Losing NaNoWriMo - not the end of the world for me!

It is the end of November and I did not win NaNoWriMo this year. People are still saying not to give up. Apparently it can still be done. But I lost, I lost faith and I lost hope. I feel almost bad about it. Yet, I think that I can achieve in my own time.

I have a YA novel on the back burner, simmering away and popping parts out here and there. It is strange because I never saw YA as a possibility for me. Since I read Twilight in my early teens that it all YA has been to me. Stupid teenage romance about stalky guys and the supernatural. I never really realised what it could be, not until now.

Now I am so far passed YA that I think I can better understand it. I can look back and see passed all the creepy brooding vampires. I mean, that part was a nightmare. But, then there is Northern Lights and more recently A Fault in Our Stars. YA can carry important messages about life and friendship, about acceptance and diversity and it is that part of it that I want to write about.

I have always felt like I had something important to say. I think most writers will tell you that, especially the unpublished ones. They will say that they have something important inside of them and they just haven't found the right way to say it yet. And, I believe them. Once they find the right way, the perfect way, to say that one important thing, they usually become something. They might not get published but they become something. At least, I hope so.

So here I go, putting NaNoWriMo behind me and writing something else instead. Something that I do not want to rush through! I am a huge believer in not editing until the first draft is done, but you cannot rush art! At least, I hope not. I do not need November to write, it is a bit of fun, a challenge. Really though, I write all year round and after the year I have had I know that things really cannot get worse. So with nothing in the way, here I go!

I must be mental.

Today I resign myself to the loss of NaNoWriMo. I have written 23000 words of one novel and it just is not working. I know the idea is to push ahead and get to the parts that work, and I have done that in the past when I thought that it could work, but I have to face up to the fact that I can no longer sit day after day and stare at that particular scrivener project. It is a sad day for me, I do not like to give up, I do not like to lose. Although, whilst I have given up on one novel half way a more confident side of me is whispering, we can still do this.

I had a very strong novel idea for the start of November, which I kicked in for something that I thought would be easier, now 23000 words into that one I am beginning to look back to that first novel and think, that is the one. That is me. I have been lying to myself over 23000 words and that is not okay. Sometimes the words did flow but they never had a sense of rightness to them.

I am a lost writer. I grew up believing that high fantasy would always be my passion but over the last few years I have changed. Those 23000 words were my last chance at reeling back in the spirit of high fantasy, but I pulled out an old boot instead. A worn, shredded old boot that has lost its charm. I am not saying that I dislike high fantasy, I am just saying that I as a writer have evolved from it. It was my springboard into writing, and I do not believe that many writers in this world have stuck with their springboards. The very nature of a springboard is to launch you to another place, the very nature of a writer is to evolve.

I have said before that I am always learning and want to continue to learn. It is why I am pursuing a MA and want to teach. I have never been disillusioned, I have always written because I could not exist any other way, I have never expected anyone else to understand that, to read my work and see it. I have my hopes set on a teaching job that will allow me to exist and to pay the bills.

And so, I have to be true to myself. This year NaNoWriMo has taught me that above all else. The first year I did it I learned that I could, the second year I learned that I could do it and go beyond it, and this year I have learned that it is okay to change what you write - that if you do not roll with the changes you are going to be on the floor days, months later wishing you had. This is not a sad moment for me, I am not giving up I am moving on and starting again, because believe me I am not done trying.

So, to sum up:

- Restarting NaNoWriMo

- Not afraid of change

- Writers are awesome

NaNoWriMo

I am taking part in National Novel Writing Month and I am over 5000 words behind. Yet, I am still feeling rather optimistic about winning. My plot is reasonably flawed, a few of my characters are already flattening out and there is this annoying little voice in my head that says university work is more important. Also, if I do not write anything today this will be my third day in a row without writing. 

I guess I should really go and bloody write something rather than waffling in a blog post. Surely a blog post is not superior to the march of adventure that is NaNoWriMo? Because, it is an adventure. Not only that but it is a challenge. One that I think every writer should attempt. I have spoken to people who do not think that just hammering out a first draft is the way forward. To them I say, at least I am moving forward. That is, after I have throttled the editor in my and shoved him in a box. 

