Falling behind

I’m falling quite behind Chris Baty's target of “15k by Monday.” I am not excessively worried as I have tons of notes and outlines for future parts of the novel. However, psychologically it is hard: the word count snowball must roll soon enough to gain the needed momentum and become an avalanche.

What I did was to spend another weekend working on a science fiction story for yet another anthology. I did so somewhat reluctantly. First of all, I’m not 100% to be on target with this submission: they are looking for longer fiction, and I really couldn’t get the story to work over 3000 words or so. It might very well be that my writing efforts will be wasted, and the editor won’t move past the first page reporting the word count.

But the hardest thing was really to leave Nino behind. As I reported already a few times, it’s becoming increasingly painful to leave the novel’s universe for this own. Worse, the longer I stay away, the more difficult it is to once more immerse myself into it, a difficulty that manifests itself in needing to reorganize my thoughts about what happens next, or simply procrastinating the putting of actual words on (virtual paper). The process, I found more and more, is like a snake molting out of its old skin, or like those howlingly painful werewolf transformations from 50s horror flicks. Except, of course, that one is growing all those hair and fangs inside the brain. And that, of all things, is bound to hurt.

Listen to Ed

One great thing I started doing was following Ed McBain’s advice:

No outline at first, except the loose one in your head, draped casually around the idea.

Once you've found the voice, write your first chapter or your first scene.

This is how Fire Season started: a couple of pages I wrote long ago, without thinking too much about it. Some scenes which kept bouncing around in my head. Nothing was very developed. More of a mood, a tone, the voice of Nino sounding in my head, very similar yet well differentiated from my own.

Outline the novel in your own way [...] The outline is you, talking to yourself on paper

This was the hardest part, the one that took the longest during the first NaNo days. Pieces of the story would emerge, like various colored vegetables in a minestrone, and I would arrange them in some tentative order. I found out along the way that outlines work only in 3rd person, while the novel is in 1st person. Ed is right: I'm talking to myself when outlining. I'm acting as Nino when writing.

Set yourself a definite goal each day. Tack it on the wall

This is easy. And NaNoWriMo works very well to institutionalize that process.

I found that avoiding skipping a day is very important too. But not always feasible. The best advice I actually don’t remember where it comes from. Some interview with some writer. But I found it to work very well: every day I review what I wrote the day before, and quickly edit it. I usually don’t make major changes, but this allows me to end up with cleaner text and to “get back” into that parallel universe. A universe of dangerous adventures but, somehow, greater serenity of the real one.

My week

Monday: Stress
Tuesday: Despair
Wednesday: Conflict
Thursday: Weariness
Friday: Coma
Saturday: Recovery
Sunday: Dread
Monday: Stress...

One safe islands are the lunchtimes I spend writing in this beautiful place:


On good days, one can see the channel islands, on and the sun’s glitter spread on the ocean. Below, the world goes on in its frantic activity. They look like multicolored mice from here. Everything is silent, and we are suspended above the sphere of the real.