Written Word Wednesday

Week One of NaNoWriMo

Yes, I took the plunge, and here on Day Four I am 5,297 words in. Writing a novel in a month is hard...and exhilarating! In my 22 years as a reader, I have read hundreds and hundreds of novels—many of them good ones—so how is it that I have not the faintest clue of how to write one? I'm struggling with pacing, perspective, voice, amount of description, amount of dialogue, etc. And yet the beauty of it is that I just keep writing instead of giving up, and I'm confident that at some point this month I'm going to figure out how I actually want to tell this story.

Yes, writing a novel in a month is hard...and exhilarating. When you're on a 30-day deadline, you simply have no time to edit. Going back spells death, pressing forward is all that counts. You have no idea how counter-intuitive this is to me. It's so difficult to keep my critical fingers off previous pages, but there's something so freeing in saying, "keep writing; fix it later." I'm learning to adopt the Wrimo creed: "Resist the tyranny of the delete key!" and "Editing is for December." Yesterday, they gave us the following advice:

And please remember: If you write a paragraph or chapter you don't like, just put it in italics (or change the font color to white). Do not delete! After you write your way across the 50,000-word finish line, you can double back and clip out all the parts of your book that make you cringe (I think you'll surprise yourself with what you decide to keep). For now, just keep moving forward! There's an old folk saying that goes: Whenever you delete a sentence in your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground. Where it will likely require medical attention.

Writing a novel in a month is insane. (Even a very short one, like this.) I have two jobs, family birthdays, dinner guests, the World Series, and more. That daily word quota hangs over my head. Here's how the schedule is shaking out:

1. Write before work (approx. 6:45-7:30 AM). Yesterday this produced 453 words, today 724. (Monday this time was spent working on lesson plans)
2. Write on lunch break (approx. 12:40-1PM). Yesterday this produced 324 words, today 155. As you can see, results vary!
3. Write at night as much as possible. Since I've had something going on every night this week so far, this has varied, but I've been averaging 1200 words in 1.5 hours.

To catch up today, I have to write another 1,371 words. We have dinner guests, followed by small group, plus Game 6 of the World Series. Excuse me while I go try to finish Chapter 3. :)

Rope Tricks

I have a pair of shoes that will not stay tied. I'm telling you, these shoelaces are positively Houdini-like. Double knots? Ha. Triple knots? Nice try.

I've been wearing them a lot lately, and every single time I get up from my desk, the laces are trailing again, and of course since "Safety First" is the motto of my workplace, I have to tie them before I walk downstairs.

I think I need to go shoe shopping. That, or ransom my tennis shoes from Ashleigh. Or both!

Overwhelmed

It's been a tough week emotionally - people I love are hurting deeply, and I've been hurting for them. Lots of things have been running through my mind, some less helpful than others, like

"Life is pain, Highness, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something." - The Princess Bride

Wednesday evening was a particularly tough time, and even though I am not directly connected with the the particular suffering of my friends, I found myself utterly overwhelmed with sorrow. I went to bed in tears and woke up in tears. And that phrase kept running through my head to describe how I felt: "overwhelmed with sorrow." This rang some bells, so I turned to Matthew 26:

He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me."

Not only is he experiencing greatest sorrow - to the point of death - he is unsupported. His closest friends fall asleep, and he cries out, "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?"

This is incredible. What other religion presents a God who voluntarily experienced the greatest sorrow on this fallen earth? And as I meditated on this, I came to this fundamental truth. Jesus truly knows the depths of our sorrow. And yet more -- because he had to suffer it alone, we never have to - HE is always there to watch and pray with us. Wow.

Written Word Wednesday

Both my sister and my mom sent me an article today from By Faith magazine on Christian writers. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, so I can't comment on the article, but my sister did pull out this quote when she sent it to me:

"I hope to borrow from Flannery O’Connor, that my students in their writing will be more attuned to 'the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil,'" says Smith. "[I hope they] will offer the full range of human experience digested from a Christian worldview perspective."

This is so silly, but my first reaction when reading that quote was to feel pressured. Perhaps the fact that I can't think of plots is only a secondary reason for why I hesitate to write. The primary reason involves feeling that I should produce something of profound Christian excellence about "the full range of human experience". (My only novella to date has kind of a Janette Oke-ish quality to its Christianity. Nothing wrong with Janette Oke's Christianity, but it isn't exactly multi-faceted, layered literature.)

