So, once again, I’m starting off with a Twitter quote:

@barelyknit: Do I make myself finish just so I can say I did? Is that what #NaNoWriMo is about? ‘Cause I am NOT LOVING this novel.

@doycet: Pushing past the not-loving is one thing NaNoWriMo makes happen. The not loving thing happens every single time at some point.

@barelyknit: Good to know. This is my first larger project, so I’m not used to going on despite the apathy.

Now, I’m not posting this to pick on Jennifer. At all. She is not the only one thinking this.

People keep leaving comments (yay!) and twitter DMs (woot) about how I must be wired right into the NaNoWriMo GroupBrain, because I just seem to know exactly what’s about to happen to their nano project, day by day. Fact is, I’m just writing advice for whatever thing I happen to be having a problem with that day, because… surprise surprise… I am not a unique snowflake. None of us are. These problems are everyone’s problems, and if I have some insight into them, or Jennifer happens to mention out loud what lots of people are thinking, that is why.

I write about it cuz I’ve worked through these projects mumblety-times before. That’s it. I don’t always see it coming, but I always recognize it when it gets here, and I kinda-sorta remember how to deal with it.

Now then, bit of background: in my dayjob, I teach things to people – mostly, to adult people. That’s the simplified summary of it, anyway – it involves project management, and regular management, and online course development, and classroom course development, and a metric buttload of writing, as well as doing that actual thing that people think of when they think of ‘teaching’.

There’s a key thing to understand about learning: at some point, with anything that you’re learning how to do, you have to… you know… do it.

The first ugly fact about writing a full-length … well, anything … is that it’s a fuckton of work. The first draft isn’t even most of it; that’s like a decifuckton. A portion, is what I’m saying, but still a lot.

The second ugly fact about writing a full-length anything is that you don’t know if you can do it til you do it. That’s part of what NaNoWriMo is about — giving you a relatively fun way to determine if you can do it (and lots of company if you find out you can’t, yet).

The third ugly fact is that there is stuff you will NEVER learn about writing until you actually sit down and try to write the thing that you want to learn to write. That’s really the other thing that I think NaNoWriMo is good for… it let’s you take that final step in learning how to write a novel by writing a novel. In the end it’s the only damn thing you can do to really learn how, and one of problems that the process teaches you about is how to deal with not always liking your story.

So let’s talk about not liking your story.

This will actually happen a couple times per project, probably. If you’re lucky, you’ll just have one instance of it, but if so, it might go on a few days. There are (at least) Two Things you can do to deal with this. Note: these are not different options you select from — do both of these things.

Thing 1

So you’re not happy with the stuff going on right now? Sorry, but that’s tough. You’ve got a story to deliver, and sometimes you just have to soldier through.

Simple truth: some days, the words just come hard.^{1 2} Sometimes they’re hard because you’re not really loving the scene, or it’s just very tricky, or you suck at action sequences, or whatever.

This is one of those moments that defines. This is the thing that culls people from the herd before they get to the finish line, and there isn’t a better way to put it; if you want to finish your novel(la) length story, you learn to power through the days where you aren’t loving your work. Not the work – YOUR work, specifically.

If this seems like a NaNoWriMo thing, I have to tell you, it isn’t; this is a writing thing. NaNoWriMo may seem silly to some, but it does teach us – via the experience – to write long stuff, and this is one of the lessons: Sometimes, you gotta write anyway.

Thing 2

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. – Elmore Leonard

Stop and ask yourself: “Why don’t I like what I’m writing? Why is this not working for me?” That’s an important question, because if the author doesn’t like it, who the hell else is going to?³

• Are you over-describing stuff? Stop. Switch to nothing but dialog for awhile. If you’re protag doesn’t have anyone to talk to, FIX THAT RIGHT NOW.
• Is the scene boring you? Drop it and skip to the next. Flag it with a [finish this later] and move on.
• Do you not care about the character? Get them in some conversations with other characters, so you can find something to like (or find out that you’re writing about the wrong person as the protagonist).
• Are you hung up on how to get through the current scene, but you’re writing a solution anyway? STOP. Go write some other scene — that reluctance is your brain telling you that you’re writing something stupid and that it will give you something not-stupid LATER.
• If all else fails, attack the scene with genre-appropriate ninjas. I am totally not kidding.

