A Writer's Notebook, Day Seventy-Two
I have done it. The completed draft is printing as I write these words, and I feel elated, despite the awareness that much work is still to be done. I have a number of things that I am aware of already, but I am truly excited that I actually did it. The final word count for the draft, which will likely increase as I do have some things I intend to add in tomorrow, is 68,334 words. I acknowledge that this is still a short novel, but for a month's work, I think it is quite decent, and I am glad to have finished with a bit of time to spare for other things before nanowrimo actually begins.
The ending itself went quite well, though I did need to take a moment and rethink some of it a bit. I also know that I may have rushed the end a tiny bit, and will want to add a few things to it. There is a lot of work, but I got to the end of the current story, and that is something I feel is worth celebrating a bit. Of course, at a bit after 2 am, that's not likely to happen, but I do feel amazing.
I am eager to share this with a few people, as well, not only out of that general enthusiasm, but also for the purpose of making certain that others have seen it. I have a strange superstition, but in my mind, it is as if a piece of writing does not really exist until others have read it. This is a holdover from my tendency, at one point in my youth, to write then destroy things. If someone else had read it already, it couldn't truly be destroyed, it didn't only exist for me any longer.
I've had many lessons from working on this book, not only in terms of the process of writing a novel, and the elements of it, but also in terms of my thinking about how I can utilize the kind of experimentation that I am interested in, while still crafting pieces that are accessible, and where those elements become important as a part of the story itself. That has nothing to do with whether this book turns out to be any good at all, but with the perspective that it has given me.
I also, of course, feel that I did gain many insights about how a novel works and how to write one, in terms of my own thinking about it. In some ways, I do not know how to codify my process, as I don't use a true outline, but I do have a strong sense of the story before I begin, though it remains loose and flexible. In the end, I know that I need to look at the book a word and a sentence at a time to construct it, and I don't always know what will be the essential moments until I get to them and they happen. In many cases, I think the language is what guides this for me. I can sense when the tension that has been building in the words, in the pacing and rhythm, as well as the meanings, is ready to topple over, and I can often sense when the language is echoing another moment in the piece, and what that means.
In part, composition is an unconscious process, and so the construction of the novel must rely upon that process. While I do wish to make these ideas more explicit for me, the way of doing so does not lie in changing the process, but in keeping at it and exploring it more deeply. This month taught me many things, and I am sure that I will not know what they all are until much later.
One thing that it certainly has taught me, though, is that I truly can write a full novel to the end in a month, and that doing so is often a wonderful experience. Sure, I had some periods when I was a bit frustrated, but at each turn, that frustration gave way to a new creative discovery. Some were small and relevant only to this book, others are much larger and have greater reverberations for my work in the future, but they all are moments that I know will make me a better writer, as they have shown me a certain degree of self-trust is a necessity.
Beyond any of that, however, the thing that is truest and most clear, is that I learnt that the novel, as a form, is something that I feel a deeper aptitude for, and a desire to gain mastery over. In some sense, I feel a bit addicted, not only to finish a book, though certainly that is a part of it, but moreover with wrestling through the issues of crafting a long piece of fiction. The magic that occurs over that space and the time of the writing is not something that I have experienced with shorter works, and that is something that I truly found astonishing. I felt that there was a mastery underneath the work, even if it was not clear to me what was happening.
I think that I have a natural inclination towards works of a longer sort, and I am really glad to find that writing my second novel, at least in terms of the first draft, was something that I could get myself to do with such alacrity, and in a way that felt rewarding and challenging. As I had mentioned numerous times starting out the project, one thing that I felt certain about was that I could most easily learn to write novels by doing so many times, repeatedly. I still believe this to be true, and I am even more enthused, as I know for certain that I can write books in a way that makes this reasonable as an approach. Repeating this by writing another novel is bound to teach me more, and to bring me closer to truly feeling that I know what I am doing in writing a novel.
