By K.A. Laity
It takes audacity to assume you've got a novel in you, although more and more people lately seem to find that audacity regularly -- pity they're mostly illiterate celebrities who pay someone to do the paperwork. Regular women often have more difficulty taking up the proverbial pen because they lack the chutzpah, but also because they lack the time. It's all that unpaid labour that's not really on the clock but somehow takes up an awful lot of hours.
I'm convinced the key to writing success is simply not cleaning anything and buying ready made meals.
If you've thought about the idea of writing but couldn't quite figure out how to get started, try joining NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month, or as their catchphrase puts it, "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!" That sounds a lot better than "thousands of people hunched over computers around the world." Indeed there's some magic in the idea of all these people engaged in the same creative pursuit for a whole month. You can get a word count widget for your blog or website, read pep talks from successful NaNoWriMoers, and join a discussion forum for your region or genre.
The best thing about the size of that group is that you have lots of support out there. If you sign up for an account, you will be pointed to groups and NaNoWriMo writers in your area whom you can share sympathy and encouragement. You can 'meet' on line or if you want to get out of the house to your local coffee shop or library, you can also meet there. While writing remains a mostly solitary pursuit, there's no reason to go it alone -- a secret all writers know. As fun as making up things can be, complaining about the process with people who understand it will always be an important part of the writer's life.
It's an ambitious goal to write a novel in a month, but instead of feeling stress about measuring up to word counts, think of this month as a chance to develop a habit. As the incredibly wonderful Octavia Butler once wrote,
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not...Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don't have it, it doesn't matter. As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent... Finally, don't worry about imagination. You have all the imagination you need... Persist.
As all professional writers will tell you, that's what it really takes: persistence. The will to keep going even if it's in small increments will sustain you. So will the ability to shut off the nagging voice in your head that says, "Is it good enough?" Likewise the ability to rewrite, to revise, to tinker away with a text will be key to its success, but if you don't have something to revise, you can't make it better. Get the words flowing, tell your story -- the one no one else can.
Persist.
K. A. Laity writes so much that she had to create some pseudonyms to keep her colleagues from thoughts of murder. A tenured medievalist at a small liberal arts college, she mostly tries to find ways to avoid meetings in order to write more. Find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter where she details her glorious new life in Galway, thanks to the Fulbright Foundation.
Image via kruemi's Flickr