NaNoWriMo Doesn't Have a Difficulty Level

I'd like to sincerely apologize if, at any time, I made what I do seem easy. In the spirit of sharing Kryptonite, here's the reality. Other than being a queen of symptoms and few working treatments (the physical and mental concerns will always be playing a role), there are a lot of factors that come in between me and superhuman awesomeness. So many factors can make one story harder than another, no matter where you are as a writer. Maybe you changed genres or you're aiming for a novel when you usually write short stories. Maybe you're finally ready to work on something you hope to publish.

People will perceive that you're more experienced or successful based on preconceived notions of what you've done so far, but writing is one place where we're all not that much different. We want to shout it from the rooftops when we're doing well, but any momentum is something we may exaggerate because we know we could hit a block of some sort or life will just make it impossible to get to those ideas we're itching to nail down.

Like most people, I battle with tons of ideas with no sure-fire way of communicating them and struggle to find my strengths and weaknesses. I also believe in setting clear boundaries, which means I don't trust total strangers with my unpublished work, always building cautious friendships and talking about personal issues with a measure of earnesty and reservation. For every milestone, there's another unknown looming and at no point did what it behind us make it that much easier to take the next step or repeat something we've done before.

As much as my blog is about introspection at times, I'm terrible at keeping in the first person tense when writing because my mental headspace keeps panning outside of the character and ends up in third. No one wins baseball going from first to third. I have some odd preferences in writing as well. I try not to start paragraphs using the same first word of the one before it. I have a tendency to use the British 'grey' and 'glamour' while every other word follows American English. It's not something I do to stand out, but one of those things I've done as long as I could remember. My English teachers always wanted the double space after every sentence. That took a lot of work to kill that habit (and I still use Find to locate any, just to be sure). Given, these are small things and nothing that would shatter the story. However, you may have noticed, I'm an impulsive thinker. I do often have to put my story back on track when I start chasing shiny objects that don't need to be there. I spend a lot of time editing because there can be a lot to clean up.

Showing a few of my obstacles shouldn't give you grounds to compare. Oh fuck, if it's hard for her and she's done this much, then what hope do the rest of us have? (I've heard this a few times directly and it's mortifying to be regarded too loftily.) If you want to know the truth...

Exactly as much as everyone else. Call it being unable to take a compliment but you can call me amazing and I'll find some way to make myself seem ordinary. Even though I might know I'm amazing, it's a hollow victory if I give the impression it's au-naturale and you either have it or you don't. I had a lot of things working for me, but just as much working against me. Just like you. There are insecurities and egos-- the perceived good and bad can flip around, but you know what? Taking note of the way things slip away from you are nothing to be paralyzed about. Those are the key to your unique insight, where people will start to find you relatable.

I struggled a lot the first time I did NaNo but not because of the word count. I tried to write a book that an agent might look at. I looked at it the wrong way and even though I was satisfied enough to release it, I wish I had stretched it out more, let those characters shine more. Its sequel UnSung was where I resolved to ditch word count concerns and just write the story as broad as I needed the characters to be. It took eight months to draft because I needed to plot, plan and unify the details. Since I originally planned UnNamed as a standalone, I didn't bother styling it to continue. UnSung was born of what I wanted UnNamed to be. UnHeard will continue on the same way. If I thought for  one moment that the next book in a series would be worse than the one before because of forcing it, I wouldn't write it until I felt it could be better. Yet UnSung will wait to be completed because I wanted to see if leaving it open might benefit it as I continue. My first series was one I wouldn't release until they were done. It gave me so much room to go back and change things. While I didn't want to do the UnQuadrilogy the same way, I think that between UnSung and UnHeard, mutual contemplation might benefit them both. So I set UnSung aside to throw in a new approach for NaNo.

The first time I neglected the free-writing part. Don't edit as you go, don't stop to plan, just wing it and learn to clean up the mess later. I was curious if I could not only wing it on a complex fantasy but do it on a third book when the second was still in edit. Not only is it freeing, I don't feel tethered to notes or plans that I can always work in later if I like the original plan better.

I'm going to cut into the fat here-- I used attitude and mentality to create the hurdles of difficulty. If headbutting the challenge was working against me, I could change tact. It's not the same as quitting or admitting defeat. Writing isn't factory work. It requires very volatile things that demand only flexibility. The only failure is killing your drive by slaughtering your talent. You do not enjoy your favorite things because you think you should. It doesn't matter if writing falls under work or play, you are ultimately in control. Even if your characters run amuck, you get to grab the reins of the story and the edit and the vision. It's not censoring them or watering them down; it's bringing them to harmony with the elements.

(This is especially true when I've written something too quickly because of a great mood and momentum. You think it's untouchable but it's actually where you really want to dig in.)

Every character doesn't need to be wise or quirky or fucked-up or deep. Loving them too much will squeeze them flat. It's probably hard to face your own mortality, especially when you superimpose yourself on to a character. But...

