Okay, now it’s really over. Last night a bunch of hardy wrimos (is there any other kind but hardy?) gathered on the mezzazine at the Armory to celebrate our victory during National Novel Writing Month. There were 167,150 participants, worldwide, and 32,173 winners. Wow!

2,427,190,537 total words were written during this year’s NaNo. Many thousands were read aloud last night, and shy persons taking the microphone could not ask for a kinder, gentler audience than those rows of fellow wrimos, in from the cold in a lovely setting. My daughter and I had to dash out early, before the cake (!) arrived. Neither of us wanted to go; it was so warm in there.

At home, the words of a title (nano 2010?) sprang to my younger daughter’s mind: Puppy Prom. Curses! Why didn’t I think of that?! It’s totally awesome!  She’ll be off to a good start next year. Me? Around Halloween, just like this year, I’ll sit down with nothing. No title, no outline, no plot, no character sketches, no idea what I’m going to write about, and I’ll begin. It won’t be any Puppy Prom, but it’ll be something. I can’t wait.

And then there’s this, too: if I’m someone who can hammer out a 50,000 word novel in a month, what else might I try, and do? What might any of us do? I know that sounds really awfully much. But I can’t help it. National Novel Writing Month brings out all the sap in me, and I leave it feeling full of hope, I really do. And, not knowing quite what to do next. (Except for my real job, things like that.)

There’s always RePoWriMo. Refrigerator Poetry Writing Month? You write poetry using only refrigerator poetry magnets. Anyone? It’s in April. Keep it in mind.

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Remember when you were a kid, and someone read you a story? Countless stories? Didn’t you love how they all ended in the most satisfying way, with the same two bracing words?

Here it is the close of a long November and NaNoWriMo ’09, and my two daughters have won. They met their word count goals and brought their stories around to the place where they could write: The End. In Eliza’s story, ogres are defeated, the antidote is found, and the villain becomes the hero. As for Molly, the character she named and brought to life — Lilac –finally finds the answers. In the end, the girl knows who she is.

My daughters do, too. They’re writers.

Today, I’m talking with Molly, 9 year old wrimo.

Molly, you’re a nanowrimo veteran, having won last year. What has been your experience so far, NaNoWriMo -09? Well, sometimes I’m feeling that I can’t get up and write, but if I just write, I can get unexpected plot ideas. And I’m enjoying nano this year, even more than last year, because I’m older, and have more experience with writing. It’s just really fun.

Unexpected plot ideas? My characters are in a dilemma right now. One of them is an orphan, and she really wants information about her parents. She moved from Florida to New York, and she made a friend named Sydney. But I felt really tired a few days ago and couldn’t think of anything. And suddenly this crazy weird but exciting idea came to me: I’ll have them kidnapped!

That definitely sounds unexpected, Molly! Any tactics for the final week of nano? I’m just going to keep writing, fill in a few scenes that I haven’t filled in yet, but first do the end. (Which I actually already wrote.)

Oh! Can you tell us how it ends?
No.

Fair enough. Although it’s completely irrelevant to nano, do  you think your novel is very good? It’s better than last year’s, but that’s not saying anything. But I actually do like it for the reasons that it deals with some real life problems, as well as being really exciting.

That sounds like a terrific novel, Molly! Thanks for talking with me today. Good luck!

Okay. Now I have to leave and work on my nano.

Right. Me, too.

Week three of nanowrimo 2009, and it’s supposed to be a great ride from here on out to 50,000 words, the finish line, the whirr and rattle of the printer spitting out the winner’s certificate. Instead, I’m having the worst couple of writing days so far this month. So I’m taking some time to do some research about the following items, all of which (and more!) play a role in my high-speed novel:

1) cutting an album (what do I even call that? pressing a cd?),

2) EFP (explosively formed penetrator) roadside bombs, and,

3) the roosting habits of the Little Brown Myotis. (I am already aware that these bats can eat their own weight in mosquitoes every night. That would be like you or me eating thirty pizzas in one go. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but… well I am. It can’t be done. I’d hate to see the Big Brown Myotis bat.)

749,689,061. That’s the total NaNoWriMo 2009 word count as of 9:05 am, Pacific Time. My novel is at a very respectable 21,720. But that was week one, the week during which all that easy breezy beautiful first ten to twenty thousand words just pours out, high velocity style. (which is to say, not anything like publishable, but fast and furious.)

Screech! Now we’re into week two. My nanoing daughters and I keep saying, hopefully, to each other, “things are going great, and I haven’t even had to use any tricks yet!” By that we mean: nano tricks.

Such as?

Such as having a character read aloud from the 164 – box of Crayons. Many of the colors have two-word names, bonus! Or, having a character walk on and sing all the lyrics to Waltzing Matilda, and then disappear, never to be seen again. A dream sequence. A sudden recollection of a past life. Two past lives.

But here’s really a neat trick. A few weeks ago I saw the (former Oregon resident and) poet Dorianne Laux give a reading, and one of the poems she read was called “Cher.” The origin of the poem was a challenge from her husband, the poet Joe Millar. He gave her ten words and told her to use them to write a poem meant to say something she’s been wanting to say but hasn’t. Let’s us try it.

Here are ten words:

1. Peat moss

2. Jellybean

3. Post-it Note

4. Convertible

5. Plausible

6. Switch

7. Tooth

8. Curator

9. Fringe

10. Custard cup

You can try this yourself, or — nano trick! — make your character write the poem. It will probably take your character several tries. Record them all in your novel. Good luck.