How Novel!

Novelists aren't all like the prolific Barbara Cartland who published more than 700 books. In fact, most of us would be happy to just get that one special story out of our heads and into the world.

Sigh. Being a writer means a life fraught with self-doubt and angst, or so I've been told. Starting that all-important book is easy. Finishing is usually the hard, if not impossible task.

Thankfully, there's something out there that can help you get to 'THE END.' It's called National Novel Writing Month, quirkily abbreviated NaNoWriMo. Every November, budding novelists can sign up at www.nanowrimo.org where they will receive online encouragement and keep track of their progress as they work their ways up to completing a novel goal of 50,000 words before midnight on Nov. 30.

Thousands take the challenge every year and Marty Chan is no exception. A few years ago, the Metro Edmonton writer in residence did just that when he was still the writer in residence at the Edmonton Public Library. He wanted to make it a part of his program, but he had some ulterior motives to do so.

"I wanted to experience NaNoWriMo and host some public write-ins. I worked on this crazy idea, a steampunk fantasy novel about a young Harry Houdini teaming up with Nikola Tesla," he said. "It was a great time."

Often, novels produced during this month are personal pet projects and never get produced, only shelved somewhere at home. Maybe it was because Chan had published books before but he knew that he had something good going on.

That story eventually became the first in his Ehrich Weisz Chronicles, called Infinity Coil. There's a second in the series, Demon Gate, that came out just last year too.

That first draft of Infinity Coil, he further explained, doesn't much resemble the actual published book but he was really just writing it for fun to begin with anyway.

"I had no idea it would turn into something real."

St. Albert author Dawn Ius said that she managed to get from page one to the end chapter on her YA work Anne and Henry when she did NaNoWriMo a few years ago too. Most of her next project is in progress this November too.

A new chapter

Experienced, published authors have proven that these 30 days can indeed be a fruitful time. But what's it like for a first-timer?

Edward van Vliet has participated a few times with National Poetry Writing Month (a.k.a NaPoWriMo), writing 30 poems in 30 days during April. In February 2017, he's going to get in the Haiku writing spirit for a similar program. But there's one bandwagon that he hasn't joined yet.

"I thought that I would jump on the novel writing one," he explained.

"I've come back to my writing after quite a long time off of it. I ended up going to a writing workshop in Santa Fe with one of my favourite poets and that got me back on the wagon again. As I've jumped back in over the last three years, there's been a couple of novels that have been percolating for quite a long time. I thought, 'You know what? Let's just make this a year of writing.' I'll jump on for that. Even if I only get 30,000 words out, that's still 30,000 words that never got out before."

Unlike van Vliet, it's important to know that you're in familiar company. The NaNoWriMo website even offers a map that shows major centres around the world where participants have registered and how they're doing. For instance, Edmonton has nearly 450 novelists hard at work this month and so far, they've got an average word count of just more than 1,500 words per day. Calgary has 506 novelists at 1,667 wpd, progress that puts them exactly on track to achieve that magic number 50,000 within the next 25 days.

It's hard to know if those are real figures, however. The map shows that there are 1,073 novelists in Brazil with an average word count of 2,003,180. That might not be accurate.

Jeff Ryan describes himself as a total amateur when it comes to writing. His day job is a programmer at Bioware, which is a totally different kind of creative work. The dream of being a novelist hasn't exactly burned itself into his consciousness. It's more of a bucket list kind of thing to do, he explained.

"Everyone's got that one story they want to tell. It's more of a hobby thing for me. It's a life goal. I'll probably keep with it for a few years. It's good fun if nothing else. It's a nice challenge."

As a hobbyist, it sounds like a pretty serious thing to get through 50,000 words but that's just what he did for NaNoWriMo last year. "I wouldn't say it's done yet though," he joked.

Chan advised that quality is still always better than quantity though.

"Unless you're incredibly fast, I think that the best that you can aim for is a fleshed-out outline that you would probably have to revisit, and shore it up and throw out some things. Sometimes it's easy to get seduced by this whole notion of meeting your word count goal so you just start padding."

If anything, he suggested that writers remember not to put all of their eggs in one basket. Creativity and productivity are fickle creatures. People think that 'the muse' will just arrive and be a constant source of inspiration for long stretches of time, he said.

"The muse pops in and pops out. Once you have the inspiration for the idea, it's actually just the discipline of sitting down and working that draft. You have to come at it every single day and get a good number of words written and think about it in terms of writing the first draft as cumulative. As long as you get words down on the page, after a certain amount of time, you will have enough words to make the first draft of a novel."

Closing the book on closing the book

While it was still October, Chan also offered a 'Kick-Start Your Novel' workshop at the library, which received a pretty fair attendance.

Now that it's November, he's got a full slate of programs lined up to help out all of the city's NaNoWriMo-ites and other young Atwoods and Vonneguts out there, starting with a series of public write-ins. He considers it a kind of writers' boot camp where people can congregate at the library with their notepads and laptops and all write together. There will be games and other motivations to help people break through any blocks that they might have. The first is tomorrow from 2 to 4 p.m.

Chan calls them two-hour periods of sitting down and slogging through 1,500 to 2,000 words. "They're good examples of what writers go through all the time."

The others are Wednesday, Nov. 9 and Thursday, Nov. 17 both from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. with the last one on Tuesday, Nov. 22 again from 2 to 4 p.m.

After that, he's lined up a roundtable of publishers. Chan will moderate a panel with representatives of several publishing companies to ask common questions. That will take place on Monday, Nov. 28 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Anyone can register for these free sessions by visiting http://sapl.libcal.com or by calling 780-459-1682. More information can be found by visiting Chan's writer-in-residence website at www.metrowir.com.

And hey, if NaNoWriMo doesn't work for you then there's always Camp NaNoWriMo, a virtual writing retreat, or the Saint City Writers group that you could try.