Losing the plot

That title might sound like a reflection on my previous post, but no — it’s a pun-charged reference to NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

The idea is to produce at least 50,000 words of fiction during the 30 days of November. I’ll save you the trouble of opening a spreadsheet to do the calculation: that’s an average of 1667 words a day. (Warning: more statistics on the way. Try to contain your excitement.)

I first came across Nano, as its lonely practitioners, known as Wrimos, like to call it, in October last year. I briefly considered giving it a go then, but on November 1st I found myself sitting not in front of a keyboard with a Do not disturb sign on the door but in front of a steering wheel on the 700 mile drive from Theale to Zurich. And Day 2 saw me starting a new job, so it was never likely to happen. I didn’t think it likely to happen this year either. NaNo seemed like an ideal candidate for inclusion on a list of those things that seem worthy enough, but that you know will never get done. Like climbing the Munros, or walking the Pennine Way, or doing the ironing.

But I’ve surprised myself, and managed to knock something out every day so far. Yesterday, on the 12th day of the month, I sailed past the 25K halfway point. Current tally is 27,676 words, which is 6005 words ahead of schedule. Or 55.4% done, with just 43.3% of the month gone. Average daily output is 2129 words. At the current rate, I would reach 50,000 after 23.5 days, nearly a week ahead of schedule. Most productive day was yesterday, with 4102 words. Least was last Monday, with 526.  I’ve spent a total of 30.46 hours writing it, or an average of 140.6 minutes per day. Cumulative hourly word rate is 902 words, though interestingly, this rate has been steadily rising over the 37 individual sessions, as can be seen:

And that illustrates what you suspected all along: only those with bulging anorak wardrobes should mess with NaNoWriMo.

People I tell are surprisingly polite about this activity. Most feign mild interest, and some even go as far as to ask a question, which tends to be: “Who judges it?” I then explain it’s not a competition, and conversation quickly shifts to something more interesting, like the latest addition to their collection of barcodes. Despite it not being a competition, WriMo vernacular does refer to “winning”, which simply means reaching the 50,000 word target.

There aren’t many rules. None of the output can have been created before November 1st, though it’s permissible to plan characters and outline plots. And no editing before November 30. That’s about it. NaNoWriMo is shamelessly about quantity, not quality. This initially struck me as a cop out. What’s to stop someone asdfghjkl-ing 50,000 times and declaring William Burroughs to be a seminal influence? The answer is nothing, but if no one is judging or even reading your work, what would be the point?

The quantity rule does have a plausible purpose. The idea is to exterminate two of the cardinal sins of writers and would-be writers, namely the tendency to procrastinate, and to over-edit instead of pushing on.

Guilty m’Lud.

What happened to the running book? Oh it’s still there. I came across the oppressive 30,000 word slab just yesterday, while trying to talk down my computer from its annual suicide attempt. I spent much of the afternoon behaving like a man desperately trying to scoop water out of a sinking boat with his bare hands, except that the enemy wasn’t seawater but a seemingly cocaine-fuelled platoon of viral commandos, hell bent on knocking out my vital Windows files. As an oblivious world kept turning, I gave up and concentrated on trying to salvage deserving data. And there it was: the folder entitled RunningBook, containing subfolders stretching back to an incriminating 2004. Watching it sink into the digital abyss might have done us all a favour. Instead I rescued it, but with the same enthusiasm I might feel hauling Piers Morgan out of quicksand.

The reason it’s struggled to grow beyond that size can be linked to the aforementioned shortcomings:

• The reluctance to “get ass in chair” as the excellent memoirist Susan Gilman warned us about at the writers’ workshop thing I attended in Zurich in the spring, and
• The tendency, even after getting “ass in chair” to begin by compulsively rereading a chunk of what I wrote previously, and spending hours refashioning it into something equally dismal.

These are universal traits in frustrated writers, and pretty much all that separates the wannabes from the average published writer. Yes, much more separates wannabe writers AND the average published writer from good published writers but let’s put that on one side. Actually writing well is a more distant obstacle I don’t even want to think about. The first task is just plastering some of that word… shit… stuff… whatever you call it… on the page. The rumoured requirement to produce devastating insight and an ambrosial turn of phrase is an enemy to square up to some other time.

Which is where NaNoWriMo comes in. It’s a deadline. It cracks the whip and urges you ever onwards. No time to squander on the endlessly iterating loop of edit and re-edit. What’s to stop one doing this without NaNoWriMo? Well nothing — except the seemingly irresistible urge to throw oneself into those familiar man-traps. The mixture of peer pressure and encouragement, along with the collective creative body warmth emanating from the many thousands of Wrimos across the globe embarking on the same voyage, helps you to scoff at the bad old habits, just as running in a race will always produce a faster, more dogged performance than doing the same distance on your own. The hope is that those ‘bad old habits’ will be well and truly spooked. So far, so good.

So good? Hmm. Well, I’m pleased with the word count, and I’ve surprised myself with how easy I’ve found writing dialogue, but the plot is sliding a bit, or rather, hurtling downhill like a drunk on a toboggan. And I couldn’t begin trying to list the overarching themes without tugging nervously at my earlobe and refusing to make eye contact.

I did try the detailed planning approach, but failed. Outlining plot and sub-plots, characters, timeline, themes. No good. Nothing came of it. So on 1st of November (a public holiday, conveniently), I sat at an old computer I’d set up in the spare bedroom, and thought: “What now?” I had no plan. I had nothing but an opening line which I now typed and stared at for a while. Eventually another appeared. Then another.

And that’s all there is to it.

Added 16 November:

A robust exchange of emails with an Australian man has made me think again.  The robustness was mainly on his part. I was too scared to disobey.

I’m sticking with the NaNoWriMo framework, but in some unexplained deus ex machina, the rambling novel has become some sort of bizarre running book. A true story, they say.