artistry”, I mean (at least in my case) a certain kind of dissonant fragmentation (i.e. modern artistry, post-war, post-a-bunch-of wars). It can work wonderfully in visual art, and even in a poem, but in something that takes a while to absorb–say a novel (you have to read it)–there had better be something very very good there, some hook.
Agh!
Weirdly enough, I have also been listening to a great deal of Fred Astaire. (Dancing makes me happy!) Fred Astaire illustrates amazing artistry, not particularly “high” as in “highbrow” (only high-stepping.)
He is silly, clever; even his most abstract dance maneuvers fold into a kind of narrative–they have a beautiful symmetry.
And yet, even though I really do believe in that kind of symmetry, I am not pursuing it, or, for that matter, a plot, a plan, a maneuver. Rather, I am trusting in my unconscious as I write, right now. It’s not “automatic writing” a la Yeats, but just what comes next and next and next, (in my brain, not in any time sequence.) I’m basically layering with whatever my brain ladles out. My only hope is that there will prove to be a connection in the sense that, in one brain, all pancakes are (sort of) one pancake. But, well–if all pancakes are one pancake, then what is a “short stack?”
Agh! (aghaghagh!) (short stack of aghs.)
Doing What It Takes (Pearl Just Doesn't "Get" Plagiarism)
Pearl Just Can't Make Up Her Mind
Last night, I wrote that I had started Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) with a fair number of words, but a great sense of randomness i.e. no clear plot or plan.
Here’s the question–one faced by anyone trying to write any novel I suppose (that is, one writing a novel just for the sake of writing a novel.) Do I go for a project I know I could probably cobble together and finish (a project that may have a somewhat silly adolescent aspect), or do I try for something as yet undefined which seems more ambitious and artistic (but which may in fact be undoable, and grandiose)?
My sense is that the most important question is not which project is “better” but which one I can make myself stick to.
All I can say is that the unformed one is way easier to get started on. I just sit down and start writing something–a scene or a mood or a memory–and hope that it will somehow fit in with the 3000 words done yesterday. The problem here is that it’s harder to maintain. You keep waiting for momentum to kick in, hoping that the fact that you only have one brain will bring a certain uniform stamp and shape to what you are doing. (This book would ultimately, I guess, be one of those books that seems like a bunch of little stories.)
Or do I go for one of the old plots I have already kicking around–(a) the sequel to a teen fantasy novel about beauty, cruelty, and rebellion (that’s sounding pretty good); (b) adult novel betrayal in Benares (seems a bit hard, right now); (c) children’s book about a little white dog who reads the dictionary, (d) or some kind of “boys’ book” for young people. (They always need boys’ books.) .
Any suggestions, tell me quick! Only 29 days to go.
All Words And No Play
Did you really think I would leave you? For a month? Promptly At The Beginning of that Month?
I did start working on Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) this morning, but frankly, all I’ve written so far are words. Close to 3,000 of them–I was on a fairly long train ride with a computer handy–but they are hardly more interesting than “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Or Jill. (Dull girl.)
This is one of the problems of not having the time or emotional energy to plan a novel before beginning. (Yes, I’m whining already.)
Of course, you can be inspired to write things you have been longing to write about, words you may even have been storing up–but, ideally, a novel should not be a tool for revenge on close family members. It’s best (if you want to keep your family intact) to suppress some of that energy. Or at least channel–ahem– disguise–it.
It’s also useful when you sit down to write your novel to keep in mind the types of books you actually like to read.
I look at myself. If I start with no plan, if I just “let it rip”, I can end up churning something out that is vaguely gut-wrenching; but it also risks being a more violent form of navel gazing.
While the books I most enjoy have stories.
I will include my morning’s words as part of my word count for Nanowrimo purposes, (i) because I’m competitive, and (ii) a bit of a cheater. And, more importantly, because I think you do have to work off some dross when you are doing something arbitrary. And you might as well give yourself some credit for that.
But what I tell myself that I have to remember is that for all the jokes, I am trying to write a novel here–not a diary, a rant, a collection of memories. I am trying to write something that can be read, and not just written.
Enough said.
(PS–No, I’m not posting old novel yet as I’m concerned it will dissipate focus even more. Agh.)
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