lizvogel

I've been slogging along on Apocollapse, and I finally got to a scene I was looking forward to, that I've been using as a carrot to get me to write some tedious stuff I didn't want to do. And I started writing the carrot scene, and it landed way harder than I expected it to, emotionally. Like, I don't see how these two characters, who are supposed to be friends, could ever come back from it.

I think I broke the book.

Obviously the choice is either tone down the emotion (which would be a fairly simple edit, just take out the references to Chicago and the MC's family), or else lean into it and spend a lot more time and page-real-estate on them dealing with it than I intended or have room for. Well, or let it land like the bomb it is and stop the book there, the emotional equivalent of rocks-fall-everybody-dies. Which is appealing to the author, because the book's at That Point in my process, but not really an option.

Of course the correct answer is almost never to tone down the emotion. So after a long discussion with the housemate over pie, I am leaning into it. Part of that will involve an assumption the housemate kept making which is not only unfounded in the text but explicitly countered in the text, but the fact that she kept making it, and I can reasonably expect a lot of other readers to make it, is something I can use. Having my MC make that assumption too, and having Other Character have to correct him, gives them something to talk about that is more objective-philosophy and less intensely-personal-trauma. Which at least gets them talking again.

None of this makes it easy, of course. And it's still going to take more time and real-estate than I have to spare, and on some level I am fundamentally annoyed that my nice philosophical-discussion carrot-scene has turned into another Hard Part. (Most of the other philosophy discussions have been fun and relatively easy to write.) But at least it gives me a way to keep going and not drop the book right there.

I'm sure eventually I'll come to view that as a good thing. ;-)

There are many problems with NaNo, some of which I've rambled about here. But I'm realizing there's another one, and it's fundamentally baked into the structure of NaNo itself:

It gets you halfway, then stops.

Many writers bog down halfway through a book, so many that phrases like "the miserable middle" are common vernacular in writing circles. It makes sense: you're past the fun part at the beginning where you get to meet the main characters and screw up their lives, throw in cool stuff just because it's cool with the assurance that you'll do something with it later, and perhaps lose sight of what you've learned from every other book you've written, which is that this exciting vision in your head has a hell of a lot of work attached to it. But you haven't yet got inertia on your side, where the weight of all that clever stuff you've built up keeps that rock rolling downhill and your job as a writer is to keep running just ahead of it, where you get to cackle with evil glee as all that set-up starts to pay off. The middle is where you have to slog through making sure that all those threads keep pointing in the right direction to tie up later*, where the foreshadowing seems obvious and the reader can just figure it out for themselves from here (it's not and they can't), where you start to wonder if you can pull off that clever dovetailing of two disparate tracks (you can), and where the sheer amount of heavy lifting yet to be done is an inescapable cliff face in your path, not yet counterbalanced by all the heavy lifting you've done so far. Middles are where the fire of ambition tends to peter out and the fire of accomplishment hasn't yet been lit. It doesn't work that way for all writers, of course, but it's pretty common.

50,000 words is, approximately depending on genre and so forth, the middle of a novel.

So NaNo gets you going with a framework that prioritizes writing, encourages a breakneck pace, and (if you're lucky) has a supportive community to help you keep at it. You barrel along, not always happily but at least productively, with that 50K target in mind and the promise that you can *rest* when you get there. And you get to your 50K, and you cheer "Yay! I can stop now!"

And you stop. Right at the worst possible point.

Post-NaNo, you sleep, you catch up on the housework/reading/friends/whatever that you put off for a month, and, if you're like me anyway, drop that book like a very hot rock. And all of that support structure drops you, too. And then days or weeks or hopefully not months later, you try to pick the book up again, and discover that you are mired in the Slough of Despond with no momentum whatsoever, the beginnings of forgetfulness about what you were going to do next (you remember it was clever, but not exactly how), and as much hard work ahead to slog through as you have accomplishment behind. And most if not all of that encouraging framework has disappeared, because everybody else is exhausted from November, too.

This is a major failure point, and it's baked into what NaNo is.

I'm thinking there needs to be an alternative. I do like the rush of NaNo; that ridiculous challenge is very motivating for me, in the years I choose to accept it. But it's also not sustainable at that level. Is there a lesser challenge that would still be invigorating, but that could be kept up until a book is actually *finished*, say in four months instead of one? That would carry the writer through the miserable middle and out the other side, without having to abandon all of real life for longer than most of us realistically can? Something with the framework and the *participation* that made NaNo at its heyday effective? (Not through the official NaNo organization, which is all kinds of broken. But something more than just me setting a deadline for myself, which can sometimes work but is not what I'm looking for here.)

