That’s right. In a desperate attempt to thwart my creative stagnancy, I’ve undertaken the challenge of writing a novel in one month.
Let me clarify: I won’t be attempting to write a full, revised novel in one month. The basic concept is challenging/forcing oneself to write about 1,600 words a day, spending little to no time with revision, simply pushing the story forward, until, after 30 days, the result is a 50,000-word novel, no matter how unpolished it may be. This is the general idea behind the National Novel Writing Month of November (or NaNoWriMo), which is a support group of sorts where many writers put themselves up to this challenge simultaneously, using online message boards to offer one another support and share progress. Since my creative neglect is pressing and must be addressed before I burst, I will be participating in an offshoot of this group, called July Novel Writing Month (JulNoWriMo).
I have absolutely no promises on this, but I am trying my hardest to push forward with the support of the group. I’m generally a very undisciplined writer (as the frequency of updates on this site can attest to), and also impatient, which is why I have never written anything beyond a handful of pages up to this point. Even if it’s quantity over quality, I’m setting out to change this. Revision and perfection is for August. Simply writing is for now.
The basic premise of the story is a reclusive musician who struggles with addiction and mental illness and his internal conflicts and conflicts with those who try to lift him from his misery and isolation. It will be a heavy story, but I hope it’s compelling and I’m not aiming to make it relentlessly bleak.
I struggled with what direction to take, because I feel like I have it in me to write something completely different, like a young adult magical realism novel or a philosophical science fiction story or a coming of age story or a black satire or so on and so forth. I think I’ll try something entirely different in November and see how it comes out.
If there is anyone out there who is remotely interested, I could really use your help. It will help me to be purpose-driven if I know people are following my progress, even if doing so languidly. With that said, I will be providing regular updates here and elsewhere with my content, and you can follow the crazy meandering story of an author who has little aim for said story. (I have little idea of where the journey will take me. Join me).
You can read my (remember, unpolished) first chapter here.
like drunken fireflies
adrift in a knowing wind,
embers come to rest
on her open palms.
blinking into dulled hues
of orange, they float
away as ashen flakes,
leaving, like twisted
black ribbons,
drawings upon her skin.
An ancient Japanese legend held that a wish would be granted to anyone who folded a thousand paper cranes. A young girl named Sadako Sasaki, stricken with leukemia from the bombing of Hiroshima, spent hours on her deathbed folding paper cranes.
One by one they fall
like little bent feathers
from the tips of her fingers,
gathering like snowfall
till her bed is lined
by a flightless white flock.
With two tiny mirages
of gauzy wings flapping
burnt onto her irises,
she waits in quiet resolve
for the cranes to lift her
in a chorus across the sky.
Another greyed dawn
pressed against my windowpane.
In quiet procession,
the streetcars are swallowed
behind the horizon’s yellow teeth.
I open the window and let in the chill
so that I can see
how part of me leaves
with each wispy breath.
It would all come to be routine:
the drips that fell on our eyelids
jarring us awake at daybreak,
the handfuls of ice we’d gather
for patching our sun-scathed walls.
Even the murky breaths we’d touch
with our frostbitten fingertips,
the bedside stories we’d whisper
against our cold, moonlit walls.
Still, the ice on your eyelashes,
your voice like waxed violin strings,
your smile that curls like a wick:
I needed them. You knew this.
You knew this so you stayed with me.
You stayed when I tipped our lantern,
when drips fell in our open eyes.
You stayed while our igloo gave way.
every passing glow
of headlights on the wall
assumes somehow
the shape of you
and every bit of shadow
that clings on as you
slide on into the night
is me somehow
When the executioner was the only one
unconvinced of the killer’s guilt,
he pulled the switch
like rope on the pulley
of his own descending grave.
When the killer’s face began to appear
ruffled and out of place in his dreams,
he would wake up chilled
to the marrow,
his fingers
clutching the rope
that held the pendulum over his head.
send the flies away
the jilted spider
shouted from the corner!
send away the gleam
that slides across
these silken threads!
the paint chips
mistaken
for snowflakes!
the smell of
glistening venom
in the morning!
leave me to weave
myself cocooned
until she returns!
the little widow!
winding the web
that unwound me.
march lightfooted in that porcelain frame
and fill the air with the sound of bones
against pavement, like a pair of dice
tossed on a block of ice.
the night is spotted with street-walkers
so keep that skull up, chum,
because here comes a breather now
who already looks as if he’s seen a ghost.
*the Halloween poem
