print

Reflections on NaNoWriMo

Now that the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) is over, I have a gained, not only 50,000 plus words for my next book, but also valuable insight into my craft of writing, the technologies used to work this craft, and my unusual and chaotic past.

The NaNoWriMo project is essentially about letting go of the desire to edit the paragraph you just wrote and feeling like you can’t write unless you know where your book is going. Most people who dream of writing a book fall victim to the trap of going back and editing what they wrote the day before and what happens is they wind up with a perfectly polished first chapter, but then eventually run out of gas with the novel using this process. I’ve fallen victim to that trap, even with short stories. Next, many writers stop when they don’t know where to take the story and let themselves stall out at the crossroads. Many books I’ve read on creative writing tell you to just sit and write and don’t worry about the edits or where it is going, just get the first draft finished and edit later. Much easier said than done, but with a 50,000 word and a one month deadline looming over your head, you will just write and not look back, and not look forward. And this, I’ve learned, is a fantastic technique to incorporate into your craft of writing.

Your NaNoWriMo book is supposed to be a work of fiction, but I chose to bend the rules for myself and write a piece of creative nonfiction. And I discovered it was just as difficult as writing fiction in many ways. There is so much content to cover and so many details I don’t remember exactly correct and I need to research, and these details have been the cause of my delay for many years each time I started the book. By applying the NaNoWriMo guidelines of just write the first draft and don’t look back till you are finished no matter how awful you think it may be, I pushed through an enormous amount of roadblocks that held me back in the past. Each day I would reflect in amazement at how much I’d accomplished in a day and how I’d stalled out on this book for 13 years and thank the NaNoWriMo project for changing me as a writer and providing the push and the technique to get this story out of my mind and onto the page.

Next, let me tell you about the technologies of writing I used:

1. Manual typewriter
2. Keyboard and PC
3. Microphone and PC

I composed the first 10,000 words on a gray Royal Desktop circa 1950s, and a red Royal Portable circa 1930s. The process proved too slow to keep up with my life and the NaNoWriMo schedule, and when four cuts burst open on my fingers from dry skin and the banging on the keys, I only abandoned the typewriter because of the pain and the lack of speed. However, I found my first drafts to be focused and creative, and despite the slower ability to build the word count, I maintained a higher quality of writing due to the slower nature of the technology slowing my thought process. When I gave up the ghost on the machine, I did so reluctantly - despite the pain and lack of speed, the machine just felt good to write on.

Around 10,000 words, I switched to the keyboard and the PC. I could spew out 1,000 words in 30-40 minutes on my good days, and within an hour on my bad days. But because of the speed of writing on a keyboard and PC, I developed somewhat of attention deficit disorder and found myself straying from my point and falling back on sloppy structure and grammar. Sure, I’d get the word count out, but it came with a price, and, after a few hours of typing on a keyboard and staring at a monitor, the eye strain gave me a headache, and the fast typing highly aggravated my right wrist. I wanted to switch back to the typewriter almost every day but didn’t simply because I knew I had to keep up with the word count and I fell behind even with the keyboard and the PC. But overall, I didn’t enjoy writing long periods of time with a keyboard on a PC, and wished there were a better way (although I must say here that the READ view in Word 2003 did simulate the manual machine experience enough to get me through 25,0000 more words).

Then, I found a better way.

10:30 p.m., Saturday, November 26th, I sulked in the kitchen with remorse for the project and wondered how I could finish the remaining 12,000 words by midnight, November 30th, with the busy family schedule ahead of me and after falling behind over the holiday weekend. Then, while making a late-night pot of coffee, I remembered Word 2003 ships with speech recognition software and I’d already run the training wizard so it was good to go. “Good God! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” I thought to myself. By midnight, I’d already dictated 4,500 words. By 2:30 a.m., I’d finished all 12,000 words I needed to cross the finish line, created my post for The Writing Machine for Sunday morning, and went to bed. Did I cheat? I think not.

I know Truman Capote once said of Jack Kerouac’s rambling writing style, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” So to me, he would probably say, “That’s night writing, that’s dictating.” Which I would have to say, I guess I’m not a writer, I’m a dictator (ha ha - groan). But in all fairness, those of us who write know that we are always writing in our minds, but the difficulty is getting this writing to the page. Many place rules around the process of getting the words out and the easier the method, the more it is considered cheating. But the bottom line is just get it out any way you can. Then, what I think distinguishes the difference in writers is the amount of editing. I don’t find Kerouac enjoyable to read because I just don’t prefer his style and wonder if he should have edited a bit more, but that is just me. So, are my dictated passages writing? Yes. But if I don’t edit those passages, well, they are crap to read right now and I want you to enjoy my writing so I will edit them. I stray so let me get back to my other point, that of the pleasure of getting the words to the page be it digital or analog. I found the process of dictating a pleasurable way to transfer the words to the page. I am a talker and I just closed my eyes and talked for over two hours and had a great conversation with myself and got 12,000 words out of it all without eyestrain, a headache, bleeding fingers, or aggravating my wrists. I look forward to dictating more in the future.

At last, the final side effect of NaNoWriMo has been the joy I’ve experienced telling the story of my unusual life. When I look back I often remember the painful moments and there are many of those, but writing about my life over the past month has brought insight and understanding in ways I never thought I would see. It has truly been a frightening but healing experience going back to the past and even though I know I was supposed to write fiction, if bending the rules brought peace to some tumultuous memories of my life, so be it.

So, now that it is all said and done, NaNoWriMo 2005 is over and I cheated by not writing fiction and by dictating to a computer, but I have started into a book I’ve been telling myself to write for 13 years now and along the way, I discovered much about myself as a writer and person, and I look forward to continuing on with this book either beating up my fingers on the machine, or talking to myself late into the night, reliving my life with a warm cup of coffee with cream.

For more information, visit NaNoWriMo.

END
© 2005 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on December 4, 2005 in
Emotion: Wonder, Type: Essay