H just moved out, 13 months post-bomb

[Dawn of Hope]

I don't post much, but have been keeping tabs on you for some time. You are a wonderful writer…have you ever considered trying to write a novel or maybe a writer's group would be another GAL activity for you to participate in.

Take care, your cyber friends are praying for you!

When I read your comments about my writing abilities, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! I know I am far too long-winded and obsessed over the exact words and phrases, and am badly in need of an editor to chop out big hunks of my overly-detailed prose...but other than that, I do okay. Thank you for the compliment!

The flip side of my reaction is that my H was always the fiction writer between us, but after he did National Novel Writing Month in November 2006, I was persuaded to join him the following year and write my very own novel. (National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNo, is a formal challenge to write at least 50,000 words [about 130-150 pages] of fiction in 30 days [the editing comes sometime later--the 30 day timeframe emphasizes quantity and "git-er-done," not quality], and has been held each November for the past 10 years; Google it if you are interested--100,000 people participated worldwide last year!) I wasn't sure I could do it, because the largest number of words of fiction I'd ever strung together prior to that had been maybe a page or two, but I was excited and spent most of the eleven months between NaNo 2006 and NaNo 2007 planning my story in the background processes of my brain. I was nervous, excited, worried, and eager. I was looking forward to discovering, in the unfolding of the process, whether I had a novel in me.

Then, nine days before we were to start writing our novels...H dropped the bomb that he was involved with OW and wasn't at all sure he wanted to stay M to me. I was just...flattened by it. All of us here know the absolute devastation one feels at that point; I don't need to describe it.

When I was able to catch my breath between crying jags, I thought there was no way I would be writing a novel in the next month, especially because I had been planning a love story, and I knew I would have to completely scrap that idea and start from scratch, because even looking at titles of romantic books or movies made me cry at that point. But at 10:30 p.m. on Halloween night, an hour and a half before the opening gun of NaNo, I commented to H that if I did NaNo I would need to have a whole new plotline, and I had no ideas (I didn't explain further, but I'm sure he got an inkling), and he suggested several general avenues to consider, and one of them fired a tiny spark in my brain. When that happened, I decided that I was going to try it. I needed a distraction from my own nightmarish life, and I thought maybe, just maybe, this would work to some extent.

I decided to just play with it, launch it and see where it took me. So at 12:01 a.m. on November 1, 2007, I started typing, with the barest germ of a plot. I wrote a little more than my daily quota before shutting down for the night. Then I continued on with the journey the next day. And the next after that. And I was astonished. It was actually...fun. Even in the midst of my agony and despair over my real life...I managed to enjoy the process of discovering what my characters were getting themselves into that day.

People who had done this before said that you didn't need to have the story all planned out beforehand, because as long as you at least had an interesting character or two, the characters would start taking over and driving the story for you. I didn't believe it...until it happened to me. It wasn't like being possessed or anything, but more like I relaxed enough to allow the characters to open a door in my brain that had always been closed every time I saw it before. I found myself saying things like, "I have no idea where _that_ came from!" and "My story insists on being 100% dialogue--I can't even write 'he said'/'she said'!" and "I thought I was writing a straight no-funny-stuff novel, and it turned into urban fantasy, and now I've got angels and benign shapeshifters coming out of nowhere, and the characters with paranormal abilities outnumber the normals!" Eventually I got to the point where the best answer to "How's the novel coming?" would be, "There's a witch under the house and everything's in color."

I got behind in the second week and didn't write at all for five days, trying to catch up on some actual paying work (when I wasn't sobbing myself sick; my real-life issues didn't improve), and I thought maybe that was the end of the novel attempt. But I was caught up in the story by then, so I forged onward, although I was woefully behind, and continued to be behind. I had hoped to keep it light and keep my real life out of it, but somewhere around week three I had just found out about some fresh horror H had perpetrated in his destruction of our M, and I couldn't push it far enough away when I was writing. So...I used it in my novel. I added it in as a new sub-plot, and had one of the characters talk about having gone through exactly what I was experiencing day by day in my RL as I wrote the novel. Some of the novel was lifted directly from the scribbled journals I was filling with my pain during this period of my life. Those are probably the best-written parts of the novel. Once I got to the end of what I had experienced thus far in my sitch...I took it farther. I took revenge. I wielded my divine authority as an author and punished where I saw fit. That was the most calorie-free fun I had for six months after the bomb--taking guilt-free vengeance for the wrongs committed against me in RL. (Heh, heh, heh!)

I got to the final week, and even though I had been pushing to make up for my earlier lapses in productivity, I was still significantly behind. I was moving along in the story--whenever I started worrying that the story would be too short to need 50,000 words, I would just come up with a new sub-plot, and voila, the end of the story would require at least another couple of thousand words--but I was nowhere near actually having written the 50,000 words. For a while I was thinking that I would just be happy with whatever number of words I wrote, even if I hadn't crossed the 50,000 bar by the deadline. I was going through the worst experience I had ever endured in my personal life, plus running my own solo business, for which the work didn't stop just because I was falling apart at the seams, and there was nobody to do the work but me; getting even part of a novel written on top of that was pretty impressive, even if I didn't get in as many words as planned.

