Write a novel in November is a challenge I have known about for going on three years. And when I tell the people in my world about it they always start cheering me on and saying I should do it but the truth was…. I wasn’t sure I could. You see the goal is to write an entire novel in the month of November. 50,000 words…. And I honestly did not think I had 50,000 words that would meld together cohesively for a story.
It is why I write blogs and children’s books, they don’t require 50,000 words, only about 2,000 instead which I can spit out in about 30 minutes if it’s flowing.
Children’s books and blogs seemed achievable… novels were a different story. And the truth that lied inside of me was that perhaps I am not really a writer because I only have 2000 words available at any given moment. Writers write… I spewed… it’s what I have always known, or thought.
But this year for some reason I just had this idea on the first day of November. It was like one little sentence that came across my brain as truth that said…. “You can do this” and for some reason I believed it even though all the years before I never had.
My life leading up to this point has been kind of in the gutter. Because of a failed relationship, one where I truly was all in and went for broke, it did just that or so it seemed. I felt broken, lost, kind of like a shell of myself. I really could not even recognize the girl I saw looking back at me in the mirror some days.
I counted breathing as luck…. Seriously. And I was worried that I was perhaps broken for the first time and that my resiliency had worn off. I felt like a shadow…. Melodramatic I know but true. Even homeless I don’t think I felt that black inside.
And maybe it was that amount of despair that made me realize I had nothing to lose, maybe it was grace, maybe it was just timing. But this challenge has woken me up…. And I feel more alive than I have ever felt before in my life.
Not in a crazy manic way but in a way like suddenly all my cant’s have been replaced by can’s. It’s like by trying, by just attempting this challenge suddenly I realize there is no harm in at least trying anything my mind thinks up.
It’s strange, but I feel alive and I feel like this person. This girl that writes and creates is the person I have always been meant to be and she has been inside forever and all those layers of fear have just kept her in there. I don’t know why this challenge was the key that unlocked a lot of it but I’m grateful… like really grateful because I suddenly feel limitless…. And it’s like I’m this kid who for the first time realizes that I don’t need anyone to approve or like or validate those thoughts and creations in my mind, and I don’t need those thoughts to do anything or become anything I just need to let them taste air, to let my hands create what I see in my head that’s all and in that, every time I do, I become more “me”.
Sounds like psycho babble I know….. But if you could spend five minutes in my mind and compare it to the mind of the girl I was before you would understand how different my life seems now.
I always thought that that our gift was something we were suppose to give to the world but what I am realizing now is that our gift is actually this thing God gives us and if we pay attention to it suddenly there is a whole bunch of lessons he has tucked inside that are meant to get us through our life.
So far these are the lessons I learned writing about Brown Sugar Sassy.
1) If you can get through the tough parts there is resolve
Some parts of this story were hard for me to write. There was a part that was necessary yet icky and I paced in my bedroom for three days trying to just get it out of me. I knew it had to happen and I kept just muttering under my breath that I didn’t want to do it or write it. Brayden thought I had lost my mind. But I also knew I had to and that if I could just get through it on the other side it was worth it. And I started to realize in my own life how often this is true. The other side of anything seems to always make the ick worth it.
2) Sometimes ugly characters are necessary but they always have a back story. No one is inherently evil.
There was a woman when I began this book that I was just going to make evil. I didn’t want anyone to like her or to know her or to take any time to understand her. But as I wrote the story I realized that was not the way it was suppose to be. She had a back story, and there was a softer part of her. And all her hardness and rough edges were necessary and served a purpose. Brown Sugar Sassy would not be the same book without her. And as I wrote I started having compassion for her and realizing that I wanted people to understand what was beneath that layer of razor sharp skin. And oddly enough it made me begin to look at the characters in my life that rubbed me the wrong way. The ones I just wanted to discount as evil or mean or horrible people. The ones I was not interested in understanding only blaming or judging. And I realized we all have back stories, every one of us…. And we are all necessary parts of the story and my life would not be the same without them… they serve a purpose.
3) If you show up the words will come
This is the biggest for me. In my head I know the story…. But it’s in a synopsis version and some nights I don’t know how I am going to crank out 2000 words. I don’t know what I’m going to say or how to explain it or how to roll out a story line. But inevitably if I turned on the computer and sat in front of it a sentence would come…. And then another…. And then another…. And sometimes they came fast and other times they came tortuously slow and it felt like I was wadding through mud. But they always came as long as I showed up.
And life,man, how many times in my life have I not known what to do or say or think or be but if I just show up somehow it always gets figured out. The key is not to hide away and ignore and walk away from it. Sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s slow but we always get through it and we always have the answer or the word we need and they will keep coming as long as we do too.
4) The story moves slowly when it is pivoting…. Go slowly through the corners be patient it means there is change on the other side
This one was hard for me. For the majority of the book the story moved along quickly, events , seasons, months they happened fast but then there was a point where everything slowed down to a snail’s pace and suddenly my 2000 words did not get me through entire chunks of the year they only got me through a couple hours of her life. But what I also realized was this time was also pivotal. We were getting ready to turn a corner in Brown Sugar Sassy’s life and so we had to take that corner slow so none of the readers and the story got lost along the way. It was changing direction.
And it was like a light bulb went off in my head when I realized why sometimes my life crawls at a snail’s pace and other times it flys by….. because in those moments when time seems to stand still and nothing moves quickly and I feel like I am dragging myself through mud day in and day out it is because it is a pivotal moment for me…. My life is changing direction though I can’t see it but God does not want me getting lost in it.
I learned that foreshadowing is everything…. Along the story I dropped certain key moments…. Ones that might get lost and seem inconsequential to someone at the time but at the end hopefully they will see why they were there and how they were all leading up to certain parts. Hindsight in life is 20/20 but I do believe there are always hints…. Small little whispers everywhere left like clues to lead us up to certain places in our lives…. And most of the time it is only after we reach that place and we look back do we realize how often they are there.
I am a writer…. This I now know…. And it is an absolute privilege to hold a pen and to create a character and write a life and determine a destiny. It is beautiful to take the journey with a girl that only exists in my mind. I love Brown Sugar Sassy, love her like she was real and that girl now owns a large part of helping a soon to be 42 year old woman finally find herself.
And now I hope beyond hope that everyone gets the chance to taste their gift…. And to try…. …. And not worry about what will become of it or if its’ done right or what anyone is going to think….
And they just show up and attempt because I just think the world will be a better place if we all just started doing that.
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