Here's the other, really important thing about Nanowrimo, the international thing where thousands of people attempt to write a novel in the space of just a month: the simple fact that it's just about possible. The idea that I'm developing for my story, Set Up, Punch has been fluttering around my head for a couple of years now, but I've never gotten around to completing it, or indeed, even starting it. Too much effort for too little reward, I felt. Would it be any good? What if I didn't know what the hell I was writing? What if there was no real logical transition in between the scenes I was writing, and they clearly only followed each other in that order because that was the way that I, the writer, wanted them to be - but they didn't actually have any narrative coherence? What if my lead character was quite sketchily written, with no strong personality traits for the reader to latch onto?
Well. Two and a bit days in, roughly 5,000 words, and I'm guilty of all of the above. But, I'm two and a bit days in, and I've written 5,000 words of a story that simply did not exist on Wednesday. It's actually a giddily remarkable thing. This approach to just go blindly forward, telling the story in much the same way that you imagine 19th Century explorers to have gone hacking through jungle vines, is very freeing. I haven't even read back more than 100 words from wherever the last section I'd left off writing at any one time. I simply do a quick scan to remind myself of where I am in the plot, and then go forward. Always forward.
Which brings us back to the opening line of this blog entry. If I wasn't doing this as part of a national event, my internal editor would have kicked in (and kicked me) ages ago. Probably within the first 100 words. More than that, whenever I'm not writing - when I'm not at the pad or laptop - the whole scale of the thing overwhelms me. It's a novel, for crying out loud. One that I have just 28 days to complete. And it's not even 28 days, not really, because life and work are going to get in the way. So I find, somewhat to my surprise, that I'm not actually thinking over plot problems when away from the computer. Usually, with other projects, I am. I will have written myself into a corner, and will spend a few days not writing, just mentally trying to untie the story knot. With this novel, I find myself incapable of doing that - my mind just shrinks away from the problem like a shell-shocked dormouse under a flashlight (no, I have no idea where that image came from either, just work with me here). So, as I say - if it wasn't for the fact that this is under the umbrella of nanowrimo, my panic and writer's block would have encouraged me to jump ship at the first hurdle. (ships? Hurdles? And you thought the shell shocked dormouse was a tortured metaphor).
But I've found, forced with the idea that I have to hit a reasonable word count every day, that simply flexing the fingers and ... typing - actually provides the storylines that I haven't been able to think of when I've been away from the computer. At least, that's the way it's gone down so far. I very likely won't be quite as clear-headed in the middle of week three, when I find I've sunk 200 pages into my characters running on the spot. Perhaps literally, if I'm particularly stuck.
It should be ok, though. In one of my other lives, I'm an improviser, and in improv, you learn to live in the present moment - just always moving forward, only reacting to whatever's going on at that precise moment. The theory is that you won't have to worry about coming up with a decent ending, because whatever story you're telling in the present will lead naturally to that ending. That's the theory, anyway. I mention the improvisation only by means of a tenuous link to the fact that to or row (Sunday), I'm holding the second of my improv drop ins at the DukeBox Theatre on Waterloo Street in Hove, which is as good a place as any to come up with a new story or idea. They're purely drop in, so newcomers are welcome at any time, regardless of what experience they do or don't have. There's all manner of different types of improv and skills that are looked at each week, so it's always worth coming along to see what we're doing.
Now. As the more astute amongst you might have guessed, this entire blog entry was a delaying tactic, avoiding that fateful moment when I finally go back to the novel, and hack out the next couple of thousand. As ever, right now, I have no idea what happens next. Hopefully I will within the. Ext half hour ....
No comments:
Post a Comment