So, I am quite ecstatic at this moment, and I feel the sense of having done something that was worthwhile in my life. Not only because I do believe, at the end of the day, that this will be a really good book when I get done with it, but also because I know that, even if it is never anything other than a mess, well, the writing of it was certainly a worthwhile and significant event in my life.
The ending itself went quite well, though I did need to take a moment and rethink some of it a bit. I also know that I may have rushed the end a tiny bit, and will want to add a few things to it. There is a lot of work, but I got to the end of the current story, and that is something I feel is worth celebrating a bit. Of course, at a bit after 2 am, that's not likely to happen, but I do feel amazing.
I am eager to share this with a few people, as well, not only out of that general enthusiasm, but also for the purpose of making certain that others have seen it. I have a strange superstition, but in my mind, it is as if a piece of writing does not really exist until others have read it. This is a holdover from my tendency, at one point in my youth, to write then destroy things. If someone else had read it already, it couldn't truly be destroyed, it didn't only exist for me any longer.
I've had many lessons from working on this book, not only in terms of the process of writing a novel, and the elements of it, but also in terms of my thinking about how I can utilize the kind of experimentation that I am interested in, while still crafting pieces that are accessible, and where those elements become important as a part of the story itself. That has nothing to do with whether this book turns out to be any good at all, but with the perspective that it has given me.
I also, of course, feel that I did gain many insights about how a novel works and how to write one, in terms of my own thinking about it. In some ways, I do not know how to codify my process, as I don't use a true outline, but I do have a strong sense of the story before I begin, though it remains loose and flexible. In the end, I know that I need to look at the book a word and a sentence at a time to construct it, and I don't always know what will be the essential moments until I get to them and they happen. In many cases, I think the language is what guides this for me. I can sense when the tension that has been building in the words, in the pacing and rhythm, as well as the meanings, is ready to topple over, and I can often sense when the language is echoing another moment in the piece, and what that means.
In part, composition is an unconscious process, and so the construction of the novel must rely upon that process. While I do wish to make these ideas more explicit for me, the way of doing so does not lie in changing the process, but in keeping at it and exploring it more deeply. This month taught me many things, and I am sure that I will not know what they all are until much later.
One thing that it certainly has taught me, though, is that I truly can write a full novel to the end in a month, and that doing so is often a wonderful experience. Sure, I had some periods when I was a bit frustrated, but at each turn, that frustration gave way to a new creative discovery. Some were small and relevant only to this book, others are much larger and have greater reverberations for my work in the future, but they all are moments that I know will make me a better writer, as they have shown me a certain degree of self-trust is a necessity.
Beyond any of that, however, the thing that is truest and most clear, is that I learnt that the novel, as a form, is something that I feel a deeper aptitude for, and a desire to gain mastery over. In some sense, I feel a bit addicted, not only to finish a book, though certainly that is a part of it, but moreover with wrestling through the issues of crafting a long piece of fiction. The magic that occurs over that space and the time of the writing is not something that I have experienced with shorter works, and that is something that I truly found astonishing. I felt that there was a mastery underneath the work, even if it was not clear to me what was happening.
I think that I have a natural inclination towards works of a longer sort, and I am really glad to find that writing my second novel, at least in terms of the first draft, was something that I could get myself to do with such alacrity, and in a way that felt rewarding and challenging. As I had mentioned numerous times starting out the project, one thing that I felt certain about was that I could most easily learn to write novels by doing so many times, repeatedly. I still believe this to be true, and I am even more enthused, as I know for certain that I can write books in a way that makes this reasonable as an approach. Repeating this by writing another novel is bound to teach me more, and to bring me closer to truly feeling that I know what I am doing in writing a novel.
So, I am quite ecstatic at this moment, and I feel the sense of having done something that was worthwhile in my life. Not only because I do believe, at the end of the day, that this will be a really good book when I get done with it, but also because I know that, even if it is never anything other than a mess, well, the writing of it was certainly a worthwhile and significant event in my life.
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