I've been slogging through my fourth novel, wondering what's going to happen next and how I'm going to complete 50,000 words by Nov. 30. I'm not
that far off target right now, but I'm still not where I should be.
It's not easy being a month-long novelist. There's persistence, creative problem solving, forgetting/ignoring the daily pressures of life, giving up watching TV in prime time, and self-trickery/bribery involved (no candy until you finish 1,667 words!). All in my spare time, the little that I have of it.
I'm savvy now to my writing ways, though. That's part of the problem. I've always been a seat-of-the-pants fiction writer. I start out not knowing ANYTHING significant about the novel except the first line. It doesn't always stay the first line, but it always starts there. Some years I've had vague, random situations and images floating in my brain in the days before.
I couldn't catch them easily. They were like shadows passing in the night. Some years, I had a great opening situation and the characters took off improvising their lines and actions in a wild romp.
The first year was the easiest, I think, to quote my wise niece Nico, because I didn't know I didn't know. I didn't know that I didn't know what I was doing. I just did it! I didn't know what I was doing, what to expect, and the sky was the limit. Since then, I've come to think that I know a little something about crafting a work of fiction. Oooohhhh... that was dangerous. Now I have expectations that my first draft won't be crap.
But all first drafts are crap, to paraphrase Hemingway.
So here's the situation: I've crafted 17,550 words so far....and until this morning, I didn't know what the heck was going on. I had vague notions. My two main characters were running around the desert, young girls who should have been back home spending their summer vacation bored and complaining like most self-respecting pre-pubescents. But, no, my characters had to go flying off in a magic carpet for adventure.
As the word count grew, I was throwing all sorts of trouble their way -- mysterious assailants, losing their valuables, running away from danger, buying a donkey that they couldn't take back home with them -- but they weren't growing, the tension wasn't building, and, frankly, I didn't know how I was going to pull 50,000 words out of them.
But now, this morning, I thought, I'd better sit down and figure out, even if it's still vague, some sort of plot arch. What are they doing so far from home? Why did matter that they were there, now? So what started out as a fantasy novel has turned, I think, into a geopolitical thriller involving magic carpets that can travel through time and space, family secrets, a bloodless coup d'etat in a major Middle Eastern country, spies, and poor judgment by a 12-year-old who just might end up changing the course of history.
Who'd have thunk it?
Snow. It still brings a thrill as it courses down from the heavens, cloaking the ground, the trees, the buildings, and everything with a soft mantle of white.
