NaNot

I had intended to take part in National Novel Writing Month again this year, really I did; but here we are, a third of the way through November and I ain't written a single bleedin' word. I haven't even got any ideas, not for a novel, not even for a short story. Mind's a blank.

I'm not especially bothered by this: I often go through prolonged periods of creative drought. It's not so bad, though, because it means I get a lot of reading done. I am nearing the end of Christopher Priest's The Prestige. My chum Jai introduced me to Priest earlier this year by recommending The Affirmation, a wonderful book that blurs the lines between reality and fiction, raises questions of identity, and can also be read as an insightful description of schizophrenia. Then I heard that The Prestige was being adapted for the screen by Christopher Nolan, he of Following, Memento and Batman Begins fame. I wanted to read more of Priest's work and, as I usually like to read the novel before I see the film, I got myself a copy of The Prestige. Like The Affirmation, The Prestige starts off in a deceptively straightforward way but Priest is a master of confounding your expectations. Just when you think you know exactly what is going on, he turns everything on its head and makes you question everything that has gone before. I have about 40 pages left to read and I am itching to see how it all ends.

I was excited to hear that Christopher Nolan would be tackling a Priest novel. Nolan has proved with his first four films that he is a most intelligent director fascinated by messing with the perceptions of the audience. Interestingly, the reviews for Nolan's movie have been pretty evenly split between those who have praised it as a superior piece of cinematic sleight-of-hand and those who have condemned it as an interminably boring piece of garbage. So I really don't know what to expect: will it be a step forward for one of the most interesting young directors working today that faithfully transfers the spirit of Priest's writing to the big screen or has Nolan fluffed it and produced his first dud movie? I shall find out soon... but only once I have finished the novel, obviously.

Oh... er... that time of year again...

Right, yes, only a few days until November which means that National Novel Writing Month is upon us. I've been meeting up with fellow Oxfordian NaNo writers every month since last year's challenge and I've taken it for granted that I will be doing it again this year. Except I have no idea what I am going to write. Nada. Zip. I first tried the NaNo challenge in 2004 but, because I only signed up to it on 1^st November, I had not planned anything in advance. I just made it up as I went along from Day One, got to about 25,000 words (the target being 50,000) and, having written myself into impenetrable knots, gave up. Last year I did some preparation: a premise, brief character notes, outlines of key scenes and a general synopsis. Sure much of what came out was made up on the spot but at least I had a basic framework to keep myself on the right track.

This year, though, I have no premise, no characters, no outline, nothing. All I do have is a desire to write the most sarcastic novel ever, to poke fun at mindless Creative Writing 101 dogma by explaining everything in terms of plot, symbols, metaphors, character arcs and motivation as I go along as if crediting the reader with zero intelligence. The only thing I haven't got is an actual story.

Come Wednesday, then, it looks as if I'll have to wing it from the very first sentence. Oh well. Wish me luck.

Helix v2.0

Started revising my NaNoWriMo novel today. It's been sitting on the virtual shelf for six months so I can now view it with fresh, objective eyes. And - bugger me - the first five pages suck the big one. The prose style doesn't settle or flow comfortably until several thousand words in. And as for the supporting female cast... Oh dear. I am going to have to completely overhaul them to make them resemble real people.

Not some much a revision as a total rewrite. I'm going to pay a great deal more attention to the language sentence by sentence than I did with the first draft - a luxury I didn't have at the time. Page one now features ruminations on fruit smoothies and fear of arse-rape with a carving knife.

I foresee a long haul ahead of me.

Helix: the feedback

So, two people have now read my 50K NaNoWriMo novel and they both said it was good. In fact, one of them said that not only did he enjoy but it also made him seriously reassess the course his career is taking. I made him think. Scary.

The interesting thing is that, although being quite different personalities with different reading habits and tastes, they both liked the same aspects of the novel and also made similar criticisms.

Things they liked:

• the basic premise
• the flow of the prose (with the caveat that the first five or six pages are awkward but then the style settles down)
• the observations about office dynamics and politics
• the psychology of the protganist and how I convey his sense of failure
• the fact that I don't cop out at the end and attempt to offer a coherrent explanation that neatly ties up all the loose ends

I did fear that the whole thing would be too weird and nonsensical but, even though both readers conceded that they never figured out who certain characters were supposed to be or what the hell happened at the end, they felt the book too oblique for its own good.

