And that's when the magic started.
Sheridan-Peters says someday she may go back and edit her 2001 novel. But the process itself -- that one-month experience, and every November that has followed -- is the reward. She says after she finished that first novel, she gave it to a friend to read.
"She handed it back to me and said, 'This does not suck,' " Sheridan-Peters says. "That was all the praise I ever expected to get."
Participants in National Novel Writing Month swarm Books-A-Million in Dupont Circle. The project challenges writers to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days.
(Photos Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
|
|
To scan the NaNoWriMo message boards is to peer into a fascinating slice of pop culture. The two most popular categories are those labeled "Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror" and "Romance & Erotic Fiction." Part of that, suggests Baty, has to do with the fact that sci-fi writers have taken to the Web easily. Another element may be the fact that romantic fiction is highly formulaic and therefore easy to write in a month. Because 30 days does not allow much time to research the Regency period, or the physics of space travel, the message boards are filled with all manner of requests for arcane information. There are subject lines that say, "Anyone know about forklifts and licensing?" and "incest . . . how wrong is this?" and "Habitable star systems."
One person posts this question: "Anyone know of a disease, preferably genetic, with no symptoms so long as you're medicated but will kill you within a few days if you go off your meds?"
A woman from the state of Washington writes in with the following query: "Any ideas for traits that might inspire unjustified hatred in the wife toward a blameless, gentle, hardworking man?" This sets off a firestorm of enthusiastic responses from other women, such as: "Snoring! After a while you just want to smother them with a pillow," and "My ex used to grind his teeth at night. . . . Homicidal ideation? You betcha."
Is NaNoWriMo the downfall of literature? Baty says he has often feared that professional writers would regard his experiment as "an insulting mockery of their craft," but he's never heard a professional writer say this. Instead, he says, some professional writers use NaNoWriMo to escape writer's block. After all, they're not doing away with the concept of editing. They're simply putting the editing off for as long as it takes to write rough drafts.
Of the two people who've managed to publish NaNo novels, both substantially edited their drafts after the November frenzy was over, and one was already a professional writer. His name is Jon F. Merz, a writer of supernatural thrillers. His 2001 NaNo novel, "The Destructor," pits his hero, a sort of vampire cop, against a female villain who is part vampire and part werewolf.
NaNoWriMo is "sort of the puke-it-out phase," Merz says. "Perfection -- if it's attainable -- comes later."
The other NaNo success story is Lani Diane Rich, 33, who had always dabbled in writing but never thought she stood a chance of being published before NaNoWriMo 2002. Her creation from that year, a chick-lit book called "Time Off for Good Behavior," took her 25 days, plus six weeks of editing.
"My problem was, I was always going back and editing myself before it was finished, looking for it to be perfect from the beginning," Rich says. "The great thing about WriMo is they're like, 'Write it -- write it badly -- just write it!' "
Baty says only about 17 percent of those who register for his experiment write 50,000 words. They send their finished works in via the Web site, and a computer program verifies their word count and declares them winners. It's all done on the honor system, and Baty says that to pad novels toward their 50,000-word goal, some WriMos cut contractions, replacing "don't" with "do not," and he himself has made characters hard of hearing so that dialogue would need to be repeated. Since there's no prize at the end, aside from getting one's name on the Web site, he figures it doesn't much matter if they cheat. The main point is they're writing.
Back at Books-A-Million, Sheridan-Peters taps at her laptop, then stops.
"Okay, I need the name for a kitschy erotica boutique," she says, sucking on an iced chai latte through a straw.
"Kitty Cat Dreams," suggests one woman.
Sheridan-Peters looks dissatisfied. "I'll figure something out," she says.
Already, in an attempt to jumpstart her plot, Sheridan-Peters has burned her character's Vespa. She's considered burning the character's boat, too, but hasn't done it yet. "I think it may turn out to be a murder mystery," she says. "There may be a body."
Art is so haphazard. Who can predict the wiles of a fertile imagination? Sheridan-Peters recalls how two years ago she wrote a book that came to a natural conclusion at just 42,000 words. She needed 8,000 more to "win," and she went to her husband for help.
"He looked at me and he said, 'So you should kill someone,' " she says. "And I did. I killed the protagonist's husband. And it worked beautifully."
