Masterpiecing 9: You Can Do It…No Seriously, Get Back In There and Write
You can’t honestly believe that getting your writing advice here is any kind of boon when you finally sit down and write the inevitable masterpiece that you have locked away somewhere, deep within your brain - back behind those years and years of Law and Order plots and caloric indexes. You just like to compare notes. I do the same thing. It’s fun to sit down and take a stab at the hundreds of other writers peddling their wares, checking up on the competition. It’s okay. We’re on even ground really. If we added up all the books published between the lot of us, it’d be a solid and very sexy looking 0.
A flip or two through my vast and sickeningly yellowing collection of half finished novels, unpublished short stories, and love-lorn poetics will show you that I’m no different from any other aspiring artist…I start a million and one projects and might, someday, if I (and everyone I’ve promised to dedicate a novel to) am able to whip one out, I’ll be the happiest person on the planet.
For now though, returning to the track that is novel writing and that unfinished masterpiece you occasionally glance upon with the same withered stares that your neighbor’s emaciated, yowling cat gets when he pounces on your garbage cans, here’s what’s next. Don’t let it die. Forget the million other projects you never finished. This is your masterpiece. It’s the million and first project and deserves better from you.
Every year, I participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The rules are simple and the project simpler - write a 50,000 word novel in one month, November to be exact. In the weekly emails sent out to help bolster self esteem and motivation for participants, all sorts of fun, smarmy advice is present, but the one thing I found most interesting (and ultimately helpful) was this: Week 2 is the hardest. After the first 12k words or so, the novelty has worn off and the weariness kicks in. The second half of the uphill climb is painful and long, but once you hit the summit, it’s all clear sky, you’re over half way done.
This doesn’t directly apply to your novels of unlimited length, creativity and time to finish. It’s for people trying to write 1700 words a day for a month. But, here’s the best part; it’s more or less the same thing. Once you’ve kicked in three or four dozen pages and find that your characters might be boring or that your settings are starting to crumble from your own disinterest or worse yet, you didn’t work on it for a while and can’t remember where you are. Step back, take a gander at what you have and remember how awesome your idea is, how fantabulous that masterpiece will be when it’s done, and make sure to throw in something half way interesting to keep your own attention.
If the writer’s bored, your readers will be twice as much so. I’ve actually peaked this point before, overcoming the depths of despair and boring exposition in the middle of a book. Not to say that my conclusion is as splendid as I would hope, or as exciting, but I got there….and some day I’ll get to the end. Oh sweet glorious ending, how I long for thee.
So, in a nutshell, step 9 is this: don’t get discouraged or overwhelmed after a few chapters. Keep going - there’s something there that got you started and by all means, don’t add to that ever growing pile of the painfully incomplete novels and stories of the past.