I first took the NaNoWriMo challenge in 2010. During my third year I took time to write a letter to myself as a way to remember some of the things I had learned in those first two years.
I pull it out from time to time as a bit of instruction and inspiration. I have since posted that letter here - in four installments. (Disclaimer: This piece is full of all kinds of silliness and fun.) This is Part Two: THE COMMITMENT. If you missed Part One, you can read it here.
What Worked
What Didn’t Work
An open letter to my current self
from my former self as a NaNo novice
by Kaye Sims
October 27, 2012
Part Two: THE COMMITMENT
If I’m going to do this thing, I’d much rather have it be some kind of success than for it to be a failure or a fizzle. Therefore I have decided that I need to decide whether to commit to it or not. Yes, I used the word “decide” twice in that sentence. So sue me. Deciding involves asking certain questions.
Will I do this thing?
I can “give it a try” or I can decide to make it happen. If I simply give it a try, I may or may not end up with a document. If I consciously decide to do this thing, then I must determine what that means and what will comprise success. Yes, this is my book; I am the author and I make the rules.
Side note: NaNoWriMo’s rules are pretty simple. It is all about the word count. Between November 1 and November 30, you must compile 50,000 words. That’s all they care about. So yah, you have to wait until November 1 to start writing and you submit your 50,000-word document by November 30 to win. Other than that you make the rules.
What exactly will I do? What am I committing to?
You will probably have more than one goal or priority with this project but you need to know which one is your highest priority. For me, the over-riding goal is to crank out the words, to meet that word count. Yep, yep; even if it means that I end up typing “I don’t know what to write. What in the world shall I write about now? Okay; I have 300 words; where in the stink can I find 1700 more? Let’s see; I think I’ll write about such-and-such.” Yes, I am fully aware of the silliness of such a venture. I mean... why would I want to end up with 50,000 words of useless gibberish? But I decided to let anything go – simply because the word count was my top priority – and I have been happy to note that I rarely end up going down the total nonsense route. Oh, yes, I have taken advantage of that self-granted freedom to write anything, but usually something has grown out of it. It reminds me of the movie Finding Forrester when he told the kid to start typing anything, specifically instructing him to copy from Forrester’s own work. (Remember to read these lines in Sean Connery's voice!)
Sometimes the simple rhythm of typing gets us from page one to page two. And when you begin to feel your own words, start typing them.
Punch the keys, for God’s sake! YES! You’re the man now, dog.
GREAT movie, by the way!
Why do I make the word count my priority?
Confession time: I am not a good finisher. I start way too many things that end up fizzling or languishing in a file or a pile. I can admit that one of the greatest things for me about NaNo is the push to get ‘er done. The sense of accomplishment is uber-important for me, most healthy and needful for my self-esteem. Not only that but it is great to have such a large body of work in my repertoire. Oh, yah, I am very well aware that what I end up with may not be usable – certainly not without a lot of work. But I still contend that a very, very rough first draft is better than no draft. (See Anne Lamott’s chapter on shitty first drafts in bird by bird.) Even if I can use only teeny, tiny bits and pieces of it in the future, at least I’m beginning to build my collection of writings.
But perhaps even better than the accomplishment itself is the experience – the opportunity to learn. If my primary reasons for doing NaNo are the satisfaction of completion and the acquisition of a body of work, my secondary reason is nearly as important – and that is the practice that it gives me. It was an invaluable opportunity to get to know myself as a writer, to become familiar with my own writing patterns and then to analyze which things were working and which weren’t. It was alternately discouraging and exciting to see how I would react to the beginning of a day’s work, to the inevitable occasional verbal constipation, to the moments of panic or boredom, to how slowly or quickly the words counted up, and to how enthralled I would get when thoughts and fingers were flowing freely. By pushing myself to write such a large quantity of words in a day, I had to push past several obstacles. I began devising ways to compensate for the things that bogged me down and to facilitate effective ways to capture the thoughts that were swirling faster than my fingers could race. I also noted that having these dedicated hours at the keys eventually provided a venue for a few ideas that had been languishing – particularly if I had taken care to record somehow, somewhere at least a smidgen of that particular notion.
What else is most important to me?
While cranking out a certain number of words is my first task, I also hope that I will end up with something somewhat cohesive and maybe even usable – even if only fragments and after much editing. Presumably this hope of something usable is more likely to become reality if I have some sort of plan and probably a general idea of direction or theme or topic or plot. Oh, yah – plot – since this is supposed to be fiction or at least a novel. Forgive me for momentarily forgetting that.
The plot
You probably aren’t planning to do NaNo unless you have an idea. However, the idea may not seem clear until you start contemplating the project. I think both years my idea came together in the last couple days of October. This was one of the first lessons I noticed: often inspiration waits for me to prepare a space for it and to welcome it. What is really cool is when several old ideas start to gather themselves under a bigger theme – and once a few of them have clustered together I may be able to come up with enough stuff – or at least way more than I could for one of those single topics.
So yes, I figured out that I needed to come up with a plan...
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