PAGE TURNER: 50 Pictures' Worth

"Gail and Nate cried themselves to sleep on Thursday. The rest of his birthday weekend went downhill from there."

Those marvelous opening lines begin the new novel from Matt Larsen, which is either called Gemini Joe or Greater Than, depending on where you look for it.

That kind of confusion would not seem to be ideal for a new book, especially if you don't remember seeing anything about a Matt Larsen in your last issue of Publishers Weekly. Not to worry. Matt -- friend, colleague, and groomsman -- hasn't actually handed his book over to a publisher yet. In fact, he may not even bother. Because his book is the triumphant fruit of his labors as a participant in the 2005 edition of National Novel Writing Month, where it's about the journey, not the destination.

A quick brief for those new to the concept: NaNoWriMo (the preferred abbreviation, although a curiously stingy appellation for a project about accumulating words) posits that everybody has a novel in them, and they would write it if they only had the necessary prodding. So for the month of November, anybody is welcome to accept the challenge of starting from scratch and composing a 50,000-word novel by the end of November 30. You want to write that book? Here's the artificial deadline you need.

Sounds simple enough. Just start typing, and stop occasionally for coffee. Indeed, judging from the list of winners, that is the approach some successful novelists have taken. One winning volume is titled A Month of Random Phlegm Coughed Up By My Brain, a Bastardization of Conventional Novel Writing, in G Minor. I haven't read it, but I have the suspicion that it's not going to be entirely linear.

But 50,000 is a lot of words. For those keeping track at home, that's approximately 1,667 words a day. By the time I reach the end of this sentence, this blog entry will consist of 325 words. So should I decide to write a novel called Shane Writes a Blog, "Chapter One: Shane's Blog Entry for December 1", I'm not even a fifth of the way through Day One.

I have never entered NanoWriMo, choosing instead to live vicariously through others. If I'm not mistaken, this is Matt's second attempt at the literary 1500 meters. Most obvious lesson learned from watching Matt: writing sucks up your life. Several times during the past month, after dinner or in the midst of a game, Matt got to use this awesome-yet-sad exit line: "I'm sorry. I have to go write my book." If you think about it, it's a fantastic way to get out of any situation. It sounds gravely important: "Well, you can't really argue with that. The man has to write his book." And yet it's really cool: "Wow! He's writing a book!" But finally, it's bittersweet, because the darkness of a looming deadline colors the whole enterprise. Do you get to enjoy the process when you're racing through it? It's becomes just one man, slogging away against a tolling clock.

Well, it's not quite that dramatic. But I sounds pretty cool that way, doesn't it? Make a good book, that would.

Choosing November as the month to write a book is really quite cruel. The main reason: Thanksgiving. This 4-5 day holiday sitting right there in the last third of the race, practically daring you to try and finish. It's as though the people running this contest want you to blow off your family and friends. I mean, sure, it could have been worse. They could have picked February. It's the shortest month. But you would get the whole 28 days, because President's Day isn't going to coma-a-callin' right as you're building up to the dramatic climax. Besides, you're going to be stuck inside anyway, waiting for winter to end. But, I suppose that makes completing the challenge in November all the more satisfying. "Look at all the obstacles I've overcome." But you do miss the leaves changing.

This is all very significant to me because we're coming up on the third anniversary of me beginning work on a book of my own. I began writing a serial novel a long while back, that posted on an online literary journal called The Greenroom. (I then became editor of that journal, and then watched it go moribund due to website issues. It will come back, though. I swear it.) In a way, I had a gentler version of NaNoWriMo's artifical deadline in my corner, too. Knowing that I wanted a new chapter to go online every two weeks, I had to chug through the writing and the editing. And for about ten chapters, I was really making a go of it. In fact, as I went along, it seemed to get easier. I was in The Zone (which ESPN has informed me must be capitalized and drenched with reverb when uttered). But I let a deadline slip, and I slipped out of the groove, and the fields eventually went fallow. You see it happen to a lot of NaNoWriMo participants. They get through the first 10,000 words, and then the next 5,000 come much slower, and then you have to go to Ohio to gee Grandma, and you never do see the finish line.

I regret that my story slipped away. And Matt has shown me that I get get it back. I've got 15 chapters written. The construction equipment is on the site; the workers are just waiting for permission to start work.

The word is given.

Awhile back, I mentioned a couple secret projects for this blog which, as the name implied, I kept secret. Now I'll tell you: I'm finishing the book, and I'm doing it here. I'm going to start re-posting the early chapters, and then, starting with Chapter 16, it's all new, baby. And I've got whoever might be reading this site to keep me honest. Let's do this thing.

Dead Me Are A Girl's Best Friend. The re-launch. Chapter 1, coming next week. I'm going to write this book. It'll take more than a month, but I'm gonna do it.

Because right now, Matt can say something I can't. He wrote a book.

Matt's NaNoWriMo Page
An Excerpt from Matt's Novel