2.6 The NaNo Tale

Small details

 For a change, I will be sharing a little about myself. Someone told me recently that there isn't a lot of information on me as a writer, and I was a little surprised, "Surely there's plenty!" Then I looked at my information pages and realized in an effort to stay interesting and cute, I'd neglected to share some more personal details.

Today I'm going to talk a little about myself. Please forgive the self-indulgence.

I started writing seriously when I was about 13. I tried to stop writing once when I was about 23, it 100% did not take (nor did the discipline to put down the pen last longer than a few months.) During the years 13 to 20, I wrote a bit over 100 different fanfictions.

I am an advocate of public schooling over private, as my own education was public. I think that while we had fewer resources, we had more passionate teachers. I know two particular English teachers I owe a life and love of words to.

When I was 14, I met Ms Carroll.

Ms Carroll (Ms, not Mrs, not Miss- Ms, she explained, was a woman's address for a lady who wasn't defined by her relationship to men. Her first lesson to the whole class) was a spark of fire to my kindling. She loved stories, creative writing, and she demanded more, better, harder writing efforts. She was a harsh marker, but bursting with encouragement. She told me to write. Then she told me to do better, to think critically.
She taught critical analysis of writing, and challenging yourself. She taught me to deal with adversity by doing better, improving myself so some day, in the distant future, I would smile at critics and their comments would be picked apart for usefulness and left out to dry aftwards.
Ms Carroll saw the tinder that primary school had placed on my heart for writing, and she lit that spark. She fanned that baby flame.

When I was 15, I met Ms Brown.

Alinta Brown came to my public as a substitute teacher for English. It's the distant past now, but I believe that our teacher came down ill (it wasn't Ms Carroll in that year for me)
She liked history. A lot. (She introduced me to the SCA!) She also was a fantastic teacher, a great encouragement. And she was a published author in fantasy magazines! What a dazzling, talented lady! I was envious of her starry career!
One day, in the library, the rest of the class had left and three of us were still scrambling away on our notebooks, writing a short-story that had been the class' lesson for the day. Ms Brown had read a little of mine as an example to others. I was very proud, (I've thankfully burned all evidence of anything I wrote in those formative years!!) Ms Brown asked me if I was participating in NaNoWriMo.

"What's that?"

"It's a competition where you write 50,000 words."

My jaw dropped, "50,000 words?"

She laughed and explained it. We had a month until the first of November.

I won my first NaNoWriMo.

I didn't cheat. I just wrote like a lunatic. This was a very heavy, painful undertaking for someone who so far had only written short stories and fanfiction shorts.

I learned a lot of lessons.

First, I learned that the reason why I had so many unfinished works was because around 20k-35k, it is like trying to bleed to make the words come for me. 

Pantsing or Plotting, that 15k stretch is all uphill for this poor lady. That section, I have to bleed my soul to write. After I have pushed the story over that hill, the words ease out of me- the novel is birthing and I'm in control again.
I have heard this from a lot of other folk as well; not always the same stretch of words; some are earlier, some are later, but that first lump is the killer for everyone.

The second lesson I learned was that writing to a deadline isn't for everyone. 

But it works for me. I met someone who wrote 80-100k novels habitually. Everything she started, she finished. But not on a deadline. Never with a clock. That doesn't make her better or worse than me. Everyone has a process.
I look forward to NaNoWriMo as a chance to force myself to finish. It isn't the starting, it is the finishing for me; that moment when you see 50k words and the magical text 'THE END' on that word document.

The third lesson I learned was that novel writing is Hard.

You won't always finish a project. My writing folder is filled with ideas that made 10k, but never further.
I've failed NaNoWriMo 5 times. That's 5 years I just didn't make the word count. Sometimes that stings, other times I realized that I wasn't into the novel enough. My head was elsewhere. I had two very bad, rocky years of other interference. Insert a dozen excuses. The end result was an abandoned novel.

But Giving Up.... is harder.

