|
This was transcribed by Electron Jam, who takes the blame for all mistakes. Electron Jam has no connection with 'You and Yours' or the BBC. Please contact the transcriber through the website if you have any corrections, comments, or questions.
Liz Barclay:
Iain Banks has done it in six weeks. Georges Simenon could do
it in under a fortnight. But it generally took Gustave Flaubert years. It
depends on the novel, I suppose, how long it takes to write.
But for
participants in Nanowrimo (REE MO), it's the time that counts. November is
National Novel Writing Month, Nanowrimo, and the challenge is to write 50,000
words or 175 pages in just 30 days. Enthusiasm and perseverance are what's
required. Talent and craft don't matter a jot. Laughably awful prose won't rule
you out as a winner. You just have to finish the book by midnight on Sunday the
30th of November. Since Nanowrimo (REE MO) began four years ago, over 2,000
novels have been written and only three of them have been published. So just
what is the point?
Rachel Schofield dropped in on a group of participants
frantically scribbling away in London.
Deirdre, reading from her novel:
Nightshade and Judy have been house hunting. They've just
found a nice flat, possibly the flat.
Neil, reading from his novel:
Janet dropped into the hatch and his feet landed on what had
been the ceiling. He reached up to grab one of the cracks...
Elise, reading from her novel:
Her skin was chafed and dry, in some places it had even
started to bleed. She thought, perhaps, it was time to stop eating
pomegranates.
Mark, reading from his novel:
Shh, can you hear him? There he goes again. When you hear
the coals moving like that, it's the fire-mouse moving about. Watch carefully.
See if you can spot him. Oh he's a tricky one.
Rachel:
Never mind tinker sailor soldier spy, here teacher, computer
programmer, journalist, and investment banker are among those baring their
literary offerings as part of a maniacal November mission to create.
Feath:
So how are we all doing, I mean like word wise. Are we all
gonna make it?
Elise:
Yeah. I think so, yeah.
Deirdre?:
Yeah.
Neil:
I'm about 14,000 words behind schedule and quickly need some
decent writing.
Rachel:
Coordinating today's get-together is Feath MacKirin, she
first attempted the Nanowrimo (RYE MO) challenge last November, and is
passionate about the phenomenon, which began in California four years ago.
Feath:
You write 50,000 words in 30 days. It actually has to have a
beginning, middle and an end. 1,667 words a day will get you through it. It's
like a load, it's like a rock on your back. Yeah, it's hard.
Rachel:
It's gonna cause you so much suffering, it's gonna be so
hard why do it?
Feath:
Because whoa, when you've done it, man, it just kicks you,
it really does, oh, it's just a rush, it's so cool.
Rachel:
But hang on, no skipping to the end of the story. This
year's Nanowrimos have a few days to go yet and the memory of Day One is still
pretty fresh in first timer Fiona Juwan's mind. Just how did she feel sitting
down to start the first of 50,000 words?
Fiona:
Very very afraid (laugh) I panicked. I knew the story, knew
the plot. I knew all the characters. But I needed a first line. And I was in an
absolute tizz. So, that started up my ulcer, and then I realized I had my first
line, it started as a hunger, an irritating gnawing of the gut. (reading) I
float silently above my world. A spirit in the liquid area that surrounds my
consciousness. I am a sphere of thought tightly wrapped in all the rubber bands
that have snapped in the stinging of my skin. I am a sheet of fire that sweeps
across the forest floor, hungrily licking at the tree trunks and willing them
to erupt into passion's flame.
(cheers and clapping)
Feath:
I want an autographed copy of that. It's awesome.
Rachel:
Around the world, thousands of Wrimos are regularly meeting
to drink coffee, steal plots and spur each other on. Sharing the agony of
creation is key to the whole philosophy. But the real rationale for this global
seat-of-the-pants approach to novel-writing is to ensure that something,
anything, finally gets written. Which is what appeals to co-sufferers Deirdre,
Feath, and Mark.
Deirdre:
I've been going around for years with a folder of half
completed stories and I've great trouble finishing anything, so the thing about
Nano is the group spirit and the fact that you have a definite deadline, and
people will point and laugh at you if you don't keep it.
Feath:
You have to do it, get it done. So there's no binking around
with, oh should I say said or should he reply or should he do this, and duh de
duh. Do it. Shut up the internal editor and write it.
Mark:
It's a good way to get over writer's block because you focus
on the word count, and it's kind of never mind the quality, feel the width.
Rachel:
Indeed, the Nanowrimo website makes no attempt to disguise
the fact that just thirty days in the writing wilderness will produce an awful
lot of execrable prose. But the true Nano spirit doesn't care a jot. A polished
oeuvre was never the idea.
Feath:
In that pile of rubbish there's gonna be a couple of
diamonds and thirty days of sweating, those diamonds are worth it. And you fit
'em in somewhere, and you maybe write a totally new book around it. But it's
there, and every book has it, every book.
Rachel:
Come the 30th of November, around 4,000 novels will have
been written worldwide. Quite a jump from the six penned in 1999 when Nanowrimo
began. And paltry plots and gristly grammar will be no barrier. Anyone who gets
their 50,000 words verified via the Nano website is considered a winner.