Read the 3 Faces of Eve. Do yourself a favor and read an account of a woman who had to kill aspects of herself to assimilate them. Killing your poster child can be a sign of metamorphosis, not self-loathing. If your writing suffers from overloved characters, understand that killing them, either literally or figuratively, is about growth. I didn't die when my mom did. When I die, I won't be around to care that I did. Even the Death card in a tarot deck is about change, the end of something and the birth of another. It doesn't matter if you tend to be hypersensitive and empathetic (guilty of both, believe it or not), if your characters are really independent entities meant to show off their humanity, making them superhuman does both you and them a disservice. No one expects you to extol the virtue of your beliefs through every character.

Whether life or change or NaNoWriMo is difficult is up to how you learn to adjust it. Even in the throes of a panic attack, I once stopped it by thinking "you gonna cry, Barbie?". Hyperventilation turned to laughter and I like to believe I forced a chemical I lacked to release and counter it. No, depression doesn't disappear with happy thoughts. While I know how to trick a lot of moods now, some are still dangerous and stubborn. I have a mental medicine cabinet that must be tried every time, but until I do try everything I can think of, I can't give up. Don't say you can't until you've tried all of the things you can.

You don't get to always decide when to be happy, when to write, how much to work. Americans have been groomed to think we should do things anyway, even if that path is a long walk off a short pier. No. Just no. There are choices and consequences. Don't let people shame you into being who aren't you. You know you'll be the one to deal with it so weigh it as only you can. Tell the Captain Obviouses to fuck off.

I'm gonna be a tireless cheerleader this month. As much as possible. I know what it's like to be low. Doesn't matter if anyone reciprocates it on my low days. I always find a way to crawl out and fight. What matters to me is people finding the joy of writing. People often get lost in that when demanding something from it that isn't guaranteed no matter how much you suffer. It's never a more important time in history for people to learn to reconnect with purpose and one another.

It's easy. It's hard. It's up to you. Whatever you do, do it with an open mind.

The Ups and Down of Being a Writer

Pros and cons. Can't have one without the other. I've delved into this before, but I thought it would be fun to go all out on a tug of war with it. We've all got that little goblin that comes bearing bad news, but my muse is here to bat it away with the good side to the bad. Who will come out on top? Well, me, because I own these assholes ®©™ so, sorry to kill the suspense, but me. I win. There's just a lot of banging around until those two tire each other out.

GOBLIN: You're staring at that blinking cursor again...

MUSE: Spacing out is part of the process!

It's true though. Really no cause for panic when you're not immediately hitting the keys. I have a ticky clock on my wall that I also find oddly comforting. The passing of time and meditation of nothing doesn't have to be a bad thing. Modern society has us abused to what productivity really is, and that's often something writers have to learn to refine as we go. Writing is often about forgiving the not-writing.

GOBLIN: Remember what you just wrote? IT'S CRAP!

MUSE: Okay, now read what you just wrote. Pretty good, right?

I've said this before, but there is absolutely nothing more odd than the illusory feeling that your work, no matter how fresh it is, gets slammed with instant self-doubt. There's no way it was terrible, but you're usually being hypercritical. Almost always, read it again. If the goblin keeps winning this one, you probably need to forget it altogether then look at it again without a self-defeating attitude. In fact, try not to edit when you're moody at all. Might take some time to spot the difference. Self-doubt is rampant in creative processes, but you can usually get gratification from actually re-reading it and refining it.

GOBLIN: Anyone can write a book.

MUSE: Then why haven't they?

Lots of excuses and we've heard them all. Million dollar ideas, no time, too busy, too distracted, better things to do. No one who has ever actually written a book will ever say anyone can do it. Sure, you can laugh about how many shelves you'd fill with your text messages, but the discipline of writing, plotting, no matter what your genre-- nothing is easy about it. People don't understand the sacrifices of social life, sanity, time and emotional upheaval that goes into focusing on a finished product. You'll get a lot of people out to trivialize it, but you and your author friends will know better.

GOBLIN: Ugh, there's just too much wrong with it! Not even worth saving.

MUSE: It's nothing an outline couldn't fix.

At first, the idea of outlining seems tedious to the free-writing process. Nothing you can really do about that, but I do find that once you get going, it can actually lift a huge weight off of your shoulders. Even a badly mangled plot in your head often isn't nearly as bad as you think, you just need to build the logic around it. More often than not, my free-writing brain was still loosely using logic and it doesn't take much to make it fit the more-fleshed out version. So yes, it can be a nightmare realizing that you really shouldn't move further until you do so, but you'll probably find that this, too, isn't as bad as you thought.

GOBLIN: You can't sleep until I'm done with you.

MUSE: Take notes then get your ass in bed.

