It's eight days into December, and you may be asking yourself, "Where is the novel you said you were going to write in November?" The answer to that: [crickets chirping].
So National Novel Writing Month has come and gone, and I did not write the novel I said I was going to write. I failed for a number of reasons. Here is my defense:
- I had a very important, very large, and very complicated project dropped on me at work, without advanced notice. This project required a lot of work and took its toll on me mentally. Writing in that state would have been extremely difficult.
- I decided to write a novel before I even had an idea for a story. I think it should probably be the other way around. My first idea to write a robot's autobiography didn't take off, and then my second idea was to take my idea for a TV series and turn it into a novel. I did a lot of conceptualization and made good progress with plot points, but never actually got any real writing done.
- A non-literary creative idea (short film) got in the way. My company announced a Film Festival/contest, encouraging employees to make a 60 second video to be played at the company Christmas party. My team and I came up with a good idea (an Antoine Dodson parody, complete with actual autotuning), and we put it together. We ended up taking third place and winning $250 dollars ($25 for each person). It hasn’t been announced yet, but we feel pretty certain we won the People’s Choice award. We definitely got the best and most cheers when our video was played in front of everyone.
Those are the biggest reasons why I wasn't able to write a novel in November. I really wish I had succeeded, believe me, but I'm not too torn up about it. I was lying in bed early last week, and, as I frequently do, I was thinking about the stories I wanted to tell. I started thinking about my unfinished novel --- December 17th will mark eight years since I started it --- and I wondered why I've felt so powerless to complete it.
Back when I thought I was going to finish my novel before graduating college, I liked to describe it as conveying the "essence of my adolescence," and I figured I wouldn't be that far removed from adolescence when I finished it. My goal was to finish my novel before graduating from college.
As they always do, things got in the way of my plans. It turned out to be pretty hard to find time to write when I was a full-time student at BYU and working 20 hours a week. Life disregarded my goal, and I never could get back into a good writing routine. I successfully co-wrote a weekly newsletter thing (the old Access: Denied) for some twenty-five consecutive weeks, but I never made much progress on my novel. Then school got really tough --- who knew double majoring would require a lot of work? --- and I basically gave up on my goal.
Years passed and I felt so removed from the 19 year-old kid I was when I started writing my book that I didn’t think I’d ever manage to resume writing it. At least until last week.
There I was, waiting for the sweet oblivion of sleep, and I started thinking about the novel I didn’t write in November. It didn’t take long for my thoughts to turn to the novel I started but didn’t finish. Eventually I asked myself, “Why can’t I start working on this novel again? What has been holding me back?” I could not think of a valid reason why I couldn’t resume work immediately. The old hang-up, of my book being about my adolescence and my no longer being an adolescent, no longer held water. I realized that yes, I would have to do a lot of revising, but I already knew that, even when I was just twenty-one and not much of an adult. I realized that my work’s autobiographical nature shouldn’t restrict me from working on it even though I’m no longer the person I was when I started writing it. I’ve changed, but the beauty of my novel being mostly unwritten is that I don’t have to revise that much. I was just struck that night, for whatever reason, by the realization that not only could I complete my novel, but that I wanted to complete it.
I remembered something I had learned in one of my film classes. There are two questions to ask when attempting to define a character in the most basic and essential terms: what does the character want? And what does the character need? Most central conflicts arise from discrepancies between the wants and needs of a character. My novel wasn’t really about me or the life I had as an adolescent. Yes, that life and my experiences informed a lot of the novel’s plot, but they did not define my protagonist. What did define my protagonist were his wants and his needs. And those wants and needs had not changed even though I have changed quite a bit in the eight years since I started the work. More than that, I think that I now have a deeper and more complete understanding of the protagonist’s wants and needs. Eight years ago I thought I knew what was driving my protagonist, but I see now that my understanding was pretty superficial. Life has prepared me to understand him better, and if delaying my novel has been worthwhile in any way, it will be in the lessons I learned during those eight long years.
A Certain Kind of Weird is not dead. Let’s think of it like it’s waking up from its hibernation, or returning from an unfortunate but necessary exile. I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to finish. There really is a lot of work to do, but rather than crank out a 50,000 word novel in a month, I’d rather try and put the 61,000 words I already wrote to good use.
Yesterday I read a lot of the notes and outlines I created years ago (which really was quite extensive), and it got me excited to return to these characters and their silly story. Though the amount of work to be done is staggering, I am not discouraged. I have to basically do a full revision of everything I’ve already written (especially the first chapter) before I can push the story out into new territories. I’m looking forward to the challenge of reconciling the tone and voice of my writing from eight years ago with my current tone and voice. Really, that’s the biggest challenge facing me. I know there will be some cringing as I read my work again, but I think I’m ready to deal with it. Most of all, I’m ready to reacquaint myself with my characters.
Maybe I’m finally prepared as a writer to complete my work.