I think learning to quiet the editor is a good skill. Perhaps even a very important one. Even if you take nothing other than that from NaNoWriMo I think it has been worth the time. Just do it for one year, do not bother with the rest. I promise you will learn something.

This is my third year taking part. I am of the opinion that a writer can have never learned enough. And so year after year I put myself through the ordeal that NaNoWriMo becomes. I will probably just scrape by like I have the previous two years. I will probably finish the novel over the months after NaNo, just like the last two years, and then I will print out a triumphant first draft, put it on my side and never visit it again. 

Because editing is the bloody hard part.

In a way I suppose the march stops there for me. I am probably doomed to fill drawer after drawer with horrendous first drafts. Even as I type this my mind is straying to the first draft I wrote last year and I'm thinking, perhaps I should do a rewrite for NaNo, perhaps I should scrap what I have written so far this year. Perhaps. Perhaps, I should write the second novel in the series I started last year.

Now I am feeling conflicted and will have to go away and think about this some more. 

Present Vs Past

I am trying to decide on wether or not to use the present tense for my NaNoWriMo novel. It is not the most common tense to write in. I have never written anything longer than a short story in the present tense. But, somehow it feels a little better. A lot of my writer friends despise the present tense and refuse to read anything that is written in it. I too have often turned my nose up at novels written this way. But, I do not think that is just because of the tense. It is because they use the present tense in a strange way.

The challenge when writing in present tense is making it sound 'right'. I use that word with some caution as I am not sure what the correct term for well written work is, as everyone has a different idea of it. What I mean is some sentences sound strange when written in the present tense, they make complete sense and feel comfortable in the past but transferring them straight over to present is just... strange. This is where the challenge comes from. I have been writing a short piece in present tense. When I read over it I find myself tweaking small parts that would sound fine if I just changed the bloody tenses.

However, when I started this piece I was writing it in the past tense and it felt wrong. And if it feels wrong then there is nothing I can do but bow to the whim of my idea. It is set in the close future, and that, for me, seems to be enough to push it over the edge when I am writing in the past tense. It doesn't even feel like sci-fi to me, it is that close to the present, so it wouldn't make sense to write in past tense. Does that make sense? It seems to, but then I think about it and I know it should not matter.

No matter the tense, as long as it is written well it should get good feedback. I just want to avoid those who would rather chop their hands off than read present tense. I guess my aim with this novel is to appeal to those people especially. To have them pick it up, read it, and find themselves thinking, 'well I don't usually like present tense, but I love this.'

Originality is dead.

A few of my more recent lectures have made it very clear that no idea is new or original. This has lead me to want to throw myself from a very tall building, seeing as, you know, none of the work I have ever slaved over is original anyway so who cares. Originality is dead and I would argue that technology killed it.

Every idea I have ever pitched has at some point met with this response 'Ah that's kind of like this book/film/article where...' Every idea we come up with is like something else. This is because our lives are solely intertextual. We cannot help but see similarities between works of fiction, in tweets or status updates. Why is this? How have we become an intertextual society?

Technology is the answer that I would give. We can share work at the click of a button, we can link articles, surf world news, read newspapers from other countries and time periods. We can watch shows we have missed, shows from years ago, films, all online. We have surrounded ourselves with material and it all interweaves with and comments on everything else. Any person who is sitting at home on their computer, sitting on the bus on their phone, sitting in class on their tablet, can be a critic, an artist, a social presence and an amateur blogger. We can be and see so many different things at once, we can interact with them. No wonder we have brought that notion into our films and literature. 

Contemporary writing, films and articles are filled with references to other writing, films and articles. Sometimes this is deliberate, other times it is subconscious. We are constantly becoming involved in several things at once online, it is not possible for us to keep this out of our creative work. Right this minute, as I am typing, I may be reminding you of someone else, or something else. I may sound like an article you read the other day, I may use the same phrases as a character you were just thinking about. We contrast and compare naturally, it is only human to do so. Originality is dead, then, and perhaps humans killed it. It would not be the first time we had throttled a state of being out of existence.

