What I Failed to Do First to Make Nanowrimo Writing Easier
But it’s not a failure if you learn from it, right?
This was easy to write…this blog post, I mean.
Pretty much everything about my current Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) project — besides the notes-on-a-napkin — has not been. I get all set up to write, then I grind…slowly…with great effort…and that hot smell of burning neurons.
The upper middle-grade novel, Bangarang, has been somewhere in the fringes of my mind for a decade. The story started taking shape when I was a younger mother surrounded by eight sons and one daughter, homeschooling in a backwoods log cabin. I was noticing something curious about the media and influences arriving at our home through all portals: radio, TV, video, internet, and store.
Very few of these were centered on order, or creating order. Much of the current music, the trending toys, the contemporary literature, the movies and internet entertainers — they seemed to rise from a deep well of inanity, noise, conflict, and chaos.
A cabin with eleven people — at least our cabin of 11 people — already had a generous share of inanity, noise, conflict, and chaos. Maybe that’s why I craved peace and order, and began to cringe at the volume and speed at which the opposite was invading, and shaping, our family culture.
Take toys, for example. Being education-obsessed, we had impressive collections of various building toys — Lego, and Kiva blocks to name a few. The toys appearing in commercials, however, were spinning war tops, action figures intended to battle for justice, and glamour-driven dolls going off the deep end.
YouTubers were just coming into vogue, performing skit-in-a-song videos intended to be humorous or provocative, but were more absurd than anything.
The lyrics to popular songs from country to heavy metal seemed to be increasingly inappropriate for listeners who hadn’t a) quit respecting law and order and b) given away their virtue.
I’m sure this will sound old-fashioned and critical, but it was what I kept noticing and feeling uneasy about in a mother-spidey-sense way. More and more of these inputs seemed intense, unfiltered, and oblivious to the concept that some consumers were young enough to still be learning how actions and ideas have consequences, and that what you put into a mind is what you get out. I wanted safe and interesting consequences for my kids, and resources that would give them time to observe and figure out rules (think: dependable principles) for productive, humane, joy-oriented living.
It was in this conundrum of being part of a culture without being crookedly formed by that culture that I started “writing” Bangarang. Largely, this was being done by taking note of both subtle and glaring products and productions that seemed bent on hustling the destruction of harmony (interpersonal peace) and conscience (intrapersonal peace.)
I get what you’re thinking: chaos, violence, and senseless art are “real life”.
I also get what you may be asking: Who are you to decide what anything means, causes, or merits? It’s a free world.
I guess my defense is that each of us is a life-builder. It’s our responsibility to make sure the materials we use, from nails to nail-guns, choices to mentors, are sound. When you’re a parent, helping the beings you brought into the world get the footings and cornerstones right is pretty much a primary reason for your being.
Which brings me back to the ease with which this essay has been written.
I am convinced that what I’m saying here, right now, is worth being heard. (I’m not telling you you have to believe it; I’m just saying that it’s a valid entry into the grand conversation going on all around us because it is the honest expression of a breathing soul.)
Writing Bangarang for the past three days during National Novel Writing Month has been like earnestly cobbling together scrap lumber you’ve collected in the yard believing that, at some point, it will be the best thing you’ve ever built, and it might shelter people, or carry them across a dangerous flood or something.
I had started laying down words for Bangarang without fully checking in on my convictions or reasons for writing the book — not just the blueprint for the story, but the reason for the blueprint itself. I won’t make that mistake again.
I have no idea if this novel will ever see the light of a printer’s production room. I don’t even know if it will deserve the eyes of an editorial board.
What I do know is that taking the time to remind myself why this story has mattered enough to me to steep it in my brain for a decade has brought me back to the best lesson of creative writing I think one can ever learn, and that is write what matters.
Now that I know my why again, I am ready to write.
