One thing I've noticed about writing is: it's fucking hard. Why is it so hard? I have a good idea, I start writing, and BANG! I hit the wall, every time. Abandon project! Abort! Abort! It hurts, I hit the wall so hard my nose feels broken, I need to lie down, open up a bottle of Beaujolais. And then I think, well, I must not be a real writer because it's not hard for real writers to finish a novel. I imagine Philip Roth just typing away for eight hours a day in his leather slippers, so engrossed in his own genius that his butt never hurts, his stomach never grumbles; squirrels twitch at the picture window behind him and hurl nuts at his head and he never flinches from his deep yet gentle and encompassing concentration.
I know. And I've never even read any Philip Roth.
But then there's this e-mail I got from the NaNoWriMo guy a couple of weeks ago, maybe you got it, too?
The writer Edith Wharton once described novel writing like this:
"The beginning: A ride through a spring wood.
The middle: The Gobi desert.
The end: Going down the Cresta run."
As you move from the spring wood of Week One into the trying climate of Week Two, one or all of the following are likely to happen:
1) The fun, good-time feel of the first week will evaporate.
2) You will decide that your book is a miserable failure, that you are a creative fraud, and that novels are best left to novelists.
3) You will put 1 and 2 together, and decide to cut your losses and drop out now while the getting is good and the fall TV season is still relatively new.
I cycle through these feelings every year I participate in NaNoWriMo, and I have two words for anyone who finds themselves falling into a similar Week Two funk:
Cresta run.
Yep. The greatest toboggan run in the world is just one week away. Make it through the grumpiness and self-doubt of Week Two, and you'll be rewarded with renewed energy and an eerily improved outlook on your novel. Work diligently through this, the hardest week of NaNoWriMo, and you'll see the tangled mess of your story begin to unknot, and your book begin to soar.
I know it's hard to believe. But look at all the work you've done already. You have characters! You have settings! Your manuscript has grown large enough to injure a small dog!
Not that you'd want to injure a dog, small or otherwise. But still, you've done more in the last seven days then most writers accomplish in seven months. You've made it through the first huge week of NaNoWriMo.
Now dig in for one more challenging push.
It's going to be tough. But you can do it.
Oh man, can you do it.
See you in Week Three, author!
It kind of cracks me up just to read that again. "See you in week three, author!"
So, today I'm going to write, no matter how much my nose hurts, even though I've already squandered two hours on e-mail, t-shirts, and my flickr friends. It's the last day of National Novel Writing Month and I have four pages; 1,182 words. But with you as my witness, by god, by the end of the day I'll probably have, like, 1,183.
I know. And I've never even read any Philip Roth.
But then there's this e-mail I got from the NaNoWriMo guy a couple of weeks ago, maybe you got it, too?
The writer Edith Wharton once described novel writing like this:
"The beginning: A ride through a spring wood.
The middle: The Gobi desert.
The end: Going down the Cresta run."
As you move from the spring wood of Week One into the trying climate of Week Two, one or all of the following are likely to happen:
1) The fun, good-time feel of the first week will evaporate.
2) You will decide that your book is a miserable failure, that you are a creative fraud, and that novels are best left to novelists.
3) You will put 1 and 2 together, and decide to cut your losses and drop out now while the getting is good and the fall TV season is still relatively new.
I cycle through these feelings every year I participate in NaNoWriMo, and I have two words for anyone who finds themselves falling into a similar Week Two funk:
Cresta run.
Yep. The greatest toboggan run in the world is just one week away. Make it through the grumpiness and self-doubt of Week Two, and you'll be rewarded with renewed energy and an eerily improved outlook on your novel. Work diligently through this, the hardest week of NaNoWriMo, and you'll see the tangled mess of your story begin to unknot, and your book begin to soar.
I know it's hard to believe. But look at all the work you've done already. You have characters! You have settings! Your manuscript has grown large enough to injure a small dog!
Not that you'd want to injure a dog, small or otherwise. But still, you've done more in the last seven days then most writers accomplish in seven months. You've made it through the first huge week of NaNoWriMo.
Now dig in for one more challenging push.
It's going to be tough. But you can do it.
Oh man, can you do it.
See you in Week Three, author!
It kind of cracks me up just to read that again. "See you in week three, author!"
So, today I'm going to write, no matter how much my nose hurts, even though I've already squandered two hours on e-mail, t-shirts, and my flickr friends. It's the last day of National Novel Writing Month and I have four pages; 1,182 words. But with you as my witness, by god, by the end of the day I'll probably have, like, 1,183.
34 Comments:
Actually there's a great passage in one of Philip Roth's Zuckerman novels about the torture of writing, something like if you saw a mental patient going through such head-clutching agony you would summon medical personnel who could make him stop hurting himself like that.
Aim high, Mrs. Kennedy! You're an inspiration to all of us fraud writers! ;)
Every writer who writes about writing writes that it's hard to write. So write. And quit your bitching. You're building shelves, Garp.
Good luck Mrs. Kennedy. If you need an idea for a novel you can borrow mine. It's about a russian poet, who is also a doctor. He falls in love with a beautiful, young policial activist during the revolution, but alas fates keep them apart. It's a sweeping epic drama.
