The first big obstacle in undertaking a project such as NaNoWriMo, or, for that matter, on any writer’s desk, is just plain fabricating words: sitting down at your desk or coffee shop of choice and NOT killing time answering emails, facebook stalking your significant other’s ex, watching funny animal videos on youtube, etc., but WRITING the words that will add to your ongoing project.
My first reason not to write was the flu. My first day “with the novel” (I like to think of it, alternately, as a baby which the five of us are parenting and a baton in a relay race) I was laid out with a high fever and a strong imperative to visit the bathroom. I spent several hours staring at the tree outside my window, thinking about the beauty of its yellow leaves in the alternating light and shadow of passing clouds, yellow on blue, yellow on gray, yellow in sun, yellow in shade. I thought I might recover enough to turn some of my reflective spirit into prose, but after a few hours I realized that the idea of even moving to my desk seemed unlikely, and I called in sick.
So I traded days. This brings me to my second reason not to write: I had to work. On my rescheduled first day with the novel, I had approximately two hours between work shifts and no chance of staying up late due to the loathsome evening shift/ next morning shift scheduling I thought I’d left behind in my money-desperate college days (but apparently have rediscovered in my even-more-money-desperate-due-to-the-miserable-economy-that-kicked-in-at-the-same-time-as-repaying-my-student-loans days). Had I not been beholden to four other writers, I can promise that I would not have gotten even one of those 1600 words typed out. I know because this has been the case for approximately three years, 1095 days, regarding the non-NaNoWriMo novel of my lonesome.
When I did finally drag my work-weary behind to the desk to write these words, the reasons not to write did not run out. There was still a pretty huge problem ahead of me: I had no idea what to write.
As Yale mentioned in his post, I expressed my anxiety regarding the, as I perceive it, fairly masculine style of our novel (which was one reason for my selection of a nom de plume referencing a historic male personage, though that’s a different drama I may post about later) in an email to my collaborators. Outside of any of my personal pre-conceived biases regarding certain styles and genres, I don’t think it takes another woman to recognize the difficulty a woman in her early/mid 20s might have ventriloquizing an ex-con, fallen cop, middle aged bookie collector man.
“Bookie collector man”? Another reason I’m having trouble knowing what to write: on top of not knowing much about men and middle age, I don’t know heads or tails on the world of crime, gambling, disgraced cops, or the things that go with it.
This has led me to an artistic crisis: Have I relied too heavily on the old “write what you know” maxim? Am I, after all, one of those writers whose work is mostly autobiographical? And am I okay with that?
There are so many reasons not to write, in fact, and so much to think on regarding their implications, that I could probably easily write 1600 words, probably more. Yet here it is, my second day with the novel already, and time to work around/through/past all of them.
