Drafting

Piling On the Manure and Hoping For the Best

Before I begin this week’s post, I would like to welcome the five new subscribers who joined us in October. I’m so glad you found your way to the Questhouse!

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I’m attempting to produce a 50,000 word novel draft in 30 days and one hour (thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time). That’s a daunting word count, and it almost guarantees that the quality of the writing will be uneven, at best.

Just a week into the project, I’m already behind. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’m doing that magical thing - every day, for at least a little while, I’m slipping into the secret walled garden of my imagination and tending a fragile new story. It’s the loveliest feeling I know.

Illustration for The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

It’s also miserable sometimes, especially when I’m writing page after page so obviously doomed for the chopping block. I remember urging my students not to write “bed to bed” stories, because nobody wants to slog through every stinking moment of a character’s day (especially not a teacher with a hundred stories to grade). And yet that’s exactly what I’m producing right now. I’m dogging my character Roo’s every step and recording each detail, down to when she scratches her arse.

Slowing down the pace is partly a stalling mechanism, a way to procrastinate without actually procrastinating. I’ve gone through the trouble of building a scene and populating it with characters, some of whom I know will be important to the story, and I want to learn as much as I can before moving deeper into the plot, where new challenges await. I figure this strategy has to to be marginally better than typing “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” on repeat. Besides, I never know when Roo’s going to have something interesting to say. I sometimes have epiphanies in the shower, so why would I deny her ten minutes to linger and ponder in the steam?

The author at work.

I figure that if I keep showing up, if I keep tending the secret garden, Roo’s story will grow into something I can prune into beauty later. For now, my job is just to pile on the old composted manure and hope for the best.

George RR Martin contrasts this gardening method of novel writing with the more streamlined architect process in a 2011 interview with Alison Flood.

"The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect."

My nature is to be more gardener than architect, too, but, having spent years wrestling the thorns and burrs of my last unruly novel, I devoted considerable time to planning this book before I began writing. This time I want to be more like a landscape architect, humble enough to realize that I can’t control Mother Nature and wise enough to partner with Her more intentionally. Yes, I’m planting seeds and piling on the manure, but I also terraformed swales and terraces of plot and scrutinized my psychic seed catalogue for the plants that will offer both cascades of spring blossoms and the poetry of the bare winter’s branch.

At least that’s what I hope I’m doing. In truth, I met a good friend for dinner last week and tried to share the blueprint of my story. It was the first time I’ve tried to say it aloud to another person, and I’m not sure it made much sense. When she asked me how Roo would grow into the person I want her to become, my answer sounded like bullshit, even to me.

And still I push the ivy aside, turn the key in the lock of my secret garden, and slip into a world all my own.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo, or have you in the past? Or have you written a book, or made a film, or designed a garden? Please share your wisdom in the comments.