I wrote a novel in thirty days last November. Yes, you read that correctly. Thirty days. How did I do it? The drive to write, determination, and encouragement – from family, friends, and the staff at nanowrimo.

Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month, begins every year on November 1, when participants begin working toward the goal of completing a fifty-thousand-word novel by midnight on November 30. Anyone can participate, from novice to veteran writers. All you need to do is sign up, create your novel on the website, and, of course, write at least sixteen hundred and sixty-seven words a day.

So what motivated me to spend a month doing little else but write? First, I already had an idea for a novel in mind, and had been thinking about starting it, but kept telling myself I’d get to it later, maybe next year. In September, two months before the kick-off of nanowrimo, my stepdaughter said, “Melissa, do it; you can do it.” Her enthusiasm was contagious. Why not? I thought – after spending the spring and summer revising my memoir, I had put it aside, with plans to read through and revise it, yet again, starting in December. So, what better time than November, when darkness presses down on the light, to push back against the sluggish side-effect of winter’s gloom, and write the first draft of my novel?

How did I begin? I began before the beginning – a lot of research, an outline, a diagram of the novel’s arc, flashcards jotted with brief descriptions of each chapter, character sketches – physical descriptors and clothing styles, family and work history, hobbies, dreams, favorite foods, habits, living situations, and strengths and weaknesses. I assigned each character a name that conjured his or her unique temperament, and downloaded from the Internet images that matched each character’s personality. I created living, breathing, heart-beating human beings, and listened to the nuances of each of their voices in my head. I moved into their lives, their minds, their every thought. I did all of this before typing word one.

Though I started preparing two months in advance of the kick-off of nanowrimo, and felt confident about the trajectory of my story, when I finally sat my butt in the chair to type the first sentence, the uninvited judge living in my head spoke mightily. And there were days when my brain churned on sloth speed and I struggled to reach the minimum daily goal of sixteen hundred and sixty-seven words. But I countered the judge’s arguments, re-filled my brain’s glucose tank with fun snacks (mostly dark chocolate), and gave myself pep talks: “Keep typing, keep writing, keep the characters alive and breathing.” Of course, there’s something to be said for seeing progress, in numbers. That’s partly how nanowrimo kept me going: Each day I downloaded what I had written on the website and, voilà, the link calculated exactly how many words I had written, how many words I had left to write, and my average word count per day. More than the word count, the unraveling of the story sustained me. By November 28, I had fifty thousand words. I was ahead of schedule! On November 30, I typed my last sentence. Total word count: fifty-three thousand nine hundred fifty-nine words.

Though it’s only January, and November is three seasons in the future, if you’re thinking about writing a novel, and want to sign up for nanowrimo next year, it’s not too soon to start thinking about your story now: plot, arc, theme, characters.  Though some people may have the brainpower and creative heft to dive into nanowrimo without a life jacket, I vote for having one nearby, whether it’s an outline, a diagram, or both. And getting your work onto the page will boost your confidence, deliver a lasting high, encourage you to say, “Yes, I can do it!”

Writing paraphernalia and conditions I recommend: Note cards, corkboard, your favorite pen, pencils, notebook, sticky notes, drawing paper, a quiet space, quotes from writers that inspire you, your favorite chocolates or other snacks, plenty of water, tea/coffee, comfy clothing, and a happy light for those who live in locations like Vermont, where the sun goes on sabbatical starting in November.

Good-luck!

I’m happy to share with you that my essay, “A Faded Scar with Palpable Edges,” is now available to read in The Medical Literary Messenger, a web-based journal associated with Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, and whose aim is “to promote humanism and the healing arts through prose, poetry, and photography.” The essay is about my struggle to overcome Anorexia Nervosa, an eating disorder affecting between one and five percent of female adolescents and young girls. The deeply contemplative and inspiring creative works published in the journal can’t help but make one pause to reflect on health, illness, and the human condition. So, while I hope you take a moment to read my essay, I also encourage you to read, and view, the other “voice[s] for the healing arts (Medical Literary Messenger).”

“A Faded Scar with Palpable Edges” was previously published in Humanthology, website devoted to real life chronicles connecting writers and readers to causes they embrace. Though I’m sad to share that Humanthology is no longer in publication, you can still access my essay, and others, on the website.

If you’re looking for a unique way to write an essay, to bend the genre, how about writing a Hermit Crab Essay? “This kind of essay appropriates existing forms as an outer covering, to protect its soft, vulnerable underbelly,” Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola write in their co-authored non-fiction craft book, Tell It Slant. The metaphor of the hermit crab is fitting. They are born without shells, and need to find an empty shell in order to protect themselves. As Brenda and Suzanne write in their book, the same goes for “an essay that deals with material that seems born without its own carapace—material that is soft, exposed, and tender, and must look elsewhere to find the form that will contain it.”

