Return to the Lake

Nanowrimo 2011 is less than two weeks away. In case you don’t know what that is or have forgotten since the last time I got all self-indulgent about it, you can find out more here and here.

This will be my fourth time, and I’m proud to say I’ve come out on top each year I’ve taken it on. The dynamic will be different this year though: The friend who originally convinced me to try it is taking what may or may not be a temporary respite from the endeavor. This was a little concerning at first since taking on such a monumental project is easier when you have someone working in parallel to motivate you. But she’s out of the picture, and instead my writer cousin is going to be joining me on the Nano road. No, not that writer cousin -- I’ve leaned on him to try it before and he always finds some greased-pig way out of daring to take it on. I didn’t even bother asking for this November since I’m sure the little pansy would play the “Yeah, but my son was just born LITERALLY DAYS AGO so I’ve got other things to do with my time” card. And considering that, well, I guess he’s off the hook for at least one more year. So instead I’m going with my other writer cousin, my young protegé, the little Texas dude with a mind twisted enough to try reimagining the classics of children’s literature as ultra-violent revenge quest adventures. But since he has a few middle school commitments to attend to he’ll be taking part in the Youth program, for which he only has to produce 30,000 words or so over the month. Yeah, only. Ask yourself the last time you wrote something 30,000 words long. In a month. No small feat, especially when you aren’t even old enough to get a learner’s permit. But he sounds pretty keyed up to get started, which gets him over the biggest hurdle.

I remember my initial year of Nanowrimo as being a serious a battle. I focused on word count first and story second, and put together a manuscript that now sits in a folder somewhere, a cool idea with flashes of potential that was paired with an awkward execution. My second year went much better; I had a concept with a lot of emotion attached to it. And even though I had little idea about where the story was going, the whole thing just bled out of me once I started. That one turned out well enough to attract the attention of at least one agent, and now sits in a folder with scads of revision notes waiting for its turn to come back to life. Then last year, Year 3, I took on something far more abstract and experimental than I’d ever tried before, which stands as easily the most polarizing project I’ve ever finished. Some people loved it. Some hated it. Few were neutral.

The thing that each of these projects had in common was that I started working on them early in the morning of November first with no preparation other than a few vague ideas of what I wanted to try. This year is going to be different. In fact this year I’ve done such extensive prep that I’m planning on blowing past that built-in goal of 50,000 words and shooting for something just a bit beyond 60K. And I have no doubt I’ll be able to do it, mostly because, in a manner of speaking, I’m already more than halfway there.

Now, before anyone accuses me of cheating, let me explain... This year instead of starting over with a brand new idea and beginning a manuscript from scratch, I’m taking an existing one, arguably my strongest one, and rewriting it. Almost completely. Just over a year ago I thought I had it to a point where it was ready to go on submission, but twenty or so form rejections later I began to have second thoughts. As I ran it past a few people for second looks and took a hard look at it myself, I started to see it as more of a concept in a later draft form than a finished work. Comments people had made, both positive and critical, took on new life. Random ideas I’d gotten from different beta readers began inspiring new directions. Time spent reading different articles gave me ideas about how I could approach this, and before long it started to grow into something deeper, more fully developed, and... seriously? More frightening than it was before. (And if you’ve ever been one of my beta readers in the past, you’ve likely figured out which manuscript I’m referring to by now, and you probably get the title of this post.) Ironically, since I’m knee deep in revision planning, the same version of the manuscript that was dismissed so many times over has a little piece of life to it right now since it’s being read to a class of kids who are right in the target demographic, and from the updates I get about progress it sounds like it’s going over like gangbusters. A few kids have been creeped out by it during read aloud. One student came back to school telling of nightmares she’d had related to the story, and another hijacked a couple of characters to use as examples in a piece of his own writing work. Cool things for sure, but it all makes me think, “What until you see what’s still coming.”

The puzzle pieces came together to show me what I could do to make it into the epic I’ve always wanted it to be but knew in my heart it hadn’t quite become. But now? Not only do I see how to beef up everything I want to keep and revise everything I don’t, but I’ve found a third act that wasn’t there before, something that sprouted from an itch of an idea that remained after the last time I thought I was finished. Just a thin loophole of possibility that spiraled everything into bigger and darker levels.

So now I have goals. I really would like to see this project someday make a serious run at publication, and I believe it can. But to achieve that I have to methodically work my way through creating a story and a world so undeniable and powerful that it will be impossible for agents to categorically overlook and publishers to ignore. I want it to become the kind of story that people remember from their childhood, partly because of the impact it had on them and partly because of the nightmares it caused. I want it to be a story that I’m proud of, something uncompromisingly engaging that will pull its readers in so deeply they’ll feel disoriented by their surroundings when they pull back from their reading.

Lofty goals for certain, but that’s the vision I have right now, eleven days before I begin working in earnest. I know it can get there. I know it can achieve what I want it to be. The trick will just be making it happen.