The long version
Since my NaNoWriMo* ’pep talk’ manifestly went out several days ago** and today is the last day of the nationally novel-writing month of November, this seems to me a suitable day to hang the original long version here. I assume the short version is or will be up on the site somewhere–I’m not sure when they hang the current year’s–but this is what I originally wrote, before I had pointed out to me they only wanted 800 words.***
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As I write this less than twenty-four hours before NaNoWriMo’s deadline I also have a book due in eight days. Not just due. Absolute, final, already overdue, my-editor-is-a-patient-woman-but-publishing-schedules-are-publishing-schedules, due.
When NaNoWriMo contacted me last April about writing a pep talk for this year’s masochi—er—enthusiastic writers, I had just decided to whack PEGASUS in half and make two books out of it. PEGASUS started life as a short story about eight years ago; when the first draft passed the ‘novella’ stage I sighed heavily—this happens to me kind of a lot—put it in the ‘novel’ queue, and didn’t pick it up again until about a year and a half ago. There is of course an enormous thrill to opening a new blank document or breaking out a fresh clean legal pad for the first sentence of a brand-new story, but when I’m writing to deadline, meeting deadlines being about my least best trick as a professional writer, it’s comforting to have something on paper already, some idea of how long (ahem) something is, some idea of where it’s going.
Except this one kept going and going. And going. I have always been a write-each-draft-straight-through-and-don’t-look-back storyteller; it’s the way I develop a feel for the pacing, for where the high and low, careening and meditative, places of each story are—and how I discover where the whole works is going to finish. I usually have a clue about the ending (but I am sometimes wrong), and I never know precisely. Consistency and clarity (and spelling) begin to emerge in the second draft; there are a lot of twiddles, futzes, complete re-rewrites and outtakes during the second draft, and probably the most-per-page screams of frustration: the first draft has told me that the story is there but now I have to make it work on the page. The third draft should mainly be giving the story a really good brushing and plaiting its mane and tail—but there are hazards even here (ask anyone who has ever plaited a mane or a tail), nor is it likely to stand quietly for this operation. The twitchier it is the likelier that there’s a visiting WWII society at the local airfield holding a gala, and you’ll have skeins of Spitfires and Mosquitoes screaming overhead all day. Speaking of screaming.
Some time last winter, still on the first draft and beginning to panic, I . . . stopped. I did not write straight through to the end. I went back to the beginning and started on the second draft as if I knew what I was doing—as if I knew where I was going—as if I knew how it ended. There’s another little quirk of PEGASUS’ character: one of the reasons it’s taken me eight (or so) years to get back to it is because I seriously don’t know how it ends. There are two possibilities, but the division between them is a little drastic: it’s not quite ‘everybody lives’ vs. ‘everybody dies’, but . . . close. I won’t know till I get there. And I didn’t finish the first draft, so I didn’t get there. This has never happened to me before. It’s never happened to me before that I’ve started a second draft without having finished a first draft—without knowing how it’s going to end. It’s never happened to me before that I’ve split a book into two books . . .
Writing is like this.
Oh, not exactly like this; every writer is different as every human being is different, one from another. (Some writers make their deadlines. Some writers know where they’re going. Some writers don’t mind not knowing where they’re going.) But the chief thing I would like to get over to you, as you look to me to say something inspiring about this maniac—I mean, this energizing and felicitious project to write a first draft of a novel in a month, is the liveness of Story, and therefore the unpredictability inherent in writing any story down. I’ve been writing stories for nearly as long as I’ve been breathing, and my first novel was published over thirty years ago. And writing still surprises me. Stories still get away from me. It’s not that all this time and experience have gone for nothing: I have much greater faith in the process than I did; thirty years ago I wouldn’t have dared do what I’m doing with PEGASUS, nor would I have trusted my own instinct that I’ll be able to write that unknown ending when I get there.
It’s a good thing that writing, that Story, is surprising. You need that live, tensile strength between you and the story you’re trying to write, or it’ll die on the page. But this doesn’t make it easier. It makes it harder. It’s more exciting—more thrilling, more appalling: on good days you’ll fly higher than a peregrine cruising for dinner, on bad days someone will have to scrape you off the floor with a spatula. This is what writing is like. But if you’re going to be a writer, you have to write. You have to live, and write on through, the highs and lows, the careens and the meditations of your stories. And that’s what you’re here for now: to write. Go for it. Good luck.
So last April, when NaNoWriMo contacted me, I had recently decided that PEGASUS was two books, and while that murky-shapes-in-the-twilight ending was a little unsettling, I had cheered up a lot. My proper due date was the end of August. I’d make that, no problem. For once in my life I was going to meet a deadline with no problem. NaNoWriMo suggested I get my encouraging words in to them perhaps by the end of August. Fine. Happy to. Thanks for asking.
I got to the end of the third draft of the first volume of PEGASUS on 13 September. But PEGASUS has not been one of the easy brush-and-plait ones. I’m still combing the burrs out. As I wrote in my blog that day, I need a miracle. Anyone got one you’re not using? Out in the garage, up in the attic, in a shoebox under the bed?
I am going to make it. I am going to turn PEGASUS in on the 8th of October.
I’m even going to get my pep talk in to NaNoWriMo by tomorrow.
If I can do these impossible things, you can also do the impossible thing of writing the first draft of your novel in a month. It’s a first draft! It does not have to be a thing of beauty! Don’t worry about the spelling (or the consistency)! Just write it. I bet you can even get to the end, and find out what it is.
And may you have an absolutely brilliant time doing it. Writing can be the worst, and often is—but it can also be the best. And the world always needs more good storytellers. May all of you take a few steps down that good-storytelling road this NaNoWri month. May you come out of that month knowing what you want to do next, and eager to keep going. Try to remember the peregrine days on the days that your husband/wife/roommate/dog needs steel wool to get you off the floor. And keep writing: the only way you can learn how your stories work is by letting them tell you, through your fingers on a keyboard, your hand round your lucky fountain pen, you speaking to your voice recognition software. By putting live words together.
Good luck. I’ll be lighting candles for you.
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**And thanks to all of you who emailed me, and to those advance scouts of webness who posted to my new Twitter self, about it^
^ Given that I also get email any time my blog footnote count drops below a certain level, I fear Comprehensive Insurgency if I ever failed to have any footnotes at all, never mind that the original NaNoWriMo pep talk was a footnote-free activity
*** Sigh
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