Butt in Chair: the mantra heard in writing circles, read in writer’s guides, taught in creative writing classes, and so on. I’ve heard conflicting thoughts on the phrase. You can’t say you’re a writer if you don’t sit down and actually write your pages. You also can’t gain inspiration or live life by remaining in said chair. I think it’s safe to say that no matter what advice you receive, the act of writing is just plain difficult. It really is.
This November, I bit the bullet and signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to put the novel I started last fall back into my mindset. The phenomenon challenges aspiring writers across the globe to set aside the month of November for some good-old-fashioned Butt in Chair time; got a story you’ve always wanted to write? Take NaNoWriMo as your golden ticket opportunity to get it going. And for me, that’s what I needed, a form of external motivation, some semblance of a deadline to remind me of my grad school days to get the damn writing written. You see, I fare better with a deadline, a kick, a lit fire. Plus some other sources of inspiration struck me these past few months and I wanted to revisit my story idea born last October. NaNoWriMo would be my time to get some writing, hopefully my whole story, in. Except once again, even with a deadline and a deep desire to tell a story, writing is just plain difficult.
I’ve used the Butt in Chair method and writing a middle grade (MG) novel, typically 20,000 to 50,000 words in length, is still tough for me. Long-form running is like running a marathon, it takes time out of a busy schedule. While poems, picture book scripts, and other short-form writing just come naturally to me, I’ve always strived to write novels; some of my favorite books come out of the middle grade age group and I thought, I can do this. In the words of my Nano, if other people can do it, why can’t I? Enough longing to write a book that can stand with some of my favorite MG writers on the shelves, just write a book and go from there. And so this November, I did. Or at least I started.
This NaNoWriMo - yes, by the time this is posted, November will still be going on - I’m not going to finish my MG work in progress. I don’t know why this big challenge takes place during a major American holiday and the end of the year at that, Thanksgiving and Q4 assignments really threw a wrench in my writing streak - I did have one going on from early to mid-November. But I am about at the halfway point of my little writing expedition. So even though I won’t reach the challenge’s ultimate goal of finishing a novel within the month of November, I’ll celebrate this small win. I will keep going in December, in the next months, in rewriting, reworking, and the analyzing and editing stages. I’m grateful for NaNoWriMo’s motivation, I did get some good first draft writing in after all even if the end result wasn’t a fully finished first draft.
Yes, I would’ve liked to have written more and have at least the drawn skeleton of my book. Composing a novel is hard, but every step along the journey is important. For me, I just needed a little pep in my step to get started. My book is a passion project, and I know the motivation is there waiting to take shape on a finished manuscript. I do want to share more about my book and I hope that one day kids around the country and world can see it on shelves. That is my true end result. So be on the lookout for more misadventures of a MG work in progress in desperate need of crossing the finish line.