Bottom line: your lack of enthusiasm might be your brain telling you “Dude, I would skip this bit if it were in a book I was reading.” So skip it. If you need it, skip it and come back.

Let me give you an example.

Earlier this week, I was working on Adrift, and I got stuck. I’d written my characters into a bit of a corner, and I just… I didn’t know how to get them out of it. I wrote about 400 words that day, most of which involved the characters looking at each other, scratching their heads and saying “Well, fucked if *I* know.”

So I went and wrote something else. My main character (Finnras) is a dad, trying to find his daughter, so I went and wrote out one of the bedtime stories that he used to tell his daughter when she was a little girl and Everything Was Good. That was my writing for the next day, and it was good: one of those rare 3000+ days on word count.

And when I was done?

When I was done, the characters I’d left back in that nasty corner had figured a way out.

Thing #2 is a really good trick, by the way. I highly recommend keeping that particular tool handy.

So, to sum up:

You don’t like the story right now.

1. Above all, keep writing.
2. Find out what’s making you not like it, and either stop it, fix it, or leave it be and write a different bit.

That’s it. Get back to work.

Have fun.

---

¹ – Actually, for me, the words rarely just fly onto the screen in mighty 5000 word clumps — it just doesn’t happen that often; maybe a half-dozen times in as many years. Maybe. I almost never get ‘ahead’ on my daily wordcount, because the daily deliverable is what gets my ass in the chair, and that habit is far more valuable than a 6000 word day. But I digress.)

² – You totally thought I was going to make a ‘come hard’ joke, didn’t you? Perv.

³ – The answer to that is somewhat dependent on how many revisions the author has done. Finishing revisions sometimes leaves me with a very strong desire to never ever ever ever see that particular work again. Ever.

So this was me, last night, on Twitter:

Me: Guys, can we move things along?
Characters: We are.
Me: But, the outline…
Characters: Shush. Grown-ups are talking.

I had forgotten about this part of the project.

See, I’ve been doing revisions for quite awhile. Revisions are nightmarish and purgatory-like, but in some important ways they’re very comforting, because you’re working on a project where you and the characters are old friends. They probably aren’t going to do anything TOO crazy and unexpected. Also? They probably don’t hate you.

The first draft characters? It’s not like that. They wander off. They don’t go where you want. They won’t SHUT. UP. And they think your outline is an adorable list of suggestions. They definitely don’t trust you yet. You’re a week into the project, and you know in your head where you want to go, but the story just doesn’t seem to be going that way. If you’re working from an outline, you haven’t seen anything that resembles a point on the outline for the last four days.

So how do you deal with these characters?

I’m going to suggest you give them their heads for awhile.

Let me tell you a quick story.

My granddad got a hunting dog pup. Good dog, but damn he was hyper. If you took him out for a hunt around the end of the day, he was all right, but in the morning? Forget about it. My granddad hunted for most of his life, and he understood animals and people (and stories, but that’s a post for another day), so this is what he did.

Every day – usually before I was even awake – he drove out to this stretch of gravel road between his house and ours. He’d let the dog out and lead him down into the ditch. He got him to sit still, walked back up to the truck, got in, rolled down the window, put the truck in gear, hollered “Come on!”, and hit the gas.

About a mile later – sometimes more, depending on how hyper the puppy had been acting that morning – he’d slow down, stop, get out, and walk around to the back of the truck.

The dog would be standing right there, panting, with his big, dumb, dog smile plastered over his face.

My granddad bent down (which took awhile, on some mornings), looked the dog in the face, and said “You ready to listen?”

That. Right there. You do that.

Your characters are hyper. They’re just fucking thrilled to be in a story and living and breathing and just doing stuff.

Let ’em run it out.

Once they’ve got it out of their system (it’s coming up soon — probably today or tomorrow), get back in there and take the reins back.

Just so we’re clear about what I’m saying, let me put it in clear points.