So what hope do our creative minds have? Little, I am afraid. Creative people will never be able to escape the scrutiny of human nature. We are attuned to references, we like to criticise. We like to look at a great piece of work and shoot it down because it has been done or seen before. It gives us pleasure to think that one great artist or another is actually not so great because someone before had worked in the same way. I find that the one criticism I cannot bare is 'it has been done.' We have been brought up in a society that lauds originality and criticises repetition. 

But, that does not mean that we should just give up. I am still writing, I am still writing. I am still writing. I am learning and reading and finding different ways in which to express myself. Good writers, I think, are aware that intertextuality is unavoidable. Great writers use this knowledge, and create work that cannot be criticised for being unoriginal because that was how it was supposed to be. This does not mean that great pieces of art are complete regurgitations. This means that great pieces of art are taking those regurgitations and twisting them into new forms. I have not yet found the right way of doing this, I do not hold the secret to great writing. But, I am willing to try and find it. 

 

Mammoths, fantasy and defining modern writers.

I am an unpublished writer. I am an unpublished... writer? I am unpublished, therefore I cannot be a writer. 

That last statement is untrue. I am a writer. I have sometimes wondered if other people see me that way. Are there people out there who think that they cannot be writers because they are unpublished? Probably. It was how I used to think. But, I have and am studying writing, I think I should get some kind of title for that. Princess, would be my desired one. World dominator, empress! But, what if I applied that thinking to other subjects? I have studied history so... I am a historian! No. And the reason that I am not a historian is because I do not feel it. I love history, but in my heart I am a writer. I always will be. And also a little bit of an empress too.

I started thinking about this because I started thinking about submitting to a magazine. Or online journal, or anywhere. I am not at this point going to be picky. The thing is, I have gone through this process before. I have thought about submitting, researched for hours the best magazine to submit too, gotten a piece ready for submission, aaaaand backed out. I just cannot hit that button. I have done, and I have a slew of rejection emails to prove it. But, why can't I now? I think it is because that as a writer I do not know who I am. 

Writer is too broad a term. I am a writer of fiction, we could narrow it down that far at least. But then within that, what am I? Once, I would have said 'I am a writer of fantasy fiction.' Yet, I no longer class my writing as fantasy. Sure, there are fantastical elements to all of my pieces but they feel too real to be fantasy. Fantasy can be a comment on reality and real society but I think that my work goes deeper than that. At least I like to think so. I think it strikes real elements with a sledge hammer rather than encompassing them as fantasy fiction does, sometimes. I am well aware that fantasy is a very broad term and it could be applied to my work. 

Yet, fantasy is not the right world. Surreal sounds better. So going back to the top. I am an unpublished, surreal fiction writer. Does that sound right? Not quite. I do not think it is quite there. I want something harsher, something that screams look at me I'm being fucking amazing over here! Empress Jodie, sauntering through. Marching through. No, charging through! I want something that charges through with a lance, riding an elephant! No, a mammoth! Let's bring mammoths back! Let's all ride mammoths and charge into the world of fiction. Or better yet, let's all stop labelling ourselves as writers. The term is too broad, too encompassing, too much like fantasy and fiction. 

I propose that we all choose our own terms to describe our work and who we are and who we want to be. I have been stringing something together throughout this post. And after much more thought than there seems to be here I think I know who and what I am.

I am an empress and my work is a charging mammoth.

This Summer

Come and find me in the summer,

I'll be standing by the window.

In a white dress.

I will paint my lips red,

darken my eyelids for you.

Stain my white dress.

Let us spin a bedroom,
I will draw the curtains,
you can paint the sheets.

Let us stand together,
by the window and,
watch them as they dry.

You will leave me in the winter,
when I have to close the window.
I'll fold my white dress.

So just give me this summer.
Your sweet lips,
paint my dress.