November 15- 0 hour for Nate Lowell

I was going to post something about the awesomeness that is Nathan Lowell, but then I figured I’d let him speak for himself. Congrats, Nate, you’re a true inspiration.

After the Challenge
by Nathan Lowell

Today’s Sunday, the 15th of November. People of NaNoWriMo are frantically hammering out words to beat the deadline of 50k by the end of the month. I got my 50k last night, and I owe it to the MightyMur challenge. Thank you, Mur.

When she asked me to write this guest post, my reaction was a certain level of “who? me?!”

In reality, I don’t really think of myself as having a lot to contribute to the art of writing. I’m just a guy who tells stories. I like to tell stories and I seem to have found some people who like my stories, so it works out. She suggested her readers might like to know how I beat her challenge, how I feel right now, and what’s next. So, here’s a little story with less fiction than normal.

How did I do it?

I wrote. For me, it wasn’t even a lot in terms of raw word count. Getting a new book going takes time and working in a new universe takes even more. In preparation for what I knew would be a slow start, I did some prep work in October to get ready for the writing when I could start.

First, I drew maps. I drew a lot of maps and threw most of them out. I didn’t draw them by hand, but used the GIMP and plasma clouds to form land masses and water, rivers, lakes and mountains. They were random but they suggested things to me. What would it look like to walk in that valley? How long would it take to sail up that river or across that ocean?

Second, I built a globe of the world and worked out the annual calendar. I wanted a world that was different from ours but not so different that I needed to make up a bunch of stuff. In my new world, the orbit is more elongated and the period between equinoxes is asymmetric. It’s just the world. It’s background and maybe it won’t be significant in the long run. The axial tilt is also bigger so there’s a midnight sun effect in a larger area of the world. That gives me background into the world and how it works, even before I think about people.

Third, since this was going to be a Fantasy novel, I spent some time thinking about the tropes of fantasy. What makes a classic fantasy novel? What’s the ‘elevator pitch?’ It goes something like “young person, disillusioned with life on the farm, runs away to seek a better life and stumbles on adventure that nearly kills him/her but in the end they save the world from evil and discover they can’t go home again.” Oh, and there’s magic. Nothing says fantasy like a magic. The magic is instantiated in various ways, but there has to be magic. Swords are good.

It was important to me to identify the tropes of fantasy so that I could be very deliberate in bending them. In my science fiction work, I’ve taken the tropes of space ship, hero, and universe and bent them so that the interstellar conquest is not about an air force but an airline. Kind of a “what if FedEx got the first jump drive?” idea. So, my goal was to do the same kind of thing with Fantasy. I spent days just thinking about what things I could turn upside down and still have a fantasy novel and still tell a compelling story.

So. The heroine isn’t young. Her normal life is traveling and her adventure starts when she settles down. She doesn’t save the world from evil, but she does help one little part. Along the way she learns something about herself, and I’d like to think that she teaches something about what it means to get old. At least, that’s what I think. I’m only about halfway through this tale at 50,000 words. It needs at least another 30 to be what I’d consider a novel and if it goes to 100k by the end of the month, I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed.

The writing was far from flawless. At 44,500 words I realized that the previous two days worth of work had put me in a place where I didn’t want to be. It was a ripsnorting adventure yarn smack in the middle of my story. The problem was that in NaNoWriMo – even more than usual – you don’t edit until you’re done. But unless I edited, I couldn’t finish. So I pulled 13,000 words out, managed to reuse and repurpose about 5,000 of them, but had to replace 8,000 words in the final days of the challenge. Luckily for me, it worked out or I’d be writing a very different guest post. The first readers are much happier with the revised story and so am I.

How do I feel?

Anxious. There’s a certain sense of relief – of being freed from the NaNo 50k so now I can focus on the story. Even more is the anxiety that comes with the production of any of my stories. Will it pass the so-what test?

Where do I go from here?

Back to the keyboard. I’ve got a story to finish, and then edit, and then podcast. December’s just around the corner and I’ve got a lot of non-writing things that are going to get in the way. Every word I manage to get down gets me that much closer to finding out how the story ends and I’m really looking forward to finding that out.

Why did I do it?

This wasn’t one of the questions that Mur asked, but it’s the one I’ve been asking myself for the last few weeks.

This challenge has been a real struggle for me. Kinda like calling your shot on the pool table. “This is what I’m gonna try to do and I’m telling everybody about it.” In the secret and solitary world of writing few people actually say “Ok, my next book is gonna do this, that, and another thing and I’m gonna finish it by Auguary.” I wasn’t worried about the word counts because I’ve written more in less time before. What I was worried about is writing a story that’s worthy of being podcast in December and being added to my list of titles.

That last part is yet to be realized. I’m very happy with the way the story is unfolding, and even as I’m writing this, I’m getting anxious to get back to the world and find out what happens next. I’ve got 15 days to find the end of this tale and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can. I’ve done it before, and I think I can do it again (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself by saying that).

So given all that, why?

Because NaNoWriMo is a good cause and the challenge gave me an excuse to promote NaNoWriMo just a little bit more.

It’s something bigger than just writing the next book. It’s taking part in a global event of absolutely epic proportions. It’s the chance for somebody who never thought they could write a whole novel to actually have the excuse to sit down and do it. It’s something that anybody can do, regardless of age, or skill, or background and in doing it, join a community of writers, of creators, and thinkers. If you make your 50k, and nobody ever knows but you? So what? You climbed the mountain. You looked down from the summit. You stood in the foot prints of your betters but the next one who stands there will stand in your footprints, too.

And maybe you’ll learn something about yourself, about the craft, about the world, and maybe we’ll all be better people because of it. Maybe you’ll learn the most important thing of all — that you should be writing.