To be honest, this is not the first time that I have felt this way about the National Novel Writing Month. Almost this exact same situation took place five years ago, albeit in a somewhat different setting than now.
So let us leap into H. G. Wells' time machine for the duration of this blog entry and travel back in time, away from today's full-time working pattern, all the way back to the halcyon days of November 2009. My life was different then; university was the main focus of my attention, evenings were spent mostly playing video-games and watching terrible films in the company of housemates, and it was also a time where I was in the process of acclimatising to a world where I no longer had lip piercings or long hair. It's hard to believe that this took place half a decade ago. Makes me feel old and creaky. Someone throw some more wood on the fire while I tell this tale, and pass me my teeth while you're at it...
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By November I was well into my first year of studying Creative Writing. Well, I say "first year" with extra emphasis being placed on the quotation marks. In truth, it was my second year. I was studying Media Production in my "first first year", but something told me I was in the wrong course when 1) I had no real interest in films, and 2) I was sneaking novels into the lecture theatres, and rushing out the moment lecture ended so that I could read during the 10-minute break before the next class.
It was roughly two months into my new course. During this time, most of my fellow classmates mentioned that they were going to take part in the NaNoWriMo challenge. Considering I had some free time to spare between shooting monsters into the early hours of the morning on Gears of War and trying not to doze off in workshop sessions, it seemed a good time to try and see whether I was up to the task of writing those 50,000 words. It would be good to put some of those ideas I'd conjured up over the Summer to paper, and I set about typing with such enthusiasm that I barely slept for days on end, often foregoing meals and company, intent on transferring the vivid scenes in my mind onto paper. I would write something deep and original and like, totally awesome in every way.
What was the story like, I hear you ask? Well, put it this way: I pretty much ripped off the entire Thief franchise. No, that's not entirely true. I did have a lot of my own ideas. Ideas that made no sense. Ideas that were downright hokey. Awful dialogue (oh, the dialogue! Five years later and the memory of that dialogue still haunts my dreams. Only vast amount of chocolate can silence it.)
Oh fine, I admit it, it pretty much read like embarrassing Thief fanfic, which is not all that surprising really considering how obsessed I was with that series. Most of my evenings were spent stepping into the shoes of Garrett the Master Thief, pilfering shiny objects from unwary aristocrats and zombie things, while smirking at how easy it is to pilfer shiny objects from aristocrats and, you guessed it, zombie things. Seriously, the only thing stopping me from playing that game right this second is that the damn thing no longer works on my laptop. Perhaps it's worried about what might happen if I did play it during the month prior to NaNoWriMo 2014, and is terrified that it would be responsible for unleashing Thief-Fanfic 2.0 on an unsuspecting world...
I finished the challenge over the course of about 10 days, I think. Made it to about 58,000 words before I keeled over and slept for what must have been an entire decade, but was probably closer to about 11 hours. Burned out big-time and had a splitting headache. But y'know what? As cringe-worthy as the story was it had an immense effect on my writing at the time. To use gamer-speak for a moment, it felt as if my writing skills had "leveled up", and I had so much fun writing about the stuff that interested me at the time. While I wouldn't stand anywhere near those characters without making sure I was armed with a can of "anti shit-story repellent" spray, it was one of the most exciting experiences seeing those (cardboard) characters come to life (if "cardboard" translates to "alive"), seeing them speak to one another (Eugh! Someone, bring me some chocolate) and working to an extremely tight deadline. It made me feel alive, apart from when I'd dozed off through sleep-deprivation.
