NaNoWriMo: What does it all mean?

I first visited Dinosaur Land in 2014 which I decided to go on an Instagram Vacation. My plan was to go from Arlington (where I live) to Baltimore (a city I love) to Richmond (to visit friends). Along the way my plan was to stop at roadside attractions and unusual points of interest like the American Visionary Arts Museum (a must see in Baltimore). I photographed the pineapple that greets visitors to Charm City and Nipper the RCA dog. I stopped at the Giant Roller Skate (but did not skate; need to go back to do that) in Bealton,VA. However, Dinosaur Land was always the true destination.

March in the DMV is a strange month. It's hard to predict the weather; it can be gorgeous and spring-like or hold onto winter with an impressive death grip. I once described it to a friend from New Orleans as "what would happen if February and April had a baby and that baby hated sunshine and happiness." As I was driving from Arlington to White Post, VA (where Dinosuar Land is), it started to sleet and snow. The route takes you down 66 through the Shenandoah Mountains so you can imagine how much fun this was. By the time I got to the parking lot, it stopped sleeting but was still bitter cold. Dinosaur Land was open; I was the only visitor. The young man who sold me my ticket told me to be careful but to enjoy. I stepped through the entrance into a strange and magical place. I walked around the park, taking pictures, reading the signs, and wondering why more places like this don't exist. It made me feel like a kid again and that was before I browsed in the gift shop.

No one is going to build Dinosaur Land today (unless it resembles something more like Jurassic Park) but I'm sure glad Joseph Geraci thought to do so in the early sixties. I've been back twice since 2014 and plan to go at least that many times next summer. Places like Dinosaur Land represent a lot of things: nostalgia for the good old days, a specific type of American entrepreneur, and the belief that simple entertainment is the best kind of entertainment. It's the ideal place for hipster kids to take selfie (and me too - I have some Dinosaur Land selfies too) but also a fun thing to do with little kids on a pleasant summer day. Places like Dinosaur Land make me think about my childhood and driving from wherever we lived to Detroit in the summers and the sort of hazy veil that sits on top of childhood memories. We never stopped at a place like Dinosaur Land but we had adventures and enjoyed the fun of the road.

As I started prepping for NaNoWriMo this year, I had a hard time getting into my original idea. I liked the idea but I when I sat down to write a character sketch or timeline, I got stuck. While I think it's a good idea, it's just not ready to see the light of day. Yet. So with two weeks until the start of the month, I threw out that idea and decided to go with something else. I decided to write about a Dinosaur Land-like place in a similar type of town in Virginia but tell the story from the perspective of a young girl, Iris, (and later her as an adult) whose family owns a roadside attraction called Land of Legends. She grows up there and its really the only place she knows. She wants to be an artist not run a park in the middle of nowhere. When she returns as an adult the realities of running such a business sink in; it's fallen on hard times and the land is worth more than the family legacy. Iris has to decide what to do with the park and how to preserve the history of her family.

Land of Legends features Iris's family, including her father, grandparents, aunt, and two cousins. There's a boy who returns later on but not as a love interest, a grumpy cat named Ethel, and the legends themselves. The park features a Yeti, Bigfoot, dragons, a kraken, mermaids, a maze with a Minotaur, fairies, and a family of unicorns. Imagine growing up with that in your backyard and with the expectation that you will run this one day. I genuinely liked every character I wrote even the bratty little girl who tries to climb on the unicorns. It was fun to write but as with any writing, it was also work. I struggled through 1997, the summer Iris turns 13. Getting through the middle was the most challenging part of the story. I also made the decision to kill a character although the character that died at the end was not the character I originally planned would die. That's how these things work; you have a plan but things happen and you change course. However, I kept going and I finished the first draft. I wrote a fun, little novel. It's not going to change the world but it changes me.

Which brings me to the end: what does it all mean? When I tell people about NaNoWriMo and about "winning" (which is what they call it when you get your 50K word goal and finish), they seem rather let down. I assume it's because they think winning means my novel will be published. That's not how this works. I get where they're coming from; when you write a novel people expect you to publish it. Maybe I will one day but that's not the goal for me. I have done this for the last three years to push myself to take an idea and turn it into something complete. I like the structure of the month; I have to discipline myself to write and commit to the project fully. Writing is not just a hobby for me but since it's not my full time job, taking this month to really dedicate time to an idea and to crafting characters and to seeing them develop makes me incredibly happy. It gives me purpose and fulfills my need to do something creative every day.

The other reality of this is that it doesn't stop because the month is over; not the novel or my writing. I write a weekly blog, I write for work, I write things I don't share publicly; I will always write even if no one reads. I'll take a little break from the novel but will return to it at some point to revise and edit and decide if I want to do anything else with it. I've been working on revising last year's novel, Transient Suburbia, on and off since the summer. My goal for the coming year is to finish the revisions to that novel and do something with it. I don't know what that something is but I want to see that novel out there in the world. I have two weeks off in December and most of my time is going to be devoted to working on that novel because I believe in it and I love it. Eventually I'll do the same thing with Land of Legends and my first NaNoWriMo novel, The Metro Counselor.

The 2015 Stats:

• Started on: November 1
• Finished on: November 23
• Total days: 19 days (I wasn't able to write four days for various reasons)
• Best day: November 22 - 8171 words
• Worst day: November 18 - 184 words
• Total words: 50078
• Pages: 95
• Chapters: 26
• Number of times I watched the kraken scene from the 1981 film Clash of the Titan: 40
• Number of pairs of themed socks purchased: 3 (Yeti, Bigfoots, Unicorns - all from Target)
• Packages of peanut M&Ms: 2
• Bottles of wine: 2

I'm happy to share my "finished" NaNoWriMo novels with anyone interested in reading them. I wanted to post the whole novel this year but it didn't really lend itself to being posted on a blog. 