Between them they made the following criticisms:

• it takes a few pages for the style to settle down
• the dialogue between the protagonist and the two main female characters is ropey and, by extension, the female characters are underdeveloped (although one of the readers thought the break up between the protagonist and his first love was very well handled)
• some of the prose is repetitious
• lots of typos! (but, hey, they both know I churned the sucker out in 23 days, so...)

In conclusion, they both felt that there is an excellent novel in there that, with revision, is of a publishable standard.

So, there we are: I've got absolutely no excuse not to persevere with rewrites and send it out. I admit that I was surprised to get such positive feedback, especially considering that I had major reservations about the quality of the thing. It just goes to prove how difficult I find it to judge how good my writing is. I have a lot of work to do to knock the book into a publishable state but at least I now have confirmation that it will be worth the effort.

A big thank you to you both (you know who you are). Your critiques have been very useful.

Onto draft #2.

What to do with my novel now?

So, I've written a novel. I have finally pulled my finger out and written a novel. I always said I would but I was never convinced that I'd actually get off my arse and do it - I am notoriously lazy.

But I did it, I wrote a damn novel. The question now is what to do with it.

Am I going to let anyone read it in its current form - belched out in a month, clumsy plotting, too many adjectives, adverbs, lapses in tense and so on and so forth? Something that concerns me is that the novel turned out much more autobiographical than I originally intended. It is, after all, easier to describe a relationship you once had than to filter your experiences and distill it into a fictional scenario, especially when time is of the essence. This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the novel might reveal a little more about myself to the friends I allow to read it than I am comfortable with; on the other hand, my best writing has always been the stories with strong autobiographical elements. That's not to say my novel is full of signposts - "This bit really happened! This bit is made up!" - but even so, I have written about difficult experiences that I'm not sure I want people to know in such detail. They wouldn't know which bits are real and which are made up but, still, people might start looking at me in that slightly nervous way people regard the mentally infirm.

Also, the central (and admittedly bizarre) plot device didn't really work too well but I had a bit of a brain wave when in bed on Monday night. I've had this idea knocking around my cranium for a long time but never thought of a way to utilise it in a story. It suddenly occurred to me that it would work well with the material in my NaNo novel. This would mean a complete overhaul of the entire plot so however it ends up, it will be substantially different from the first draft I have now.

So, I'm definitely going to do something with it but it can wait until the new year. I have tunes to write in December for the next issue of Mad Hatters. After a month of furiously writing prose, knocking some noise out will be a welcome relief.

Hmm, Writing Prose vs. Composing Music: that's an entire blog post in itself for another day.

NaNo: Reflections

OK, I sounded a bit bummed when I posted earlier. I guess that after the initial excitement of crossing the 50K threshold, I calmed down and it felt like a bit of an anti-climax.

But now I have reflected on the whole experience for a few hours more, I am dead chuffed I did it and proud of my achievement.

What a crazy thing to do: write a novel in a month. What kind of fruitloop attempts such a thing?

I am a novelist

Check it out: 50,327 words. I did it. I wrote a 50,000 word novel in a month. Actually, that is a lie: I wrote a 50,327 word novel in 23 days due to completely failing to write anything until the first weekend of November.

So... uh... there we are.

I should count myself fortunate that the workload at my current temp job was a bit slack so I was able to churn out about 1,000 words during the day. They are giving me more work to do next week so it is lucky that I have finished tonight.

So, how does it feel to complete the challenge? It feels good. It has been an hour or so since I wrote my final word and the initial buzz has faded a bit now. But, yeah, I've written a novel... in a stupidly short space of time. At least I now know I can write a novel. I am also spared the disappointment of quitting after reaching 25,000 words like I did last year.

If this all sounds a bit vague then what can I tell you? Like most things in life, the anticipation of the conclusion is more exciting, exhilarating and satisfying than the conclusion itself. I'm happy that I won the challenge and relieved it is over but, you know, what next? Life goes on.