Yet another reason, perhaps, for me to attempt Nanowrimo. (Yes, I'm reconsidering!) I think maybe I need to throw caution to the wind and just write something for fun. No one should expect their first attempt to be a masterpiece, right? Well, we'll see. :)

Photo Essay: Dunnottar Castle

Tonight I watched part of the 1990 version of Hamlet starring Mel Gibson. The reason I rented it, though, is that it stars something else: Dunnottar Castle. This was just 20 minutes down the road from where I lived in Scotland, and I had a couple wonderful adventures walking to the castle along the cliffs from the small village of Stonehaven. The movie sticks a non-ruined castle on top of this bluff, but the setting is unmistakable. Here's what it really looks like.

Depressing Literature

At the request of my nephew I decided to address the "depressing literature" problem in class today. As in - why is "classic" fiction so often depressing? And why should we read it? What should we get out of it?

Literature has always been a way to grapple with tough questions about this world. As far as it is truly trying to imitate life, it is imitating life in a fallen world. And life in a fallen world results in these questions: how can people do this to one another? Is there really a God and is he good? Can God be present in the midst of great evil and suffering? Can a sinner have any hope of salvation? Not all authors, obviously, have the right answer to these questions – many have only a counsel of despair. But as Christians we have an overarching framework—God’s story—to help categorize literature:

Creation | Fall | Redemption | Consummation

Even the simplest fairy tales reflect this structure:

Once upon a time | Enter Wicked Stepmother | Enter Handsome Prince | Happily Ever After

Fiction usually only tells part of the story, and yes, often camps out in the Fall - that's where we're living here and now, and that's the road down which dramatic tension lies. But every protagonist that sacrifices for others hints at Redemption. And every happy ending hints at consummation.

As a side note, most fiction that is categorized as "realism" is depressing. In the critics' worldview, a happy ending cannot be realistic. "It's all tied up too neatly," they say. "No marriage is a happily-ever-after...just wait till the honeymoon is over," etc. However, in the Christian worldview I think there is room for happy endings, because our view of what's real includes the reality to come. We already know there's one happily ever after marriage to look forward to, and after the wedding feast of Christ and his church, there will be an eternity of joy. A book with a happy ending echoes that surety.

But back to depressing fiction. What value does it have for us? We read about the Fall in order to better understand our own sin, our own desperate need for a savior. We need to be reminded that creation is groaning under the weight of the Fall. As Christians, we should use depressing literature not as a path to despair, but a springboard to Christ. In other words, we take it and plug it into the context of God's story; we see it as an illustration of the Fall that makes Redemption and Consummation seem that much sweeter.

I eventually applied all this to the specific book we're reading, Uncle Tom's Cabin. When looking at the book through this framework, I think we were able to see that despite the intense depiction of human depravity, the book is filled with the hope of redemption and consummation. As we read our hearts can grieve over the sinful state of the world and our own hearts, but be quickened with joy and hope in Christ as the Physician of the world.

Written Word Wednesday

My friend Ashleigh has a lovely feature on her blog called "The Wordless Wednesday," in which she posts some of her spectacular photography. As long as I'm attempting to revive this blog (woohoo! 4 posts in 4 days!) I've decided to steal from her and have my own Wednesday feature - a little musing on books, authors, and writing itself. We'll see how it goes.

I just discovered that the 11th annual NaNoWriMo is about to start. You're probably saying, Nano-what? NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month," and takes place every November. The goal is simple: write a 175-page (50,000 word) novel between November 1st and midnight November 30th. Naturally, with such a timeline, the goal is not to produce the next literary masterpiece. As the creators of the event say,

"Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."

This approach actually makes sense to me. I have spent my whole life reading great literature. The result is that the minute I try any creative writing, I get to the end of the first page, read it over, come to the inevitable conclusion that it is not Great Literature, and give up. What if--just once--I kept going? Actually worked something out to completion, no matter how bad it was? What if, say, I just decided to write my first novel in 30 days. I could even have a burning party on December first, but at least I would be able to say that I completed a bad novel, and by extension, perhaps I could complete a good one.

Apparently I am not alone in thinking these thoughts. The most staggering thing about NaNoWriMo is this:

In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever.

Think about that. There are 100,000 people in this country who want to try writing a novel in a month. Do they do it just for fun? Or do they actually have aspirations of being published novelists? One hundred thousand people. There's my new motivation. "Write a novel; everyone's doing it." :)

PS - Yes, I thought about participating in NaNoWriMo; no, I'm not going to. Yes, I would love to be a novelist, but the fact that I can't come up with a plot to save my life indicates that nothing much is going to come of that particular ambition!