At the start of this month, I said I was going to try to blog every day about NaNoWriMo. I did, however, put in all kinds of conditions: I was moving, I was traveling, hamsters, etc. So I’ve only managed to do four or five blogs. Now it’s the 25th day, and I’m jumping back in the game!

This relates directly to today’s question. When I put out my call for topics, I immediately got 20 or 30 people asking questions like, “I’ve only done 6,000 words! Do I even keep going?” Or, “I haven’t written for a week! Should I give up?”

Clearly, a lot of people are finding that they haven’t hit their target wordcounts and the panic is starting to set in. So, today, let’s talk about what you do when you are REALLY, REALLY BEHIND, and address the “should I keep going?” question.

Listen to a story . . .

When I was a very small mj, I had a best friend named Hortence.* Hortence and I were best friends because we lived next to each other. That was all. It was a friendship of convenience, as all friendships are when you are four years old. Hortence was bigger than me, and her parents were hippies and had all kinds of awesomely relaxed standards. This meant that in Hortence’s house, we could play with ANYTHING at ANY TIME. (This included tools. Nothing says safety like a six year old with a hammer.)

We also listened to music and made up complicated dance routines with props. There was a song we loved called “Centerfold.” Centerfold is a story about a guy who was in love with a girl in high school, who later finds out that she is the current centerfold in a magazine full of NAKED LADIES. And for some reason, this destroys his mind a little.

Here is the video, in case you don’t know it.

There is a line in the song that goes, “Slipped me notes under the desk, while I was thinking about her dress.” Hortence always thought this line was “FLOWERS thinking about her dress.” Now, when I was a tiny mj, I did not understand what the song was about, really. I was pretty confused about why the man was so upset to see a girl he knew in a magazine. But I could speak basic English. So I knew that part Hortence had worked into her routine with the plastic flower was pointless. To be fair, it does sound like the singer is saying FLOWERS thinking about her dress, but (as I pointed out to Hortence), flowers do not think about dresses. Flowers do not think at all.

We were debating this on the swings (we did a lot of talking on the swings). We had to be in each other’s dance routines, of course, and I was refusing to do anything with the plastic flower because the flower was just NOT IN THE SONG. Hortence, master debater that she was, said, “He does TOO say flowers because . . .”

And then she pushed me backwards off the swings. This was how we resolved 90% of our debates.**

I much preferred this approach to Hortence’s other method of punishing me and making me go along with her plans—namely, she would revoke my toy privileges. See, her grandmother worked at a toy factory*** so she had pretty much every cool toy there was. And if I crossed her authority, she would simply tell me I was no longer allowed to play with something. Usually her Suckerman. I LOVED Suckerman. Suckerman was this rubbery demon-sea monster thing covered in twenty-eight suction cups. You pulled on his arms and then you threw him against the wall. He would stick and kind of roll down and stick and roll down and stick and then fall off the wall. It was genius.

Suckerman

So if Hortence REALLY wanted to let me know who was in control, she would say, “You can’t touch Suckerman.” And then she would put him right in front of me. Those of you with siblings might have had the good sense to just reach forward and TAKE the Suckerman, but as far as I was concerned, there was a MAGICAL DOME over Suckerman that my hand could not penetrate. I would just sit there and stare at it sadly.

Hortence’s mojo was so powerful she could occasionally put the magical no-touch dome over MY TOYS. “But that’s mine,” I would say. And she would just shrug and say, “You can’t touch it.” Finally, on one of those occasions, when she put the dome over my Rubik’s Cube, I broke with convention and took it back! And then she grabbed it back from me and threw it on top of our neighbor’s shed. I eventually got it back, but not before it rained. It was never quite the same. So I never crossed her again.

I was, in short, her b%^&h.

Why am I telling you this? I will explain. See, sometimes when you are working on a book, you feel like you are the book’s b%^#h. Like the book holds you under its sway. Like it owns YOU. Sometimes it puts the magical dome over itself and says, “You can’t work on me. I’m too hard.”

The reality is that the book is YOUR b%^#h.**** There is no magical dome. It cannot throw itself on top of the neighbor’s shed. YOU are in charge at all times. YOU make the book. Sometimes it is hard but YOU are still in control. No muses or magical writing pandas.***** It’s very easy to get worked up about how tricky and finicky writing is, how it requires special conditions. NO IT DOESN’T. You need time and something to write with and a little gumption. And, if possible a snack.

And the same is true with NaNoWriMo. Sure, yes, it’s great to meet the deadline at the end and hit that 50,000 word mark on the 30th. But NaNoWriMo is a great tool to get you writing and IT TOO is your b%^#h. Don’t use the fact that you are currently a little bit behind as an excuse to stop. This is your opportunity to finish a book. So finish a book! DO IT. Set new dates for your own personal NaNoWriMo and push on.

No matter what, my answers to these questions will ALWAYS be that you should keep writing.

I am also informed that I am required by law to tell you something. Today, Let it Snow—a book I wrote with John Green and Lauren Myracle—made it on to the New York Times bestseller list. The status of “New York Times Bestselling author” has long eluded me. It wasn’t the be-all, end-all goal of my life. I was perfectly happy not ever having that title. But today, I do have it, and I get to KEEP it forever. And it is actually kind of awesome.

And I got here by just plugging away and writing. Okay, and maybe there was ONE magical writing panda. But whatever.

* Not her actual name, of course. I have changed it on the grounds that she can still beat me up, because . . .
** Hortence is now, and I kid you not, a professional boxer.
*** Again . . . no, REALLY, she did.
**** I look forward to you quoting me to your English teachers on this point.
***** I am not sure how prevalent the belief in magical writing pandas actually is.

Posted: Thursday, November 26th, 2009 @ 1:39 am
Categories: ask mj, debate, nanowrimo, suckerman.
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