Top 11 Things I Learned Writing 1666.66666667 Words a Day for 30 Days Straight
National Novel Writing Month Always Delivers Quirky Surprises
1666.66666667. Just a number, right? But staring down the barrel of all those sixes the first time I thought about doing National Novel Writing Month in November, I felt like I was contemplating a cruel form of literary suicide. I heard of doing Bikram yoga for 30 days straight. Giving up booze. Talking to a stranger a day. Or any number of other mini-resolutions designed to give your self-esteem a boost by sticking to a dorky, new daily routine for a whole month. But who in their right mind would commit to writing 1700 words (rounding up those sinister sixes now!) each and every day for 30 days? Deathtrap for sure.
I pulled the trigger. Survived NaNo five times. And loved it.
Like a lot of things, once you master the mindset, you can rock it. Plus the NaNo peeps have gamified the journey and offer tons of word-candy goodies to keep you buzzed on writing for 30 days straight. Check them out for yourself. And don’t miss reading the book — No Plot? No Problem! — the inside track on winning NaNo like a pro by Chris Baty, its founder. He even has ideas on beverages that can jack your word count such as “Mango-choco-guava-nectar,” whatever that is. Me? Sipping on cheap Pinot Noir right now.
While I’m still shaping my fifty-thousand clumps of word-clay I created over the years, NaNo taught me a lot of good stuff about me. Seems the act of bashing out 50,000 words itself may be as valuable as any weirdness that shows up in your 100-page manuscript.
Here are my top 11 favorite learnings.
1. No Plot? No Problem! The entire philosophy of National Novel Writing Month works for life itself. “There’s no figuring out, there’s just creating it,” is something I learned at Landmark Education and something I’ve heard repeated in so many different ways by so many different people. When we believe we belong, our voice is unique and that it’s worth expressing because some group of other people will find it interesting, knocking out 1700 words a day is a joy.
2. Greethuania is real. This was my first NaNo novel. It was a surreal, awesome writing journey. Spurned by evil Greethuanian greed, Vyk Spiliotytas (that’s me) bumbles through his attempts to kill off a bunch of relatives he didn’t know existed, all to increase his take of his old man’s $4.2 billion estate. (Sorry Nikaka, Spyvaldus and Bronyorgas: Vyk had to pursue what was rightfully his.) All while dodging the German butcher, Greethuanian Immigration Police and the meanest hangovers you ever had swigging way too much Kruptaxa way too often.
My dad was born in Greece and my mom in Lithuania. What can I say? Greethuania was the perfect country for all of my metaphorical rellies to come out and play while writing my first NaNo novel.
3. BUBIA! BUBIA! Blues musician, Nader Mansour, says “Just shut the fuck up, close your eyes and play. If your brain works, you’re doing it wrong.” I love that expression of my own life battle-cry, “BUBIA! BUBIA!” which is “Be Unreasonable, Be In Action.” We are hard-wired for writing success. Just have to get rid of the bullshit in our heads that says we’re not. Give yourself permission to suspend judgment for 90 minutes a day. Don’t dwell on what’s showing up. Keep cranking! Banish your naysaying monsters (unless they show up on the page!), trust yourself, stay in action, maybe even close your eyes, blast some music and let those fingers fly across the keyboard. Go ahead. Kick out a novel in 30 days. Live a life you love in 80 years. Same thing to me.
4. The Mole Mapper got under my skin. A fun part of NaNoWriMo to embrace is that there’s really not a lot of time to think about what does show up on the page. Idea is to just go for your daily word count. When you allow that, you can expect the most amazing people to visit. Dr. Owen Pengilly entered my life while writing The Mole Mapper. A highly-skilled dermatopathologist with techniques so advanced, he was recruited to interpret secret messages of the moles on international spies streaming through his clinic. In between popping malignant moles off 75-year-old ladies, Dr. Pengilly examined the status of moles’ moles. He entered the results into his system. They were read by the agency. He was told what message to embed in the mole for future communications. Fascinating work if you can get it. Dr. Pengilly became the most revered mole-mapper in the agency, especially astute at deciphering moles surrounded by angry images piss-burned into the skin of moles who were ex-cons. Then the moles turned on him. I’m telling you, to this day, freckles freak me out.
5. Fly to Tokyo and back to get your writing done. I’m a black and white guy. My wife doesn’t always like that and she may be right, but when I’m psychotically all in, I get stuff done. Got my first advertising copywriting job after 72 interviews. Lost 50 pounds in three months on Atkins. Did the Lemon Cleanse for 10 days. Drank all 12 Labatt’s Blue on Canada Day ’cause they were in the fridge. NaNo works the same way for me. Structure. Goals. Short time frame that you can sink your heart, soul and guts into. Cal Newport describes the process in his book, Deep Work. I haven’t done it yet, but I love the story of the writer who booked a round-trip flight to Tokyo. Wrote all the way there. Drank an espresso when he arrived in Japan. Took the next flight home. Finished his manuscript on the way back. Ditch the distractions to get our writing done more often. NaNo gives us a protective bubble to make it happen in November. Up to us to keep it going year ‘round.