Sleep is too important to the long haul to deny it as a priority. I definitely have those moments where an epiphany comes at the wrong damn time. I know damn well I don't have even another couple hours I can throw at it, but it's just as important to jot it down in some way that will make sense to pick it up again. I'll even go ahead and let my brain play with it while I'm in bed, maybe jot down a bit more if it's juicy, but if I'm physically toast, then the goblin is just being an asshole and giving me more work on the edit when I make an unintelligible mess of it. Your ideas can be just as poisonous to the process, but if you have a game plan for keeping them manageable, you can stay optimistic about having no shortage of ideas.

GOBLIN: Who would read this crap?

MUSE: At least one of us...

While it's practical to think of the audience, you have to remember that you're the audience too. Every challenge that I take is based off of something I am genuinely interested in. I've thrown it out that I want to do a lighter version of fantasy that kids can read and almost immediately, people seemed to sniff out the idea that I was 'selling out'. First of all, if you thought that, you don't know me. There is nothing that can make me force my way through something half-heartedly. At the end of the day, I still write what I want to read and I know there's an audience for it. It's my own damn fault because I'm a curmudgeon about marketing. Again, while there is no stage of writing where you are actually completely confident, at least let your ego grasp that you are your own audience and that's important too.

GOBLIN: This isn't a bestseller.

MUSE: Your mom isn't a bestseller.

And the brain has childish arguments sometimes, throwing a bunch of garbage over the process. Again, something I've mentioned before is the concept of zeitgeist. Some brilliant shit is lost to time, some hot garbage raises a multimillion dollar stink. I mean, really, it's okay. Writing isn't always going to be fun either. I do a lot of editing, researching, crying, punching pillows, building, tearing down-- I'm essentially a freelancer, which is nerve-wracking shit, but I am constantly building skills that I will learn the visible value of as I go. The more I lay down what I can do, the more opportunity for visibility. Just, whatever you do, don't offer to pay me in exposure. I can give you my answer in advance: nope. My own projects are 'exposure' and I have no one to blame but myself for the failure or success of it. So while there are no guarantees, there is also accountability. You might not become a big sensation, but you won't be alone in that struggle so you'll find a lot of ways to keep from spinning your wheels. You'll learn what needs to be done to have better chances of meeting your goals.

GOBLIN: Someone in a writing group said you should do this and this and--
MUSE: NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU THINK! If you smell-l-l-l what the Rock... is cooking.

You'll get a lot of people who mistake their tastes or experiences as gospel. While you can build some relationships that are worthwhile, I find that a great deal of writers are pretty over-the-top in their opinions and often blur that with advice. There a lot of far-lefts and far-rights (although I do find my rational 'people in between' too). Really, you learn that it's okay to stick your fingers in your ears and la-la-la, not listen. One of the many reasons it's important to research your story is to enrich your story-- the same goes for your collection of groups, friends, blogs and so on. While people might occasionally drive you up a wall, sometimes you just have to cut those connections for the sake of your sanity and your story. I find that most of the people who you see repeatedly pretend to be writing experts are not actually applying any writing towards their work. They're operating on some nostalgia of what it's like to be a writer, being a part of community that they aren't actually building new experiences on. They become pseudo-experts that you really shouldn't give much weight to. Being a writer means you actually have to write. And no, posting in groups and blogging even doesn't really count towards your body of work as a novelist. If you can decide what you want out of writing, it had plenty of upsides. If you're often banging your head against the wall because you procrastinate, then you're not finding the upsides.

MUSE: This should be a simple idea!
GOBLIN: Let's get COMPLICATED!
MUSE:... Sure, why not?

This is one that throws me around a lot. Every idea usually starts pretty simple. I usually manage to color it with complexities in planning. Fortunately, I can still make it simple to read, but behind the scenes, no one really sees what it takes to accomplish that. Simple things often blow up, but I'm up to the challenge of making the story simple for readers too. This often means planning out things that won't actually be in the book. When you build a world, you have to assume there is plenty going on that won't actually make it into the story, but that car crash in this scene isn't a car materializing into mid-air. Sometimes you need to map out the story of a frustrated parent who is running late. Even if it doesn't make the pages, every participant has to successfully convince you they belong to the story. In the big picture of a story, that can seem overwhelming, but it can also be fun to break away and create pockets and alternatives and movement elsewhere. Some people dread this-- it takes away from their word count goals and time management to divert. Yet, I can say for certain that this kind of maneuvering ultimately SAVES you time and gives your story a brilliant edge. When you are confident in your world's moving parts, it does make you more productive as your world grows.

I'll leave this as is. I do have plenty to do-- no writing for a while, but I'm securing back stories, bestiaries, profiles, maps-- things that I didn't want to do until I realized this story needs them. No big deal since I figured it might come to this. It's not going towards my word count but it is certainly a necessity in moving forward. I gave UnSung a wide berth since a second book is still wobbling on the toddler legs of its infant predecessor. The third and fourth books will immediately benefit from this too.  Yes, another up and down here. We often don't know what is 'too much' or 'too little' work for our story. Flexibility can be a good and bad thing, so we have to decide if we're up to the challenge there too.