NaNoWriMo Part I

A strange thing happened on my way to writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month last November. I changed my mind.

Actually, the change was forced on me.

Early in the year, I outlined a novel, mostly in my mind, about a man who overcomes profound professional and personal adversities. In this case, the man was a race car driver, Indy car, specifically. (Given his job, you can imagine the type of adversity he could face.)

Now as many of you know, I love auto racing, primarily open-wheel racing. (I love Indy car and Formula One, not so much NASCAR, which I watch sometimes but it isn't my favorite. Being from Indiana, you can probably understand why I love open-wheel.) I know a lot about racing but not so much from a technical angle. And while the novel wasn't going to be loaded with technical material only a gearhead could understand and love, I needed to know more about the technical side in order to give the book greater credibility. I wasn't planning to mention the ratio between aerodynamic downforce and drag, or what spring rates are, or how air temperature affects the horsepower of a normally aspirated engine. But I did have to have some understanding of those issues and more.

A guy I knew from Philadelphia was, last year, at least, working as an engineer for a top Indy car team. I connected him and planned to pick his brain on the technical side of racing, including race strategy. But then, my health became an issue and dealing with that in the late summer and fall consumed more and more of my time and intellectual energy. The upshot is that by mid-October (when I started to focus on writing fiction again), I wasn't far along in my research and didn't have time to do a proper job of it. I could still write the story but it would lack heft. And I didn't want that.

So I had to change course and pick another story, one that wouldn't require a lot of research, which I didn't have time to do. Thus started the journey that became AN UNTIDY AFFAIR.

I thought back to my time in Philadelphia and recalled a particular person I wasn't overly fond of, and I used them as the starting point. In my head -- and later with the help of my wife -- I developed that person as a character and added other characters to interact with the first. It was going to be a story about overcoming challenges (and not a crime story) but quickly it changed.

Since I knew the first person in the mid-1980s, I decided the confrontation between the radical group MOVE and Philadelphia police would be a perfect backdrop to conceal a murder.

In the week before Nov. 1, I wrote a 10-page outline of the novel and prepared to tackle the challenge of writing at least 50,000 words in less than 30 days. In addition to writing an outline (which I normally don't do), I faced a couple of other major challenges with this project. But I will get to those later.

For now, I wanted to lay out some of what got me to Nov. 1. Mustering the creative strength to move ahead was difficult at first because of the medical issues I had been staring down for a couple of months. But once I was back to serious writing, the story came quickly and easily.

And in the end, that is what I want to impress upon you now. If you want to be a writer, then write. Circumstances may change what you write but write you must. So get back to it.

But first, thanks for reading.