I’d been thinking of writing on my planning for 2010 and beyond, but a reader asked that I post something on “the process” of writing during NaNoWriMo, and I agreed that might be of interest to a few folks.
One of my workshop mates recently spoke about how there are two kinds of writers
- plotters — those who plot and plan in advance
- pantsers — those who start with a character, perhaps a few ideas, and let it all come out on the page
NaNoWriMo is intended to be a free form, no-holds-barred write-fest; just turn off the internal editor and produce 50,000 words in 30 days. It is a glorious time for seat-of-the-pants writers.
My own approach is somewhere in between. I like to have the major characters and conflicts defined. I usually have a beginning, a couple important scenes, choices, or images from the middle, and an end I want to drive through. I may also have an idea of how I want to get there. I’ve managed to finish two novels with this method.
This year, I had substantially more material than before. I had little character sketches, a plot outline, a few lists of names, a rough sense of the geography of the world. I was more prepared than ever … and the going was much harder.
Usually, I start out NaNo very enthusiastic. This year, the first 10,000 words were like pulling teeth. Bad, ugly, cavity-filled teeth. They were disgusting. I won’t even inflict the first three scenes on my alpha readers until I rewrite them, they are that awful. I could not get into the language, the feel, the style of the world.
Then I got to a scene featuring the main character who was the impetus to the whole story–a sort of vigilante character. When I’d conceived the novel, it had initially been about him alone. All the other characters that were now essential to the plot, came after. I wanted to write a story about him, and the rest of the paraphanlia came so that I could do that. I wrote the first scene with him and it just flowed.
Now some might say that I overplanned, that I lost the spontenaity. But I don’t believe that’s it. This is easily the most complex story I’ve written yet, and I couldn’t do it without all the planning. But I had lost the “fun” and writing that scene which is, quite honestly, about a very cool character being very cool, reminded me that the story, the plot, even the characters weren’t why I wanted to tell this story. I wanted to tell this story because it was cool.
And it got easier.
But not a lot easier. While I am happier with most of what I wrote after then, the pace was still much slower than my previous NaNos. I’ve been thinking about why, and I’ve decided it’s because I’m becoming a better writer.
One of the big mantras of NaNoWriMo is to turn off your internal editor and just write. What I’ve realized is that, as I improve as a writer, that internal editor kicks in much earlier in the process. Before, I would write, see that it wasn’t good, stop, go back, start to edit, remind myself to keep writing, stop editing, and move on. Now, the editor takes the wheel before the words even come out. They come out slower–but better. While this is a good thing in the long run, when you’re looking to just pound words out, it makes it a lot harder. I used to be able to do 1000 words in a solid 45 minutes when I was on. Now it’s closer to 750 words in an hour. Better words, but still fewer.
So now I have to get used to being slower, which is a hard thing to accept when I’m squeezing writing into the cracks of the rest of my life. Hopefully, it’ll mean less time on the rewriting end.
So is there a lesson in this for others? The only one I can think of is that if things aren’t going well, don’t get frustrated, stop and try to figure out why. I realized that I wasn’t getting slower–I was getting better. So there may be a positive message in your struggles as well.
