Almost exactly ten years ago, I was sitting on the tiny tiled floor of somebody’s apartment kitchen with my dear friend Amazon, clutching a screwdriver or fuzzy navel – some orange mixed drink – and explaining this story idea I had about a girl who’s haunted by a poltergeist.
We were at a party to launch National Novel Writing Month, which I was determined to try after watching enviously from the sidelines for the previous year or two. I had a setting, a beginning, an idea of the end, nothing in between and barely any characters, but in the NaNo spirit: NO PROBLEM. I soldiered dutifully ahead for about a week, churning through a handful of loosely connected scenes and about 30 handwritten pages before running aground in bafflement and exhaustion.
Almost exactly three years ago, I was curled on the living room loveseat, scowling into the computer with those old 30 pages sitting next to me while one or both of my kids screamed upstairs. I knew I was never going to get through the NaNo goal of 50,000 words in a month; if I hadn’t managed it in 2006, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it in 2013. But I’d written my Master’s thesis at a rate of two pages a day, and that seemed like an achievable goal for fiction. After all, nobody was ever going to read it and it was never going to go anywhere. But by god, I was going to write it.
And now, after spending the intervening time hauling that little ghost story in and out of zombie surgery, most recently with the help of literary agent and narrative necromancer Lana Popovic: IT LIIIIIIIIIVES.
We were at a party to launch National Novel Writing Month, which I was determined to try after watching enviously from the sidelines for the previous year or two. I had a setting, a beginning, an idea of the end, nothing in between and barely any characters, but in the NaNo spirit: NO PROBLEM. I soldiered dutifully ahead for about a week, churning through a handful of loosely connected scenes and about 30 handwritten pages before running aground in bafflement and exhaustion.
Almost exactly three years ago, I was curled on the living room loveseat, scowling into the computer with those old 30 pages sitting next to me while one or both of my kids screamed upstairs. I knew I was never going to get through the NaNo goal of 50,000 words in a month; if I hadn’t managed it in 2006, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it in 2013. But I’d written my Master’s thesis at a rate of two pages a day, and that seemed like an achievable goal for fiction. After all, nobody was ever going to read it and it was never going to go anywhere. But by god, I was going to write it.
And now, after spending the intervening time hauling that little ghost story in and out of zombie surgery, most recently with the help of literary agent and narrative necromancer Lana Popovic: IT LIIIIIIIIIVES.
So if you’re up to your elbows in that new November project and the words aren’t flowing and nothing’s clear and you’re pretty sure this is never going anywhere? PERSEVERE. Cheat shamelessly by throwing the 50K goal out the window, if you have to, and just hang onto the camaraderie. You have the company of countless other evil geniuses and a marvellously equipped laboratory, and nobody minds if you can only make it up the tower for a couple of hours a day.
Strap on your goggles and keep throwing the zombie guts at the wall. Your lightning strike is waiting.
Strap on your goggles and keep throwing the zombie guts at the wall. Your lightning strike is waiting.
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