What Writing a Book in One Month is like if it’s not your focus.
Or how it’s different when less is more and you need to get paid.
Why November is always a nightmare.
For the last three years, November has been the busiest month of my life.
By way of example, this November I:
- Worked my full time day job
- Recorded 18 hours of audio
- Filmed 10 hours of live footage
- Published 8 podcast episodes
- Wrote 12 scripts
- Edited 3 video essays
- Published 3 articles
- Coded 2 websites from scratch
- Applied for 3 grants
- Live streamed for 24 non-concurrent hours
- Wrote 33,999 words of fiction.
I also started a no carb diet, which, in hindsight, was maybe poor timing.
One might ask why I don’t spread this work over the rest of the year, but the truth is I’m doing most of that anyway, it’s the last one that adds a level of over-work I’m used to avoiding.
So, question is, why write so many words in one month?
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)
NaNoWriMo describe themselves thusly (that’s not a word but it’s too late to go back and change it):
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.
On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
Basically, you write a book in a month.
I’ve done it every year since hiring an editor and veering into the publishing industry.
This year, my goal was to start from scratch and rewrite the third book in the series we’ve been working on.
My goal was to write 40,000 words in November, then during my initial edit in December I’d build it down to 30,000, then back up to 40,000 after working through with the storygrid during January.
I did it last year and it worked well.
So, I figured, no worries this year, right?
The Stats
I spreadsheet a lot of things in my life.
The imposed sense of order spreadsheets create make me feel a little more comfortable about the chaos going on around us.
So here it is, the first graph.
One thing I’m always conscious of is consistency in November.
I’d much rather a smooth gradient than a ton of spikes or dips, which says more about my personality than the process of writing prose.
As we can see from Graph 2, I super didn’t nail that part.
Thursdays were pretty much always a bust because that’s the day we record our podcast, so I knew I’d need to make up for it with some bigger days (this also didn’t happen).
For the most part, I’d hit 1,000 words and call it good.
The Routine
Come the start of November, I end up calendaring in writing at the very end of my day (because there’s no other time really), so after I got to the gym, edit a video, eat dinner and do housework, I sit down at my laptop in the hour before I need to go to bed.
My goal was to write one scene a day.
When you break a scene down into five parts, know it needs a valence shift, it’s pretty easy to knock something together if you have a loose idea of those elements.
I managed something approximating this every day.
Even if the words weren’t happening, I’d try and plot out the next scene as insurance that come the next day, I’d have something to write.
Thus went November, one day at a time.
What Did I Learn
There’s always a different takeaway from NaNoWriMo each year. I still enjoy it, but knowing it’s work makes it somehow more and less important at the same time.
No longer is there an imposed sense of pressure — I just need to get it done.
For the most part, I sat down and did the work.
But, as always, there was a moment where I felt the spark.
The Fire— or the myth of art and creativity
For the most part, people who value the mythical “moment” in creating where god takes the wheel and magic happens, are lying to themselves.
95% of art that’s sell-able (arguably the only art worth a damn to anyone except you) is about consistent, smart grind.
Waiting for motivation is a sure fire way to burn out with nothing ever done.
But, when you do the work every day, every now and then, you get the little sparks — not a raging, out of control bonfire of creativity.
But little sparks all the same.
The iterative bursts of inspiration that fuel a larger, more sustainable engine.
This time, the little sparks came in the form of a surprisingly intimidating, quiet mob boss, an accidental love story and a gunshot.
So what?
My November was a brutal slog and I’m going to see one of my favourite bands tonight and meet them, while I’m pretty much ready to lie on the floor and sleep.
I’m tired, drained, but pretty happy with what I’ve done.
I feel more focused than ever, and after a few days off, I’ll be right back on the train to write the last few thousand words.
If there’s any lesson, I guess it’s this: goals exist to push you to be better, not just to achieve a milestone.
The process of achieving a goal is the best part of creativity, and when it’s time, you get to the grindstone and do the hard work of making it into useful art.
PS: hang in there, nothing amazing was ever easy.
Image Credit: Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
All Calvin & Hobbes comics copyright Andrews McMeel Publishing.
