Day 5 NaNoWriMo Update

Here’s a Day 5 NaNoWriMo Update. This November (for those unaware, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month), I am doing a new and different project (on top of my other work).

This weekend is also NaNoWriMo’s special fundraising campaign, so if you can spare a few bucks for a very worthy cause, please do so!

I’m co-writing what may be aiming to possibly be (c’mon, it’s day 5!) a YA Thriller.

I’m doing it with my long-time pen pal (who doesn’t know she’s in today’s posts). We’re writing it back and forth. We’re using our character POVs like a doubles tennis match where each scene is the ball.

Your partner reads and reacts to what you’ve written, so there’s feedback with each volley. So far, it’s exciting and energizing to write this way. It feels so fast and easy to crank out words. And It’s caused me to revisit an old post of mine called The Crisis while thinking about Douglas Adams’ (and my) struggles with deadlines.

Each biography about Adams is worth reading for its unique point of view on what is ‘common knowledge’ about his life. Jem Roberts’ The Frood is a deep dive into the community of comedy and writing that Adams was shepherded into. It includes powerful examples that indicate to me, as a student of Adams, that Douglas always had trouble as a solo creative. Instances of lateness and procrastination in favor of anything that involved a more social and interactive opportunity did not suddenly appear with Adams’ success and wealth. They were there, like Kansas, all along.

I’m comforted by this because I am constantly tempted to forgo writing work for anything that involves people. Having examples of my hero Douglas doing the same, allows me to better confront that foible in myself and (with luck and hard work) counteract it.

Adams was successful with Lloyd and felt an enjoyable ease creating The Meaning of Liff. The biographies are full of project examples like the HHGTTG video game with Steve Meretzky and Last Chance To See with Mark Carwardine. Adams is portrayed as able to enjoy creating with people.

I do wonder how much more of his incredible talent and humor we could have had if Adams had lived long enough to benefit from a community like NaNoWriMo. Or even the debunking of the mythology that a film auteur is based on. Yes, at the end of many days, an author is a creator alone with words. But have you ever read the acknowledgments of any book?