NaNoWriMo: The Home Stretch

I am down to the last week of my participation in National Novel Writing Month. As of today, I have written over 41,000 words—9,000 from the finish line. Though I have written a millions of words over the years, I do not think I have written this many words for such a sustained time in this period of time.
Today, I want to share two experiences about the process, and then I’ll include a sample of the novel from this week. With just a week to go (November 30), I did not find it too difficult to write an average of about 1700 words a day. The most difficult time were the hours and moments before I began writing each day. I was anxious to get it done, but also found myself putting it off sometimes. I felt pressure to not get behind in the daily word out, but also experienced dread that nothing would come today or that it would be garbage.
Inevitably, once I sat down and got 400 or so words up on the screen, it began to flow. There were moments where I hit a creative wall: “what happens now?” I would stare at the screen, asking my character that question, and he just stood there. After a slight moment of anxiety, I went to my research resources, notes, or outline for that section. Something would jump out at me and my character began to move and act. At other times, I just started writing about where he needed to go next to get to the next stage, and everything came alive again. My advice to others comes from this experience. Just keep writing the next thing; use prompts or research to kick start the next section.
The second experience had to do with the moments when I sat down to write and knew what needed to come next. But I didn’t want to write it. Either it bored me or I wasn’t excited about writing that particular part. That could be a sign that of bad writing—if I am bored or unexcited about a passage, my readers may find themselves bored or unexcited. I learned to deal with this in two ways. First, I just began writing. Usually the passage turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated, or my characters did something exciting that I didn’t expect. Those are fun. The few times that it seemed I was just slugging along, unsure of the content, the Muse told me this: “Just get your words on paper. You have to have material to work with later. Blank pages will never make a novel, but bad writing can be edited and revised into good writing. Or, I might later scrap the passage replaced it, once I return to it with a full context. We call it the first draft for a reason.”
I was not unaware of these lessons, but NaNoWriMo has emphasized them with more intensity and meaning. Keep writing. Use prompts. Remember its a diamond in the rough. This is not the perfection stage, it’s slapping the wet clay down on the wheel.
The novel I am writing, as noted before, takes its literary structure and themes from the ancient book of Job. It is a complex literary work in structure and textual history; it mixes narrative, poetry, and a lot of imagery. That complexity has prompted me to write some passages as dream sequences and daydreams. Below is one such passage (based on an earlier narrative “real life” experience of the character). As always, I remind you that this is an unedited, unproofed draft.

Zig pointed to the plates in front of him. There were three or four. I couldn’t count. I was really drunk. Everything seemed hazy, I appeared to be floating above the bar. I craned my head left and right. From what I could see, the bar was empty.

“No one profits from his wrongdoing, as I will show you—” He grabbed a round, crusted pastry or meatball from the plate and stuffed it into his mouth. He continued speaking around the food as he chewed. “Mmmm. Quite a pleasant taste.” He rolled it around his mouth, masticating, moving it with his tongue, savoring it. He swallowed and smiled.
I shook my head. “That’s isn’t true, Zig…”
His eyes grew large and his mouth contorted into a grimace. He began to gag. The barmaid appeared and handed him a metal bucket. He took it with both hands and held it in front of him, just beyond his knees at the level of the bar stool. He came forward in a controlled flop and vomited into the bucket. The metal rang at the spattering of liquid and projectiles of food.
I cringed. He sat back up and smiled again. Bits of vomit hung from his chin. Without looking, he handed the bucket back to the barmaid. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “See?”
I began again to argue that this was no proof, but he stopped me with one finger in the air between us. Turning back to the plates, he grabbed the next one—a battered ovals morsel with sauce dripping from it. Bringing it to his mouth, he began sucking and licking. “Mmm…quite delicious.” He took small a bite, nodded to himself, then popped the rest into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed with great delight.
“No one profits from wrongdoing.”
I looked at the barmaid for some supportive logic, but she nodded in grim agreement, still holding the bucket of sickness. Turning back, I saw Zig’s face had become bright red. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He took some short, quick breaths. His eyes rolled back into his head. As if in slow motion, he began to lean back and slump down. He slid off the stool and collapsed onto the floor below the bar stool.
I jumped up and took two steps toward him, but I was shoved out of the way. It was a paramedic. “Excuse me, sir. Please stand back.”
Two more EMTs joined him, and began a choreographed dance of adjustments to Zig’s body, insertion of needles, taking of vitals, and the passing back and forth of handheld machines. Each medic had a precise function, performed with the well-practiced actions of a professional. After a few moments, the one nearest me leaned into his shoulder and clicked a microphone that was clipped there. “We’ll need the stretcher.”
Two other medics arrived with a stretcher as if they had been waiting just off camera. With a “one-two-three they” lifted Zig onto the thin white mattress, buckled straps across his chest and things, and raised metal sides with a click. One of the medics inserted a tube into Zig’s mouth and began adjusting a device sitting on the mattress beside Zig’s shoulder.
Zig opened his eyes and fixed them on me. “Sseee? Sastes gud ‘ut iss koison.”
The medic at his head of the stretcher glanced up at me. “He said, ‘See? Tastes good but it is poison.’”
“All right,” said the medic who had called for the stretcher. “Let’s move him out.”
As they rolled him past, he turned his head to watch me, grinning around the plastic tube in his mouth. As they hustled him out the door, I turned back to the bar maid. She returned my gaze, but with little expression.
“What—what is going on?”
She dimpled and set the bucket down on the bar top. “He eats everything in sight, but he is starving. He’ll die soon.” She shrugged. “Kinda proves his point, doesn’t it?”

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. The shot upward through the fissures, too long dormant.

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]