NaNoWriMo – Renée Can(ada) Writes

True Tales of a Forty-Year-Old Writer

A MasterClass On Writing With Judy Blume A week ago yesterday, my best friend gave me an early birthday surprise as a burst of inspiration to help me close out National Novel Writing Month. I was happily stunned by the email that informed me I was gifted a masterclass with bestselling children’s author Judy Blume. What could be cooler than taking a class from one of the first authors to inspire me to become a writer in the first place? I don’t think my friend realized just how perfect her gift to me was until I expressed how much Blume’s characters spoke to me when I was a child.

Today, as I listened to the introduction of my class with Judy Blume, I felt the synchronicity of this experience happening now even more. It so easily could have been a letter from 11-year-old me that Blume reads at the opening of the first lesson. Judy, whom I hope doesn’t take offense for addressing by her first name, recites part of a letter she received from a 13-year-old fan: “I think the main point of kids’ books is to show that things that happened to you also happened to other kids…I thought I was weird for doing and thinking some things, but your books make feel [normal].”

Characters like Peter and “Fudge” Hatcher from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and from Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series spoke directly to my young reader heart. To this day, there are memories I have of childhood that I’m still uncertain as to whether actually happened to me or were instead experiences that favorite book protagonists, like Ramona Quimby, live through. That’s the magic of writing that spoke to me so keenly as a young child.

That power of the written word led me to decide, while still in elementary school, to be an *author* when I grew up. It amazed me how well an adult writer could understand so perfectly what it was like to be a child with the usual rash of emotions and confusing experiences. The characters in those favorite children’s books were as real to me as the friends I made in my school classroom. I thought to myself: I want to do the same for other readers out there.

True Tales of a Forty-Year-Old Writer So from about age 8 on, I began writing and writing and writing. I wrote from my life experiences, my pure fantasies and from an imagination stoked and nurtured by reading the best books written for children and young adults at that time. I wrote when I was lonely. I wrote as an escape. I wrote when I was excited about what the future had in store for me. I wrote as another form of play and exploration. I wrote to exercise that mighty muscle of my imagination, which was just as important to me as my strong biceps and springy, speedy legs.

Eventually, I was a young adult myself, saddled down with adult ambitions and ‘real world’ practicalities. I attempted to bury the childhood dream behind a communication degree and a career in professional journalism. It is fair to say that I lost my way for several years.

Yet even through my years spent across the country at college, through my first loves and breakups, and later, through seemingly endless years of chronic illness, immersing myself in my writing world always felt like home. Using my words to give voice to my deepest desires and most earnest emotions still felt like the truest thing in my life I could do.

So, here I sit. I am eleven days from turning 40, and I have yet to complete writing a novel of my own. Yet, I sit today after a month of NaNoWriMo, where I consistently worked and played through 27,044 words (a bit more than 90 pages) of the young adult novel that I first started years ago. While I didn’t get quite as far as would have been my ideal, I am proud of the new writing I breathed into life, and I am pleased with the polishing I did of the old. I don’t plan to stop as I skip through the month of December either. I find myself excited and even more optimistic about finally living up to my childhood dream of being a (published) novelist. Let’s do this!

The Incessant Whispers of Insomnia

When you can’t tune out the Muse
But your weary eyes refuse to skim another page,
When muting the channel of inspiration is futile,
Though your limbs ache and shake with
The promise of imminent rain,
You try to drown out the voices
That defy the silence
By meditating on diving deeper
Into the present moment–
The irony of that intention
Is not lost on you, no

So…you pick up the phone
And tap out this sound byte of dialogue here,
That scrap of character description there,
Sending a message to your tomorrow self
To kick off another day behind the writing desk

But the moment you rest your head
On the bed once more,
You can SEE your characters awakening
Behind your closed eyes
And you realize they
Will not be silenced
Until you give them the chance
To say what they need to say

