I need a shower.  My house is about to get vacuumed, and yes, my first draft of the book is finished weighing in at not quite 70,500 words and 199 single spaced pages.

In a few days we will rejoin our regularly scheduled blogging already in progress.  Until then, have some left over pie and go for a walk.

My house hasn’t been cleaned in three weeks and it’s been just as long since I’ve gotten any real exercise.

Oh, yes, and I am one of those people whom in previous years I have hated: I have 54,505 words today and the book still isn’t done.  I’m just going to keep writing until it is.

Then comes the hard part: the editing.

Total Words Written So Far 33,755
Total Hours Spent Writing 33.25

Avg Words Written Per Day 2,596
Avg Hours Writing Per Day 2.56
Avg Words Per Hour 1,015
Avg Morale Per Day 5

Number of Words Remaining 16,245
Number of Days Remaining 17
Number of Hours Remaining 16.00

So why do I still feel like I don’t know where I’m going?  Ah, the joys of NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo follows a pretty set pattern for me: the first few days I feel like a complete and utter hack.

What hubris to think I can write a novel (even though I’ve done it before…three times)! And how dare I think I have anything interesting to say or that my prose might be even vaguely entertaining (when I know for certain that NaNo is supposed to 1) produce a first draft, and 2) everyone’s first draft is kinda shitty).

The kind folks at the Office of Letters and Light, NaNoWriMo’s parent organization, realize that most authors go through a similar cycle so they line up a pep talk a week for us. It makes me feel a bit better that this year’s week one pep talk is from an author whose work I admire, Jasper Fforde.

Because here’s the thing: Writing is not something you can do or you can’t. It’s not something that ‘other people do’ or ‘for smart people only’ or even ‘for people who finished school and went to University’. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training—get your hands dirty—and make some mistakes. Those 22 days of mine were the start, and only the start, of my training. The next four weeks and 50,000 words will be the start of your training, too.

There’s a lot to learn, and you won’t have figured it all in 50,000 words, but it’ll be enough for you to know that you don’t know it all, and that it will come, given time. You’ll have written enough to see an improvement, and to start to have an idea over what works and what doesn’t. Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation. A manual on knitting can tell you what to do, but you won’t be able to make anything until you get your hands on some wool and some needles and put in some finger time. Writing needs to be practiced; there is a limit to how much can be gleaned from a teacher or a manual. The true essence of writing is out there, in the world, and inside, within yourself. To write, you have to give.

What do you give? Everything. Your reader is human, like you, and human experience in all its richness is something that we all share. Readers are interested in the way a writer sees things; the unique world-view that makes you the person you are, and makes your novel interesting. Ever met an odd person? Sure. Ever had a weird job? Of course. Ever been to a strange place? Definitely. Ever been frightened, sad, happy, or frustrated? You betcha. These are your nuts and bolts, the constructor set of your novel. All you need to learn is how to put it all together. How to wield the spanners.

And this is why 30 days and 50,000 words is so important. Don’t look at this early stage for every sentence to be perfect—that will come. Don’t expect every description to be spot-on. That will come too. This is an opportunity to experiment. It’s your giant blotter. An empty slate, ready to be filled. It’s an opportunity to try out dialogue, to create situations, to describe a summer’s evening. You’ll read it back to yourself and you’ll see what works, you’ll see what doesn’t. But this is a building site, and it’s not meant to be pretty, tidy, or even safe. Building sites rarely are. But every great building began as one.

So, even though I’m ahead on word count, there’s still 2,000 more words out there for me today.

I’m taking a writing class, Gotham’s Fiction I, instead of doing NaNoWriMo this year (I knew I would be too wiped out from the summer of working hundreds of hours of overtime and no vacation) but Fiction I proving to be a little less challenging than I hoped (OK, so it’s only week 2 but still).

So I signed up for NaBloPoMo: 31 blog posts in November. Sounds easy enough. I’ve done it before.

But I still don’t find out if I’m on federal jury duty for six weeks until the middle of next week.

Definitely “or both” I think.