{"id":1067,"date":"2012-01-11T20:03:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T00:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2012-01-11T20:03:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T00:03:09","slug":"12-in-12-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/?p=1067","title":{"rendered":"12-in-12"},"content":{"rendered":"

I. You call this a challenge?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Broken down to 1,000 words a day, the 12-in-12 (12 novellas and\/or novels in 12 months) doesn\u2019t seem like much of a challenge. Writers are inundated with advice along the lines of, \u201cWrite every day.\u201d One thousand words, ultimately, translates to about four pages. That\u2019s not a lot.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to writing than putting the words on paper. There\u2019s gestational periods for every story. Some happen instantaneously. Some spend years knocking around the back of the brain waiting for just the right moment. So to create twelve fully formed, cohesive, intelligent, interesting stories–not just stories, but tales of length and depth–requires a lot more brain juice than mere finger dancing.<\/p>\n

And real life is guaranteed to interfere. Illness. Loss of the day job. Loss of a loved one. Failed relationships. Moving house. Power outages. Computer crashes. Uninvited relations overstaying their welcome. Vacations of your own. Some days, no matter how much you try, you find yourself staring at a page filled with the words, \u201cAll work and no play\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

You have to accept that the idea that writing every day does not actually mean writing every day. There will be days where you achieve no words, but have instead given your brain a sorely needed (and sometimes well deserved) break from the story. This allows the subconscious to work out details you haven\u2019t figured out. This allows influences from the outside world, influences which didn\u2019t exist yesterday, to help flesh out the sketchy bits.<\/p>\n

Some days, you make great progress, type a furious four or five thousand words, burn out the keys of your laptop and erase the prints from your fingers.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, most writers, myself included, have a day job that requires a large chunk of time, often forty hours or more, every week. You could\u2019ve spent that time writing. And maybe, if you don\u2019t have a day job, you can<\/span> spend that time writing, and a 12-in-12 suddenly feels like something quite natural. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case, though. It\u2019s still twelve long stories. How many people do you know have been working on a single novel for more than a year?<\/p>\n

There are other aspects of this writing game that simply aren\u2019t included in this calculation. Revisions. You can spend as much time making something right as you did making it the first time. That\u2019s okay. That\u2019s normal. That\u2019s necessary. (And for my purposes, while it will happen as I go, ultimately I need only twelve first drafts to succeed.) There\u2019s the submission process, which may include other pieces you\u2019ve done before. Maybe something you\u2019ve already sold will come back for a final galley check before release. Maybe you\u2019ll be invited to write a short story for an anthology. Maybe you\u2019re researching markets one day and find yourself hitting midnight earlier than expected.<\/p>\n

I cannot fool myself into thinking this 12-in-12 will be easily accomplished. I know it won\u2019t be easy. I know I\u2019ll face hurdles and obstacles and unforeseeable crises. That\u2019s how writing works. I\u2019ll deal with them as they come. It\u2019s an ambitious goal, so maybe it\u2019s time I explore, in part, why I think I should do this.<\/p>\n

I blame my last novel.<\/p>\n

For the record, it still needs a title. It resulted out of a previous writing challenge, a month of short stories in April 2010. One of those stories, \u201cArmand Luis Salazar\u201d, begged for more, so that October I started writing the novel. After a month or two, I had one-quarter of the novel written. Then nothing. Nothing for days, weeks, months. I did other things, yes, involving other novels needing revision before publication and short story requests for anthologies, but I\u2019d lost steam on the novel. It required thinking I hadn\u2019t done. It required knowledge I didn\u2019t have. Summer of 2011, I found myself in New England, where I explored Boston for a few days before being locked (I\u2019m trying to make this sound like a burden) in a studio (on the Maine shore) for two weeks (they provided three meals a day and wine). Here, I was meant to write. I was also free to wander, explore, and photograph, which I did. I wrote half a novel–half of that novel–there in Maine, giving me three-quarters of a novel and a very clear direction as to where it would end. But I came back, started a new role at my day job, and moved house. Other stressors popped up. And I couldn\u2019t figure out how to get the book finished. In the end, in a few weeks in December, I wrote the last quarter of the novel. I looked at this stack of papers, and handed it over to a trusted friend. I asked, \u201cIs this really a novel?\u201d<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t answered me yet.<\/p>\n

The point is, I know it shouldn\u2019t take me more than a year to write a single story. Now I aim to prove it.<\/p>\n

I have two novellas already planned and started. I\u2019ll get to them. I have one novel partially planned, and contracted; I\u2019ll get to that, too. This past week, I started with a blank screen and a few unconnected ideas, thoughts, and memories, and started something entirely different. In two days, I had almost 10,000 words. Are you impressed? Don\u2019t be. I still don\u2019t know where it will finish. But I\u2019m very happy with where it started, and where it\u2019s been going; and I\u2019m seriously hoping I won\u2019t have to cut a huge chunk of what I\u2019ve already done to re-direct the story to a different place. I can tell you it takes place, or at least starts, in upstate New York, not far from where I went to college. There are snow leopards. Yes, I know, there are no snow leopards in upstate New York. So what? There\u2019s a guy who drinks too much who stops at a motel off Route 9. There\u2019s a diner, a bar, and a circus, and there will be a contest at an inn before it ends. That\u2019s all I\u2019ll tell you now. It\u2019s a start. It\u2019s the first of twelve. And right now, like the novel I finished in December, it needs a title.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. You call this a challenge? Broken down to 1,000 words a day, the 12-in-12 (12 novellas and\/or novels in 12 months) doesn\u2019t seem like […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}