I am happy to announce that I passed the 50,000 word mark on Thursday, November 26, 2014, and became a winner of National Novel Writing Month. I upped my daily word count during the last week in order to reach 50k by Thanksgiving—I did not want to have it hanging over my head during the holiday here in the US, what with family and friends and overeating. It also had the benefit of giving me one more thing to be thankful for.
The novel, however, is not finished. The working title is To and Fro Upon the Earth, using the literary structure of the ancient book of Job as its own structure. I estimate that there are about 10,000 more words to go; the story line is quite close to the climax and a denouement to follow. As I noted in previous posts, I use historical-critical and literary-linguistic research into the document to provide my structure and writing prompts. The narrative is at the point that corresponds to chapter 28 of Job. There are twelve more chapters, but the majority of scholars believe that chapters 32-37 were a later addition to the text (the section introduces a new character, new language, and some stylistic differences.) Since I am concerned with the literary nature of the work, I will not use research from those sections. Therefore, I have a fairly brief narrative to write (based on chapters 29-31). The climax of Job is in chapters 38-41, the denouement is chapter 42.
This was my first NanoWriMo. I appreciate it because it gave me the impetus to essentially finish a novel in about 30 days. The sense of accomplishment is fulfilling, and the knowledge that thousands of others are doing the same brings a sense of the global. However, I did not experience hardly any other sense of community. This is due to my own situation: I am busy with other writing and editing and had little time to visit the forums or interact with buddies. Next year, I would like to change that, though I am not sure how. Perhaps I can start working ahead for a long period of time before November 1, and devote even more time to the NaNoWriMo community.
A final comment about my novel itself. In my third post about NaNoWriMo, as I explained the structure and content of the novel, I noted that “…my idea is not to retell the story as a modern novel, but to use the structure of the work as my structure, and use themes or characteristics from each literary subsection to act as a writing prompt for my literary subsections.” I discovered that if one uses the themes, characteristics, and literary structure of an ancient document, the result is a bit like a re-telling. After all, my novel addresses similar themes in a similar structure. Yet I think someone, not knowing that background, could read it and not necessarily think of the book of Job. Job is mostly poetry; To and Fro Upon the Earth is mostly narrative. Job addresses speculative wisdom from an ancient near eastern mindset; To and Fro Upon the Earth addresses meaning and chaos in life from a modern perspective. However, if someone were looking for a bit of literary fiction that might open up some of the more difficult themes of the book of Job, this novel might serve that function as well as merely entertaining a reader.
Thank you to the staff at NaNoWriMo for their work. A special thanks to all of you who followed along with my experience and those who sent encouraging notes. Thank you also to Anthony Holmes and Gemma at Sulis for encouraging me to write for NaNoWriMo, and for allowing me to write for the blog.
Within the next year or so, I hope to finish the novel and have it published. If you want to keep up with my efforts, you can follow me on FaceBook, Twitter, or at my website.
Posts in this Series
- NaNoWriMo: Preparations, Part 1 (approach and tools)
- NaNoWriMo Preparations: Part 2 (Outliner or Pantser?)
- NaNoWriMo: Six days and Ten Thousand Words
- NaNoWriMo: Thirteen Days and 25,000 words
- NaNoWriMo: The Home Stretch
- NaNoWriMo: Running Past the Finish Line
[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. This is part 6, and the final post in the series. Thank you, Dr. McDowell![/box]