And most of all, something that doesn't stop right at the point where it's hardest to get going again.



*For the current book, this is also where I start having to do more front-brain planning to make sure things happen in the right order, both for practicality and for pacing. This is not the fun part.

50,447 words.


I will plink around a bit more; it would be nice to get chapter 5 filled in enough to give to my housemate alpha-reader at the end of the month. But whatever more I do or don't manage...

Win!

Yesterday I hit 75% of the 50K goal, which is pretty damned good for just over halfway through the month. (I started at about 53%, this being wuss-mode NaNo, but I'm still quite pleased with it.)

I just reached 39,041 words, or 78%. (That's 78% of NaNo, not 78% of the book. Probably just over a third of the eventual book.) I took a productivity hit on Saturday because I went to a local maker group's open house, and got thoroughly distracted by the potential of OMG the toys! But apparently raw Mustelidae* and theology discussion was what I needed to get back in the groove.

I have poked a bit at the convention, and been thwarted by internet problems and people not cashing their reimbursement checks. I have done my best to ignore the estate for a while, and been thwarted by relatives wanting status reports. Real life remains a work in progress.

Now there's a cat sitting on my arm. :-)


* As the sticker says, pay no attention to my browsing history; I'm a writer, not a serial killer.

I have decided: I am doing NaNo, but in wuss mode. I will start on November 1st, and the goal is to get the book to 50,000 total by the end of the month. This is basically a half-NaNo, since it was just over 26K when I finally had to give up last year.

Stretch goal is the full 50K new words, of course. But if I can just get the book to where it should have been at the end of last November, I'm calling win.

So, it seems this NaNo's lesson was not how to write through adversity (though I did some of that), but how to let go of a challenge when it really is unreasonable to continue. The final straw was when I got pulled over for the license plate light being out; not that that was that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things, I didn't even get a fix-it ticket, but it was the one more damned straw that made me admit the full 50K just wasn't going to happen when I was spending twelve-hour days advocating for decent medical care for Mom.

That said, I kicked ass. 20317 words in the first 11 days, and I managed another 6114 even after Mom went down. That alone is more than I usually manage in a month. And they're words I'm happy with, too; the characters are developing nicely, I started setting up for some things I'm excited about, and my speed-researched angelology came in handy and generated ideas without constricting anything. (I will note that next time I do NaNo, I need to either pick something with less research requirements, or start researching a lot sooner.)

I feel pretty satisfied with my NaNo accomplishment, given the circumstances. I am sitting bedside in the hospital (different one) again as I type this, so obviously Apocollapse isn't getting very far atm, but I feel good that it will.

You know you can do this, because you've done it before.

Yes, the apocalypse is depressing. Go pet a cat.

Coffee, dammit.


4061 words and counting.

NaNo is coming, and I'm 97.326% sure I'm doing Apocollapse for it. Unlike previous years, there is much prep to be done, including organizing my research, compiling my notes, figuring out a major character's name, and putting together a writing mix -- which is where you come in, dear reader, if you have any suggestions to add.

What I've got so far is (almost certainly not in this order):

Sister Hazel, Sword and Shield  (lyrics)
Imagine Dragons, Demons  (lyrics)
Simple Minds, Summer  (lyrics)
Simple Minds, Walk Between Worlds  (lyrics)
? Simple Minds, The Signal and The Noise ?  (lyrics)
Haley Heynderickx, Untitled God Song  (lyrics)
Tears For Fears, Rivers of Mercy  (lyrics)
Tears For Fears, Master Plan  (lyrics)
Tears For Fears, The Tipping Point  (lyrics)
? The Decemberists, Calamity Song ?  (lyrics)
?? OK Go, Before the Earth Was Round ??  (lyrics)

As you can see, a range of musical styles/genres is fine; some of these things are not like the others. The more melodious strains of alternative/rock are my usual territory, with clever lyrics that can be reasonably clearly understood. The lyrics don't have to pertain to the prophesied destruction of the earth and everything on it; oftentimes my interpretations of songs are idiosyncratic at best. And sometimes (though rarely) it's just that something sounds right.

(ETA: There are probably several other songs that should be on this list; cf. needing to compile my notes. But more music is always welcome!)

So, what else should I be listening to?