
Omigosh. How did so much time go by since I last posted???
Well, it’s not like I haven’t been busy. Aside from a particularly hectic time at work, there have been a lot of things going on. For example…
• My play, Twisted Love, was performed in Fullerton, CA, in a lovely and very smart production directed by Tira Palmquist.
• But the big news is: I finished the NOVEL!
Now I know this is a theater site, but I want to write about this gigundo prose project anyway because (A) some of you writers out there may find it helpful if I share some of the process of writing, and (B) I do think that some of what I learned can be applied to any writing project (or indeed any big project – theater related or otherwise).
So when we left our hero (or, at least: ME, your hapless writer)…
I had 13 days to go in the National Novel Writing Month project, and I had still had some 20,000 words to write. At the same time, I was starting to feel about 20,000 of leagues under the sea, artistically.
The book is called “Peacock Hall.” It’s a metafictional whodunit, of sorts, in which the stock characters of an English-drawing-room thriller slowly become away that they’re characters in a mystery book. (Imagine Agatha Christie makes out with Pirandello on top of the board game “Clue.”)
Metaficitonal or not, any whodunit requires more specificity and plotting than I was prepared for. Trust me: as someone who’s been writing drama for a long time: prose is HARD! Really, really, really hard. In my playwriting life I haven’t had to describe someone’s appearance, or a landscape, or the specifics of which room is next to which other room in a long, long time.
Out of my element, I was starting to ask some counterproductive questions: Why are you doing this, again? What is the purpose of this? Why isn’t this turning out well? And: don’t you know this will NEVER be published – so isn’t this a waste of time?
There were I admit, a number of days in which I didn’t get to working on the novel at all. There always seemed to be other stuff to do: calls, emails, scripts for work, cleaning the house, getting the car washed, walking the dog. (OK, I don’t have a dog. But I invented an imaginary one so I could waste time walking him.)
But I kept pressing forward, even though the work seemed Quixotic. By the end, after having skipped some days, I had to crank out, say, between 2,000 and 8,000 words a day to make my 50,000 word quota.
I’m not sure why I was so driven to do it – partly because I had committed to doing it publicly, both on the NanoWriMo website, and also to friends and family, who I had asked to nag me about my novel. And partly because I really wanted to be awarded the certificate at the end that said I had completed 50,000 words. I know it’s goofy – but that meant something to me.
And… I did it! I actually finished the novel! 50,000 words, with a beginning, middle and end. (To be exact: 50,151 words. But who’s counting?)
So you may be wondering: how did it all turn out? Well…
It’s a disaster, artistically. Oh, the beginning and the end are pretty okay - it’s just those 46,000 words in the middle that are a problem. (Snort.)
Seriously: characters materialize and drop out… voice, tense, and POV veer back and forth madly… and a number of the characters who get knocked off do so with little or no fanfare.
In addition, there are long paragraphs where I write “Why am I doing this?” and “How many words to go till I get to my daily quota?” There are other paragraphs where characters burst into song, or make shopping lists. (And YES, they DO count towards my 50,000 words, too - I was amused to see on the NaNoWriMo blogs that many writers were sniffy about writers who pad their first draft with songs or shopping lists. But I figured, hey, whatever gets a first draft down on paper.)
So, yeah, I couldn’t go out and publish this thing right now. I haven’t looked back at it yet – haven’t had the heart to – and I do have my doubts as to whether I ever WILL be able to make anything of it. I am certain that it can’t go out into the world without major rethinking and re-editing.
Am I glad I did it, though?
You bet. Absolutely. While I was in the middle of it, I didn’t think I’d be this happy about the sheer fact of completion. Completion counts for a lot, I think.
And there are a few things I learned along the way, which may be applicable to any other writer. Indeed, any other theater artist may find these helpful, too, especially “Thing I learned # 1.” Here goes! For me:
2) You can get a LOT done by working in small increments every day. Just 1/2 hour a day = about 3 pages! Say you write 10 minutes per day. That’s about a page per day – which means you have a 365 page draft of a novel in just one year!
3) Find the most productive writing time and work then. (Speaking for me, only: first thing in the morning is the best writing time. Then I felt like I COULD write more during the day, if I wanted to, but I had fulfilled my quota and didn’t have it hanging over me.)
4) Have some overarching goals: the specific “50,000 words, 1 month” time and length goals really helped me. This way, I wasn’t lolling about saying, “Oh well, I can finish this whenever the Muse strikes me…. Oooh, wait – ‘Top Chef’ is on!”
5) Set smaller, daily goals as well: breaking the big word count into smaller increments helped. (1667 words per day was the minimum to get to 50,000 in a month.)
6) Tell people about your big project, so when you quit, you feel you have to stick to it and get it DONE.
7) Get a sloppy dirty first draft down, no matter what. Most first drafts are crappy anyway – you can always go back and edit it later.
Two more that occur to me:
And….
I hope to apply what I learned to my playwriting and screenwriting projects in the New Year. And yes, I may even set a time to reread this big stack of paper and re-edit it to see what’s there. Above all, I’m proud of that stack and hope I can make something of it.
I’d love to hear from you: have you undertaken something massive and insane – and maybe misguided? How did it turn out? Are you glad you did it, in the end? Would you do it again? Please feel free to drop me a line.
And look for a new post from me, sooner than last time since now I’m not in such a word tunnel.
Happy Impending Holidays! I hope you’re all well.
Best,
Ed
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