Writing fiction is lonely work. No one understands what you’re working on, or (if it’s a novel) why it’s taking SOO long. The danger inherent in this work is that you’ll lose heart, lose focus, quit.
NaNoWriMo is great way of countering the loneliness–you start something new, write every day at a fever pitch; you cheer on your buddies and in turn are cheered on by them.
But the month of NaNoWriMo has come and gone. Your daily habit has corroded. The new novel idles, wondering what’s next, like a powerful car forced to wait while it’s driver makes up his mind.
What to do?
Here’s an intriguing option that just popped out at me from the blogroll of one of my commentors, Lisa Kenney (thanks, Lisa).
The Dickens Challenge is the brainchild of novelist Timothy Hallinan, whose special concern for novelists is HOW TO FINISH that sucker (so many of us don’t). Tim has challenged his readers to post one chapter each week of a current work in progress.
When you consider that some of the great novels of the 19th Century were published in weekly installments, and written on the fly, this isn’t so a bizarre notion. Still, it’s scary to think you might be walking off a cliff, as it were–in full view of anyone who wants to look. But then, what worthwhile life adventure wasn’t scary at the onset?
The Fool, in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, owns nothing but the few belongings in his sack. A little dog is yapping at him, but he ignores it. He’s youthful, naive, full of energy and hope…AND WALKING OFF A CLIFF.
Tim characterizes The Dickens Challenge this way: "Think of it as doing Nanowrimo in a store window, but with no time limit…." I would add that, unlike Nanowrimo, which is all about achieving that daily word count, the DC brings the focus back to the true mission, which is to make it mean something.
Personally, I have to say The Dickens Challenge might be just the thing to cure my own post-NaNoWriMo blues. I’m tempted to jump in. Anybody else?
More on this in a Part 2 tomorrow.
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Do it!!
We’d all be happy to have you join us.
Tim Hallinan
PS — Gotta write my chapter for Sunday.
This is exciting! We would love to attract some more writers. And Chapter 6 is calling me too…
I find this interesting. Tim’s site and all the comments are great!! However, I’m in the middle of major edit and can’t take time to work on a new project. But, I did want to share something I recently read. The Cleveland Plain Dealer (my mother-in-law sent it to me before she headed South), did a six-part series. It was a six chapter short story. The interesting part was…each chapter was written by a different journalist on staff at the paper (no not fiction writers –as a side, it was interesting to see the non-fiction writer cross the line). The first journalist wrote chapter 1, the second wrote chapter 2, etc. It was fascinating. Each chapter completely different from the first yet they were moving toward an ending in an oddly cohesive way. It was interesting to read.
So best of luck to any who decide to hop on the writing bus and submit a chapter a week moving toward a purpose of writing a novel.
There was a small vogue for these multi-author serial novels about 10 years ago. I wrote a chapter for one called “Pete & Shirley, the Great Tar Heel Novel.” It was fun and I learned a few things. Like: those who write toward the end of the story always have it tougher than those who set the pace. If you write Chapter 15, for instance, you must deal with the accumulation of everybody else’s creative choices, made earlier, whether they’re any good or not.
I learned you should be nice to the next writer in line. In my chapter, Pete’s wife makes him burn his old journals from past love affairs–except he doesn’t: he burns a decoy stash instead. He hides the real stuff in the trunk of his car, holding back one volume, which he takes it into the bathroom, locks the door, and searches for “one particular date–July 17, 1967.” I ended the chapter with: “And there it was.”
Kaye Gibbons the next writer in line later told me that, when she read that last sentence, she wanted to wring my neck. All in good fun, but she had a point. I had thrown her a blind “hail-Mary” prompt that gave her nothing immediate to take off from.
To shift metaphors, instead of passing her the baton, I mimed passing it–meaning she would have to get her own baton, but make it look as though she was taking it from me. This is what improv comedians call pimping: you point off-stage, look at your scene partner with goggle eyes, and yell, “Look! Don’t you SEE it?”
So, what should I have done? Something like this. “…July 17, 1967, the date I accidentally shared a cab with Brigitte Bardot.” Silly as it is, the Brigitte Bardot gambit would give her something to build on.
holy smokes i got excited about your workshop after rooting around your site, but dang it, you’re not in texas.
hope you don’t mind, but i’ll be back to hang out…