Deirdre and Neil remember last year's mad dash to meet the
midnight deadline.
Deirdre:
I didn't have any net connection in my house, so I actually
had to go and log on at a net cafe to get my novel validated. And so there I was running along the
freezing cold street with my disk clutched in my hot little hand and I was just
waiting for the moment when my rating would turn into a winner's rating, and
then the next day there was the thank god it's over meeting, and we were all
drinking champagne in fact and celebrating, and it was just one of the best
buzzes I've had in a long long time.
Neil:
When I finally sort of hit the word count, that said over
fifty thousand words, I did actually literally just stop. I can't remember, it
was probably three o'clock in the morning at that point on the 30th of
November. I just stopped and fell asleep, then in the morning, Ah yeah, I've
done it. I've done it!
(laughs)
Rachel:
Part of it has to just be kind of an ego trip to be able to
say I've written a novel.
Feath:
Exactly.
Rachel:
You know, at dinner parties that you go to.
Feath:
Yeah, you know, even my family who know me, and know that
I'm just a goofus, they're like, "Oh wow, you wrote a novel? Can I read
it?" And suddenly you become like this little shining star in your family,
even if it's just rubbish. It's a big ego trip, it is.
Fiona:
Yeah, of course. (laughs) We all want to be able to say
we've done something amazing. Oh, I've written a novel, by the way. (laughs)
Rachel:
Even if it was written in 30 days and it's quite terrible?
Fiona:
Ah, but who's to judge what terrible is?
(laughs)
Liz:
Very good point. Feath McKirin [hm, sounded like Fiona to
me!] ending that report by Rachel Schofield where I'm joined by Victoria
Routledge, who is a novelist with five books under her belt at the tender age
of 29. What do you make of all this?
Victoria:
Oh, I think it's a very good thing really. There's a lot of
pretension about writing novels, and I think just getting people to sit down to
start, it's a very good way to encourage them really.
Liz:
But is this the kind, is this the way that you would do it
yourself? The American author John Gardner advises writers that are just
starting to write as if you have all eternity. But this is (laughs) writing
lengthy but arguably awful prose in a month.
Victoria:
Uhm, well, I'd argue that most of the novelists I know do
tend to write about 50,000 words in the month before they finish. Although most
published novels are 120 to 150,000 novels, uh, pag-, uh, words. So knocking
out 50 in a month is actually a necessity rather than a … It's like a Sunday
night getting your homework done for Monday morning. You always leave it to the
last minute, and when it's the only thing you do, every night's panic night.
Liz:
So are you still working to deadlines then? Because you've
worked on both sides of the publishing business.
Victoria:
Yes, I used to be an editor, which makes it a bit uhm, makes
it a bit shady then, because I know that editors do tend to build in about two
months' buffer time. So when they tell a novelist that they want the book by
August, they really mean we need to get it into production by January, but we
don't want you to faff about. So I never take deadlines all that seriously. But
on the other hand, I know how annoying it is when books are late, so I'm
usually a very good girl, and get it done.
Liz:
In a way, you know, we have, uh, all these thousands of
people now, uh, four thousand I assume by the end of this November will have
written their novels in this way. Only three so far have been published. What
is the point of it?
Victoria:
Well, it's interesting that you mention Iain Banks, because
my old agent actually discovered Iain Banks off a slush pile at Macmillan, so
the idea of getting lots of people to write and then reading everybody's, it's
actually worth it for the one or two gems you can discover. Uhm, and actually,
someone very famous once said that you should just write a first novel and hide
it under the bed because it's really a learning exercise. The more you do it,
the better you get. So, to knock out a couple of, you know, 50,000 words of
complete piles of rubbish isn't necessarily such a bad idea, because it teaches
you how to write something more technically proficient later on when you feel
more able to put more in it. So...
Liz:
So I suspect then that you think there may even be a few
gems in these that get published, that, that are written by the end of
November.
Victoria:
Very possibly, because if people want to write a novel, uhm,
they might, they clearly have something they want to say, so..
Liz:
Haven't we got enough novels already, without encouraging
even more to be written?
Victoria:
Well, we have a lot of pop singers already, don't we? I
mean, why not more novelists?
(laughs)
Liz:
Well the Nanowrimos (REE MOs) are quite up front about it,
they say it's all a bit of an ego trip to write a novel, and recent research
from WH Smith shows that 50% of us would like to do it too. Have we just got
caught up in the romantic image of novels, novelists?
Victoria:
Well, I, the rom-, the reality of being a novelist is far
from romantic, I can assure you. I think a lot of people think that a novelist
spends all day swanning over Hampstead Heath with some dalmatians and a fur
coat then...
Liz:
Don't you?
Victoria:
(laughs hysterically)
Does it look like it?
Liz:
(chuckles)
Victoria:
Whereas, most novelists I know just sort of do nothing until
5 o'clock then go into a panic and write 800 words of nothing.
(laughs)
Liz:
In a word is your first novel still under the bed, now,
unread?
Victoria:
No, unfortunately my first novel is very much out there. And
I wish it wasn't.
But uh, what can you do?
Liz:
(laughs)
And we'll go and have a read of it. Thank you, Victoria,
very much for joining us.
| 