Yikes! It's NaNoWriMo Time!

NaNoWriMo, how I love thee – how I hate thee! For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November and thousands of writers, want-to-be writers, and up and coming writers join in the agony…er, I mean fun!  It’s 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel – no revising or editing, just frantic writing. Of course, your final novel can exceed 50,000 words, most do, but that’s the goal for 30 days.

 

At first I was feeling kind of blah about the whole thing. My heart wasn’t in it, although I did have a gist of what I wanted to write. When I reluctantly started on November 1^st, I thought bah-humbug! But then, the creative juices started flowing and I fell in love with my novel and the characters.

 

It centers around two sisters, Abigail (Abby) and Lola. They were eight and ten when their mother left. It wasn’t just that she left – the night she disappeared, the girls found their father cleaning up a bloody bathroom. The girls, especially Lola, are plagued for years with, “Did their mom really leave or did their dad kill her?”

 

Their harsh, unaffectionate dad uses the Bible and religion to control them leaving the sisters to deal with their home life in different ways. Abby becomes promiscuous in high school, while Lola turns to food for comfort. Although she’s bullied and tormented by her classmates, she developed a crush on the popular, Jonathan, the only one who ever stands up for her.

 

The sisters’ journeys take them on a path to find the real God – not the cruel God of their father – and that special someone to love them. They also embark on a quest to find out the truth about their mother’s disappearance. There’s plenty of intrigue and conflict, especially when Jonathan, recently widowed, enters Lola’s life. Lola is now a poised, beautiful, successful business woman with twin daughters when Jonathan appears again.

 

Things get complicated because Lola is positive Jonathan fathered Abby’s son, Dylan. Oh, and a major part of Lola’s story is that after high school, Lola’s dad pays a friend of his – also old enough to be her father – to marry his awkward, homely daughter. “Who else will want you?” he tells her. The marriage only lasted weeks but resulted in the birth of Lola’s twin daughters. Oh, and what really did happen to their mother will surprise you!

 

Lola and Abby are survivors! A must read. I mean, I MUST finish their story. And as far as finding the time for NaNoWriMo, because it is time consuming -- we all know that we make time for the thing we love.

NaNoWriMo Woes

        Every time I start a new NaNoWriMo, I threaten to kick myself. I have three such novels of 50,0000 words and more that I need to finish. Why start a new one?

        Why indeed! Here I am typing my little fingers to the bone with a new novel (and way ahead of my word count, I might add) Seriously? I love my other novels. I want to finish them.  I can’t believe I’m doing this again.

        Never, ever, in my wildest imagination did I think that writing could be so time consuming. I thought it was like the movies----a remote cottage, gentle breezing blowing through a window, soft music playing, some devoted someone bringing in coffee or iced drinks and delicious sandwiches.
        Even in the movie Misery, the main character , an author, played by James Caan, who was in excruciating pain inflicted by the demented Kathy Bates, who also tormented him mentally, managed to crank out an entire novel. In the midst of all that, he made the novel writing look so easy.
        But alas, I suppose ‘No pain, No gain’ as the saying goes. So I lie in bed each night with my novel unfolding like scenes from a movie (that’s what pantsters do—no plotting for me) until I want to scream, “Leave me alone so I can sleep!”
        NaNoWriMo, how I loathe thee.…I mean, oh, how I love thee.

50,000 Words in 30 Days!

So here it was, 2009, I was a little (cough, cough) past 60 and all my life I’d wanted to be a writer. But I just never had time because, well, life happened! So, driven by unfulfilled desires, I’d embellish and elaborate on my memos on my job, my emails to family and friends, my post-it notes plastered everywhere, all my creative juices clamoring for an outlet.

So that October, I allowed my friend Jan to bully - well, not bully, she’s not like that - gently persuade me to try my artistic hand at NaNoWriMo. I DON"T HAVE TIME I kept telling her. What? Write 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November? You must be nuts! I must be nuts, I thought as I took the plunge. Jumping Jehosophat! I finished with over 60,000 words on my great American novel. After working a full time job, doing eBay for extra $$$$, and my family/church activities, I’ve no idea where those 60,000 words came from.

I pursued my writing that month with a frenzied excitement, positive that I was on the brink of a masterpiece.The words gushed forth as my fingers clickety-clacked on the keyboard. I fell asleep thinking of my characters and awoke with my characters taunting me to not leave them stuck in yesterday's muck and mire. My characters were my friends and sometimes my adversaries. How could that be?

Just when I thought I’d finished, I started editing and revising, and it grew with each telling. The madness must stop, I’d tell myself. I had so many other things to do. I don’t have a maid, chef or chauffeur. No one climbed into my van each morning in my place and headed to downtown Phoenix to work. No one did my eBay for me.

With a huge sigh, and a pat on the back, I deemed my novel finished. At more advice from Jan, who seems to know because she's had 2 books published, I bought a Writer's Market from a bookstore, smug with my accomplishment and soon-to-be-published novel. Yowzers! You mean in a book of 1169 pages, there are not several hundred publishers just vying for my book? Oh, I was but a little child lost on the first day of school in a crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands, most of them towering over me. I was just a speck in the unpublished writers’ ocean.

What did it mean...2-12 months before a reply to my query, and 2-12 months to publish once there is an acceptance to my query? And I may get rejected repeatedly before I get accepted?!! Say it isn't so! My manuscript will gather dust and my characters will shrivel up and turn putrid like the fruit sitting in the bowl on my kitchen counter. (yes, I’m going to toss it in the garbage - the fruit, not my manuscript)

So once again I’m confronted with the truth that nothing in life is easy! Is it worth pursuing? I say yes.