How I Spend November

November, as those close to me know, is National Novel Writing Month. Silly to call it National, as it now exists all over the world, but when it started in San Francisco in 1999 with 21 people the global part seemed far fetched. The gist of it is, as Chris Baty says, to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Baty started it for the simple reason that people always say they want to write a novel (people always say they want to do something) but that they had to wait to retire/the kids to leave home/win the lottery/their vacation time or whatever blah de blah blah excuse (because people always have something that keeps them from doing something).

Chris Baty said bullshit to all you people and your excuses. You need a deadline. And you need a crazy unreasonable deadline. What works about 50,000 words in 30 days is that if you are any kind of normal person with a life it's still a bit of a stretch to write 1667 words a day. Consequently, it means that mean-spirited discouraging editor voice in your head has to turn off and go away so that you can write. Actually, it's not even writing. It's typing. Typing with a purpose.

Why did I start spending my Novembers typing like a crazy person?

In the Spring of 2005, I was finishing up graduate school. In graduate school, while I loved my classes, loved that I had found a way to legitimate spending my Sundays in bed with 19th century British novels and a cup of coffee, and loved (most) my professors, I also struggled a bit. I struggled with that bitchy competitive at all costs mentality (having had papers and ideas stolen). I struggled with who you have to be in academe, that you have to fit into a kind of cookie cutter, and by the end of my program, I realized I didn't fit into that cookie cutter. And when I tried to fit myself into that cookie cutter, I got sick. I had more health issues in my years of graduate school than I had ever had before. I talked about all these things with a glorious adviser as I finished my program. She said, "You know you have brilliant ideas, but your problem is you're just so creative. Your problem is you're just in the wrong program. You should have been across the hall in the MFA creative nonfiction program."

She didn't say such things lightly. She spent most the time I knew her trying to convince MFA'ers to switch sides to the MA program. She told not just one person who wrote to quit. But I left her office with my pen in my hand and thinking, well, then, I should write.

I walked down the hallway and continued thinking, huh, well then. I want to write a book. But writing a book is daunting. You have to be smart sounding for at least 200 pages. I walked into the copy room to check my mailbox before leaving, and ran into a couple of friends of mine who were talking about a writer in the MFA program who had just had her collection of short stories published. But, they said in hushed voices, the stories weren't very good.

All the stories you hear of good writers not getting published, I continually find it baffling when mediocre and even bad writers get published. I asked, well how on earth did she get it published?
My friend said, "They're compelling stories."

I went home thinking of this and that night sat in my bathtub, saying to myself, okay, I can write a book, but I need a compelling idea, because I can write a bad book if the idea is compelling. Then my idea literally fell on my head. In the bathtub. Completely out of no where.

I finished graduate school, moved to Colorado to be with my not-yet husband, went to Africa with not-yet husband, got married, and started researching my idea. In November, I wrote my first 50,000 word draft. Of course I still procrastinated and wrote the last 30,000 words in the last three days (I didn't have a child then). But you write 30,000 words in 3 days - well, you can imagine the typos and the paragraphs without a stitch of punctuation.

I did what you do in such situations: I gave it to my parents, the people who are supposed to love me no matter what even if I write 50,000 words of crap.

I still haven't revised it. Turns out I find revising more daunting than actually writing. Turns out writing is the easy part. And actually, while I still love the idea and can even see the future movie of my book in my mind, I'm not there yet. I'm still simmering on it. In 2006 & 2007, I tried to use the November Novel writing as a outlet for revising and failed miserably. In 2008, I had a baby the week before November started, so I felt justified in taking the month off - and even if I wanted to write, in labor I pinched nerves in my upper arms that left my wrists paralyzed for six weeks. I couldn't even put on my glasses let alone hold a pen.

In 2009, we went to Singapore. In my suitcase, I had a good chunk of my research books and my revision attempts, but instead I started a new novel in November. Not even halfway through the month, I decided I hated that idea and ended up writing a collection of short stories that I've spent the last year revising.

Just before coming home from Bali, I started to realize what was missing from my novel, what I needed to do in order to fix it. I'm a firm believer in simmering and I've since learned that I'm in good company. I met an author who had a story in the Best American Short Stories and she spent five years writing, simmering, revising, simmering some more. Now I think the writing process is similar to parenting, in that when you follow your story or your child's lead, it goes far easier than trying to force your agenda.

This year I have a brand new idea. I'm writing that. Husband still wants me to revise and finish the old one. Of course I will. But not this month. This month I'm typing my 50,000 words while trying to keep up on all the other things I want to be doing and writing. This year - last year too - the writing isn't even about the writing anymore. It's just for the tradition of it. That in five years, we've lived in four cities, and still haven't for sure decided on where to live. How I spend November is the one count on-able thing in my yearly calendar. It's how I cope with all the other change constantly happening in the rest of my life, that no matter where we are, I am getting up at 4am and stealing Saturdays for myself and writing. Typing.