NaNoWriMo - All Apologies

Southern women apologize a lot, and I am the chief of sinners. If a friend bangs her elbow, the words “oh, I’m so sorry!” immediately fly from my mouth. We are a strong breed, able to carry the weight of the entire world upon our shoulders. In the same way that we take the responsibility for people’s hurts, we also feel it is our innate obligation to smooth over any potentially threatening or tear-inducing information. For instance, when I made the mistake recently of telling my mother I was participating in NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month annual competition), and she asked me what my novel was about, I immediately kicked into justification mode.

NaNoWriMo’s goal is to encourage people to turn off their inner-editors (at least for thirty days) and to get 50,000 words down on paper. Even for a pathological procrastinator like me, the potential incentive of being declared a “NaNoWriMo Winner” displayed all the signs of intense motivation. A few weeks in and close to 15,000 words, I made the mistake of mentioning my participation to the woman who bore me, raised me, and has known me my entire life. Caught in my own trap, I was forced to answer the dreaded question, “what is your novel about?” Hesitation followed. Wheels turned counter-clockwise in my mind. Attempts at vague explanations began to take shape in the recesses of my brain.

“Well,” I began articulately, giving my inner thesaurus time to clean up any misleading language waiting at the back of my tongue, “it’s the story of a mother and daughter and the hard times they go through… because of the mother’s alcoholism… you know, like the women I use to work with… and how the daughter learns forgiveness.” Awkwardness settled over the conversation as the woman who can see right through me processed this information. I blathered on quickly, in hopes of averting any possible suspicion that my mother had in any way contributed to the fodder for my novel, “You know, I saw so much of this in the families I worked with, how they learned to love, and to be loved, and to let others love them.” As my attempts at description continued, the façade of disconnectedness began to crumble, and my mother simply said, “aside from the alcoholism, it sounds like me,” and I knew it did.

Just as well, I reason, that she finds out now and not when I am being interviewed for Oprah’s book club. It is true. I stole the alcoholism from my father, the single-parenthood and broken relationships from my mother, the utter-depths of despair from my former clients, and several emotions and experiences from my own childhood. At least, my justification continues, I am turning truths into fiction and not portraying fiction as truth. After all, stories are just truth writ large, in easy to swallow, bite size pieces. The tricky part, it seems, is making sure those pieces taste good.

Some of the most difficult scenes of the novel are already out of the way, but I am finding myself hitting walls of writers-block as the focus turns to the mundane experiences of the main character’s lives - the awkwardness of adolescence, the helplessness of daily addiction, the unbreakable bond of a mother and child, despite life’s attempts to rip it apart. Stepping into the pain and sorrow of someone else’s shoes in an effort to weave 50,000 words into a magnetic story is difficult, and squeezing your foot into an old pair of your own can be heart wrenching.

My mother enjoys reading stories of redemption, so I do not think she will mind much that pieces of her life will be included in one. Truth be told, they have already been glued in place, the story just has not been told yet. I did not apologize for the inclusion, but I did try to offer assurance that my novel will not be her soul laid bare, nor will it be my own, as a novelist has the luxury of only displaying the parts of her life she is willing for others to glimpse. All I ask for at the end of November is for 50,000 words of a story to emerge. After that, I will do any editing and adding and smoothing over that is necessary. When the story is finished, if something I share is too personal, too uncomfortable, too distressing, I will be ready with my, “oh, I’m so sorry!”

Posted on January 28, 2008 12:00 AM