nanowrimotivation
a fellow nanowrimo participant recently complained of a lack of motivation in the month of december. after much musing, i slapped out the following, which i have yet to send out to the group and probably won't. but it was intended for somewhat public consumption, so i'll put it here. maybe some of them will stumble across it. then again, maybe not.
Our beloved National Novel Writing Month takes a lot out of us. Those of us who reach or exceed the mark are elated to have ?won,? although the finished product may be suspect. We are also exhausted. Even those of us who do this often. Because it is a race we?re not used to running, despite the conditioning of the writing we do during the rest of the year. Those who don?t finish are also exhausted from the effort, and likely, they are exhausted from whatever it was that kept them from finishing. They might then get a little bummed about writing. This is probably normal. The point being, there isn?t a whole lot of writing going on in December.
I can?t stop writing. Not even when I need to hit the brakes. I back off for a day or two, and then my muse shakes off his drunken slumber, rubs his bleary eyes and mumbles incoherently in my ear until I begin writing again. My muse is a pain in the ass, and if I knew what was good for me, I?d kick him to the curb and leave him there. But I love him. I?d miss him if he ever did leave, so I humor him and starting slogging words across a page or screen to see what he?s mumbling about.
This month, he?s mumbled quite a bit about a kid named Duncan Kyle and Duncan?s brother, Jake. Duncan and Jake have both been part of the series of science fiction novels I?ve written that started with my 2002 NaNoWriMo entry, Shaman. Duncan and Jake have their own story to tell, one I?ve tried to tell for four years. Duncan was originally conceived as a character for the role playing game Changeling. The game lasted two sessions, but Duncan wasn?t done. Jake became a hell of a lot more interesting when something I had intended as a shadowy killer with no real personality took me by surprise in one writing session. He began to mock Talon as they fought, and I realized there was a lot more about Jake that I had yet to learn.
Besides Duncan and Jake, there are five stories about a private investigator named Hayden Knight and an investigative reporter named Conrad Satan (pronounced Sha-tan), one of which I started in October but can?t quite get back to. In that story, the last scene I wrote was so bad, I recently went in and deleted it after a read through. Still, I haven?t found the desire to move forward with it, partly because the story got away from me at some point. Well, Conrad got away from me at one point and is likely to start doing foolish things, and Hayden, having been hypnotized, is having a hard time overcoming the hypnotic suggestion, which he knows damn well is a lie.
In order to get around that, I?ve decided to let Conrad do what he will. I can?t stop him. He?s hardheaded and maybe a little crazy. Besides, some of the later stories deal with his mental breakdown. If I let him go now, I?m setting things up for later. To get Hayden to snap out of it, I?ve decided a little research on hypnotism is in order. Research, I?ve found, is a fantastic motivator. You might not find what you set out looking for, but chances are you will run across something that you find interesting. Hop over to your favorite search engine and look for something that interests you. It doesn?t have to be something that pertains to your writing. Maybe you don?t have anything to write about. Type a random thing into your search engine and see what happens. I?ve found fun things this way. In fact, it gave me fuel for two short stories I wrote after NaNoWriMo, ?Cucumber? and ?Indian Summer Halloween.?
I got the title ?Indian Summer Halloween? stuck in my head after that stretch of warm weather we had in late October. I researched Halloween and found a two-line entry about Carlin, supposedly the spirit of Samhain. I never found more about Carlin and thus decided to use her as I pleased. I also found the story of Jack O?Lantern, a farmer who tricked the devil and for his trouble, could go to neither heaven nor hell and walked around with his soul in a hollowed out turnip. ?Cucumber? tells the story of how Jack O?Lantern got tricked into hiding in a hollowed out cucumber by his newborn son. I?d never written a fairy tale before. It was fun to write, and I think it turned out rather well. ?Indian Summer Halloween? is about Jack Jr.?s search for his ?sister,? Carlin, who has run away.
Also on the many back burners I?ve been juggling are a story about samurai in some kind of fantasy setting and a story called ?Sons of Dead Fathers,? which stems from a panel discussion at Dragon*Con 2003 that I attempted to derail with the suggestion of ?kill the love interest.? I made two false starts at this story because I had forgotten the story and was looking at ideas instead. That?s no way to write. At least not for me. So I decided that I would give my main character a love interest. Most importantly, I would kill her during the course of the story. This thought, that I will put this boy through that kind of pain and suffering, is motivation enough for me. I cackle madly and rub my hands together like some kind of evil mastermind. I love my characters, and I love to hurt them. I?ll let them win if the story goes that way. I don?t force them to do what I want. I merely unload misery and see how they react.
