The perils of writing from life ...

I'm writing a novel that's heavily based on two emotionally turbulent times in my life: my childhood and my college years. It doesn't bother me that the writing brings up powerful memories. I kind of like that, actually. I also love that the childhood parts make me feel closer to my daughter; they remind me of just how sentient she is at her age. 

But there's a problem.

I just can't judge the writing about the college years. Is it good? Is it bad? Who knows? Not me. 

My memories bring up such strong feelings that when I re-read my writing about them, I can't tell if the memories or the writing are triggering my responses. 

Even worse: the novel also imagines a situation in which the heroine meets her college boyfriend again, years later, in an unexpected way. It's all so real in my imagination--I mean, the potential that I actually could meet my real ex again in an unexpected way, something I never imagined before writing this book--that I get downright anxious reviewing my own work. And, again, I can't tell if the writing is genuinely suspenseful and intriguing, or if I'm just wigging out inside my own head and emotions. 

Even worse worse: I'm getting so anxious and heart-pumpy that I can't bring myself to actually write the pivotal reunion scene. I've written about five deferrals now: they see each other, but an actual conversation has been delayed, and deferred, and interrupted, and ... you see where this is going. Writing a story that hits so close to home has proven difficult, in short. 

This will be a challenge for the writing group, it seems. They have superpowers. They can help! 

Staying accountable, and keeping the dream alive

It's been almost six months since my last post. In that time, I finished neither my academic book nor my novel. This leaves me with a series of questions.

Am I a failure? 

No, no, no. I refuse to believe this. A [wo]man's reach should exceed her grasp, and I've finished about 70% of that academic book and maybe 1/4 of the novel. If I hadn't set absurdly unrealistic goals to start with, I might be feeling great about this progress right now, instead of beating myself up about it. 

Will I ever finish? 

Yes, yes, yes. YES. Yes. 

Will I be setting additional arbitrary deadlines?

Well, I probably shouldn't. But, yes. I will. 

I want to get a manuscript for the academic book to the publisher by year's end ... let's say January 7th to be kind to myself, as that's the first day of the next academic session.

 And, I promised a full draft of the novel to my writing group by mid-December (um, year's end ... a very busy year's end).  

Sabbatical is over, so I'm doing all of this writing while teaching and serving on way too many infuriatingly inefficient committees. So, it's now more important than ever (!!) to remind myself: 

1. I GET to write. I don't HAVE to write. This is a gift. This is a choice. The books could be a legacy. This is all worth it. 

2. No [wo]man is an island. My writerly friends are such inspirations. They are trucking along toward their goals (articles, dissertations, novels, memoirs). We are all in this together. 

Back to the grindstone. Whoosh! 

So, I just noticed this "Ticker" post:

My Old Ticker

The old goal? 2500 words per week.

My new goal? 2700 words per DAY.

Things were so much more leisurely then.

Of course, my old goal was also 80,000 words overall, and my new goal is 90,000.

But still.

Counting down ...

In the home stretch now. After all these months of thinking and outlining and mind-mapping, all mixed up with occasional bursts of writing, I no longer have the luxury of waiting for the writing to magically appear in said bursts. It is sitzfleisch time. 9 weeks until submission day. 9 weeks!!

Editing to add: I just reviewed my most recent posts ... which are about six months old. Then, I was invested in creative writing, which has gone better than I'd expected. At this point, of course it's a last priority until, you guessed it, 9 weeks from now!

Ghosts

Day Two of NaNoWriMo, and I feel lucky to have found time to meet up with my girl GEW today to write. Seeing her is inspiring, because she's cranking right along despite so many other demands on her time, and it's also clarifying, because I can see how much farther along she is in terms of conceptualizing her project.

Unlike her, I am all over the place. I've written about 3500 words, but they're only tangentially related to each other. There might even be three different projects tangled up in there.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I ended up tonight, after wandering through a couple of digressive scenes, focusing on stories from my own life that have been rattling around in my brain (and, let's be honest, my heart) for years now. Probably haunting more than rattling: "One need not be a chamber to be haunted," and all. The words themselves came easily, just like the memories that informed them, although, as I was writing, I felt 20 years old again both in spirit and in skill level. It was as if I'd used Scrivener as a time machine to transport myself back into that era again. Maybe this little trick will help me write dialogue eventually, but it definitely isn't helping me write great prose right now.

So, I must admit to myself now, if not to others in my circle, that it appears that my chamber is, indeed, still haunted by ghosts from my past. This is probably part of the reason I've avoided "creative writing" and turned toward the safety of academic writing since my college years. I've read before that you have to get rid of your own stories before writing anything truly imaginative. Yup. These old, not-even-that-interesting stories are bleeding out of the edges of the little worlds I've been trying to build with words. I'll see if I can wrastle 'em. If not, it looks like, for me, NaNoWriMo might become an exercise in exorcism.

NaNoWriMo Day 1: 1759 words

Still loving Scrivener. It's been great for my academic writing, and it's been great so far for my novel. Ahem ... "so far" being all of one day.

P.S. So, I met my novel goal today, but not my academic goal. Can I write 500 words in the next 9 minutes, or shall I stretch my "day" past midnight to fudge the numbers, or shall I lie on the couch and read Salon.com? Choices, choices, choices ... 

NaNoWriMo

So, I'm taking the NaNoWriMo challenge this year. One month to write one novel!

Let the games begin! GEW, I'm looking at you!