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One experience in particular sticks out in my mind, one that has brought about equal parts amusement and facepalm-ness ever since. It was nearing the end of November. It might even have been sometime in December, just before we all broke up for Christmas. Either way, it was very cold. Very Winter-y. An event called the Creative Writing Society gathered every week in some old Tudor-esque pub across the road from the university. Students and lecturers, or even just people wanting to discuss the writing craft or listen in on the workshop sessions, met up in some pokey room at the back of the pub for a couple of hours. If you were expecting this to sound a little more clandestine, then you will be disappointed; none of us had to wear ceremonial robes or engage in mysterious joining rituals, but then again I only ever went to one meeting so who knows? From what I could tell from the proceedings the idea was that people would read out a page of their most current project and receive praise or constructive criticism from the group as a whole. It was a promising idea; writing is a solitary craft after all, so being able to communicate with peers and other like-minded people can be a good thing. Sometimes working in a vacuum is not beneficial, and considering that I, Frank Burtenshaw, King of all Loners, am saying that then it must mean something.
At the time I and some of the others in my class decided we'd read our work aloud to the group. There was some time to kill before the society gathered to be all creative and society-ish, so a few rounds of drinks and conversation would do well to alleviate the needles of anxiety I was experiencing at the time. I am a solitary person by nature, so the prospect of talking out loud to a group of people - worse, reading out stories to random faces for the first time in forever - was downright terrifying. Everyone took their places; both my lecturers were there, as well as some old faces from my previous course from the year prior. There were a mixture of people from some of the higher years that wanted to showcase their material, as well as a few elitist snobs here and there to add variety. Not a massive crowd, but enough people to keep things interesting.
I can't remember all the details, but I do recall puffing out my chest, brandishing my freshly-printed manuscript and reading out my magnificent story in a trademark sonorous voice. In retrospect, I might have been a teeny bit tipsy, so the effect was probably louder than I had hoped. I unleashed this masterpiece of literature upon the crowd, gaining momentum with every sentence, confident that I would receive adulation and applause for this piece of work that I had produced during my first foray into NaNoWriMo, smiling to myself at how well the words flowed from the page. The group listened without saying a word. I reached the end of the manuscript, ending the final sentence with a flourish, and waited, victorious, as silence descended like a pall upon those present. I waited with them, still smiling, excited to hear their response.
They tore me to pieces.
It was brutal. Though I've forgotten most of the feedback I received, the general consensus was that it was a complete and utter disaster. They butchered every sentence, every piece of dialogue, and poked holes in all descriptions and the character motivations. Though humiliated at the time, it was during the following day, upon re-reading my manuscript, that I realised that I was the one who had butchered every sentence, every piece of dialogue, and that most of my descriptions were flawed and made no sense, and the character motivations unrealistic and two-dimensional. That experience alone taught me the importance of editing a story from a rough first-draft into a coherent story, and it is something I still continue to learn with every project that I work on. The knowledge that just because I churned out a novel in less than a month it does not necessarily mean that it is good. It takes dedication, patience and a ton of practice to improve the craft, and the one thing I should not have done was read this travesty aloud without having taking the time to meticulously edit it. Still, it was a mistake that left its mark and, like all mistakes, I use it to better inform my next projects so that they will hopefully be better than the last. There have been other situations like the one above, but this sticks in my mind the most because of it's proximity to NaNoWriMo.
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Thankfully the time machine was able to bring us back to the present day - October 2014 - without leaving us stranded in Morlock territory, so allow me to say one thing before I bring this blog entry to a close. This year's NaNoWriMo will be an entirely different challenge to the one I took part in five years ago. The rules are the same, but my situation is different. Unlike my uni days, I am now in a full-time job with less free time to spare, so my evenings will need to be split between reaching my word count for the day and continuing to read and research. Also, since late 2012, I have read through hundreds of books in an attempt to explore the types of stories I would never have even given a chance back in uni. I am in the throes of a literary Golden Age, eager to learn all that I can and always seeking to discover new things. My interests, my personality, my reading tastes: all completely different. I am not the same person I was five years ago, and I have a feeling that this year's NaNoWriMo will reflect that.
So, what's the plan? I have just under a month before the challenge begins. That gives me some time to plan and prepare myself for the month ahead. No matter what happens, the story begins, one way or the other, on the morning of November 1st.
One thing is definitely for certain: I won't be complaining of boredom anytime soon!
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