Finishing - Day 2

... so, I'm not taking my own advice. I suggested to my (ex) newbies that they take a day to fill in gaping plot holes and sort out glaring inconsistencies, but I haven't done that myself.

Reason being, after five nights off (the ultimate reward for writing 2K a night and finishing on the 25th), I really wanted to write again. So that's what I did. I wrote about 1300 words last night, about 1100 tonight. Small change, really, but this isn't the giddy dash of Nano, but a more leisurely, purposeful pursuit.

As for the plot holes, I'll simply pretend that anything that needs to have been written, has been written. If I realise that it is essnetial Mr Abroghast (I think I've spelt his name five different ways, but that is TOTALLY UNIMPORTANT for now) needs to have a trained monkey, I'm going to pretend that the trained monkey was introduced earlier. Frighteningly, I'm having to do this with my killer - he's meant to have been introduced at a grand reception, which hasn't actually been written yet, and isn't officially in the schedule I drew up ... but no matter, no matter. Sooner or later, I will go back and tidy up the first portion, but before I can do that, I think I need to know what is going on in the second half. Maybe Mr Abroghast won't need a trained monkey. Perhaps I won't even need Mr Abroghast in the end ... It will all be sorted out in the end. What is important is what I'm writing now.

If you have taken a day off, as a mental health requirement or to resolve major plot problems, it is improtant to start writing again as soon as possible. Leave it more than a day or two, and the difficulty increases expotentially. Leave it a week, and a little voice will start whispering, "Why bother, you're almost half way through December now, why bother starting, leave it until January ..." and I'd put money on you not writing a word in January.

So no more slacking. You've had your day off, you can take another night for editing IF IT IS ESSENTIAL, but either today or tommorrow, you need to sit down and hammer out your words.

And now we just do it all again ...

Well, this is it, folks. The last day of Nano 2007. For most of you, scattered about the world, the day is still yong, for me, it is only over.

The end of Nano is a weird expereince. You've suffered so much over the month, you're so exhausted and strung out by the end of it, that you'd think the last thing you'd want t do is write another word. But at the same time, you really, really don't want it to be over, because its been such a wild, crazy experience, and going back to interacting with normal people who aren't fixated on word counts and plot bunnies seems ... slightly scarey. Those of you still scrambling for the finish line, of course, don't want the month to end because you want to eke a few more words out of it.

Good news on both counts. If you want to continue, there is no reason on Earth why not. December is nick named NaNoFiMo. If I tell you 'Fi' standds for 'Finishing,' I'm sure you can work out the rest of it for yourselves. Lots of people carry on into December, January ... the orums are still pretty lively. As I've said before, I intend to finish this year, starting tommorrow. I'm going to stage it as a personal Nano-lite challenge - aiming for maybe 30K for the month, rather than the monstrous 50K. Remember a time when you thought 30K seemed was a ridiculously high number of words, beyond comprehension and totally undo-able? That time was just 4 weeks ago.

The good news for those who didn't reach 50K is that they will just have discovered something totally remarkable - it doesn't matter a damn. As long as you're still showing up, reading my over-long emails and writing something, you're not a loser, and you're perfectly entitled to carry on with the rest of us.

So if you're keen to stick about and soldier on, I'm happy to stay in touch with you. By getting this far, you've graduated from newbie to veteran, so I relinquish my mentor's cape and knobbly staff.

My adivce to those who are still game (and I hope that's most of you) is simple:

• Take a day off. Sorry, no more than that. To get more than a day off, you need to have finished earlier than the last day. I know you're exhausted, and weepy, and feel like you have no friends, but, tough. You need to get right back in there. If you don't, you probably won't. This was the mistake I made the first (counts quickly) THREE times I did Nano. So don't fool yourselff by thinking you can take a week off. Also, of course, if you're going to set a reasonable target for December, you can't afford to take days off.
• You may spend the first day 'back on task' tinkering with youre plot, editing, brainstorming and what have you. This is where you get to correct some of the BIGGEST plot holes in your story. Don't stress about all of them - spelling and grammar, making sure character's names are spelt correctly and such like minutae are tasks for another month. But if you've missed out enitre scenes (as I have) or if you have characters in two places at once (as I have) or if you have far too much happening in far too short a space of time (as I have) then this ONE NIGHT is you're chance to go back and make these corrections. Because after that you have to atart moving the story onwards.
• Set yourself a new word count and daily quota. This should be reaslistic - 50K in December is a BIG ASK, what with Christmas, New Year and all that. Also, you're probably drained after November. You can take your foot off the accelerator - BUT ONLY A LITTLE BIT. As I said, I'd like to hit 30K. Reason for that is ...
• You need to set a new rewards programme. If my Nnovel reaches 80K before the end of the month, I'm buying myself the Special Edition of Deliverance on DVD. Classic film. Set your rewards to match how much you feel you can achieve - the point is to give yourself an incentive to stay on target, not to make yourself miserable by failing to achieve impossible goals.
• Be disciplined. This is probably the toughest part of it. You need to force yourself to carry on with the story. With Nano over, a lot of the external motivation, the feeling of gleefulexcitement, is gone. Whether or not you've made it to 50K, you probably feel abit demotivated, deflated and perhaps even a little melancholy. Snap out of it. A daft competition ended, not the GREAT LOVE AFFAIR THAT WILL DEFINE YOUR LIFE.