One year, about 6 years ago now, I decided I was never going to be a published writer. I was at my lowest. I'd failed two years in a row. What, I asked, was the point of NaNoWriMo for me? I was torturing myself for nothing.
No one (except other writers) understands how much pressure there is from outsiders to tell you to stop writing. Unless you've 'made it' writing is a time-wasting hobby and you're probably not very good. Does that sound familiar?
I was good at it, sure, I knew that, I'd practised for 9 years- both small stories and novels. I'd gotten good at a lot of it. But I was never going to see myself in a bookstore.
I was at the moment where I knew I had that skill, but I lacked confidence in my powers. My artistic vision wasn't 'good enough' even if I could not yet see what 'enough' was.
I listened to a writing podcast, Writing Excuses, and heard one of the guys talking about when he was on the verge of giving up, and the moment when he realized he couldn't. Writing was in his body. It didn't matter if he got the deal, he couldn't stop, no more than he could stop breathing. He finished his second novel- a week later, he got The Call.
My spark, that had dimmed, finally reignited.
I started writing again. I hit my word-count, but didn't finish the novel.

Fast forward to 2017. August.

The last three years of NaNo have netted me novels.
What's more, I've been depressed for about 2 years now. Bad. I'm missing work, I'm incapable of dealing with any one or any thing. It's gotten too rough, too hard. I've had a bad lot in life, in a lot of ways, and I'm not coping.
Worse, I remember that I wrote myself a note two years after my last down-spiral. I told myself to go after getting published before I'm 30. To try. Not self-defeat, not toss in the towel before I've gotten out of the gates. To Actually Fucking Submit to a press; an agent, a small press, whatever.
I'm 28. It doesn't look likely, does it? I've failed my lifelong dream and goal. I've fallen flat on my face. I'm as far from anything I wanted when I left school as it is possible to be.
Then, I snapped. I'll do it. I'll submit my 2016 novel to a few small press. Nothing will come of it.

Nothing has. But, something else started happening around November. I started to remember that writing was my joy, my passion. I started to remember what it was like to have a nice comment on my work. Because those agents just kept sending me form-rejections.... and Ms Carroll's encouragement to a wide-eyed 14 year old came rushing back, "Give those bastards something better. Something they have to pay attention to."

2017: October.

I've been working on a collection of ideas, stolen from a half-dozen #MSWL agents have posted. I'm combining them into one big, meaty chunk. I have a novel idea swimming out of darkness that sounds, to me, fucking amazing. I pitch it to my best friends. Yep, the harshest, hardest to please reader I know says "You know... I'd probably pick that up in a bookstore." 
This is an insanely high level of praise. The book must be written.

For the first time in 14 years of NaNo... I went to the local write-in.

I was terrified. I've been a shut-in for every NaNo I've ever done except the first. And that was no write-in-official-event. What if I piss them off? What if they hate fantasy?
The ML was a 14 year veteran as well, come down from another part of the country. We had a 16 year old, her mother, a first timer and a third-year NaNoer who was self-published.
They asked questions.
I talked myself raw for about 2 hours. Giddy to impart specific advice. I'd finished a lot. I had tips, I had years and years of wisdom to impart. I was the only pantser in the room. Most of them had studied literature at uni, I'd studied Languages and Teaching- but experience was just as powerful a teacher. I had a double-major from college in English and I chuckled at the formulas that we teach new writers. I knew they'd learn, in about 10 years, that those formulae are starting points.

I finished NaNo a week early. A fat, delicious word-count glittering at me.
I had The Nightmare Detective beta'd twice inside the next two weeks.

Mid December, I started querying The Nightmare Detective.

Query Count: 30
Form rejections:12
Custom rejections: 4
Requests for full: 6

I feel a lot more confident that this novel may see publication, but also, I hope my tale helps others. Don't give up. I don't think it is about wanting to be a writer that makes us succeed or fail at the task. I think it is a willingness to accept all the hardships that come with it. As well as the victory, you need to taste the defeat.

I wish everyone the best of luck on their journey!