What I Learned From Finishing My NaNoWriMo Novel

Remember that novel I started in November?  I finally finished it today! 

The first 50,000 words were easy.  Probably because I was on a deadline.  November, I had my writing group, I was motivated, and the writing sprints made it even easier.

Then December came along and all of the ‘life’ I put on hold came back.  Like cleaning the house and doing laundry.  And work got a little chaotic as well. 

But I did it.  Three weeks later than I was hoping, but I made it!  This is novel number 5 that I’ve written from beginning to end, and it’s unique in several different ways.  All of my other novels are YA Fantasy with magic and romance.  There’s none of that in this novel.  It’s a modern day story of a woman whose dad gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  I knew it was going to be hard to write, and even knowing that, I’m still amazed by the work and effort that it took to finish. 

It’s a good idea to try something new every once in a while.  We all get into ruts, and unless we push ourselves, we’ll never grow and learn.

So here’s what I learned from my newest novel, the Purple WIP:

1.  I can write adults.  I’ve never had a main character over the age of about 25.  Jen is almost 40 with three kids, and her oldest is 15.  I know how to think like a teenager because I’ve experienced it.  Putting myself in the mindset of someone older than me was foreign, though we figured each other out by the end.

2. It’s really tricky writing ambiguous endings.  My other novels had a clear cut ending.  They achieved their goals, they overcame their obstacles, and they lived happily ever after.  I’m a huge fan of HEA.  But with Alzheimer’s, that’s not really an option.  One of the reasons that it took me so long to finish was because I didn’t know where the story ended. 

3. Writing in two languages is harder than it looks.  Jen is married to a Hispanic man, and they are asked to help a Spanish Congregation of their church.  She doesn’t speak Spanish, but there’s constant Spanish around her.  Trying to write a conversation between her and some of the sisters in her congregation was almost impossible, though probably very accurate.

4. It’s a lot harder to write real places.  When I make up a setting, I can decide where the cities are, what the weather’s like, and the history.  Not so much with real life fiction.  Though, I did learn how to spell Milwaukee, so that’s a plus, right?

5.  I enjoy writing YA Fantasy.  I think this was the biggest thing I learned.  It was a great experience, and I’ve been wanting to write an Alzheimer’s story for years now, but I don’t know that I’m going to branch out to write more of those kinds of novels.  One is good enough for me.

Writing Something Familiar

I’m almost done with my purple WIP.  So close.  This is the one that I started during November for NaNoWriMo.  I wrote 50,000 words in November, and now I’ve written about 20,000 words since then, so my momentum has definitely slowed.  Though, to be fair, half of that was written this month.

This week though, I’ve been able to get back on track, and I’m in an interesting part of the story.  I’d accidentally started a section before realizing that I skipped a whole part, so I’ve been simultaneously working on both at the same time.

One of the sections, the main character is taking a tour of a city that is very important to my family.  It’s a teeny tiny town on the edge of Illinois, where the early members of our church gathered, and many important things happened there.  My character is currently taking tours and watching shows that are more than familiar to me.  In fact, one of them, I’ve been in for four years.  She’s also meeting people that I know out there, though I never specify them by name.

With hubby in Nauvoo

The second section, her father falls and hits his head and is rushed to the hospital.  As a nurse, I know what it’s like when someone hits their head, I know how they bleed, what the paramedics will ask, I even know what kinds of things a doctor will look for in that kind of an incident.

Both sections are familiar, and yet, it’s almost surreal writing because it’s not familiar to my MC.  She’s never been to Nauvoo, and she doesn’t know where each building is, how to get from one place to another.  She doesn’t know where the shows are, or which ones she needs tickets to.  And as an added difficulty, all of her travel companions speak Spanish, which she barely understands. 

With the paramedics and hospital, it’s not something that comes naturally to her.  This is her father, and she’s going to react on fear and probably not understand everything that’s going on.

I’ve never had to work so hard to think in someone else’s head.  In all of my other stories, I’m discovering the world with my characters.  They all live in foreign and exotic worlds, so I’m still trying to get an idea of the territory as I write.  But now, these are real world places and situations.  I have to be true to them, make sure that they are exactly right, and show them through the eyes of someone who’s not going to know what kind of assessments a doctor will do in an emergency room.  Or who doesn’t know the difference between Parley and Muholland Street.

Have you ever had to write about something you know well, but present it in a way that’s utterly foreign to you?

November

November is finally here!

For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that writers across the world are frantically writing as fast as they can, trying to up their word count before time writes out.  It’s the time to forget about sentence structure, and about precision and accuracy.  It’s about getting those words onto the page.

Friday night, our NaNoWriMo group met at 11:30pm in the only place in our tiny little town that stayed open past midnight: McDonalds.  We met, talked, ate and then anxiously waited until the fateful time when we could begin writing.  Last year, this McDonalds was brand new, and it was a ghost town.  Not so this year.  I’d never seen so many people crammed into one space. 

Our group did a countdown to midnight, and the rest of McDonalds joined in, probably expecting something exciting to happen once we hit zero.  And something spectacular did happen.  Nine or ten different worlds opened up at midnight.  New characters came into being.  Stories that might never have been told began. 

Too bad those in McDonalds couldn’t see it.  All they saw was that a large group of people on computers counted down until zero and then began writing on their laptops like nothing happened.  I did get a pretty big chuckle out of their confusion.

This year, I’m trying something very different.  Writing is always about the journey, about trying something new.  Last year, I finished my fourth YA Fantasy novel, and I’ve got to say, it’s probably the best one that I’ve written.

This year, I decided to try something new.  I’m used to writing teenagers, love stories and fantastical worlds full of magic and danger.  I wanted to push myself to a new level.

This year, I’m writing about a woman in her 40’s.  She’s married and she already has three kids, one of them being a teenager.  She’s dealing with life itself, that after “happily ever after.”  One of the reason why I decided that I wanted to focus on this was because I wanted to write a book about Alzheimer’s.  It’s such an important topic, yet I keep seeing it romanticized. 

Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease, on all accounts.  It’s a change in personality to the point that when you’re interacting with that person who has Alzheimer’s, you’ll never get them back – not completely.  There may be moments that they seem to come out of their fog, but that moment becomes less and less common.  They slip into their own world, leaving those behind to learn to deal with the loss.

In the first two hours of November, I was able to write just about 2,700 words.  Almost immediately after, I went to sleep.  When I woke up, I saw this on my twitter feed.

How appropriate is that?  November is National Novel Writing Month and Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month.  I feel like the two of them are converging into my novel. 

That being said, I’m going to use the month of November to give you updates on how my novel is going, and I’m also going to be sharing my own experiences and knowledge about Alzheimer’s.  I would love to hear any of yours!  The best thing we can do to take care of those with Alzheimer’s is to advocate for them.  They’re the ones who don’t have a voice.

Happy November!