But is the novel any good? It's not bad, I think; a bit of a mess but what do you expect from a first draft written in 23 days? The ending is rather weak. This is funny because it was the idea of this final scene that drove me to write the story I wrote in the first place. In the event, the ending just limps along in the wake of some stronger stuff that precedes it, stuff I didn't plan in advance but just made up as I went along. Oh, the irony. Never mind: that's something I can worry about when I revise the thing.

I'll tell you what, though: I am so glad to have a free evening ahead of me. I don't have to sit down and write for a couple of hours. I can bum around and do nothing.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to drink a beer and watch some crap TV.

NaNo Update: The final push

If the daily target to write 50,000 words in thirty days is 1,667 words a day then I should by now have written 43,342.

My actual word count is now 43,360.

For the first time during the challenge I am ever so slightly ahead of where I should be and the night is still young. I should easily crack 45,000 words by the time I go to bed and will probably (hopefully) exceed that. That will leave me a mere 5,000 words to go. I am hoping to finish by close of play on Sunday night, three full days before the deadline.

I was a little concerned earlier because, as I mentioned in another post, I skipped forward to write passages that would appear later in the book. However, as the plot of the novel has subtley deviated from my original outline, I was concerned that those passages I wrote may no longer fit into the story and would have to be considerably rewritten or dumped entirely. That would be 4,000 words down the crapper. Fortunately, it didn't take a great deal of work to amend them. In fact, I was able to extend those stray passages quite a bit by incorporating new information that I improvised earlier. So, it's all good.

Oh yes, I'm gonna' make it. Can't stop: I have a novel to finish.

NaNo update: 25K

Halfway. I'm halfway to 50,000 words. I'm still behind where I should be by about 6,600 words but I am catching up. Also, I gave up last year at around 25K due to no-income induced panic. But this year, even though my fiscal/career situation leaves a lot to be desired, I'm eager to carry on writing and succeed at... er... writing a crap novel in a stupidly short space of time. Hey, if I achieve that goal I get a little electronic certificate thingie. That's gotta' be worth it.

Plot-wise, it's all gone a bit strange in the sense that nothing strange has happened for about 10,000 words. I've been filling out some of the protagonist back-story, y'see, banging on about a wonderful relationship he had that went all pear-shaped. Oh, I did take a brief break from my hero's love-life to skip ahead to a juicy violent bit 'cause I was getting bored.

But now I've got some of the character's history out of the way I think it's time to push forward with the nasty weird bits of the story. Don't you?

10K!

Wey-hey! I've cracked the 10,000 word checkpoint! OK, so I should have 15,003 words by now but, hey, I'm into four zeros now and that is something.

Without giving too much plot away (because only a dumbarse would blog their entire plot for all the world to see and, if so inclined, filch) there has so far been one corpse, one car crash and one dream sequence involving a nasty and slighty surreal encounter with a paper shredder.

Gonna' be a fucking bestseller, I tell thee.

NaNo progress halted

No, not the writing of the novel. I refer to the absence of the nifty NaNoWriMo Progress Meter that once sat proudly on the right sidebar.

Unfortunately, the clever geezer who made the progress meter, Jeff Lee, was having severe bandwidth problems on account of his clever word counting gizmo proving so popular with NaNo challengers. His web hosting provider demanded more money and Jeff quite reasonably decided that, as he had provided the gizmo for free and was seeing no return from it, he would have to remove the progress meter and all the user accounts from his server rather than forking out for more bandwidth.

A great shame but perfectly understandable.

This does mean that any Guardian readers who read about my natty progress meter and come here to take a look are only going to see a rather less impressive bunch of big, grey, static numbers.

Sorry about that.

NaNoWriMo motivation

Day 3 and I've only written the first line of my NaNoWriMo novel. Eep. Even slipping one day behind puts you 1,667 words adrift of the target. And then one day becomes two and then three and - oh shit - 5,000 words behind.

But who's counting, eh? Who will notice if, despite your best intentions, you begin to question the wisdom in participating in such a challenge when you have so many other projects and problems to be dealing with?

Well, if you are dumb enough to blog about your intentions to take on such a challenge and stick a progress meter on your website for all to see, anyone who reads the culture blog on a national newspaper's website will notice, that's who.

I can't exactly pussy out now, can I? Talk about motivation. I'd better get on with it.