So…back behind the barely filtered
Blue-light incandescence you go,
Translating the morse code of action
Tapping incessantly against your
Left temporal lobe,
Until the click click click
Of the keyboard ceases…
And a sigh of satisfaction
Escapes from your lips,
A grant of permission to collapse
Against the pillow once more

Confronting the Past to Come Back to Creative Center

Confronting the Past to Come Back to Creative Center The stacks of paper displayed in the photo to your left is what you wind up with when you channel–or, should I say, crank out–a novel at a NaNoWriMo-like pace. Ten years ago, 50 pages were born in one YA writing class, and 50 more spilled out in another. Seriously in the thick of the YA fiction writer community, it was not a question of if I would finish this book, but when. My story had already piqued the interest of a couple agents and some bestselling novelists. As someone who had been writing fiction since I was eight, it would have been just plain foolishness not to take advantage of the creative opportunities and inspired flow this one plot idea was bringing me.

For a couple months, my flow of fiction was stymied while I gathered up the courage to break up a dysfunctional relationship I had been in for a couple years. My two cats were basically held as ransom by my ex. He knew how much I adored my little girl and boy Bengals, so he figured if he put down his foot to claim them as his, I would not leave him either. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t part of the reason I kept flip-flopping over my decision for several more months.

However, I finally got myself moved out of the house we shared, and I wound up back living with my parents. Witnessing my heartbreak over losing my best furry friends, they agreed that I could adopt a kitten, despite their dislike of animals as pets in general. In a moment of inspiration, I committed to writing fifty more pages in my novel to earn the privilege of bringing new felines into my family. Thinking this would take me a month, at least, I surprised myself by writing more than 50 pages in a week. What can I say? I was fueled by anticipation, excitement and my desire to immerse myself in the kind of love that only an animal can provide.

The Pointer Alexei turned out to be the perfect writing companion. He’d sit on my lap, or force me into proper posture by prostrating himself behind my back, as I typed away furiously on the computer. He’d look up at me with soulful eyes when I questioned whether to keep going. Purring and gently pawing at me, his love and affection energized the body when I was fatigued, refueled my confidence when it was lagging and reminded me of my worth when I felt beaten.

The next major dash came toward the end of that same year, when I met a woman at a writer’s conference who invited those of us in attendance at her breakout session to submit a draft of our novel to her publishing company. “It doesn’t have to be a complete or perfect, final draft,” she said in encouragement. “Just show me your best work.”

I took the bait–and the challenge–writing and cobbling together what turned out to total more than 200 pages. The novel was in no way finished. There were several huge scenes missing altogether. Dialogue of my two main characters started to sound stilted and coalesce as the story dragged on. My printer acted up, causing half the pages to format oddly, and it refused to display page numbers. Was it better to just wait until everything was right, or did I just take the leap and pray she appreciated my earnestness and recognized the diamond in the rough?

For good or for ill, I took the leap. A couple months later, I received a curt letter and my full manuscript returned to me unmarked. She took issue with the title–which was not a grammatically correct phrase, but made reference to an exact album title, fyi. I honestly don’t remember if she wrote anything else, but I took it for the rejection it was. Even knowing I had sent my novel baby off far too soon, I took to heart the utter lack of interest and regard in my characters and their promising, fictional lives.

While I still hammered away at the book over the next year or so, the overflowing fount of inspiration that had generated the first 200 pages of story began to trickle dry. As Novembers rolled by, I took advantage of NaNoWriMo challenges to dip back into my story, but I was always derailed before the end of the month, whether by illness, job obligations or sheer overwhelm and exhaustion. Eventually, my heart was no longer dwelled in the world which I had created.

Being a writer of many genres, the last several years have been dominated by newswriting, academic writing, essays and opinion pieces, poetry and even a children’s book series and a couple of plays. A little over a year ago, I realized that my years of writing about relationships and my journey toward better health–on my blogs and across multiple media platforms–had spawned a significant body of work. I took my husband’s suggestion to write a book about how I learned to take the reigns over from chronic illness to manifest better health of my body, mind and spirit. So I’ve been immersed in the emotionally exhausting, yet ultimately fulfilling, work of memoir, while also continuing my ghost writing and enrolling in more yoga teacher trainings.

