If I were to sum up my NaNoWriMo experience in four words they would be: stressful yet oddly liberating.
It has now been nearly a week since the end of NaNoWriMo, and I have to say, I miss it. I am an unnervingly deadline-driven person, so having a set goal to work toward was the best motivator I've had. Of course, there's always the challenge of finishing the book and perfecting it that's an excellent driver, but I miss the deadline.
For a lot of the month, I was about a day behind because I would catch up then have another non-writing day that set me back. However, I finished NaNoWriMo on November 30th with 50,135 words to show for it. Such a goal is no easy feat, so to anyone who completed it or made the attempt, congrats!
When you break down the 50,000-word goal, it actually isn't as much as it sounds. It's just 1,600 words a day. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to engrain a writing routine in your life. It showed me where I could easily be writing throughout my day rather than wasting time on social media or bingeing Vikings (which I will do, nonetheless). And once you fall into a routine and a groove in your writing, that many words won't take long. That is the most valuable thing I learned from NaNo: I do have time to write and still do all the things I usually do.
It's interesting to reflect back on the month and see how my novel had transformed, which always comes with writing. On November 30th, of all days, I had an epiphany in my novel, so I'm nearly back to square one. At least I have a timeline and a frame to guide me. NaNo is for first drafts, and the first draft should never be comparable to the final draft.
My strategy for the month was just getting down words even if I felt uncomfortable with them because as I said, NaNo is for first drafts. I think that is the only thing we can do as writers is just getting the words down. Writing is rewriting, but you'll have nothing to rewrite if you don't put them down in the first place. When it does get a bit overwhelming or you're unsure of the words but you know the direction in which they will lead, skip a scene of two. Get yourself back on your feet and let your story write itself by going with what feels natural. The scene or two that you skipped will come back to you.
When NaNo rolls around next year, I'll compile a list of tips that I learned throughout the month. Although I was only a first-year participant, I feel that I learned quite a lot. For example, don't edit. At all. This was something I really struggled with during the middle because I was growing unhappy with the story, but once I pushed through by just putting down words, I quickly turned it around.
For the past week, I have been itching to attack my story. The world-building phase and the second draft phase are my favorite parts of the novel-writing process. I've been patiently waiting for both the end of my final exams and for the story to sit before I go back in. I've been steadily coming up with new ideas and new turns that will really elevate the story, so I'm craving to flush them out.
Do let me know in the comments below how NaNoWriMo went for you! Also, please let me know if there are any writing topics you want me to discuss or anything NaNo-specific you would like to learn about.
Thanks for reading,
Taylor . x
Ekphrastic story based on: Celebration in Montparnasse after the First Futurist Ballet, 1929. Andre Kertesz
Characters are entirely my own and are not the people in the picture. For reference, the characters are as follows: Charlie is at the righthand head of table, Edna is to his right, Walter, Irene, Marjorie, Florence, Louise, Jack at the lefthand head of the table, Roy, Rose, John, and Alice.
The ballet had only just finished, but Charlie always had a way of ruining things. We’d all had enough champagne to bear it no mind when it happened, and his voice filled every room with a malevolent calm, the kind that was just as addictive as coke but twice as dangerous, so we could never think to part with him.
The only one of us not intoxicated by Charlie was John, which always put Alice on edge—though she wore a smirk the whole dinner, nonetheless. I was on edge too, but only because if I hadn’t already loved another man, I’d love Charlie. People said I looked at him like I did, but I didn’t, I’m sure. Charlie’s eyes were hollow and gaunt, sunken and dark like he’d done it on purpose with a shadow. And his jawline cut like a knife into his neck, meeting at the spot where an actual knife had cut into his neck. I’d seen it happen. His blond hair was so slick it looked like a heat puddle on a paved road. His cheekbones rose to needle-like points on either side of his slender nose then dipped to frame his slender mouth. He wasn’t handsome—he looked like a villain. So much like one I often forgot he was one.
That’s why, when the mob walked in, it almost felt like they had been invited. Walter was giving a toast, his sixth since the ballet, and Marjorie’s shrill laugh exposed how many bottles of champagne had been emptied. One would’ve looked at our table in our private room and thought us a party of good friends.
Roy, a cousin of Charlie, was the only one of us to notice their entrance. His eyes, so large and concaved like Charlie’s, grew double in size and I never thought that possible. That’s when they shot Roy. It came from my end of the table, right behind my head—it was so close I would’ve sworn it was Charlie himself had I been able to take my eyes off him. I watched even as he rose from his seat and drew his own pistol, pointing it just above my eyeline. All I did was watch. It was like the fourth act of the dance the way he moved. Jack jumped to help Roy, but Roy was surely dead. Weren’t we all? When you befriended Charlie Cowell, you knew you’ve already died, you just wait to find out how.
Walter gripped a champagne bottle by the neck, empty of course, so as to have the other full bottles for when all was settled. He brought it down with brute, drunken force on the head of the man with the smoking gun, James. But it wasn’t the first time that had happened to that particular mobster—I had done the same two summers ago with a bottle of pinot grigio—so Walter was shot. He was heavy and shattered the dinnerware as he met the table. Poor Irene, on his right, spilt her drink all down herself.
Marjorie, Florence, and Louise fled the table with handkerchiefs pressed against their rouged lips. Jack was still bent over Roy who, to my immediate surprise, wasn’t dead. He never came across as a man to survive a bullet.
It was John who rose and shot Roy dead. He shot Walter for good measure. Alice and Rose then stood at his side, clearly ready to leave. I rose as well, still watching Charlie as he pointed his gun at John. But I was the one to do it. I shot Charlie. Only his leg, so I knew I could watch him again another time. He didn’t even make a noise, that man—the villain.
Alice and Rose were the firsts to leave, but not before ensuring Marjorie that they’d see her for cards on Sunday. Marjorie’s horror had subsided by that time, and she almost seemed intrigued, mostly by Frank. Frank always intrigued the good ones—I thought it was because of the way his jacket fit over his back when he held his gun at another man. She agreed in earnest to cards on Sunday. Then, James and Frank, James still with broken glass and champagne remnants on his shoulders, gathered the other men’s pistols, emptying them. Each bullet hit the floor in a sound like a pianist striking his keys.
John lowered to Charlie’s ear and whispered something through clenched teeth before putting his knife to the scar on his neck and adding two vertical lines, completing the “H” Haynes had started some months ago before Charlie interrupted him. Charlie didn’t move this time. He wanted to see what John would do.
Charlie hadn’t accounted for John when he killed Haynes, when he spread his empire just a little too widely and thought he snuffed out Haynes’ boys—he thought John was his. But Haynes had been priming John, and it was John who was destined to run with the legacy. John was a masochist in private and a sadist in public, and Charlie had no idea. Charlie was so sure of himself that ten minutes ago even he might’ve looked at our table in our private room and thought us a party of good friends. And maybe we all were friends, but all of Charlie’s friends were dead, and when a man knows he’s dead, he’ll do anything.
James tucked his arm under my coat, around my waist, and drew me close to him. “Shall we go home?”
Charlie now watched me, and I wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold his gaze. It wasn’t even in anger, it just held all of that glorious malevolent calm. And I was already so drunk off everything, it seemed.
“Yes, my love.”
“Did you have a good time at the ballet?”
We were in the hall now, and I swigged a bottle of champagne I had snagged on the way out. “You really ought to have seen it, my love. It was beautiful.”
“Well, I’m glad.”
And he was.
“Did you have a nice evening as well?”
“I did.”
“Well, I’m glad.”
And I was.
By Taylor Martin
