Strapping In For The Challenge Of My Life

I've been a creative writer since I was a kid....I can remember spending hot, boring summer afternoons writing funny news articles, and stories about my family getting rich. In college I even went so far as to write 350 pages of a Russian spy novel I was working on, but in the end it was just an incomprehensible mush. (It seems even the vaunted KGB couldn't keep up with my endless plot twists and character switches!)

If I was going to get serious about writing, I figured I needed to "learn how to write", so I started reading a lot of books on how to write. I don't know a quicker way to kill a writing career. I learned so many ways to do it wrong that I just quit in utter hopelessness. I haven't written any meaningful fiction in over a decade. If I ever become a famous novelist, and an aspiring writer wants to know how to get started, my first and most important piece of advice will be, "Stay the hell away from writers' books!"

Anyway, just because I quit writing fiction doesn't mean I don't still have story ideas. I still come up with them, but I have never had the courage to put them to paper.

But, in the words of Jack Black and his hallowed rock band Tenacious D, "the tyranny and the bullshit's gone on too long."

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) --- a community challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days --- seems a great opportunity for me to break through the lies and excuses I've been telling myself and to actually run off the precipice of mediocrity and soar into the great heights of authorship!

My body is shaking right now with nervousness, just writing this blog entry, just talking about doing it. But I certainly have nothing to lose. I'll be no worse off if I fail, and most certainly better off if I try.

I'm coming to learn that the defining challenge of an author is not the ability to write, but the ability to trust oneself. I expect to learn that lesson in spades during this November challenge.

My perfectionistic leanings have tripped me up in many areas of my life, and no less so when it comes to writing. So I find comfort in the NaNoWriMo contract I saw on Teri Anderson's blog. I've reprinted it here, for my own sake as well as for anyone who missed it.

(Wow, I just wrote 411 words...wish it counted toward my 50k!)

NaNoWriMo Contract
The Month-Long Novelist Agreement & Statement of Understanding

I hereby pledge my intent to write a 50,000-word novel in one month's time. By invoking an absurd, month-long deadline on such an enormous undertaking, I understand that notions of "craft," "brilliance," and "competency" are to be chucked right out the window, where they will remain, ignored, until they are retrieved for the editing process. I understand that I am a talented person, capable of heroic acts of creativity, and I will give myself enough time over the course of the next month to allow my innate gifts to come to the surface, unmolested by self-doubt, self-criticism, and other acts of self-bullying.

During the month ahead, I realize I will produce clunky dialogue, cliched characters, and deeply flawed plots. I agree that all of these things will be left in my rough draft, to be corrected and/or excised at a later point. I understand my right to withhold my manuscript from all readers until I deem it completed. I also acknowledge my right as author to substantially inflate both the quality of the rough draft and the rigors of the writing process should such inflation prove useful in garnering me respect and attention, or freedom from participation in onerous household chores.

I acknowledge that the month-long 50,000-word deadline I set for myself is absolute and unchangeable, and that any failure to meet the deadline, or any effort on my part to move the deadline once the adventure has begun, will invite well-deserved mockery from friends and family. I also acknowledge that, upon successful completion of the stated noveling objective, I am entitled to a period of gleeful celebration and revelry, the duration and intensity of which may preclude me from participating fully in household activities for days, if not weeks, afterward.

Signed: Judd M. Miller, fledgling novelist
Date: Thursday, October 22nd, 2004
Novel Start Date: Midnight, November 1st, 2004
Novel Deadline: 11:59 PM, November 30th, 2004

If anyone else would like to join me in the insanity, sign-ups are at www.nanowrimo.org