Day 2 of NaNoWriMo: Who Needs Inspiration To Write When There’s Chocolate?

If you wait for inspiration, you’re at the mercy of inspiration.

I once read about a writer who admitted he masturbated his way to the end of his novel. It was the only thing that got him to finish it. No, I don’t mean finish reading it.

If you’ve ever slogged through a confusing preface to a sagging middle, ending up with a denouement with a hole in the plot big enough to drive a truck through, you know I can only mean finish writing it.

Of course, as prim and proper as I was at that time, I turned up my nose in disgust, imagining an Alex Portnoy-like figure, not just fucking the family dinner but his best-seller as well. (If you’re too young to get the Portnoy reference, read John Updike. It will amplify your imposter syndrome for a hot minute, but then you’ll learn a lot about writing gorgeous sentences.)

Anyway, I became one with dreading the blank page when I wrote my first book. No, solo delite wasn’t my drug of choice, though I’d be lying if I wasn’t occasionally tempted. I just learned that to finish a long work of even mediocre prose, you can’t wait for the muse to grace you with her presence.

Inspiration is like the wind: it comes and goes. Meanwhile, you have a deadline and can’t wait for her to show up. So how do you handle the anxiety when you don’t have an idea, when the words won’t come, when doubt threatens to crush you?

The answer is simple: anyway you can. Masturbate if you must. Or, do what I do. Eat chocolate.

Just don’t waste time waiting for inspiration.

Let me tell you how my Day 1 of NaNo went and maybe it will give you a clue how you might handle yours.

First, let me explain why I’m doing NaNo after publishing over thirty original works and putting enough of them into paperback and hard cover that I have fifty-some titles on Amazon.

You might think I don’t need to challenge myself this way, and after my first NaNo a couple of years ago, which I did for fun after starting a new genre, I thought, “Been there, done that.”

I have almost fifty years of writing under my belt and a solid quarter of a century of daily writing to boot. So I didn’t need to challenge my discipline, or so I thought before the pandemic hit.

The isolation didn’t affect me very much for the first three or four months. But then by summer, like almost everyone else, I was tired of it all and hit the wall. My productivity slowed down, I went begging for ideas, and eventually just couldn’t seem to write anymore.

I’ve turned a corner, but it’s not easy coming back from a drought, which is why I instituted my daily writing practice in the first place. Stop and start writing is its own form of cruel and unusual punishment.

I’ve turned a corner, but it’s not easy coming back from a drought, which is why I instituted my daily writing practice in the first place. Stop and start writing is its own form of cruel and unusual punishment.

You think you’ve put all your doubts about your ability to rest. Until you take a short break from your writing for a day, two days. Then it becomes a week. Pretty soon you can’t remember how to boot up your writing program, and you’re not even sure you can spell single syllable words.

Once you get your nerve to pick up your story or article again, your doubts come roaring back and it can take weeks to subdue them. It’s a merry-go-round ride I’d promised myself I’d never take again. Writing every day is hard, but not as hard as stop and start writing.

I’ve written about the virtues of a daily writing practice before, so I won’t go on. Suffice to say, I thought I had it beaten. But when the pandemic brought me to my knees, I decided the structure of NaNo would help me get back on track.

I chose a cozy mystery as my form because I’ve been reading Louise Penny and she combines good writing, a serious story, and the elements Agatha Christie developed to create what we consider the cozy.

The books I read when I prepared to write my first cozy were a bit “light” for my taste, but I figured it was easy money, a form I could copy. The Darling Valley Cozy Mystery Series was born. Little did I know, I’d fall in love with my books.

But I abandoned my Olivia character and her band of saints and sinners in Billionaire Hollow for greener pastures ($$$$) after six books. Now after reading Penny, Olivia called to me again. So I’m starting a new book in the series with only that bit of reasoning for justification, and here’s how I started in yesterday.

It’s been three years or so since I left Olivia and company in Darling Valley and I decided I’d pick up their story after the end of the pandemic. A bit of wishful thinking, but it’s my book. I can do whatever I want.

I imagined her at her desk that I’ve described in previous books, setting up her first meeting with a client in over 18 months. Okay, now what?