6. Almost Dad still haunts me. Rick Alman, you fucker. So you won your paternity-fraud case and wormed your way out of future alimony payments. You only had to agree to stop being a dad to your 11-year-old daughter, Drew, who loves you more than anything in the world. Now she’s facing her harshest challenges battling Williams Syndrome and you bail. You scumbag, Alman.
Hey, I have no personal parallels to Alman, but as a dad with three daughters, he makes me puke. (OK, maybe I can also relate to some abandonment issues triggered in this story.) Funny how all this stuff bubbles up when given the permission to appear somewhere in a 50,000-word document.
7. Life is empty and meaningless. Very Zen, I know. But get too attached to what’s showing up on your screen and you’re screwed. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad words, you’re doomed either way. Especially because there is absolutely no way to judge what is good or bad writing. That’s the gift of NaNo: no time to judge! Goal is to just complete your daily word count. What’s helped me is re-reading just enough of my previous day’s writing to snap me back to the crazy trail I was chasing the day before. Then hit Return and blast out the next 1,700 words.
8. Shadow Flicker is lethal. Forecast of wind farms with 116-foot blades on each 330-foot turbine with blinking red lights all night long made a clean cut through the middle of Fort Dodge. Half the town was dead-set against allowing them to slice through their way of life. Ray Block was part of the other half. “Build a fuckin’ nuclear reactor on my shitter if you want,” he’d often say at a Marvy’s while nodding for another Pabst. “As long as it throws off some extra cash to my bank account. Cost of gas plus running my ’71 Cutlass is getting to be more than I can handle, even thoughs I shouldn’t be driving with my bad luck on all them dueys lately. Fuck, bring it on! New turbine-factory job could help with all that plus pay off my booze bill.”
Sure it can, Ray. But ever think about who those red lights are communicating to at night? I have. Every time I nervously drive through the farm fields of Iowa where my relatives live. Writing Shadow Flicker let me investigate all the creepy, clandestine theories in my head. Wicked winds of change are upon us!
9. Let go. Sick of seeing this in your inBox every morning said a little differently from all the personal-development gurus you subscribe to? Me too. But when it comes to cranking out 1700 words a day, you better bow to this philosophy. Besides, you were built for the freedom of self-expression in the face of all life’s adversities. As Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us: “Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between contradictions … for the god wants to know himself in you.”
10. Don’t bank on your Severance Plan. I struggled with this one at first. In my original manuscript I see I tinkered with at least 12 different scenarios to kick this story into gear. I finally settled on a tense, 14-day quarantine for a 100 or so employees who just heard they got shit-canned from the CEO they all hated at MG Enterprises. Most of them hated each other, too. But they had other priorities to address. A killer virus had been detected in a few of their colleagues. Another killer was cutting the throats of MG managers since he wasn’t thrilled with his personal severance plan.
As I said, I agonized at how to get this sick story going at first. But NaNo also teaches you to have courage. Kill the narrator if you have to! Mess up the lives of your characters. Describe your naughtiest fantasies. Confront your worst nightmares. Sometimes for 30 days straight you just write shit. But hey, it’s November. You get to do that.
11. 1666.66666667 is just a number: but celebrate like a mofo anyway. You start writing about something that moves you, that scares you, that bursts the tears threatening to fry your laptop as they plop into the keys as you pound out your story. 1666.66666667 words is just the start. Which is really the point, isn’t it? Share your story. Learn about yourself in the process. Connect with others who feel the same joy and pain. Learn some more. Write some more. That’s life in a NaNoshell. When you’re done, make your victory tangible.
For some of the TGIO (Thank God It’s Over) parties our Twin Cities’ writing group threw in December, I brought a cake themed to my story. I can’t bake for shit. Maybe I can’t write for shit. Who cares? Cranking out my NaNoventures and having my cake was the most fun I had each year. Dare I even eat this one?
Best line ever about how hitting my word-count goal makes me feel comes from Stephen King. After completing his own, daily 2000-word goal he writes, “I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven thirty in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst.”
Definitely inspired by all of my NaNo experiences, next up was publishing my graphic novel, Toe Jam and The Toenail Fairies. Get your nose plugs out… live from Planet Fungeye, I’ll share that story next!
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More of my stories to come, but what I’m really excited about is reading your stories awakened by mine.