I say we make our own month- for all of us would bees who missed the boat in November. How does January feel for you? The holidays are over, and with the exception of MLK day, a pretty slow month. I'm good with January, Anyone else??
Um, yeah. I've been working on my first novel for 2-plus years and have 1.5 chapters left. That whole ski run metaphor is bullshit because I know once I'm done with these chapters (if I'LL EVER BE DONE), I've got edits and character development issues and then there is that little task of finding a publisher...
Oh, I think I'm having a heart attack. Maybe I should just concentrate on one sentence at a time.
When my brother mentioned on his blog that he was having difficulty keeping up with the deadlines for NaNoWriMo, I thought it sounded familiar, and now I know where I heard it before--here. That's so coincidental I almost fell over--what a small world indeed!
You can do eeet!
I'd stick with "Writing Well is the Best Revenge," because although this post is more representative of my personal experience, I bet it won't fit on a T-shirt.
Good luck. It's amazing you struggle when you've written so much here, and so well. I believe any and all kinds of writing are hell. Then I remember: Wait, I chose a career that constantly involves writing. And then I think: No wonder I yearn for death.
It's not about quantity; it's about quality and enjoying the process. 1800 words you're proud of and had fun writing is way better than 50k of crap. Keep writing!
For what it's worth, I'd rather read you than Philip Roth.
Fucking hard, yes, but at least now you understand why so many writers are alcoholics. Bottoms up! (And good luck)
Writing is for suckers. Watch me suck. That's my t-shirt. Keep it up, Mrs. K, just think of that money shot at the end, and use a fluffer if need be.
-sac
Hey, writing the book's a walk in the park. Wait 'til you get to the finding and agent and publisher part, if you want to talk pain.
I know exactly how you feel. I'm a copywriter, and writing is painful for me. I'm not one of those people that can type away just trying to get the ideas out and then go back to fine-tune. I have to edit in my head and don't type anything until I like it. I've always worked like that and it's too late to change my ways now.
The part that sucks is that quite often, I'll have a great idea brewing in my head for a tagline or something, but by the time I get the wording right in my head I've lost the thought before I can type it.
Who knows, maybe I should try dictation...
Your manuscript has grown large enough to actually KILL a medium-sized spider. That's nothing to sniff at, Mrs. Kennedy.
You can never squander time on friends! Flickr or otherwise...
I'm right there with you -- I hit the wall rather early in week two.
I hit the wall a week ago and have been passed out since. I gave up. Maybe next year!
Did you ever know that you're my hero?
It was a dark and stormy night. A shot rang out. A scream (blah, blah), and somewhere a little girl (blah, blah).
okay, that should solve your writer's block. go for it.
It's official: I ended the day with 1,023 words, because I spent my two hours editing instead of writing.
Fran Lebowitz once said " I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood and not hurt myself " and she's
funny too.
Read John Steinbeck's "Journal of a Novel:The East of Eden Letters" and you'll see how hard it is to write.
You're in good company. Of course, if you take time off to see how hard it is to write (by reading about how hard it is to write) you'll never be able to work through the hard parts...of writing.
Anyway...let your mind go and just do it! We know you can.
if you just wrote retarded shit like me you'd find the gobi quite arable, i think.
Yeah, well, if I ever get my hands on that monkey book of yours we'll see who's the real retard, you or Edith Wharton.
I heard this long interview with Fran Liebowitz once where she said she broke a 10-year writer's block when the pain of not writing outweighed the pain of writing. That 10 years goes to show you how much more fun not writing is than writing.
just type to make a long story short and you'll be safe, I promise. Come on.
What if you just start with it?
Okay.
Mrs. K! Editing? Say it ain't so. You must fight - fight! - to keep that editor out of your head! Save it for the rewrite. Then you can be as persnickety as you want.
ah come on. you're one of the ones who will succeed. we all know it. of course, so am i and i know it.
here's the key from a fellow writing struggler and yes, struggler is a word, i am a writer, i would know:
just write it all down because it's GOING to suck. first drafts are supposed to suck. that's what second drafts are for. so when your nose meets that wall, keep writing even if it's the same word for days and then poof! it'll all start flowing again all of a lovely sudden.
now if i would take my own advice i would be speaking to you from amazon dot com's best seller list.
Hey, you didn't give up! That rocks. I get intimidated when trying to express myself in a literary voice. I get hung up on phrasing and totally lose my train of thought. When that happens, I get out my little digital recorder and freestyle some rhymes, or compose some beat poetry. Resets my brain, makes me laugh. Oh, and I also talk my way through the images I'm trying to put on paper. Then I go back and write it.
Hey, I bet you'd look hot in a beret. Some bongos? Huh? Huh?
You fell short, too? I gave up around day twelve when some drool accidentally fell from my lip, hit the keyboard, and I didn't really respond. A couple of minutes later I was like, hey wait, that's not good. Then I stopped.
so.....when do we get to see those 1,023 words? With all that editing, I'm sure it's fantastic.
Man, I so tanked with NaNoWriMo, and I felt so shitty about it. But then a few days later, a friend of mine who had no idea about said Mo e-mailed me to propose we work on our respective novels during the month of December, egging each other on for encouragement. I'm much happier with this arrangement.
Though I'm already certain his novel will be better than mine.
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