No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days (17 page)

As I’ve mentioned, you are currently enveloped by a special bad-ass writing energy that will dissipate when the four weeks expire. If you still have a couple of days left to go in the month after you cross the 50k finish line, try to get back in the writing saddle after your celebration and keep going. Everything you can do now will pay off huge dividends later. Plus, building up a wordy surplus before the month draws to a close means you can go back and delete all those abysmal italicized passages and still have a 50,000-word novel to show your friends at the month’s close.

WEEK FOUR, DAY 25

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 41,675 words]

WHEN IT HAPPENS, TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW

It’s clear that the satisfaction of having written a book in a month is its own reward for this crazy endeavor. A better reward, however, is bragging to all your friends and loved ones about your enormous accomplishment. And the best way to maximize your boasting potential is by sending out an email with a “screen shot” of your winning word count total as an attachment.

Here’s how you do it on a PC:

-1) Take your novel to a page that you won’t mind your family and friends reading (the title page is a classy option.)

-2) Go up and select Word Count for the entire novel, and make sure the square word count box displaying the total is visible in the middle of the screen.

-3) Find the Print Screen button on your computer. Note: It may be deviously labeled “Prt Scrn.” When you hit the button, it will take a picture of whatever is on your screen at the time.

-4) Go to the Windows Start bar, then Programs, then Accessories, and open the cheap-o default paint program that came with your computer (it will probably be called Paint).

-5) Go up to the Edit drop-down menu and select the Paste option.

-6) You should now see the photo of your word-processing screen that your computer took a few seconds earlier.

-7) Save the file somewhere on your desktop, and then email it to every single person you’ve ever met in your whole life.

Mac users activate their screen capture by hitting the command, shift, and “3” keys simultaneously. This will save a file (probably called “Photo One”) to your startup disk, which can then be opened and cropped in a paint or design program.

WEEK FOUR, DAY 26

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 43,342 words]

WEEK FOUR EXERCISES

DOING THE LAST DAYS LONGHAND: YOUR NOVEL, UNPLUGGED

If you’re far behind schedule, ignore this exercise completely and continue your typing frenzy. If you’ve managed to build up a word cushion, though, consider unplugging yourself from your computer this week and walking across the finish line au naturel.

That’s right, I’m talking about the lost art of longhand noveling. By writing part of your book with pen and paper, you’ll be forced to take your story slower (something you probably haven’t been doing much of this month), giving you the chance to reflect a little before committing words to the page. And from the scrabbling sound of pen on page to the spiky divot of the nib digging into the fresh expanses of paper, there’s also something sensual and calming about writing by hand. If there’s something we all could use a little more of in Week Four, it’s calm.

For advice on taking a longhand vacation, I asked one-time winner Jennifer McCreedy, one of only a half dozen or so NaNoWriMo participants to have written their 50,000-word novels entirely by hand, to give us her top five tips:

-1) Buy a notebook with lined paper that does not have perforated sheets. Opt for notebooks with a more durable binding than your average glue, such as stenos, which generally have sewn bindings.

-2) Ditch the Wite-Out. You’re not going to make any spelling errors that you can’t fix later, so you don’t need it. And if you carry it with you “just in case,” you will use it. One minute you’ll be fixing punctuation, the next minute that whole chapter about the neighbor’s lawn will be one big white smear.

-3) Give yourself, and your tired writing hand, a break. If you start to run low on ideas, stop writing and let your mind and hands recharge at the same time. If you’re having a burst of inspiration that’s driving you to write for hours, force yourself to take breaks when you come to the end of a chapter or the top of the hour.

-4) Don’t worry about adding each line to your word count as you write it. Instead, count when you stop for the day, or when you pause to give your writing hand a break. Write your updated word count at the top of your last written page, so that you can easily locate it when you tally up your next section.

-5) Don’t buy expensive pens to novel with. Ten thousand words later, your pen will start to run out of ink, and you’ll be $7 in the hole. Go for a pack of inexpensive (but not dollar-store) pens with blue or black permanent ink. Avoid erasable ink, as you’ll be tempted to make edits—even if you have a will of iron. For the same reasons, don’t novel longhand in pencil.