This past summer, I attended a hermit crab essay class taught by Brenda Miller at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She began by having us list the numerous existing “outer coverings.” Here’s a sampling of what we came up with: recipe, field guide, Craig’s List ad, bibliography, syllabus, math problem, text message, prescription side effects, blog post, phone call, email, love note, resume, restaurant menu. She then asked us to choose one and see what creative content the form suggests. As Brenda noted in her piece about the hermit crab essay published in Brevity, “This is the essential move: allowing form to dictate content. By doing so, we get out of our own way; we bypass what our intellectual minds have already determined as “our story” and instead become open and available to unexpected images, themes and memories.” Also, this form gives “creative nonfiction writers a chance to practice using our imaginations, filling in details, and playing with the content to see what kind of effects we can create.”

Since I was in the mood “to play with the content” on the day I attended Brenda’s class, I chose side effects of a prescription narcotic:

This narcotic, if taken as directed, will result in a lasting high, and a sense of total freedom. Within thirty minutes of taking this narcotic, your attitude will change from worry to “I don’t give a damn about anything.” You will be able to eat as much as you want of whatever you like – Devil Dogs, Twinkies, potato chips – and not care if you gain weight. If anything, you will likely lose weight. There is no maximum dose. It is perfectly fine to operate a vehicle, vessel, Saturn V Rocket or The Millennium Falcon, or any kind of machinery, and even drink alcohol while taking this narcotic. If you experience any of the following we recommend you take an extra dose immediately: a sudden ability to speak in parseltongue, the strength and flexibility to maintain warrior three pose for more than fifteen minutes, the brain energy to move objects with your mind, the ability to convince your spouse that you are no good in the kitchen, the acting skills to persuade your boss to allow you to work ten hours a week and get paid for forty, and the chutzpah to convince your mother-in-law that she is wrong about most things.

Warning: Literal interpretation of the above essay is dangerous and harmful to your health.

Do you have an existing “outer covering” to add to the above list? Do you have an essay in need of a shell? Since the new year is only two days from now, why not write an essay in the form of a resolution list? If you’ve already found your protective shell,  please don’t be shy about sharing it.

Happy New Year!

Are you looking for a solution to creating powerful prose? Of course you are. Why would you want your work to be clogged up with useless words, sentences, and phrases? After reading five online writing guides, I found that most of them agreed on the same words that, as one guide asserts, “deserve to die.”

Many of the words you can safely kill are ambiguous ones like adverbs and adjectives. For instance, writing “The toddler jumped high” doesn’t tell us how high he jumped. Two inches? Ten inches?  The same goes for the following: “The woman is tall.” Your version of tall will likely be different than mine. But if the sentence is written with detail, as in, “The woman is six foot eleven,” then we can agree she’s tall.

Here is a partial list of more words you can kill off:

Very and Really: Though both are meant to augment an adjective, verb, or another adverb, they do the exact opposite – they weaken the word it intends to modify.

Just: this word also weakens the writing. If someone smacked my hand every time I used “just,” I’d have one huge bruise.

Perhaps and Maybe: Both of these adverbs make the writer sound unsure, which makes the reader question the writer’s reliability. When reading my work recently, an editor told me she noticed I use both of these words too often. (how much is too often?) She also mentioned that women tend to use “maybe” and “perhaps” more than men. I don’t know how true that is, but her feedback made a difference. Each time I’m tempted to write “maybe” or “perhaps,” as in, “Maybe I felt sorry for him,” I stop myself and ask, “Well, do I?” If so, I write it that way: “I feel sorry for him.”

Always and never: Both are absolutes, and nothing is absolute. It’s best to employ these words when writing a command, such as “Always lock the door before you leave the house” or “Never leave the car door unlocked.”

Thing: This is lazy writing. What things? Books, chairs, bubble gum wrappers?

Amazing: This word is overused: “That was an amazing movie … The hike was amazing… The concert was amazing.” Which brings us to …

“Was:” A to be verb. I know I’ve mentioned this in previous blog posts, but it’s worth mentioning again. The to be verb is sometimes warranted, but action verbs make for stronger prose. Instead of saying, “I was walking to the beach,” say, “I walked to the beach.”

Let’s look at the two options in the following sentence using “amazing” and “was”:

“The sunset was amazing” versus “The sun descended below the horizon, painting the the sky magenta and red.” Which sounds better?

I invite you to explore the following websites for more words to destroy:

Lit Reactor, Plague words, 10 words to cut

Feel free to let me know how it goes.

