Starting last Saturday, as my NaNoWriMo group members were hard at work at their desks; I was hard at work on mine. They were all starting novels, with one month to finish. I was starting my desk, removing its finish.
You see, much like athletes, writers often have pregame rituals they observe. Lucky socks. Lucky pens. Brand new notebook. Sharpened No. 2 pencils.
It just so happens my ritual involves beginning a biggish project that has only some vague connection to the actual endeavor I should be starting instead.
In this instance, a desk.
For years, a folding table has served as my desk at home. As folding tables go, it’s not bad, but if I get to typing faster than 85 words a minute, it starts swaying side to side. If I were writing a sea adventure, such ambiance would be awesome.
But I’m not, and it isn’t.
And since I’ve committed to write a book in November, I figured I could either stock up on a month’s worth of Dramamine, or refinish the desk. Had the weather been foul, I’d have gone the pharmaceutical route, but it was too warm and pretty to be working indoors.
Which is how, while my fellow group members were diligently accumulating their daily quota of words, I was deglossing my desk, envisioning how it would fit in my office, how solid it would feel. I understood that redoing the desk would put me a few days behind everyone else, but surely a new old desk would inspire me to produce something great.
For the past several years, I’ve been sporadically whapping away at two different novels in what I once considered to be the right way, but I was forever getting waylaid by structure, intimidated by characters, sidetracked by research. And most of all, interrupted by life.
That’s where NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - comes in. Every November, NaNoWriMo participants challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. There’s no cash prize for the winner, just the satisfaction of having met a goal. It’s an exercise in persistence and creativity that can demonstrate what you’re capable of.
Those who work or have small (or midsize) children or a bunch of animals or one of those needy, attention-seeking houses that’s forever coming up with reasons you and it must spend time together, well, they generally aren’t able to commit the time necessary to write a novel. But just 30 days is a fairly doable span. Other things can be back-burnered or reasoned with, since it’s only a month. And after November is over, it’s back to being Joe Citizen, except now Joe has thousands of words under his belt. Words they can edit and hone and polish a little at a time if they want.
In just 30 days, the novelist dream can become tangible, can be using up space on the hard drive or filling a notebook or two.
The truly cool thing about doing NaNoWriMo is all the drama you get to attach to your project, the messes you can justify making, the excuses you’ll have for locking yourself away and being antisocial and smelling bad and getting all wild-haired and maniacal-looking.
For some, there’s a magical power in deadlines, in having a goal attached to a specific date on the calendar. Regardless of whether that novel is publishable, setting a challenge for your self and coming through it is a positive thing. You’ll have something to show for it.
And I really need something to show for it. Since I still don’t have a desk.
After deglossing and sanding and staining; after rubbing down the first finish and adding another; after tightening the legs, re-gluing a loose drawer, waxing the drawer-slides and oiling the hinges, there was still one thing I forgot. To measure the desk.
It was too wide to fit up our stairs.
