WRITING

We Can’t Be Inspired for 30 Days in a Row

But that’s not NaNoWriMo is all about

When I say that I participate in NaNoWriMo almost every year and that this involves writing every day, many writers tell me, “I wouldn’t be able to write on command like that.”

I’m really very surprised by how often I get this response.

It always makes me wonder about the value that these writers give to inspiration. Not that I don’t think inspiration is extremely valuable for a writer — far from it! But I do think that if we want to go anywhere with our writing, we can’t count on inspiration, because it comes when she wants, and that’s certainly not everyday. Yet we’d better write every day if we want to achieve any form of finish work.

That response also makes it sound as if being able to write every day is cheaper than writing only when inspired. As if the lack of inspiration made anything we write just mechanic writing.

Why I think the idea of inspiration is a writer’s enemy

After being a short story writer for most of my life, I wrote my first novel — which actually turned out to be a trilogy of novels — during the 2010 NaNoWriMo.

It was an extremely educational experience for me. It jumpstarted my understanding of how a novel is written, as opposed to how a short story is written, and also it established a daily routine of writing that I kept for almost seven years.

Previous to that, I also thought it quite impossible to write every day.

How do you find the time? How do you find inspiration?

And don’t get me wrong, I was quite inspired by that story. I could say I was obsessed with it for at least five years. And still, I was not inspired every single day.

There were days I found it very hard to write. There were even days I didn’t write anything at all. There were weeks I didn’t write anything. But always I came back to it in the end, and that’s how I first wrote the first draft of the entire trilogy in five months — an achievement that I would have thought impossible for me before.

How did I do that?

Well, not by waiting for inspiration to strike me every day, I can tell you.

Ghost Trilogy was based on inspiration. The inspiration of a moment where I pinned down the characters I wanted to write. It really first started with that: characters and setting and a vague idea of what I wanted the story to be about. Falling in love with the idea it’s really all it takes. That is the true moment of inspiration.

But that’s not the story. To create the story from that, we then need a lot of work, both structural, logical and motivational. It’s work of discovery, rather than inspiration. It’s finding the cause/effect chain. It’s logic and building, and we don’t really need inspiration for that. We need focus and dedication.

That’s how we write every day, even when we aren’t inspired.

NaNoWriMo helped me discover that:

1. Organization is key

I firmly believe this. We may have one single, bright moment of inspiration, and we need to capture it. We need to recognize the strength of the idea.

But then we need to work like hell on building on that idea. For me, that mostly means working on characters’ motives, the structure of the story and trying to match the plot to the story theme.

It’s a process that mostly rests on the logical organization of the story’s different parts.

NaNoWriMo is the perfect place to experiment with this. We need a story idea that we love and we are invested in. Then we need to work at its structure and motivation for 30 days in a row.

2. Focus is our best friend

When we attempt to write a novel in 30 days, while dodging anything real life throws at us and coping with everything we can’t dodge, it isn’t inspiration that will keep us at it. Believe me.

It’s focus.

Life will try to distract us, that’s what she does best. But if we are focused on the goal — and we need to be if we want to write every day for 30 days in a row — we will find the time to write one way or another. During that 2010 NaNoWriMo, I woke up one hour earlier in the morning so to be able to write for one hour before going to work.

NaNoWriMo will prompt us to find ways to build time for our writing. That’s maybe the most valuable thing it has taught to me. There is always some time we could use to write if we look hard enough.

3. Believe it

There will be a moment, in the middle of the month, when you’ll think you must have gone mad to even attempt this. When you’ll think it’s a total waste of time and mental energy because you’ll never be able to finish it. And anyway the thing sucks.

It comes with the field. Not with NaNoWriMo, mind you, but with the writing of a story, whether you write it in November or whenever and whatever its length.

This moment of supreme doubts is the moment in which we need to believe in our story the most, because this is the likeliest moment in which we’ll give in. Not a strange thing that most writers attempting NaNo give up on it during the second week.

The middle of the story is always the hardest. It’s a moment where the exhilaration of the new shiny thing has passed, but the end is not in sight. And most of the time we have so many elements to handle that we are just too confused.

NaNoWriMo taught me how to handle this moment. By keeping at it. By using my roadmap — remember, organization is key — and by sharing my doubts with my fellow NaNoers.

Sharing is a powerful motivational tool. Sometimes what we need is just talking out a nasty plot point. Sometimes we need to get out of a depressing moment. Whatever the case, it is a lot harder to face it alone. The writing community is a strength we often don’t realize we need until we dive in.

So really, there’s a lot we can do for our writing other than waiting around for inspiration. Being proactive is key, and NaNoWriMo is a harsh but effective teacher.

Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently. She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/

An online magazine about the art, craft, and business of storytelling, STORIUS is a publication for everyone interested in how stories are created, discovered, distributed, and consumed.