The challenge…

Back in November, I took the challenge — any writer knows what I am talking about. I did NaNoWriMo 2011. For those of you who aren’t familiar, NoNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, an annual writing campaign that was started back in 2001. It challenges writers to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I was in the midst of my first semester of college when November crept up on me. I had planned on fleshing out some sort of outline for something completely fresh and new. That didn’t happen. Instead, I freestyle wrote 50,000 words based around the North Coast Mystery characters. I did finish, by the way. I completed the 50,000-some odd words in the 30 days, with a couple of days to spare, if I remember correctly. It was rough. I normally have an outline when I write, something to keep me organized and on-track with my ideas. This was a very different type of NCM story whereas there was not an investigation at the forefront of the story but rather it was the subplot. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do when I started, although unsure of whether or not I could pull it off. What followed was an extremely intense 50,000 words with some pretty brutal scenes that are gut-wrenching for even me to read back through. The jest of the story is Rob gets injured on the job and winds up in a coma and in his mind he wanders through his memories. We know from Rob himself that not all his memories are pleasant. There are some nice ones but then as time goes on, they aren’t so pleasant anymore. The short story I posted a while back that I used for my English assignment was an extended scene from that novel. I think the stuff with Rob’s mom was particularly difficult to write, partially because I’ve always kept everything blurry even in my own mind about what exactly went on during that period. Not anymore.
The “walk through your dreams” part isn’t the only plot line of the book. That would be a very long and tedious 50,000 words. It consumes about maybe 15,000 words or so. The real challenge comes when Rob wakes up with amnesia.
It’s a very good story. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out and how well organized it was for having no outline whatsoever and making everything up as I went along. There were some very good scenes, both present and past, that I wrote. What I have not decided however is whether or not this story will ever see the light of day. Part of me thinks that if I polished it up, it would make a fantastic novel, several stories in the future (we’re talking like the 11th or 12th in the series here, folks). But I haven’t decided yet. As I said, it’s pretty brutal. It’s very honest and very realistic in its portrayal of a grieving, mentally unstable alcoholic told from the point of view of the teenage boy having to live with her and keep everything together. One line from the book that perfectly summed it all up was what Lilah told Russ when he asked what she thought happened back then, “I think that your mom wasn’t strong enough to hold it together and that everything fell to Rob to do and he had no choice but to be strong and hold it together. And after so many years of having to do that…it affected him on levels that will never get completely better.”