So, after years of refusing the opportunity, this time I finally decided to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words in a month - and this around a full time plus overtime work schedule, a high-energy dog, a relationship which, at the very least, requires that I cook a meal every once in awhile, and various other responsibilities. Suffice it to say, the NaNoWriMo challenge is a rather daunting task.
Well, it is now November 27, 2009, Black Friday, and I'm at less than 20,000 words. I admit, I do feel a tinge of disappointment at not making it to the winner's circle, but only a tinge and here's why. For one thing, one would need to write 1666+ words per day to make the 50,000 word count. At my composing speed, this would require an average of 2 writing hours per day. Unfortunately, many of the chores of my weekdays do not end until around midnight, and at my age, I need my beauty sleep. The other reason is the writing process itself. For the first time, I allowed the writing to come first. I put the internal editor, who hates everything, to bed, with the promise that she could get to work after I'd reached the word count goal. This was a most-liberating experience - I just put words on the page. I even skipped the boring parts, telling myself I could go back and fill in those details later. Then, an interesting thing happened - my story - the ideas and outline for which I'd been tossing around in my head for a few years now - completely jumped the track. It has gone in a direction I didn't intend it to, but it works. This has presented another challenge, however, in that I wasn't sure where it would go next and this uncertainty was really blocking me. I had two to three different directions I could take, and wasn't sure which one would have the best outcome. So, last night I stopped and, with pen and paper, sketched out the logical course of events that would follow each particular course of action. One result/ending was too cheezy, one hit a wall, and one ending doesn't have the resolution a reader might be looking for, but it is the one most true to the intention of the story and the authenticity of the central character. Oddly enough, this was also the natural direction the story was trying to take, but I kept stopping it thinking, "No, no, no, this isn't what I wanted!" But, it's what the story wants to do, and so it shall. If, when I sit down and get back to writing, the story wants to go in a different direction than what I have worked out on paper, I will let it. I'm not going to force the story to do anything it does not want to do, I'm going to trust that, as it develops, it will go where it is supposed to go. This trust in the process of story development requires a lot of faith, and I think that is where the writer's block comes from - from not having faith in the writing process, in my subconscious, in a higher power or whatever. My point is, when writing, just sitting down and letting the ideas come forth, the story begins to take on a life of its own and I have to get out of the way and let it grow.