Nanowrimo has put you on the road to becoming a writer, but you need to keep moving. It isn't a road, really, but a conveyor belt, or an escalator, travelling the opposite way to which you want to go. Stand still, and you'll get further and further away from you destination. Believe me, I speak from personal experience here - you need to be harsh, and drag yourself, whimpering and snivelling, to your work station each day and hammer out your words. Because it would be SOOOO easy just to give up. But you mustn't, because there's a whole damn book out there begging to be written, and only you can do it.

Subterranean Home Stretch Blues

Looks like i'll get to 40K tommorrow. I certainly need it. Looking back, I don't remember previous nano's being this difficult. No, not even last year, when I was working full time (and believe me, November is the worst month for teaching in New Zealand), adjusting to the joys of parenthood, and wrestling a plot that was sprouting in many different directions (eventually, it turned into two seperate stories).

Okay, so 40K doesn't look bad - I'm sure some of you would sell limbs or non-essential organs for a few of those words. But it has been a struggle to get here. I'm exhausted, not too happy with my story and fustrated. I can sense the story lurking in the background, but I can't quite see it clearly enough to get it down on paper. I feel like I'm putting down a pretty poor substitute for the REALLY GOOD STORY that I should be writing.

I'm guessing most of you feel the same. Writing under pressure is like this. You can't spend time finding the right words or exploring all the poetical and metaphysical possibilities of a scene, or captuing a character's motivations in a few nuanced sentences. What should have been great scenes seem flat. Characters seem to be as artificial as puppets.

I can't offer any advice that will dispell this feeling of inadequacy, the suspicion that you're somehow spoiling your story and it would be better if someone who actually knew what they were doing was writing it.

I can only offer my usual advice: keep writing. It will get better. It might just be delight as you stagger across the 50K mark, or just numb relief. Or perhaps as you move towards the climax, things will pick up as the narrative gathers momentumn. Things can fall into place all of a sudden and stuff can just sudednly make sense. You get a buzz going when things like that happen. When it happens in the 30s or early 40s, it can give you a big enough kick to send you hurtling towards the finish line with the sort of enthusiam you NEVER thought you'd again feel for writing.

The other positive thing I can say is that things aren't ever as bad as you remember. One thing I've really enjoyed this year is looking back over previous nano's to find exemplars for the diversions I've shared. Reading some of those efforts has been really exciting - I've been amazed at how good they are. I'm convinced they are at least 500 time sbetter than what I'm writing now. I'm also sure in a couple of year time, I'll look back on 2007 as the very best year I ever had, at least 500 times better than whatever I'm writing in this putative future ... And remember, these were all projects I junked, and didn't think were worth carrying on with. At least one of them has now been moved into the 'Worth revisiting' folder (The story surrounding the Judy's Audition extract).

So don't let the voices in your head (and I KNOW there are voices in your head. Don't worry about it. Only mad people don't hear the voices by this stage) dissaude you from carrying on. Remember - no-one else can write this story. You might not be writing it as well as you'd like, but if it doesn't get written now, by you, it never will be written. And once it's written, however badly, it can be made better. And once you've got through nano, and had time to come back to your senses, you'll realise it isn't half as bad as it looks just now.

The tipping point

Week Three is when people realise that Nano is Hell. Some people are behind. For them, it is Hell. SOme people are on target. For them it is Hell. Some people are ahead. For them, also, it is Hell.

In Week One, enthusiasm and the giddy excitement of madcap excitement carries most nanoers along. Before they know it, it is over. Yup, a few run into difficulties straight away, but Week One is a time of wild optimism. "So what, I've only got 500 words, and I've just had both hands amputated. I can so do this!"

Week Two is usually pretty tough. Then, dismal reality sets in. What had seemed like a flurry of plot ideas turns out to have been a plot unravelling. Characters that seemed 'mysterious' in Week One are now just stubborn. Those foolish enough to credit muses for their inspiration, generally discover that muses are fickle, work-shy slackers who bolt at the first sign of trouble.

Week Three is different,a nd yet the same. Some are horrified to find that the problems of Week Two don't magically disappear in Week Three. Others realise just how bloody big a task they've set themselves. Others start to feel the effects of nano's pressure cooker environment - they get stressed, they get sick, they give up.

Some people hang on, bitterly punching out words, because somewhere in Week Three, they will reach 25K - the half way stage. And when they do, they think, they'll feel better. Half way! Wheeee!

Wrong. Halfway is just that. When you hit 25K, you'll feel like a train wreck. You'll be tired, sick, depressed, confused, saddled with a plot that you have no faith in and characters you hate. And you'll be acutely aware that once you reach 25K, you have another 25K to go. And you won't be sure that you want to do it, because you'll know how much the first 25K hurt. And you won't know if you want to do it again. Because doing it once hurt like Hell. So doing it twice will hurt like two Hells. And that can't be good.

That's when you need to keep on going. 25K isn't anything special. Everytime I've reached it, I've found it to be an anti-climax. But somewhere between 25K and 35K (usually 28K to 32K), I reach what I call the tipping point. Suddenly I relaise - really comprehend - that I've written a whole lot more than I still have to write. If all the words I'd written were piled up, and another pile of the words I still have to write was put beside it, the first pile would be much bigger than the second pile. And suddenly, you realise that you're going to damn well do this thing, no matter what. Up until now, you might have said you're going to do it, but it's always been with a little sliver of doubt. But now you know you can, and you will. And this time you really mean it.

And that's the tipping point. From there on, it isn't easy. But it is easier. The last 20K or so can still be painful, but somehow you know you're going to get there.