WEEK FOUR, DAY 27

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 45,009 words]

WEEK FOUR EXERCISES

REINTRODUCING YOURSELF TO THE WORLD AS A NOVELIST

One fringe benefit of writing a book is being seen by those around you in the new, vastly sexier light of your novelist status. Displaying your new writer self may feel uncomfortable at first, but give it a try. Social gatherings are a great place to practice the brilliant self-absorption that you’ll need to emanate as a novelist.

Maximizing the benefits of a party situation is a learned skill, and it can be difficult for novice writers, especially as the party wears on and the patrons become increasingly drunk and prone to talking about all manner of things, most of which are unrelated to your novel.

Steering every conversation back to your book isn’t impossible, though. It just requires a certain amount of conversational finesse. Witness the following model tête-à-tête:

-Writer: So, what’s up, partygoer?

-Partygoer: Not much! I’ve been pretty sick lately with that flu that’s been going around, so I’ve just been laying low. Sleeping a lot. You know...

-Writer: Oh, man! That’s so funny you would say that. The protagonist in my novel had this moment where he thought about opening an office supply store that sold only wiener dogs.

-Partygoer (laughing): What a brilliant plot idea! I feel better already!

-Writer: Yeah. Cracked me up, too. But he didn’t end up doing it. Maybe in the sequel, huh?

-Partygoer (getting out a pen): I need your autograph right now. Another key point to remember—

whether developing your sterling literary reputation at social gatherings or one on one—is that the novel you just completed is not your first novel. Even if it is, in fact, your first novel. In all conversations, you should refer to your manuscript as “my most recent novel.”

Technically speaking, this is accurate. And it also implies the existence of a host of other, earlier novels whose existence you are humble enough not to get into at that moment. In the unlikely situation that someone asks for a synopsis of your earlier novels, say your agent has asked you not to talk about them. Then roll your eyes, shrug your shoulders, and sigh, “The publishing world... ”

WEEK FOUR, DAY 28

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 46,676 words]

-------------------THE (COLD) WINDS OF CHANGE: PUTTING WEATHER IN YOUR STORY

“Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather.”—

Mark Twain

Weather is one of those things you don’t really think about while you’re reading a novel. Unlike the weather in real life, novel weather is mostly a low-key affair. Either it’s cold or hot, rainy or not. If you find yourself winding your story down before you hit 50,000 words, consider spending some time adding exquisite weather to your book. Describe the warm winds and put smells in the air. Send in a monsoon, and follow a raindrop in its broken progress from cloud to gutter. Weather, as boring as it sounds, can actually be amazingly fun to write.

--------------------------------------HOW TO MAKE YOUR PRINTOUT LOOK MORE LIKE A REAL BOOK

For a truly polished presentation, number your pages and your chapters, and insert a page break after the end of each one. (To do this go to Insert on your word-processing document, and choose Break, then Page Break.) Now change the document layout to the Landscape setting, and then divide each page into two very wide columns with a two-inch gutter between them. Voila! Bookish, indeed.

--------------------WEEK FOUR, DAY 29

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 48,343 words]

-------------------THOUGHTS FROM THE TRENCHES: NANOWRIMO WINNERS ON “THE END”

“When Week Four shows up, I grit my teeth. This is when I’m typically close to fifty thousand words, but miles away from the end of the story. I bring out the broadest brush in my arsenal. Entire scenes get described in a few sentences as I rush to begin detailing the plot elements necessary for the story. I race to build to the climax. For the past two years, I’ve been forced to write twenty thousand words in two or three days to get the story on paper. I find the exhilaration of typing “The End” to be so intense, so moving, that I typically cry as I type those words.”

—Russell Kremer, 51, three-time NaNoWriMo winner from Los Angeles

“The best thing about Week Four is coming to the end of the book. The worst thing about Week Four is coming to the end of the book and realizing that I am short eight thousand words, and that I have to add an entire additional subplot, or change the ending, something, anything, to hit 50,000 words. I hit this point in my second book and was bemoaning it at the dinner table, and my husband said, “You need to kill somebody. That should be good for eight thousand words.” So I did. I killed the protagonist’s husband.”

