Today is a celebration Sunday Sesh, and I’m doing the honours with a Cricketers Arms Lager, brewed in Melbourne.
This one is light and crisp. If you look closely at the photo you’ll see there’s lots of bubbles. It’s very light for a lager, and it smells sweet and fruity.
It goes down a little bit like a shandy, which isn’t a bad thing on a hot day. The sweetness in this brew takes the edge off the bitterness.
If you like Bare Cove Radlers, you’ll like this drop.
So, why the celebration?
In the last 24 hours, I’ve managed to write more words in one novel than I’ve written across 4 of them in the last 6 months. And it felt bloody good to finally get a good run on for once.
I guess the beauty of Nano is that it frees you from the constraints you normally find yourself under when sitting at the computer banging away on the keys, hoping that the words you form make some sort of sense.
I know I said the Sunday Sesh’s during November would be writing-free since all my other posts would be full of my Nano-neurosis, but I stumbled across something last night that made me fly through my writing, and I wanted to share it with you.
Of all the things suggested to help get you through Nano, the one thing I struggled with was finding the right tunes. Most of the time I write with nothing but the sounds of cars going past, ambulances with sirens blasting, and the dogs barking incessantly at people walking too close to the fence. (You can see why I get so much work done under those circumstances). On the odd occasion I do have some music on while I attempt to get words on the page, it’s normally something like Enya. I have a bad habit of actually listening to the music and singing along to it, bopping away at the keyboard and not actually typing anything, so any music without words, or with words I can’t understand is good.
However, last night a song jumped out at me while I was writing and it made me sit up and think. I stopped typing and listened to the song a few times over, and I realised that it embodied the essence of my story. The feeling I got when I listened to that song and thought about where my plot was heading was just magic.
I got goosebumps, and new plot points began forming in my brain. My words came more easily and my characters jumped to life. No longer were they skimming along on the edges, blurry in my mind and doing meaningless things in an attempt to move the plot forward. They were taking on lives of their own. I could see the settings as clearly as if the characters were me. Instead of sounding like they were talking under water, their voices became much clearer.
I began to dig deeper and started asking them some hard questions.
That’s all well and good for my plot, but the thing I’m really happy about is that I am much more excited about writing than I have been in a long time. Regardless of whether I hit the 50k at the end of this month or not, the one thing I will take away from Nano (even at this early stage) is that I need to make sure I stay connected with my characters, and I need to make sure that they’re following their true paths, and not the ones I think they should be following.
And finding a theme song early on should be a priority.
Having said all of that, I should be writing. I still have a huge amount of words to get down to reach 15k – not likely but I’ll give it a good shake.
And for everyone wondering, my Nano-novel’s theme song is “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan. If you listen to it, you’ll discover what type of novel I’m writing. I just hope I can do the story, and my characters, justice.
Until next Sunday’s Sesh,
Cheers!