‘K, so I finished the sucka. 50,000 words in thirty days, most (not all) of them complete fudge. It wasn’t without its casualties though – both fictional and real. After staying up until 3AM on the penultimate day, losing my literary virginity in a scotch-fuelled Mills & Boon-esque awkward encounter between the main character and his nemesis’s sister, I was up again at the crack of dawn to toss most of the characters onto a fire that engulfed the final pages of the novel. A glass of champagne later and it was into the car to drive through a sodden night down to Cornwall for the weekend.
Which should have been a nice, relaxing release – but the month of late nights caught up and slapped me upside the head, literally. On Sunday morning I woke to the after-party sounds of friends gathering in the lounge, and lay in bed for a while slowly gathering the strength to get up and join them. After briefly doing so, I stumbled to the bathroom – which was where I came to, on the floor, with a buddy over me minutes (seconds? hours?) later. I had managed to faint – though, luckily for my buddy, not before I had yanked my pants back on – and have a couple of nice little lumps on my head where I cracked myself as I fell, and a neck that doesn’t turn anymore.
Was it worth it? Hell yeah. NaNoWriMo is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done (even harder than Dry July!) and, perhaps as a result, the most rewarding. As an aspiring yet time-challenged writer, shutting the inner editor outside in the blustery winter for a month and just trucking on through opens up many, many learning opportunities. Sure, just getting volume done is only a fraction of the battle, but for some of us it’s the first big one.
There was a chain-smoking, bolly-swigging hag of an agent on Radio 4 last week, spluttering with hungover midweek disbelief at the audacity of 100,000 people to attempt to write a first draft in a month. She was, understandably, concerned that the dozens of manuscripts passing her desk each day would swell to include hundreds of dubious attempts from the NaNoWriMo hordes. I’m sure there were at least a clutch of aspirants out there who, on the buzz of clocking up word number 50G, enthusiastically eMailed off submissions – but for most I’d say they couldn’t face reading it themselves, let alone siccing a merciless agent onto it. There is widespread agreement amongst NaNoWriMo writers that, while what they end up with after a month could later be edited and re-edited into something semi-submissible, on December 1st it is absolute shite.
I had plans to burn mine, but on nearing the end changed my mind. Who knows, when I’m a famous author (hiding behind a pseudonymous disguise so you lot can’t getcha hands on my loot) it might fetch a bob or two. For now though, I’m turning my back on it. I’ve seen enough piss-flavoured frappuccinos for a wee while, cheers…
[The graph, in case you're wondering, is from my page on the NaNoWriMo site. Shows the mad dash in the last week, as predicted].
Wow, what an achievement! Truly impressed – took me 4 years to squeeze out 55,000 words of dubious quality!
Any chance I might read it?
Hmmm…sorry, but most certainly not. You’d be more than welcome to take a gander once it’s been edited, but who knows when that will be? I’m thinking of shelving it and starting on a fresh idea in the New Year – perhaps next Christmas you’ll find a book-sized present under the tree…