I wrote a few sentences and then introduced recurring characters. It was all garbage writing but a germ of an idea came to me. I had to have a murder and one began to form in my head.

Several sentences later, nothing coalesced so I got up from my desk and picked up my knitting. My stitch count was off so I ripped out a few rows, when I remembered I always start my books with a preface. But for a preface, I needed to know the crime.

Time for a snack. A slice of buttered sourdough and some chocolate chips later, I wrote 1000 words and had the bare bones of a preface and the outline of a plot. But now I needed to research how to get into an ATM without a password. So, of course, time for some internet scrolling.

Word count 1097. Still garbage writing, mostly an outline. Time in 90 minutes give or take.

Couldn’t find how the murderer would use his stolen ATM card to get into the bank account but discovered they are called Debit Cards now, so I corrected my text. Progress.

Stared at the page and decided my victim should be female not male.

More progress. Same word count, two hours in. Lunch time. I had to finish this session before the football game started.

Much growing doubt about my writing ability. I had been away from writing too long, I’m too old, I was never good in the first place, why had I started this NaNo thing, why hadn’t I made better investments so I wasn’t trying to earn money in my old age, why had I made all the bad decisions I’d made in my life, why had I…

STOP!

See, this is what happens when I don’t write every day. I end up questioning my whole existence. It isn’t Judgment Day. I just need a plot for my cozy.

Okay, the clock is ticking until kickoff. I go back to the preface. My killer has a tech startup so he’d know how to get into the bank account with an ATM, scratch that. Debit Card. I don’t have to explain how he knows. He just does. It’s fiction, not a banking manual.

I go back to Olivia. Her boyfriend shows up and they have a conversation. I stretch it out to 800 words give or take and put in a lot of description and outline some ideas. Still short of my target of 2300 words. Lunch.

Okay, after eating some turkey chili, I realize she needs to have a reunion party with her peeps. So I write that scene. An outline. Really, really garbage writing but it’s 2100 words, including some ideas for how the victim is killed and who he’s related to in Darling Valley and call it quits.

So far I hate the writing but I think there’s a plot in there. I also realize I need a second murder for a subplot. Shit.

And then the 9ers lose and I have to rip out more of my knitting.

But I got through day 1 of NaNo.

The moral of all this?

Some writers will tell you they work from neat, detailed outlines that go from scene to scene until they come to the end of a polished novel.

Maybe I’ll do that in my next life. I spent years trying to figure out how to write an outline and worried I wasn’t a real writer because I couldn’t outline my stories.

Finally, I figured out my process. I have an idea and I peck at it from start to finish. I write chronologically. I can’t write scenes and piece them together, though some writers do. I can’t do an outline because I don’t know what happens next until I write the scene. I write until I’ve run out of story and then I scribble my ideas for what comes next. Turns out that’s an outline. Then I fill that in. So I’m a hybrid writer I guess.

Most important, I can’t tell you how to write your stories. I can only tell you to work at it until you find the process that works for you.

I’ve learned that the answers to writing problems are in the work, in the words. I didn’t know what I was going to write when I decided to go back to my cozy genre. But I put down the little I knew and kept at it. By seeing the words on the page, I slowly and at times painfully, could see what needed to happen next.

The answers are always in the writing. You don’t find buried treasure by looking up at the stars. You have to dig, you have to dig into your words. For some of us the words hold the treasure.

If you get inspiration by looking our the window, go for it. After the game yesterday, I walked to my gym. That’s when some inspiration came to me. After I’d started the work and got some garbage words on the page, had done some digging and allowed some ideas to surface.

While on the bike, I realized who the second victim could be and began crafting an invitation to the reunion. It would get the people involved in the murders together. It’s one of the conventions of a cozy. There, I was ready to start day 2.

There’s no recipe for writing a book. There’s no magic in NaNo. It encourages you set aside some time every day and gives you a word target to finish a project in a month. It’s doable. After that, you’re on your own. The community of writers helps, but don’t let them intimidate you. Find your own way, do it your way.

All roads lead to Rome. But waiting for inspiration is a detour.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading and stay safe.