But then my secret competitive streak kicked in, and I started writing more. I got to November 29th, 24 hours before the finish line, and I was still 12,500 words short, or a full quarter of the total (about 35 pages). I got up early (for me), and I started writing. I wrote all day. I checked my word count obsessively. I wrote more. I got a little stuck a few times, but mostly I just got out of my own way and let the words flow from my subconscious through my fingers, sometimes not even stopping in my conscious mind along the way. I wrote. And I checked my word count. And I wrote some more.

H was performing in a band thing that night, and I had said I would be there (his A notwithstanding, we were still pretending in public that everything was fine between us), so I went. That took about 3 hours, but then I hurried home and back to the keyboard. At 11:53 p.m., I took a deep breath. I had something like 50,040 words, according to my word-processing program, and I hoped that would be enough extra to ensure that the official NaNo word counter would agree that I was over the limit. I frantically churned through the steps to submit it, and waited, biting my nails, as the processor hummed and I stared at the clock in the corner of the screen. The next thing I saw was a screen saying, "WINNER!" I officially had 50,016 words, it was 11:57 p.m. on November 30th, and against all odds...I had made it under the wire. I did what I set out to do. I was very proud of myself!

The small fly in my ointment was that I had met the word count needed, but the story wasn't finished. I figured I would wrap it up in the next week, especially since I came up with a couple of new subplots the next day which I liked. Then I would let the novel cool off for a while, and then go back and edit it.

Fast-forward 17 months. I haven't looked at that story since I submitted it for the official word count that day. But I will, sooner or later. I'm not concerned. I will finish it, and later I will edit it. After that...I'm not sure. I thought it was pretty good the last time I read it through. I don't know if I will try to get it published or not. Probably the first thing I will do is let a few people read it. To this day, nobody has read it except me (unless H sneaked onto my computer and read it without my permission). He did make a pointed comment once or twice in the months following the end of that NaNo about not having gotten to read my story, and I pointed out that nobody has read it yet because it's not finished. I didn't tell him that I don't know if I will ever agree to let him read it because he's in it (under a different name, of course, but it would be quite clear to him), and the picture is not flattering. And...he might not like the fate I assigned to him.

While I was struggling through my first novel, as just described, H was doing his second bout with NaNo. For that year's NaNo (2007), he finished one full novel of 50,000 words, and half of another one. I read his finished one (I don't like to read unfinished stories; I'm too impatient to hear what happens next), and liked it, as I always do with his writing. It was a long-planned sequel to his prior year's NaNo novel, a vampire action novel/thriller, and the sequel concentrated more on the love story that was background for the original tale, which wasn't entirely fun for me to read, especially the climactic wedding scene (apparently it was weird for him to write, too, as I saw a text message he sent to OW about that...that was when I was still spying on him, but I stopped that a few months later).

The following year's NaNo (2008), I started to write another novel (one of the requirements is that you start something new, not add on to a novel that is already in progress), but I didn't have the drive I'd had the prior year, and I ran out of steam before I got even a third of the way through the 50,000. I kept thinking I might pull it through at the 11th hour again, but then H moved out on November 24th, and I just gave up on the novel. Quite honestly, I can't even remember what it was about. I haven't looked at it since. Maybe someday I will finish it.

H had again completed one novel before he moved out (par for the course for him; he finished his first novel by around November 20th all three years, the overachiever!), and completed part of a second novel before the end of the month. The next time I saw him after he moved out--a chance encounter a week later--I asked if I could read the one he had completed earlier in the month, and he said yes and sent it to me, but I have not had the courage to look at it yet, even seven months later. When I read his 2007 NaNo, the vampire love story, it was only a month after the bomb, and of course I was looking for hints of what was going on in his mind as I read the story...but I didn't find much of that nature. I think the reason I haven't read his 2008 NaNo novel yet might be tied in with whatever it is that makes me not interested in spying on him any more. I just don't really want to know. I think it is because almost every time I imagine what might be going on...it turns out to be at least that bad, and often worse, and the worst parts are the things that didn't even occur to me might be happening. So...I'm not eager to read this story of his.

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And that, boys and girls, is what happened when I considered trying to write a novel! I'm thinking a writers group might actually be an excellent GAL suggestion, and heaven knows I need more of those....

AAL, I'll bet you had no clue I could take your relatively brief note to me (which was greatly appreciated!) and expand it to a ten-page response! (Okay, I copied it into Word just to amuse myself, and it was only seven pages!)

Thank you so much for your prayers! I really, really appreciate all of them, even if they include a few regarding the possibility of my being more succinct...!

Peace,
Dawn