National Novel Writing Month Autopsy Report
Autopsy Number 1
Name Weirdsmith
Body Identification Novel
Date of Birth November 1, 2015
Date/Time of Death November 18, 2015
Coroner Creole Ned
Cause of Death Fatal lack of interest
Due To Lack of planning
Due To Lack of motivation
Yesterday I officially declared my 2015 NaNoWriMo attempt dead. What caused its tragic demise? Read on for more (or skip to the TL; DR summary at the end, I won’t mind).
For months I wavered back and forth on whether or not I would participate this year. I finally decided that if I was in the middle of writing something and going like gangbusters (what are gangbusters, anyway?) I would keep writing and skip NaNoWriMo, as it seems silly to suspend one writing project for another without having a really good reason for doing so.
Come the latter half of October and the only thing I was writing were inane posts to my blog. I promised myself back in August that I would write every day, whether it was posting to my blog, working on a short story, writing on a forum or handcrafting a nuanced grocery shopping list. I’ve kept to this (writing every day, not handcrafting nuanced grocery lists), mainly by writing on my blog. The posts vary in quality and quantity, but I’ve written something every day for the past three months, even if it was sometimes no more than “here’s an amusing cat image I found”. Establishing the discipline of writing every day was important. I hoped this routine would smooth the way for my return to writing fiction, but apart from a few writing prompts, that didn’t happen.
So here it was, mid-October and I was ready to take part in NaNoWriMo again, to get the ol’ fiction juices flowing. Don’t ask what fiction juices are, you don’t want to know.
Here’s a summary of my NaNoWriMo efforts to date:
- 2009: Took unfinished short story “The Ferry” and turned it into a novel. WIN.
- 2010: Took completed short story “Hello?” and turned it into a novel. LOSE.
- 2011: Took completed short story “The Dream of the Buckford County Church” and turned it into a novel. LOSE.
- 2012: Wrote original novel The Mean Mind, based on an idea I came up with a hundred years earlier. WIN.
- 2013: Wrote original novel Start of the World, based on an idea created specifically for NaNoWriMo. LOSE (due in part to catastrophic loss of data)
- 2014: Took unfinished short story started earlier in year that began as a writing prompt, “Road Closed” and turned it into a novel. WIN.
- 2015: Took unfinished play “Weirdsmith” (I wrote the first act back in 1991) and adapted it as a novel. FAIL.
You may have noticed a pattern here. In all but one case I totally cheated by adapting existing stories or ideas. NaNoWriMo discourages this and my success rate–2 out of 5–is not compelling anecdotal evidence that it’s a good strategy.
As the days went by I cast about for ideas, looking through my old stories, idea files and cans of fiction juice. Nothing grabbed me. Nothing called out to be written. Not even a grocery list.
Finally, on October 31 I re-read my unfinished play “Weirdsmith” and at 10 p.m.–two hours before NaNoWriMo 2015 officially began–I made the decision to take the play and adapt it as a novel.
The first problem came up the next day. I didn’t particularly like either of the two main characters in the play. I decided to jettison them and replace them with the couple from “The Dream of the Buckford County Church.” I’m a big believer in recycling. It’s good for the environment and lazy writers.
I wrote 1,745 words on Day 1, with the opening scene left hanging at a tantalizing point, so I’d be eager to jump back in the next day. But the next day I did not jump back in. The opening scene was limp and uninspired. There were wiener jokes. I’m not philosophically opposed to wiener jokes, but when you start a novel with them, you’re perhaps looking more at a novelization of an Adam Sandler movie more than writing your own daringly original work. I sat out Day 2 to ponder my next move.
On Day 3 I wrote a new opening scene, jettisoning the two characters that had replaced the previously jettisoned characters. It was like the story was built on a foundation of ejector seats. This time I wrote from the viewpoint of Weirdsmith (William Smith) himself. It felt better, though I only had a vague inkling of how the already vague story would proceed.
On Day 4 I pondered my new direction. I pondered for the next five days after that. I finally wrote part of a second scene on November 10. Then I pondered some more. I knew I wasn’t going to jettison Smith, because the story would be jettisoned along with him and that would be the end of it.
Yesterday, November 18th, I jettisoned the story, realizing there was no way I was going to finish by November 30, and more importantly, feeling strongly that my time would be better invested in other efforts.
So what went wrong? Here’s my quick analysis, in handy list form:
- I waited too long to come up with an idea. This gave me no time for any sort of planning, outlining or just plain thinking about the story. Adapting an unfinished play should have helped but it didn’t in the end because…
- I cribbed from existing material, decided on Day 2 it wasn’t working and had nothing else ready to fall back on. I didn’t want to just damn the torpedoes (“Torpedoes, I damn thee to a brief and violent life!”) and keep going because I really didn’t like that opening scene. Continuing on from there would have felt like I was wasting my time, simply writing out of obligation and nothing more.
- My new opening scene written on Day 3 was better, but it was like a sketch that has faded so much you can barely see any detail. You’re not even sure what exactly you’re looking at. I didn’t know where to go from that opening scene and NaNoWriMo demands that you go, you go, and you do not stop. I stopped.
- A few more days of pondering yielded no insights or bursts of inspiration. Sitting down and forcing myself to write resulted in me pecking out a few more words. The only mercy was no more wiener jokes. But it wasn’t enough.
That’s pretty much it: poor planning, flat writing and in the end all I had was something I wasn’t interested in pursuing. It was kind of like visiting some place you’ve always dreamed about going to and when you finally get there you realize you can make better tacos at home. Or something like that.
Anyway, my plan for next year is to write a novel about writing a NaNoWriMo novel. It should be a breeze.
