Carpe Libris - The NaNoWriMo Edition

 So what is NaNoWriMo some of you may be asking?  Well, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.  Each November intrepid writers from around the world (despite the word "national" in the title) pledge to write an average of 1666 words per day in order to have the makings of a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month.  Sarah Gruen's Like Water for Elephants began as a NaNoWriMo project as did Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.  This year after a story idea came to me in a dream over the course of two nights, I decided to give it a try. 

I'll confess I'm not meeting my daily word quota so far. I wrote recently about how writing poetry is a different practice for me than writing essays or stories.  Well, I've discovered that writing a novel requires a different rhythm as well.  My two hour daily commitment is great for my non-fiction work but just isn't cutting it for the novel.  It's only been a week so hopefully I'll settle into a good rhythm soon.  Until then, here's what I've been reading to prepare for NaNoWriMo writing.

In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
This is one of those books that sat on the bookshelf for years and every time I came across it I'd think, "Oh I want to read that one day."  Well, last week that day finally arrived.  Somehow a book about a whale attack seemed like it might make good hurricane reading.  That, combined with the fact that the novel I'm working on is set in a 19th century New England fishing village, made me go downstairs to pull it off the shelf so it could do double duty as entertainment and research.

Philbrick's book tells the story of the ill-fated whaling ship, Essex, the inspiration for Melville's Moby Dick.  Although I haven't read Melville's tale, I find it hard to imagine it can be any more harrowing and fascinating than the real story.  From the very beginning of its voyage, the ship seems to sail from one challenge to another-- a novice crew, inadequate whaling boats, damaging storms, a leaking hull, mounting tension between the first-mate and captain. 

Then things really get bad.  In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from the coast of South America, a perturbed 85 foot whale seems to deliberately ram the ship not once, but twice, the second time causing irreparable damage. The monster then swims away, never to be seen again.

Unlike Melville's tale which focuses on Ahab's pursuit of the whale,  Into the Heart of the Sea is more about what happens after the ship sinks, how the crew members who survived managed to do so.  Philbrick bases his story  not only on written accounts from two of the survivors, first mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, he also weaves in elements of physiology, psychology, history, and marine biology to create a lush narrative that is truly a page turner.

Miss Fuller by April Bernard
Last year when I thought I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo with a different story idea, I was doing a lot of research on Louisa May Alcott and her family.  During that time I came across the name Margaret Fuller and looked her up as she seemed to be an intriguing woman.  You gotta love a woman who stands up to Louisa's father, Brosnan, who was evidently something of a jerk.  I remember thinking after I read the Wikipeida article on her that her life would make an interesting story so when I came across Bernard's brief novel in the library I had to add it to the stack of books I was already balancing in my arms. 

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli was an American teacher, journalist and women's rights activist who was part of the circle of writers and transcendentalists that included the Alcotts, Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne.  She spent time in Italy reporting on the revolution where she met and maybe married, maybe didn't, Italian revolutionary Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.  The couple eventually were forced to flee Italy.  On their way back to New York with their two year old son, the ship in which they were sailing ran aground just off Fire Island.  Despite being only a short distance from shore, the family didn't survive.  Thoreau was dispatched by Emerson to go attempt to recover the bodies and it's that incident upon which Miss Fuller, a fictional version of the story is based.

In addition to searching for Fuller's remains, in Bernard's tale Thoreau is also looking for a manuscript, letters that Margaret has written telling the story of her life in Europe, a story that is allegedly so shocking and scandalous (although tame by 21st century standards) that the person to whom the letters are addressed refuses to take them from Thoreau when he does find them.  Rather than destroy them, he puts them aside and in a fit of feverish delirium, reads them one night and immediately regrets his decision.  The letters are later left to Anne, a sister the author has invented for the purpose of her story and who serves as a narrative framework for the novel. 

While this character of Anne and her role seemed forced and was the part of the book that didn't work for me, I did enjoy Bernard's writing and found her insight into the relationships between Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau and Hawthorne interesting.  Also the description of the shipwreck and how the locals responded to it left me wanting to know more. I was left feeling, however, that the real story of Margaret Fuller was much more intriguing and inspiring than the one Bernard's imagination created.


Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
The reason I haven't been able to get into a good rhythm of writing for NaNoWriMo is that my inner editor, who is usually content to sit quietly in a corner until I ask her for advice, has decided to look over my shoulder this week.  Every time I type a sentence I hear her voice asking, "Are you sure that's a jib sail?  Maybe you should look it up." or saying, "Don't forget to show not tell.  Why don't you go back and rework that paragraph." 

At this point I just really need to focus on getting the narrative out of my head and onto the page so she's not helping.  I've tried telling her to take a hike to no avail so I finally pulled out my well worn copy of Anne Lamott's book and am reading the "shitty first draft" chapter each day before I write to remind myself my goal now is to do just that--- write, not edit. 

Evidently I'm not the only one with this issue.  I recently started following Lamott's Twitter feed and it's reassuring to see how many times she Tweets about having to remind herself of the same thing. Of course, as I was raking leaves on Sunday I listened to a BBC World Book Club podcast  where Peter Ackroyd claims he never edits-- he just sits down and writes basically a finished product that doesn't need many, if any, revisions.  I just hope my inner editor wasn't listening.