NaNoWriMo Planning

I realized after I posted on Saturday that it was not really the word count or my ability to write during November that was making me so anxious about National Novel Writing Month. It was actually the project I’d chosen to work on. As I read the forums and started making “writing buddies” in the NaNoWriMo universe, it became clear to me that people were doing this, uh, for fun! Imagine that!

It is, after all, a kind of game, giving yourself a word count and a few parameters and then taking off. The thing is, I hadn’t just committed to the daily workout, I had committed myself to some kind of Mount Everest climb that I really didn’t want to do. I was using NaNoWriMo to force myself to write a story that I do think is important and that I feel compelled to write– but which scares me.

And because I want to blog about it, the choice was even more difficult. It’s the kind of writing project I want to keep to myself until I’m sure of it. It takes risks and some people aren’t going to be happy I’m writing it. All these critics were lining up on my shoulder.

That’s not what NaNoWriMo is about. It’s clear that I needed to choose another story, another novel, one I could actually enjoy being inside for a month and then getting on with things.

At the dinner table, I often tell Steve about plots I’d like to write. This summer I was going to write a bunch of short stories, and I did get started on a few (and finished a draft of one). One is loosely based on a local murder of a policeman. I blogged about it  at the time. As the months progressed, a few more details about this murder came out. For one, the officer’s partner fled the scene in the patrol car. The police arrested the wrong guy and held him for a week, ruining his life. Then, a couple months later, following up on a lead, they went out to a farm to interview someone else. The guy ran to the barn and killed himslf there before the police could speak to him. Later they found the shotgun that killed the cop on the property.

I think I should be able to get a novel out of that scenario, or at least have fun trying. Of course, I don’t know any of these characters, and I of course, unlike the “real” story, need to figure out a motive and what happened. It is fiction. And I hope to write to that deeper truth.

So I’m working my way in, thinking again about point of view (I’d love to tell it from that partner’s point of view, but I’m not sure he knows enough of the story). I’m thinking about the other characters, the women especially, and the perfect small town where I lived for two years and where the book will be set. A town with a bakery and a brewery and a chicken processing plant and a large Catholic church.

I’m thinking about their history together, in high school, on the baseball field. I’m thinking about their families. I’m thinking about everything I know about men and these small towns and secrets and violence and lies.

Instead of Hassler’s North of Hope, I’m going back to the novels of Kent Harouf. I’m looking at Cormac McCarthy and Hassler’s great small-town Minnesota book, Grand Opening. If you have other recommendations (I don’t know crime fiction and could use some suggestions), let me know in a comment.

And I’ll be back to post starting November 1, and let you know how it goes.