Slightly inspired by artificial deadlines

It's Day 29 of the Picture Book Marathon (which I signed up for on Feb. 1st). The goal was to have 26 picture books finished by the end of the day. My count (as of 11:11 a.m.)? Three nearly complete books, and ideas and/or outlines for another 12 or so.

After some hesitation on that first day, I began to feel hope and inspiration, actually letting myself believe that I was going to not only come up with 26 manuscripts, but that I was going to sell many of them. Nine days in, that hope hadn't entirely vanished despite not having completed a single book—I met a writer friend for lunch halfway between here and West Virginia, where we brainstormed together for an hour.

The beginning of such efforts always feels like the start of a love affair—there's an almost tingly sensation of playfulness and life-changing opportunity. And then comes the hard work, whether paying a mortgage, or creating a conflict-filled plot.

I got really, unexpectedly busy this month, so the PBM became less and less of a priority. If it had been a real deadline with consequences (i.e., money or stigma) attached, I would have found a way to make it a priority. But I knew, deep down, that it was an artificial deadline and that it really didn't matter if I came up with 26 books in a month.

Yet, without this artificial deadline, I probably wouldn't have made myself come up with ideas for so many picture books, nor would I have attempted to write down some of the stories I used to spontaneously make up for my kids at bedtime (e.g., "Cleo, Secret Empress of the Cats").

So, I don't have 26 books completed (although I still have another 12 hours or so...), but I do have a list of ideas to work on—and I got to see my friend, Mary, for the first time in six months.

The Picture Book Marathon begins

I signed up for the Picture Book Marathon, pledging to write 26 picture books in February, because I thought it would be fun to delve into a new format, especially since I have no realistic plan to seek publication for anything that comes out of this. I figured it would be a good exercise to write with both simple visuals and a specific audience in mind.

So this morning, the first day of the Marathon, I set aside 15 minutes to start scribbling something down. The contest suggests coming up only with a very rough 32-page draft each day, which could be only 32 sentences for the simplest picture book.

But for the first time in my life I have writer's block (which is why I am writing this blog post instead). It's not just that my mind has suddenly gone blank—I actually feel nervous and sweaty. I can't make myself commit anything to paper.

I thought writing for young children would be the simplest kind of writing possible. What is overwhelming is not how little I need to write to make one small book, but all the thousands of words and descriptions I must cut out to get there.

My inner critic is like a fussy child, displeased with any of the ideas I hand her, throwing them all in the thrash before they're even unwrapped.

Create something in 30 days (more or less)

NaNoWriMo didn't work for me this year. But that doesn't mean you or I have to wait until next November to work under an artificial, Internet-based deadline to complete some type of creative work.  Below I've compiled a list of web sites that encourage "high-velocity prose" (as NaNoWriMo bloggers call it) of any type within certain time frames:

February: Picture Book Marathon - Write a picture book every day of the month in February

March:  NaNoEdMo - 50 hours of editing one novel

April: Script Frenzy Write 100 pages of original scripted material in 30 days (includes TV scripts, screenplays, stage plays and graphic novels)

May (1-7):  NaPiBoWriWee - Write 7 picture books in a week

November:
• WNFIN (Write NonFiction in November) - Write 50,000 words of nonfiction
• NaPlWriMo (National Playwrighting Month)
• PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) - Create 30 picture book ideas in 30 days
• and, of course, NaNoWriMo

For a list of additional contests [I didn't list them here because some seem less official] see:
  NaNoWriMo-Style Events

A realistic NaNoWriMo goal?

Late last night, in a fit of exhausted inspiration, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, even though I questioned recently whether I should attempt it again.

This year I am being realistic—that is, not very ambitious, since it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to carve out enough time this week to start it off well.

The working title of my forthcoming work: (NaNoWriMo insists that you provide a novel title in order to register): Whatever I Can Think of to Write in Any Given Moment.

The genre: Memoir/Stream of consciousness (a genre I may have made up since I had to write it in under the category of "Other").

I'm aiming for 10,000 words this year, one-fifth of the official NaNoWriMo goal, or around 350 words a day (not the 1,667 words that the contest suggests). I've decided to write about the people and moments I've wanted to recall over the years, to remember them more vividly, to recreate and then ameliorate the past. This may only last through the first five days before I go on to something else I've always meant to do.

So I say am trying to be realistic, but I confess there's some tiny glimmer of hope inside me that Whatever I Can Think of to Write in Any Given Moment eventually will be considered a ground-breaking, creative masterpiece marking a new and unforeseen category of memoir-ish fiction.

NaNoWriMo or NaNoWriNo?

A friend asked recently if I intended to do NaNoWriMo this year. I said I wasn't sure. Since that time,  my potential answer has swung daily between "How could I?" to "How could I not?". That's because I'm in the midst of revising the middle-grade novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last November.

Without the pressure to write a novel in a month, I probably wouldn't have written this particular novel—so I'm thankful to NaNoWriMo for that. But writing that fast, without any time for revision or reflection along the way, also means that some of the resulting text is extraneous, to put it politely.

I had to try to meet my 1,800 word goal every day, so I often wrote about whatever popped into my head. New characters would appear and speak their minds, whether they needed to be in this particular book or not. One description (not five or six) about how much my heroine loved to read would have been sufficient.

The hard part now is figuring out what is worth keeping. I've realized that good prose doesn't necessarily mean good fiction—hence, many well-written sentences need to be deleted. I've spent as much time now hacking through my second draft as I did writing that first draft last year.

If I attempt NaNoWriMo again, I've decided the best option will be to try to write interconnecting-stories-as-a-novel. That way, I can choose the best stories to keep, hacking away without the worry of any visible scar tissue between chapters or even paragraphs.