How I Wasted November, by Writing a Book

As very few of you have noticed, and even less of you cared, blogging has been a little light lately.
This is because I’ve been embarking on a ridiculous literary adventure, under the umbrella of National Novel Writing Month (which is shortened to NaNoWriMo by those not smart enough to shorten it all the way to NaNo.)

The idea is simple, to sit down and write a 50,000 word novel in November. Thirty days, 50,000 words. That’s 1,667 words a day, a figure that I saw many, many times as I fired up Windows calculator to figure out what sort of ridiculous, relentless pace I’d have to keep up for the month. “If I give up now for today, how many extra will I need to do this week…”

Holding down a full-time job means that midweek writing goes tough, coming back exhausted and being met with a barrage of words that need to be completed that evening, it’s tough. Weekends are, surprisingly, worse, normally a time to get some rest and recover, but NaNo meant trying to get a bit ahead so the following week wouldn’t be so rubbish.

The sheer pace of writing is intentional – I’ve tried to write a novel before, and ended up redrafting the same sentence repeatedly, getting hung up over a description of a tree, without moving on and getting into the story. With NaNo, you don’t read it back, you don’t edit, you just write. Of course, the more sleep deprived days lead to absolute crap being written, like:

I lifted the saw, I think it was a hacksaw, but only because that’s the only type of saw I know. I placed it on top of his left leg and began to cut. The fabric from his jeans started to rip and tear as the saw went through easily. Then a slight resistance as it hit flesh. I grimaced and tried not to think about what I was doing. I continued to cut, until an even harder resistance: bone. I shuddered at the thought, and continued to cut round it, stopping at the horrible noise every single grind made.

Hmm.

Saturday night, I finished the novel, wrote those two awesome words: The End, and closed Word down. Okay, it was only the first draft (the “Ben Elton Final Draft” as it’s wonderfully known) and I’d have to – shudder – read it and edit it at some point, but I’d done it. I’ve written a bloody novel.

In a way, that makes me like Jesus, because he wrote a made up story too.