So would I count the experience as a success? Yes and no. No in that I didn’t make the word count, which is a fundamental aspect of a “just do it!” challenge like this. It’s disappointing that another year running I didn’t meet the challenge. Yes in that I came closer than ever before. In that I’m proud of my little work and I intend to work on it to completion, whatever that means (I’m not going to equate “completion” with a word count of 50,000). Another great thing about frame stories is that you can always add stories and take stories away. They’re inflatable, compressible, expandable, shrinkable….) And I intend to make it good, which means I will take it slow and steady.
Some days I wanted to write and I wrote. Some days I didn’t want to write and I wrote anyway. Other days I positively rebelled against myself for subjecting myself to such a monstrous thing, and read a book, went for a walk or dabbled in German instead. Anything but write. Part of the struggle on those days was the struggle to overcome the feeling that I was wasting my time…and indeed, many, many things vyed for my attention throughout the month, many of which I love doing just as much as writing, and will bear a little more fruit in the here in what is essentially a critical growing season, i.e., my time in Spain. Translating, and everything to do with translating. Planning a trip. Studying Catalan. I can write a novel in English in a month anytime. But there are some things that make the most sense to focus on in the 10 to 12 months I’m in Catalonia, in Spain, in Europe, in grad school.
Though to be fair, it doesn’t have to be one thing or another. I definitely found that my work was a great platform for reflection on and consolidation of the topics I’m covering in school and the novel things and ideas I encounter in my daily life in Spain. The whole work is a pseudo-translation (rare these days) with a translator who inserts herself quite a bit into the text (rarer still in any era). For example, one of my short stories is based on the life of Gaudí.
Incidentally, because I live so close to the Sagrada Familia, and indeed in a city so permeated with the colors and textures of Gaudí—or maybe just because he was a great person—I’ve taken a great interest in Gaudí. And one of the reasons for this is his complete dedication to his craft, and indeed his increasingly narrowed and intensified focus throughout his life. He dedicated the last 10 years of his life to working exclusively on the Sagrada Familia. And when I write about and reflect on that, I begin to wonder why I’m not focusing even a little more single-mindedly on being a great translator. Indeed, there’s a section of the Sagrada Familia, a downstairs chapel, that is open to the public and contains Gaudi’s tomb. Beside it are a few pamphlets and cards for sale for 0.10-2.00 euros promoting the movement for Gaudí’s beatification. Despite not being Catholic and even having mixed feelings about the beatification process, I did get a little card for the beautiful prayer on it, which reads in part: “You instilled in your servant Antoni Gaudí, architect, a great love for your Creation…. Grant…that I also may learn to dedicate myself to a well-done work.”
Of course, we don’t (and can’t) all take things to the extreme that Gaudí did. I don’t get the impression from what I read about him that he was an altogether well-rounded human being.
Nanowrimo could be called the literary equivalent of a crash diet or a gung-ho exercise program. I don’t think I realized, before diving in, the degree to which writing is a practice, a discipline, a facet of a lifestyle—especially good writing. I’ve heard it said that completing the Nanowrimo challenge requires training and a gradual buildup throughout the year. Personally, then, I find the whole concept of Nanowrimo a little paradoxical. If you’re already in the habit of writing regularly, without great big fits and starts and stops, then you don’t really need a month-long word binge.
The whole experience has been one of mirrors and poles. I’m satisfied and I’m not. It’s a novel(-in-progress), the longest type of literary work that is commonplace today (unless you classify huge tomes distinctly), and a collection of short stories, which constitute the shortest type of literary work that is commonplace today (unless you classify flash fiction and the like distinctly). It’s a necessary act and a waste of time. It’s a translation and an original work. It’s one practice that would benefit from singleminded focus amid many. It’s about quantity, it’s about quality. To take up the Nanowrimo challenge is to play with extremes and opposites. And maybe that helps us create more powerful synergies.
I’m setting my own challenge, then. I’d like to finish a draft of my novel. A good, polished one, regardless of word count. Not this month. And not next month. But before I leave Spain, so that I can edit and polish it up properly after I leave. As one of my favorite writers, Téa Obreht, said:
“I did no writing while I was visiting the Balkans. I do no writing while I’m in Belgrade visiting my grandma. There’s a way you think about your experiences and process them after the fact that makes it much more organic. When you’re in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you’re writing about it.”
Ultimately, I’d like to self-publish the book before 1 November 2014. It’s ambitious, but you have to set goals. It may not be very good, but as another of my favorite writers, Orson Scott Card, said, all writers have a million words of crap that they need to get out of their system. I will have come a little closer to that.
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