—Rise Sheridan-Peters, 42, three-time NaNoWriMo winner from Washington, D.C.

“There’s a lot of giggling to yourself, partially because by this point you’ve become slightly mad, but I think also because you’re free to really take yourself less seriously.”

—Ryan Dunsmuir, 38, five-time NaNoWriMo winner from Brooklyn

--------------------WEEK FOUR, DAY 30

CHAMPAGNE AND THE ROAR OF THE CROWD (CONT'D)

[Today's Goal: Reach 50,000 words]

A LETTER

For you to read upon reaching 50,000 words. Or at the end of the month, whichever comes first. Congratulations!

Dear Novelist,

It is my pleasure to inform you that you have officially kicked ass this month. No matter how many words you have written, you have done an amazing thing. Through distractions and demands and family obligations, you forged ahead. Your willingness to go out on a creative limb, to stand up and reach for an impossible goal, is an inspiring example to all of us. For those of you who managed to write 50,000 words this month, know that writing so much so quickly is a task that most professional writers would run from screaming. You have eaten the challenge for breakfast, and cleaned your teeth with its footnotes. You are brave, talented, and brimming with the kind of loquacious storytelling skill that no doubt will serve you well in your new job as up-and-coming novelist.

And if you fell a little short of 50,000 but still wrote your heart out, I have a little secret to share: In the course of this great experiment in caffeine consumption, the goal of 50,000 words has been, shall we say, overemphasized. One of the things month-long noveling does is get your sense of scale all out of whack. This is done intentionally, because anyone with a realistic sense of perspective wouldn’t try to write a novel in a month.

As the month ends, though, I feel it is my ethical responsibility to bring some perspective back into your life. So listen closely: If you “only” wrote 15,000 words over the past four weeks, you invented fifty (that’s 50, five-oh) book pages of fiction. Those of you who made it to the 25,000-word point wrote eighty-three pages. In a month. Hello?

This is something to write home about.

And in this letter home, you should include a few things. One of them being the fact that you chose to try. This may seem like a little thing—this trying—but it is not. You put your name out there for the world to see. You risked failure. And just by risking failure, you avoided it entirely. Let me explain. You could have spent this month living your normal life. You could have gone for long walks with your lover or won points with your boss by coming into work without those big bags under your eyes. Instead you agreed to do something dumb. You agreed to try and write more fiction than you ever have in a month.

Most of you—like me—probably do not write fiction. Fiction is something other people write. But this month, you dared to say, “Screw that. It’s my turn.” You stepped up to the plate. And there is nothing more admirable in this whole damn world than someone willing to set for themselves the fearsome task of trying something big.

So be proud, writer. You’ve done something fantastic this month, and I salute you for it. Now please do me a favor and go grab those bottles of champagne (or suitable champagne substitute) you bought in chapter eight. One of the bottles is for you. And the other is a gift for you to present to your MVPs: the friends and family who helped you get through this tumultuous month. And as you gather with your loved ones to celebrate your achievements and the end of a crazy, productive month, please accept my congratulations and a toast. To you and all you’ve done. And to the joyful power of dreams realized.

CHAPTER 9

I WROTE A NOVEL. NOW WHAT?

It’s been a month of stress and jubilation, panic and triumph. And now, somehow, it’s over. After all the frenzied productivity and endorphin-spraying bursts of creative accomplishment, you’ll likely find your return to normal life a little... weird. Truman Capote famously compared finishing a book to taking a favorite child outside and shooting him. While your book is still a few steps away from being finished, you have completed a huge portion of it, and you will be feeling the tingles of loss, emptiness, and powder burn that Capote described in the coming weeks. NaNoWriMo participants refer to this feeling of aimlessness as the “post-NaNo Blues” or “postnovel depression.” Whatever it’s called, I’ve come down with a huge case of it each of the five years I’ve written a novel. At the close of Week Four, I feel like I’m being wrenched awake from a beautiful, crazy dream. I don’t know what to do with myself, and all I want is to burrow back down into the warm depths and reconnect with the stories zipping around my head.