1. Your characters aren’t listening to your grand plans. Don’t panic.
2. Let them run. Stay with them, so they don’t run off somewhere completely horrible, or get badly hurt, but let them run.
3. When they bleed off that wild edge, step back in and assert control.

Now, caveats.

• With #1, it’s not okay if they’re not listening and not doing anything interesting. Screw that. Kick em in the ass and get em in line.
• #3: This part is important. You are the author. You really are in charge, so get the fuck back in there and take charge. It’s just a quick run – not anarchy. We aren’t poets.

-=-

On Writing
That’s the end of this post, but I wanted to add a little postscript here that harkens back to one of the main tips of NaNoWriMo: “It’s okay if you write crap.” I’ve said similar things before, but I want to fine tune that statement a bit; include something I unconsciously add for myself, but don’t say aloud often enough.

“Write bad stuff, but as much as possible, don’t write it badly.”

I’ve seen some folks do these NaNoWriMo projects and… it’s like they saw “it’s okay to write crap” and thought it meant “it’s okay to forget everything you know about writing.”

Yes, it’s okay to have big, fat scenes with too much dialog and some unnecessarily long descriptions — you’re feeling your way in a new space; some of that exposition and over-description is for YOU, to find out what’s going on and to get to know the characters — you can write it now and chop it later.

But it’s not okay to ignore your tools. Solid sentence structure. Decent grammar. Spelling as good as you can do without actually running a spell checker. (That’s a treat to save for this coming Saturday.)

You have these tools. Treat them with respect. Use them well. That’s all.

Get to work.

Have fun.

A few days ago, in the comments, Chuck said:

I usually aim for the middle ground on first drafts — I know it’s not going to be perfect, but I aim for a solid B to B+ range. Hell, I’m going to go through five drafts anyway — but if my first draft is littered with lots of little problems, I’m looking at six or seven drafts. Further, the little issues take a lot lot lot of time to go back and fix. So, for me, it’s a matter of economizing the process. Fixing small errors now — largely by making sure they don’t happen in the first place — actually saves me a shit-ton of time on the back end.

So here’s the thing. Chuck is totally right.

I’m walking a dangerous line here, because when you’re working a NaNoWriMo project, going back and editing is a phenomenally bad idea that will put you in the hole on wordcount faster than anything, so I don’t want to tell you to do any editing at this point. Perish the thought.

But there are a few things you can do using your brain-thinking-thing so the words you put down aren’t as bad as they might otherwise be. A few very very very simple rules you can follow.

However, I still wouldn’t mention them, except for one thing.

*looks around*

*leans in*

*whispers*

A couple of these rules, like the one I’m going to talk about today, will actually give you more words than if you don’t follow it.

Dirty Trick: No Adverbs

The road to hell is paved with adverbs. – Stephen King

That’s a pretty strong vote against the adverb. It’s a pretty widely accepted rule among writers, though perhaps King is the most passionate about it.

Well, and me. I’m kind of rabid about adverbs, but not for the same reason. I don’t like them because they kill my word count.

Examples:

“What’s up?” he said smilingly.

*wince* Right. That sucks. Let’s try it without the adverb.

“What’s up?” he said with a smile.

Ehh. Better. Marginally less wince-worthy, and more words. Okay. Some people will grouse about how words can’t come with a smile, but whatever.

Now, once you’ve broken your two-pack-a-day adverb habit, you can take it a step further by avoiding those “with a…” phrases. I don’t know what they’re called in grammar books; prepositions? Maybe. Not all prepositional phrases are bad — most aren’t — but those ‘with a …’ phrases are really just a way of writing adverbs without writing adverbs. You’re cheating yourself.

“What’s up?” he said, smiling as he spoke.

Better! Considerably less suckitude. More words. Win/win.

Maybe you could…

“What’s up?” he said. He was smiling as he spoke; the particular smile I liked to imagine he saved just for me.

Bam. Maybe not the great american novel, but exponentially better than “smilingly”.

There’s your first dirty writing trick: No adverbs.

Now get back to work.

Have fun.