The NaNoWriMo Novel that Wasn’t…and Then Was

By Ona Gritz

Two Autumns ago, I attempted to draft a manuscript for National Novel Writing Month and failed. Actually, I failed in two ways. To win NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Not only didn’t I make it, but before my marathon even began, I blew a goal I’d set for myself: to outline my novel using a traditional storytelling structure.

Outlining isn’t a requirement for NaNoWriMo. In fact, the project’s founder wrote a book reassuringly titled, No Plot? No Problem! But having begun my writing life as a poet, plot did prove to be a problem for me. Unsure how to shape one, I avoided it, spending hour upon hour polishing my sentences until they shone. I loved this work, could happily spend whole afternoons shuffling mere handfuls of words. But I’d recently had the painful task of cutting 120 pages worth of carefully burnished paragraphs because, after a decade of work on that particular manuscript, I finally understood the story I’d been trying to tell. 

And so I embarked on my NaNo-plan, using the weeks leading up to November to read articles and listen to podcasts on various storytelling techniques: Freytag’s Pyramid, the Plot Embryo, the Snowflake Method. Finally, I came upon Save the Cat, which helped me see how nearly every novel and movie I’d ever loved followed the pattern of the hero’s journey in precise, carefully measured turns. I even recognized it in my own completed books, though I’d always gotten there by the slowest, most circuitous route possible. This time would be different, I promised myself. This time I’d have a well-drawn map as a guide.

The problem was I got so caught up in studying how to outline—yet another form of avoidance?—November 1st arrived and all I’d written in preparation was a rough few pages of notes. Looking back, I could have started NaNoWriMo late and let it spill into December. Instead, I chose to believe I’d absorbed enough information on story structure to inform my draft and began. 

My idea was for a middle grade novel about a donor-conceived girl named Cara with mild cerebral palsy (a disability I also have) who, just as she’s adjusting to a new school, stumbles upon a family secret. Though it went against every instinct I had, I wrote my pages quickly without stopping to assess. Reaching my daily 1,667 words felt satisfying, like finishing a workout. Also, for the first time since I’d given up my day job to write full time, I actually knew, in a concrete way, when my work hours were over.

Then, two weeks in, just like a hero at the midpoint of a Save-the-Cat novel, I made the exact wrong choice. I allowed myself to read what I’d written. Though I loved Cara’s voice and found some scenes charming, the story had grown so rambling and unfocused, I felt discouraged enough to abandon it.

Here is where we’d find our Save-the-Cat hero despondent. She’d had one goal that meant everything and she’d blown it. All was lost. But in real life, I shrugged off my attempt as a worthwhile experiment and went back to my first love, writing poems—slowly honing my work to my perfectionistic heart’s content.

Months passed. One summer afternoon, while looking up a detail about a children’s book I was reading for a contest I’d been asked to judge, I happened upon a call on the publisher’s website. They were seeking YA verse novels, stories compelling enough to draw teenagers, built poem by poem. I closed the computer and went back to reading for the contest, wistful that I hadn’t the vaguest idea for a young adult novel. 

The next morning, in the shower, Cara popped into my head. How would her story change, I asked myself, if she were sixteen instead of twelve? Details from my abandoned NaNo project quickly rearranged themselves. September became August, and the new classmates Cara had been eager to please fell away in favor of a handsome crush. A school project that had shifted her perspective on disability evolved into a summer job that did the same more fluidly. As for the family secret, it moved from the opening pages to just past the midpoint, adding mystery and momentum. 

The publisher accepted my proposal and, with the contract, came a timeline. My first assignment? Submit an outline following a Save-the-Cat style beat sheet. This time, I knew how to do it. Also, thanks to my two-week stint of daily writing back in November, the deadline I was given to hand in my draft in just over two months didn’t deter me. As a hi-lo book, meant for readers still developing their skills, the language for my YA novel needed to be simple, the word count a spare 10,000 words. Compared to NaNoWriMo, I had twice the time and one fifth as many words to write, which left plenty of hours in each workday to devote to the part of the job I live for: rearranging words and refining lines until each poem felt exactly right.  

My verse novel, The Space You Left Behind, came out this past June and is now in the hands of teachers, librarians, and, most importantly, teen readers. Sometimes, after the requisite twists and roadblocks in a Save-the-Cat story, the hero gets exactly what she desired from the start. More often, she gets something she didn’t know enough to want when we first met her. Something more suited to the person, or poet, she is.

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Ona Gritz is the author, most recently of an award-winning memoir, Everywhere I Look, and two YA verse novels, The Space You Left Behind and Take a Sad Song.

THE SPACE YOU LEFT BEHIND

Sixteen-year-old Cara has cerebral palsy. Self-conscious about her limp, Cara is convinced her disability is what causes boys to always place her in the friend zone. This summer, it seems to be happening again with her new crush, Josh.

The two of them are huge fans of a popular mystery podcast and, as it happens, Cara has a real-life mystery of her own. She’s never been that curious about the donor who is her biological father, but now that Josh shows an interest in learning his identity, she’s all in. As Cara starts exploring, she stumbles upon a family secret that just might explain the feeling she’s always had that something important is missing from her life. But with this knowledge, her life may never be the same again.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing