Note: I wrote this post on Friday. I thought I’d posted it. Turns out, I should have double-checked. So in today’s post “Rethinking the Medieval”, when I say “if I piqued your interest” this is the post I mean. You live & learn. 🙂
As Halloween approached, the Twittersphere came alive with preparation and excitement for National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo), which commenced today. It is when eager writers tackle the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in just one month. The only goal is to achieve that word count, shutting one’s mental editor in a drawer and letting rip, 1,667 words per day.
Some writers thrive on this sort of pace. I see how it could be beneficial – to turn off hesitation, to make progress however “messy” the end result. Writers cheer each other on; it’s a marathon after all, and the goal is simply to finish.
I have only ever been a spectator in this writing sport. The deadline and the pace is daunting to me. The idea reminds of the days when I was up all night finishing final papers for college classes, running on caffeine, chocolate and adrenaline. I couldn’t imagine doing it voluntarily for a month, even if the project in question was just pure fun.
My goals for November are more basic. Since the summer I’ve been in recovery mode, letting my brain rest after so many months (and years) of writing-editing-revising. I am learning how to write without the novel playing out in my daily thought cycle. It was my companion for nearly a decade, and now it’s moved onto another phase. And I have to learn to let it go.
It’s one thing to have an idea for a new novel. It’s another to write it. Some ideas take a long time for me to knead and let sit like bread dough. Others roll out like a pie crust. Sometimes it’s wrestling dough into a finicky spritz press. It’s all in the process. Process is queen. You can’t rush her.
More fundamental than working an idea through the press or under the rolling pin is finding the time to do it. November is the end of the infernal Daylight Saving Time. Normal time commences with an “extra” hour of daylight. 6:00 a.m. is now technically 5:00 a.m. I work better in the mornings. But, dark as it is now, I have the worst time getting out of bed, no matter what alarm I use. I usually do not have the time to put my brain to anything productive.
November will be a time to reestablish a creative routine, take back my mornings when the clocks change. I’ve made a playlist of music – nothing too intense – to wake my brain up. Even if I sit at the desk with my coffee and let my mind wander, I’ll consider it a victory. You have to start somewhere.
I want to write a novel again. This new one – about time travel and the early middle ages – is taking its sweet time. And I’m letting it. I’m slowly working through a guide to Old English and toying with a story here and there. Blogging. Reading. Wandering bookshops and buying books. Rearranging my bookcases. Enjoying fall before the real Advent and Christmas season begins.
I have to move at my own speed. On my own. In the quiet. That’s the only way a novel gets written, alone with my thoughts, at my own pace. That’s the beauty of writing: there is no one way.
Here are two articles I’ve found inspiring lately: Jami Attenburg on Solitude and Chuck Wendig
Fun Fact: the pre-Christian English called November, Blotmonað (Blotmonath), meaning “month of blood.” It referred to pre-winter slaughtering of animals or, some posit, sacrifices made to the gods. The word monað (and our modern word month) comes from the word for moon… moon cycle – from the waxing crescent to the next new moon.
As a further note, there is an argument among scholars to eschew the term Anglo-Saxon in titles and programs. I agree with them, so I’m going to avoid using the term whenever possible. A few reasons for this:
One. “Anglo-Saxon” began as a general term to describe the early medieval English, because the main Germanic groups who invaded and settled what became England (post-Rome) were – say it with me – Angles, Saxons and Jutes. It was a way of making distinctions between, say, Anglo-Norse or Anglo-Irish aspects of language and culture – who influenced whom, who settled where, etc.
Two. This term has been co-opted and weaponized in recent years by white supremacist groups – yes, Nazis. Much of it is willful ignorance and a refusal to accept clear research. They do not care what “Anglo-Saxon” refers to and perpetuate the fictional and dangerous narrative that the Anglo-Saxons were racial purists. In fact, the Anglo-Saxons didn’t called themselves such. They were Anglisc or Saxon, and later just the English. (It is similar to general ignorance of the term “Viking,” which was something one did, not a lifestyle.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun in Alfred the Great’s time, was a title nodding to the old kingdoms of England.
Three. The term alienates non-white scholars of early medieval history, as if “Anglo-Saxon” history belongs only to the “Anglo-Saxons,” in other words, white people. History doesn’t belong to anyone. History is the facts and evidence and looking closely at what people of the past said about themselves, not the other way around – not what we want them to have been.
