Here goes nothin'. I'll be back in 30 days, with a 50,000 word draft of a young adult novel. If I don't call you back, or don't respond to something on facebook, or don't blog, or appear in public looking frazzled, I apologize. It's because I'll be joining a few thousand other fools* in the folly of writing a novel in a month.
And at the end of that month, I'll have a draft of this young adult novel, tentatively called "Driving Through Constellations":
It's been four months since Claire's mom died in a car accident. Her dad walks around in a fog, and her little brother hasn't been sleeping, and Claire's been going on long drives by herself, staring at the stars. But when her best friend Alice gets dumped, she drags Claire along on a road trip of healing. Can Claire heal her heart in one cross country trip? Or are the spaces between her and the people she loves too vast?
We'll see how much it transforms by the end. :)
For those readers who are sharing in this journey, here's what I've been reading to myself, over and over. This is why I'm doing this.
"Knowing there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same, who are using this ridiculous deadline as cattle-prod and shame deterrent, means goddammit, you better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. So you have to do it, goddammit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride." -- Dave Eggers, NaNoWriMo pep talk, 2010
* The world is full of zanies and fools, who don't believe in sensible rules and won't believe what sensible people say... and because these daft and dewey-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, impossible things are happening every day!
Neil Gaiman has a quote (more like a general idea) that keeps me going: something about simply putting one word after the other until the book is complete, whether you feel inspired or not. Because, when all is said and done, you won't be able to tell the inspired bits apart from the non-inspired ones anyway.
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