I’m over-the-moon excited to announce that my essay, “Reaching for the Keys,” has been published in Saranac Review  It’s about my emotional struggle to take the car keys away from my father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. I spent a year and a half working on it – typing, deleting, reflecting, pacing, tearing up drafts and starting over, pulling my hair out, waking up in the night to scratch down notes. Why all the fretting? Though any piece of creative work takes time to craft into a piece of salient art, writing this essay challenged me more than most other essays I have written. How so? While I know I made the right choice by taking the keys away from my father, the act of writing the essay brought me uncomfortably close to particular emotions and a long list of complexities that speak to the human condition (at it’s core, what this essay is really about): fear, anger, remorse, guilt, truth, loyalty, mortality, illness, aging, independence. I suppose that’s partly what creative writing should do – push us a little too close to the edge of the metaphorical embankment.

There’s also an ironic element to the piece, but I don’t want to give too much away here (apologies for the teaser). To quench your curiosity, relieve your hunger, I encourage you to read the essay. The Journal is available for purchase at: Saranac Review.

The Saranac Review was born in 2004 out of four writers’ vision to open a space for the celebration of many voices including those from Canada. Attempting to act as a source of connection, the journal publishes the work of emerging and established writers from both countries. As our mission states, “The Saranac Review is committed to dissolving boundaries of all kinds, seeking to publish a diverse array of emerging and established writers from Canada and the United States. The Saranac Review aims to be a textual clearing in which a space is opened for cross-pollination between American and Canadian writers. In that way, we aim to be a textual river reflecting diverse voices, a literal “cluster of stars,” an illumination of the Iroquois roots of our namesake, the word, Saranac. We believe in a vision of shared governance, of connection, and in the power of art.

~ Saranac Review

Are you a writer who is wondering how to tackle editing your manuscript? As I edit my memoir, I think about the tips Ann Hood  shared at the Muse and Marketplace last May in her workshop, “How To Be Your Own Best Editor.” I left the workshop with pages of a notebook filled with her savory tidbits, and re-read them again and again when I’m stuck. Here they are:

First, you need to develop writing habits that you can keep. And don’t allow anything to interfere with your writing time. If need be, Ann suggested finding a writer friend who is amendable to signing a contract with you.

Each day, before writing the next pages of her manuscript, Ann reads aloud what she wrote the day before, and edits at she goes along (it’s too easy to skim over awkward sentences and words when reading silently). She could not have emphasized this enough: When writing first chapters, start where something happens rather than with backstory. While working on those first pages, Ann reminded us to avoid starting with clichés like long descriptions of the weather, or a scene where someone is waking up. As she said, we all wake up the same way: we crawl out of bed, and rub the sleep from our eyes as we shuffle to the bathroom, pee, brush our teeth, etc. I believed it when Ann declared that first chapters tend to get revised the most – I’ve lost count as to how many times I’ve deleted the first chapter of my memoir in progress and have had to start all over again. This happens because we usually start the piece in the wrong place, and believe that’s exactly where the book should start.

On a micro editing level, Ann cautioned against overuse of the verb to be, as in, “she was walking.” Instead, write this: “She walked.” Similarly, she advised to watch out for extraneous and vague descriptors like “so,” “awesome,” and “meanwhile.” The same goes for words like “smile,” “look, and” laugh.”  A recent word count of my two-hundred-fifty-page memoir revealed fifty smiles, and at least seventy looks. Ann suggests we strive for something that is uniquely revealing to your character, such as picking at knuckles to show a nervous response. Here’s another micro editing detail worth jotting down on a Post-it and sticking on your desk: make sure the beginnings and ends of scenes and chapters are resonant.

On a more global point, Ann referred to Grace Paley’s assertion that every story is two stories: the one on the surface and the one bubbling beneath. The climax is when they collide. The external conflict is the plot, or the tangible parts of the story, whereas the internal conflict is a need.

Ann also alluded to Flannery O’Conner, who said writing is painting a picture with words. Or, rather than stating emotions, show them. How is your character sad, angry, or lonely? And don’t forget to have the protagonist do three essential things along the way: React, reply, reflect. As for dialogue, it should do more than offer information. It should advance the conflict, develop character, move the story forward. Of course, you can’t forget the setting – every scene should have one. Is it in a hospital, an office, at the beach?

When finished with a complete draft, Ann urged us to put it away for three months before sending it out to agents (at the very least, one month). Why? She summed it up in an Allen Ginsberg quote: “To regain your voice, you need to forget you ever heard it.” Now that’s worth writing down on a Post-it.

Please feel free to share any thoughts, questions, or insights.