Steve says it’s time I gave y’all an update. (Side note: I like that word, “y’all”. It’s quite fascinating how the dialect of the Southern United States has created a new second person plural, which takes the place of what the word “you” used to mean. Back in the day of The Bard and the King James Bible, “thou” meant “you, the single person”, and “you” meant “you, the several people”. Nowadays, regular English only has “you”, as in, “you one” and “you many”. But Southern US English has re-invented a plural, so there you can say “you one” and “y’all many”. I wonder if it’ll ever make it into formal, written language? End of digression.)
So, yes, update. No, I’m not getting sidetracked, why would I? It’s not like I go on guilt trips about how much I have, or haven’t, written in the last while. In fact, I was going to (but didn’t) write a blog post on that: “The Year I Failed NaNoWriMo”.
Because, that did happen last November. I failed NaNo—dismally so. I only got a few thousand words done. But then, I’d set myself up for it. I wanted to see if I could write a novel and do regular work, as well. So I booked several editing jobs during November, as well as having some volunteer work to do (and never mind starting Christmas preparations), plus a trip to the coast for some family stuff in the middle of it. On top of it I was a NaNo ML (Municipal Liaison, i.e. regional leader or cheering squad), which brings a bunch more work with it. I know, I know, laugh all you want.
In fact, setting myself up for failure was a useful experiment. I once knew someone who set himself up to fail a university course: he signed up to the class with the full intention of failing, just to teach himself the lesson that it’s okay to fail. I wouldn’t quite go that far myself; for one, university courses are blinkin’ expensive—there are a lot of cheaper ways of failing. But I started NaNoWriMo 2022 with the idea that I probably wouldn’t finish my 50,000 words. I’d done it ten times in a row before, pushed myself to the finish line, got it done. So I knew what it takes for me to do it. I’ve seen others win NaNoWriMo “on the side”, though, while holding down full-time jobs or looking after young children, and I wondered if there was any chance of me doing so. Answer: No. I didn’t even get a part of a novel written. Which was no surprise, but still stressful.
I did learn a couple of useful things. I’m not a very fast writer, I’ve known that all along. Word sprints and word wars are useless for me. It’s not that I can’t type fast, but I can’t think fast, can’t craft sentences very quickly, so my word count per minute has never been high. Some of my friends can crank out 2000 words an hour without breaking a sweat, and I’ve always wondered how they do it and why I can’t. This time, during one of our online write-ins, I decided to just write stream-of-consciousness drivel, nothing whatever to do with any story I was writing, just to see how fast I could put words on screen. And what do you know, if all I’m doing is typing without trying to make sense, let alone paint a word picture, I can rack up the word count with the best of them! However, it’s a word count that nobody would ever want to read. There were words, even mostly-spelled-correctly words making somewhat-puncuated sentences, but they were utter dross, not a story. And I didn’t enjoy the process. So, it’s not that I’m a failure at writing, it’s that I have a different writing style from the one that cranks ‘em out fast*. I’m a Slow Writer. Which, given the fact that I’m into Slow Culture as a whole (Slow Food, Slow Textiles, etc.), is kind of a good thing. And like other aspects of Slow Anything, it means you (or rather I) have to take time for it, have to set time aside, or it won’t happen.
So! Now you know that I did not write a new novel last November. However. I do have a whole bunch of novels sitting around on my computer in varying states of completion. A few are finished, critiqued, edited, polished. Some are finished, i.e. completed novels, but need rewriting; one needs a whole different ending. And one is only half done, and I need to write the second half and get ‘er done. Also, there are some short stories kicking around that I’ve been submitting to contests, and/or might turn into a story collection, or expand into a novella or even full novel.
All that to say, Writing? Why yes, Steve, I have been writing, thank you very much. You can stop giving me censorious looks. And something might even come out of it, very soon.
That’s Life, the Universe, and News from the Writing Trenches in January** of 2023. I’ll let y’all know when there’s more to tell.
*Footnote: I’m not saying that people who write novels fast write dross; far from it. Just that their brains work differently from mine. I can only write really fast if I write drivel; if I want to write anything worth reading I have to take my time. And that’s okay.
**Edit after posting: I just noticed that it is, in fact, now February, not January. Which tells you where my brain is at. Ah well…