Coming soon to the Island: the conclusion of NaNoWriMo, The Eye Shadow Experiment (no, I did not join a band but it is an excellent band name), a check in on how online dating is going, and my guide to not hating the holidays. 

It's not so easy writing about nothing*...

Earlier this week I finished Patti Smith's new book, M Train. I'm a huge Patti Smith fan; she's one of my musical idols and her first book, Just Kids, is one of my all time favorite books. I've been eagerly awaiting M Train and was not disappointed in my experience. It was very different from Just Kids; there was no specific narrative although there was a connection throughout the work. Where Just Kids focused on Patti in New York in the 1970s, M Train moved through time with some rhyme and reason. Much of the book is about travel and her life with her late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith (of the band MC5). I was so impressed with the sadness in M Train; it never became maudlin or a Patti Smith pity party. It's just there like it is in life. If you're a fan of Patti Smith you should add this to your reading list.

M Train is also the last book I'll read until the end of November. Yes friends, it's almost time for National Novel Writing Month! For the last two Novembers, I've spent the month writing a 50,000 word novel in one month and refraining from doing things like reading, being social, and eating complete meals. I'm a planner even when writing so I typically use October for prep for the month. It's actually encouraged; as long as you don't write any of the actual novel, you can do prep prior to the start. For my past novels, I did things like character sketches, timelines (very important last year), and ideas for endings while not actually writing anything. The character sketches were probably the best prep I did. Each of my characters, particularly in my first year, were fully fleshed out before I started. I knew all the details I needed to make them come alive on the page and I felt very connected to each one. Last year, I did a little less on the characters (although they all had a complete bio) and more on the locations I featured throughout the story. Those places were characters and I wanted them to be as present and realistic as possible especially since most of them are real places that you can go to (or could have gone to at one point in history).

I had every intention to get prepped for this year. In September I settled on my idea and should have been in a good place to start mapping out the characters, deciding which war my reenactors would reenact, and was set to create to fictitious museums. All I had to do was figure out how the ancient order of museum scholars would fracture and become the warring factions they are today.

None of this happened. Every time I sat down to write something, I would stop or get distracted by something else (it's my patriotic duty to watch reruns of NCIS on USA). Despite really liking the idea and wanting to create this world, I just couldn't get into it. This is even after sharing with my writing buddy and a new NaNoWriMo participant. Both thought the idea was good and that there was potential for some cool characters and everyone loves ancient orders of one thing or another. My heart wasn't in it and if my heart's not in it, I know it won't work. Over the weekend I decided to scrap the whole idea and start over again. With two weeks until the start of NaNoWriMo. I guess this is my year of living dangerously.

So what will this year's novel be about instead? There's no ancient society of anything. No museums to create, no art to describe. I could focus on baking, my other favorite hobby, and build on some of my short stories from over the summer (not the same characters of course since that would break the rules). I could but I'm not. I could write a full length Pickles novel but I'm saving Pickles stories for when I decide to start writing children's books.

I was in Leesburg this weekend attending a friend's wedding and the idea came to me as we (my parents and I) were driving around Leesburg. I'm pretty sure this was my first time officially in Leesburg; it's kinds of a strange place. There's are lots of developed areas (shopping centers, the outlets, breweries for miles, and strip malls) and the historic town of Leesburg. It's retained the loveliness of an old Virginia town. And then there are these long stretches of farmland and vineyards that come out of nowhere. It's a jarring contrast and it made me think of all the little towns I've driven through and visited around Virginia. Some of them are nothing more than a few buildings and a street or two; others are just a sign that says you were in one place and now you're not. We develop areas so quickly and haphazardly (or so it seems) these days. Driving around Leesburg and the surrounding area helped me form an idea that I hope I'll be able to develop during the month. I also hope I can get my act together and get some characters figured out sooner rather than later.

There's no title yet; it'll come eventually. The story will focus on a family owned roadside attraction in a small Virginia town (not unlike Dinosaur Land) and the family who owns it and has to make some decisions about the future of their business and their legacy. Rather than dinosaurs, my roadside attraction will focus on mythical creatures from multiple cultures and areas of literature. I'll still get to include my museum character in the form of the daughter of the current owner of the attraction. Like her "sisters" in my previous novels, she'll be looking for her home and community, something I think about often in my own life. There will be humor and conflict and emotion and mermaids; all the things you want in a novel.

Here's where I need your help. I'm letting you, my lovely Island readers, decide two things this year:

1. Which mythical creatures should be part of the roadside attraction? I can't say that I'll use all of your suggestions (I already have my own ideas mapped out and have let a few key friends pick one or two) but input is fun and it's possible I've left out a creature or six.
2. Do I allow you to read along with me as I write? Or do I "publish" the finished novel at the end of the month? For the past two years, I've posted excerpts from the novel on the blog and shared the finished version via a Google Doc link with a few people but maybe it's time to share the whole thing with the world. 

So Island readers, I leave it to you. Post your thoughts in the comments and we'll see where the month takes us.

Next week: One final Lazy Movie Weekend before NaNoWriMo begins. We'll take a look at one of my favorite Halloween movies that no one seems to have seen.


*from M Train by Patti Smith