NaNoWriMo: Thirteen Days and 25,000 words

Seventeen more days to go in National Novel Writing Month. The draft of my novel, To and From Upon the Earth (working title) is on target to reach 50,000 words by the end of November. In fact, at this pace, I will hit the mark before the last day.
I have had a few days where writing was a problem, though not many. I think this for two reasons. First, as I mentioned before, I write between 800-1400 a day every week, so adding to that is not like just starting off weightlifting when never having lifted weights at all. Second, while I am largely writing by the seat of the pants, I do have a structural outline based on the ancient wisdom book of Job. When I have trouble knowing quite where to go, I read some of the ancient text itself, or I do some research on what scholars have had to say. Those act as writing prompts, and almost always send me off with almost too much to write.
I have noticed something interesting about my writing mind as I reach the halfway point. I am enjoying the dream sequences or daydreaming sections of the novel more than the day-in-the-life, real-time plot elements. This may be because it allows me to stretch my wings, so to speak, in ways I have not done in the past writing nonfiction and historical novels.
On the negative side, I have discovered that writing so much in one day (the average is almost 2,000 words a day, plus my other writing) takes a mental and physical toll. By about 1600, I am fairly useless for much conversation or activity, though I manage to have a Guinness and watch some Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Gotham. Thought reading in bed right before I go to sleep has been a long practice of mine, my mind will not stay on the text. If I read, it must be earlier in the day.
Here is another brief passage from the novel, written this week. Again, I stress the caveat that this is a pure first draft with no re-reading, editing, or proofing.

I shook my head and took a sip of my beer. How many was this? I should probably stop and get some water. Oh. There was a water glass in front of me, too. It was full. I put down my glass carefully and picked the water glass up. Both seemed too heavy.
“Ok, ok. Yeah. What was I saying?”
“No, not you, J___. Me. I was telling you that you gotta apologize and change your ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you been living a bad life and it caught up with you. That’s how it works. You can’t live a bad life and get away with it forever.”
I frowned. “No. I didn’t.”
“But you got drunk and you killed someone.”
“I wasn’t drunk. It was an accident.”
Zig put his hands up. “Okay, ok, whatever you say. Maybe so, I don’t know. But what I am saying is that its karma. All this bad stuff, it happened cause you were living bad. Maybe not drunk driving, but other stuff. Maybe no one knew, maybe some knew. You living bad, and you got punished for it. That’s how the universe works.” He leaned back triumphantly because drunken philosophy is the best kind.
“I tell you, Zig, I did not.”
He took a swig of his beer. Zig took a swig. Big Zig took a big swig. Like a pig.
He leaned forward. “Did you hear me?”
I laughed. “No. I was writing a poem about you.”
He laughed back. “Nice, nice. But first, this is important. “You had a bad life, you paid the price—“ he held up his hands “—I know, I know, you said you didn’t. Just stay with me, this is the important part.”
He set his glass down with care and pushed it about six inches away from him. He took a bar napkin and wiped the moisture from the table in front of him, then turned in the stool to face me.
“What matters is now is that you give all that up. You say, ‘no more of that bad life.’ I’m gonna change. I’ll never be that way again. Instead, I am going to work hard. No more laziness, no more goofing off, no more of that bad stuff that I wanted to do. Gonna work hard and be a good person. Help people out.”
I set my water glass down harder than I intended. “Zig, you aren’t listening. I did all that! I was all that!”
He held his hands up again. “Now, now, I know it’s hard to hear. Tried to tell my wife the same stuff, she won’t listen. I think you are smarter than her. You gotta be a good person and work hard. Forget all that life before. Be good. Work hard.”

I felt the explosion boiling up inside me. It was coming fast, I had no time to think. The gasses and molten rock had been down there a while, under extreme pressure.
“You idiot! I did all that. I was worker hard I was good I did do it all!” The glass shattered on the floor below me. “You don’t know!” I spun around at the room, the smiling faces, the grimacing faces, the shocked faces moving in and out of focus spinning around “You talk like you know stuff but you know nothing!” I hurled the last word out at the room, screaming it as loud as I could. Scuffling talking yelling I stumbled forward more faces Zig beside me arm out “No! You are not better than me you think it is so simply it is not—“ I shrugged off Zig’s arm on my shoulder and fell back against a stool, then righted myself. “You think it’s all so simple so easy like the plant and the…the…the spider its just so neat and clean and its not” Zig beside me again both hands on shoulders “take it easy J___ sit down it’s ok I didn’t mean anything” bartender in front me weaving and waving “that’s not the universe zig it isn’t sometimes bad life people get away with it all life until they die and sometimes good people get all the punishment and its not so—“ grabbed on all sides it seemed like a whole group of people pulling I said stop but i couldn’t move and it went on and on…

Posts in this series

[box type=”bio”] We are pleased to publish this series of guest posts by Dr. Markus McDowell, an author and editor. He writes primarily nonfiction in the fields of law and religion, but we discovered that he has written fiction since he was 14 years old (but never published any). We convinced him to give NaNoWriMo a try, and to document the experience for us. Thank you, Dr. McDowell![/box]