The Return to Nebraska

First off, I'd like to extend a huge thanks to those of you in Hamilton County who supported the Zoo by voting for Issue 17. We really couldn't continue to have a world class zoo without your support. (And while I'm on the subject, the Zoo's website has finally been given a complete overhaul. Go check it out!)

The first week of NaNoWriMo has passed, and I figured it was time to let you all know how I'm doing.

First off, I have a confession to make. I'm cheating. After thinking through my plot idea this year, I realized that there was no way I'd be able to pull it off. I had planned on writing a metafiction novel about not having any idea what to write about for NaNoWriMo, and was going to pick a genre, write a storyline until it fell apart and then start with another completely unrelated genre until something worked. The name of this mess was to be The Spaghetti Method (as in throwing it against the wall until something sticks). It was going to be brilliant; it would just be a bunch of writing exercises loosely strung together.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd want to give each mini-plot a valid try, which would require research. Lots of research. If I was going to set a story in the Middle Ages, I'd need to brush up on my European history. If I was going to write a storyline from the point of view of an elephant, I would have to research elephant behavior and matriarchal societies. If I was going to write an action sequence, I'd have to learn something about guns... and so on. While it would've been a fun idea, I would've spent entirely too much time reading and not enough time writing.

Meanwhile, Alison and Devin, the characters that I'd stranded in Nebraska last year's attempt, were frantically waving their arms in an effort to get my attention. "What about us? Are you going to leave us here forever? We've probably still got another 50,000 words of story to tell!"

So, to make a long story short (or rather, a short story longer), I'm picking up where I left off with last years' story and attempting to finish it. (I figure if Miramax could split Kill Bill into two movies simply by sticking a Volume One and Volume Two to the titles, then why can't I?) I'm not counting the twenty chapters I wrote last year in my totals, so hopefully by the end I'll have a 77,000 word novel that will actually be finished and won't entirely suck.

(And for those of you who had the website address of last year's novel-in-progress, don't bother looking for it. I've taken it down and, as of this point, will not be posting chapters online as I go. This may change as time goes on, but I doubt it. Trying to code what I'd written took up valuable writing time, and I felt guilty whenever I'd fall behind on my word count. My posting here is infrequent enough. Adding another website into the mix would be asking for trouble.)

According to the "official" rules of NaNoWriMo, participants are not allowed to use any previously written work or stories in progress, so I am technically cheating. But then again, there were people who turned in a ten word sentence repeated 5000 times last year and were awarded the "winner" banner. (What's even more ridiculous about this is that these people were stupid enough to post their "novel excerpts" on the NaNoWriMo website. Were they attempting to show how brazen and clever they thought they were? Were they that desperate for attention?) So if these people can cheat that flagrantly and wave it in the faces of those of us who were struggling to meet our word counts, then why can I not write 50,000 new words - the second part of my story - and get credit for it?

I hear the purists griping about my argument. I'm not listening. I'm on my way back to Nebraska, and this time I'm coming back with an ending.

So I wrote 1700 words at the first Write In on Saturday, fueled by the massively addictive Indian Malabar coffee at Sitwell's. All of it was dialogue, it had little or no bearing on the plot, and I didn't care. I'll edit later, right?

I took Sunday afternoon off to go see Urinetown with my mother and sister, then returned home, made a pot of coffee, and started to type furiously. As of Sunday night, I was chugging along and had written almost 5000 words. (For those of you who know the plot, yes, the karaoke scene is finally written.) And then I hit a brick wall. I managed to add a chapter between the meaningless dialogue and the karaoke scene, bringing my total to a little over 6000 words, but I wasn't sure where to go next.

Most of the problem was that I had afraid that I wouldn't be able to stretch out the rest of the story for another 44,000 words. The aforementioned karaoke scene was pretty much the midpoint of the story, and my outline after that point consisted of "stuff happens." There was no conflict whatsoever, just my characters sitting around smoking and drinking and saying the same things over and over again. It was rapidly becoming an poorly written uninspired drunken pop-culture version of Waiting for Godot. I was almost ready to drop out.

The only thing I could think of to extend the plot was to have a character break an ankle. Hey, I write from experience. (Although I've never been stuck in an alternate dimension in Nebraska... I've never been any further west than Chicago. But that's the good thing about alternate dimensions - no experience necessary!)

I decided to take a break, walk away from the story for a day or two, and give my brain a rest. I went to see a few movies. (Word to the wise. Avoid The Matrix Revolutions. It's mindbogglingly bad. On the other hand, Elf is sweet and charming. And I don't even like Will Ferrell that much.)

After clearing my mind with an example of Good Movie/Bad Movie, I had an epiphany in the 11th hour. It may not be enough to carry the story to the 50,000 word finish line, but it will certainly help. And it's better than the idea of describing an upcoming pivotal Scrabble game in excruciating detail, one tile at a time. I guess I'll see if it works or not tonight, after I work my way through another pot of coffee. It's going to be a long night.

Tomorrow's Write In is at the Blind Lemon. Hopefully I'll be caught up enough to show up. Hopefully I'll be awake enough to show up. Hopefully I'll be able to find a decent parking spot in Mt. Adams. (Walking more than short distances is still a challenge. Adding a hilly terrain and a heavier-than-it-looks laptop increases the level of difficulty.)

I'm going to work through this. I'm determined this year.