But then the realization of turning 40 began to weigh on my heart. What were the things I had dreamed of accomplishing in my past, yet hadn’t in my present? What were my great passions that weren’t getting a lot of love lately? How could I transform the end of my 30s into a period of celebration and anticipation? Rather than wallow in regret over the past, how could I instead look ahead to 40 with excitement, joy and fulfillment? My answers: completing my first novel and being a published novelist; writing fiction; and using NaNoWriMo, which falls the month before my 40th birthday, as the catalyst for creative fecundity.

It was time to confront my past in order to come back to my creative center. Thus, I returned to my old novel about twins and remembered why I fell in love with them in the first place. Inspired by my original work, my rewrites and the newer material I had written in spurts over the years, I began writing as if I were discovering the story for the first time. Inevitably, I have bumped up against old holes in the plots, questions about the storyline–like which twin’s perspective is stronger to start with, which conflict should lead and which should develop later in the story? Yet I am trying to approach with curiosity and the sense of adventure, rather than with fear and the sense of dread.

Instead of writing completely anew, I dug out my old manuscript to identify what is gold, what was plain rubbish and what deserves a second (or third or tenth) chance. I have to admit sitting amongst to the piles of scenes I first wrote so many years ago, I felt great overwhelm and an insidious desire to just chuck it all. But then I found the voices, the scenes that started it all, and they still warm my soul and stir my heart a decade later.

Today, I write without my feline companion by my side. I sift through what’s stellar and what’s shit on my own. But it helps to know I’m not alone in the struggle to confront self-doubt and creative stuck-ness. Thousands of other writers are facing down their mental demons and opening up their hearts to channel the gifts of the muses, this month, this week, this day. May our writing dreams help fuel us through the rest of this writing month–and beyond.

Back Behind the Writer’s Desk

I’m currently in the midst of rewriting and finally completing a young adult novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer’s Month) that I first started 10 years ago. Yikes–I know, I can’t believe it’s been that long either! As a story first begun in an informal YA (Young Adult) fiction writing class, further developed in a more formal YA fiction writing course, and then regularly critiqued in an intimate, three-person circle of writers before I lost the fire that lit the first couple hundred pages. I’ve mostly been spinning in circles working independently with the story over the last several years–in between news articles, health and wellness blog posts, ghost writing, tutoring and yoga teacher training–rewriting and rewriting again the major scenes at the start of the novel, while working on new scenes here and there. But as November neared and my 40-day countdown to 40 began, I made the decision to recommit to the fictional world I first began at age 30.

As I’ve sunk my teeth back into the plot and re-bonded with the main characters over the last couple weeks, I’ve fully enjoyed the dashed frenzy to get more words on the page. But something was missing. Someone was missing.

So yesterday, on the first sunny day of the week, I attended a writer’s group for the first time in far too many years. I’m so glad to made the effort! I was pleased to see a rather sizable turnout of about a dozen people. There were award-winning novelists, published memoirists, a seasoned journalist, a TV and book reviewer and a short-story writer learning how to write for screen, as well a budding poet and a budding essayist. I made the acquaintance of the author of a memoir on being a medical marijuana dispensary owner, The Brian Hogan. And I was thrilled to see author Sophronia Scott, with whom I was considering taking a memoir writing class at the Fairfield County Writer’s Studio this past fall. After flipping through its pages yesterday afternoon, I can’t wait to read her collection of essays, Love’s Long Line, which comes out in February 2018.

Big thanks to the British-born award-winning writer Gabi Coatsworth for leading such an informative and inspiring writers’ group. I left fresh with ideas to further pursue, workshops and mini conferences to attend, writing contests to ponder entering, writer’s tools to use, and several new writers to follow. I’m excited to finish up NaNoWriMo with thousands more words behind my belt and a better idea for how to come full circle on this novel at long last.