It’s been a bit of a bucket list year for me. Well, compared to most years, anyway. Sure, my fantasy of putting on a tux, sipping a shaken-not-stirred martini, and dropping a few hundred bucks at a Nassau casino for my birthday fell flat. However, I did play my very first rooftop gig this summer, which was much hotter than you might think (both in temperature and, unfortunately, sweat stains). And last month? I finally tackled NaNoWriMo … and won! It was … well, harder? Stranger? More cathartic? All of the above.
I’ve wanted to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for at least a decade, but every year I’d get derailed by one of the usual suspects:
No story.
A story, but no motivation.
A story and motivation, but an easily distracted mindset that forgot to look at the calendar, and suddenly realized on November 15th that NaNo had already started without me.
So, technically, you could say it’s my tenth NaNo, and first win. More accurately, we could call it my third, and I’m 1 for 3, I suppose. Point is, I was ready this time.
In late September, I actually picked a story idea and, like a responsible adult who has no social life and doesn’t mind looking like a nerd whipping out a notepad in a bar, I made lists, outlined plot points, and scribbled down dozens of witty lines I hoped I’d still find witty in November. By early October, I was so ready that I nearly cheated and started early. Instead, I passed the time by reading No Plot; No Problem and How to Write a Damn Good Novel, even though I was pretty sure reading about story beats, plot structures, and tension-filled dialogue was overpreparing me for spitting out 50,000 words as a speed draft and was going to make me overthink everything and slow me down.
As an analyst who already cranks out 15–20K words of technical nonsense per week, I wasn’t too worried about the word count. At one job, they even called me “Tolstoy,” not for literary prowess, but for overwhelming volume. If I don’t have to worry about quality, I can give you 1,600 words about my lunch and still have time left to describe an elaborate backstory I concocted for our waitress. Fortunately, my penchant for rambling off-plot rants turned out to be a superpower in NaNoWriMo. Sure, it’ll suck later when I try to edit those tangents into a coherent story, but Future Me can deal with that.
The real challenge wasn’t the writing—it was surviving the inevitable Week 2 meltdown, when I decide the story is crap, I’m crap, my entire existence is crap, and I should probably abandon the draft in favor of drinking beer alone while staring dramatically at the rain. That’s when my precious outline was supposed to save me by allowing me to zone out, type on autopilot, and only stop for the occasional refill of lapsang souchong.
I started with a straight-up techno-thriller with the trope of the Hitchcockian “wrong man” story. I’ve studied him in a college film class, I’ve watched all the movies with the commentary tracks, I know about Macguffins and subverting audience expectation, and as a long-time tech guy, I really wanted to finally destroy Hollywood’s myths of “zoom and enhance” or “crack that firewall just by typing a bunch of commands” computer magic. No gimmicks for me. Just gritty, realistic depictions of software, espionage, and the power of technology.
Naturally, my serious techno-thriller mutated into a satirical comedy, since it turns out the biggest villains in tech are less “evil geniuses” and more “bumbling sociopaths who insist on using pivot tables and Excel when they should be using a relational database and SQL.” The real power lies with the nerds, but we’re smarter, poorer, and too exhausted to overthrow our incompetent overlords. I went from watching The 39 Steps to rewatching Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Foul Play, because let’s face it, sarcasm and satire come more naturally to me than dramatic tension and clever plot twists.
Halloween rolled around, and for once, I was thrilled to skip the bar crawl of drunken amateurs in “Slutty ______” costumes. (Seriously, I’ve endured “slutty clowns,” “slutty nuns,” “slutty Crocodile Hunter,” “slutty Cookie Monster” … well, that last one may have been intended as “plain old Cookie Monster” that she failed miserably at. Wait … I just sidebarred into a different blog post and possibly my next novel.) This year, I found myself in a co-working space filled with introverts, sipping tea, exchanging author recommendations, and basking in the sweet silence of collective creativity.
I also learned I’m what I call an “alpha-introvert.” I’m usually quiet at the bar with the extraverts, but weirdly talkative around quiet people. As soon as the clock struck midnight, the room went dead silent except for the beautiful click-clack of keys, and that was that. Game on.
What followed was a month of write-ins, virtual write-ins, Discord chats, Facebook groups, and surprise camaraderie with fellow Indy NaNo’ers. I had no idea so many people around here were secretly novelists waiting to unleash their inner Tolkien, or in my case, their inner Jack Higgins on an espresso bender.
There were writing meetups nearly every day, and someone, somewhere, was always up for a side chat about plot holes, word sprints, or which snacks best bribe your muse. (Answer: M&M’s. Big-assed bowl of M&M’s.)
Now, to the haters. You know the ones, the professional writers who foam at the mouth every November, ranting about how NaNo is ruining literature and promoting bad writing habits. First of all, calm down. Second, you’re not wrong … but you’re missing the point. NaNo taught me a lot.
Outlining: It works. Who knew? Without it, my stories would still be stuck introducing characters and never getting to the part where something actually happens.
Write first, edit later: Revolutionary concept. In tech writing, you don’t get this luxury. In fiction, I discovered I don’t need to sculpt every sentence with the unambiguous clarity of a software requirement. I just need to finish the damn thing first.
Thinking ≠ Writing: No amount of pondering, pacing, or beer-fueled brainstorms gave me breakthroughs. Only writing did. Turns out inspiration doesn’t come from the muse. It comes from sitting your butt in the chair and typing … and M&M’s … I suspect the green ones.
I hit the 50,000-word mark on November 26th, just as planned, leaving me free to fully commit to Thanksgiving gluttony without a looming deadline. I collected all the badges (yes, even the “30-Day Streak” badge, just don’t judge my ten-word writing days). The issue, however, is that 50K words isn’t a complete novel. I’m maybe 80% done, and the fear of losing momentum is real.
Still, I’ll finish it. Why? So I can proudly switch all my social media bios from “wannabe writer” to “author” and whip out my manuscript at bars like a proud grandma with vacation photos. (“This chapter’s my favorite—it’s got chase scenes, but if you read deeply, it’s a metaphor for chess!”)
Once it’s done, I’ll either polish it up and sell it on the website or bury it deep under a pile of better ideas and coffee mugs with witty sayings about writing. After all, a zeroth draft, written straight through with no edits, is really just novel-flavored improv and the equivalent of an SNL skit after 12:30, right?
For now, I’m sharing the first three chapters (in all their unedited glory) over on my site: lungbarrow.com. If you like it, send in proof of a random act of kindness and I’ll send you a free copy of the final eBook when it’s done. No gimmicks. No mailing lists. Just good karma.
Time to reconnect with friends I haven’t seen in a month. Thanks for supporting my nonsense. And if you didn’t write a novel last month … what did you do? Grow a beard? Avoid nutting? To each their own.
