Super Sized Stevie gets inspired! Photo by Ron Raymond Jr.
I think I’ll just put in a car chase and some monkeys. This is my fifth NaNoWriMo event. This is also the first time I’ve been this far behind. Right now it’s day 19 and I have 18,992 words - my goal, as always, is 50,000. I’m not sure why I’m so resistant this time. I’m writing Part 2 of the novel I wrote for NaNo last November. I reread it when Camp NaNo started on April 1 and realized it was nowhere near complete. So I’m writing Part 2 and I’m suddenly paralyzed. Why? Because I need it to make sense? No, that’s never been a NaNo priority for me. Somehow I feel I owe it to the characters in Part 1 to have their lives make sense. That’s a lot of responsibility.
National Novel Writing Month is a glorious event, a free, nonprofit thing open to everyone. NaNoWriMo is every November and the challenge is to write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. Camp NaNo is held in April and July. The challenge for Camp NaNo is whatever you want it to be. I did Camp NaNo last July and my challenge was 50,000, just like it is this month.
As I write this on Thursday, April 19, I need to write 2,584 words a day to make it to 50,000. The thing about NaNo, for me any way, is just writing the words. Sometimes they’re clearly just for a word count, sometimes they’re funny and sometimes I think, “wow, I wrote that? Sweet.” Every time I’ve done NaNo, the plot, what there is of it, and the characters totally change over the course of the month. In the first 20 pages of last November’s novel before there were at least five characters we never saw again. But that is actually something I love about writing 50,000 words in a month: I have no idea what is going to happen.
the cops referred to it as the scene, like my brain-spattered bathroom was suddenly the totally hip place to be.
BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE FATMAN
Myra is a middle-aged porn writer whose ex-husband shows up after 10 years and blows his head off in her bathroom.
I love this story; I love Myra because she is middle-aged and awesome and has adventures. My best friend Mare read it and politely said, “it’s a little thin on plot.” I thought she was being generous to use the word “plot” anywhere near this. Very cool characters, excellent dialog, some extremely funny lines - and very little motivation for anyone to do anything. I’m rewriting it as I’m reading Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell.
I checked my rearview and in the dark I wouldn’t know the headlights of a Crown Victoria from Queen Victoria’s tits.
BIZARRE LOVE QUADRANGLE
The second in what has become the MYRA TRILOGY. Myra flees to California to recover from what happened in Maine. She finds trouble, adventure, sex & love. My first ever car-chase! Myra drives a 2013 Mustang down the 101 with absolutely no idea what she’s doing. I’ll rewrite this one as soon as I’m done with FATMAN.
Someone with three names had to be a celebrity, like Philip Michael Thomas, or John Wilkes Booth.
MYRA 3
The final story of the MYRA TRILOGY. Myra has adventure forced upon her and manages to crush it. She hates Boston but this is where the adventure takes her. Have I ever mentioned my love of spies? This may actually be a second half of BIZARRE LOVE QUADRANGLE, I’m not sure.
Because when you send a cranky, bored and hungry centuries-old fairy into a meth dealer’s house, what could go wrong?
NaNoWriMo 2017
BABY EDITH
The title as well as the main characters were inspired by headstones in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, Maine, where I happened to be last Halloween, gliding about dressed as Super Sized Steve Nicks. Having my picture taken by my boyfriend Ron, who was dressed as Dr. Johnny Fever. You know, like you do. Baby Edith may or may not have died at age 47; the story is told by Hattie, her ex, who may or may not have been responsible for the first time she died. Hattie’s sidekick is the 21st-century incarnation of near-eternal folklore myth Puck, who is currently a balding, charming, middle-aged Indian man named Ashok.
I love writing sequels. Ron and I like to cast the movie versions of all of them, although secretly I would love to make them into very special television event mini-series. In any case, I’m sure Andy Garcia and Liev Schreiber would absolutely demand to be cast in the movie of FATMAN, working for scale due to the sheer brilliance of the source material. Or not. But Ron and I still can’t come up with an actor to play Myra: she’s tall, she’s curvy, she’s got a mass of curly blond hair, and she's 50. That’s the thing. She is middle-aged and the actor who plays her must be middle-aged. I imagine I’d have an easier time selling the story if Myra were a 25-year-old Pilates instructor who has adventures, but she’s not. She’s 50, she’s hot and she wouldn’t do Pilates if you paid her in lipstick and shoes.
I actually pitched FATMAN during last month’s #PITMAD on Twitter. I got one like from an agent. I thought her name was familiar and sure enough, I pitched HEXBREAKER to her in 2015. Well, she liked FATMAN about as much as she liked HEXBREAKER, which is to say she didn't. For a crazy paranoid moment I thought maybe it was deliberate: she liked my FATMAN pitch on Twitter because she remembered my name and what? Felt bad about HEXBREAKER and wanted to make up for it by reading the first 25 pages of FATMAN? Or she just really, really doesn't like me and wanted to shoot me down twice? Yeah. Neither. Just a weird coincidence. In any case this agent doesn't like my fiction voice and she doesn't like my nonfiction voice, which is my real voice. That kind of stings. I wonder if she'd like my radio voice? I sincerely doubt it, since my radio voice is weirder than either my fiction voice or my nonfiction voice.
So that’s my NaNo experience. Your mileage may vary. Here’s the thing: if I can write 50,000 words in a month, anyone can. Try it! Camp NaNo starts July 1 - and you get 31 days!
PS Many thanks to my first-draft reader, Ron Raymond, Jr. for sending me his favorite quotes.