Okay, so most people who know Pearl consider her a very mellow dog. She’s also quite old. (I’ve been saying 13 1/2 but I realized the other day that she is actually 14 1/2.)
Even so, her reaction to my Nanowrimo manuscript is disconcerting.
(Music by Jerome Kern, Lyrics by Dorothy Field, Sung by Fred Astaire, romantic elements–in the manuscript–by ManicDDaily.)
Three days and very very few hours until November and Nanowrimo begin and I still haven’t spent a moment mapping out a plan.
Nanowrimo, as you may know, is National Novel Writing Month–a month in which any one of the writing persuasion is justified in caving in to all anti-social, anti-utilitarian, and Auntie-Mame tendencies in order to pound out a novel (or 50,000 words) in thirty days.
Technically, you are not supposed to put a word to paper (okay, screen) prior to 12:01 a.m. November 1.
Planning is allowed, however: outlines, mapping, character sketches, thinking.
(The deadline is self-imposed. No would actually know if you cleverly converted outlines into written text… a week or so before November 1.)
But here I am. Not planning anything yet, because, in my ManicDdaily way, I am grappling with personal and professional issues that feel in the instant like matters of crippling importance. (In fact, it’s probably the feelings that are crippling, the matters less so.)
Enough said. What do you do when you don’t have a plan for a novel and you really really want to write one anyway?
First of all, be honest. You say you don’t have a plan, but is there nothing kicking around your cranial closet? What about an old plan, discarded plan, some plan that seemed at one point impossible to you?
When you come up with that old plan–and seriously, just about everyone has one–think about whether you could commit to it for a month. More importantly, could you have fun with it?
Don’t pass over a plan because you think it’s stupid or impossible, but only because you are genuinely not interested. And even then, think twice. (The novel loves narrative–it really is helpful to have an idea for one.)
If you can’t come up with a plan, you can always try just writing. Start with a scene, a place, a person, a feeling, relatively random words set down upon the page. (The human mind’s love of narrative is so strong that a story is likely to take over even when using this method. Eventually.)
But take care. This kind of writing (which the Nanowrimo staff calls writing “by the seat of your pants”) can feel emotionally satisfying at its inception (like therapy) but can sometimes bog down (like therapy), especially if it wanders too much into the territory of a roman a clef.
Which brings up another important point. Whether you are a “pantser” or a planner, try to let go of the angst. There may be a nobility to enduring suffering, but few people want to read pages and pages of how you have endured yours. Whining tends to be very hard to shape.
Besides, what fun is it avoiding the trials and tribulations of your personal life for a month if you’re going to spend your whole time writing about them?
(The lady doth protest too much, methinks.)
A bit of a dreary Sunday.
The good news: This morning, I finished a re-write of an old Nanowrimo novel. This does not mean that I actually finished re-writing it, but that I finished another complete round of revisions.
The bad news: I haven’t done my laundry yet and the laundry room here gets really crowded Sundays.
The good news: This afternoon, I started another round of revisions on this same old Nanowrimo novel, going through it one more time. For a while, the whole thing just seemed to work.
The bad news: Then, I ran into a chapter that I seem to have over-edited my last time through, trying to break up the scene. Now I think I have to seek out some of that old deleted material.
The good news: I have a bunch of laundry to do.
As I’ve mentioned before in posts on writer’s block, my block does not arise in my initial writing, but in the editing and revising.
Part of my problem is that I sometimes want to make the manuscript to take a shape it doesn’t want. I will try a major restructuring, hoping that certain kinds of manipulation–flashbacks, changes of view–can supply the momentum and drama that the plot is lacking.
This type of re-organization may work for some writers. I’m not sure I’m not one of them.
Please understand that I am not saying here: “first thought best thought.” I strongly believe in revision and editing. (Except perhaps on this blog–sorry!)
But, for me, the editing sometimes works best on a sentence to sentence basis. Or, even better, through cuts. (One can get very enamored of sections that don’t move a story forward, especially when you’ve heavily re-written these sections on a sentence to sentence basis.)
But changes that involve fitting the manuscript into a different framework, or inserting a… device… tend to be less successful for me.
A good test of whether structural changes are useful is whether you can actually carry them out. If, as you go through the manuscript, the changes feel increasingly hard to write, they are probably not helping you.
Again, I’m not saying that re-envisioning of a manuscript is not sometimes important. Filling in blanks or making blanks can help you find your voice and your audience; it can feel both creative and compelling.
The key word is “compelling”.
Good writing does not re-write itself, but if it becomes too much of a tussle, you might consider a return to your initial, rawer, vision. This at least will have a certain energy and drive.
Here’s the point: be realistic about the true nature of your first draft. If you have made an amuse-bouche, don’t try to stretch it into a full course meal. If you keep trying to inject further substance into it, you may end up with something that can hardly be chewed (much less digested).
Now, about that laundry….
I woke up today feeling terribly depressed. Yes, it’s probably my chemistry (the down side of the m-word), but, as I browsed through the online New York Times, I also felt that I had every right to blame my hopelessness on the world in general.
Everything seemed to bring up Reagan’s old (deficit-producing) supply-side economics; they seemed not just to have been swallowed by the American people but to have become an integral part of the body politic–its eaten-out heart (as in “eat your heart out’); the idea that compassion is bad while greed is good (for society as well as the greedy), almost a moral imperative.
There was the article about the refusal of politicians to support improvements in infrastructure despite the terrible need both for the improvements and the jobs the improvements would provide. Then the negativity towards healthcare (in one, a Florida politician whose company was indicted for massive medicare fraud.)
Then there were the little children bullying other little children, seemingly egged on by parents who are happy, primarily, that their kids are at the top of the popularity heap.
I don’t want to detail the stories of truly horrific brutality, stories where even the words “lack of compassion” can’t be squeezed in.
Normally, I try to spend Saturday re-writing one of my old children or teen novels. (I have a few that for years have seemed sort of finished, and yet still aren’t quite “done.”) But, suddenly, my little fictional tales seemed ridiculously trivial. Sure, they all promote compassion; but they are also, due to my lack of talent and vision, not particularly life-changing, society-changing. Not even, perhaps, life or society-nudging.
Of course, one would like to write life-changing books! But what if you just don’t/can’t.
Feeling grandiosely whiney, I looked over at my very conveniently located muse–that is, my good old dog Pearl, snoozing at the bottom of my bed.
Talk about a lack of grandiosity! Talk about forging ahead!
Pearl might very well like to be a noble dog, a celebrated dog (a Balto!) even just a big, strong dog. But she was born cute and fluffy and a little bit clownish.
Pearl might even like to be young again, with fully functioning limbs.
Nonetheless, Pearl presses doggedly through life each day, doing what she does as best as she can. And not doggedly just in the sense of persistently and dutifully–but with a joy us non-canines (and blocked writers) can only wonder at.
ManicDDaily 
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