For me, that?s what keeps me writing. How do these people I write about deal with things? How do they react to love? To losing loved ones? To physical pain? What do they do to cope? My detective, Hayden Knight, has lost a lot of friends, has lost his daughter, yet he is an absolute rock. Even though he won?t get rid of the bottle of bourbon he keeps in his desk drawer. In this year?s NaNo novel, I did horrible things to one of my main characters, mostly in the way of physical pain and unwelcome sexual contact. How did he respond? During a fight, he professes to the psychotic assassin who has been hounding him that he likes pain. So of course, I gave him more. I love doing that kind of thing. I love all my characters; their faults, their strengths, their hang-ups, their vices and their virtues. Character and dialogue are the things I think I do well in writing, so I do everything from that standpoint. Plot? Whatever. The characters tell me how they want to proceed, and that?s what we do. Morals? Don?t go there. Theme? Only by accident. It?s like having voices in my head but being able to listen and respond without psychotropic medication.
But let?s face it. Sometimes it just doesn?t work. Either you stare at your screen or the paper for hours and nothing happens, or you write, and it feels like the most painful dental experience you?ve ever had. Your muse has shacked up with some little hottie. Your characters are sick of you beating them about the head and won?t come out to play. You?ve got research material galore, but you just don?t seem to care. So what do you do when you hit this icy patch on the road of noveling endeavors?
Some people will tell you to stop until you feel ready to write again. This works to an extent, but what if you never feel ready again? Some people say write through it, but writing through it can make you feel worse because you?ll think everything you put down is crap. And it might be. Of course, if you honestly believe that everything you write is brilliant, there?s a whole different problem. Fact is, we all write crap every once in a while. Some of us are only capable of crap. That?s okay. We write because we love what we do. The second you feel you don?t love it, stop. Loving the craft itself will get you through any block you face, in whatever manner you face it.
Personally, I write through blocks. Though I will stay away from whatever story I?m working on. I write journal entries, store lists, wish lists, character sketches, dreams, anything but the story that?s got me tied up. Eventually, my mind will wander back to the story. I?ll wonder what my people are up to. I?ll wonder what state I left them in. Then I?ll read over what I?ve done, discover that they are taking tango lessons in Kentucky and my muse will say, ?Hey, what if we did this?? And before I know it, I?m moving right along.
While writing through a block is my preference, it sometimes does leave me with that hopeless, helpless sense of doom, that ?I?ll never be published because I suck? pit of self doubt and self pity that can suck away any writer?s will to write. When that happens, I stop. However, I don?t stop being creative. I won?t, for example, drown my writing woes in hours of pointless television. Unless there?s hockey on. What I will do is read. It seems to me that some writers forget to read. Some things I?ve seen come across as if the writer didn?t realize that people read. This is why we write, though. Most of us probably were reading before we were writing. We probably read something and had that beautiful epiphany of ?THIS is what I want to do!? Read a book. Read a magazine. Hell, read the back of the shampoo bottle while you?re in the shower! Either you?ll be inspired by great craft, or you?ll find something so bad that you know you can do better, even at your worst.
Having nothing to read, I?ll find other creative things to do. One of my biggest time wasters is Photoshop, but it also keeps me in a creative frame of mind. I can?t draw. Stick figures elude me, but with Photoshop, I don?t have to be able to draw. I can do some nifty things with Photoshop. Most importantly, I can refresh my writing batteries.
I will also refinish furniture. There?s a wealth of old stuff in my house, hand-me-downs from parents when my husband and I first moved in together. While it?s easier to toss it and buy new stuff, I?ve gotten quite good at sanding off old nasty stains, tightening up wobbly table legs and putting on a fresh stain. It?s a very Zen activity. I don?t find my mind wandering. I can be outside in fresh air and sunshine. The physical motion of sanding and painting, while not requiring much concentration, seems to induce a trance-like meditative state. When I?m done, my mind is clear, and I have a ?new? table.
Whatever you do, do something creative to work through blocks. Blocks are as important as writing. You must heed them. They are telling you that your creative brain is tired. Give it a rest, but don?t let it atrophy. My muse, for all his drinking, is a hungry little bastard, and I must feed him. Writing is play. We didn?t always play the same thing when we were kids. Sometimes it was tag. Sometimes cops and robbers. And sometimes we just stayed inside and colored in our coloring books.
It?s also important to keep in mind that blocks are temporary. Just as the month of November comes to an end, so will any block you face. Some of us may have doubted that we would make it to the end of November. But we did.
