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.

My daughter has the right idea, very dialed in with this high-velocity noveling.

She’s only 195 words into her nanowrimo novel, and already the hero/villain (to save time cutting to the chase, one character does double-duty as both good AND evil) has committed the crime, set out on a quest to find the antidote to make it right, and at the moment is riding a Pega-corn (winged unicorn) into combat with a pack of ogres. Wow. You go, noveling 6-year-old!

Me? Not zooming along as speedily, plot-wise. Yesterday I left my character in a fencing class, considering the balance between defense and aggression. Zzzzzzzz.

6-year-olds don’t pace themselves, they give it all they’ve got. That’s the way to do it.

I’m going to follow her lead. Hop on a Pega-corn, maybe fight some ogres. But first, coffee.

Novel Influenza A, H1N1, yes, the swine flu, has blown its foul, fetid breath through our humble abode, leaving us all weak, pale, and pounds lighter, even our six-year-old, who hadn’t an ounce to spare, and now, only now, soon to be restored to our former health and vigor, and filled with the glory that it is to be alive, we stand, three-fourths of us anyway, stand united, sharpened pencils in pinched fingers, ready to face November and whatnot.

Glad you’re over the hump, susanl, but, why so wordy, and not quite true, and, well, badly written?

Oh, that. Because… it’s National Novel Writing Month.  And every word counts. Literally. All 50,000 of them. They must be counted, they must be written quickly, and they must add up to 50k.

National Novel Writing Month, in the words of Evil Genius and Founder Chris Baty, is “a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.  Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.” Now in its 10th year, 2008 nano had 120,000 participants around the globe, and 20,000 of them won. That is, they wrote the 50,000 words. That’s a decent novel, the length of Huck Finn, for example.

It’s all about the word count. It’s about going forward, building without tearing down. Kurt Vonnegut: “Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way of making your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.”

So when Tim DuRoche asked me to blog about my nano experience for the PCS website – well, he didn’t ask ME, per se, he asked my friend, the writer Natalie S., but she has never done nano in her life, and besides, she is off at a prestigious and very fancy writers’ retreat you all have heard of and wish you could go to, but let me just say to Natalie, Hey, Natalie, I have my own writer’s retreat right here (see cute T-shirt: “An idyllic writers retreat, smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life”), just me and my mini HP, and a hundred and twenty thousand or so other fellows — so, yeah. (Again, with the wordiness!!)

So, when N couldn’t do it, and she passed the buck to me and Tim said, “uh, okay,” I was TOO THRILLED. Here’s why: (insert wiggly line flashback effect here…)

Think back…One year ago… Nano 2008.  I trotted my winner’s certificate (in its clear sheet-protector) down to the PCS box office, and a man wearing an excellent tie presented me with four free, count ‘em, free tickets to “A Christmas Carol.” My entire family went to see the production on one of those dark and stormy days we had so many of in December. Remember?  There was no one out on the roads, the wind was howling, and the snow was falling, but the show went on, as the show must! and the entire experience was just like magic. (I am not just going for word count, here. My husband and I were filled with such good will and enthusiasm that we subscribed to the remainder of the PCS season!)

Sadly, I thought I might skip NaNo this year, because I’m in the middle of a novel revision, and, thanks be, I have a lot of contract work, and then there’s this FLU, and such and so on. But, you know, I’d miss the community. For a lot of us typically solitary writers, that’s what it’s all about — this gorgeous web of noveling people in all pockets of the world, including a town called “Dinosaur,” all supporting each other online and in person, and never is heard a discouraging word, all month long. It’s a beautiful thing.

And, thanks to the lovely and talented NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, my two daughters (ages 6 and 9) will be writing novels this month, too. Fully three fourths of my family will be shirking our duties, eating takeout, wearing the same clothes day in and day out, etc. etc. to be nanoing fools this month. That’s three out of four, seventy-five percent, or per cent, three slices of the family pie, three quarters, oh AGAIN with the word count!

So, yes. Truly, when Tim asked me if I’d be interested in blogging about Nano on the PCS website, I said, in the words of Dickens, “Abso-bloomin’-lutely!” I’m pretty sure it’s Dickens. Maybe Rogers and Hart. Or Lionel Bart. Lerner and Lowe. George Bernard Shaw. (Word count, sorry! Habit!) Anybody? Help?  Because I don’t have even a MOment to look it up. It’s nano-time. And I’m writing.

Hope to see you here.